“Glenville.” She started sobbing again.
“You’d better tell me what’s happened, Darlene.”
She sank weakly into a chair. I didn’t try to hold her. She stared at an open doorway across the room. “Glenville shot him,” she said. “Glenville shot his uncle Roland.”
A clutching stillness for a moment, then. A stillness that made a vacuum of my skull, with my pulse hammering inside of it. I turned woodenly, crossed the room to the open doorway.
It was a bedroom. The early afternoon sun slanted in the window, a pale rose-burst of light I didn’t see him at first. I moved into the room edgily.
He was lying on his back over beyond the bed, a big, fat, bald mound of dead blubber. I had to dose my eyes for a second on Roland Grayson’s death. He had been shot just above his left cheekbone.
I went back to where she was sitting. She was reaching hungrily for a cigarette. I needed one just as bad myself.
“I thought you were alone,” I said. “When did it happen?”
“Right after I phoned you. Glenville must have guessed I’d come here. John — I... I hated him! He was weak and sniveling around his uncle. He never did a thing in his life that took any manhood. I used to think Glenville had an aristocratic face. It wasn’t. It was just weak.
“I... I was going to leave him, John. I couldn’t stand him any more. I love you, darling.”
She stood up, slipped her arms about my neck. She was wearing her tears like jewels. She knew how to do that, too.
“I remembered the times we used to have, John. You’re a lawyer. You could have got me a divorce, couldn’t you, darling?”
“Go on,” I said.
“Glenville and Roland came here to the lodge. They took the long way, around the mountain road. I decided it was as good a time as any to tell him, John. When I said I was leaving him, Glenville went to pieces. He said it was all Roland’s fault. Roland had tied up his money and wouldn’t give him enough to care for a wife, decently. As if I wanted only his money! Roland, he said, stuck to him like a leech, living his life for him, giving him no freedom.
“It was — awful, John. It seemed, like all the years had suddenly gathered in Glenville and exploded. And you know the family well enough to know the kind Roland was. Hard and mean. He said some vicious things to Glenville. Then to me, John. He — called me names, darling. Glenville struck him, and Roland knocked him down.
“Glenville went out of the room, and when he came back his face was like a crazy man’s. He had a gun in his hand. Roland had stepped in the bedroom and taken off his coat. I screamed. Roland turned just in time to catch the bullet ha his face,” she shuddered.
“And then?”
“Glenville ran. Crying like a baby, John.”
She walked over to the window, looked out at the sunshine, letting the sun cloak her like a soft, rose-petal gown. She was crying very quietly now.
My throat was tight as I looked at her. People could change, I thought. Sometimes people had to get their stomachs full of one kind of life before trying something else. Maybe she was leveling. Maybe she’d really been going to leave him and come back to the lawyer who had about as many pennies as Glenville had dollars.
A hard trembling began to shake her, and she turned to me, her hands knotted together. “John,” she almost screamed, “what are we going to do with him?”
“Him?”
“Roland!” she cried.
“But Glenville...”
“Yes, Glenville! And Glenville is yellow. Glenville would sell his soul to save his skin. He realizes what he’s done now, John! He’ll sell me out flat! John, they’ll get me — for murdering Roland!”
I could hear her breathing clear across the room.
“Can’t you see it?” she wailed. “Nobody but Glenville and Roland knew they were coming here. They told me. Now Roland is dead. That leaves only Glenville. And he’ll swear he was never here today, John.”
I began to see what she was driving at.
“They’ll think I did it, John. Everyone knows what bad blood there was between Roland and me — because of the way he bossed Glenville. Several people knew I was coming here today, though not exactly why. But they’ll learn that I was going to see a man behind my husband’s back. That’ll make it worse. They’ll never believe I only wanted to tell you I was leaving Glenville, if you still wanted me. They’ll say that I killed Roland, when he followed me, in an argument over Glenville’s money.”
“But Glenville...”
“Glenville will buy himself an alibi, you can count on that! And they’ll never believe the truth from me, John! In their eyes I’ll be the only person who could have killed Roland. There’s only one thing we can do — get Roland away from here. Hide him some place. Until we can locate Glenville and make him break, make him tell the truth!”
I was lawyer enough to see what that might mean, too.
She drifted across the room to me. She clung to my lapels and for a minute I thought she was going to sink down and kneel at my feet. “I’m not asking you to do anything really wrong, John. Just give me a break, a chance to get at the truth. I’ve been a fool. You’ve got every reason to hate me, John. But you’d give a homeless dog a chance, wouldn’t you?”
Now she was breathing against my cheek. Her lips against my cheek. “A chance to keep your house for you, John. To learn to cook for you and take care of you. To be there when you came home every night.”
Darlene there, instead of the emptiness and silence of a lonely apartment...
And people could change. People got wise to themselves sometimes. But still I was afraid, afraid of her, of the cold dead body in the next room.
I held her face between my palms and looked deep in her eyes.
“I love you, John,” she said softly.
I didn’t say anything. I turned around and started out of the room, toward the back of the house. She followed me, not speaking either.
I went out in the back yard, glancing around.
I hadn’t been able to turn the car around. Or the boat. I’d need something to wrap Roland in.
I’d started toward the garage. A tarpaulin might be in there, to cover his death until I got him out of the house.
“John...”
I didn’t look at her, didn’t speak. I wanted to close my eyes, my whole mind, to everything until it was over. Until we had fixed it so she could be safe for the moment and had cornered Glenville and got the truth.
“John!”
I paused at the gaping, open doors to the garage, looked back at her.
“John, what — what are you going in the garage for?”
“To get something to wrap him,” I said.
“But... but not in there, John. There’s nothing in there. John, I...”
There was something in there. I could see it. A tarpaulin.
She was saying something, very fast, very brisk. Trying suddenly to laugh. She was walking across the yard toward me, words fluttering out of her. Trying to tell me there was no need to look in the garage.
Something snapped inside of me. I remembered. I remembered that she had spoken of Glenville in the past tense as much as the present. I lunged into the garage, jerked the heavy canvas back.
Glenville lay under it. He’d been shot in the back of the head. Shot, while he’d been trying to run?
I heard her breathing. I turned to look, and she was standing off there, just beyond the garage doorway, breathing hard.
“You killed them both,” I said. “For Glenville’s money. You married him for it, but Roland had it all tied up. I guess you were right about there being an argument here today. Something certainly did gather in a knot and burst — but not in Glenville. In you. Then with Roland’s blood on your hands, you knew Glenville would never stick by you.