The Trial of Marie Montrecourt (19 page)

“Going out, Mrs Minton? And that poor husband of yours still ill in bed?”

Marie managed to remain pleasant. “My husband is sleeping now, Mrs Gilpin, but he’s asked for a small bottle of brandy. I’m just going out to buy it for him.” Then, without really knowing why, she added: “Dr Hornby is insisting Stanley sees a surgeon. There’s a danger the ulcer will burst very soon.”

“Well, an ulcer’s a very terrible thing, Mrs Minton. A serious matter if it bursts. It must be a worry for you.”

“Yes, it is.” Marie continued towards the door.

“Will he ever be well enough to turn that ironmongers into a grocers like he planned?” she called after Marie, but she was gone – avoiding the necessity of a reply.

*

Evelyn had no clear recollection of his return journey to Paris but somehow he got there, and when Renfrew saw him he realised at once that something was wrong.

“Are you ill?” he asked.

“I think I must be,” Evelyn muttered.

“Then get yourself back to England and see a doctor about it,” he was ordered.

On the voyage home, he tried to convince himself that the priest had been wrong. He was an old man with a faulty memory. He’d grown muddled and confused. Evelyn only needed to confirm that his father had died from typhoid fever to prove it. That was why he was at Harley Street now, demanding to see Dr Oliver.

“It’s impossible to see the doctor without an appointment, I’m afraid, sir. There’s no point in waiting,” the receptionist said.

Evelyn ignored the man’s protests. “He will see me and I will wait, and I don’t care how long it takes.”

Dr Oliver, hearing raised voices, came out of his room to find out what was the cause of the disturbance. He was surprised to see that it was Evelyn. They hadn’t met since Sir Gordon’s funeral.

“Evelyn, how very good to see you. Is there a problem?”

“I was trying to explain to this gentleman that without an appointment—” the receptionist began.

“It’s about my father. I need to talk with you.”

“I see. Well, tomorrow—”

“Now, I need to talk to you now. It’s about the cause of his death and I need to discuss it with you urgently, and I’d rather do so in private if you don’t mind.”

“Ah. Yes, of course. Yes.” Oliver took out his pocket watch and consulted it. Evelyn was aware that the receptionist was watching the scene curiously, but he didn’t care. “I have ten minutes before my next patient. It’s all right, Stephen,” he said as the young man started to protest. “This won’t take long.” He held the door of the consulting room open for Evelyn and then closed it behind them. “Now, how can I help you? Please, sit down.” Evelyn was too agitated to accept the invitation. “I heard you were in Paris with Lord Renfrew.”

“I returned this morning.” He knew Dr Oliver was watching him with some concern. “I’ve received information recently…” Evelyn broke off, for the moment too distressed to continue.

“Information that’s disturbing to you. Yes, I can see that.”

“This may seem a strange question to ask, Dr Oliver, and if so forgive me, but I mean to have an answer and I mean to have the truth.” He took a deep breath. “My father’s final illness, what was it? It’s imperative you tell me.” Dr Oliver was so thrown by the unexpectedness of the question that for a moment he didn’t answer. “Why did you and mother prevent visitors?”

“It was typhoid. Your mother was concerned about the danger of infection, which is why she kept everyone away.”

Evelyn saw that the doctor was uneasy. “Don’t lie to me, Dr Oliver. It’s too important.”

After a moment, the doctor said quietly: “I can see that it is. Very well. It was syphilis. He caught it in ’81, in Africa.”

“Oh, God!” Evelyn’s legs buckled and he sat down abruptly on a chair. “I thought syphilis either killed a man straightaway or it was cured.”

“I treated your father with mercury when he returned from Africa. We thought it
was
cured. I was as shocked as you are now to discover that the man who’d been dubbed the moral conscience of the nation had caught such a disease. But then, after the heat of battle, with heightened emotions, values can become twisted. That’s how I assumed it had been. Every camp has its followers of women who know how to pleasure for a price, and under pressure of war, why should your father be any better?”

“Because he pretended to be!” Evelyn spat out words.

