Fair Warning

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  She was apparently talking to Ivan’s lawyer, one Henry Fitterling, for she said, “Thank you, Mr. Fitterling. If you’ll come at once … Yes, there might be a new one. Of course, this is very soon after his death, but under the circumstances … Yes, terrible… Oh, she’s bearing up very well, thank you. Really surprising, but—youth, you know… Yes, a devoted husband. Strangely devoted …”

  The door closed abruptly as if at the thrust of Beatrice’s white hand. Marcia remembered that look of purpose which had flashed in Beatrice’s eyes for one unguarded instant the night before. She remembered it and was conscious of it as something that ought to be explored, that ought not to be forgotten. But first she must see Rob.

  She snatched her brown tweed coat.

  The library door was open, and she hesitated, wondering whether to try the french doors or the front door. But a policeman—Mawson it was—was standing in the library looking at something small in his hands. Something—burned matches and a small pasteboard fold printed with advertising. He looked up and saw her and put them hastily in his pocket.

  She said. “Is there any objection to my going across the garden?”

  “Well,”—he looked at her as if wondering how much she had seen—“no—but it’s sort of wet.”

  She hesitated. “Did you have breakfast?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you. I’ll be relieved in a few minutes.”

  “Will—will Mr. Wait be here again this morning?”

  “I suppose so.”

  She went out into the light drizzle of rain. Just there by the cupboard she had stood frantically lighting matches, finding no letter. Whose hand had touched that door, opening it so silently, letting in the black, wet night and the beating of rain? Officer Mawson was watching her; and she went down the flagstone steps.

  Rob saw her coming and opened the door for her.

  “Marcia!” He took her small, cold hands and pulled her inside. “I’ve been watching—waiting—wanting to come to you. Verity said to wait. Marcia, what did they do to you last night? Oh, my dear!”

  “Rob, the letter’s gone.”

  It was worse because he took it so quietly. He held her hands a little tighter against him, and his eyes were very dark and blue, and he was rather white around the mouth. But he said, “Oh, so they got it.”

  “It’s not there, Rob. I—did it myself; I put it in the cupboard because Ivan was asking me about it; I wanted to conceal it just till I could return and get it and destroy it. Oh, Rob, what have I done to you?”

  “Don’t, Marcia! After all, I didn’t kill Ivan.”

  Verity came swiftly into the hall.

  “What’s all this? Good morning, Marcia. How are you? How do things stand? They telephoned to us that there would be no inquest. No reason. I suppose Wait wants to have enough evidence for the coroner's inquest to secure a grand-jury indictment. They say he does that. What’s wrong?”

  “Let’s go back to the sunroom; there’s a fire there.”

  Rob put on fresh logs before he told Verity. She took it rather well.

  “Oh. I see. A letter. Exactly what did you say in this letter, Rob? You didn’t talk of—killing Ivan, did you?”

  “No.”

  Verity understood. “But it might be read to imply that. And of course it was a love letter, thus furnishing a motive.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked into the fire for a moment and turned suddenly to Marcia. “Marcia, what did you think when you found Ivan dead? I mean, did you realize he was murdered?”

  “Yes. I thought—I thought Rob had done it. Because of me. It would have been my fault, you see. Rob—with murder on his hands forever because of me—” Marcia stopped.

  Verity gave her a curious look and said, “Didn’t you think it was wrong to murder him?”

  “I don’t know. I—I hadn’t time to think. You see, Rob wasn’t himself when I saw him there at the gate just before Ivan was murdered.”

  Verity said dryly, “Well, no, he’s not been exactly sensible for days. Weeks. Since the night we thought Ivan was going to die, in fact. You needn’t say just how you felt about it, Marcia, but there’s no disguising the fact that it would have been a mercy if Ivan Godden had died that night. And after that one glimpse, while we waited to hear from the operating room, of what life could mean to both of you if he died, his getting well and coming back was a—a pretty ghastly sort of climax for Rob,” said Verity abruptly. “However—did they ask you about the letter last night, Marcia?”

  “No. They asked about everything else. But not about the letter.”

