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Authors: Mignon Good Eberhart

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BOOK: Fair Warning
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It was just then that she perceived that the library door was not closed. It was instead an empty well of soft blackness out of which came no sound.

Her first thought was that Ivan had gone.

Then something in the quality of the silence, of the darkness all around her frightened her a little. It was so very black—that space beyond the doorway which was the library. So terribly still.

Where were the lights? There were no overhead lights; Ivan hated them. He’d had them removed and lamps put in. Well, then, where was the nearest lamp? And don’t be silly, nobody’s going to clutch at you out of all this blackness. There’s nobody here. Walk over to that chair and turn on the light.

She crossed the threshold, and at once all light was gone.

But there was something in the room. Something that moved a little somewhere—below her it was—on the floor —
what

It was the dog, Bunty. No, Bunty was gone.

But the thing was moving again.

She tried to cry “Ivan”; she tried to speak; her hands encountered slippery cold leather, and she reached frantically into the darkness and found the lamp cord and jerked it.

“Ivan!”

He was there.

On the floor. One of his hands moved aimlessly up and down along the carpet. And a knife with a shellacked wooden handle projected from a patch of wet redness just over his heart. He opened his eyes and looked at Marcia and said in a kind of mumble, “Get Graham—quick—take this out —”

“Ivan!”

His eyes were blank and bright and commanded her. “Take it out!” he gasped, and under that terrible command Marcia put her hands on the thing which was oozing red there upon his white shirt front. It was a knife, sharp and two-edged. A knife she had seen before. “Pull,” he whispered, and his eyes fluttered and closed. Marcia, crouching there with her hands frozen to the handle of that knife, saw him die.

Nothing moved in the room, not even the shadows. She might have been alone in the house.

Rob had killed him, then.

As he said he would do.

Rob—oh, Rob, no. Anything but this!

She didn’t hear the french doors open.

She didn’t move as Beatrice paused for one dreadful instant and then screamed, “Ivan!” and ran across and flung herself down opposite her, with Ivan between them.

“He’s dead,” she cried. “He’s murdered! How could you have done it, Marcia!”

CHAPTER V

S
OMETHING HAD ENTERED THE
Godden house which was never to leave it. Entered or perhaps had been there, bred long ago and coming slowly into secret being.

And in the first dreadful moment of its being it changed the faces of all familiar things, making them strange and full of obscurely terrifying significance, as in a nightmare. The brown leather chair, the worn carpet upon which she crouched, the white head of Caesar looking down with sightless eyes—all of it was different, had sentience, and in that sentience there was threat.

“He’s—dead,” said Marcia whispering.

Beatrice’s long face was blazing white; she leaned across Ivan and seized Marcia’s shoulders.

“How could you have done it!” she cried, shaking Marcia as if to force words from her. “You have killed him!”

The long loops of green ribbon dangled from her shoulders, and one of them swung across Ivan’s breast and Marcia stared at it.

“Your dress,” she said numbly. “You are staining it—I didn’t kill him. Let me go.”

Beatrice’s iron grip on her shoulders tightened, then she released her so suddenly that she flung Marcia backward against the chair.

“Who would have thought you had the strength to do it!” she said in a queer kind of contempt, and bent over Ivan again, and felt along his outflung wrist.

What for? A pulse, of course. But Ivan couldn’t be dead—he had just spoken to her. Marcia said in a queer high voice, “He can’t be dead. He spoke to me. He said to call Graham Blakie.”

Beatrice gave her one swift look.

“Did he say anything else?”

“No—yes, he told me to pull—to pull out the knife.” She was shuddering all at once and sick.

“I see. So that’s your story. How long—when—oh, it doesn’t matter! Telephone for the doctor, quick. Not at his home, at Verity’s. Hurry. They can do things, you know. It seems to be straight through his heart. Telephone, I said!”

Marcia was staggering to her feet, getting entangled in her chiffon skirts, obeying as was her habit.

“No, wait,” said Beatrice. “It would be quicker to run across the garden. I’ll stay here.
Hurry
! Where’s Ancill?”

It was wildly disjointed—incoherent. The one instant of comprehension was gone and did not return except in terrifying flashes during the chaotic hours to come. Beatrice was calling “Ancill—Ancill!” loudly and still leaning over Ivan. Marcia herself was out in the moist, dark night, running over wet grass toward lights across the garden wall which were windows of the Copley house when Ancill, running, passed her. He cried, “I’ll get the doctor,” and was over the wall, a thin, sliding black silhouette. He was at the garden door, and light was streaming out into the moist darkness. Then all at once figures were jerking from the house into that stream of light.

