“I say,” said Dr. Crippen with a confidential, guilty grin, “is your sister-in-law quite mad, Ronald? Eh? Is she?”
“Quite,” said Stratton equably. “Come on, Sheringham.”
Ronald Stratton’s young woman proved to be a charming lady of about his own age, with very fair hair and a delightful smile, who admitted to two children of her own and the name of Mrs. Lefroy. She wore a seventeenth-century dress of white satin brocade, with hooped skirt, which admirably set off her fair colouring.
“You’ve been married before, then?” Roger asked conversationally, as they began to dance.
“I still am,” replied Mrs. Lefroy surprisingly. “At least, I think I am.”
Roger made an apologetic noise. “I somehow thought you were engaged to Ronald,” he said lamely.
“Oh, yes, I am,” said Mrs. Lefroy brightly.
Roger gave it up.
“I’ve got my
nisi,
” Mrs. Lefroy explained, “but not my absolute.”
“This seems to be quite a modern party,” Roger observed mildly, swerving somewhat violently to avoid another couple who did not seem to know what they were doing. As they passed, he saw that the couple was composed as to its feminine half of Mrs. Pearcey, who was talking so earnestly to her partner that he was able to devote little attention to the steering of her.
“Modern?” echoed Mrs. Lefroy. “Is it? Only as regards the Strattons and me, I think—if by ‘modern’ you mean not only readiness to recognise that you’ve made a mistake in your marriage, which is what most married couples always have done, but readiness to rectify it, which is what most of them still haven’t the courage to do.”
“And yet you’re ready to try again?”
“Oh, yes. One mistake doesn’t make a series. Besides, I never think a first marriage ought to count, do you? One’s so busy learning how to be married at all that one can hardly help acquiring a kind of resentment against one’s partner in error. And once resentment has crept in, the thing’s finished. Anyhow, there one is, all nice and trained to the house, the complete article for the next comer. After all, one’s got to cut one’s teeth on something, but one doesn’t cherish the dummy for the rest of one’s life, does one?”
She laughed, and Roger laughed too. “But nature provides a second set of teeth. Haven’t they to be cut on another dummy?”
“Oh no, they just come already cut. But I’m quite serious, Mr. Sheringham. One isn’t the same person at thirty-four as one was at twenty-four, so why should one be expected to be suitable to the human being who fitted ten years earlier? Probably both of you have developed, on completely different lines. I think one should change partners when one’s development is complete, except of course in the rare cases where the two do happen to have developed together.”
“You needn’t apologise for your divorce, you know,” Roger murmured.
Mrs. Lefroy laughed again. “I wouldn’t dream of doing any such thing. It just happens to be a subject I feel rather strongly about. What I think is that our marriage-laws are all on the wrong lines. Marriage oughtn’t to be easy and divorce difficult; it ought to be just the other way about. A couple ought to have to go up before a judge and say, ‘Please, we’ve lived together for two years now and we’re quite certain we’re suited to each other. We’ve got our witnesses here to swear that we’re terribly fond of each other and hardly ever quarrel, and we like the same things; and we’re both quite healthy. We’re certain we know our own minds, so
please,
can’t we get married now?’ And then they’d get their marriage
nisi.
And if by the end of six months the King’s Proctor couldn’t prove that they were unsuited after all, or didn’t really love each other, or would be better apart, their marriage could be made absolute. Don’t you think that’s a very good idea?”
“It’s the best idea I’ve ever heard about marriage yet,” said Roger with conviction, “and I’ve produced a few myself.”
“Oh, yes, I know. Your idea is that the best thing to do is not to get married at all. Well, there’s something to be said for that. At least, I’m sure my poor brother-in-law-to-be would agree with you.”
“Ronald’s brother, you mean?”
“Yes. You know him, I suppose? That tall, good-looking fair young man over there, dancing with the woman in the leg-of-mutton sleeves—Mrs. Maybrick.”
“No, I don’t know him. Why would he agree with me?”
“Oh!” Mrs. Lefroy looked a little guilty. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to have said anything. After all, I only know what Ronald’s told me.”
“Is it a secret?” Roger pleaded, with unabashed curiosity.
“Well, I suppose so, in a way. Anyhow, I don’t think I’d better say anything. But I shouldn’t think,” added Mrs. Lefroy with a smile, “that it will be a secret for long. You’ve only got to watch her.”
“I’ll watch her,” said Roger. “In the meantime, do you mind telling me who you’re supposed to be?”
