She said nothing, nothing.
“Well?” he said finally. “Well?”
She didn’t even seem to hear. He got up, rammed into his robe and went to the kitchen where he poured some whisky. He brought it to her. She shook her head weakly, but he lifted her, made her drink. She coughed and pushed at the glass, then sat up crosslegged on the bed, her head down.
“It was last Thursday night. You were working on that brief. He came and got in...”
Colby blasted. “And you didn’t tell me, didn’t report it to the police. Did you get a good look? Lucy, Damn it... why did you try to hide this from me...” His guts clawed him and he stomped away from the bed, blindly, came back, his fists clenched as he stared grimly down at her crushed figure.
“The publicity... the scandal... what it would do to us, to your career, to have me dragged... dragged naked through the headlines...” She turned an anguished, pleading face up to him. “I thought I could bear it... save you from it... honest to God, Vin...” She caught his hand, tried to draw it to her face. He yanked away, then regretted it.
He petted her face, kissed it. “Sorry, baby. I know what you meant to do, and I love you for it. How did he get in?”
“I let him in. It wasn’t a stranger...” Her voice dropped so low he had to bend near and ask her to repeat. “It wasn’t... wasn’t a stranger?”
“Wasn’t a stranger?” he repeated stupidly.
“No. So of course I let him in. He’d been drinking, but I didn’t know how much. He made a pass. I slapped him. That made him worse, and I hit him harder and ran for the phone to call you, and he knocked it away, and I ran to the door and yelled at him to get out and he got mean... mean...”
“Who?” Colby said. “Who? He... He... He you say. WHO!”
“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you,” she cried desperately. “But first let me tell you how and what happened, so you’ll believe me, and know that I did fight, that I didn’t want it to happen. He tortured and overpowered me...”
“That’s obvious to me. Why are you stalling... why have you been hiding it if there’s nothing guilty about it? Who?”
“He was scared afterward. He threatened. He stood over me for I don’t know how long, driving it into me what would happen if I let you know. He’d say it was an affair.”
“Affair!” Colby said contemptuously. “Bluff. I want Dr. Keech to look at you so he’ll be prepared to swear...”
“Wait. Listen to me. I did go to Dr. Keech, but he said he’d claim I required abuse from a lover...”
“It wasn’t the doctor who said that.”
“No, of course. You know who I mean...”
“That’s just what I don’t know.”
“Well... it was Windy. Windy Tearle. That’s who it was. I swear that’s who it was. I swear!”
“I believe you. Why overemphasize? Go on. Keep talking,” he said, turning away. He began to dress rapidly.
“If I let you know and you took him to court he would hire a psychiatrist to explain masochism, and Windy would swear that’s what I was. He’d bring friends in to claim they too had... had made love to me... or that I’d tried to get them. Windy said it was common knowledge that men flocked to me at parties, dinners, the country club... and for a better reason than my public charm. Vin, that’s a lie...”
“I know. Go on,” he said tightly, continued dressing.
“He said any jury would take one look at me and see a high-stepper, and one look at you and see... well, a not high-stepper... and they’d look at him and snort at the idea he would have to rape any woman...”
Colby nodded involuntarily. Windy was handsome, and the easy charm and magnetism that made him an effective trial lawyer made him damned attractive to women. Unwillingly Colby remembered Windy and Lucy dancing together... a very attractive team. Others had seen it; Colby himself had realized it.
“His defense would hammer on that point,” Lucy went on. “That I was a thrill-seeker... and he was the thrill, and that I had pestered him for months on end. He had resisted because he was your colleague, a junior partner in the same firm... he and you worked closely together on many cases, and he esteemed you and considered you friend, and I was, however desirable, off-limits. Then he’d say he just hadn’t been strong enough... he had been weak, weak, weak and human. He had had a rendezvous, then another, and my shocking passion had begun to scare him and he had wanted to break, but I had become venomous, threatening to blow both my husband’s and his career sky high, get us kicked out of the firm. He had lost his head and slapped me. It had... that slap, inflamed me and I had begged him to hit me harder... Then gradually I increased my requirements for pain, and he had been trapped in all that morbid ugliness, and scared that he himself might become perverted and begin to enjoy inflicting pain...”
3
Colby had seen Windy in Court often enough. He had an actor’s flair; he could shift from earnest, boyish tactics to deep solemnity with wholly convincing ease. He could seem as incapable of guile as an infant. Colby finished dressing with an air of deadly calm, but there was a cold sickness in his gut, and the insidious, unwelcome thought crept into his mind. He couldn’t stand it... he had to have it denied.
“Lucy...” He didn’t look at her. “If... I say if there was... were any truth to it... that a dull low-key bum like me was too slow, un-alive for a lovely, vital girl like you and the marriage left your hungers unsatisfied... if, I mean... and even though you loved me and pitied me and fought to remain loyal, but couldn’t... and if this wrongness in your life drove you somehow into wild cravings... cravings to punish yourself or to be punished, and consequently...” He stopped. She was silent. He turned, half expecting to see that she had thrown herself face down to weep. She sat there staring at him coldly.
“I only meant,” he flustered. “Don’t look that way, baby.” He went near and tried to touch her. She leaned away. “Lucy, I only wanted to say even if every lie of his was true I’d love you... I’d help you... get a psychiatrist... stand by you...”
“If you’re so close to believing him, imagine it all in a court. I see I was right in hiding it from you. He would smear me, make us so ugly and contemptible, drag me naked through the headlines so successfully we’d have to skulk out of town... even if he went to jail. Furthermore, if you’ll look in my vanity case on the closet shelf you’ll see a copy of the little document he prepared just in case you murdered him.”
There were three typewritten pages. Colby finished reading and sat looking drained. It was a sort of last testament, and it would be effective in court... maybe even effective enough to send Colby up for life. Even if he should be acquitted, Lucy would emerge smeared.