by Nina Bawden
Outside the door the doctor said, “You said he’d been drinking some brandy?”
“Out of my flask,” I said. “I suppose there must have been something in it? It smelt all right to me.”
“Might be,” said Dr. Carter. “Might be something like chloral hydrate. All the symptoms. Not the sort of thing I like at all. Not at all.” His watery eyes were glazed with exhaustion. I fetched the flask from my room and gave it to him.
“Will the child live?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said.
“We’ve done all we can. It depends on a lot of things.”
His voice was dispassionate as though life and death were not of much importance. He turned the small flask over and over in his hands.
“D’you drink any of this?” he said.
“I had a nip on the journey down,” I said. “That was yesterday. I haven’t touched it since.”
He looked at me sharply. “Had the boy had anything else to eat or drink recently?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask if you like,” I said.
He shook his head. “Never mind. Wait till tomorrow,” and he slipped the flask into his pocket. He went down the stairs, stiffly nodded to Brigid and Henry, who were waiting in the hall, and then Henry showed him to his car. Then he came back and put his arm round Brigid. I don’t think she noticed him; she was looking at me.
She said, “How is he?”
“It looks as if he’ll pull through,” I said.
She gave a long, trembling sigh. “What happened, Paul?” she went on. “Dorry said she’d caught him drinking out of a flask in your bedroom.”
“My brandy flask,” I said.
“But surely, old man,” said Henry, “he wasn’t just drunk?”
I said, “No, of course not.”
I couldn’t believe they didn’t understand. They looked at me, with their mouths a little open and their eyes quite blank.
“Someone may have been trying to kill him,” I said.
Henry straightened his back and looked very military. “That’s rubbish,” he said. “Rubbish.” But his eyes were worried and alarmed.
Brigid whispered, almost more to herself than to us, “He’s been saying that. Ever since he came here. He’s been saying that someone was trying to poison him. I thought he was just playing a funny kind of game.”
Then I said, “Of course, it may be that someone was trying to kill me.”
“Good heavens, man,” shouted Henry. “You don’t mean that. Now who on earth …”
He stopped, and puffed out his moustache, his face red and distressed. I shrugged my shoulders. Then Brigid said in a low, frightened voice:
“Will … will they call the police?”
“It depends,” I said, “on what they find in the flask.”
I took off my shoes and sat on my bed, smoking. I was very tired, but I knew I shouldn’t be able to sleep if I tried. I kept thinking about Sebastian and wondering what possible reason anyone could have for wanting him dead.
Then I remembered with a jerk that told me that I was nearer sleep than I thought, that it was my flask he had been drinking from. I didn’t know much about that sort of thing, but I did know that chloral hydrate dissolved easily in alcohol. Could he have taken it in anything else? He had had his supper in the kitchen with Dorry an hour or so before he went to bed. Dorry had said he hadn’t been well all day. Could he have had the drug in something he had eaten earlier on? Or was it the egg-cup full of brandy that I had given him the night before that had made him seem listless during the day?
If it had been chloral hydrate and in the brandy, it had been meant for me. That all made it very much easier. Because if it had been meant for me, then I knew who had put it there.
My mind was going round and round in circles the way it always did when I was tired. I remembered that Venetia had given me the brandy flask for my twenty-first birthday. She and Henry had been living in London then, and they had given a party. Venetia had been playing around with a young artist they had met. He wore dirty corduroy trousers, and his hair was lank and greasy. He looked as if he hadn’t bathed for months and he was very scornful about the world. He wasn’t able to be scornful about Venetia, though; he followed her round the room like a dog. Venetia and I had a row about him before the party was over, and we ended up by getting quietly drunk together. It was then that she had given me the brandy flask.
I think I must have gone to sleep, because I came to, suddenly, feeling very cramped and cold and with the feeling that something was going to happen. I lay quite still on my bed, and listened. Then I heard something. It was a squeaky, sliding sound. A sound that might be made by someone sliding up a stiff sash window. Then there was a thud. I got off the bed silently, and as slowly as I could so that the springs wouldn’t creak. I padded across the room and opened the door. The corridor was black and still. I listened by the door of the first room I came to, but there was no sound. I went on, and up a flight of stairs. There was a line of light along the bottom of the door of Venetia’s room. I opened the door and went in.
