XII

Winnie Verloc, the widow of Mr Verloc, the sister of the late faithful
Stevie (blown to fragments in a state of innocence and in the conviction
of being engaged in a humanitarian enterprise), did not run beyond the
door of the parlour. She had indeed run away so far from a mere trickle
of blood, but that was a movement of instinctive repulsion. And there
she had paused, with staring eyes and lowered head. As though she had
run through long years in her flight across the small parlour, Mrs Verloc
by the door was quite a different person from the woman who had been
leaning over the sofa, a little swimmy in her head, but otherwise free to
enjoy the profound calm of idleness and irresponsibility. Mrs Verloc was
no longer giddy. Her head was steady. On the other hand, she was no
longer calm. She was afraid.

If she avoided looking in the direction of her reposing husband it was
not because she was afraid of him. Mr Verloc was not frightful to
behold. He looked comfortable. Moreover, he was dead. Mrs Verloc
entertained no vain delusions on the subject of the dead. Nothing brings
them back, neither love nor hate. They can do nothing to you. They are
as nothing. Her mental state was tinged by a sort of austere contempt
for that man who had let himself be killed so easily. He had been the
master of a house, the husband of a woman, and the murderer of her
Stevie. And now he was of no account in every respect. He was of less
practical account than the clothing on his body, than his overcoat, than
his boots--than that hat lying on the floor. He was nothing. He was not
worth looking at. He was even no longer the murderer of poor Stevie.
The only murderer that would be found in the room when people came to
look for Mr Verloc would be--herself!

Her hands shook so that she failed twice in the task of refastening her
veil. Mrs Verloc was no longer a person of leisure and responsibility.
She was afraid. The stabbing of Mr Verloc had been only a blow. It had
relieved the pent-up agony of shrieks strangled in her throat, of tears
dried up in her hot eyes, of the maddening and indignant rage at the
atrocious part played by that man, who was less than nothing now, in
robbing her of the boy.

It had been an obscurely prompted blow. The blood trickling on the floor
off the handle of the knife had turned it into an extremely plain case of
murder. Mrs Verloc, who always refrained from looking deep into thing