The Unsuspected

down to calmness. 'You are trying to make me afraid that someone wants to kill me. Why don't you tell me straight out who that person is?'

'Because,' said Francis, 'there are two Mathildas. One of them could not ever believe me. The other one knows already.'

The silence closed in. Suddenly she found herself in Francis' arms. Her impulse was to let go, give up to the warmth there, put her face against him and let the tears through. But she struggled.

'Sorry,' he said. He set her back on her own equilibrium. 'I know what you're going through. Something about the way you take it breaks my heart.' He spoke lightly. His eyes had that warm light. His eyebrows flew up with his smile. He half turned, as if to let her pull herself together. 'Lookit! Chocolates!'

She watched him pick up a brightly wrapped candy, peel off the wrapper. She made herself remember that he was a liar. She said, 'Your forgeries are so very clever, perhaps I'd better make a genuine will.'

She went to her little gray desk, pulled out paper and pen. 'To all whom it may concern,' she wrote angrily, decisively. She put down the date in big firm figures and underlined it. 'This is my will and it supersedes all others, including the one forged by a man who calls himself my husband. I am twenty-two years old, unmarried, perfectly sane. I don't know legal language, but I intend to make my meaning so clear—'

Standing behind her, Francis munched chocolates.

She wrote down that everything she had must belong to her beloved guardian, Luther Grandison. She finished it. She signed it.

Francis nodded. 'Good,' he said.

She looked up into his eyes. They didn't seem anything but clear and friendly. 'If you'll just hide it,' he said. 'Please, Tyl. And tell a stranger. But only a stranger. What harm can that do? Call it a whim. Call it anything. Give me that little bit of trust or take it for

a little bit of advice that cant hurt you.'

She thought she could feel the warmth of his presence close above her. The moment crystallized, as some moments will, and for just that while she was aware of the whole setting—herself at the desk with the light falling on her hands, the paper under them, white against the rosy blotter, the green pen lying there. All the background was in her mind, as if she could see it too. The gray walls around them, the furniture, the bed with its yellow spread, its soft pale yellow silken quilt, the hollow in the pillow where her head had been.

And she heard the silence of the house beyond the rooms walls. She was aware of the deserted gardens outside, below, and of the globe of the world turning through the dark toward dawn.

And in the core of the moment was the warmth of his presence, where he stood just behind her, looking down over her shoulder easily, not touching her and yet surrounding her as if there were a shield at her back.

She said, 'All right. Ill hide it.'

Where had her wrath gone? Where was the stubborn conflict and clash of wills? Mathilda tilted her head, looked up and back. She smiled.

He bent and kissed her warmly, heartily, like a brother, like a friend. An endearing kiss, it asked for nothing. It congratulated her.

Then he put a handful of chocolates in his pocket. 'These are good,' he said. 'Good night' For the second, he hesitated, as if he wondered what to call her. Dear, or what? He touched her shoulder. 'Thanks, pal,' he said.

Then he put one long leg out the window absurdly, as if he were getting into a pair of trousers. His face grinned at her a last moment over the sill. She heard faint scrambling noises. He was gone.

She put the window down, stepped quickly back and away from it. She didn't want him to see her watching, if he should look back. Because, of course, she wasn't watching.

She had the new will in her hand. She folded it small. She looked about for a place. A little hanging shelf near the bed had some books in it. She took one down, a thin book of poetry-Lucile-in a cardboard case. She put her piece of paper inside, between the book and its case. It wasn't a very good hiding place, but it would do.

Mathilda undressed, got into bed. She told herself that when the light was out she would lie and think things through. She would start at the beginning and be clear about everything. She would try to organize the facts, make some sense out of what had been

happening. She would try to understand with her brain, instead of reeling about in the confusion with a straining heart Instead of drifting in and out of people's arms. She thought, What a way to behave. She must—must be clear.

But once the light was off and she lay snug under the yellow comforter, Mathilda fell immediately asleep.

In the morning, she was surprised to find that the door of her room had been locked all night. It wasn't her habit to lock her door. It made her a little ashamed to think she'd forgotten. Because, of course, it was Francis who had locked it, and she'd simply forgotten.