  Again Verity looked into the flames for a long moment, and Rob came over and sat on a footstool near Marcia and took her hand. But he did not look at her.

  Finally Verity said in an odd tone, still watching the flames, “Do you still think Rob killed him, Marcia?”

  “No,” said Marcia simply.

  Verity turned quickly, and Rob glanced up at Marcia’s face and said, “Why? How do you know?”

  “Last night—remember what you said at the gate, Rob?”

  “Yes—God, do I remember!”

  “What was that?” said Verity sharply.

  Rob answered her. “It was pretty heated. You see, I’d just seen them through the french doors. Ivan— Well, never mind. The thing is, I was half out of my wits with—”

  He dropped Marcia’s hands and rose and walked to the window. “Never mind that, either. I said she shouldn’t go back to him. I’d kill him first.”

  “Did anyone hear you?”

  “I don’t think so. There was no one to hear.”

  “What were you doing in the garden?”

  “I knew Ivan had got back. I had to see Marcia—thought I might get a chance to that way. Knew if I went to the front door Beatrice would be on the job.”

  “But he didn’t kill Ivan,” said Marcia. “If he had, it wouldn’t have been his fault—it would really have been mine. And Ivan would have always, always separated us. But Rob didn’t.”

  Verity made a sudden impatient little gesture and rose and went to Marcia and kissed her, still with a queer impatience.

  She said abruptly, “Rob didn’t kill him. He just simply couldn’t have done it. In the first place, he’d realize that was not the way to get to marry you, Marcia, if that’s what he wants—”

  Rob turned quickly. “If she’ll have me.”

  Verity’s face was suddenly bleak and old-looking; she said, “Don’t you realize what will happen if you marry and Ivan’s death remains a mystery?”

  Rob looked very white and angry. “After a decent interval of time—after—”

  “Wait, Rob. Listen to this: Your raincoat. Your presence in the garden talking to Marcia not an hour before the murder. Ancill hearing someone talking to Ivan in the library and saying it was your voice. The possibility that someone in either household has some inkling of how things stand between you.”

  “No one—”

  “You can’t be sure.” She was checking things on her small, strong hands. “The man in the garden—”

  “That wasn’t I.”

  “Oh, wasn’t it? It could have been you that—Ancill or Emma Beek or whoever it was—saw. They might have been wrong about the time but right about you—you were in the garden, remember. And then you marry Ivan Godden’s wife.”

  “There’s the letter, too,” whispered Marcia.

  “Oh, yes,” said Verity. “The letter. Well, there you are.”

  “They’ll find the murderer,” said Rob, white-lipped. “Don’t look like that, Marcia.”

  “Find the murderer?” said Verity, looking into the fire again. “Well, I suppose so. It’s your only hope, isn’t it?”

  “Marcia, why are you so sure I didn’t do it?”

  “I think by morning, when I’d had time, I would have—at least, I wouldn’t have thought only of what you had said there at the gate. I would have thought of you as I’ve known you all this time. And—loved you,” said Marcia.
“But last night there was something else. Something more objective—and yet not exactly objective, either. You see, when I went to the library to look for the letter—the rain was louder, all at once, and there was something there. In the dark—and rain. And I think it was the murderer.”

  “Good God, Marcia!”

  “What did you do? What happened?” Verity’s eyes were blazing. “Did you see—”

  “No.” She told it, haltingly, remembered it too well. “But it wasn’t Rob. I wouldn’t have been,” she struggled, trying to find the right words, “I couldn’t have been afraid of Rob. I mean—instinctively, as I was then. Terrified.”

  Rob sat down suddenly on the footstool and took her hands again and said tautly, “Marcia, promise me never, never to take such a chance again. Ivan Godden was murdered. I’m not sorry he’s dead; I’d lie if I said anything else. And he was—well, we’ll skip that, too. But the thing is, it’s murder. You—oh, God, Marcia—in the middle of the night—alone—with—”

  “Why did you think it was the murderer, Marcia?” said Verity.

