“But I stuck to my guns. Then I transferred funds and left him without a joint checking account. The scenes got rougher, but I didn’t relent, even after he struck me with his fist one night.”
“The abominable louse!” I said.
“He was a pauper surrounded by plenty. Everything he’d schemed to get was in sight, but not within his reach. He was reduced to the necessity of coming to me when he wanted money for a pair of trousers.”
“Bully for you, Ellen!”
“In addition, Miss Cricket Luden was becoming impatient, questioning the eventual success of Kevin’s plot.”
“Her ardor was cooling?” I asked.
Ellen nodded. “She had to go to work to maintain herself. It didn’t set well at all. Kevin really wanted her, and he was driven to distraction. At last, the distraction became desperation. He even threatened to filch objects of art from the estate and sell them. I told him to go right ahead. I’d have him jailed, since such items remain in my father’s name.
“Kevin knew I would do exactly what I’d said. For the second time, he struck me. Quite a punch. In the stomach. A hard slapping about the face. I managed to undergo the torture with a laugh.”
“Bravo!” I said.
“I told him that he’d made his bed and now he would lie in it. Quite alone. Quite penniless. No threat, no amount of torture would make me change my mind. He would never get his hands on my money until the day I died.”
“Bravo and ole!” I said.
“The final change came to him then, John. I can’t describe it definitely, not as you describe a color or a view of the seashore. Something in his face, behind his eyes, in his manner when he thought I was unaware that he was observing me.”
“More scheming. A thicker plot,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, the first hint of tiredness in her voice. “I know that now. I knew it at the lake cottage. I told him yesterday that I believed I’d discovered a way to defeat him, to sever myself from him without a community property settlement.
“I drove up to the lake. I’d told the servants, and he learned my destination from them. Today he came. He was prepared to kill me. He had it all figured out. He reviled me. He took delight in telling me how it would happen.
“He was going to make it look as if I’d suffered a fall in the cottage and died alone, without being able to summon medical attention. Miss Luden and a male friend were going to say that he’d been with them at the time of my death.”
“The horror of it all!” I said.
“When he was all finished with his sadistic speech, Kevin advanced on me. I begged him to go away, to forget that such a dreadful thing had ever hatched in his mind. He said no, that he was going to kill me and take pleasure in doing it. I screamed as he reached for me, and I grabbed the poker beside the big fireplace there in the lodge. I... I struck him. He fell. He was dead.”
I took Ellen’s hand in both of mine. “You poor, poor girl.”
“And so—” she expelled a shaky breath — “we are here.”
“Yes,” I said. “But perhaps not for long.”
“Perhaps?”
“You were simply defending yourself,” I said. “Any jury in the land would agree that in this case you were justified. It was a case of a lone woman at the mercy of a murderer. A woman faced with no choice but to try to keep herself from being killed. If we only—”
“If?” she said.
“A single witness.”
A faint smile slipped across Ellen’s lips. “How about a jury box full of witnesses? A courtroom full of witnesses?”
“I don’t catch your meaning, my dear.”
“I’m referring to the tape,” she said. “When Kevin stopped his car outside the lodge, I was in the study off the main room, using the tape recorder to dictate some correspondence. I remember leaving the recorder on when I went into the other room to meet Kevin.
“It’s a very expensive outfit, John, very sensitive, and the scene between Kevin and me took place noisily, as you can imagine. Everything he said to me, the whole of the scene, is in sound on that recorder. If the tape were played before a jury—”
“My dear,” I literally shouted, “we’ll have you out on bail in a matter of minutes. When we play that tape for the district attorney, I doubt that he’ll even insist on the formality of a trial.”
“Are you sure, John?”
“Certain. What a stroke of—” I glimpsed the depths of her eyes. She was also sure. As sure as I.
As if she divined my thoughts, she laughed softly and patted my cheek. “Of course I had to defend myself, John.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “No one can doubt that.”
Not even, I added to myself mentally, if it did take you awhile to goad Kevin into it, my dear.