Chapter Twenty- one

Grandy pushed the button; the gadget operated. Francis opened the study door from the living room and came in. He crossed easily to the visitor s chair and sat down. Jane, at her little desk in the corner, kept the rhythm of her typing steady, but the sense of the line she had been typing dissolved into a jumble of meaningless letters, as if she'd suddenly begun to type in code.

Grandy had a cigarette in his holder. He pushed papers fretfully away and leaned on his folded hands. He inquired after Francis' health this morning.

Francis said, “I want to talk to you.'

'By all means,' said Grandy with some curiosity. . . . 'Jane—

'I'd like Jane to stay, if you don't mind.'

'I don't mind.' Grandy took the holder out of his mouth and fingered it delicately. He waited.

'Because,' said Francis, 'I'd like a disinterested person to hear what I am going to say.'

'Would you like Jane to take notes?' said Grandy charmingly, obligingly. 'She does shorthand very well.'

Francis was not diverted. 'I came to tell you that you are no longer unsuspected,' he said quietly. 'And murder's too much, you know, to excuse, even in one who has been so kind.'

Grandy's interested expression remained unchanged, unless he looked even more interested. 'Please do go on,' he said in enchanted tones, as if this were the very thing he had needed to stimulate and excite him.

'When Rosaleen Wright hanged herself that winter morning,' said Francis coolly, 'she knocked over a lamp, uprooted some wires and blew a fuse.'

So Tom Gahagen was telling me,' said Grandy amiably. One would think they approached a puzzle together.

'Your clock on the mantel just beyond that wall was stopped. The time was twenty minutes after ten.'

Grandy shifted in his chair. 'Yes, yes. All this we know. What's the significance?'

'Althea was in the kitchen that morning?'

'Yes. Certainly. Althea was in the kitchen.'

'So were you, Mr. Grandison.'

'So was I,' he agreed benignly.

'You entered the kitchen,' said Francis slowly, 'by that door, from this room, at ten thirty-five.'

'Whatever makes you think so?'

'You see what it means if that is true?'

Grandy's mouth flattened, expressing distaste. 'Something very nasty,' he said. 'Very nasty.' He cocked his head. 'Do you follow him, Jane?'

Jane felt a trickle of perspiration down her back. 'I don't—no, I don't, sir,' she faltered. Her eyes were round as saucers and she looked frightened.

'Really a horrible idea,' said Grandy thoughtfully. 'That she hanged herself before my eyes, eh? While I watched?'

Francis shrugged.

'Oh, I see!” cried Grandy. 'Dear me, I hanged her!'

'The odd part of it is,' said Francis, 'that you did, and I can prove it.'

'That would be very odd indeed,' said Grandy. 'How?'

'Oh, not the icebox light.' Francis tossed this at him. But Grandy's head did not tremble from its bright, interested pose. 'Althea told me and one other person, who will remember what was said and so testify.' Francis hesitated. 'You see you killed Althea

a trifle too late.'

'So,' said Grandy rather more heavily, 'Althea too? My lovely girl, the one I've lost.'

Jane let out a childish whimper. Grandy looked across at her. “My dear,' he said tenderly, 'can you bear to hear the rest of this? I'd like you to. Try not to feel. Just listen to the words.'

Jane bent her head.

'Now,' said Grandy, turning to Francis, his eyes glinting, 'proceed, Mr. Howard.'

Francis thought, Jane's fooled him. He's acting for Jane. He marshaled his attack.

'Althea turned the radio up, if you remember-or even if you don't'—Francis caught and controlled his temper—'at precisely the moment you entered the kitchen and closed that door. She was struck by a phrase said over the air. She remembered it clearly. That program was recorded at the time, Mr. Grandison. It gives away the exact minute. The minute you left this room. And that minute was ten thirty-five. Not earlier.'

Grandy said, 'My dear boy.' He said it gently, with pity. 'When did Althea tell you this?'

'The evening— the night she died.'

'What a day and a night you've had since.' Grandy spoke softly. 'That