The Widow (29 page)

‘It'll stain the sheets. Get an old torn pillow case. No, help me undress, first, I pissed my trousers. I want a shower. Or a bath. Help me.'

The poor boy wanting to do ten things at once, and all efficiently! She felt sorry for him, all white and shaky. In common with most women, she knew that it didn't do to be ill. Husbands will end up a great deal iller. One thing however he could control was his tongue. Not a single question!

‘Help me balance,' wobbling on the bathroom floor. ‘Ow.'

‘Is it too hot?'

‘Yes it is rather. No, don't touch it, it's splendid … Ahhh,' breathing strongly out.

‘This has to be drunk very hot too.'

‘Help me sit up. I'll sip. Have you noticed? – people in
Newsweek
always sip, they never drink. Likewise they never eat, they munch or they nibble.'

‘Don't talk so much.'

‘No, but let me. Travis McGee sits in hot baths and drinks ice-cold gin.'

‘What would you expect? – he has gin-coloured eyes. All right let's look,' hitching the stool closer. He had put a pillow on the edge of the bath. There was a lot of heavy breathing during the peeling process. The wound gaped nastily. The heat of the bath was doing things to her circulation and it oozed.

‘Keep it well up. Is this a car windscreen or a metal edge or what?'

‘No the car's all right.'

‘A fat lot I care about the car. Was there nobody to drive you to the hospital?'

‘I didn't want that.'

‘But who bandaged this? Rough but luckily fairly efficient. Who drove you home?' Now that he was no longer so worried the floodgates were unloosed.

‘Arthur, please. I'll tell you as soon as I can.'

‘Sorry.' He poured a big slosh of whisky for himself, crossed his legs and studied her carefully.

‘Your arms are bruised, and around your neck. Nothing seems broken and you've no internal injuries.'

‘Darling, please. I'm just shaken up nervously, I promise. All I ask is that you don't let me fall asleep in the bath.'

‘Good. Just tell me what it is you do want.'

‘I want to move the hand, very slowly, just to see there are no tendons cut. I don't want any doctors. I've seen too many just recently. I want a clean nighty. I want to fall asleep in my own bed. First I want to tell you that there's nothing to worry about. No, first I want to tell you I love you.'

Hm, yes; that was all very well: there was a face there full of disquieting Britannic obstinacy. She was awfully sorry; she just didn't care. Total lethargy was now arriving in great galloping waves. She managed to get out and stand, and be dried, and hold arms out, and not burst the seams of the clean nighty. The hand was swathed up, and the arm put in a sling. She managed to say, ‘One more thing, darling – no cops.' His lips were set in a horizontal line; he only nodded.

She slept till midday. She felt refreshed. Everything was fine. She got up to go to the lavatory and everything wasn't fine at all: she was extremely light-headed and tottery. Arthur appeared at once, all cool competence, sat her on the lavatory, helped her back. Her senses were oddly alert; the living-room door was open; there was a funny smell.

‘Who's there?' as though it were a burglar.

‘A doctor. Do not fuss. Discretion is assured.' The doctor appeared. A young girl. She had to laugh really – one of Arthur's little fiddles …

‘I'm not a doctor at all, I'm only a student. So this is illegal practice. Show me. Oh well, that looks pretty awful but it's not really bad, I think,' touching with gentle fingers. ‘It'll heal all right. Thing is, not being done properly, likely leave a scar. Oh well,' with some relish, quite enjoying this, ‘if you'd taken it to surgery they'd have made a fuss. That hospital would kill
you quicker than this will. You've lost a lot of blood though. I fiddled some stuff from the pharmacy, haemoglobin and whatnot. Still – clean. Stay quiet and keep it quiet. Eat a big steak when you can. We'll have to watch it though, make sure you get all the movement back. When did you have an anti-tetanus last? Look, Arthur, I'll be in tonight, and I'll get a second opinion. No it won't leak out.'

He didn't say much when he came back. Only, ‘Can you eat?'

‘You bet.'

‘It was a razor cut, wasn't it?'

‘Yes.'

He brought scrambled eggs, tomatoes, coffee. It was delicious. She ate like a wolf, and promptly fell asleep again.