  “I—don’t know. Unless—well, who would come there at that time of night stealthily? And it was, somehow—horrible—emanating evil—”

  Verity said soberly, “It’s possible. There are things one simply knows. Thirst—hunger—shelter and awareness of danger. Rob is right. I mean—we’ve got to speak honestly, Marcia—neither of you could be sorry Ivan is dead. But the means of his death is another thing. Murder itself is—sort of contagious. It’s letting something loose. Unchaining it. From your point of view Ivan’s death is not exactly regrettable, though you’d rather he hadn’t been murdered.”

  “Divorce,” said Marcia with stiff lips, “would have been—oh, anything would have been better than this.”

  “I know. Rob feels it, too.”

  “I feel,” said Rob, “that I’m damn glad Ivan Godden’s dead, and I think the death he got is too good for him. He was killing Marcia slowly—by torture.”

  “Hush, my son.” Verity’s face looked white and twisted as if with pain. “Don’t ever, anywhere, say that again. All this is from your viewpoint. Perhaps mine. But there’s also this. That is only your viewpoint. It remains that someone has murdered Ivan Godden. That there was some motive for it. I wish,” she said suddenly, “that you needn’t go back to that house again, Marcia. I don’t like it.”

  Rob looked swiftly at his mother. “You mean—”

  “I mean nothing,” said Verity, all but snapping. “Except that murder has a way of—repeating itself. And that no matter what this thing has accomplished—or failed to accomplish—in removing a scoundrel from the earth, it doesn’t follow that it was a good deed from a good motive.”

  “Motives,” said Rob slowly. “Why should he be murdered? Marcia, had he any quarrels with anyone? Had he—oh, wronged anyone? Anything like that? I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but after all people don’t as a rule murder just for the fun of it.”

  “Not as a rule,” said Verity somberly.

  “What do you mean?” said Rob again.

  Verity did not explain. “Marcia, what about motives? Do you know of any—enemies Ivan had? Anything like that?”

  “No—but I wouldn’t know.”

  “Whoever did it,” said Rob abruptly, “had also to have opportunity. That rather—well, limits it.”

  Verity said suddenly, “Tell us again, Marcia, just how you found him. What had happened? Everything—if you don’t mind, my dear. I know it’s hard.”

  “I went over and over it last night,” said Marcia. She told it again, slowly this time and forgetting no smallest detail. Rob watched her intently the whole time, never taking his dark eyes from hers, but Verity looked into the fire, and Marcia could see only her white profile with its fine, strong nose jutting out a bit sharply because she was so tired and haggard, as if she had not slept.

  Toward the last, the part she had not told the police, it became difficult.

  “You mean he wasn’t dead yet?” said Verity.

  “No.” Marcia swallowed and went on: “He said to hurry and get the doctor. And told me to pull out the knife. I—tried to. Put my hands on the knife, you know. And then he died. Just then. I couldn’t move or think or do anything, and all at once Beatrice came in. From the french doors. And she thought I had killed him.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘How could you have done it!’ I tried to explain. She didn’t believe me. She said, ‘So that’s your story.’ But she didn’t tell the police what she had seen.”

  “Why?” said Rob tensely.

  “I don’t know.”

  Rob frowned. “Beatrice has got to be shut up. I didn’t realize exactly how it was, Marcia. It’s—She can tell it as if she saw you murder him. Is that all of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do the police know?”

  “Not that much. I mean, I didn’t tell them about Ivan’s making me pull on the knife. I just said he was dead. And they don’t know what Beatrice said to me. Unless she has told them.”

  “I wonder what she’s planning,” said Rob thoughtfully. “I wonder why she hasn’t told yet.”

  “She was sending for Ivan’s lawyer when I left,” said Marcia.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine, from the way she spoke, about his will.”

  For a moment no one spoke, and Marcia became aware of a little crescendo of scratches and whimpers at the garden door.

  “It’s Bunty,” said Verity and rose and let the little dog tumble frantically into the room and dash for Marcia. She bit and growled and wriggled and panted and came very near to wagging her black little tail quite off her square little body.

  “Of course,” said Rob unexpectedly, “it must have occurred to you that Beatrice murdered him.”