There was a man standing there, between the bed and the open window. It was Tom Adlesburg.
Chapter Four
We looked at each other. He was dressed in a dirty raincoat buttoned to the neck. It was spattered with slushy snow, and there were wet, dirty patches down the front. One sleeve was newly torn. He wore a shabby trilby hat pulled low on his forehead. It hid his baldness and made the narrow face younger, and almost handsome. Behind him the rain drove in through the open window; I could hear the swish of it against the house, and the creak of the trees as they strained with the wind. I crossed the room and looked out. It was as dark as pitch, but I could see the top rungs of a ladder leaning against the sill. I pulled the window down and drew the curtains.
Adlesburg was watching me; he had not moved except to turn his head.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and made a little negative gesture with his hands.
“Nothing,” he said. He spoke softly, and his eyes burned clear like a lamp.
“What did you come for?” I said.
“Come for?” he said, repeating my words in the slurred tones of the very drunk. He was watching me intently, almost as though he were committing my face to memory, and yet there was a curiously blind feeling about his gaze. Then he changed. He made no particular movement, but the rigidity went from his body. He gave me a broad, amiable grin.
“I guess I just came to say goodbye to Venetia,” he said. His expression was boyish and bashful. He sounded more like an American than usual.
“You chose an odd time for a walk,” I said.
He laughed, and I could smell the whisky, sour on his breath. He said perkily, “You see, we were rather specially acquainted.”
I said, “She was your mistress, then?”
He said, “Didn’t she tell you?” quite brightly, but he looked, suddenly, as if he were rather ill at ease. I took a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it, and he watched me. Then he shook his head as if he were trying to sober up. He walked to the bed. He pulled back the sheet that covered her face, and stood, looking down at her. I couldn’t see his face.
Then he said, “I never thought it would end like this.”
“You expected it to end?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said, lightly. “I shall not be staying here much longer. We could not have gone on.”
I moved to the bed and stood beside him. I could see his face now. I wondered why he looked so relieved, so unlike a man mourning for the woman he loved.
“Had you told Venetia?” I asked.
He jerked the sheet back over her face. He said:
“No. She didn’t know anything about it.”
He had made quite an effort to keep his voice steady. But he must have known that I knew he was lying, because he added hastily:
“I guess I didn’t want to upset he
r. I reckoned she might get a bit hysterical, you know how she was.”
“Yes,” I said.
His eyes flickered nervously. A little tic had started by his right eye. He said:
“I couldn’t stay here for ever, rotting in a hole like this. I’ve got a medical appointment.”
Then I remembered. Before the war he had been a surgeon in America; there had been some sort of scandal, and he had left the States and gone back to Austria. How he got into England after the war I didn’t know, but I had stopped being surprised at that sort of thing. I was surprised, though, that he had got a medical job. Perhaps the people who were employing him didn’t know what he had been. Perhaps that was the hold Venetia had over him. Thinking like that, and knowing Venetia, I was almost sorry for him. But only for a moment. Then I remembered that he had been Venetia’s lover, that he had held her in his arms, wanting, but not loving her. I was suddenly quite sure that he had not loved her. Anger filled me; I looked at his hand resting on the bed and remembered how dark it had looked the other evening against her white skin.
I said, “She would never have let you go. You know she would never have let you go.”
He shrank away as if I had struck him.
He said, “She couldn’t have stopped me,” but I knew that he knew it was a lie. He looked at the bed, and there was no pretence of love in his face now. Only loathing, and a kind of disgust.
I said, “You were going to start all over again. If it hadn’t been for Venetia. You were afraid she would find a way to stop you.”
“Yes,” he said. “I reckon that’s all there is.” He looked, suddenly, small and beaten. He gave a long, trembling sigh, and said, with a faint echo of perkiness, “Shall I go out as I came in?”
