Fear Stalks the Village (Murder Mystery Classic). Ethel Lina White
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Marianne parodied her husband's toneless voice. "My good man, are you ever interested in anything or anyone?"
"That's a curious charge to make." The doctor spoke with his usual inertia, but there was a fugitive gleam in his quiet eyes. "Actually, I endure a chronic condition of frustrate curiosity...I admit, I care nothing for anyone's income, so long as he pays my bill, and I can't get excited about common-or-garden ailments. But—I would like to know what is really at the back of anyone's mind."
"Does anyone?" asked Marianne. "Do you know me?"
"No." The doctor winced as his wife began to dismember a fowl with her usual furious energy. "I wish I did. I should know then why you insist on carving. You'd make a devastating surgeon."
"I carve, because I hate to see you with a knife. You're so deadly professional that I feel I'm watching an operation. And that's a true message from the Back of Beyond, Mr. Curious...By the way, Micky's got a new word. It sounded just like 'bloody'. But I'm waiting for him to say it again, and living in hope."
During the remainder of the meal, Marianne talked exclusively of her infants. Before it was actually finished, she sprang to her feet and again clasped her waist passionately.
"I was a fool to have any dinner," she exclaimed. "My inside's woke up and is swearing at me like mad."
"Bicarbonate," murmured her husband. "How about some tennis, later on?"
"No, my beloved, Momma's no time to play with her biggest baby, this evening. After I'm through with the dispensing I'm going to get busy on those books."
Her eyes glowed at the prospect, and she entirely forgot her interior grumbles.
"I just love it," she declared. "Figures are a real joy to me. I ought to have been a bookie. And all the time I'm jotting down items I'm saying, 'Here's a packet of rusks for baby', and 'Here's new woollen panties for Micky'. What are you going to do?"
"Finish my novel."
The doctor strolled into the drawing-room, which was a cool, pleasant place, of faint pastel-tints, and green from the shade of plane-trees. Stretched on the faded old-rose divan, with his boots wrinkling the silken spread, he lost himself in the translation of a Russian play. Presently, Marianne entered, loaded with stationery, which she dumped down on the bureau.
She gave a cry at the disorder of the couch.
"Curse you, darling. Those cushions are clean."
The doctor slipped guiltily off the divan.
"I think I'll go and smoke a pipe with the padre," he said.
"Do. Go before I slay you. Give my love to that young man and tell him to stop shouting in the pulpit. As a mother, I protest against his waking up all the babies in Australia. And you needn't hurry back, for you're not popular. Leave me your novel."
The doctor fished it up from the carpet.
"Better not," he advised. "Like a woman, you'll miss its philosophy, and pick out all the improper bits. And then you'll slang men, generally, for their filthy taste...Good-bye, Marianne."
He left his wife feverishly turning over the pages of a ledger, while he mounted the shallow wide oaken staircase, in order to wash and change his coat. When he had finished his toilet, he stole into the night-nursery, where the two babies lay asleep, each with doubled fists and damp, downy head.
Although one was ten months the elder, there was a strong likeness between them; both were palpable little doctors, and outwardly ignored relationship with their temperamental mother. They were luxuriant babies, too, in expensive sleeping-suits, and tucked up under delicately-hued, ribbon-bound, air-cell blankets. Opulent satin bows decorated their white enamelled cots, and they had huge furry animal-toys for bed-fellows.
As the doctor stood looking down at them, the door was softly opened, and Marianne entered. A strap of her golden gown had slipped from her shoulder, and a lock of dark hair fell over her cheek, giving her a semblance of utterly disreputable allure. She threw her bare arm around her husband's neck and completed a picture of domestic happiness.
"Aren't they beautiful—beautiful?" she crooned.
"They are," agreed the doctor.
Marianne's clasp on his shoulder tightened to a clutch, and she burst into tears.
"Ought we to have done it?" she cried. "They're so helpless—so entirely dependent on us. Suppose anything happened to you? Or to me? Strangers to care for them. Suppose the practice went down? What would become of them?"
Her husband instinctively shut his eyes as though blinded by the glare of tragedy. The next moment he had recovered his self-possession, as he patted his wife's arm, with a gentle laugh.
"You're morbid. It's probably due to acidity. You'd better go and take that bicarbonate."
CHAPTER III — THE HERALD
Ten minutes later Dr. Perry lay stretched on a shabby 'Varsity chair on the Rector's yew-shaded lawn, while his host paced the daisied grass, waving his pipe, and declaiming as he tramped. In his character of a human dynamo, he was a source of interest to the doctor's curious mind; and, as he smoked, he studied him with cool detachment.
The Reverend Simon Blake was a tall, bull-necked man, of great muscular strength, with blunted, classic features, crisp coal-black hair, and flashing, arrogant eyes. He looked rather like the offspring of a union between a battered Roman emperor and an anonymous plebeian mother. His voice was strong and vibrant, and all his gestures expressed vehemence. He appeared never to have acquired the habit of sitting, and he talked continuously.
Dr. Perry knew that his display of overflowing vitality was misleading, and that he was only in the process of rekindling fires which had blazed too fiercely, and died. It was the last back-kick of nervous tension which made him such a restless planet of a fellow. He had worked himself out in a Dockside parish, sticking to his job long after he was beaten. Not until he had crashed, both mentally and physically, had he consented to accept this living in the country.
"Sit down, man," urged the doctor. "You're like the spirit of atomic energy."
The Rector obediently dropped down on his protesting chair, with the force of machinery, only to spring up again.
"This place, doctor," he said, "is perfect. I pray I may end my days here. Look at it, now."
He waved his pipe towards the village street, which staged the usual sunset pageant. Children skipped and played on the cobbles, exactly like golden girls and boys and little chimney-sweepers, long passed to dust. Women gossiped over their garden gates, just as they had gossiped in Tudor times, and they talked of much the same things. At a quarter-to-eight, Mr. and Mrs. Scudamore emerged from the gates of the Clock House for their evening stroll. The lady wore a feathered hat and a fichu of real lace, and all the village did homage to the Honiton point.
The doctor studied the Rector, and he—in his turn—watched the stately advance of the pair. The clergyman noticed how the lawyer's frost-bitten face thawed whenever he spoke to his wife, and he was delighted by her responsive smile. Yet they were not too engrossed in each other to pass a couple of sunburnt children, in old-fashioned lilac sunbonnets. The little girl took a sugar almond out of her mouth, to prove that its colour had turned from pink to white, and the Scudamores rather overdid their pantomimic surprise at the miracle.
The doctor's lip curled slightly, but the Rector beamed.
"Lovers still," he said. "That's a perfect marriage."
"In the sight of God and the neighbours," murmured the doctor. He added with a bleak smile, "There is only one danger in this 'God save the Squire and his relations' attitude. The villagers would be too sunken in tradition to complain, in case of abuse. They know they wouldn't be believed."
"Abuse?"