Fair Warning

by Mignon Good Eberhart

  Yet, ugly as it was, it was one of many lesser horrors. For deeper than anything was that awful anxiety about Rob. Could they charge him with murder—could a jury convict him—on that evidence?

  Saturday morning they heard nothing from him. Dr. Blakie came early, and he and Marcia and Verity talked long and for the most part with futility. They did decide on the finest defense lawyer available.

  “Burgne is the man,” said Dr. Blakie.

  And they would see Rob the moment the police permitted it.

  “I went there this morning before I came here,” said Dr. Blakie, “but they wouldn’t let me see him. They’d questioned him all night, I imagine. He’s probably not fit to be seen—especially by a physician.”

  Verity’s ashen face went a shade grayer.

  “You don’t mean—”

  Dr. Blakie said quickly, “I meant only that he was likely exhausted. Don’t worry about anything else. The police are humane—all this talk of brutality is for the most part just talk. But, after all, their business is to get the murderer. And murder isn’t a particularly gentle crime.”

  Verity got up and walked blindly to the window and stood there, her back toward the room, as if she could not bear to have them see her face.

  It was Marcia, huddled in Ivan’s great armchair, hollow-eyed and white from the horror-ridden night, who forced herself to talk of the evidence against Rob.

  “Is it,” she said, dreading the words on her own tongue—“is it convicting? Are they trying to make him confess? Is that it?”

  Dr. Blakie gave her one look and said, “I don’t know. It would simplify things if they could get him to confess. It would simplify it anyway, but particularly if the evidence is circumstantial, as it seems to me it is.”

  “Circumstantial?” Verity turned quickly, her tragic blue eyes seeking the doctor’s face.

  He explained it. There was evidence in plenty: motive, threat to kill, opportunity. But “circumstantial” meant that it was all evidence from which certain conclusions could be drawn. But that a good defense lawyer might be able to pick holes in the fabric of reasoning which had to be built up in the minds of a jury. That it might be—probably was, he interpolated a bit grimly—strong enough to convince any jury on earth, but that nevertheless the prosecutor might fear that some tough and sturdy soul on the jury would hold out for proof.

  “Proof?” said Marcia. “Fingerprints? Witnesses?”

  “Something like that, yes. But mind you, I don’t know. I’m judging only from what we all know of the case. The police may have things up their sleeves that we know nothing at all about.”

  “Evidence convicting Rob, you mean,” said Marcia drearily. “They can’t have. He didn’t murder Ivan.”

  It fell into silence. Silence in the book-lined room which was still Ivan’s; in the house that would never forget the pressure of his footsteps, the silken tone of his voice, the graceful motions of his beautiful hands.

  If it could tell what it knew! If those glimmering dark glasses along the bookshelves could re-enact a scene only four days old! (Could it possibly be only four days ago that Ivan returned to that house and was murdered? thought Marcia in queer astonishment.)

  It was still raining steadily, as if there were no end to the emptying of the clouds, and the slipping of rain against french doors and windows murmured softly in the room.

  Dr. Blakie began again to talk of the case against Rob. There was, of course, the motive. The thing they had needed.

  “How did they get the letter?” asked Marcia.

  Verity knew something of that; she had heard when they accused Rob—she was old that morning; all the elasticity gone from her slender body, all the luminousness from her blue eyes.

  “In the usual underhand way,” she said. “A postoffice envelope—addressed in letters cut from newspapers and pasted on. No clue at all to the sender, I suppose. They had sent it, Wait said, to the Northwestern laboratory. Rob told him that that alone—the way the letter reached them, I mean—argued that whoever sent it was trying to put the blame for the murder on him; they said not necessarily. That information like that was often sent in such a way because whoever sent it didn’t want to get involved in the thing. Or, they said, it might have been a servant. That one of the servants in the house might have found the letter and might possibly have had some grudge and sent it to them. “Oh, yes,” said Verity, “they admitted that grudge might come into it. But they said the letter was proof of motive and threat to kill just the same.”

