Buffet for Unwelcome Guests

by Christianna Brand

  Ten minutes later Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, had given her hand to a man who within that hour and by that same hand, to her certain knowledge would no longer be alive; and had promised before God to love, cherish and keep him till death did them part.

  Well, if there was an after-life, reflected Inspector Cockrill coming away from the Old Bailey a couple of months later, at least they would be soon re-united.

  Meanwhile, he must remember to look up hornets; and see whether the queens, also, have a sting.

  1And so should the reader

  Poison in the Cup

  THE GIRL MUST HAVE been leaning with her full weight against the door, for when Stella opened it, she almost fell into the hall. She said: ‘I’ve taken an overdose of morphia.’

  Panic rose in Stella’s breast. What did one do? What were the proper steps to take? A doctor’s wife for fifteen years, and still she didn’t know. She had closed her mind to it, she loathed it all so much, the dreary people with their sicknesses and miseries, trailing up her garden path, taking up the two best rooms on the ground floor. She dragged the girl into the surgery, heaved her into the one armchair. ‘My husband’s out.’ But she could ring Frederick. ‘I’ll get hold of his partner,’ she said.

  The girl lay with closed eyes in the big chair: a small, ginger-haired creature with leaden eyelids and a slack, pink mouth. Her legs, sprawled before her, were exquisitely shapely and yet unattractively large for her small body. The tiny, rather grubby little hands lay laxly in her lap. Was she already sliding into coma? Ought one to be wasting time on telephone calls, ought one not to be administering emetics, antidotes…?

  Frederick was not in. She crashed back the receiver in despair. The hospital!—she ought first to have thought of ringing the hospital direct. Only for heaven’s sake, what was the damn number? And she thought again, groping blindly for the telephone directory, I don’t even know the number of my husband’s own hospital….

  And so observed the small hand, surreptitiously moving, surreptitiously hoicking up a stocking, pulled askew by her stumbling passage through the hall, no doubt, and now cutting uncomfortably across her plump white thigh. And all of a sudden, Stella knew. She said: ‘You’re that girl, Nurse Kelly, from the hospital!’

  The girl opened her eyes and gave her a small, sweet, sly smile. She said: ‘I suppose you’re his wife?’ Her voice was a little, dying-away murmur.

  Stella left the telephone and came and stood over her. ‘And you haven’t taken morphia at all—have you? This is all just a laid-on drama. You’ve come merely to make a scene.’

  The girl smiled again, that sly little, faintly mocking, secret smile. She said nothing.

  Stella caught at her arm, jerking the lolling figure upright. ‘There’s no use giving me enigmatic glances, my dear. I’m not a man, I’m not impressed. You haven’t taken morphia or anything else and you can now get up and trot ignominiously back to the hospital.’ She gave the soft, slack arm another jerk. ‘Come on—get out!’

  The girl dragged her arm free and lay back in the chair again, looking up at her spitefully from under her pale, reddish eyebrows. She said: ‘What will Richard say?’ and added in her silly, faint dying-away voice: ‘You know he and I are in love?’

  ‘I know you’ve been pursuing him round the hospital ever since you came there,’ said Stella. ‘But all doctors get that kind of thing and I’m sorry if I disillusion you, but you’ve been nothing to Ricky but a bloody bore. All these ringings-up in phoney voices, all these sloppy little notes….My dear girl, my husband is fifteen years older than you are, he’s married, he’s a very busy man—he hardly even knows you exist.’

  The girl had been leaning back in the chair quietly listening. Now she opened her eyes. She said: ‘Of course you’d be the last to know, wouldn’t you?’ and closed her eyes again.

  It was all no use: just a silly, obstinate, hysterical little bitch, trying to make herself interesting. Stella lost all patience. ‘All right, have it your own way; but now I’m bored with you, as bored as Richard is. Will you kindly get up and get out of my house.’

  The girl said in her dying-away voice which yet was half-mockingly triumphant: ‘But I’m going to have a baby,’ and pulled aside the cheap little, tarty little coat for a moment, and softly folded it again over her body.

