The Poison Cupboard

by John Burke

  ‘Yes, but —’

  ‘You didn’t want anyone else to come along and interfere?’

  It was all true, and not true. The right ideas added up to the wrong answers. But he was not allowed to say what was true; and even if he had been able to do so, it could only have made matters worse. That was the awful part of it.

  He felt dizzy. He heard the judge saying: ‘You need not answer that question if you do not wish.’

  He didn’t know what he wished. Only to be out of here. He could not be sure which question the judge meant.

  Then he was suddenly all right again. The faces came back into focus, and he knew that he must go on — answering carefully, not adding anything, letting them do the work and make a mess of it. If Aunt Laura herself wanted to get up when the time came and tell them what had really happened, that was her business.

  Gil looked across at her, half-apologetically, half appealingly.

  Aunt Laura was paying no attention to him. She must have lost patience with the long way round they were going. She didn’t seem to care what he said. She was not here at all: she was somewhere else, working things out.

  Chapter Six

  This was, perhaps, the only scene on which the prosecution’s guesses were more or less accurate.

  More or less: for no one else had been present, and whatever evidence that interfering woman from Manchester gave, she could still not reproduce the exact conversation that had taken place between Laura and the woman who had summoned her.

  Laura half closed her eyes, and was back in the Royal Oak in Legacy. Her attention straying from the steady accumulation of absurd evidence against her, she was back in that drab hall, looking into that woman’s face, suddenly remembering.

  ‘Molly,’ she wonderingly said.

  ‘Thought the ‘Mrs. Swanton’ would fetch you. Made you think, didn’t it?’

  ‘Actually I thought —’

  ‘Not that I ever really got that far, of course; but you might say I’ve got a sort of title to the name. And I thought I’d best not call myself by my own name in case word got round. Wouldn’t want to embarrass you.’

  Laura had no idea where all this was leading. She was still too surprised to say much or to wonder what all this nonsensical outpouring meant.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she ventured, ‘what your name is now.’

  ‘Same as it always was.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you must have married.’

  ‘Not me. It never did come to that. Not with any of them. Often got a different surname for convenience, but really it’s been the same all along. None of ’em lasted long enough for me to get used to ’em.’ Her bitterness was half derisive, contemptuous of herself more than of the men. ‘Still Molly Drysdale,’ she said.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I thought maybe you’d guess when you got the message. I’m registered here as Mrs. Swanton. It’s a common name in these parts — more common than Drysdale. The idea tickled me. But when I rang up and you didn’t answer — some kid was on the phone —’

  ‘Your son,’ said Laura.

  Molly’s face seemed, oddly, to become all at once very round and childish. She gave a nervous little laugh.

  ‘Was it, now?’ she said. ‘Well. Well, fancy that.’ She hesitated, and when she began to speak again she sounded unsure of herself, as though she had forgotten what her motives had been when she telephoned the surgery. ‘I thought . . . I’d better ring up. Fetching you over here was best. I didn’t fancy coming into Brookchurch . . . just in case.’

  ‘In case of what?’

  ‘Just in case. I wanted you to come and see me, and I wondered what you’d make of that. Mrs. Swanton, eh?’ Once more the thought seemed to give her childish satisfaction. ‘If it wasn’t your ma, who else could it be? I thought it’d give you something to think about. I was pretty sure you’d come to check up.’

  For a moment Laura did not reply. Evidently Molly was unaware of Charlotte’s existence. There was no reason, of course, why she should have known that there really was a Mrs. Peter Swanton now.

  Then she said: ‘If you really want to talk to me, can’t we sit down somewhere? Though I can’t imagine —’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got plenty to talk to you about.’

  Now Molly sounded aggressively jubilant, and yet scared. Perhaps no one but Laura would have detected that undercurrent of fear: it was a note she was familiar with, a false harmonic that came into women’s voices when they said, ‘Well, if you think it’s best to let them root about in my inside and see what they can find, I suppose they’d better’, or, ‘Well, we didn’t think of having a baby yet, but we’ll manage — just tell me, Doctor . . .’

  They went through the door from which Molly had emerged a few minutes before, and entered a small sitting-room with one low window. A door at the other end led into the saloon bar, and beside it was a flight of stairs, open to the room, down which came a persistent draught.

  For the first time Laura was able to see Molly clearly.

  She felt an immediate glow of satisfaction. Molly had turned out just as she, Laura, had always predicted she would. She looked older than her years, and the slack little mouth had become peevish. Her hair was dyed a rather brassy auburn, though it would have looked quite becoming in its own indeterminate brown shade. Molly was not unlike a faded edition of Charlotte

  — the sort of woman, thought Laura, that he had always liked. The soft and pretty, the fluffy and yielding, so soon to become pale and fretful.

  Yet as she continued to look at Molly, she saw that this was not altogether true. On that face there were lines and fine fissures cracking faintly under the make-up near her nose; but Molly had not crumpled quite so utterly as Laura had expected. She was still pert and defiant: her voice had its old rasp, her eyes were as arch as ever, and her figure was certainly good.

  Laura stared at her appraisingly.

  ‘Well?’ said Molly, with a harsh laugh.

