MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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marry a poverty-stricken doctor who was forced to live and work in a slum? He evidently did suppose that; and the fact that he did so made her feel uncomfortable.
“I don’t set out to be particularly good, Roger, but I do think it awfully wrong to talk like that!”
He said slowly, “I agree, it is.”
“It makes me feel I oughtn’t to come and see you like this, in your own house. Jervis would be very much put out if he knew I ever came here.”
Gretorex, wincing inwardly, made no answer to that observation. Sometimes this woman, who was all his life, would say something that made him experience a violent feeling of recoil.
She had got up as she spoke, and with a sensation of relief she put on her hat. It was still early, and she had suddenly remembered an amusing bachelor girl named Judy Swinston, who lived not far from here, in Queen Anne’s Mansions. Judy had said that she was always at home after dinner on Thursdays, so why shouldn’t she, Ivy, go along there now? She could telephone from a call office to find out if it was really true that the Bohemian crowd who formed Judy Swinston’s circle didn’t bother to dress.
In some ways Ivy Lexton was very conventional. She would have disliked making part of any gathering which could be called a party, in her present day-frock and walking shoes, charming as were both the frock and the shoes. It was a perfect St. Martin’s summer evening, more like June than the first of November.
“You’re not going yet?” asked Gretorex, in a tone almost of anguish.
“Jervis said he’d try and be back by half-past ten, so I knew I’d have to be home early.”
“I see. All right. You won’t mind my walking with you a little way?”
And then she turned and faced him, angry at his obtuseness. How utterly selfish men were!
“I should mind—mind very much indeed! Whenever we’ve left the place together, I’ve always felt uncomfortable. Taxis go all sorts of ways nowadays—just to make their fares bigger, I suppose. The other day a taxi brought Jervis and me down close here, past the end of this street, though it was quite out of our way. I should hate it, if he met us walking together at this time of night. He would think it so queer.”
Again he said sorely, “I see. All right.”
Suddenly there came the sound of raucous cries echoing down Ferry Place.
“ . . . Verdict in the Branksome Case. . . . All the winners!”
“I thought they weren’t allowed to cry papers now?” said Ivy, as the shouts drew nearer and nearer.
“They cry them down here. As for the Branksome Case, to my mind the verdict is a foregone conclusion. The man will hang, and they’ll let the woman off—though she ought to hang too!”
“A lot of people were talking about the Branksome mystery where I was lunching today,” exclaimed Ivy. “I knew nothing about it, so I felt rather a fool. The truth is, I’m not a bit interested in murders, Roger. I think it’s morbid to want to know about such things.”
“Do you, darling? Then I’m afraid I’m morbid. This Branksome Case is of peculiar interest to every medical man, owing to the simple fact that there is a great deal of secret poisoning going on nowadays.”
“What a horrid idea!” And Ivy Lexton did indeed think it very horrid.
“Horrid, no doubt. But I’m afraid unquestionably true. In fact I heard the question put only the other day, as to what a doctor ought to do if he suspects anything of the sort is going on?”
She looked at him with a certain curiosity. “What would you do, Roger?”
“I’ve never been able to make up my mind. Of course, this Branksome story was complicated by the fact that two were in it—a husband and a wife. They’d got everything they could out of the woman’s lover, so they made up their minds to do away with him. They were awfully clever, and it’s a marvel they were ever found out.”
“How did they do it?” she asked, eager at last.
“With arsenic—fly papers.”
“Fly papers?”
He laughed. “Wonderful what people will do sometimes, isn’t it? Steeping fly papers in water has long been a common way of ridding oneself of a tiresome husband. There’s arsenic in almost everything we use—at least, that’s what’s said.”
“Arsenic?” Ivy pronounced the word very carefully. It was a new word in her limited vocabulary.
He smiled across at her. Every moment of her presence was precious to him, so he talked on, eager too. “There’s plenty of the stuff in my surgery, at any rate. It’s a splendid tonic, as well as a poison.”
“What a funny thing!” and she smiled at him, apparently rather amused at the notion.
Looking back, for even Ivy Lexton looked back now and again to certain crucial moments of her life, she realised it must have been at that very moment that a certain as yet vague and formless plan slipped into her mind.
“As a matter of fact,” Gretorex smiled back at her, “I’ve got to make up and send off this very evening a mixture which will contain arsenic——”
“I must be off now,” Ivy said, a thought regretfully.
They walked down the short passage, and through the two doors which separated the house from the surgery. Once there he turned up the light. Anything—anything to keep her a few moments longer in his company!
He went quickly across from the door to the left corner of the bare, low-ceilinged room, now his surgery, which had once been an outhouse. There he unlocked the cupboard where he kept his dangerous drugs, and lifted down a jar on which was printed on a red label the word “ARSENIC.” Placing it on a deal table above which was a hanging bookcase, he exclaimed, “If you would like to see, darling, what——”
And then there came a thunderous knock at the front door of the tiny house.
“Wait one moment! Don’t go yet, dearest,” he said hastily. “I won’t be a minute!”
He rushed away, though even in his haste he did not forget to shut both the doors which separated the surgery from the rest of the house.
Ivy Lexton gave a quick look round the sordid-looking stone-flagged walled space, through which her eager little feet had so often carried her last winter, at a time when she had been in love, really in love, with Roger Gretorex.
She noted that there was no blind to the little square window. But, even in the unlikely event of anyone looking in through that window, no one standing outside could see, while she stood by the table, what she was doing, or was about to do.
Standing very still, she listened. From the consulting-room at the other end of the passage there came the sound of voices, raised in argument.
Hesitatingly she took up the jar Gretorex had placed on the table. Then she looked at it with avid curiosity. How strange and exciting to know that Death was in that jar—prisoned, but ready to escape and become the servant of any quick-witted, determined human being.
When, at last, she put the jar down again, she noticed what she had not seen till now, that a glass spoon lay on the table.
Once more she looked round the bare surgery. Once more she listened intently, only to hear again Gretorex’s voice, far away, raised in argument.
All at once and in feverish haste she began unscrewing the top of the jar. Once this was achieved, she pressed the jewelled top of her bolster bag, and as it sprang open, she took her powder puff out of its pochette. Then, taking the glass spoon off the table, with its help she began shaking into the little white leather-lined pocket a quantity of the powder which she knew to be a deadly poison.
After snapping-to the bag, she replaced its cap on the jar labelled “Arsenic”