Fair Warning (17 page)

It would do no harm to try to find it, of course. Although Beatrice would be watching. Beatrice with her strong, beautiful hands, her tall, strong body, her arms which would be like steel. She had, certainly, thought Marcia in queer, sudden horror, the strength to kill Ivan if she had so desired. The physical strength to plunge that knife in his heart.

It was not possible that Ivan was dead.
That he was no longer in that room watching her every move; in that house, ordering its every breath.

Ivan was dead. The thought stabbed across her consciousness again as it had done many times. But it was not yet comprehensible in all its meaning and significance. She knew there would be, sometime, recognition of it; she knew that now in her inmost being there was a deep awareness of it. Of the removal of those dark, cruel fetters that had bound her.

But now there were other things. For Ivan was dead and he had been murdered. That was the thing that obsessed them all; that took every energy and every thought and every anxiety.

Ivan had been murdered, and Rob was already suspected of that murder.

So they must guard themselves, live somehow through those days of utter horror, meet somehow this incredible emergency.

Yet, standing there at the french doors, surrounded by that room which was so strongly Ivan’s, the room where only twenty-four hours ago he had been murdered, it seemed as if he were still there. As if, when she turned, he would be sitting in the big leather chair—watching her, smiling secretly. As if at any moment she would hear his voice: “Marcia … Marcia, come to me.”

She turned, shuddering, from the window.

She was terribly tired. She would go to her room and try to rest—try not to think of that adjoining room with the locked door between.

“Dr. Blakie,” said Ancill from the doorway.

She turned with almost a sob of relief. She hadn’t heard the faraway bell. She hadn’t heard the door being opened.

She held out both her hands, and Dr. Blakie took them quickly.

“How are you, Marcia? I tried to get here sooner but couldn’t make it.” He spoke quietly and with an effect, not of lightness, but of matter-of-factness which fell gratefully upon Marcia’s ears.

He went on scrutinizing her.

“You look a little pale. Why don’t you put on some lights? It’s not a good thing to sit here in the dark and—think.”

He released her hands and went to the light and pulled the cord and closed the door into the hall.

“Now then. How goes everything?”

“I don’t know. That’s the thing—I don’t know. We don’t know what they’re doing—what they’re after.”

“There, there now. None of you have been arrested; that’s something. Oh, it’s a bad thing, Marcia. But don’t break down over it. How late did they keep you last night?”

She told him.

“But you didn’t—incriminate yourself in any way?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Look here, my dear. We may not have very many minutes alone together, and I want to talk to you. Think you can—manage it?”

“Yes—yes.”

“All right. Sit down. Over here so we can’t be heard. That’s right. Now then—who killed Ivan?”

“I don’t know. I—”

“I mean, who do you think killed him?” She looked at him, and he shook his head kindly.

“Don’t be afraid to talk,” he said. He came nearer her, put a hand under her chin, lifted her face a little toward him and said gently, “You do have friends, you know.”

“I know,” she said, trying to smile.

“And I’m afraid,” he said in the remote small voice any of the surgical nurses at St. Thomas’s would have recognized —“I’m afraid, my child, that you’re going to need them. Now, then, tell me what you think—who killed him?”

“I don’t know. First I thought it was Rob—”

“Rob!”

“Yes. I—” She could feel a warm little wave coming. over her face. “He—he thought Ivan was not good to me. He—”

Dr. Blakie was watching her, seeing too much. He stepped back toward the desk and leaned lightly against it.

“Rob’s in love with you,” he said finally, very quietly. Marcia did not answer; she met his steady, searching gray gaze for a long moment but did not speak.

“I see,” he said at last, smiling a little. “Well—after all, it’s happened before this. You needn’t look so—upset about it, my dear. Remember, doctors see a lot of humanity—too much sometimes. However, you are a beautiful young woman, obviously mismated, it’s not surprising that Rob would constitute himself a sort of knight-errant. So you thought at first it was Rob?”

“But it wasn’t,” said Marcia quickly. “I know it wasn’t. It was only because Rob had—chanced to see something, and he thought I was in danger.”

“So Rob was the man in the garden?”