It was nearly twilight. The curtains were drawn but she looked. And Arthur was conspiring again, damn it. The doors were opened, to hear if she yelled or had nightmares. She could hear muttering, and smell cigar smoke.

‘Arthur,' she bellowed.

He appeared at once, falsely genial.

‘Ah, you're awake. Splendid. Like some coffee? I've a splendid steak when you want it, or liver if you prefer.'

‘Look, are you taking more of your girlfriends into my confidence?'

‘Ah. Caught me, have you? Just as well. Yes. I've a visitor for you. Do you feel up to it?'

Might have known, she supposed. He didn't breeze in with false geniality – not his style – but it was the commissaire of police just the same.

‘Don't mind my cigar do you? Look, set your mind at rest. Nobody knows I'm here. Nor will anybody know. My car's marked with an Aesculape. You know, the little insignia with the snakes. A doctor, okay? Just in case you're watched. But I have to know about this, you realize.'

She looked at Arthur. Arthur looked at the commissaire. You tell her.

‘You've been marked on the hand with a razor. This is a variation on an old gag thought up in the gangster-film days. Known as the croix des vaches, and put on faces of people who had been too talkative to cops. Which tells us a good deal.'

‘Which, together with the way you behaved, and the fact the car hasn't a mark on it, told me a good deal,' said Arthur apologetically.

‘I'll get you a doctor, incidentally. Girlfriends who are medical students are fine, but we don't want to take any risks. I'll repeat that, if you didn't catch it. These are professionals. Not necessarily the cinema kind. Nor, necessarily, good professionals: what they did was only half smart. Perhaps they thought you a hopeless amateur and that throwing a big scare into you would settle the matter adequately. In that, I suspect, they may misjudge you.

‘Put it this way. You have stumbled, perhaps accidentally, even amateurishly, upon some trace of a professional operation. Quite possibly you don't know what it is. They thought you knew more than you did. Two conclusions. This gets now turned over to professionals, which is why I'm here. Agreed? And two, we have to make a pretty thorough enquiry into what you know and what you don't. You're in no shape for interrogatories. But in a day or so. Oh, and another thing. We'll do this here at your house. And, incidentally, we'll assure your protection Okay?'

‘Yes.'

‘There are one or two invasions of your privacy. Like we tap the phone.'

‘No need. It has a recorder on it.'

‘I put on the thing,' said Arthur, ‘which says Miss Otis regrets she's unable to dine tonight.'

‘Then when you can, you answer your phone normally but leave it on record. And you notify me at once of anything funny. We'll have somebody here, anyhow. A woman, I think. I'd like to do this throughout with women, if possible.

‘So I'm not going to worry you today. I'd like to know whether any trace is likely to exist of your adventure last night. Incidentally, I learn you were carrying your gun. Were you expecting something?'

‘Not really. I had it because of something different, and I was out late in a strange quarter. I didn't get the chance to get near it. I was just bundled into the car.' She told.

‘I see. Is it likely there are any marks on the car?'

‘I doubt it – the confident way they behaved.'

‘Exactly. The occasions nowadays when one gets anything from prints are a rarity. We'll look, in case. Bring the car down, would you, Doctor Davidson? Or it might be stolen – coincidence-like. Now have you any idea where they took you?'

‘Somewhere beyond the Robertsau, because I recognized the Rue Melanie both ways. But I don't think I could tell exactly, even with a good deal of trouble. And it was raining too. I don't even think there'd be footmarks – I remember them saying to take care.'

He nodded.

‘A chance of your identifying voices?'

‘Maybe,' with a dubious face.

‘Yes, it's identity-parade evidence. A judge wouldn't place much faith in it. Well, we shall see. Now Doctor Davidson has been telling me about some of your notions. You had lunch in the town.'

‘I keep thinking narcotics. Dismissed it all the time as
madly melodramatic. In light of what's happened, I'm just not able to say.' She told, hesitantly, about Marie-Line. ‘But now that you know this – I got into a bad enough pickle already. The doctors. If you start they'll be furious. Treat it as breach of confidence.' The commissaire nodded, quite unsurprised.

