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Mrs. Rogers tried to stop the movement but could not. She watched in horror as Miss Detweiler came to rest on her side. Her head tilted back, and she seemed to be staring at the canopy of her bed.
Mrs. Rogers turned from the bed and walked to the door. In the corridor, the walk became a trot, and then she was running to the end of the corridor, past an oil portrait of Miss Detweiler in her pink debutante gown, past the wide stairway leading down to the entrance foyer of the mansion, into the corridor of the other wing of the mansion, to the door of the apartment of Miss Detweiler’s parents.
She opened and went through the door leading to the apartment sitting room without knocking, and through it to the closed double doors of the bedroom. She knocked at the left of the double doors, then went through it without waiting for a response.
H. Richard Detweiler, a tall, thin man in his late forties, was sleeping in the oversize bed, on his side, his back to his wife Grace, who was curled up in the bed, one lower leg outside the sheets and blankets, facing away from her husband.
Mr. Detweiler, who slept lightly, opened his eyes as Mrs. Rogers approached the bed.
“Mr. D,” Violet said. “You better come.”
“What is it, Violet?” Mr. Detweiler asked in mingled concern and annoyance.
“It’s Miss Penny.”
H. Richard Detweiler sat up abruptly. He was wearing only pajama bottoms.
“Jesus, now what?”
“You’d better come,” Mrs. Rogers repeated.
He swung his feet out of the bed and reached for the dressing gown he had discarded on the floor before turning out the lights. As he put it on, his feet found a pair of slippers.
Mrs. Detweiler, a finely featured, rather thin woman of forty-six, who looked younger, woke, raised her head, and looked around and then sat up. Her breasts were exposed; she had been sleeping wearing only her underpants.
“What is it, Violet?” she asked as she pulled the sheet over her breasts.
“Miss Penny.”
“What about Miss Penny?”
H. Richard Detweiler was headed for the door, followed by Violet.
“Dick?” Mrs. Detweiler asked, and then, angrily, “Dick!”
He did not reply.
Grace Detweiler got out of bed and retrieved a thick terry-cloth bathrobe from the floor. It was too large for her, it was her husband’s, but she often wore it between the shower and the bed. She put it on, and fumbling with the belt, followed her husband and Violet out of her bedroom.
H. Richard Detweiler entered his daughter’s bedroom.
He saw her lying on her side and muttered something unintelligible, then walked toward the canopied bed.
“Penny?”
“I think she’s gone, Mr. D,” Violet said softly.
He flashed her an almost violently angry glare, then bent over the bed and, grunting, pushed his daughter erect. Her head now lolled to one side.
Detweiler sat on the bed and exhaled audibly.
“Call Jensen,” he ordered. “Tell him we have a medical emergency, and to bring the Cadillac to the front door.”
Violet went to the bedside and punched the button that would ring the telephone in the chauffeur’s apartment over the five-car garage.
H. Richard Detweiler stood up, then squatted and grunted as he picked his daughter up in his arms.
“Call Chestnut Hill Hospital, tell them we’re on the way, and then call Dr. Dotson and tell him to meet us there,” Detweiler said as he started to carry his daughter across the room.