  ‘I was just wondering . . .’

  ‘Whether I’m going to have a baby? Well, I am.’

  ‘Splendid.’

  It was the nearest Laura ever came to congratulating anyone. ‘Splendid’ was adequate, so far as she was concerned: she uttered the two syllables with a conventional smile, and that formality was enough.

  Although it was not always well received — certain doubts and regrets were often expressed by the glum, expectant mother — the response was rarely in the order of what she now got from Molly.

  ‘Splendid? Not bloody much. What’s splendid about it?’

  ‘I was forgetting. You have certain difficulties.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it. I tell you, it’s a fine thing, getting caught like this. A fine thing.’

  The situation was, in Laura’s experience, not an unusual one. It was certainly not the first time Molly herself had been involved.

  Laura said: ‘I’m sure the father —’

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Molly. ‘Went weeks ago. And I wouldn’t want him in on it, anyway; not for the world.’

  She obviously enjoyed being melodramatic. It had been not unlike this on that previous occasion, Laura recalled — when it had been a question of Peter’s unborn child, the dawning life that was to become Gilbert Drysdale. Then, too, Molly had been exceedingly histrionic. She had run her hand through her hair, wept, and made dramatic gestures — rather repetitious gestures.

  It was hard to see why she should have come back to this neighbourhood after so long to repeat the performance.

  Laura said: ‘I don’t see what all this has to do with me.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m a long way off my usual round. I really must go.’

  ‘Not yet you don’t.’

  ‘I suppose you’re after money?’

  Molly recognised the sting in the voice, and narrowed her eyes as though to avoid a lash across them.

  ‘I don’t want your money,’ she f
lashed out.

  There was a footstep behind Laura. She half-turned, and saw a woman standing in the doorway. Her face was familiar — familiar not as that of a patient, but as of someone seen in Jury on market day, or perhaps seen here in Legacy once or twice in five years.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said the woman, and went out again.

  Laura said: ‘If you’re thinking of coming back to this part of the world . . .’ She had a sudden suspicion that Molly might be wildly dreaming of marrying Peter and settling down here.

  ‘I don’t want to stay here, don’t you worry,’ said Molly. ‘Not in this dead and alive hole, thanks. No, I came specially to see you, that’s all. To get you to help me.’

  ‘To help you?’ She refused to let herself understand.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  This time Laura was on her feet, ready to leave.

  ‘You’d better not walk out now,’ said Molly. ‘I’m warning you, you’d better listen.’

  Laura stayed, not because of the threat, but because she was so intensely curious to know why Molly thought she had the power to issue threats.

  She said: ‘Provided you don’t make any more suggestions of that sort, which I have no intention of considering —’

  ‘You’d better change your mind about that, Laura. Sit down.’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right where I am, thank you.’

  Molly glowered up at her from her chair, and then essayed a conciliatory smile.

  ‘Look, it won’t do any good to get mad about it. I’m only asking you reasonably, I don’t want to start getting awkward.’ She lowered her voice and talked urgently, half appealingly. ‘I’m nearly broke. Honest, you’ve no idea what it’s like. I’m not asking you for money . . . though if you want to let me have some afterwards, I won’t say no. Never do say no.’ The smile flickered hopefully again. ‘But I’ve got to . . . to get rid of this baby. It won’t do me any good. And what chance would the kid have? I ask you — what good would it do anyone to have this kid born?’

  First Gilbert Drysdale, thought Laura: Gilbert, impinging on her life and on Peter’s, Gilbert involved with Charlotte, Gilbert the pointless and unnecessary. And now another human being was forming within this woman.

  ‘I couldn’t go to any of those awful old bags in the town,’ Molly was saying. ‘There was someone in Manchester . . . but the money she was asking, I just couldn’t find it, and I wouldn’t have gone near her anyway. I used to know someone in London, but she’s in jug right now. So then I thought of you.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Laura.

  ‘I thought it’d be just right. There’s plenty of people in the district for August week-end — no one’d notice me — and we could get it all fixed up. I can trust you.’

  ‘Not in that way,’ said Laura firmly.

  ‘You’ve got to help me,’ said Molly. ‘I tell you, Laura, I’m desperate. You can do it all right, and I won’t worry you again. But if you don’t . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ said Laura. ‘If I don’t?’

  ‘I’ll make a proper scandal. You’ve kept it dark all these years about me and your precious Peter. First your dad, and then you — you’ve kept everything nice and sweet and respectable, haven’t you? Well, what if I made a fuss now, and let the whole neighbourhood know about it?’

  She was almost pushing herself up out of the chair, thrusting herself defiantly at Laura.

  Laura said: ‘I don’t know that it would matter much.’

  ‘Don’t try and fool me. I know you lot. Having Peter’s name dragged in the mud — and you know what folk round here are. They’d never let you forget it. I tell you, you’ll help me or you’ll put up with the consequences.’

  Laura could not repress a smile. Peter in his northern prison, and this woman talking of dragging his name in the mud!

  ‘You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face,’ cried Molly furiously.