  “Didn’t the sender say it had been in Beatrice’s possession?” asked Dr. Blakie.

  “I don’t know. Apparently not. If he had, Wait would have seen immediately it was a motive, too, for Beatrice’s death. So Rob—at least before they took him away—didn’t tell about Beatrice’s use of it. Wait said the motive for Beatrice’s murder was the will; that by it Marcia would inherit and thus—thus eat her cake and have it. Meaning,” said Verity in that tight, harsh voice that was not her own— “meaning, Marcia, that you wanted Rob and still you wanted Ivan’s money. They figure that women don’t as a rule want to give up money.”

  “They’ll find out that Beatrice had the letter,” said Marcia. “And it seems to me logical that the murderer of Beatrice took it from her and then sent it to the police purposely to throw blame upon Rob. If we tell them Beatrice had it, will it help to clear Rob—or make it worse?”

  It was another of those ugly dilemmas. It was possible that Beatrice’s murderer had somehow secured the letter, and Dr. Blakie and Verity admitted it. But on the other hand they couldn’t tell that Beatrice had it and what use she made of it without disclosing what the police might think a far stronger motive for silencing Beatrice than they had known Rob had.

  In the end they left it pending Rob’s own decision and the lawyer’s advice.

  “It’s best,” said Dr. Blakie, “to say as little as possible just now. Talking is too great a risk of simply making things worse for Rob.”

  “But it isn’t reasonable to accuse Rob,” cried Marcia bitterly. “It isn’t logical. If he had killed Beatrice for the letter, he would have destroyed it at once.”

  “It isn’t what we think that matters,” said Verity. “It’s what the police think.”

  And there was, too, the problem of Gally’s story of his presence in the house exactly when Ivan was murdered. They had, only the day before, urged him not to tell it.

  “Has he said any more about it?” asked the doctor.

  “No. Nothing.”

  But it couldn’t help Rob; it might divert the load of suspicion so that at least the police would know that here was another of that small circle who had opportunity to kill Ivan and who was actually in the house when the murder took place.

  “It’s like throwing Gally to the wolves to divert them from Rob,” said Verity, “if we tell them of it.”

  “No,” said Dr. Blakie equably. “It’s nothing of the kind. Let’s have Gally in here and see what he thinks.”

  He came readily enough but looking a little harassed. And he didn’t know how his story could possibly help Rob.

  “I’d have told it yesterday if you hadn’t talked me out of it,” he reminded them rather sulkily. “Now Rob’s arrested, I must say I’m not so keen to do it. It can’t possibly help Rob. And if all at once they turn around again and let Rob out, they’ll hold me. However, I’ll do it if you want me to.” He looked at Marcia soberly and went to her and put his bony, freckled hand on her shoulder.

  “Anything you say goes, Marcia,” he said. “It always has with me. Always will.”

  “Oh, Gally! What are we going to do! You—and Rob. And me.”

  Gally patted her shoulder awkwardly. But she had come during that long, dreadful night to one decision.

  Steeling herself against the appeal and affection in Gally’s eyes, she told them of it.

  “Somewhere in this mass of—of evidence—of clues and alibis and stories of what happened, there’s the truth.
And I think if we let the police know everything we know—all of it, every smallest fact, whether it’s—it’s dangerous to us or not—they’ll stand a better chance of finding the real murderer.”

  There was a small silence. Then Gally said, “O.K., Marcia.”

  And Verity said suddenly, “Perhaps you’re right, Marcia. The truth is in it somewhere. If we could find it.”

  “It’s there, yes,” said Dr. Blakie. “But things in the world don’t always work out according to theory. Anyway, the police know everything. Everything, that is, but that Gally was here in the house when Ivan was murdered. And that Beatrice actually had the note and used it as a lever.”

  “They should know that, too,” said Marcia. “And I’m going to tell them the whole truth about Ivan’s death. That he was dying when I found him—not dead. That he spoke to me and told me to pull out the knife and that Beatrice found me with my hands actually on that knife. I’m going to tell them that.”

  “You can’t do that,” cried Gally. “They’ll say it’s collusion. That you and Rob did it together.”

