The Darkness Knows Read Online Free Page A

a little under her touch. She prodded it for a moment in confusion before she finally glanced under the chair with an exasperated sigh.
    When her eyes fell upon what she’d been touching, she sucked in her breath sharply and staggered backward into the table behind her. A wooden chair fell to the floor with a clatter. Vivian realized with shock that she’d been poking the stockinged calf of a woman lying on the floor under the table.
    â€œH-hello?” she said, her voice a barely audible squeak. There was no movement, no sound except for the quiet mumbling of the radio. The announcer’s voice registered somewhere in her mind, saying with gusto, “Miracle Whip is America’s favorite salad dressing, the favorite of millions of men and women…”
    Vivian gathered her courage, tiptoed slowly around the side of the table, and froze.
    The woman was lying on her stomach with her face turned toward Vivian, her gray eyes fixed and staring. There was a trickle of blood drying at the corner of her mouth, and a sticky mess of it covered the side of her head.
    It was Marjorie Fox, and she was dead.

CHAPTER THREE
    Vivian opened her eyes, and Graham’s face came into focus above her, his brow furrowed with concern.
    â€œThere’s my girl,” he said, straightening up with an unconvincing smile. “Feeling better?”
    Vivian glanced around and was surprised to find herself lying on the leather sofa in Mr. Hart’s office, shoes off, stockinged feet perched atop two pillows. The only source of light was the green-shaded lamp on the desk, and there was the faint smell of smoke in the air. Vivian squinted into the dimness and spotted the remains of something smoldering in the ornate crystal ashtray. She wrinkled her nose at the acrid tang in the air.
    â€œI’m… Well, I’m not sure how I am. What happened?” she asked, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers.
    â€œYou fainted.”
    â€œFainted?” She sat up in alarm.
    â€œYou’ve been out quite a while,” Graham assured her. “You gave us a good scare. It’s a good thing Angelo was there to catch you when you fainted; otherwise, you might have a nasty bump on your head as well.”
    Angelo , she thought. I fainted, and Angelo caught me.
    â€œI did?” She started to replay the evening’s events in her mind. She remembered having coffee with Graham, riding in the elevator, going to fetch her umbrella… Then everything caught up to her in a rush: the blank stare, the blood.
    She gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. “Marjorie!”
    Graham sat down next to her and coiled his arm around her shoulders.
    â€œNow just relax, Vivian.” Mr. Hart walked into the room with a small glass of amber-colored liquid. He leaned down and tried to put the glass to her lips, but Vivian snatched it from his hands. She was in shock, but she wasn’t an invalid.
    Mr. Hart shrugged and pulled one of the matching leather armchairs that had been facing his desk closer to the couch and took a seat. He watched her sip at the brandy for a few seconds. Then, in complete silence, he took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and cleaned each lens slowly and carefully with a handkerchief pulled from the inside breast pocket of his jacket. His hands were shaking.
    Mr. Hart was just shy of sixty, but he looked significantly younger—quite a handsome man for his age, Vivian had always thought. He’d aged gracefully, kept a trim figure. His hair was completely gray, but it suited him. It lent him an air of distinction. In the two years she’d worked as his secretary, he’d made at least two dozen passes at her. She’d politely deflected all of them. In secretarial school they’d warned her about the propensity for an employer’s attentions to become amorous, after all.
    Despite the fact that she’d turned him down repeatedly, gossip about them had still made the