Fair Warning (14 page)

“All this,” said Jacob Wait, “happened on March eighteenth?”

“It was the day Ivan Godden was injured,” said Verity. “If that’s March eighteenth.”

“During the morning?”

Verity’s nose looked very white and clear.

“Yes—about noon. Mrs. Godden brought the dog over here and asked me to keep her. I guessed something of what had happened and asked her outright, and she told me only the bare outline of it. If she had openly quarreled with her husband about the dog she did not say so.”

Her tone adroitly implied that it hadn’t occurred—that quarrel. But Jacob Wait knew better. He said rather dryly, “Well, they had. Miss Godden knew of it and told me this morning. It seems that Mrs. Godden became—hysterical— and struck her husband.”

Rob was white with anger and did not dare show it. Verity said steadily without a glance at Marcia, “If she did, she was driven to it.”

“Your story, then, is that Ivan Godden was cruel to his wife?”

Verity saw that trap in time.

“He wasn’t kind. But his cruelty to her was not so extreme as to cause her to murder him, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Jacob Wait turned—or rather merely shifted his great dark eyes to Marcia.

“The servants tell us a different story,” he said. “They say that particular quarrel came to physical violence.”

“It did,” said Marcia, summoning strength from some hidden reservoir. “He—my husband—was a very strange man. He was angry with me, he had given me the dog expecting me to grow fond of it, as I had.” It had surprised her a little, that gift—until he had threatened to take the dog away and she had realized that the gift had been from the beginning only one of his subtle ways of torturing her. She went on, “He said Ancill would do it, that I needn’t worry. And he said—” she braced herself and told it because she must—“he said I need not shed any tears, but if I did he would have the pleasure of—of kissing the tears away.”

Rob made a strangled sound and said, “Is this necessary? Don’t you see how very painful—”

“This is murder,” said Jacob Wait wearily. “Go on, Mrs. Godden. What happened then? Or may I guess—he approached you, you struck him and ran outdoors.”

“Someone told you,” said Marcia in a mere statement of fact. He nodded.

“Ancill?”

“No.”

“The cook—Mrs. Beek?”

“No. Beatrice Godden told me that your quarrels with her brother came to violence. I asked her. She supplied particulars. It would have been better if you had admitted it all last night when I asked.”

“Beatrice—” began Verity explosively and stopped.

“You see,” said Jacob Wait slowly, “it seems that Mrs. Godden’s behavior was so very unexpected—so singular, indeed, in its—er—extremity, that Ivan Godden felt it necessary to tell his sister. To,” said Jacob Wait, “warn her.”

“You—”

“Hush, Rob!”

“It’s true, he told me he was going to do that. It was his punishment.” Marcia took a breath. “He said he would tell Mrs. Copley, too. He—he—”

Verity was at her side.

“There, Marcia. Don’t, child!” She faced Jacob Wait over Marcia’s head. “If Mrs. Godden for once defied her husband, it was only what a less controlled and patient woman would have done years ago. I assure you—knowing her well—that she is not given to hysteria or anything approaching it. And that Ivan Godden’s vile pretense at warning would have reflected only and rightly upon himself. He—” Her eyes blazed blue fire, and the torrent of anger was getting out of hand. Rob saw it and said something unintelligible, and Jacob Wait watched and listened. “He deserved a much worse death than he had,” blazed Verity, and Rob put his hand on her small shoulder and said, “Verity, stop!”

She stopped, still angry, and Jacob Wait gave Rob a regretful look. This was the kind of thing he liked to get started; this was what gave him sidelights and information and evidence. Evidence. He sighed, gave Verity a long, mournful look, and then said suddenly to Rob, “What would you do if I arrested you and Mrs. Godden now?”

“You can’t,” said Rob quietly. “You haven’t a case.”

“Oh, haven’t I?” said Jacob Wait. He favored him with another long, unfathomable look and repeated, “What would you do if I arrested you?”

“Try to get bail, I suppose,” said Rob.

“That’s what I thought,” said the detective and turned around and walked out of the room. At the door, however, he stopped and looked at them again. “Of course, you wouldn’t succeed. But you’re as good as under arrest right now,” he said. “You can try to get away if you want to. I don’t care. But I wouldn’t advise you to try it.” He was unhurried, unruffled, altogether certain of something, and they didn’t know what it was.

That was the trouble.

