Read Online Fair Warning by Mignon Good Eberhart - Free Book Online Page A

Beatrice. “It would be quicker to run across the garden. I’ll stay here. Hurry ! Where’s Ancill?”
    It was wildly disjointed—incoherent. The one instant of comprehension was gone and did not return except in terrifying flashes during the chaotic hours to come. Beatrice was calling “Ancill—Ancill!” loudly and still leaning over Ivan. Marcia herself was out in the moist, dark night, running over wet grass toward lights across the garden wall which were windows of the Copley house when Ancill, running, passed her. He cried, “I’ll get the doctor,” and was over the wall, a thin, sliding black silhouette. He was at the garden door, and light was streaming out into the moist darkness. Then all at once figures were jerking from the house into that stream of light.
    Her feet were wet and cold; her cherry taffeta wrap had fallen somewhere back in the library, and her shoulders were bare to the night. A tall figure in black, with a gleaming patch of white that was a shirt front, was vaulting over the garden wall and was followed by another.
    “Marcia! My God, what are you doing here?” Rob’s arm was around her, his warm hand on her bare shoulders. “What is it?”
    “Bring her into the house, Rob.”
    “Are you sure he’s dead?”
    They were hurrying, all of them, over the wet grass, their voices breathless, incoherent. Then Ancill was holding the french doors open, and Dr. Graham was running across to kneel beside the thing on the floor that was Ivan.
    Rob said sharply, “Don’t look, Marcia. How did it happen?”
    “I don’t know—I came downstairs, and there were no lights and—he was there—”
    Rob! Why did you do it! Anything but this, Rob!
    Dr. Blakie was doing things with swift, skillful fingers while Beatrice stood above him; Marcia could see only Graham’s black shoulders and his bent head and Beatrice’s pale profile, with those lowering black eyebrows, above the green lace dress. Rob kept rubbing her hands and watching them, but he was listening to Marcia, too, for he said in a queer voice, “Do you know who did it? Tell me quickly, Marcia. I must know. Did you see?”
    Who did it? He wasn’t looking at her at all; who did it?
    “No,” said Marcia. “No.”
    Something had happened over there where Ivan lay. Something final. Dr. Blakie had risen and was standing beside Beatrice, looking down, and they were both utterly still except that one of Beatrice’s strong hands was opening and closing. Rob knew, too, that it had happened, for he turned suddenly to Marcia; his eyes were dark and terribly urgent, seeking down into her own.
    “Don’t you know?” he whispered. “Quick—before people come.”
    “No,” whispered Marcia. “Rob—Rob, is he dead?”
    His face just above hers was so white; his mouth so grim, his blue eyes so strange and black and shining.
    “He’s dead, all right,” he said. “You’d better have a lawyer —”
    Dr. Blakie had turned toward the desk. “Do you know anything of this, Marcia, except that you—found him like this? I mean, was anyone else in the room?”
    “No.”
    “You just—found him? With this knife in his heart?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, we’d better notify the police. I can’t do anything else. I’m sorry. Where’s the telephone?”
    Ancill slid from behind the big brown leather chair.
    “Shall I telephone, sir? What shall I say?”
    Beatrice turned slowly to look at the doctor. They were all, suddenly, looking at him.
    He would not return their looks; he got out a cigarette case, opened it, selected a cigarette, and tapped it on the case, still refusing to meet those eyes. His face looked tired and gray above the gleaming white immaculacy of his shirt front. He said finally, still not looking at them, “Tell them it was suicide.”
    “Suicide!” cried Ancill.
    He looked at Ancill then.
    “Certainly, suicide. He’s stabbed; his skull apparently was fractured by the fall. He could have stabbed himself—how do we know he