“Try not to judge your father too harshly, Sir Evelyn. We’ve neither of us been tested in the way he was. As I said, I had assumed Sir Gordon was cured, but there is a new theory now, and your father’s case was an example of it. The disease can occasionally lie dormant for a long time, then it can become active again. Fatally.”

“So for all those years it had been festering inside him. How appropriate,” Evelyn said bitterly.

At a loss what to do next, Oliver suggested Evelyn might like to talk to his mother about it. “Though be careful,” he added, “she’s become very frail.”

“I haven’t been home. I can’t face her. I can’t forgive her. She knew he had syphilis and said nothing.”

“I think you’re being a little hard on her. She did what she had to do to save the reputation of good man.”

“A good man!” Evelyn repeated his words with contempt. “There’s something else I need to know. If a woman is diseased with syphilis, and if that woman has a daughter, will that daughter carry the disease?” He was thinking of Marie.

Oliver pursed his lips in thought. “If the daughter does survive – and that is rare, although it does happen – then she would not necessarily have inherited the syphilis. She would not be strong, she would probably lose any baby she conceived before it was born, but she would not necessarily carry the disease.”

He waited for further questions, but Evelyn’s thoughts remained with Marie. He remembered she had once told him that she had miscarried a child. She would never know why because he could never tell her.

*

It was the afternoon. She’d returned from Ilkley and had been sitting in Stanley’s room, watching him for what seemed like hours. Though his eyes were closed, she knew he wasn’t really asleep.

How had it come to this – sitting by her husband’s bedside waiting for him to die? It had never been a love match, but she had never expected it to end like this. In fact, after Edith’s death, there had even been a moment when their marriage might have worked, but any chance of that happening ended when the baby died. She saw that Stanley’s eyes were open now.

“Planning how to get your hands on those letters, were you?” He felt under the mattress to make sure they were still there.

She hadn’t even attempted to take them from him. She wouldn’t be able to move him. He was too heavy.

“Where’s the chloroform?”

“There.” She pointed to the blue, fluted bottle that was standing on the table beside his bed. “With the brandy. Now give me the letters. You promised you would if I got the chloroform.”

“Well, I’ve changed my mind. You see, they’re going to provide me with an income for as long as I need it. A little bit of money to give me comfort and paid to me on the first of every month. He won’t miss it. While I have these letters, he’ll have to go on
paying me for my silence, won’t he?”

She stared at him too shocked for a moment to speak. “You can’t do that. I won’t tell him that.”

“You won’t have to. I’ve got his address from the letters. I’ll write tomorrow.”

“I won’t post it.”

“That fool Hornby’s calling some time tomorrow. I’ll get
him
to post it for me.”

“No. Stanley, please don’t do this. Evelyn’s a decent man. He doesn’t deserve this.” She could see her words were having no impact. “You mustn’t drag him into this sordid mess.”

“He dragged
himself
into it when he wrote the letters.” He reached for the blue, fluted bottle and studied it. “This stuff isn’t working so well. Next time make it a bigger bottle. I have to use more of it each time to have any effect.
Tried swallowing it to see what that would do, but it just made me sick.”

“It would have killed you otherwise,” she muttered.

“Well then, wouldn’t
you
have been happy?
Go on, get out. And close the door behind you.”

She reached the sanctuary of her room and leant back against the door. She was trembling. What would Evelyn think of her when he received Stanley’s letter? She wanted to scream, to throw things. She needed to keep busy or she would go mad. She started to fold some of the newly washed clothes that lay on the chair nearby.

She opened a drawer and began to pile the clothes into it. Sometimes, in her darkest moments, she’d caught herself wondering what it would be like to hold a pad soaked in chloroform over Stanley’s mouth while he slept, keeping it there until he stopped breathing and end it all. That she was even capable of such thoughts shocked her. She slammed the drawer shut and turned her attention to the bookshelves. They needed tidying. She started to pull the books out one by one, piling them on the bed.

She realised she was holding
Farnsworth’s Medical Dictionary
. It fell open at the section dealing with chloroform:

If swallowed, a mere teaspoonful could kill a strong man.

She thrust the book aside. Tomorrow he was going to write to Evelyn. She had to try to change his mind. She had to try.

She returned to his room. He was drowsy but he was awake.