Her feet were wet and cold; her cherry taffeta wrap had fallen somewhere back in the library, and her shoulders were bare to the night. A tall figure in black, with a gleaming patch of white that was a shirt front, was vaulting over the garden wall and was followed by another.

“Marcia! My God, what are you doing here?” Rob’s arm was around her, his warm hand on her bare shoulders. “What is it?”

“Bring her into the house, Rob.”

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

They were hurrying, all of them, over the wet grass, their voices breathless, incoherent. Then Ancill was holding the french doors open, and Dr. Graham was running across to kneel beside the thing on the floor that was Ivan.

Rob said sharply, “Don’t look, Marcia. How did it happen?”

“I don’t know—I came downstairs, and there were no lights and—he was there—”

Rob! Why did you do it! Anything but this, Rob!

Dr. Blakie was doing things with swift, skillful fingers while Beatrice stood above him; Marcia could see only Graham’s black shoulders and his bent head and Beatrice’s pale profile, with those lowering black eyebrows, above the green lace dress. Rob kept rubbing her hands and watching them, but he was listening to Marcia, too, for he said in a queer voice, “Do you know who did it? Tell me quickly, Marcia. I must know. Did you see?”

Who did it? He wasn’t looking at her at all; who did it?

“No,” said Marcia. “No.”

Something had happened over there where Ivan lay. Something final. Dr. Blakie had risen and was standing beside Beatrice, looking down, and they were both utterly still except that one of Beatrice’s strong hands was opening and closing. Rob knew, too, that it had happened, for he turned suddenly to Marcia; his eyes were dark and terribly urgent, seeking down into her own.

“Don’t you know?” he whispered. “Quick—before people come.”

“No,” whispered Marcia. “Rob—Rob, is he dead?”

His face just above hers was so white; his mouth so grim, his blue eyes so strange and black and shining.

“He’s dead, all right,” he said. “You’d better have a lawyer —”

Dr. Blakie had turned toward the desk. “Do you know anything of this, Marcia, except that you—found him like this? I mean, was anyone else in the room?”

“No.”

“You just—found him? With this knife in his heart?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’d better notify the police. I can’t do anything else. I’m sorry. Where’s the telephone?”

Ancill slid from behind the big brown leather chair.

“Shall I telephone, sir? What shall I say?”

Beatrice turned slowly to look at the doctor. They were all, suddenly, looking at him.

He would not return their looks; he got out a cigarette case, opened it, selected a cigarette, and tapped it on the case, still refusing to meet those eyes. His face looked tired and gray above the gleaming white immaculacy of his shirt front. He said finally, still not looking at them, “Tell them it was suicide.”

“Suicide!” cried Ancill.

He looked at Ancill then.

“Certainly, suicide. He’s stabbed; his skull apparently was fractured by the fall. He could have stabbed himself—how do we know he didn’t?”

“Sui—” began Ancill and then said, “Yes, sir,” and slid away.

“Suicide!” said Beatrice. “He was not a man to do that. It couldn’t be suicide.”

Dr. Blakie glanced at her.

“Could be,” he said remotely. “Probably wasn’t. Anyway, the police won’t believe it. But we’ll try suicide—the weapon was still there.”

“Look here,” said Rob suddenly. “Marcia found him like that, and she was alone when she found him. We’ve got to fix up something before the police get here. They’ll—they’ll fasten it on her.”

Beatrice looked at Marcia, opened her mouth, closed it again. Dr. Blakie said quietly after a moment, “Just what happened, Marcia? Tell it more clearly.”

“It—I was leaving—going to Verity’s—I was late, I came downstairs—the library was dark; the hall was dark. No lights anywhere, so I couldn’t see him. I came into the library and—heard something moving —”

“What?” That was Rob.

“I don’t know. Just something moving. Like a cat or dog or something on the carpet. I turned on the light, and Ivan was there. He—he wasn’t dead. He opened his eyes and told me to call the doctor and to—pull out the knife.”

Rob said swiftly, “And did you?”

“No—I tried to, but I couldn’t. He—he died—just then. I couldn’t.”