  Stella sat down on the edge of the examination couch and for a moment gave herself over to a sick despair. For what a muddle, what a sordid, endless, desperately damaging muddle might not this dreadful little creature land them all in, to satisfy her craving for notice. A doctor….And the wretched girl had been, in some sort, his patient; he had attended her for a couple of days up at the hospital for a poisoned finger—that was, in fact, how all this nonsense had begun. But if she’d been his patient—then that meant the attentive interest of the General Medical Council….And the girl was undeniably pregnant. A physical nausea rose up in her at the thought of the gossip to come, the leering eyes and the whispering tongues, the goggling excitement of the hospital staff, the no-smoke-without-fire routine; the ceaseless threat from the girl herself of scenes and dramas and collapses and recurrent phoney suicides. Marriage to Ricky had been dull enough in all conscience; but now how precious it began to seem in its monotonous security. For what if patients began to fall off, if poverty and struggle came to be added again, as in the old days of their building up of the practice, to the dreary round of surgeries and night calls and cancelled parties and always-arriving-late….I couldn’t face it, she thought; I couldn’t go back to the scraping and saving, the petty economies, the cheeky tradesmen, the little, niggling, mounting debts….But if this girl persisted in this charge of hers….

  There was a step in the hall and Frederick Graham, Ricky’s partner, came into the surgery:

  Ricky would have stood for a moment, rather helpless, hesitant, diffident; but Frederick, the debonair, just lifted a devil’s eyebrow and said with his easy smile that he was sorry, he hadn’t realised there was anyone here….

  If this stupid little bitch had had to fasten upon one or other of them, why couldn’t it have been Frederick?—who, after all, was ten times more glamorous, surely, than poor, self-effacing, quiet Richard. Frederick was a bachelor and consequently far less susceptible to this kind of blackmail. And yet… After all, he was a bachelor; and in that case….Like a sick thrust into her heart came the knowledge that she couldn’t have borne that: the thought of Frederick in the arms of this creamy-soft, sleechy-soft little creature. For many months now, when the hum-drum of life with Richard had become too much to bear, she had titillated herself by pretending that she and Frederick….The truth is, she thought, that I’m no better than this miserable little strumpet here. But at least she had made no scenes, played out no dramas—Frederick had no more idea of her day-dreams than had Ricky himself.

  The girl in the chair opened her eyes and gazed up starrily at Frederick. ‘I know you! You’re Mr. Graham, the surgeon.’ She added in a silly, baby voice: ‘I’m Ann.’

  Frederick drew his brows together in one of his quick black frowns. ‘It’s Nurse Kelly from the hospital, isn’t it? What’s she doing here?’ But the truth began to dawn. He said: ‘Not still chasing after Ricky?’

  ‘She and he are going to have a darling little baby—’ said Stella.

  ‘Oh, for heavens’ sake—!’

  ‘—and she’s taken an overdose of morphia: can you imagine?’

  He nicked the girl over with a sharp, professional eye. ‘Morphia? How long ago?’

  ‘Before I left the hospital,’ said Ann Kelly, defiantly.

  ‘She’s been here fifteen minutes or so,’ said Stella. ‘In such a state of coma when she arrived that I had to half carry her in. So I suppose that would tally.’ She added with triumphant sarcasm that under the circumstances her present state of liveliness was interesting, wasn’t it?

  ‘Liveliness is a symptom in the initial stages,’ said the girl, temporarily coming-to to defend herself.

&nbs
p; ‘Not by the hour, my dear: even I know that. And you’ve forgotten to be dry and thirsty.’

  ‘And to have pin-point pupils,’ said Frederick, bending over her and lifting an eyelid before she could prevent him. He straightened himself. ‘Now then—what’s all this nonsense about?’

  The girl slowly opened her coat again and again folded it about her. ‘Richard Harrison’s the father,’ she said. She rolled her head towards Stella. ‘Naturally, she won’t believe it.’

  ‘Neither will anyone else,’ said Frederick; but the threat about the morphia allayed, he had time to consider the situation more closely. Stella saw the quick frown, the tiny shock, the immediate acceptance of all that this might yet mean to them—to herself and Richard, to himself, to the practice.

  ‘I shall have to try to convince them, shan’t I?’ said the soft little voice.