It was as if some definite, absolute knowledge was in him and upon it he had built a program. They couldn’t guess it; they could not trim their own course thereby. All through those days they were to be acutely conscious of it, as one is conscious of walls surrounding one even if they do not directly press or touch against one.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

That was the trouble.

He went away as unexpectedly that morning as he had come. It was for a moment or two difficult to believe that he had really gone and had not just walked into the hall to interview the maid and would return.

The two policemen, stolidly but observantly, as if they were huge machines guided and controlled by a small wheel which was Wait himself, followed him.

Rob stared at the door, and Marcia held her breath, and Verity turned to listen sharply. The door in the front of the house closed at last, and Rob became suddenly galvanized and disappeared into the hall. He returned.

“They’ve gone, all right. Driving away in a car. Well—”

He got out his handkerchief and wiped his face and lit a fresh cigarette with hands that were inclined to shake. “Well, anyway,” he said, puffing at the light, “they didn’t take us to jail.”

“There’s always a next time,” said Verity somewhat morosely. “Have they got your letter?”

Rob, hopeful, said no. Verity shook her head. Marcia, limp and exhausted, thought both ways.

“Somebody has it,” she said. “And if they have the envelope”

“And it’s quite true,” added Verity, “that with the case as it is—so far as we know—just now, and in spite of what he said, you might be able to get bail and he’d be actually no forrader. No. What that man wants is an indictment or nothing.” She turned suddenly from staring into the fire, and her voice broke. “Oh, my children,” she said, “
what
are we going to do?”

But she recovered at once. She looked at Marcia curiously and with some approval. “Did you really strike Ivan Godden?”

“Yes,” said Marcia. “I didn’t mean to. It was as if I went—out of my own body. He’d been so—”

“Beastly,” said Verity. “I see that. You didn’t tell us— well, never mind. I’m glad you did it. I didn’t think they’d left you that much spirit.”

Rob said suddenly, “What did he do, Marcia?”

Marcia swallowed convulsively. It was not easy, even then, to talk of it. Yet Verity’s terse, prompt comment had already mysteriously covered something of the scar that frenzied moment of primitive defiance had left.

“He didn’t do anything,” she said wearily. “Not then. He just stood there looking at me with that queer, blank look in his eyes and the red streaks my fingers had made getting clearer and clearer on his cheek—I didn’t know I was going to do it. It was as if just for a moment something possessed me—”

“Marcia!”

“I couldn’t help it. It was—I didn’t know I was going to—I didn’t intend to—I was horrified when I saw what I’d done—” She looked at Verity and at Rob beseechingly, and Rob said again, “Marcia, dear!”

“Nonsense,” said Verity. “Don’t worry about it. It was sheer self-defense.”

“It’s damaging,” said Marcia. “Now—”

It was. Now that Ivan Godden was murdered. Now that the police knew of that one moment of defiance. There was no use denying it.

Presently Verity said, “It was that same afternoon that Ivan was injured?”

“I went home, you remember. Ivan had already gone into the Loop—Ancill was driving. No one came and nothing happened all afternoon—I sat there wondering what he would do to me when he got back. Then finally Dr. Blakie came to tell me he’d seen the dog, as you asked him to do, and that she was all right.”

“He stopped here first. I wish you could have seen his face when I showed him the dog.” Verity’s voice quivered with a nervous little wave of mirth. “I thought Ivan would have to take the word of one of America’s finest surgeons. I sent him on to see you.”

“He was there when Ancill telephoned to tell us about the accident. Later, when Ivan was better, I expected him to say something about the dog. But he didn’t until—last night.”

“Last night?”

“Yes.” Marcia looked at Rob. “Was it you at the french doors?”

“I—yes. So that was the thing—” Rob got up and roved uneasily about the room. “What did he say, Marcia? Anything in particular? I mean, did he make any threats?”

“He said he’d already told Beatrice of my—my peculiar behavior and that he would tail Verity if it became necessary. And that I would understand something he’d done—” She stopped suddenly. “Something he’d done—I wonder—”

They were both watching her anxiously. For a moment Ivan Godden’s beautiful dead hand stretched out toward her in threat.

“What?”

“I don’t know, Rob. I don’t know—that was all he said.”

“Knowing Ivan Godden —” began Verity and stopped.

Rob went to Marcia again and took her hands. “And remember, Marcia, we’re going to be married.”

“No—”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Rob, we can’t.”

