Richard Gordon - A QUESTION OF GUILT

'That's most generous of you,' Eliot said honestly. He seldom had enough to keep the surgery open more than two or three weeks ahead. He refused more from Nancy than his other supporters-he disliked feeling her father's client, and it was important politically to spread patronage and responsibility as widely as possible. 'We have a tough job, screwing money out of trade union officials, clergymen and the brewers who contribute so much to what we treat.'

Crippen gave Nancy his gentle smile. 'I read the _Daily Mail._ Very touching. I wish I had done something of this nature when a young man, instead of going to Munyon's. Then, perhaps, people would remember me gratefully after my own death. As I'm sure Belle will be remembered. Good day.'

The following Friday morning, a well-dressed woman appeared in the surgery, whom Eliot did not at first recognize against the sunlit street.

'We met at the Crippens,' she introduced herself. 'Mrs Martinetti.' She looked nervously round the waiting patients on the benches. 'Might I speak to you, doctor, in confidence?'

Eliot led her through the inner door. Nancy was on her daily round of bedridden patients. He wondered if she was consulting him for some disease unfit for the ears of her husband. 'I heard the sad news that Mrs Crippen had died,' he told her.

'She has disappeared.' Clara Martinetti sat on the kitchen chair, vast hat on head, back straight, gloved hands clasping the horn handle of her umbrella. 'You know Dr Crippen well-'

'Not particularly.' Eliot sat at the deal table, which was covered with papers, medicine bottles and jam-jars sealed by oiled-silk containing lumps of mouldy bread for his patients' boils.

Clara looked surprised. 'He always made out so. When I read about you in the Mail I decided to come and see you, because I'm terribly worried about Belle.' She hesitated. 'I'm wondering if the story of her death is true.'

'Why shouldn't it be?' asked Eliot in surprise. 'To catch cold on a boat and die of catarrhal pneumonia six weeks later is tragic, but perfectly reasonable. The patient even has spells feeling much better as the temperature falls-exactly as Mrs Crippen wrote to her husband. The disease may clear in one part of the lung, you see, only to break out afresh in another. I have seen many cases, and I can tell you that none recovered.'

To Eliot's irritation, she stayed unconvinced. 'I heard of it yesterday fortnight. I had this telegram. It was sent from Victoria Station.'

From her crocodile handbag came a buff form stuck with paper strips. Eliot read-

BELLE DIED YESTERDAY AT SIX O'CLOCK PLEASE TELEPHONE ANNIE SHALL BE AWAY A WEEK PETER.

'Annie is Mrs Stratton, one of our committee. Like Mrs Smythson and Mrs Davis and Miss Way, we're most concerned. We called at Albion House directly after Easter last week, to offer our condolences and ask where poor Belle died. Dr Crippen said in Los Angeles, with his own relations. We asked the address because we wanted to send a letter of sympathy and an everlasting wreath. He said it wasn't necessary. None of Belle's friends in America would ever have heard of the Music Hall Ladies' Guild. Really!'

Eliot felt that Crippen's gravest offence.

'Anyway, he gave us his son Otto's address in Los Angeles-you knew the doctor was twice married?' Eliot nodded. The woman was stealing time from his patients. 'He said his son was with Belle when she died. Naturally I asked about the funeral. Would you believe what he said? She wasn't buried. She was cremated. He was having the ashes sent over. He said we could 'have a little ceremony then'. Cremated! It's unnatural.'

'They're very go-ahead in these matters in America.'

Her voice accelerated under the steam of her indignation. 'I asked him what ship Belle went by. He said it was the French line, something like _La Tourenne _or _La Touvйe. _The doctor speaks French of course. So I went down to the offices of the French Atlantic Shipping Line in the City. Oh, yes, they had a liner sailing from New York to Havre called _La Touraine._ But it hadn't arrived on February the second. That was the day Belle left. And it went straight into dry-dock for repairs,' she ended triumphantly.

'But Dr. Crippen is always vague, and must have been dreadfully agitated,' Eliot told her impatiently. 'He simply got the ship's name wrong.'

Clara leant over the table. 'That telegram was sent as Dr Crippen left for Dieppe with his lady typist, Miss Le Neve.'

Eliot nearly laughed. 'To save your embarrassment, I know all about Miss Le Neve.'

'I don't think you do, Dr Beckett. At our Benevolent Fund Ball in February-after Belle had left, before there was the slightest suggestion that she was ill-the doctor appeared with Miss Le Neve. She was wearing one of Belle's dresses, magenta silk, I recognized it beyond doubt. She had Belle's fox fur. Belle's muff. Belle's earrings. And Belle's brooch she was so fond of, the one with the rising sun. She wore it the evening you and the nice American lady came to dinner. And Belle's gold watch. A ring with four diamonds and a ruby, Belle's I swear. And a wedding-band.'

Eliot rose. Any woman felt outraged at a friend who was ousted by another prettier and younger than them both. He put his arm round her shoulders. 'It's easy to think terrible things when someone you love dies far away in the lawless wilds of California. But we are men and women of the world, Mrs Martinetti. Surely the theatrical profession well knows the temptation of a pretty girl to an older man? To use his wife's ornaments to decorate her is appalling bad taste, but nothing worse.'

'She's moved in with him,' she exclaimed accusingly.

'A man must have a housekeeper. After twenty years of married life, you can hardly expect Dr Crippen to "batch" it, surely? Weren't Mrs Crippen and Miss Le Neve perfectly friendly? It's only natural the doctor should turn to her for condolence.' Eliot opened the consulting-room door. 'Why, you'll be suggesting the good little doctor murdered his wife.'

'No, I'm not suggesting that.' He felt she made her reply unnecessarily thoughtfully.

'A gossip, a malicious gossip,' he pronounced to Nancy that evening.

Eliot sprawled on the sofa in Camden Road, Norfolk jacket off, in his red socks, reading _The Times._ The sunny day brought an evening cold enough for a fire. They now had two rooms in the big house-always empty except for the visitor who arrived unexpectedly, stayed secretly and left hurriedly.

'What misery is occasioned by people who stir the mud in the murky little puddles of others' lives,' he commented.

'And what pleasure.' Nancy was at the table, writing an order for Allen and Hanbury's, the surgical suppliers across at Bethnal Green.

'I have the utmost compassion for people with stunted bodies, but not with small minds,' Eliot observed into the pages of his newspaper. 'Belle was a nymphomaniac,' he revealed.

'What's that?'

'Morbid uncontrollable sexual desire in the female. The deranged women furiously embrace every man they can get at. It's been a well recognized condition for over a century. Dr Crippen had to dose her with hyoscine. That's the usual drug, it's either a sedative or a strait-jacket. They get in awful trouble with the law otherwise.' He turned the page. 'Crippen's was a happy release.'

'I'm not so sure. I've seen a woman crazy with grief across the body of her husband, killed in an East Side knife-fight. Yet everyone in the neighbourhood heard her screams, night after night, when he beat her up.'

'Dr Crippen is like a divalent atom, with two combining powers. He chose to link himself with a pair of elements as different as the violently explosive fluorine and the totally inert platignum.'

'What's Miss Le Neve like?'

'I believe she's a very good typist.'