  “Gally’s right, of course,” said Verity. “You’ll be throwing yourself at them.”

  But Dr. Blakie’s argument was harder to combat. For he said quietly, “Do as you think best, my dear. You may be right. But don’t place yourself in such a dangerous position that Rob confesses to save you.”

  She had not thought of that. She said after a moment, “He won’t do that.”

  “I hope not, I’m sure,” said Dr. Blakie, sighing.

  “The truth,” said Verity suddenly. “Yes, the truth. There really was blood on his coat, you know. A little—smear of it. On the front. If we knew how it got there we’d know something of the truth.”

  “What is his explanation of it?” asked Dr. Blakie. Verity’s small shoulders lifted hopelessly.

  “He has none. You see, they first asked him if he had touched Beatrice when they found her dead. If he had leaned near her—her clothing, or anything like that. And he told them no, he hadn’t. And the policeman and Ancill both said he hadn’t come near enough the—the body to get bloodstains from it. So it must have been some other way. And they say, of course, that the stain got on his coat when he murdered her. It must have been something he touched, something he brushed against. But what?” She hesitated and gave a blue look at Gally and said directly, “Do you know anything of it, Gally?”

  He rubbed his hair and breathed very heavily and said he didn’t.

  “You see, Rob began to shout, ‘Where’s Marcia?’ as if he’d gone out of his wits, and I saw, too, she wasn’t there, and we both started to look for her. I grabbed a golf club out of Ivan’s bag there in the hall, and we didn’t see anybody at all on the way upstairs or anywhere in the house. Marcia was yelling from the old sewing room and—and there she was, and that’s all.”

  He looked worriedly at Verity and went to Ivan’s desk and sat down dejectedly. “If Rob touched Beatrice I didn’t see it,” he added. “But there was quite a lot of blood on her dress. I saw that.”

  “Did you lean over near her, Gally?” asked Marcia. “Did you touch her or—or put your hand on her—anyway so that Rob’s coat might have later brushed against you? Without your knowing anything of it?

  But he hadn’t done that, either. He looked very white, and his ears stuck out as if at their own volition, and his hair was wildly ruffled.

  “God, no! I was too scared. Too sick. I just stood there and stared.”

  “Beatrice,” said Verity suddenly, “was as certainly murdered by somebody she knew as was Ivan. She was a strong woman. Anybody whom she had reason to fear would never have dared simply walk up to her and stab her. She would have struggled—fought—screamed—if she had had any warning. And there were so many people to hear her. Rob in the basement. Ancill and Delia and the cook in the kitchen. Marcia upstairs—well, Marcia mightn’t have heard. And, Gally, Rob says you were getting cigarettes just before Delia went into the hall and found Beatrice. I suppose if you’d heard or seen anything the police would have known it by this time, but—did you?”

  He was leaning on his elbows now, hands wildly thrusting through his already tufted, disheveled hair.

  “Nothing. Nothing, I swear it. The police pounded away at me the night of her murder trying to get me to admit to something, but I swear there was nothing. I did leave Rob in the game room in the basement and go upstairs for cigarettes. But I didn’t go in the front of the house at all, for there was a carton of them in one of the drawers in the butler’s pantry. I’d seen them there—I was out of smokes the day before and asked Ancill if there were any around and he went to that drawer for them. So I knew where to get them without—well, without asking for them. And I didn’t even enter the front hall or the dining room.” He hesitated and said, “They asked me if Rob could have come up from the basement without me seeing him. Well, of course, he could have while I was in the pantry.”

  Dr. Blakie’s gray eyes had a probing look.

  “Rob told the police—that first night of Beatrice’s death when they all questioned us all so long—he told the police that you were gone from the game room about ten minutes. You told them you didn’t know just how long you were gone, and when they pressed it—well, of course, you were confused, but it did strike me that there was a sort of discrepancy in your account of the time it took you to get cigarettes and Rob’s account of it.”

  Gally looked sulky.