  And Ricky was there: standing in the doorway with his doubtful look, his self-deprecating air, that air of quietness and simplicity….‘What on earth—? Good Lord! What’s she doing here?’

  ‘Oh, Richard,’ sighed Ann Kelly, and toppled forward out of the chair and lay huddled at his feet.

  Stella lost her temper. ‘Oh, my God!—the play-acting little bitch!’ As the two men stooped to raise the girl, she thrust them aside. ‘Leave her alone! There’s nothing on earth wrong with her, last time she did this I could see her surreptitiously hoicking up her stocking; she’s no more fainted than I have.’ And she said, viciously, shrilly that if only the silly bitch knew how awful she looked, with her skirt all rucked up and her legs at silly angles, she’d get up now of her own accord and not continue to present to her dear Richard so unlovely a display of not very clean under clothes. As the girl, sure enough, began to try to struggle back to the chair, she explained: ‘She’s come here with some drama about having taken a lethal dose of morphia; and you are the father of her chee-ild.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ said Ricky as if he could stand not one moment more of it.

  ‘Never mind, my dear, it’s all a damn bore but it’s no worse than that. She’s got herself into a jam and the only way out is to make herself into an interesting little martyr. Just take no notice and nobody else will.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said the girl.

  Ricky stood looking down at her miserably. ‘Surely you don’t want to ruin me?’

  ‘If I’m to be dragged through the mud,’ said the girl, ‘I want to know you’re there with me.’

  ‘There’ll be no mud, if only you won’t be foolish.’

  ‘But I want mud,’ said the girl. ‘I revel in mud. I want to see you wallowing in it, because you’ve been cold and unkind, and thrown aside my love as though it meant nothing. And her too—she’s been very clever and managing this evening, seeing through all my poor little defences, so sure of herself, sneering at me, mocking me—but I have the whip hand, and I’ll use it, I’ll pay her back for every sneer and every taunt, you see if I don’t!’ Exhausted with spite she leaned back in the chair again and closed her eyes; and on her lips was that sly little, evil, sweet smile.

  Ricky disregarded this outburst. He stood looking down at her dispassionately: or, thought Stella, irritated, almost with pity. He said: ‘You haven’t really taken morphia. Have you?’

  ‘I have—enough to kill me.’

  ‘How long ago, then?’

  ‘Just before I left the hospital. I took it from the poison cupboard on B. ward. You can ring up and ask them, if you like, I left a note saying I’d stolen it.’

  ‘And telling them why?’ said Frederick: all casual.

  ‘Of course not. I wouldn’t let you down,’ she said to Ricky, fluttering her eyelids. ‘No one knows.’ But she added with an evil look at Stella: ‘Not yet.’

  Ricky leaned forward, as Frederick had done, put a hand to her wrist, lifted her lip with a thumb to observe the moist gums and tongue, pulled down an eyelid. She wriggled and smirked beneath his touch but he might have been a veterinary surgeon examining a doubtful sheep or cow. ‘Well—you definitely have not taken anything.’ To Stella, he said: ‘I must go. I only dropped in for ten minutes smoke and a cup of tea between my patient’s labour pains. She’d better just be got back to the hospital; but give her something first—a cup of something hot, coffee would be best, strong and black and plenty of sugar.’ He hesitated. ‘Freddie—would you mind seeing her back?’

  ‘No, of course. I think someone should see that she gets up to no tricks….’

  Frederick seeing her back to the hospital….Leading her in, the heroine, pathetic or triumphant as best suited her; staging collapses, noisy outbursts about cruel Mrs. Harrison, yelling her bitchy little head off about Richard getting her into trouble, giving her a baby… Angrily boiling up the kettle in the kitchen, Stella thought with black despair that peace of mind was gone for ever: nothing, nothing would stop this girl. If one act failed, another would take its place; they would find her hanging about their door, besieging the houses of patients or friends, following Ricky about the hospital, making scenes in the wards Matron would bundle her off no doubt, at last; but the damage would be done by then. No use to plead, to appeal, to threaten, to command—the girl was lost to shame, beyond control; having nothing to lose, was in the strongest position of all. I wish to God she had taken morphia, thought Stella, pouring boiling water over the heaped coffee in the jug. Much I’d have done to bring her back to life! For two pins, I’d give her the damn dose myself! And straight upon the idle thought—formulate, positive, determination born complete and mature from the womb of necessity, it came—the knowledge of what she must do. Her heart reeled, her hands were clammy and cold, but without hesitation or remorse she recognised what was to be. Ann Kelly had told all the world that she had taken an overdose of morphia, that she wanted to die. Well, so she should.

