“Come here,” he said in a peculiar tone, which might have been the
tone of brutality, but, was intimately known to Mrs Verloc as the
note of wooing.
She started forward at once, as if she were still a loyal woman
bound to that man by an unbroken contract. Her right hand skimmed
slightly the end of the table, and when she had passed on towards
the sofa the carving knife had vanished without the slightest sound
from the side of the dish. Mr Verloc heard the creaky plank in the
floor, and was content. He waited. Mrs Verloc was coming. As if
the homeless soul of Stevie had flown for shelter straight to the
breast of his sister, guardian and protector, the resemblance of
her face with that of her brother grew at every step, even to the
droop of the lower lip, even to the slight divergence of the eyes.
But Mr Verloc did not see that. He was lying on his back and
staring upwards. He saw partly on the ceiling and partly on the
wall the moving shadow of an arm with a clenched hand holding a
carving knife. It flickered up and down. It’s movements were
leisurely. They were leisurely enough for Mr Verloc to recognise
the limb and the weapon.
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 now. 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
perfect 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