“What do
you
want now? Come to see if I’m still breathing? Well, I am.”

Should she just demand Evelyn’s letters outright or try again to reason with him.

“Oh, for God’s sake, if you’ve got anything to say, say it. Otherwise, get out and leave me in peace.”

“Stanley, listen to me. If you want me to go on collecting the chloroform for you, I will, but only if you give me those letters. Otherwise you can go hang. What will you do then?”

He studied her for a moment without saying anything. “Well, I have been giving it some thought,” he said slowly.

She clung desperately to a faint hope. “Does that mean you will give them to me?”

“I’m certainly not going to write to him.” He took the letters from underneath his pillow and studied them.

She almost fell on her knees beside the bed in gratitude. “Oh, thank you, Stanley. Thank you.”

“Instead, I’m going to send some of them to a journalist I know on the
Evening Post
. When he’s read them, he’ll pay me a fortune to get his hands on the rest and I’ll succeed in ruining your little friend at the same time. As for the chloroform, I’ll have enough money to pay Johnson to deliver it here. So I don’t need you.”

If she had been strong enough, she would have flown at him, dragged him from the bed and torn the letters out of his hands. Even in his weakened state, however, she knew she was no match for him. She needed to get out of the room.

*

It was midnight. She’d been sitting on her bed for hours. A distant dog barked. Her room was lit by a cold, silver light as the moon reappeared from behind a cloud. She could hear herself breathing – short, sharp intakes of breath. She began pacing up and down in her room, up and down. Had he threatened to send Evelyn’s letters to the journalist just to frighten her? If so, he’d succeeded.

Now she was outside the door of Stanley’s room – she had no recollection of how she’d got there. She opened the door. Stanley was lying on his back with his mouth wide open. There was no sign of the letters. Her eyes went to the bedside table. The chloroform bottle was nearly empty. Not enough left to put on a pad and be sure of ending it all. The bottle of brandy stood beside a wine glass.

On the floor in a corner of the room was a pile of Stanley’s clothes, lying where he’d thrown them. Underneath she could see the Bunsen burner he’d torn from the gas tap when he’d destroyed Sister’s herbs. The thin rubber tube was still attached to it. She was beside it now, looking down at it. She had no recollection of picking it up. She was only aware that her hand was shaking uncontrollably. Stanley stirred, but his eyes remain closed, his mouth stayed open.

She looked to the table, at the bottle. Was it only a teaspoon left or was it a little more? She was pouring some brandy into the wine glass and then adding the remains of the chloroform to it. She was detaching the rubber tube from the Bunsen burner. It felt like a dream.

*

Gerry’s Bar was in Soho. Part of a cellar, it was accessed from the street by a steep flight of stone steps. It was a place of cheap gilt chandeliers and worn red velvet, low lighting and dark shadows. It exactly suited Evelyn’s mood. He could be alone here. The air was a fug of cigarette and cigar smoke, which had no way of escaping in that windowless room.

The barman greeted him warmly. “Sir Evelyn, good see you again. What would you like, sir?”

“Oblivion,” Evelyn muttered, “but absinthe will have to do.”

The barman poured him a glass of the green liquid, and filtered iced water through a slatted spoon containing a sugar cube, turning the green liquid cloudy. Evelyn took his drink to one of the alcoves. “Bring me another,” he called over his shoulder, “straightaway. And keep them coming.”

He’d received a letter from Marie that morning. She had written that they mustn’t meet anymore and he knew she was right. He should be grateful, because it spared him having to face her. He couldn’t bear it, knowing her past as he did now.

He stared in surprise at all the glasses lined up in front of him, every one of them empty. Had he drunk so much? The glass he held in his hand was still full. Wormwood, it sounded evil and it was evil – the basis of absinthe. How many of these had he drunk? He had no idea. What was the time? He had no idea. What he did know was that the alcove in which he was sitting was spinning round and round and round. He tried to catch the barman’s attention to tell him to send over a bottle, but he couldn’t seem to lift his arm. He did manage to slide his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. What time was it? He peered hard, trying to make sense of the multiplicity of watch faces that floated in front of his eyes. It couldn’t be two in the morning. He couldn’t have been sitting here all that time.