  “Maybe there was,” he said. “But I got mixed up looking for the right drawer. I found napkins and waxed paper and silver and burned candles and every damn thing in the world but the cigarettes. One drawer,” he said, “had a lot of chocolate mint candies. Maybe it did take me ten minutes. But I did find the cigarettes.”

  He rubbed his hands through his hair again and looked downward and said irrelevantly, “Where’s Ivan’s glass paperweight?”

  “And you heard nothing at all from the front hall?” said Dr. Blakie, watching him. “There’s a door into it from the kitchen passage. She must have been murdered just before you came up from the basement—perhaps a few moments before. She was probably dead at once—the blow that killed her was a much more—complete thrust than that which killed Ivan. She probably died immediately. I saw the results of the P.M.”

  “Whoever murdered ’em is improving his technique by experience,” observed Gally. Verity took a deep, sharp breath, and he said again, absently, fumbling among the few objects on the desk, “Where’s that glass paperweight, I wonder? What’d you do with it, Marcia? It was such a queer thing.”

  “I didn’t do anything with it,” said Marcia, and Verity moved her hands as if she were wringing them and said, “Why don’t we hear from Rob? Will they let me see him, Graham?”

  “I’d go later; I’ll take you if I can get away from the hospital soon enough.”

  Gally was muttering, lifting up papers where nothing could lie concealed—not at any rate a four-and-a-half-inch-high ball of solid glass. Muttering and looking because he was nervous and distracted—and thus making his own contribution to that strange and awful fabric of fact and evidence, built up so carefully and so remorselessly and turning so inevitably upon its builder, an unwieldy, blundering Frankenstein.

  It was a small contribution, but it had its place and its twisted importance in that whole.

  Marcia, because he kept fumbling about, muttering of the paperweight, rose and went to the desk.

  “It’s been put away, I suppose,” she said, to silence Gally.

  It didn’t silence him.

  “Funny thing to put away,” he said stubbornly. “Who’d put away a chunk of glass? Remember how Ivan always held it in his hands while he talked to a person? Kept looking in it like a—what-do-you-call-’em? Crystal gazer. I always hoped he’d look in it and see a—well, streak of generosity or something. But instead he got his nastiest answers out of it.” Gally looked reminiscent and said, wincing, “He used to lecture me about jobs.”

  “S
omebody’s taken it away,” said Marcia. “It doesn’t matter.” It wasn’t in any of the drawers, either, she was discovering, opening one after another.

  And it really was an odd sort of thing. Odd, but, Marcia thought—in the top of her mind and above that deep preoccupation—in the confusion it had been misplaced.

  Verity and Dr. Blakie were talking of going to see Rob, of getting a lawyer.

  Miss Wurlitz for the second time that morning knocked at the door, peered gingerly into the room when Marcia said “Come in,” and told the doctor the hospital was telephoning again.

  “Tell ’em I’ve gone,” said Dr. Blakie.

  She nodded and closed the door with an efficient little click.

  Gally had stopped pushing papers about and was staring at the desk fixedly.

  “Wouldn’t it be queer,” he said suddenly in a thin, dreamy voice, “if that paperweight was what killed Ivan? Fractured his skull, I mean. I’ve often thought as I watched him stroke it that I’d like to heave it at him myself.” He blinked and added quickly and vehemently, “But of course I didn’t.”

  His words, as was not infrequent with Gally, produced a kind of startled silence—a silence that gradually filled with a crowd of unspoken speculations.

  Dr. Blakie said slowly, “The blow was on the back of the head. And it takes a pretty heavy blow to fracture a skull. At the same time skull fractures are uncertain; sometimes they fracture like eggshells under very light blows. You can’t really say anything very definite about them. Still, I suppose the paperweight might have done it. I remember it well. Are you sure it’s not there, Gally? Perhaps Beatrice put it away somewhere.”

  “When did you last see it, Marcia?” asked Verity.

  She couldn’t remember. It was as if it had always been there, and yet … sometime, not too long ago, she had thought how empty the desk looked. Was it the paperweight she had missed?

  “I can’t remember.”