Bodies from the Library 3. Группа авторов
paper could set him free.
‘Anything more?’ he asked.
‘Only your name to the Removal Order,’ said Mr Smith.
He sighed again, happily. The paper began ‘Order to Remove’—then came a blank space, with a dotted line at the bottom on which his freshly written name stood out blackly. Mr Smith took the paper from him and filled in at his dictation his wife’s name and address and a date—‘on or before the 17th of December’. The laughter that had seized on him before had him in its grip again. He bellowed, clinging to the table for support.
‘Do you know what time you came home last night, Adrian?’ demanded Mrs Belford, peevishly. Without waiting for a reply she went on, ‘It was a quarter past three in the morning. I will not have these hours kept in my house. There is no godly or respectable occupation that could detain you so long. What can the servants think of you?’
Belford smiled. He knew that it had been past three o’clock when he returned. The white face of the clock on the landing had struck him as exceptionally ludicrous with its hands all askew and its two round winder-holes goggling at him like reproving eyes. Time had stood still for him during the centuries which it had taken him to climb the interminable staircase. He had slept in the House of the Poplars, and dreamed—what dreams! Even now he chuckled over these fantastic dreams.
‘It’s nothing to laugh at,’ said Mrs Belford. ‘I can only imagine that you were—intoxicated. It is most disgusting. Did you even remember to bring home my tablets?’
This staggered Belford. Had he done so? Or had he left them in the hands of the sniggering German doctor? He put his hand to his coat pocket, drew out a small package, wrapped in white paper and sealed at both ends with sealing wax. He stared at it. He so distinctly remembered having unwrapped it in the restaurant.
Mrs Belford twitched it from him.
‘At any rate, I am glad you were not so lost to decency as to leave that behind.’ She broke the seals and extracted the bottle, setting it upright on the bedside table. ‘Fortunately, I still had two or three tablets in the old bottle. Otherwise, I suppose, I might have lain awake in agony all night as far as you were concerned.’
‘Why don’t you get the stuff from Mullings, instead of depending on me?’ enquired Belford, impatiently.
‘I have told you before, I do not care to have my affairs known to the local chemist. Mullings is a perfect centre of gossip. And that is not the point. Is there any reason why you should object to performing a trifling service for your own wife?’
‘None whatever,’ said Belford, cheerfully. He felt curiously well and happy that morning. Whatever it was that he had drunk at Rapallo’s, it certainly left no hangover. The only reminder of his curious mental condition the night before was a tendency to see the funny side of everything. It was with difficulty that he checked a guffaw.
‘I suppose it is useless to ask you where you were or what you were doing?’ pursued Mrs Belford.
‘I met a man and dined with him. We talked business.’ Belford was amused. He looked down at his wife and, with a recurrence of that extraordinary clarity of vision, his eyes seemed to pierce her sallow skin and watch the sluggish and diseased blood as it pumped along the arteries, gathering up God-knew-what poisons by the way.
‘See that it doesn’t occur again,’ said Mrs Belford. ‘If this kind of thing is going to become habitual, I shall be forced to take steps. My dear father, who amassed his little fortune by hard work and sober living, would turn in his grave to think of its passing into the hands of a drunkard and debauchee.’
Belford again controlled his twitching laughter-muscles, and apologised. ‘The happy hypocrite.’ What a good phrase that was, and how well it expressed him. He ran down the stairs on escaping from the sick-room. Indeed, he seemed to float. His feet scarcely touched the treads. He was so buoyant that he could have skimmed right out of the front door on the wings.
His delicious hilarity lasted all day. He astonished his typists and clerks by his pleasant humour. He had only one disagreeable moment, when he took out his private cheque-book to pay a small personal bill. There was a blank counterfoil. He stared at it. Had he really given that cheque for £500 to Smith & Smith? His memory was not at fault; he remembered clearly everything that had happened, up to his falling asleep in the House of the Poplars. He remembered it—but he had not really believed in it. But the cheque was gone. ‘Order to Remove’—‘on or before 17th December’—‘If you should change your mind, leave a message at Rapallo’s’—‘It would be unwise to change your mind after the Removal has occurred.’ A nauseating feeling of horror rose up from some black deep of his subconsciousness. But it passed, and left him laughing at himself.
Three or four times during the next six weeks he returned to Conduit Street and walked past Rapallo’s. Once he went in and ordered a sandwich and a glass of beer. A different pair of barmen were on duty, and he saw nothing of any Mr Smith. He came out without leaving any message. If he had had any fixed intention of doing so, the ominous sign of ‘Golding & Moss, Financiers’, just visible over the lace curtain, would have deterred him. In any case, it was absurd to suppose that Smith & Smith, or Brown, Jones & Robinson, could possibly influence his wife to take an overdose of medicine. As for the cheque, if he had really drawn it, it could make no difference. Bankruptcy and disgrace are bankruptcy and disgrace; and £500 one way or another was a drop in the bucket.
And, after all, the weeks went by and nothing happened. He began to make necessary arrangements. He drew out what remained of his current account and mentioned to his wife that he had business which called him to Germany. He left on November 20th. He went to the hotel in Berlin where he had stayed before. One must have an address, if one were not to arouse premature suspicion. Later, if nothing happened at the last moment to render it unnecessary, he could disappear quietly.
For he still had dreams. They came to him at night, or walking under the lime trees, past the restaurants where still a few tables stood outside in the crisp autumn air. The leaves being late that year, sometimes a solitary one, blown from the dry twig where it lingered, would flutter with lingering, exquisite grace to his feet, reminding him, so that he seemed to smell the resinous sharp scent of poplars.
He dreamed that one morning they would bring a telegram to his bedside, summoning him home, because his wife had been taken ill suddenly in the night. He would take the steamer. He would drive through the foggy London streets. And when he got to his house, he would find the blinds drawn down.
On the morning of December 2nd, they brought a telegram to his bedside, summoning him home. His wife had been taken ill suddenly in the night.
It has not occurred to Belford that there would have to be an inquest. It all passed off, however, extremely well. The deceased lady had been a sufferer from a painful complaint affecting the kidneys and had been accustomed to take each night a tablet containing 10 grains of veronal, to allay pain and induce sleep. A second medical man agreed that veronal was a powerful hypnotic and usually harmless in the pharmacopeial dose. Dr Lovett affirmed that he had repeatedly warned Mrs Belford against taking more than the prescribed dose, particularly as the disease from which she suffered made her particularly susceptible to veronal poisoning. As a matter of fact, the ordinary minimum fatal dose of the drug was 50 grains, so that, if the patient had accidentally taken two tablets instead of one, the consequences should not have been serious. He had, however, out of precaution, made it clear to her that the single tablet was not on any account to be exceeded within the 24 hours, and she had appeared perfectly to understand this.
The bottle was produced. The maid, Maggie Brown, recollected that this had been brought home by Mr Belford on the morning of October 25th. It was then intact, with its mouth sealed over with wax, just as it came from the chemist. She had seen the original wrapper with the chemist’s label lying on the bedside table. Mrs Belford had not begun to take the tablets till two days later, having still two tablets left from the former supply.
A representative of a firm of chemists in the City identified the bottle and the label. He remembered selling it to Mr Belford in person on