He went back to the living-room, softly closing the door behind him. Vera was sitting on the floor in front of the fire, holding out her hands to it. The red, steady glow fell softly upon her bare arms and shoulders. She did not look up as he came in.
Moving very softly, he came behind her. With demoralizing suddenness, his heart began to beat frantically, like the crying of a bird upon which a cat has pounced. Steadying himself, he put the pocketbook on the sofa and opened the box.
Vera half turned her head at the rustle of the tissue paper; then she leaned forward and laid it sideways on her knees, with a little contented sound. She was waiting for his arms to steal round her and draw her back to him.
Very quietly he put the box down beside the pocketbook. In his right hand was a long Indian knife with carved blade and handle, and his left hand moved across to join the other upon the long hilt. He took a step forward.
“Mau — rice.” It was a slow, lazy whisper. She would rouse and turn round. His chance would be gone.
Fixing his gaze on a point just inside her left shoulder blade, he grasped the knife in both hands, raised it, and literally fell upon her with all his might. The blow came straight down; her body in its doubled-up position resisted the impact, and Maurice fell sprawling to one side. Picking himself up like lightning, he sprang away. The knife had gone in almost up to the hilt.
For a moment she remained doubled forward, her head on her knees. Then the head craned back: she tried to straighten herself up, stuck — like a hen he had seen, crushed by a car and desperately trying to rise — and fell suddenly sideways. She kicked, thrusting one foot against the stove, but seeming not to feel it; her hands reached out, clutched the sofa, and she began to drag herself up. Her head was thrown back, the forehead a mask of wrinkles, her eyes staring, fixed on the wall, seemingly quite unconscious of him; and through her open mouth she made a queer indrawn sound, “Aw-w-aw-aw-a-w—”
As he watched, she pulled the top part of her body upright, leaning backward over the knife — farther, farther back — her lips drawn away from the gums; she coughed, and went all limp, rolling over with her face toward him on the carpet. Her eyebrows rose once or twice as if in surprise. Then her face became sleepy and peaceful as a child’s. She uttered a little, gentle sigh, and was still.
It was a full minute before he dared to move. His hands were shaking uncontrollably in reaction from the effort. Holding them out in front of him, he steadied them somewhat by an effort of his will. Then, going as near to the window as he dared, he scanned the front of his bathgown. Not a speck of blood on it! One long streak on his right forearm — that was all. Get rid of that first.
He went swiftly into the bathroom, and in a few seconds that splash of evidence was gone. Now then, he must get a move on. Hesitating with his hand on the door, he had the idea that when he went in he might find her sitting in front of the fire, as before. That would be disconcerting. A mistress with nine lives, eh? It was almost a relief to find her lying as he had left her. A dark stain was slowly spreading over the carpet.
He crossed to the sofa, opened the pocketbook, and took out three little slips of thin paper. If they were going to get him, if he had to swing for it, he’d give the public something to talk about. This was to be no commonplace murder. Each of the little slips had typed on it a bizarre and meaningless sentence. “So Time goes by, whitening old city churches,” read one. That would get them guessing. Another was a text from the Epistle to the Romans, about Sodom and Gomorrah. They might think he was mad, but they would notice them all right. Headlines... He might even get off as a madman.
The slips were typed — not on his own typewriter — not by any means. He had tapped them out under pretense of trying a machine for sale in a stationer’s in the town, while the assistant was getting him a particular size of envelope he knew was kept upstairs. The paper might be identified, though he had kept the type clear of the watermark; but what if it were? Hundreds of people used it.
Rolling up the slips, he bent over the body, inserted one in each nostril, and the third in the mouth, between the teeth and underlip. That was all. Now to get away.
III
Ten minutes later he was hurrying to the terminus of the bus which had brought him out. By good luck, he had hardly any wait at all. The winter dusk was already beginning to fall; it was a foggy, dull day.
Seated in the bus, he reviewed his plans. He had a ticket, which the clerk at the office would swear to giving him, and the number of which was checked up in the ledger. This ticket he was now going to use. The 3:57 would get him up to town too late to join Muriel at the Chadwickes’, but in plenty of time to meet her on the 6:05 and explain that his business had kept him. That business was a weak spot, of course, but he would put in one or two quick calls which would show he had at any rate been in town that afternoon. Muriel would be ready to say he had come up by the 1:52, and his ticket would be found among the day’s collection at Paddington. (He only hoped they didn’t check them after each train!)
At this end no one knew where Vera had gone. She lived only a few hundred yards away, and she had come straight to the flat, so that her maids would be witness that she had not left home till three. Actually, she was dead within ten minutes of entering the flat, and he was away in less than ten minutes after that. Flimsy though his alibi might be, this point at least was in his favor. When on earth, his counsel would ask, could he have found time to commit the murder? The 3:57 got to town by a quarter to five. From then on he would contrive to be seen by several people. The prosecution would not have matters all their own way, even if they did run him in. Unless some one had seen him coming in or going out of the flat, that is to say; and he was pretty sure nobody had.
“Have you ever seen this in your husband’s possession, madam?” (Holding up the knife.)
“Never,” Muriel would reply, with perfect truth; for he had bought it in an old curiosity shop in Devonport a long time ago, and it had been stowed away somewhere among his things ever since.
Or perhaps they didn’t examine a wife when her husband was on trial? He couldn’t remember.
When they reached the station, he wrapped a scarf round his mouth and scuffled through the barrier with his head down, enduring as best he might the agonizing minutes before the train arrived. It was not long, but it might have been a whole year of his life. At last the train came. Getting into a carriage crowded with country folk, he at once disappeared behind a newspaper, and, by a queer trick of the mind which was a complete surprise to him, managed to forget what had happened for whole minutes together. He wasn’t well, that’s what was at the back of it all. He wasn’t well; the strain had been taking it out of him frightfully.
The moment the train reached Paddington, he jumped into a taxi and made for an address in Notting Hill, to a friend of his who had a small, one-man office, and who could therefore be relied upon to be in. Dismissing the taxi at the corner of the street, Maurice went quickly along and mounted the rickety stair. “Come in and wait — back in five minutes,” said a confiding message on a card pinned to the door. Excellent. He went in and picked up a paper. It took him two or three minutes to realize that it was the same paper he had been reading in the train.
A reckless plunging on the stair suddenly announced the owner’s return, and a second later he entered, apologetic and breathless. “Oh, it’s you! I say, I’m awfully sorry. I was kept much longer than I expected. You haven’t been waiting long, I hope?”