“Oh, my God, she’s touched it. Her fingerprints—”

“Now, Rob, don’t!” Dr. Blakie put a restraining hand on Rob’s shoulder. “Pull yourself together. It was the natural thing to do, of course. What are you doing?”

“I’m going to wipe off the fingerprints. What did you do with the knife?”

“My own are on it, too,” said Dr. Blakie reasonably. “Fingerprints won’t prove anything except that the man’s wife and doctor both tried to remove the knife.”

Beatrice was staring steadily at Marcia, a look of deep scorn and disbelief in her white face. She took a sudden step forward, as if about to speak, and then mysteriously said nothing.

“But the fingerprints are there,” said Rob. “And it’s—a danger. Where is the knife? Oh, I see.”

It was on the table where the doctor had placed it, shining under the light. Stained and wet at its tip.

Dr. Blakie lifted his neatly tailored black shoulders in a gentle shrug. “Perhaps you’re right. Go ahead and wipe the handle. Then I’ll pick it up and put some more of my own on it. Otherwise—I mean, if there are no prints on it— they’ll know that we are trying to protect somebody, and that alone will point suspicion, start them inquiring about motives. Not, of course,” he interpolated, with a quick look at Marcia—“not that Marcia had any motives, but you never can tell where a thing like that is going to end.”

Ancill came to the door again.

“There’s a squad car in the neighborhood,” he said. “They said it would be here at once. And they said— ” he looked straight over their heads—“they said not to touch anything, sir. To leave things exactly as we found them.”

“I see,” said Dr. Blakie. “Thank you. Now if you’ll just get a sheet—”

“Yes, sir.” He went away noiselessly. Rob sprang to the table, whipping out a handkerchief. He had the knife in his hand and had turned with his back to the others when Verity said from the doorway: “What are you doing, Rob? How is Ivan—” Then she saw Ivan and stopped suddenly and caught her breath so sharply it was like a scream.

And in that frozen, still moment, with the moist black night beyond the windows a background for Verity’s blanched face and her pale blue gown with its train clutched in one of her small, rigid hands, they heard, off in the distance, eerie and human through the soft night, the sound of the police siren, coming nearer.

Coming nearer because Rob had killed Ivan Godden with a knife that they had got for dandelions.

And Beatrice had found her with her own hands on the knife and had said, “How could you have done it, Marcia!”

When would Beatrice tell what she had seen? When would she point to Marcia and say, “There is the murderer—she killed her husband, and I saw her in the act of doing it—I saw her with her two hands on the knife.”

“So that’s your story,” Beatrice had said.

There was a hideous crescendo of sound around the corner, which dwindled suddenly, lower and lower, and stopped. Ancill passed through the hall, hurriedly. Somewhere a bell rang long, sharp peals.

Rob said urgently, “Be sure not to tell about pulling out the knife, Marcia. No one need know. Remember!”

Had he forgotten Beatrice? Beatrice with her fiery white face and lowering eyebrows over those strangely clouded eyes.

There were voices in the hall. The tread of heavy feet.

But it was only the vanguard from the cruising car. Two bulky men in blue with fresh pink faces who halted on the threshold and looked at them and then entered the room. Behind them Ancill had brought a sheet which he unfolded deferentially. Emma Beek, her eyes little and piglike, was peering into the library from beyond those blue figures.

They were polite and, after they’d looked at the thing there on the floor, and had heard where and how he had been found, they permitted Ancill to cover it.

The white bandages on the right foot caught their attention, and one of them said, “What’s this—has he been sick?”

The doctor explained briefly.

“So you call it suicide,” said one of them in a detached way.

“The knife was in the wound.” The doctor lighted another cigarette.

“How about this fractured skull? Doesn’t look as if a fall on carpet like this ought to do it.”

“No, it doesn’t. Unless he struck the arm of the chair. But it’s certainly fractured.” He shrugged and added, “Fractures are queer—can’t always tell what will do it or what won’t.”

The policeman had no expression at all. But he said, looking at the outline below the sheet, “Looks like murder to me. Phone the L Street Station, Mawson. Then take a look around the house.” Revolvers had quite suddenly appeared in their hands. They were huge black things, heavy and menacing and inexpressibly out of place in that room. In that house. Mawson nodded and went away. The other policeman said, “I’ll have to ask you to wait right here, please. You can sit down.”

BOOK: Fair Warning
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