return, only to be rebuffed. It was all nicely calculated to drive a sensitive person to the verge of insanity. It was all done so subtly that even now I despair of making anyone see just how she gained her ends.
And Michael? What did he see? What was he thinking? It was impossible for me to guess. His face was blank most of the time, his manner that of a polite stranger. Gradually a rift appeared between us. Gradually it widened. I couldn't be sure what Coralie was saying to him. I grew more and more uncertain of myself, more and more withdrawn.
While I watched in a sort of sick despair, I saw him grow first wary, then cold, then indifferent to me. I still retained enough reason to blame Coralie for what was happening. But I had no proof. For she was never crude, or careless, or even explicit. There'd be a sly insinuation here, a subtle suggestion there. To Michael. About me. Anything to create doubt.
But Michael, I thought, would never understand this, never blame Coralie for what was happening. Men, they say, are by nature more open, more direct. If I went to him, telling him what I suspected, I felt he'd only regard Coralie as misunderstood, and myself as jealous, suspicious—at best, a whining martyr.
Coralie, I knew, was relying on this.
My hands were hopelessly tied. It was impossible to combat her tactics.
My decision to kill Coralie was not a sudden thing. I think it had been growing on me for weeks. Perhaps in the beginning my mind had rejected the idea in horror, but in the end I grew to accept it. I don't think I was entirely sane by that time, living as I had been in an atmosphere of suspicion, intrigue, and distrust. But perhaps I was sane enough. Perhaps I'm only trying, now, to rationalize my guilt.
I remember the night my purpose crystallized. It was after a climactic quarrel with Michael. We'd been quarreling frequently, our nerves rubbed raw. But tonight we shouted like drunken tenement dwellers, and at the last I slapped him stingingly. Strange that I can't remember the source of our quarrel. It was like that, those days. We were fighting about nothing at all.
But I can remember thinking how glad Coralie was going to be when she learned of it, as I knew she very shortly would. Mrs. Dunnigan always went to her immediately, I was sure, carrying stories.
Michael slammed out of the house finally, and I dragged myself to the bedroom, and threw myself across one of the twin beds, sobbing stormily. Until at last I grew quieter, and my emotions played themselves out, and I could think.
Was this the way it was going to end? The marriage I'd entered with such high hope? Once I'd loved Michael, and he'd loved me. Somewhere still, I felt the seed of that love yet existed. But unless I did something, soon, even that would be gone.
And I thought, I must kill Coralie. Now. Before it is too late.
It looks so dreadfully melodramatic as I set it down. I must kill Coralie. But I felt calm, even happy, at the time. I rationalized. Coralie had been an invalid for years. It would be a mercy-death, really, not murder. I was only sacrificing one for the happiness of two.