Verity rolled Bunty over with her small foot and said, “Stop chewing my ankle, you little black devil. Marcia’s right, Rob.”

She got up, and paid no attention to Rob’s angry look. “And just at the moment,” she said crisply, “there are more urgent problems,” and walked out of the room.

“Marcia, she’s wrong. Nothing can stop our marriage. Don’t think of—”

“Rob, Rob, don’t you see what it would do to you! Everywhere we go, everybody we see, pointing or thinking, “There goes the man that murdered Ivan Godden and married his wife.’”

He took her rather savagely into his arms.

“You can’t—you mustn’t—don’t even think such things.”

“But it’s true. Rob, it’s true.”

“Marcia, do you love me?”

Someone coughed in the doorway. Rob lifted his head, and Marcia pulled suddenly and guiltily away from him, or would have done so had he not held her. It was Stella, pale blue eyes avid and face flushed with interest.

She lowered her eyes confusedly as Rob looked at her, and mumbled of the telephone and Mrs. Godden and Miss Godden.

“It’s Beatrice,” said Marcia. “She wants me to come home.”

It was. She had known, being Beatrice, where Marcia had gone.

“I’ll go with you,” said Rob, but Verity, appearing again, vetoed that.

“The less you see of Marcia just now the easier it will be for her.”

“But my place is with her.”

“Your place,” said Verity, “is staying as much as possible in the background. Do be sensible, Rob. You can’t storm around and attract everybody’s attention by your devotion. It may relieve your feelings, but it doesn’t help Marcia. Although,” she added a little crisply, “I must say you’ve already got yourself in the way of plenty of attention on the part of the police. Good-bye, Marcia, my dear. You’re—” It wasn’t possible for Verity to say much. Her blue eyes grew luminous, and she put a small strong hand on Marcia’s shoulder and said, “You’re all right, my dear.”

Rob, with an air of defiance mixed with something like desperation, kissed her.

And she had no more than reached the Godden house than she wished he had accompanied her. For on the table in the hall was a hat she recognized. A hard, black derby which, because he had always had one in hand when she had seen him, was associated in her mind with Henry Fitterling.

Ancill, who had opened the door for her, confirmed it.

“Mr. Fitterling,” he said, looking over her shoulder, “is here. He and Miss Beatrice are waiting for you. In the library.”

He took her coat and added, “And Mr. Trench is here, too.”

“Mr. Trench?”

“Yes, ma’am. He has come to stay. He is in the green guest room.”

The dining-room door opened.

“Marcia!” said Gally. “There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Gally! When did you come?”

He rubbed both hands through his hair. There was a look of doubt and perplexity about him, and an entire and startling absence of his usual gay and careless good humor. He looked pointedly at Ancill, who withdrew reluctantly, giving a last look over Marcia’s shoulder which reminded her that they were waiting in the library.

“I came,” said Gally, “this morning. Just now. But I’ll be damned if I know why.”

“But—Ancill said something about the guest room—”

“Sure. I’m installed. Bag and baggage. For the duration of hostilities, so far as I can see.” He looked up and down the hall, leaned toward Marcia and whispered, “Beatrice sent for me.”

“Beatrice? But she—”

“I know. She hates me.” He shrugged and spread out both thin hands and looked very tall and very bony in spite of his loose tweed suit. “Figure it out. I can’t.”

“But you came—” Marcia began incredulously.

“Oh, I came,” he said grimly. “One does when Beatrice summons.” He looked up and down the hall again. “I’m afraid of her,” he said. “Good God, how you’ve stood it, living in this mausoleum for three years! I hope you’ll get out now.”

“Gally, the lawyer’s here, and they’ve sent for me.”

“I know—old Fitterling. Saw him coming and ducked. Want my moral support in the interview? Okay, if you say so, but they’ll likely throw me out.”

“Didn’t Beatrice tell you why she wanted you to come?”

“Nope. Not a word. Just to bring my bag and come. And I did. Tell the truth, I was sort of glad of the chance. I’ve got no brains at all,” he said with nice candor. “But I’m here in case of need.”

Bless him, thought Marcia. Harum-scarum and feckless and unswervingly loyal. If only he wouldn’t drink while he was in the house—but Beatrice would see that the buffet was locked. Beatrice—Fitterling—Ivan’s property—perhaps now she could do something for Gally—start him in some small business. Or had Ivan made any arrangements for her own inheritance?