I said, “Why did you come here?”
He looked straight at me, and said, “I came to see how she died.”
I could feel the pulse beating fast in my throat. I said, “But you know how she died.”
He said uncertainly, “I know what they said. But I didn’t believe it. Why should she go out in the night? The doctor said she died from exposure. I couldn’t believe that. It was cold, but men have lived through worse cold. She was strong and healthy; she should not have died.”
I said, and I don’t think my voice was steady:
“Have you any other explanation?”
He looked at the bed. He said, “You have seen those pinkish patches on her face? If she had died from exposure there would be patches like that. But only on the parts of her body that were exposed. But they are all over her body.”
“What does that mean?” I said.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I am not sure,” he said. “It might mean that she had died from something else. You get discoloration like that in carbon monoxide poisoning. There are tests that can be made, of course.” His voice was suddenly calm and analytical. He might have been a lecturer in a medical school.
“What tests?” I said.
“Have you ever seen a spectroscope?” he said.
I said, “I don’t think so.”
“It’s a nice instrument,” he said. “We use it for forming and analysing the spectra of rays.”
“I see,” I said, though I didn’t understand at all.
He looked at a point above my head, and said, “You know, perhaps, that the hæmoglobin is the colouring matter of the red corpuscles of the blood. If you pass light rays through a prism, the hæmoglobin and its derivatives will absorb certain of them. It is rather complicated. If I were to examine normal blood, I would find various spectra, among them the spectrum of carboxyhæmoglobin which consists of two bands near the violet end of the spectrum. I should be able, by adding ammonium sulphide, to reduce these two bands to one broad one. That is if the blood is normal. If there is carbon monoxide in the blood I should not be able to reduce the bands to one. There are other chemical tests, but this is the most reliable.” He looked at me with a remote, professorial air.
I said angrily, “This is a lot of silly nonsense.”
He said blandly, “As you please. Only you would insist on knowing why I came.”
I felt very tired. “We shall have to go to the police,” I said, and then I remembered that there would be no need for that because the police would, presumably, come anyway. Because of what Sebastian had drunk from my brandy flask.
He said, “As you wish,” as though he didn’t care very much. He went then; there was nothing to keep him. We went downstairs and I let him out of the front door. I could hear the crunch of his feet going down the dark drive long after I could see him.
When he had gone, I felt very tired and cold. I went upstairs and got into bed. I didn’t think I should sleep. There was too much in my mind. Chiefly the thought of Venetia in the arms of the little mountebank who had just gone. Suddenly that was all he seemed. There had been hundreds like him, only by some chance he had slipped into prominence. It had made quite a stir when he came to England; the Sunday papers had been full of it. Then he had been forgotten.
I went to sleep after all. It was light when I woke, a gusty, grey, unfriendly morning. I had gone to sleep in my clothes and I went into the bathroom and peeled them from me. The water tumbled, hot and lovely, into the bath, and I stepped into it with a delightful feeling of renewal.
Dr. Carter arrived at about eleven o’clock, and just after him the other doctor, the man who had been at a confinement the night before. I was in the study reading the paper; I felt warm and relaxed, and I shut the door quietly and hoped they would leave me alone.
I heard Brigid calling Henry, and then I heard him going upstairs. A little later they all came down again and the front door banged. There was a lot of noise going on in the hall. The dogs were yapping and Henry was swearing, and over and above it all I could hear Brigid twittering. Then Henry must have gone away because Brigid came into the study alone and shut the door. Her face was patchy and distressed.
“Paul,” she said. “It’s something dreadful. There’s going to be an inquest on Venetia.”