  “Beatrice!” Marcia’s hand stopped, and Bunty pushed and wriggled against it invitingly.

  “Yes, of course. She had the same opportunity you had. She could have murdered him when she came downstairs on her way here.”

  “But—why? There’s no motive—”

  “There might be,” said Rob shortly. “At any rate, she was one of a very few who had really a perfect opportunity. And she may think you suspect her and be willing to trade silence for silence.”

  Later Marcia was to think how close they came to the truth just then and yet how far they were from it. But at the time there was something she was trying to remember. Something fleeting—only half recognized at the time. Some thing—

  “The door!” she said. “It closed twice.”

  “What’s that? Quick, Marcia, what do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. But I heard Beatrice go downstairs, and then I heard the outside door close. It’s heavy, you know, and there’s a sort of jar when it closes that you—oh, recognize. Well, a few moments later I thought I heard it again. But that’s all. I was hurrying—thinking of so much—that’s all.”

  “Hush!” It was Verity, and she said in a louder voice, “Come in.”

  Stella, the Copley housemaid, opened the door. She was seething with not very well repressed emotion and said that a Mr. Wait was outside wanting to see Mrs. Godden. And that he’d said he would also see Mr. Copley and Mrs. Copley.

  There was an instant’s silence. Verity’s mouth looked curiously gray. Then she said, “Very well. Send him in.”

  Stella fluttered.

  “He—he’s been asking me questions. Shall I t-tell—”

  The words came on a gulp.

  Verity’s face became rigid.

  “Certainly,” she said at once. “We have nothing to hide.”

  “Aww—” said the girl in a kind of wail and vanished.

  “Now, what—” murmured Verity. “What can they have been inquiring—”

  “If they get any sense out of Stella it’s more than we’ve ever been able to do,” said Rob brusquely and went to Marcia. “Marcia! Don’t look so white and terrified.
I won’t let him hurt you. Darling—oh, my dear, we’re going to be married and you’ll be my wife always—and—”

  “Married,” said Marcia. Ivan Godden’s face rose suddenly before her, pale, with blank bright eyes and shadowy, secret indentations at the corners of his mouth. “Married—and let them say you murdered him? No, Rob—”

  “But you—”

  “Good morning, Mr. Wait,” said Verity. “You wish to see us?”

  He didn’t wish to see them at all. He was very tired and hadn’t had much sleep the night before and didn’t like the way the case was shaping up. By this time he ought to have got a confession out of somebody. Well, perhaps he could now, since he’d talked to the cook and since that hellcat of a sister-in-law had had her way. Better do things shipshape while he was at it. He began, as usual, with no preliminary whatever:

  “Mrs. Godden, I want you to go back again to the day of March eighteenth.”

  “Y-yes,” said Marcia, her mouth suddenly dry.

  “On that day your husband was injured in an accident and went to the hospital. When he was admitted the nurse says there were, besides his other injuries, three long scratches on his face. These, however, were not a result of the accident. They were already there and were seen when Ivan Godden got into the car. Before the accident took place. How did they get there?”

  “I—”

  “So you quarreled with your husband. Don’t trouble to deny it, you were overheard by one of the servants. And the quarrel reached such proportions that it came to physical violence. Didn’t it? And your husband’s automobile ride immediately afterward very nearly had a fatal ending.”

  “See here, Mrs. Godden does not have to answer all this—”

  “Just a minute, Copley, I’m coming to you. There’s something else that happened that day. I have here a duplicate of the bill from the hardware store where the knife that was used to murder Ivan Godden was purchased. It’s—quite a bill!” He took it from his inner pocket and looked at the scribbled slip. “Two pounds of bluegrass seed. One pair hedge shears. Three paintbrushes. One dandelion knife. A four-ounce package arsenic. Delia, your housemaid, took the articles from the desk in the library and put them away. She remembers exactly what was there. The grass seed, the hedge shears, the paintbrushes, and one old-fashioned dandelion knife. One knife only. And”—he thrust the slip of paper back into his pocket again and looked at Marcia as if he would have preferred to look at anything else in the world— “and no arsenic,” said Jacob Wait.