Fair Warning

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  “Don’t go yet, Marcia,” said Ivan suddenly from behind the paper. ‘There’s something I want to say to you. I won’t keep you long.”

  Beatrice gave Marcia a dark look and closed the door behind her, and Marcia’s breath caught in her throat.

  What was it to be? Delayed punishment for the morning of March eighteenth, four weeks ago? Or was it the letter? He had not referred to it again, but Ivan never forgot. Well, the letter was safe for the time being, and later she would recover it. That night, perhaps, when he was upstairs asleep. In the room beside her own. For the first time Marcia’s heart turned over with a sickening little lurch of horror.

  The peace of the past three weeks. Why had he returned!

  “I only want to say this, Marcia,” said Ivan suddenly, his aquamarine eyes with their small, hard, black pupils holding her own. “I have not mentioned what occurred the last time we were alone together in this room. But I have not forgotten it. You will see later that I have not forgotten and will understand certain things. Oh, of course, I felt it my duty to warn Beatrice of your—singular behavior on that day. As I shall feel it my duty to warn Verity Copley if there is any need to do so. I will speak to you later regarding the question of taste involved. Running to your neighbors with a sick dog who obviously would be better off dead. Telling them Heaven knows what erratic nonsense. Forgetting, if you were ever aware of it, any decent feeling of loyalty, of gratitude, of affection—” He was very white, and his eyes were shining with a bright, blank light, and he was panting a little. “Even going so far as to attack me. Physically.” He checked himself as if aware of his agitation. “I will say no more just now. I am ill; I need my strength for recovery. You may go now.”

  It was dreadful to see the effort he made to control himself. To see his beautiful white hands working, clutching spasmodically at the arm of the chair.

  And what had he done? What was he going to do to her? What could he do that would hurt as that look promised?

  “Ivan, you must tell me—you must —”

  “I said you may go. Or do you want me to call Ancill and ask him to escort you to the door?”

  Fantastic. Yet he might do just that.

  But at the door he called her back sharply. She came and stood looking down at him. The reading lamp spread a yellow pool of light upon the great chair and the tall slender man lounging there with one foot stretched out upon the footstool. His hair was black and wavy and shone like the pelt of a well-fed cat. He had gained a little in weight during those weeks in the hospital, but his face with its long nose and pointed cruel chin was, as always, a kind of bloodless white. He had let his newspaper drop, and his beautiful hands were curled around the chair arms. He wore a handsome lounge coat of thick, dully lustrous silk which added, somehow, to a look of smug physical well-being—the look of inward satisfaction there is about a cat when it has just finished licking all its paws and is in repose. He was, indeed, not unlike a great sleek cat. His eyes, even, were beginning to glow, as if somewhere near Marcia were fire which they reflected.

  But beyond the pool of light there were only shadows and stillness. So still that they could hear a light wind rattling the french doors. “But there is no wind,” thought Marcia, and Ivan said, “Come closer,” and made her sit down on the footstool. A little shadow, secret, repressed, dented the corners of his mouth.

  “Are you glad I have returned?”

  “Yes, Ivan.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  “Yes, Ivan.”

  She was trembling and held helpless by the glowing blankness in his eyes. He leaned toward her, and she braced herself not to flinch.

  His hands were on her face, caressing as she had so often watched them caress the green glass paperweight on his desk. They moved down slowly to her white throat, suddenly encircled it.

  “You’ll come home early tonight?”

  “Yes, Ivan.”

  His hands had closed a little on her throat, and all at once there was something new and different in his eyes. Something sudden and hot and speculative that licked out like a secret flame and that Marcia had never seen there before.

  It was obscurely terrifying, but she must not show terror. She had a quick, queer feeling that if she showed fear that speculative thing would leap out, unchained.

  She moved her head a little and said in a matter-of-fact way: “You are hurting me, Ivan. Let me go.”

  “Hurting you.” His hands closed a little tighter. “Such a slender little white throat; Anne Boleyn might have had such a throat.”

  “Ivan. Let me go. I can’t breathe.”

  Blood was pounding in her temples. But she must not show fear.

  “I can feel your pulse—pushing, fluttering against my fingers,” said Ivan dreamily and suddenly shook her a little back and forth as a cat might shake a mouse, but slowly, savoring it.

  The french door rattled again, but neither of them heard it.

  “Ivan—Ivan—let me go!”

  Someone was entering the room; there was a sound of dishes and a cough, and that queer new look left Ivan’s eyes and his hands relaxed and dropped.

  Marcia took a great gulp of air.

  Ancill said, “Shall I put your dinner here, sir?” in an utterly smooth, respectful voice which was even subtly apologetic. As if, had he known Mr. Godden was strangling Madam, he would have brought dinner a few moments later.

  Immediately Ivan was calm, smooth, coldly polite.

  “Yes—pull the table up to my chair. ... I shall wait up for your return tonight, Marcia. What are you going to wear? Stop here on your way to Copley’s and let me see how you look. You are always so lovely in evening dresses. Give me the newspaper.”

  Obviously he meant Marcia, not Ancill. It had slipped to the floor, and she gave it to him and fled.

  Small hunted animals avoid the dangerous enclosure of walls, and it was the same instinct that drove Marcia out of the house. It was dusk, the evergreens were dripping with moisture; street lights were already on, glowing in halos down the deserted, drenched street.

  She was shivering, taking deep breaths of air, clinging with trembling hands to the cold, wet iron gate without being exactly sure how she had got there. She was not aware of Rob’s approach until he spoke to her.

  “Marcia!”

  He was, oddly, on the inside of the gate. He loomed out of the dusk beside her, a tall, black figure in a loose topcoat, the collar turned up around his face, which was a white blur, his hat down over his eyes. He said in a jerky voice that was not his own, “Marcia, I saw him, just now. Through the doors. Marcia, you’ve got to come away. Now. You’ve got to. I told you, in my letter —”

  “I can’t—” She was still breathless, trembling.