“But of course there’ll be an inquest,” I said impatiently, rustling the paper hard, hoping she’d take the hint and go away. But she didn’t. She stayed put and waved her hands distractedly in front of her.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “There’s going to be a post-mortem, or whatever you call it. We were in Sebastian’s room … me and Dr. Carter and Dr. Lewis … he’s the young one who couldn’t come last night … and they started talking by themselves in a corner. I was a bit cross with them, with the poor little boy so ill. Then they said they were going to look at Venetia. They were in her room for ages, and I wondered what on earth they were doing. They came out in the end and asked me to call Henry. Dr. Lewis asked me to call him, and I thought it was awfully queer because he knows Henry so well—they both go shooting together—and he called him Mr. Sykes. They were both a bit funny, I thought.”
“How ‘funny’?” I said. “Did they stand on their heads?”
She stared at me. “Oh no,” she said. “Dr. Carter’s nearly seventy. I only meant funny peculiar. After all, I know Dr. Lewis quite well. He’s always been very pleasant to me, and he didn’t even look at me, not properly. And when Henry came he was dreadfully formal, and didn’t smile or anything, and just said he was going to ask the coroner to authorise a post-mortem … or something like that. And Henry went awfully white, and said they must do what they thought was right. And then they went away …” Her voice tailed off and tears started to run down her cheeks. “Oh, Paul,” she said, “what is going to happen?”
“If I were you,” I said, “I should sit down and have a drink.”
She sank into a chair as if her legs wouldn’t hold her up any longer, and I poked about in a cupboard and found some whisky and soda. I poured out two stiff ones and gave a glass to Brigid. She drank it in a gulp and made a face.
“You know, that’s the first time I’ve had whisky,” she said. She lay back limply, her face in shadow. Sudden
ly she said:
“Paul, why did this have to happen? I can’t believe it is happening. It’s like a horrible dream. Ever since the night it happened I keep thinking I’ll wake up, and I don’t. It just goes on and on. I thought that when Venetia died nothing could be more horrible, and now … now they seem to think there’s something wrong about the way she died. Paul, how could there be?”
“Horrible things do happen,” I said.
“But not to ordinary people.” She sat straight in her chair and leant forward. “Not to us. I know they happen to people in books, but then something has to happen to people in books or no one would read them. And of course things do happen to real people, you read about it in the newspapers. But that never seems real either.” She looked at me earnestly. “You do see, Paul, don’t you? I know you think I’m stupid and silly, Venetia used to think so too, but I’ve never been able to say the things I wanted to say. They seem all right inside me, and then when I try to explain them they come out all muddled, somehow.”
“We can’t all be articulate,” I said. “Otherwise nothing would ever get done. We should all be too busy explaining ourselves to each other.” She looked doubtful at that.
“I suppose so,” she said. Then she hesitated and looked at me rather awkwardly. “Paul, there is something I want to talk to you about. I’ve been wanting to ever since Venetia died, and there hasn’t been a chance. It’s something I couldn’t speak about to Henry.”
“Well?” I said, in as encouraging a tone as I could manage.
“Paul, Venetia never liked me very much, did she? I mean, she was always telling me how stupid I was. When we were children she used to make me awfully unhappy, even though I was older than she was. She never did anything special, it was just the way she looked at me and the things she said that made me feel clumsy and stupid. I used to think she hated me, and I started to hate her a bit, although I didn’t want to, because it seemed too dreadful to hate her when she only had one leg. And then when Sebastian was born and I took him down to Dorset with Mother, she was worse than she’d ever been. At first I thought she was jealous of me because of Sebastian, although I didn’t see why she should be jealous really, because she didn’t like babies. Anyway, when we were both in Dorset she hardly ever spoke to me, and if we were asked out to a party or something she always managed to make me stay behind. Then after she’d married Henry I didn’t see her for a long time, though I used to see Henry sometimes, in London. And then, quite suddenly, she wrote and asked me to come and stay here. I wasn’t sure whether to come or not, but Tony was being specially difficult, and I thought it would do Sebastian good to get away. Then when I got here, Venetia was quite different from what I expected. She met me at the station and she seemed to be pleased to see me, and all the time she was so nice and so kind. She seemed to have changed, somehow. And I wondered whether I’d made it up all these years, and when I’d thought she’d been nasty to me she hadn’t been really, and it was just that I was jealous.”