“He wasn’t in the house. He wasn’t the man Ancill heard here in the library.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. He told me. And Rob—you know Rob.”

He nodded shortly.

“Rob’s honest. And while I suppose he could go off on a tangent—most men could under sufficient provocation— still I can’t see Rob as a murderer. No. I agree with you there. But who was the man in the library? Isn’t there any clue to him?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps the police know by this time. It would be so much easier if we only knew what they are doing—what they’ve discovered—it’s the terrible uncertainty …” She was twisting her hands together, her voice rising unevenly.

“I know. I know. Hang on, my dear. Don’t worry about Rob, if that’s what you’re doing. He’ll take care of himself. The only evidence they have is the raincoat.”

If it were only the raincoat!

He walked over to the french windows, glanced out into the rain, and came back.

“I never thought of Rob doing it; I thought of—” He shot a gray, clear look at the door and said, “Listen to me carefully, Marcia. There’s something I want you to understand. I told you just now that a doctor saw a lot of humanity. I do. So much that I think I might understand things. That I might see things that other people would be less likely to see. I mean—impulses, reasons—justice as it actually is.” He paused to look down into her face in a kind remote way that was as disarming as a priest’s may be. She felt obscurely that there was something she ought to understand in what he had said and that he expected her to reply. But she had nothing to say, and he continued, “What I’m trying clumsily to say is that I deal, all the time, with life and death. I know their intimate secrets. And I know that there are matters beyond the usual course of law and legality. I know that—that there are things that are as necessary as fighting cholera. As burning a malignant growth. As—”

“Murder is never justifiable,” said Marcia with stiff lips.

“Oh, my dear, my dear! I only want you to know I am your friend. I knew Ivan. I know you. What’s more important,” he said dryly, “I know the nervous system.”

Tears were not far from Marcia’s eyes. She leaned forward.

“You’re trying to say that even if I murdered him you’ll still—help me.”

“You didn’t murder him,” he said abruptly.

“No. I didn’t.”

“Well, then, that’s all right,” he said briskly. “Forget all this. Forget it—but tell me just one thing. Mind, I’m not questioning you. I only want to help you—for God knows you need it. Why did you come back from Verity’s last night?”

“Come back! But I didn’t. I hadn’t gone. I—”

He looked at her slowly. His face was tired and all at once old.

“Your silver evening wrap was there. I saw it on the bed in Verity’s room when I arrived.”

“So that’s why—oh, Dr. Blakie, that’s why you thought I might have murdered him. But I didn’t. Beatrice had borrowed my silver wrap.”

“Beatrice—Forgive me. Why did she borrow it?”

“It was too warm for a winter wrap, and she hadn’t got the summer things out from the cedar closet yet.”

“Oh—so she borrowed your wrap. Wore it to Verity’s. Left it there when she went downstairs. H’m. I thought you were already there because I saw your wrap. So did Rob.”

She stood there looking perplexedly at him. It had been so natural, that request. In all that terribly crowded twenty-four hours there had been nothing more natural or ordinary.

“I don’t like it. You see, I did a little detective work today. It’s not exactly in my line. But you—there’s no use in denying the fact that you’re in rather a spot, my dear. Any little thing that can help … Well, it occurred to me that since, summing it up, the last month of Ivan’s life was spent in the hospital there might be some clue there, so I got hold of his nurses—there were five altogether. More nurses than information. However, I did get hold of two things. One wasn’t important. Only that Galway Trench had been to see Ivan.”

“Gally! But I didn’t know—”

“No. He made a very short call, and not a very pleasant one, according to the nurse. That is, she didn’t hear the conversation. But Ivan was in a rage when the boy left and told the nurse that—don’t mind this, my dear; we knew Ivan—that his wife’s relatives seemed to think he was made of money. So I take it Gally tried to borrow some money and was refused.”

“Oh.” It did hurt. But it was like Gally. And he’d been, she suddenly remembered, out of a job for six weeks. Since a fortnight before Ivan was injured. And she remembered, too, swiftly, that feeling of anxiety and urgency when he asked her, only a few moments ago, if she had any money.

