Lynn Brock - The Deductions of Colonel Gore

‘I do believe, Sidney,’ she had said one afternoon, when his unexpected intrusion from the consulting-room had dispersed one of her bridge-parties precipitately, ‘that the only purpose for which you believe human beings are provided with tongues is as an aid to medical diagnosis. Do you know that for seven minutes you stood here, in your wife’s drawing-room, without speaking, or even attempting to speak, one single word? I timed you by the clock.’

‘Well,’ he had urged, ‘they wanted to go on playing bridge.’

‘No. They had stopped—when you came into the room.’

‘Well, why did they stop when I came into the room?’

‘Because they all think you disapprove of women playing bridge in the afternoon.’

‘I do,’ he had said simply.

At that she had laughed until her eyes had streamed tears. But there had been no more afternoon bridge-parties at 33, Aberdeen Place. That incident, he supposed, had marked in all probability the definite point at which she had admitted to herself that her marriage had been a mistake …

That had been two years ago. Had this business with Barrington been going on then, for two whole years—unsuspected for all that time—so unsuspected that in the end they had thought it safe enough to risk these meetings at night in the dining-room of his house. A serious risk—since she must have realised that at any moment a telephone-call might awaken him and bring him downstairs to discover them. But no doubt they had long grown to believe that there was no risk whatever—no need for even the most elementary precaution against surprise.

How many nights had they met so before that Monday night of the preceding week on which, by the merest of chances, their secret had been revealed to him? The tyre of a belated taxi-cab had happened to burst just outside the house, and the report had awakened him—to hear, a few moments later, the door of his wife’s room open softly and her footsteps steal past his door. Minute after minute he had waited, at first drowsily, then with surprise, until at length uneasiness had induced him to go downstairs in search of her. Fortunately, his slippers had made no noise on the thick carpet, for they had come out of the dining-room as he reached the drawing-room landing. A man’s voice, unrecognised at first, had brought him to abrupt halt.

‘Friday, then. Same hour?’

‘A quarter past one,’ his wife’s voice had answered cautiously. ‘A quarter to is too early.’

The man had laughed.

‘Your dear hubby has forbidden me late hours, you know. Bad for dicky hearts. However—’

He had recognised the voice then. Barrington. While he had stood in stupefaction the hall door had been shut stealthily. In an instant his momentary fury had chilled to ice. The brain and nerves that had never failed him had recovered their aplomb, had decided upon the simplest, surest road to vengeance. He had turned and crept barefooted back to his bedroom—to lie awake till dawn, perfecting his plan, devising means against all possible mischance.

And yet his plan had miscarried. On Friday night Barrington had come tiptoeing along Aberdeen Place at the appointed hour, clearly visible from the upper front windows of the house to eyes that watched for his coming. He had come up to the hall door, but had gone away again almost immediately, pulling the door to behind him cautiously—it had been left ajar for him, evidently. No footsteps had crept from the adjoining bedroom. There had certainly been no meeting that night.

Nor on the next, nor on any of the following nights—unless one had taken place last night during his absence on the case to which he had been called out a little before two o’clock in the morning. Six nights of fruitless waiting, of coldly-raging fury that listened in the darkness until the silence of the house was as the roar of thunder. There was no certainty that he would come tonight, either—that he would come for a month of nights. No matter. On the night on which he did come he would pay for all those others …

Clegg’s respectfully reproachful cough behind him roused him from his thoughts. He bade the man good-night and went upstairs slowly to his room. Did the servants know? Had they, too, grinned and leered at him all that time behind his back for a poor blind simpleton? Probably. In Clegg’s eyes, too, he told himself now—too late—he had detected the question that had lurked in his mistress’s. ‘Does he suspect? Does he know?’

Patience. His turn to laugh would come—if not tonight, one night.

For a little while he moved about his room, making the noises for which her ears listened. He caught a glimpse of his face in a mirror as he switched off the lights—absorbed, the eyes narrowed, nose and lips pinched, a crease between the eyebrows—a tell-tale face, the face of a watching, waiting sneak. He swore viciously beneath his breath, and in the darkness began to tear off his clothes. Damn them—let them go their way. They should not pull him down with them.

He groped for his pyjamas, and remembered then that the night before the cord had slipped through at one end and that in his impatience with it when he had returned in the small hours of the morning he had pulled it right through and tied it about his waist on the outside. But it had been restored, he found, to its proper place—almost certainly by her hands. The same misadventure had befallen him on his honeymoon, one night in Venice. He remembered the adoration with which he had watched her little fingers rescue the errant tape with a hairpin, deftly …

He seated himself on the bed with smarting eyes and strangled throat. Was it— could it be too late? Was nothing left of the dream? Had he lost her utterly? Impossible—impossible—impossible. He didn’t—he couldn’t believe it. In the morning, before she went downstairs, he would go into her room and face the thing with her—holding her hands—smiling at her—her friend and confidant. Even if she loved this other man—he could bear to know that, he told himself, if she did not conceal it from him—even if she loved him, they would face the difficulty together—talk it over—calmly and wisely. Somehow the trouble would pass, if they faced it together …

Presently, shivering in the damp air that came in through the open windows, he got into bed. But the sirens were busy now on the river, as boat after boat hooted its slow way down the tortuous, narrow channel on the tide. He lay there, wide-awake, listening to them, wondering if she, too, heard them.

He had not heard the door of her room open, nor any sound of her passage across the landing—merely the creak of a stair—a stair, it seemed to him, of the second flight from the landing. The tiny noise, almost imperceptible, awaited for so many nights, stopped his heart for a beat. The guile that had once more all but eluded his vigilance shocked him violently, hardened his mood to stone again. What stealthy pains must have gone to the noiseless opening of her door, the crossing of the landing, the descent of the stairs, step by step—until that small, dreaded sound had brought her to abrupt halt, listening with straining ears to discover if it had betrayed her. How had she learned this minute, patient cunning? How had she concealed it from him?

He was out of bed now. When he had opened the door and listened for a moment, he switched on a light and dressed himself in the clothes which lay always in readiness against a night-call. His long fingers adjusted his collar and tie with the careful neatness with which they performed the task every morning. He smiled sardonically at the thought that without his collar and tie, a husband, however injured, started at a disadvantage if his wife’s lover happened to wear one at the moment of dénouement .