  A curtain descended between two distinct halves of her mind: the half that felt and the half that acted. All so easy, all so safe, so obvious. The note to the hospital authorities would be produced at the inquest; if morphia proved not to be missing from the hospital cupboard, it would be assumed that she had got it in some other way. The girl was hysterical, unbalanced, an exhibitionist; and in the family way. One more suicide by one more little psychopath; and no one, she had said, had been told the story about Richard Harrison being the father of the child….

  Cool, decisive, without further reflection, she walked through to the surgery. ‘Ricky, I think you’d better take her through to the drawing room. We don’t want anyone to come in and find her here.’ She gave the two men no time to argue, hustled them, half dragging the girl, through to the other room. ‘Sit her down on the sofa. The coffee won’t be half a minute.’ She closed the drawing-room door behind her and, swiftly unlocking the cupboard in the surgery, took out the bottle of morphine tablets.

  How many? She emptied half a dozen of the tiny pills into her hand, replaced the bottle, locked the cupboard and replaced the key. Back in the kitchen, she gave herself not a moment to reconsider: dropped the tablets into the cup, poured on the coffee, hot and strong, stirred in abundant sugar—walked through to the drawing room and thrust it under the girl’s nose. ‘Come on—drink this!’

  The girl pushed it aside. ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘Drink it!’ said Stella. The men looked up uneasily, half shocked by the vicious determination in her voice. The girl took the cup and drank, sipping it slowly, till all but a spoonful of dregs remained. Stella took the cup from her and went back with it into the kitchen; once there, she rinsed it out with scalding water, carefully preserving, however, the lipstick on the rim and the girl’s finger-prints and her own on the outside: stirred the coffee in the pot, poured into the cup just enough of the muddy deposit, left the cup on the draining-board of the sink and went back into the drawing-room. The whole thing had taken not half a minute. She said, taking care to preserve the irritable scorn of her manner, ‘I trust you’re now better?’ and could stand aside and wonder at her own grim determination;
the subservience of her feeling self to the dictates of that remorseless, curtained-off other half of her mind.

  They all stood looking down at the girl, Frederick impatient, Ricky on the hop because he ought long ago to have gone back to his case, Stella ice-cold and yet with a fluttering at her innermost heart. For now the other side of her mind had begun to work again, to admit the possibility of danger, the necessity to plan, to calculate. If the girl went back to the hospital now, they would soon enough see that she had indeed taken morphia and would deal with her accordingly. And to have her life saved now would make matters worse a hundredfold than they had been before, for the girl, conscious of no genuine attempt to administer poison to herself, would become aware that someone else had done it for her. And then—what a story would she not indeed have to relate?—confirmed by the fact that no morphia in fact would be found missing from the hospital. Or if she kept silent it would appear all a genuine attempt at suicide—since in view of her condition the dose would be diagnosed as a lethal one—and far more credence would be given to any story she chose to tell. No: the first step had been taken and from that there could be no going back. I am a murderess, thought Stella: a murderess—and from the very first step of my murder I am committed. I can’t turn back.

  She took another sudden resolution: drew the two men away and into the dining-room end. ‘Do you think we’re wise, after all, to let her go straight back to the hospital? Would it be better to keep her here for the night? I could ring up and make it all right with Matron: tell her some tarradiddle. In the morning the girl will be more rational, we can talk sense to her. Don’t you think that for her to arrive back, late at night, in triumph, having made a lovely scene at Dr. Harrison’s house, would be a mistake? Yank her back in the cold, clear light of morning and let Matron have her on the carpet. Meanwhile, I’ll make up the bed in the spare room and we can let her sleep off the whole affair.’