“The other,” Dr. Blakie went on, “is more important. And that was that Beatrice and Ivan quarreled. Quarreled bitterly and terribly just a week before he came home. This time the nurse heard part of it, but she doesn’t know what the quarrel was about.”

Beatrice. Marcia heard herself saying stiffly, “Beatrice has the letter.”

“What letter?”

She would tell him, she decided swiftly. He would see Rob.

She told it briefly, honestly. He listened, trying, she thought, not to show in his expression the increasing anxiety he felt, and asking a few terse questions.

“And no one but Beatrice and the cook knew of the will?”

“So Beatrice says. And I suppose Emma Beek knew only of its existence, not the contents.”

“And it lets you out entirely. Ivan would have changed it again sometime, probably. Odd he was killed just then. Are there any other substantial bequests? Anyone else, I mean, who would benefit largely by his death while this will is in existence?”

“I don’t think so. That seemed to be the main provision.”

“And Beatrice has Rob’s letter? Why on earth did the young fool write it! Well, never mind. They do. When did she get hold of it?”

“Yesterday. Stella brought it just after Ivan had returned.”

“And she found it in the cupboard over there? When?”

“While I was at the bank in the afternoon.”

“Queer she didn’t just hand it over to Ivan.”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t tell you why?”

“No. That’s all she said.”

“Well, you’ll have to go along with her for a while. Do as she says. There’s something more behind it than a fear lest they think she knew of the new will. It may be linked up somehow with this quarrel at the hospital. I don’t know.” He paused, frowning at the desk, thinking. “I’ll try to find out. What are you going to do about Rob? Marry him?”

“I can’t. Not when people will say—”

“ ‘ There goes Ivan Godden’s murderer,’ ” he finished.

“You see it, too.”

“I’m afraid so,” he said reluctantly. “But things may break right—look here, I’ll go over and tell Rob about this. I’ll go right away. Now don’t worry too much. And promise me something.” He was suddenly very grave.

“Yes.”

“You know my telephone number. Promise me, if any thing at all happens that seems—oh, unusual in any way, or that frightens you, to telephone to me at once. Will you?”

“Yes.”

He went away then. Marcia with her heart lighter watched from the french windows and could barely see, beyond the iron fence and the dripping green shrubs, the dark figure going along the street through the rain toward the Copley house. A light flashed on in the lower hall; he’d rung and been admitted. Rob would know now.

It was just then that she remembered that she hadn’t told him Gally was there. That at Beatrice’s mysterious request Gally had come to stay in the house.

But it didn’t matter. There’d been so many other more important things.

Rain stopped with darkness, and it grew warmer, so that the earth steamed and halos of mist obscured street lights. Dinner was worse than lunch, for the house was, with the cessation of the rain, suddenly and unaccountably still, and the air heavy and lifeless. Gally looked white and nervous in the wavering light of candles, and lingered to give a longing look at the buffet. Beatrice saw the look and herded him firmly into the drawing room. She poured coffee and over it told them, all at once, that there was some question over the manner of Ivan’s death.

“There’s been a post-mortem,” she said, abruptly. “Jacob Wait told me. It seems—his skull was fractured before he was stabbed. Sugar, Gally?”

He started violently, said no and then said yes. She gave him a glance of disapproval.

“One lump?”

“Two,” said Gally, who never took sugar, and took the cup from her hand. “You were saying?”

“They are inclined to think that his skull was fractured—before he was stabbed,” said Beatrice coolly.

“B-but—” said Gally.

“Well?”

Gally was very white; the freckles stood out on his thin face.

“But they—they said the fracture occurred as he fell.”

“They thought it possible. If this later theory is correct, it rather reverses things. If he were already unconscious or stunned by the blow, it would be very much easier for—whoever did it—to approach Ivan and stab him. It would argue less physical strength necessary on the part of the murderer.” She did not look at Marcia but might as well have done so.

“You mean—anybody might have done it? A—a woman, for instance?” said Gally.

“A woman,” said Beatrice. “For instance.”

Gally made an incoherent sound in his throat. Marcia stared into the small black pool of coffee in her cup. Gally said, “I’ll have more coffee, please,” and stood beside Beatrice watching the clear brown stream pouring into his cup as if his life depended upon it.