  Laura felt herself withdrawing, back into her own worries. It was useless trying to tell this foolish creature that there were far more important things to worry about than her commonplace misfortunes. Molly constituted no threat whatever. Laura felt, in fact, a twinge of annoyance: she had come here expecting to find Charlotte, expecting to find something that would help her to get rid of Charlotte, and all that she had found was this woman and her pitiful blackmail.

  She said: ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for you, Molly.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t there? You can give me something to take. Something to get rid of it.’

  Laura shook her head. ‘Where did you get the idea that a doctor can ‘give you something’, as you put it —’

  ‘Don’t try that on me. I know you’ve got plenty of things. And you’d better get busy. I can’t hang about here all that long. I’ll give you two days at the outside, and if I don’t hear from you by then I’ll come over to Brookchurch — and let everyone else see me while I’m at it.’

  ‘It won’t do you any good,’ said Laura indifferently.

  ‘Come off it. You’ve got to do it for me. And it had better be good. I’ve left word with a friend of mine in Manchester that if she doesn’t hear from me in a week, she’s to get in touch with the police.’

  ‘I’m afraid none of this concerns me in the least,’ said Laura. She was quite unmoved. This was simply another hysterical patient asking the impossible. She had had so many of them in the past demanding this mythical ‘something to take’, and would doubtless have many more.

  Molly was at a loss. Her face had reddened with anger. She was trying to find something spiteful to say. There must be some way of making this interview run on the lines which she had planned for it.

  ‘It’s no good, you know,’ she tried wildly. ‘You can put on an act now, but you’ll climb down soon enough. Because I mean it. You’ve got to help me.’

  ‘I haven’t got to do anything of the sort.’

  Laura went to the door. She had had enough of this purposeless conversation.

  ‘When you’ve thought it over,’ said Molly, ‘let me know. You can phone me here. The name is Swanton, remember?’ She laughed harshy. ‘Swanton. It ought to make you think what you owe me — you and your precious Peter. Better note it down.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to need it. Good-bye, Molly.’

  ‘Once you’ve thought it over . . .’

  Molly’s voice, half-threatening and half-appealing, did not even echo in Laura’s mind. She got back into her car and turned the ignition key irritably. Time wasted. Time she could have devoted to thinking about Charlotte and Gilbert, and how to get rid of them. Charlotte first. Charlotte was the important one: Gilbert was only a pawn, and there must be some way in which that pawn could be advantageously moved.

  Unfortunately there were other pawns. There was a move she had not foreseen.

  Slowly she drifted back to the present. The gap was bridged by Gilbert’s voice. She heard him answering a question, and then she was brought back to awareness of the court and the ritual that was still proceeding.

  The counsel — prosecutor or defending counsel, she could not for the moment remember which, and was disinclined to make the effort — was asking Gilbert if his Aunt Laura had told him about the existence of his mother. Had she said anything to him about his mother being in Legacy?

  ‘No,’ said Gilbert.

  ‘She did not point out to you that your mother might be an obstacle to all the plans that the two of you had recently been making?’

  The judge was interrupting. ‘What are you trying to prove, Mr. Ferguson?’

  ‘I have been instructed, my lord . . .’

  What pathetic delight they derived, thought Laura, from their little exchanges, their tart courtesies.

  Why bother; why not finish it all now? She was the one who had instructed the defence to take that line, to implicate Gilbert, because after the first shock of the police inspector’s visit and realisation of the net that was closing about her, it had seemed a rather lovely little plan. Her wo
rd against Gilbert’s: how could she lose? But now she understood, from the very atmosphere of the courtroom, that it stood no chance of success. This long, tortuous argument was a waste of time. It was so terribly obvious that Gilbert was telling the truth. There were other truths he was not telling, but they would be declared irrelevant if he tried to introduce them. Nobody asked him the questions that would open the door to the ironical truth. Nobody asked him whether he considered that Mrs. Charlotte Swanton would impede the fulfilment of his ambitions, of all those things which his Aunt Laura had promised him.

  Laura felt as she had felt about Peter when he had stood in the dock. Let them get to the verdict and the sentence; let it be ended. Only in Peter’s case there had been no doubt that he had done precisely what he had been charged with doing. In her case it was very much otherwise . . .

  Chapter Seven

  The judge courteously asked the witness if she wished to sit down. She stammered, took off her glasses and wiped them, and then thankfully sat down.

  The witness said that she was Isabella Mortlake Swanton and that she was the mother of the accused. On the 4th of August she had gone into the consulting-room at about three o’clock and found two or three medicine bottles on the bench, labelled and with people’s names written on them. She had taken these bottles and put them on the shelf in the waiting-room so that they could be collected by the patients for whom they were intended.

  Counsel for the defence said: ‘Was there anybody else in the consulting-room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was there anybody else in the house?’

  ‘My daughter-in-law was upstairs in bed, and my grandson’ — she said the word defiantly — ‘Gilbert had just that minute gone upstairs. I saw him going. He was taking some medicine up to her.’

  ‘You saw him carrying the medicine?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he had a bottle with him. Anyway, he’d promised that he would.’

  ‘The doctor herself was out?’

  ‘She’d gone out on her rounds.’