Shadow of Guilt by Patrick Quentin Page B

the truth, but his naive self-confidence undermined me.
    I hedged. “But, Chuck, is that what your lawyer told you?”
    “Oh, lawyers! You know what lawyers are like. Always looking on the black side, always yakking about technicalities. But what’s to stop me getting out of here? I told them the truth.”
    “The truth!” cried Connie. The wild, afflicted look was still in her eyes but somehow—I suppose because she realized how important it was for Chuck—she’d got control of herself again. “Then, Chuck—you mean, you didn’t do it?”
    “Do it? Kill Saxby?” He gave a bleak little shrug. “I wanted to. But wanting to and doing it… well, it seems like they’re two very different things.”
    “But—” I began.
    Quickly, before I could say what had to be said, Connie threw me another desperate warning glance.
    “No, George.” She turned back to Chuck. “You didn’t do it. Then tell us. Tell us what you told the Lieutenant.”
    “Okay,” said Chuck. “Okay, sure.”
    Connie crossed to me then. She put her hand on my arm, firmly, making it even more plain to me that she wanted me to keep my mouth shut. She said, “But you did take Mal’s gun?”
    Chuck’s face was very solemn now. He looked down at the carpetless floor, then he dropped back in his chair.
    “Sure,” he said. “I took it.”
    “On Saturday night? When Vivien found you in their room?”
    “That’s right. It was after you’d told me about Saxby, about what sort of a guy he was, about what had been happening with Ala. At first, I couldn’t really have taken it in. I mean, everything had seemed so wonderful with Ala finally saying she loved me, with the wedding set and everything. I—I just couldn’t believe it. But then, although you’d told me not to tell Dad or Vivien, when I got home I had to mention Saxby’s name. And that did it. Dad came out with the whole story of the people in Toronto and it was as if up till then the shock had kept me from feeling, because, as I sat there listening to Dad, I suddenly got so mad I couldn’t wait for any more, I had to get away, to be by myself. So I went up to my room. I sat on the bed and—and I wanted to kill him. It was just as simple as that. I wanted to kill him. Then I thought of Dad’s gun.”
    He broke off, running a hand across his cropped yellow-gold hair.
    “I knew I couldn’t do anything then, of course, but the thought of the gun kind of hypnotized me. I wanted to feel it in my hand. So I got up and went down the corridor to their room. I knew Dad kept it in the drawer between the beds. I went straight to the drawer and took it out. I sat down on Vivien’s bed, looking at it, then I heard someone coming. It was Vivien, you know that. I put the gun in my pocket just before she came in, and she said, ‘What on earth are you doing here, darling?’ But… well, I couldn’t face her or anyone. I just got up and went back to my own room. I lay on the bed. I felt terrible, kind of split in two, as if I was standing up beside the bed looking down at myself lying on the bed and I—I thought of Mother. I started thinking: My God, am I going like Mother?”
    He held out his hand to me. I took a cigarette out of my case and gave it to him. I leaned over and lit it. His hand was shaking and his eyes, watching Connie, showed a vestige of that same lurking dread which had haunted his father’s face.
    “I’ve always been scared of that, you know, ever since that last day when they came to get her, when she was screaming in her room and—and they came up the stairs with the strait jacket, the man in the white coat, the woman, the nurse or whatever she was, coming up the stairs, carrying that—that thing like a life preserver. I remembered all that and I got so scared. I guess I even forgot about Ala and the gun and everything. I just lay there, holding on as if there was a great cliff and I was on the edge. Then I guess I must have passed out or maybe just fallen asleep.