Only one way did she have a chance of that happening. She fought back to inner balance.
But be quick! She left the place and cast about the mansion, avoiding the living room, till she found Aguilar. The gray man sat sorrowfully at the accounts. He knew her, sprang to his feet and bowed, stood hands atremble awaiting her word.
“Good morning,” she greeted in Spanish. “Forgive my intruding. You have had great shock and grief, and then you were questioned at length, no? I am sorry that I must ask you a little more.”
“I am at your service, sefiora.” He meant it, she knew.
“You found the senor in the pool, got him out, called for help, and until it came tried to resuscitate him. That was well done. What I must know is this. Was the water cold as usual?”
“I, I did not notice,” he replied, startled. After a moment, in which the corrugated face squinched together: “Now that I think back … yes, perhaps it was not—not icy cold. Cold, but not icy. I am not sure, sefiora. I was not noticing. And ordinarily i, I had no business at the pool. It was long since I had felt of that water.”
“Then I suppose, if it had been as cold as he liked, you would have been aware? You got soaking wet, after all.”
A shaky nod. “Yes, you are right, sefiora, I would have noticed. It was cold, but not … not extremely cold.”
And now it was lukewarm. “Do you think the seftor, this one time, may have wanted to swim at a more comfortable temperature?”
“Perhaps. I cannot say. He never did before. I well remember how he had the pool put in just for himself—“ Aguilar clutched her arm. “Senora,” he gasped, “could a plunge into a surprise, could that have been fatal?”
His grip hurt her thin flesh, but she hadn’t the heart to reprimand him. “Surely not. If somebody, for a prank, let us say, sneaked in and set the thermostat high, I can see him swearing very loudly and storming off to wake everybody and find who the guilty party was. Can you not?”
“Yes.” Aguilar released her. “Yes, I think he would do that. He was never one to suffer insults meekly.”
“Macho. I agree. Well, I thank you, and please do not speak of this conversation to anybody else. We still have the truth to discover.”
The horror to uncover. She feared, she feared;
Boost onward, full thrust, and keep the radars alert. Grief was for afterward. She returned to the living room. Haugen and Erann sat in a silence thick enough to cut with a torch. The Earthman’s head snapped around in her direction. The Lunarian rose, gave his people’s salute of honor, and resumed his chair when she took hers.
“Okay, Rita’s out of this wretchedness and we can talk freely,” she said. “Governor, you were going to tell me what the doctors found.”
Haugen frowned. “With respect, SeAora Beynac, isn’t that the business of the police? There is no evidence of wrongdoing. The water was not poisoned, he was not killed by an uninsulated electric appliance dropped into it, nothing of that kind.”
“I wonder how dangerous electricity is in CP water, anyway. By itself, it’s a poor conductor.” Dagny kept Erann in her peripheral vision, not to stare at him. She knew the trick of using it. He might have been a breathing statue. “Seflor,” she told Haugen, “I’m old and tired. You made a remark about oddities in this case. For favor, don’t force me to call the medical office and wade through procedures.”
“As you wish,” Haugen sighed. He assembled his words. “First and foremost, his regular physical examinations showed him to be in excellent health. Whatwent wrong? How did he come to drown? You understand, these findings are preliminary, many details wait for laboratory studies, but it does not appear that he suffered a heart attack, an embolism, an arterial spasm, any of the obvious possibilities for him to lose consciousness and drown.”
“Did he drown?” Watch, watch, and don’t show that you are watching.
“What else?” asked Haugen, surprised. “The signs, the appearance of the body—Ah, Aguilar’s efforts, and then the emergency team’s, they have made it unclear how much water was in the lungs, but the blood shows oxygen deprivation.” He gave her an aggressive smile. “You do not “imagine, do you, that somebody choked him, then threw the corpse into the pool?”