第23章

They were leisurely enough for him to take in the full meaning of the portent, and to taste the flavour of death rising in his gorge.His wife had gone raving mad - murdering mad.They were leisurely enough for the first paralysing effect of this discovery to pass away before a resolute determination to come out victorious from the ghastly struggle with that armed lunatic.They were leisurely enough for Mr Verloc to elaborate a plan of defence, involving a dash behind the table, and the felling of the woman to the ground with a heavy wooden chair.But they were not leisurely enough to allow Mr Verloc the time to move either hand or foot.The knife was already planted in his breast.It met no resistance on its way.Hazard has such accuracies.Into that plunging blow, delivered over the side of the couch, Mrs Verloc had put all the inheritance of her immemorial and obscure descent, the simple ferocity of the age of caverns, and the unbalanced nervous fury of the age of bar-rooms.Mr Verloc, the secret agent, turning slightly on his side with the force of the blow, expired without stirring a limb, in the muttered sound of the word `Don't' by way of protest.

Mrs Verloc had let go the knife, and her extraordinary resemblance to her late brother had faded, had become very ordinary.She drew a deep breath, the first easy breath since Chief Inspector Heat had exhibited to her the labelled piece of Stevie's overcoat.She leaned forward on her folded arms over the side of the sofa.She adopted that easy attitude not in order to watch or gloat over the body of Mr Verloc, but because of the undulatory and swinging movements of the parlour, which for some time behaved as though it were at sea in a tempest.She was giddy but calm.She had become a free woman with a perfection of freedom which left her nothing to desire and absolutely nothing to do, since Stevie's urgent claim on her devotion no longer existed.Mrs Verloc, who thought in images, was not troubled now by visions, because she did not think at all.And she did not move.She was a woman enjoying her complete irresponsibility and endless leisure, almost in the manner of a corpse.She did not move, she did not think.

Neither did the mortal envelope of the late Mr Verloc reposing on the sofa.

Except for the fact that Mrs Verloc breathed these two would have been perfectly in accord: that accord of prudent reserve without superfluous words, and sparing of signs, which had been the foundation of their respectable home life.For it had been respectable, covering by a decent reticence the problems that may arise in the practice of a secret profession and the commerce of shady wares.To the last its decorum had remained undisturbed by unseemly shrieks and other misplaced sincerities of conduct.And after the striking of the blow, this respectability was continued in immobility and silence.

Nothing moved in the parlour till Mrs Verloc raised her head slowly and looked at the clock with inquiring mistrust.She had become aware of a ticking sound in the room.It grew upon her ear, while she remembered clearly that the clock on the wall was silent, had no audible tick.What did it mean by beginning to tick so loudly all of a sudden? Its face indicated ten minutes to nine.Mrs Verloc cared nothing for time, and the ticking went on.She concluded it could not be the clock, and her sullen gaze moved along the walls, wavered, and became vague, while she strained her hearing Co locate the sound.Tic, tic, tic.

After listening for some time Mr Verloc lowered her gaze deliberately on her husband's body.Its attitude of repose was so homelike and familiar that she could do so without feeling embarrassed by any pronounced novelty in the phenomena of her home life.Mr Verloc was taking his habitual ease.

He looked comfortable.

By the position of the body the face of Mr Verloc was not visible to Mrs Verloc, his widow.Her fine, sleepy eyes, travelling downward on the track of the sound, became contemplative on meeting a flat object of bone which protruded a little beyond the edge of the sofa.It was the handle of the domestic carving knife with nothing strange about it but its position at right angles to Mr Verloc's waistcoat and the fact that something dripped from it.Dark drops fell on the floorcloth one after another, with a sound of ticking growing fast and furious like the pulse of an insane clock.

At its highest speed this ticking changed into a continuous sound of trickling.

Mrs Verloc watched that transformation with shadows of anxiety coming and going on her face.It was a trickle, dark, swift, thin...Blood!

At this unforeseen circumstance Mrs Verloc abandoned her pose of idleness and irresponsibility.

With a sudden snatch at her skirts and a faint shriek she ran to the door, as if the trickle had been the first sign of a destroying flood.

Finding the table in her way she gave it a push with both hands as though it had been alive, with such force that it went for some distance on its four legs, making a loud, scraping racket, whilst the big dish with the joint crashed heavily on the floor.

Then all became still.Mrs Verloc on reaching the door had stopped.

A round hat disclosed in the middle of the floor by the moving of the table rocked slightly on its crown in the wind of her flight.