Read Online Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich - Free Book Online Page B

Viuda had just said, half to herself, with a sigh of resignation, was: “It will do no good. It never has from the beginning, it never will to the end of time. One can’t change the world.”
    In the passageway outside, Conchita crossed paths with Rosita. They brushed by one another like two people unaware of one another’s presence, or at least trying to give that impression. The daughter of the house whispered, “She’s sending Marta with me, what am I going to do?”
    The serving girl reached out backhand and clasped hands with her in passing, as if to lend moral support.
    Conchita looked down at something. “What’s that?”
    “Don’t be afraid, it’ll just make her drowsy.”
    “Me? I can’t!”
    The other fanned both hands at her in a violent affirmative.
    “It won’t hurt her, will it?” Conchita breathed anxiously.
    “It’s nothing, just an herb from the mountains. I got it from an Indian down at the market. I’ve tried it on myself. All it does is— Sh! Here she comes.” They resumed their interrupted transits.
    An old woman of about sixty, shawled for the street, was coming down the passageway. “Are you ready, my flower? Have you said good-by to your mother?” And to Rosita, in angry authority, “Go in there and stay with the Senora, useless one! She may need you for something.”
    Conchita brushed past. “Wait for me at the door. I’m just going back to my room a second.”
    She stopped before the mirror in there, scanned herself anxiously as though to make sure she was looking her best for the sake of the dead in the cemetery. She threw open a drawer, unearthed a lipstick from some secret hiding place at the back of it, hastily touched it to her lips. Then she lowered the dimming veil over her face, obliterating the improvement she had just made, and hurried demurely back along the passageway to rejoin her companion.
    Her chaperon already had a public carriage drawn up at the door and was sitting waiting in it. To go to the cemetery in a gasoline-powered vehicle was somehow improper, she seemed to feel. “To the flower market,” she ordered the driver, as the slim veiled figure climbed in next to her.
    Ten minutes later, after driving through a number of narrow, elbow-jointed streets, they reached a small plaza fronting a rose-tan church of massive Spanish colonial architecture. What was remarkable about it was the broad expanse of worn stone steps leading up to it, spanning the entire foundation in width. They were invisible as steps save for a narrow lane of clearance left in the middle, running directly up to the entrance. All the rest had disappeared under what seemed to be a multicolored, unbroken flower bed, with patches of shelter over it here and there. It was only on closer inspection that this disintegrated into separate little zones of barter, each presided over by its individual vendor. Some had rigged up little portable stalls, poles supporting awnings, or straw mats to keep the sun off their perishable wares. Others, unable to afford this, simply squatted on the steps in hollow squares, their merchandise ranged around them in open sheaves or clusters thrust into clay water jars. The air was cloying with an indescribable odor of ferns, crushed leaves, bruised and trodden petals and stalks, and, above all else, the peculiar brackishness given off by age-old paving stones saturated repeatedly with water all day long without ever having time to dry off. It was an odor compounded in equal parts of verdant, blooming life and stagnant, mildewed decay. This was the flower market, held on this site for two hundred years past every day from sunrise until dusk.
    Conchita’s chaperon got out of the carriage at the foot of the steps, turned to ask: “What kind shall I get?”
    The girl descended right after her. “I’m coming, too. I want to pick them myself.”
    Marta started to protest that it wasn’t necessary, she would do it for her, but Conchita had already taken the lead,