But she sat up very quickly a moment later. There must be something wrong! Kinumé had said Karen was ‘liting’ — but what was she writing? Kinumé had brought her stationery and envelope! Then she wasn’t working on her new novel at all she was writing a letter. But if she was writing a letter, why didn’t she answer her telephone?
The telephone rang for the last time, gave up.
Eva scrambled off the couch, skirt flying, and ran across the sitting-room to the bedroom door. Something had happened to Karen. She was ill — Kinumé had said so — she had looked poorly the last time Eva saw her — perhaps Karen had fainted or had an attack of something. That was it!
She burst into Karen’s bedroom so precipitately that the door banged against the wall and swung back, bumping into her. And Eva stared, her heart hammering, hardly knowing what to expect.
At first she thought the room was empty. There was no one in the low funny little Japanese bed and the writing-desk in front of the oriel windows was untenanted. In fact, the chair behind the desk, facing her, was pushed neatly into the knee-hole on the farther side, for Karen’s desk and chair were so placed as to catch the light from the triple window over her shoulder when she worked.
Eva crossed to the far side of the room, looking around, puzzled. Everything was in place — the beautiful Japanese screen beyond the bed against the wall; the water-colors; the large empty bird-cage hanging beside the bed; the Kakémono by the great Japanese painter Oguri Sōtan, which Karen prized so dearly; the delicate bric-à-brac — everything was in place except Karen herself. Where was she? She had certainly been in the bedroom a half-hour before; Eva had heard her voice. Unless she was upstairs in the attic no one had ever seen...
Then Eva spied two tiny Japanese shoes, toes down, hanging over the steps of the little dais behind the desk, where the floor of the oriel was raised above the level of the bedroom. And Karen’s feet were in the shoes, clad in white Japanese stockings, and there was a scrap of kimono visible...
Eva felt her heart contract. Poor Karen! She had merely fainted after all. Eva ran around the desk. There was Karen lying face down on the dais, stretched along the step of the dais, her kimono almost fastidiously draped about her little form... Eva opened her mouth to call Kinumé.
But her mouth closed again. She blinked and blinked and blinked, in a futile, dazed way, everything in her paralysed but her eyes.
There was blood on the dais.
There was blood on the dais. Eva kept blinking, so stunned her brain could think nothing but that. Blood!
Karen’s face was twisted sideways to Eva, resting on the polished dais, and the blood was staining the floor near her white throat. There was so much of it, as if it had gushed out of that hideous slit, that red-lipped wound in the soft front of Karen’s throat... Eva covered her eyes with a little animal whimper.
When she put her hands down one part of her numbed brain was already functioning weakly. Karen was so still, her exhausted cheeks were so white, so bluish-white, her lids so marbly and veined — Karen was dead, Karen was dead of a stab-wound in her neck. Karen was... was murdered.
The thought repeated itself, ringing in her head like the telephone bell that had rung and rung. Only the telephone bell had stopped, and the thought would not. Eva’s hand groped for the desk; she felt she must hold on to something.
Her hand touched something cold, and instinctively she jerked away and looked. It was a piece of metal, a long piece of metal tapering to a point and with a bow on the other end. Scarcely conscious of what she was doing, Eva picked the thing up. It was — that was queer! she thought dully — half a pair of scissors. She could even see the little hole at the base of the blade, between the table and the finger bow, where the screw which held the two halves together had once dropped out. But it was the oddest-looking scissors she...
Eva almost screamed this time. That blade, that sharp wicked point... the weapon, the weapon that had killed Karen! Someone had killed Karen with half a scissors and wiped the blade off and... and left it! Her hand jerked again, and the metal thing fell, striking the edge of the writing-desk and slithering off into a little waste-basket half-full of paper debris to the right of the chair. Unconsciously Eva passed her fingers over her skirt, but the cold and evil feel of the thing remained.
She tottered around the desk and dropped to her knees on the dais beside Karen’s body. Karen, Karen, she thought wildly; such a queer and pretty thing, so terribly happy after so many shut-in years, and now so horribly dead. Eva felt herself go weak and put out her hand to steady herself on the dais floor. And this time her fingers touched something like tepid jelly, and she did scream — a formless, almost voiceless scream that whispered in the silent room.
It was Karen’s coagulating blood, and it was all over her hand.
She jumped to her feet and retreated blindly, half-mad with nausea and horror. Her handkerchief, she must wipe... She fumbled in the waistband of her skirt, ridiculously careful not to get a spot of the sticky red stuff on her skirt or waist. She found the handkerchief and wiped and wiped, as if she could never get herself clean; wiped her fingers and smeared the handkerchief with jelly-red smears and kept staring blindly at Karen’s bluing face.
Then her heart stopped beating. Someone was chuckling without amusement, dryly, behind her.
Eva whirled so fast she almost fell. She did fall back against the desk, the bloody handkerchief clutched to her breast.
A man was leaning in the open doorway of the bedroom, leaning and chuckling in that dry and humorless way.
But his eyes were not chuckling at all. They were very cold gray eyes, and they were watching not her face but her hands.
And the man said in a low, slow voice: “Stand still, gorgeous.”
6
The man heaved against the jamb, came straight, and walked into the room on the balls of his feet. He walked so carefully that Eva felt a hysterical impulse to laugh. But she did not, for it struck her remotely that there was grace in the way he walked on the balls of his feet, as if he had done it many times before.
The man refused to look at her face; all his attention coldly persisted in centering on her hands. The bloody handkerchief, thought Eva in a dim horror... She dropped the hateful thing on the floor and started to push away from the desk.
“I said stand still.”
She stood still. The man stopped, his eyes flickered, and still looking at her he walked backwards until he came to the door, and then he found it by groping for it.
“I... She’s—” began Eva, gesturing in a fluttery way over her shoulder. But her mouth was so dry she had to stop.
“Shut up.”
He was a young man with a bleak brown face, as crisp and seared as autumn leaves. The words came out of his mouth like drops of ice-water through lips that barely parted.
“Park it right where you are. Against the desk. And keep those hands of yours where I can see them.”
The room spun. Eva closed her eyes, dizzy. Keep those hands of yours... Her legs were frozen, but her brain was going like a machine. The words didn’t make sense. Keep those hands of yours...
When she looked again he was standing in front of her with a trace of puzzlement in the gray diamonds of his eyes. And now he was not looking at her hands, which were spread beside her on the desk, but at her face. He was reading her face. He was taking it in, feature by feature — her brow, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her chin — going over them one by one, like an accountant taking inventory. Eva tried to make sense out of chaos, but nothing clicked into place. She thought it might be a dream, then hoped it might be a dream. She almost convinced herself it was a dream and closed her eyes again to make it so.