Confidentially Yours by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

andiron from the fireplace and hit her the first time, the blow that crushed the top of her skull. Her right hand and lower arm extended from under the edge of the towel; I knelt again and looked at them, and then raised the corner of the towel to examine the left. Neither was broken, and there were no bruises, or any soot, on them; she hadn’t raised her arms to try to protect herself, so definitely he’d hit her the first time from behind. That blow would have killed her instantly, and the rest of it was sheer sadism or some pathological hatred you could only guess at.
    But she must have let him in; I’d locked the front door when I left, and the others were already locked. I became aware then that something had changed in the room, but it was a second or two before I realized what it was. The telephone had finally quit ringing. I turned to it and picked up the receiver, still numb with shock, and started to dial the sheriff’s office. With a nervous giggle that was near the borderline of hysteria, I was conscious of thinking it was lucky for me I was in the sheriff’s office, with witnesses, when it happened. Then I stopped, and let the receiver fall back on the cradle. I was staring with horror at the splintered door frame.
    Mr. Mulholland will please take the stand…
I rang the doorbell for a long time … Yes, it was at least five minutes … When he finally did answer, he was all out of breath, and crazy-acting, and wild-eyed. I could smell the liquor on him … Yes, that’s the same suitcase. I just thought at the time it was his…
    Wait! The suitcase was in the living room when I left. He’d have to testify there was no chance I could have moved it, because I came out the door right behind him. So it would be obvious she was still alive then— I stopped. What a defense that would be! By now I’d already been here at least twenty minutes, alone, since George had let me off in front of the house.
    I’d told George she was still in New Orleans, when she was already dead here in the bedroom. Friend or not, he’d still have to testify.
    They already had the motive. The girl had given them that.
    The telephone started to ring again.
… and so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, having already killed his wife’s lover, he learned from her hotel in New Orleans that she was on her way home, waylaid her in the living room … where she dropped her suitcase, fled in terror to the bedroom and, in a last and futile attempt to save her life, bolted the door…
    … I give you this andiron … these monstrous photographs … who but a man inflamed to madness by the goadings of a cancerous and unreasoning jealousy…
    I had to do something.
    Yes, what? I heard my voice saying it aloud, and then that nervous giggle again, warning me how near I was to breaking up completely into hysteria.
    Maybe if I got out of this room where her scream was still ringing in my ears I could think. But it wasn’t a scream, I told myself; it was only the telephone. I went down the hall with it ringing behind me in the bedroom and ahead of me in the living room, as if I were running wildly and forever just to stay in one place on a treadmill in some ultramodern Hell filled with shrilling telephones all trying to drive me over the brink into madness. Then in a moment of lucidity, like a sun-filled hole in a drifting curtain of fog, it occurred to me that if I answered it the damned thing would stop. But as I came into the living room it stopped anyway. I went on to the kitchen, only half conscious of what I was doing, and from force of habit poured a cup of coffee from the percolator which had shut itself off now. I was raising it to my lips when I saw her face again, and dropped the whole thing, cup, saucer, and all, into the sink. I turned on the tap and let the water run, splashing among the fragments of china, while I cupped trembling hands and caught some to wash my face. I didn’t know why. Maybe I thought it would clear my head. I