  “You must come, Marcia. You are not safe.”

  She realized, because she loved him, that she must convince him, calm him, take that look of anguish and white hatred out of his face.

  “Oh, yes, Rob. I’m perfectly safe.” Was she? She shivered and went on hurriedly: “He’s just home from the hospital today. He’s ill—”

  He misunderstood her.

  “Ill! He’s perfectly well and sane. As sane as either of us. It’s just that he’s damnably cruel. It’s his nature. He’s feral—like an animal. Marcia, I love you. You must leave, now. I can’t—good God, don’t you see!—I can’t turn you over to him. I’ll kill him first.”

  “Rob, you mustn’t say such things. Rob—Rob, my dear, go away. Please go away. I’ll be all right. Truly I will be.”

  “Very well.” He was suddenly quite collected and rigidly calm. “Go into the house, Marcia. Your hair is wet with rain.”

  He went abruptly. Vanished into the dusk beyond the evergreens, and she could not call him back.

  She went slowly back to the house. She’d forgotten to turn the night latch and had no key and was obliged to ring. Ancill came, a tray with a custard dessert on it in his hand, and looked knowingly at the sparkling little beads of moisture in her
hair.

  She was conscious of his gaze following her to the landing of the stairs.

  That was exactly five minutes to seven.

  Marcia, realizing vaguely that she must dress for Verity’s dinner party, looked at her watch and noted the time and started mechanically to dress.

  It took her a long time. She was clumsy and spilled bath salts and powder and fumbled for the right stockings and couldn’t get her small satin girdle fastened right because her fingers shook so.

  Long before she had finished, Beatrice came for the silver-lamé wrap, gave her a dark look, and told her abruptly that they would both be late if she waited for her and she’d better go on ahead.

  She paused before Marcia’s full-length mirror.

  Beatrice Godden was a tall, pale woman, with black eyebrows and something fiery in that paleness, as if there were secret fires smoldering inside her, banked too long. She stood there, examining her hairdress and gown. She was, like Ivan, handsome and commanding at first impression. Her long, pale nose was a bit too long and could look pinched and eager. There was a shadowy black mustache on her long upper lip, and her mouth had Ivan’s way of smiling secretly to itself. She wore her black hair in a smooth coronet braid which made a frame for that long, pale face, and a dress of green lace, with her back bare and white, and loops of velvet ribbon dangling from her shoulders.

  “Will you just fasten that underarm hook?” she said. “I couldn’t reach it.” Marcia did so and found the silver-lamé wrap. Beatrice took it, said abruptly that she was going by way of the walk owing to the wetness of the garden path and, again telling Marcia to hurry, went away. Marcia could hear the rustle of silk as Beatrice swept along the stairs, her firm footsteps in the hall, and, presently, the closing of the heavy front door.

  She hadn’t, then, stopped to speak to Ivan. It must be later than Marcia had thought. She glanced at her small watch lying on the dressing table.

  Seven-twenty exactly. Well, then, she had ten minutes. And even a little more; for Verity, as Marcia knew, always allowed ten or fifteen minutes for guests arriving from a distance. Although tonight there would be no guests from a distance except Gally, who lived on the South Side. She hadn’t seen Gally since Ivan’s accident.

  It had been a mistake to promise to go to Verity’s dinner party. A mistake to see Rob that night. But there was no way, now, to escape it without rousing Ivan’s quick, persistent suspicion.

  She couldn’t hurry. Her fingers were slow and fumbling; she worked a long time on her slipper buckles, which refused to fasten; she got her satin slip on wrong and didn’t observe it until she had pulled the thin dinner gown, the color of yellow-pink tea rose, over her head and down across her hips and had to struggle out of it and change the slip. Then her hair was mussed again and had to be brushed. Her crimson lipstick smeared and would not go on as it ought. She dropped and broke the stopper of a Lalique perfume bottle. Her cherry-red coat clashed with the soft color of her dress; she had selected the first dress that met her hand and forgotten that Beatrice had worn the silver wrap. Well, it was too late to change to a white gown. She glanced at the watch again. Thirty-five minutes after seven. It would take only a minute to run across the garden. But first she must stop in the library as Ivan had told her to do.

  What was that? A dull, muffled sound, scarcely perceptible except as a kind of jar. The front door closing, of course. Beatrice leaving—no, Beatrice had already gone. She must have returned. Or it was Ancill.

  Ivan would like her in that delicate gown, cut so suavely to fit her slender curves, with the deep V in the back and in the front. He always liked her party clothes; he usually chose them, and she always looked older and more matured than in her tailored daytime dresses. She paused as Beatrice had paused at the full-length mirror. A woman in soft, clinging chiffon looked back at her; a woman with burnished hair and painted lips; a woman whose face was pale and whose eyes looked enormous and a little feverish. She looked the better, though, for that month of shy, cautious tranquillity: fine taut lines about her eyes had gone, and her face was not as thin as it had been.

  She turned abruptly away from the mirror, snatched her cherry coat and left the room.

  The light was turned on as usual at the landing of the stairs. But the downward lane of steps descended into a black pool, for there were no lights in the hall below. Ancill ought to have turned on the hall lights.

  She clung to the stair railing and felt her way downward through her own shadow into the enveloping darkness below. Stupid of Ancill to leave things so dark. Where was everybody? Beatrice, of course, had gone on. Ancill and Mrs. Beek were probably having their dinner away at the back of the house. It was Delia’s day out.

  She stopped at the library door. Ivan had not called to her, but he must have heard her. Ivan and Beatrice both had ears like cats.

  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

  SOMETHING 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.

&nbs
p; “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.