IVAN GODDEN, INJURED IN the automobile accident which came so near to costing him his life, returned from the hospital on the day of April eighteenth, a month to the day from the time of his injury.
It was really extraordinary and a curious commentary upon him that the familiar sense of his presence immediately and thoroughly permeated the house and all it held. It was something intangible but extremely definite, too; it was as if any of them, returning themselves from an absence and entering the house, would have known immediately upon opening that door and venturing the long, somber hall—running back past closed doors to the eerie glow down the stairway from the windows at the landing—that Ivan, too, had returned. That Ivan Godden was in the house and the two were in curious secret accord.
Afterward Marcia realized that his return was easier because there was so much to be done. Such a flurry of solicitation—of arranging his chair in the library, of telling him of household affairs, of talking of his illness, of his injuries, of the journey from the hospital, of his bandaged foot, of food he would like, of every physical comfort with which he could be surrounded. And later there were directions to be given—directions about the house, the garden, the spring repairs, the cars—letters to be read, reports from the mill to be looked at and talked over with Beatrice (a flour mill in the southern part of the state which Beatrice and Ivan had inherited along with the house and from which most of their income was derived).
Dr. Blakie brought him and came into the house with him, and Ivan leaned on the doctor and on Ancill as he hobbled with great care along the hall and into the library. Once seated, he looked for Marcia, beckoned to her, put his cold white fingers on her face and obliged her to bend over for his kiss. It was over in a second or two, but it seemed long to Marcia, and as if Rob’s kisses ought to protect her from that well-remembered slow pressure. But they couldn’t, of course; and she had a quick, queer fear that Ivan could detect her thought or that Rob’s kisses had been visible, and still upon her mouth.
Beatrice said, “Here’s a cushion for your foot,” and Dr. Blakie spoke rather abruptly, and Marcia was released, to stand there beside Ivan, who lay, handsome and rather sleek and fat after his four weeks of illness, in his favorite big chair.
“My prize exhibit,” Dr. Blakie was saying when the drumming in Marcia’s ears stopped. “Out of the hospital in four weeks and, except for that right ankle, absolutely fit and well again. You’ve done me credit, Ivan.”
Ivan, elegantly and consciously the center of all. that flurry of solicitation, looked annoyed. “Oh, I fancy I wasn’t so bad off,” he said. “Not that I’m not grateful, of course, Graham. Still, one doesn’t like to be regarded solely as a monument to one’s doctor’s skill. After all, doctors are supposed to save their patients, aren’t they?”
Marcia tried to think of something to say and couldn’t, because all at once Ivan’s eyes had the light, blank mesmeric look which she knew too well. Dr. Blakie stopped smiling.
“We don’t always manage it,” he said neatly and dryly and with no inflection at all in his voice. “Don’t walk much on that foot, Ivan. And don’t touch the bandages.” He stooped and touched the bandage which was visible through the smooth, thin, silk sock and nodded approvingly. “It’s about right. Tight but not too tight. Well, I’ll be going. I’ll drop in tonight after Verity Copley’s dinner party and see that you get a good night’s rest.”
“All right,” said Ivan ungraciously and moved his bandaged foot restlessly. Delia, fluttering in the doorway, and Mrs. Beek, peering over her shoulder, both made quick, abortive motions, and Ancill, hovering behind Ivan’s chair, slid quickly forward. Ivan forestalled them all.
“Bring me the footstool, Marcia,” he said.
Marcia pulled the heavy ottoman forward and adjusted it to his foot while Ancill watched and Beatrice asked the doctor again about diet.
“He can eat anything,” said the doctor in a remote voice. “He’s the better off for the rest he’s had. He’s been living on cream. Well, I’ll be off.”
Marcia snatched at the chance to go to the door with him, and Ivan was busy rearranging his bandaged foot and did not call her back.
Dr. Blakie paused for a moment, hat in hand, and looked scrutinizingly at Marcia. So scrutinizingly that Marcia felt as if the whole history of the tremendous and tumultuous thing that had happened during that few hours’ interval since he had gone, earlier in the day, was written on her face. She said defensively and also because she felt apologetic and sorry for Ivan’s churlishness:
“We—Ivan is very grateful to you—in spite of —”
He interrupted in an explosive way that was the more impressive because it was as if he actually permitted it and it did not burst out of its own accord. “Ivan!” he said briskly. “I wish I had him back at the hospital again!”
Marcia smiled with a pretense of lightness. “What would you do with him?” she asked.