“Haven’t you guessed? I thought you were a criminologist.” Mrs. Lefroy looked down, not without pride, at her billowing white skirts.
“So I am, not a costumier.”
“Well, the Marquise de Brinvilliers, then. Didn’t you recognise the arsenic-green of my necklace? I thought that was rather a subtle touch.” She picked up her bag and white velvet gloves from the top of the grand piano and glanced round the room.
“I can see that Ronald’s infecting you,” Roger regretted.
He was sorry when Ronald came up, as if in response to the glance, and claimed his young woman. Mrs. Lefroy seemed to him a woman of ideas, and women of ideas are rare. So, for that matter, are men.
Roger drifted, as a man will, to the bar.
His feeling that the party was going to be an interesting one was confirmed. It pleased him that ex-Mrs. Stratton should be present as well as future Mrs. Stratton, both of them all smiles and friendliness and completely unembarrassed. That is how things should be done in an enlightened age.
At the bar were Dr. Chalmers and another local doctor, who had once played rugger for England and was broad in proportion; he wore a red-and-white bandanna handkerchief round his neck and a black mask pushed up on his forehead, and his hands were splashed with red. The two were discussing, in the way of doctors, some obscene innard belonging to one of their less fortunate patients, which Dr. Mitchell had been engaged that afternoon in yanking out. Beside them stood, angrily, a thin, dark lady. Roger recognised her as the Mrs. Maybrick with the leg-of-mutton sleeves who had been dancing with David Stratton.
“Ah, Sheringham,” Dr. Chalmers greeted him. “We’re talking shop, I’m afraid.”
“Do you ever talk anything else?” observed the thin, dark lady acidly.
“Mr. Sheringham, my wife,” said Dr. Chalmers, with the greatest cheerfulness. “And this is Frank Mitchell; another of our local medicos.”
Roger professed himself enchanted to meet Mrs. Chalmers and Dr. Mitchell.
“But whom,” he added, scrutinising the latter’s bandanna and mask, “are you supposed to represent? I thought I had them all at my finger-tips, but I can’t place you. Are the two of you Brown and Kennedy?”
“No, Jack the Ripper,” said Dr. Mitchell proudly. He displayed his red-splotched hands. “This is blood.”
“Disgusting,” said Mrs. Chalmers-Maybrick.
“I quite agree,” Roger said politely. “I much preferred your methods. You used arsenic, didn’t you? Or never used it, according to another school of thought.”
“If I did, it’s a pity I used it all,” said Mrs. Chalmers, with a short laugh. “I might have saved some up, for a better purpose.”
A little mystified, Roger produced a polite smile. The smile died away as he observed a significant glance pass between the two doctors: a glance which he could not quite interpret, but which seemed to convey a kind of mutual warning. In any case, both doctors immediately began to speak at once.
“I suppose you don’t know many— Sorry, Frank.”
“Talking of arsenic, I wonder if— Sorry, Phil.”
There was an awkward pause.
This is odd, thought Roger. What the devil is going on in this place?
To fill up the pause he said: “And you still baffle me completely, Chalmers. You don’t seem to be made up as anyone at all.”
“Phil never will dress up,” remarked Mrs. Chalmers resentfully.
Dr. Chalmers, who appeared to have remarkable powers of blandly ignoring the observations of his wife, replied heartily:
“I’m an undiscovered murderer. That’s out of compliment to you. I know it’s a theory of yours that the world’s full of them.”
Roger laughed. “I don’t call that quite fair.”
“And anyhow,” put in Mrs. Chalmers, “Philip couldn’t murder anyone to save his life.” She spoke as if this was an old grievance of hers.
“Well, I’ll be an undiscovered doctor-murderer if you like,” said Dr. Chalmers, with complete equanimity. “I expect there are plenty of them about. Eh, Frank, my man?”
“Sure to be,” agreed Dr. Mitchell with candour. “Hullo, is that the music stopping? I think I’ll …” He finished off his drink and strolled towards the ball room.
“He’s only been married four months,” remarked Mrs. Chalmers tolerantly.
“Ah,” said Roger. The three exchanged smiles, and Roger wondered why it should be amusing when a man has only been married four months. He could not quite see why, but undoubtedly it was. Roger decided that almost anything to do with marriage was either comedy or tragedy. It depended whether one was looking at it from the outside or the in.
“Good gracious,” exclaimed Dr. Chalmers, “you haven’t got a drink, Sheringham. Ronald will never forgive me. What can I get you?”