‘My dear girl,' he said in a fatherly manner, ‘I have nothing to do with doctors if I can help it. I'm not speaking now of being threatened with all the diseases they themselves are most frightened of. I'm speaking of an over-privileged group that will go to extraordinary lengths of hypocrisy and perjury to defend those privileges.'

‘There were stories about bent prescription forms – stolen and then falsified.'

‘Hence the tight grip on your little friend Marie-Line.'

‘I thought it all seemed very small-scale and amateurish.'

‘So it is.'

‘But that – I mean – if this were professional …'

‘What's Rule One would you say? – I mean in regard to not getting caught. Not to distribute in the area where you yourself operate. There is not a great quantity of narcotics distributed in this area. Much more towards the south and over the Swiss border, and in Germany. Where the pickings are a great deal richer. Look at the geographical situation of Strasbourg. Where does most of the stuff come from? Notoriously, from Holland. That train that goes down from Holland to Italy – there used to be a lot of jokes about it. We've busted that train several times. The stuff's coming in by road. Leave it for now; you're getting tired. You kept thinking there were two different affairs and this confused you. So there are. Fiddling about at this little affair of selling pills to students you stumbled on something real, and didn't quite believe in it. Try and think it over – I'll be back tomorrow.'

‘How do you feel?' asked Arthur coming back.

‘Fine. The hand's painful, nothing more. I can tackle the steak. You'll have to cut it up for me.'

‘Good. Take your pill.'

‘Pills – take away one's appetite, leave one feeling sick, depressed and probably constipated. What I really want is a bottle of burgundy: that's the real specific for loss of blood.' Poor old Arthur – he was as bucked as though he'd drunk the bottle himself.

Poor old became startlingly good old. The steak was a sirloin and fillet together on the bone. There was marrow with it. There was watercress. There was a cup of bouillon. There was a bunch of flowers. The steak was too much for her, but he made no problem about disposing of the rest. There was not much conversation.

‘The thing I find noteworthy,' said Arthur, ‘is Demazis, a man probably involved in a criminal operation and feeling unhappy about it, seeking to confide in someone and choosing a woman. This makes the whole thing worthwhile.'

‘Mm,' she said. ‘I'm sorry darling; perhaps I've overeaten.' And the burgundy was soporific. He took himself and the débris off, tactfully, after very nicely suggesting he make her bed for her and get the crumbs out.

One is alone. One is and always will be. One is so more and more. She realized she was exceptionally lucky. A good marriage and a good man. Moreover, the second. She had not really wanted to remarry. Had done so, perhaps, for bad and selfish reasons.

Not altogether. Arthur had had a rotten time, and deserved something better. And was it a good idea to clutch widowhood like a comfortable old fur coat? Was that fair on the children? They had their lives, and she didn't want them coming on bright family visits, to cheer up old mum with a display of family solidarity, a chat about the old days, some sentimental memories dressed up with funny details and trotted out, well-worn and practised family-gathering pieces between the flowers for mum's birthday or the Toussaint, and the obligatory bottle of champagne. One boy was actively contemplating a marriage, the other hovering. Mum could come and stay, mum could babysit. All very merry. She got on well with real
or putative daughters-in-law. The boys were nice boys; they acquired nice girls.

She had her pension: Dutch money, worth a lot in France. She had a job, her health. But if she lost these things, and the old bag became an old drag … she had been frightened of being alone.

Arthur's patient kindness was as real as his generosity, his simplicity. Well, she'd had something to give. Without her, he would have retreated further and further into the eccentric professor act; crankiness and comedies to mask the steady desiccation of a fertile personality, embittered by the failures of his life.

Yes, a marvellous marriage. But as Arthur himself said ‘On est tout seul, ma poule.' Always and inevitably.

Yes, it did some good. Norma, Demazis, little Marie-Line – how, alone they were. Yes, even Demazis.

She hadn't agreed with Arthur. Poor Albert – strange that he should have the same initials as Arthur: it had hooked her, absurdly – hadn't confided in her. That was a sentimental notion. A man who went on complicating things, who realized perhaps in the end that there was no real way out, and whether he had been killed, or killed himself, or expected perhaps to be killed had planted an obscure clue. Confide in a woman?