He was still, quite deliberately, letting out exasperation. It was an economic procedure; designed to prevent the waste of inward seething.
“What would I do with him! There’s a whole laboratory full of things to do. Cute little test tubes crowded with—say, botulism cultures. Typhus germs… . Forgive me, my dear. Doctors’ jokes are likely to be a bit grim. Don’t worry about him. He’s cautious; he’ll take care of himself, all right. But see that you get to looking better yourself, Marcia. Get out doors in the sun. I’ll send you some capsules —”
Ancill materialized at Marcia’s elbow and said, so suavely that for an instant it escaped offensiveness, that Mr. Godden noticed the draft.
“Good-bye, Marcia,” said Dr. Blakie and closed the door himself with considerable force. It did not quite bang, however, for Ancill caught it and eased it gently to.
“Lunch,” said Ancill, “is to be served at a small table in the library.”
Lunch. Marcia went back to the library. To Ivan and to Beatrice. She felt as if she were poised precariously above a precipice, above a dangerous height. Going over rapids in a canoe. A breath, a tilt to the right or a tilt to the left would be disaster. Tomorrow, she thought, would be better. She would have had by then, a little time to adjust herself. To think, to map her course more definitely and with more security. Today was dangerous. And one look into Ivan’s face, one touch of his hand, threatened such small certainty and self-possession as she might have stored up.
That was perhaps two o’clock, and it was about three that Rob’s letter came. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Marcia was in the hall when it arrived, and either by chance or because Rob had planned it that way, it arrived with the afternoon mail, though it was not postmarked and had probably been placed in the mail box by Stella, the Copley housemaid. At any rate, there it was on top of the sheaf of letters Ancill brought in, and Marcia saw it and instantly recognized the writing.
“This is for me,” she said and took the letter swiftly.
“But Madam—”
“This is for me,” she repeated steadily. Ancill looked over her shoulder but, probably, saw the writing and the lack of postmark. “You may take the rest of the mail in to Mr. Godden.”
He did so disapprovingly.
Marcia turned quickly into the closed and seldom-used drawing room, running along parallel with the hall and in front of the library. She closed the door behind her and tore the letter open with hands that were cold and shaking at the thought of the nearness of the thing. Only a moment and it would have gone straight into Ivan’s hands. Rob, of course, couldn’t have known.
The writing was jerky and black, against the single piece of white notepaper:
“Dear Marcia: You must leave him now. He’s home; I saw him come. Don’t you see now that it’s impossible; that you can’t stay there? You are never to be his wife again. I can’t let you, Marcia. You’re to come today, tonight, when you come to Verity’s dinner. You must come. He’s killing you by inches. I can’t just stand by and see it. I love you.”
It was signed “Rob.”
Ivan was at home, yes. But Rob couldn’t know that his return only held her tighter. That the fact of his presence only further paralyzed her.
She did, then, for one clear, revealing instant think of obeying Rob; not that day, of course, but later, when there was time to decide how to do it, time to call all her strength together and to do it because she loved Rob. She did for a blinding flash see that, sometime, it might be inevitable and that the urgency of her love for Rob might give her, eventually, the strength to do it.
But it was for only one clear, bright instant. For Ancill opened the door.
She thrust the letter and the envelope hastily in the pocket of her sweater.
He said that Mr. Godden wanted her and looked at her sweater pocket and followed her as she went through the hall and back into the library, so she had no chance to dispose of the letter.
Ivan was for the moment alone.
“What was your letter?” he said, smiling. “Ancill says you had one. Was it from anyone I know?”
She felt, as one did with Ivan, as if she were in a huge glass bowl exposed at every angle.
“Let me see it,” he said.
Beatrice, coming into the room with some letters in her hand, unwittingly saved her.
“I’m just going to phone Verity Copley,” she said, “and tell her I can’t come to dinner tonight. Marcia can go, but I much prefer to stay at home with you, Ivan—Verity didn’t know you would be at home today.”
“I’ll stay,” said Marcia quickly. “I’ll telephone to her at once so she can get someone else.”
But Ivan wouldn’t have it.
“Nonsense, both of you must go. Do you think I want you to martyr yourselves for me? Who is going to be there?”
He had been told, of course, at the time of the invitation, perhaps a week ago, and because Ivan never forgot anything doubtless remembered every guest on the list. But he chose to make a point of it and to emphasize its triviality.
