Richard Gordon - A QUESTION OF GUILT

Crippen had called at the surgery with the invitation the morning after the fiasco. Eliot had politely declined it-he had stomached enough of the grotesque Crippens-but asked sympathetically after Belle.

'Not in bad shape. Mr Atherstone was wonderful last night, you know, comforting her. She bounced back, she's like a rubber ball.' He paused. 'Sometimes she's like a tiger.' He looked round the bleak consulting room, sitting in the spoke-backed chair. 'Do you use henbane in your practice, Dr Beckett?'

'Luckily, I have no maniacal patients.'

'I first learned of it at the Royal Bethlem Hospital for the Insane,' Crippen continued quietly. 'It's given a good deal in America, you know, in asylums. I've prescribed it as a nerve remedy, in a homoeopathic preparation. Very diluted, in sugared discs. Naturally, in its pure form, which the chemists call 'hyoscine'. The dose would equal l/3600ths of a grain.'

'Extremely minute.'

'As demanded by the laws of homoeopathy,' he asserted. 'I bought five, grains from Lewis and Burrows' chemist shop in Oxford Street last Friday.'

'Five grains!' Eliot exclaimed. 'That's enough to kill a platoon of guardsmen.'

'I also find it useful for spasmodic coughs and asthma,' he explained. 'And I am persuading Belle to take it.' He hesitated again. 'I can satisfy her demands in the way of clothes and jewellery. Others I cannot. You understand, Dr Beckett? I'm not a young man like you. And it is Ethel and I who are proper hub and wife.' He continued solemnly, 'Our wedding day was December 6, 1906. Seven years had passed since Ethel and I first met. It's a date I can never forget. It was a Thursday. It was the time Belle finally got rid of the Germans. It was rainy, but it was all sunshine in our hearts.'

His colleague's double life seemed to Eliot more sickly than exciting, and he had a roomful of waiting patients.

'Since then, we have had one long, lovely honeymoon. We have an absolute communion of spirit. It is not a love of a debased or degraded character, it is a wonderful good, pure love,' Crippen continued with muted passion. 'Her mind is so beautiful to me. Ethel will always be my wifie, not even death can come between us. We meet in the afternoon, once or twice a week, at King's Cross station, and go to one of the little hotels for railway travellers.'

Crippen fell silent. Eliot began to look upon him more kindly, as a patient. To share a man's secrets was to fractionize his mental tension.

'We were to have had a little one, you know, Ethel and I,' Crippen divulged in his flat voice, 'in the early part of last year. But poor Ethel suffered a miscarriage. No one knew at the office. Ethel was so often away from work because of her health. Her parents did not know. Only Mrs Jackson, her landlady. Ethel went to her aunt in Hove for recuperation. We so wanted the child to live. It would have been part of us both. That was something Belle could never give me, not after her operation. Belle has a gentleman, you know.'

Eliot was not surprised. 'An American, in the real estate business at Chicago.' Crippen's bulgy eyes fixed Eliot's. 'He was an actor, on the music-hall, called Bruce Miller. He met her when I was visiting America, I'd left Belle in rooms at Guildford Street, over the river in Lambeth. He was across the herring pond for some business with the Paris Exhibition, so it must be ten years ago. He's often here, he writes almost every month. "Love and kisses to Brown Eyes," I've seen some of the letters. I've never met him. He calls when I'm out, I stay away from his path. I'm easygoing. I don't care for fuss. I'm sure that one fine morning I'll find Belle has disappeared, gone to join him in America.'

'Which would be a solution to your difficulties?'

'I cannot give Belle what he does,' Crippen said simply. 'Do you know why I was attracted to her? I expected Belle to be a great favourite on the stage, thunderous applause, flowers across the footlights, delightful suppers…That's a vanished dream. Mind, I enjoy the company of stage people, like the Martinettis. But they're so excitable, so emotional. They're not cultivated like Miss Grange and yourself.'

The dinner which Eliot declined ended with the two men going upstairs to prepare for whist, and Clara following Belle with the dishes into the kitchen.

'Put the bones in the sack under the sink,' Belle directed. 'Peter takes them to Poupart's in the Cattle Market. What's the point, missing a few pennies which are there for the taking?'

'How Peter does look after you,' Clara said admiringly. She touched Belle's rising sun brooch, adding playfully, 'If you're ever tired of that lovely thing he bought you, you can just pass it on to me.'

'Ain't there more to a husband's job than keeping his wife dressed?'

'A whole world more, dear.'

'Peter and me have had our own bedrooms since we moved in here.'

'Oh, I know that.'

Belle carefully gathered the four bottles of stout, with a farthing returnable on each. 'Peter ain't no good to any woman. You can't blame me, can you, for looking around?'

Clara said sharply, 'I don't think that relieves a woman of her duty to her husband.' She set her load of plates on the greasy wooden draining-board, beside a sink already piled with dirty crockery-some smeared with egg, she noticed, unwashed since breakfast.

'Peter doesn't mind,' Belle said casually. 'But what's the good of a home and a husband if you've got talent? If the stage is in your blood, you don't care much for the washtub and the dustpan.'

'That's true, Belle,' Clara agreed, though sounding sad that she had to.

They found Crippen alone in the parlour, adjusting the gas-fire. 'Where's Paul?' Belle demanded.

'Gone to the smallest room.'

'What, by himself? Why didn't you take him?'

Crippen straightened, blinking. 'He knows the way. The light it always on.'

'I'm sure Paul doesn't mind,' Clara said. 'Why, this house is like our second home.'

'It's common politeness.' Belle sat in a pink armchair by the fire. 'Peter's taken to leaving the light on all night, because he has to get up,' she explained unkindly. 'Perhaps he's the same trouble as Paul? Peter, I'm cold. Fetch my shawl. And pass round the chocolates,' she commanded, as Paul slipped back to the parlour. The box was a condolence from the Martinettis. Belle took three of four, holding them in her palm and gobbling them one after the other.

They all turned, hearing Paul gasp. He had idly picked up a large book and flicked the pages.

'What is it, Paul?' Clara was puzzled.

'Things not for the eyes of ordinary men.'

'Gray's Anatomy,' Crippen remarked. He helped himself to a chocolate. 'Dr Beckett loaned it me.'

'You shouldn't leave an awful book like that lying about,' Belle complained. 'You've upset Paul.'

'No, it's interesting.' Clara had her fingers in the pages. 'Oh, what a spooky picture!' she exclaimed. 'What is it?'

Crippen leaned between the Martinetti's. 'That's your lungs and your heart, with the great blood-vessels rising beside your windpipe.'

'It looks like some ship with two billowing sails,' observed Paul more discriminatively.

'Oh, mercy! Is that my leg?' Clara cried.

'Those are the muscles,' Crippen explained. 'Separated very prettily in the picture, aren't they? Like the petals of a flower.'

Clara turned more pages. 'And that?' _

'The womb.'

'Peter!' snapped Belle. 'What language.'

Crippen took the book from the Martinettis, snapping it shut with unusual assertiveness.

'Weren't we playing whist?' Belle asked sarcastically. 'Set up the table and bring the cards, Peter.'

They played until one in the morning. To theatrical people, night is the working-man's afternoon. None needed be up in the morning-except Crippen, at seven. At half past one, Belle opened the front door. Paul was in overcoat, silk muffler and top hat, Clara wrapped in furs. 'Gee, it's freezing,' Belle announced. 'Sure you wouldn't care to pass the night?'