I said nothing, but I did pause and wait for him to continue.
“I think my wife is planning to kill me,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice, his eyes locked on mine. “I think, in fact, she has already begun.”
“Kill you?” I was stunned. For a long moment I could only stare at him incredulously. Then, quite deliberately, I removed my arm from his grip and went to sit in one of the large wing chairs, trying to collect my wits.
“That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard. Why on earth should your wife want to kill you?”
“I know it’s incredible. I didn’t want to have to explain so abruptly, but you were going to leave. I had to stop you.”
“You still haven’t explained why she should want to kill you.”
He glanced anxiously toward the hall but there was no sign of his wife. “Because I told her I don’t love her. I told her I have never loved her.”
I shook my head violently. “What nonsense,” I said, as one would to a child. “This is the twentieth century, for Heaven’s sake, and this isn’t the house of the Borgias. People don’t go around killing one another off because they aren’t in love. There’s divorce and—”
“Mary would never agree to a divorce. Use your head. Look at her. Is she the type of woman who would give up something that belongs to her?”
I didn’t like being spoken to in that manner, but I held my tongue and allowed myself to think as he suggested. It was true, in a sense at least. Mary Linton and the scores of females like her I had known in school were not inclined to give up what they owned—and they would, to a woman, feel they owned a husband, particularly a suave, handsome one....
“This is ridiculous,” I said, cutting off my own stream of thought and standing abruptly. “I can’t imagine...your wife said you had been sick. Perhaps....”
He looked saddened and his smile went awry in a way that made me regret such a thought.
“You think I’m crazy,” he said, more a statement of bitter fact than a question.
I shook my head frantically. “I don’t know,” I said, and meant it. “This is all so insane, the whole situation. I don’t know what to think. I want to go. I think I should go, please.”
A clock struck somewhere in the house. Nonsensically my thoughts went back into the past. There was a cuckoo clock in my father’s house, an antiquated and not very accurate device with a gratingly loud cuckoo that announced the hour. It had struck as Jeff was proposing to me, so that he had to wait for it to finish before he could go on, and I had spoiled the romantic mood by giggling.
“Jeff,” Mary Linton called from upstairs, “I can’t find that blasted letter.”
“It must be there.” His eyes, trained on me while he answered her, were frightened as I had never seen them before. They imparted some of their fear to me. “Look in my desk.”
“In the name of God,” he spoke to me in a lowered voice, “do me one favor, Chris, that’s all I ask, one favor.”
I bit my lower lip. I had loved this man once. Even if I did not love him now—and I did not—did I not owe him one more favor at least, when he was so obviously sincere in his desperation?
He took my hesitant silence for assent. He went quickly to the writing table and took a cup and saucer from one corner of its top.
“My tea,” he said. “She fixes it for me herself every day. A wifely gesture.” He laughed but there was no humor in the bitter, harsh sound. I was struck again by how wasted he looked, how pale and drawn.
He opened a drawer and took a small jar from within, an ordinary jar that might have held applesauce of something equally innocent. It was empty. He removed the lid and poured the cup’s contents into it, replacing the lid.
“Here.” He brought the jar with its yellow brown contents across to me, “Take this to a chemist. Have it analyzed.”
“But what on earth...?”
“I can’t find it,” Mary said from the stairs.
“Please,” Jeff begged in a hoarse whisper.
I opened my purse—a generous carryall—and put the jar into it, clicking it shut as she came into the room.
“I can’t find it anywhere,” she said in a petulant tone. “It must have gotten lost.”
“It’s all right, darling.” He gave her a smile so relaxed, so every day, that I thought I must have imagined all the other, the anxiety and fear and tension of the last few minutes. “Miss Channing isn’t quite convinced she would want the job. I suppose she would prefer a younger patient, or a better-looking one.”
“No,” I said quickly, too quickly, and hurriedly added, “But it is a little far from New York.”
“Surely you had the address to begin with,” she said, further piqued at this answer. “Couldn’t you have looked it up on a map?”
“I did.” I knew that I sounded flustered. Pretense was not my forte. “I just didn’t realize how far it was in actual distance until I got here. That long train ride....” I let the sentence trail off vaguely.
“Well, I suppose we ought to thank you for coming.” She stepped aside for me to go. “Although I for one had no idea an appointment had even been made. My husband has been ill, as you know. He isn’t thinking as clearly these days as he ought to be.”
The thought came to me again that perhaps Jeff really wasn’t in full control of his faculties. Perhaps it was wrong of me, even dangerous, to humor him as I was doing. It might be best, best even for him, if I told his wife everything now.
“Is something wrong?” she asked me.
“No,” I managed to say, putting a protective hand across the front of my purse, where I could feel the bulk of the tea-filled jar. “I only thought that if I reconsider, I’ll write you again and resend my qualifications.”
“That will be fine.” She was obviously confident this would never take place. She smiled more warmly than she had since I’d arrived. Apparently now that I was leaving she felt she could afford to be gracious to me.
“That’s a handsome pendant you’re wearing,” she said. “White jade, isn’t it?”
“Yes, thank you.” I managed somehow to return her smile. I wondered if her smile would remain if she knew the jade had been a present from husband, an engagement present to me.
“It’s rather like mine. That is, the jade is alike. Mine is in a ring.”
She extended her hand for me to see the ring. It was a shock to see the stone, so like my own, mounted in gold. Jeff Linton had given away his soul rather freely, I thought. But I complimented her on it, making every effort to seem relaxed and natural.
I did not breathe easily until I was outside and the great door of the house was closed after me. Then, for the first time, I let my shoulders droop and the corners of my mouth turned down as they had wanted to do since I had first recognized Jeff.
It had started to snow. Delicate tufts of white danced and swirled, postponing their arrival on the ground as long as they dared.
It was afternoon. It would be evening by the time I reached the city, quite late by the time I had made it home and eaten dinner. I’d had lunch in the town of Elsinore, the nearest village, before coming up to the house for the interview.
The taxi that had brought me up from Elsinore, a twenty minute drive, was waiting as the driver had promised. He saw me come out the small gate and sat up sharply, twisting about on the seat to open the door for me without getting out of the car.
The seat in the