“Thanks,” Roger said. “I’ve been drinking beer.”
He stood hopefully by, as one does when someone else is manipulating a bottle for our benefit. Watching, he could not help noticing the unhandy way in which Dr. Chalmers carried out that same manipulation. Instead of holding both bottle and tankard on a level with his chest in the usual way, he held them much lower; and after he had filled the latter, Roger noticed that he put down the tankard, which he had been holding in his right hand, and gave his left arm a jerk upwards with that hand before he could lift the bottle over the edge of the table. The disability was so obvious that Roger remarked on it.
“Thank you,” he said, taking the tankard. “Got a bad arm?”
“Yes. A bit of trouble from the war, you know.”
“Philip had the whole of his left shoulder shot away,” said Philip’s wife, in an annoyed way.
“Did you? That must be rather a nuisance to you, isn’t it? I suppose you can’t operate?”
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Chalmers said cheerfully. “It doesn’t bother me much, really. I can drive a car, and sail a yacht, and do a bit of flying when I can get off; and operate, of course. It’s only the shoulder that’s gone, you see. I can’t raise my upper arm from the shoulder, but I can lift my forearm from the elbow. It might have been a lot worse.” He spoke quite naturally, and without any of the false embarrassment which seems to overtake most men when forced to speak of their war-wounds.
“Rotten luck,” said Roger sincerely. “Well, here’s the best. Mrs. Chalmers, aren’t you drinking anything?”
“Not just yet, thank you. I don’t want to make an exhibition of
myself
.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t do that,” said Roger, a little taken aback. The remark had seemed so pointed that it could only have been directed at himself, but he could not understand why Mrs. Chalmers should have thought it necessary to be so rude.
“No, and I don’t intend to,” said Mrs. Chalmers grimly, and looked fixedly in his direction.
The next moment Roger saw that she was not looking at him at all, but over his right shoulder. He turned round and followed her eyes.
Several people had drifted in from the ballroom, and among them was Ronald Stratton’s sister-in-law, the woman dressed as Mrs. Pearcey. It was on her that Mrs. Chalmers’s gaze was fixed.
She was standing by the bar, in company with a youngish, tall man whom Roger had not yet met, and he was evidently asking her what she would like.
“I’ll have a whisky-and-soda, thanks,” she said, in a voice which was just loud enough to be a shade ostentatious. “A large one. I feel like getting drunk to-night. After all, it’s the only thing worth doing, really, isn’t it?”
This time Roger joined in the significant glance which passed between Dr. and Mrs. Chalmers.
He finished up his beer, made his excuses to the Chalmers, and went off to look for Ronald Stratton.
“I must meet that woman,” he said to himself, “drunk or sober.”
Ronald was in the ballroom, twiddling with the wireless. The music to which they had been dancing had been provided by Königswusterhausen, and Ronald had decided it was too heavy; something French was indicated.
Three persons were remonstrating with him, for no particular reason beyond the strange prejudice most people have against seeing the owner of a large wireless set twiddling its knobs. One of them Roger knew to be Ronald’s sister, Celia Stratton, a tall girl, picturesquely dressed as eighteenth-century Mary Blandy; the other two were Crippen, and a small woman dressed as a boy who was not difficult to recognise as Miss Le Neve.
A piercing soprano voice shot out from the wireless in one momentary shriek, instantly cut off, but not quickly enough for the manipulator’s critics.
“Leave it alone, Ronald,” begged Miss Stratton.
“It was perfectly all right as it was,” reinforced Miss Le Neve.
“It’s a funny thing,” pronounced Dr. Crippen with some weight, as one who has given considerable thought to the point, “that people who have a wireless can’t leave it alone for more than two seconds at a time.”
“Blah,” said Ronald, and continued to twiddle the knob.
A burst of jazz music rewarded him.
“There !” he said with pride. “That’s a great deal better.”
“It isn’t a bit better,” his sister contradicted.
“It’s worse,” opined Miss Le Neve.
“It’s rotten,” Dr. Crippen supported her. “Where is it?”
“Königswusterhausen,” replied Ronald blandly, and with a wink at Roger walked quickly away.
Before the latter could follow him a question from Celia Stratton took his opportunity away. Did he know Mr. and Mrs. Williamson? Roger had to admit that he did not know Mr. and Mrs. Williamson. Dr. Crippen and Miss Le Neve were made acquainted with him under that title. Roger politely expressed admiration of their disguises.