Beatrice replied. As she stood there looking down at Ivan, Marcia was struck again by the extraordinary likeness between them. Beatrice was actually Ivan in a feminine and not unhandsome mold, except that her eyes lacked his light, peculiar stare, for they were, instead, dark and clouded and remote. And that look, although Marcia sensed it only dimly, had lately changed somehow, as if it had turned inward in secret preoccupation.
“Not many,” she said. “Verity and Rob Copley. Marcia. Galway Trench. Dr. Blakie. I’m going to stay with you.”
“You must go. Both of you. I insist. Do you think I want them saying I kept you at home!” He was becoming angry; his cheeks were whiter and his eyes very light except for that small hard, black pupil. Beatrice looked at him again. There was something detached and coolly exploratory about it, as if she were viewing him without any intervening veils of custom or familiarity. She said after a moment, “Why, certainly, Ivan, if you wish it.” She put the letters on a small table beside him. “Do you want me to answer these just now?”
“I suppose so. Yes—let me see… . Where are you going, Marcia?”
She stopped abruptly, on her way to the door. She was acutely conscious of Rob’s letter in her pocket, and it had dangerous potentiality. Ivan was quite capable of taking the letter from her by force.
“I was only going upstairs. Do you want me?”
“Yes, please. Will you write some letters for me? I find the exertion of writing tires me. Get a pen and some paper.”
She went to the desk obediently, hoping her face didn’t show her anxiety. He was quite likely to keep her at his side, writing, for hours, and Marcia knew it. And he was likely at any moment to remember the letter and to inquire again about it. It was rather as if she were carrying a small and highly charged bomb in her sweater pocket. And under that surface uneasiness was a greater, more poignant anxiety which there was no time to consider. “… You must come,” Rob had said. “I love you.”
Pen, stationery with “Ivan Godden” engraved upon it, a blotter. She might slip the letter somewhere in the desk. But Ivan would be sure to find it, if he suddenly decided he was able to sit in his usual chair at the desk. There must be some place in the room where she could hide the letter until she could unobtrusively take it away and destroy it.
Ivan and Beatrice were talking, and she looked hurriedly around her. French doors, curtains, bookshelves. The aquarium at the opposite end of the room with gleams of small moving bodies in the greenish water.
If Ivan caught one faint glimpse of a white corner of that letter she was lost.
Ivan and Beatrice were still talking. She rose and sauntered toward the french doors. On either side of the doors were niches which had been made into small store cupboards wherein were stacked old magazines, ink and paper supplies, all the unsightly objects which accumulate in a library. The doors were made of paneled dark wood and were merely latched. But of course she couldn’t open one of the doors, for they would hear it and turn.
Ivan was looking at Beatrice. Beatrice was reading. Marcia, standing with her back to the cupboard and watching Ivan and Beatrice, managed to slip first the letter and then the envelope through the small space between the door and the casing. She heard the tiny swish as they fell one after the other. Neither Ivan nor Beatrice looked up, and she moved away.
She felt very much relieved and, indeed, a little pleased at her dexterity. She would recover the note as soon as it was safe; neither of the two was at all likely to approach the cupboard; and it would have been impossible to sit at Ivan’s elbow, writing letters for him, without his detecting the little square outline of the letter through the thin, revealing weave of her yellow sweater.
But the afternoon wore on, she wrote innumerable letters, Beatrice brought her knitting and sat there working on it feverishly and now and then making a suggestion, and there was no chance for Marcia to recover the letter. Ivan did not refer to it again, and once he sent her to the bank, with Ancill driving, and ironically she would have had plenty of time to destroy it. But Beatrice was watching and Ivan, too, and she was obliged to leave the note where it was. After all, it was in all probability perfectly safe.
But she was uneasy, all the way to the bank and back, through steady rain again which trickled down the windows of the car and dripped from the evergreens massed along the front walk to the house.
Beatrice and Ivan, however, were quietly talking while Beatrice knit exactly as she left them, and she gave Ivan the envelope he had sent for—a long brown envelope labeled “I.G.—Private”—from the safe-deposit box.
At six-thirty Beatrice turned on the lights, handed the evening paper which Ancill had brought to Ivan, and gathered up the enormous red afghan she’d been knitting on all winter.
“I’m going to dress,” she said and paused in the doorway to look back at Marcia. “I’ll wear your silver-lamé wrap, Marcia. It’s too warm for furs, and I haven’t got summer things down from the cedar closets yet. You can wear something else.”
“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!”