'I don't play a part, not in my own home.' He said nothing. 'Aren't you getting me another glass of brandy? Or don't you want me to have a wink of sleep?'
Crippen descended the stone steps to the kitchen. The brandy was in a cupboard with the bottles of stout, all bought from the grocer's in Brecknock Road. He reappeared with a squat glass containing over an inch of dark spirit. Belle took it without a word. She sat sipping while he folded the green-baize cloth, collected the cards, and moved the square table against the wall.
'This brandy's scented, I guess.'
'It's a new bottle. I got it on my way home. It's cheaper, which accounts for the stronger taste. The grocer told me the best brandy is almost tasteless, like drinking liquid fire.'
She held the empty glass out. Crippen disappeared. She heard him knock over something in the kitchen below, which smashed on the floor. 'It was the gravy boat,' he announced, reappearing with more brandy. 'It was cracked anyway.'
'There's something funny about you. You don't usually break things.'
'If we had a housemaid, I suppose she'd break much more.' He stood facing her, back to the gas-fire, hands under the tails of his grey frock-coat. 'Why did you talk to the Martinettis tonight of engagements offered you at the Euston and Collins's? You knew they were lies.'
'Don't dare call me a liar,' she said stridently. Crippen kept his impassiveness. 'You have been lying much worse to yourself. You never had the slightest prospect of being a success on the stage. Not from the moment I first set eyes on you. When you came into my office, while I worked for Dr Jeffery in New York. When you'd just had a miscarriage.'
She opened her mouth, but instead of speaking screwed her eyes up. 'You're sort of shimmering.'
'You've drunk a lot of brandy. It's slurring your speech. I paid for your voice training. With a proper coach, right after we were married, till the hard times came in the winter of '92 and the money ran out. I paid for your gowns. I paid for your jewels. I paid for that show you were in, back in '99. As Cora Motzi in Vio and Mitzki's Bright Lights,' he derided her daringly. 'Bright lights! You never dazzled anyone in the world, except me. Last week at the Met I saw what you were worth. Nothing.'
Her only response was to say in a dreamy voice, 'Gee, I'm kind of dry. My throat's burning. Get me a glass of water, Peter.'
When he returned from the kitchen with a tumbler she was asleep. He stood staring at her. She opened her eyes suddenly. 'Where you been?'
'To fetch you a drink.'
She took the glass. Crippen resumed his stance by the fire. 'When are you going to see Bruce Miller again?'
She choked, unable to swallow. 'Shut your mouth about Bruce Miller.'
'What about Richard Ehrlich? The German student who was your lover under this very roof. Did you ever see him again?'
'What if I did? You're no use to any woman.'
'I am to any normal woman.'
'What are you saying? I'm not normal?'
'You suffer from nymphomania.' Belle started to laugh. It became wilder, then uncontrollable. She swung about in the chair, gripping the arms. Crippen watched her. 'I intend to treat you for it.'
'Treat me?' She stopped laughing, staring at him fixedly. 'I like that! How, I'll ask?'
'With henbane.'
'That's a poison!' she shouted.
'All drugs are poisons, unless taken in the right doses.'
'Why don't you treat Ethel Le Neve?' Belle asked thickly. 'Le Neve,' she sneered. 'She was born plain Neve, her father's a coals canvasser, who gets drunk in the pubs and gets arrested.'
'You're drunk yourself.'
Belle half-rose, gasping. 'That table! The one we played cards on. It moved. Look!' She gave a hoarse cry. 'There's something under it. A dog, a huge black dog-'
'I can't see anything,' Crippen said mildly.
Belle slumped back, holding her forehead in both hands. 'My face is burning. I'm sick, I guess. Help me to bed.'
Crippen suddenly leant over her, gripping her arms.
'How many times have you threatened to leave me?' he said with unknown venom. 'Threatened! It would be the happiest release for me and Ethel. You could take your jewels. You could take our whole Ј600 in the Charing Cross Bank. You could go off to America to Bruce Miller, to whoever you cared. But you wouldn't. You found me too useful here, working my heart out at Munyon's, the Drouet Institute, the Tooth Specialists. Providing you with clothes and comfort, a slave for anything you fancied. You've your own friends. Your own pleasures. You leave me here lonely and miserable. The only sympathy and affection I've ever had in the world is from Ethel.'
He straightened up. She sat looking dazed, slowly rubbing her arms. 'All right. All right, I'll go,' she mumbled.
'It's too late now.'
'What d'you mean?'
'I don't know. My head is full of bees,' he told her abruptly.
She half rose, face shot with terror. She screamed, 'It ain't a dog, it's a bear-'
He glanced quickly at the drawn curtains of pink velvet. They were thick enough to muffle the sound. The neighbours were anyway used to Belle's outbursts. 'There's nothing there. You're seeing things.'
'Oh, Peter…' She looked at him piteously, clutching her breast. 'My heart…my heart…it's flying from my body.'
'You're drunk. You had three glasses playing cards. Maybe that brandy's not only stronger in taste?'
She rose unsteadily from the chair. Her mouth opened, no words came. She staggered, clutching the mantelpiece, pulling the pink cloth, smashing a china cat against the gas-fire.
'Peter!' she screamed. Crippen continued staring, hands under coat-tails. 'I'm dying…' He did not move. 'I'm going next door, to Mrs Harrison…' She tried to walk, knocked over the small table, clattering the framed photographs on the floor. She crumpled. She lay face down on the carpet, giving a huge gasp. Crippen stayed immobile.
'Belle,' he said quietly.
He hesitated.
'Belle-'
He crouched and turned her half-over. Her face was dusky, her mouth slack, her eyes partly open. He stood up. 'So,' he said. He gave her chest a gentle kick, partly inquisitive, partly insolent. 'Belle has left me,' he murmured. He sounded unbelieving. He walked quickly round the room, hands in pockets. He stopped suddenly, righted the overturned table and carefully replaced the photographs. He rearranged the pink mantelpiece cover, picking up the fragments of china from the carpet, cupping them delicately in his left hand, leaving the room for the kitchen and tipping them into the round bin under the sink where Belle had scraped the leavings from their dinner plates.
He returned to the parlour, strode straight past Belle, crouched and switched off the gas-fire. Then he turned Belle on her back with his foot. He raised her eyelids, revealing pupils like black full moons. He felt her wrist for a pulse, noticing the forearms drawn in spasm, the fingers clawed. 'So Belle shall vanish,' he said. He began to undress her.
He unbuttoned her yellow silk gown down the back, unlaced the waist, pulled the bodice from her crooked arms and tugged the skirts from her feet. The cotton underskirt was soaked with urine. He remembered that Belle had not visited a certain room since dinner. He tugged off the black ankle boots with pearl buttons up the side, and unbuckled the black lisle stockings from suspenders stretching half-way down her fat thighs. He loosed the tape of her cotton knickers, which ended in six-inch frills over the knee. He unknotted the lacing of her stays, ripping them off her wobbling buttocks. She had only an undervest with six buttons, which he loosed from wallowing breasts. He had not seen her naked for five years or so. She always had him come to her in the dark, like an animal. He noticed the scar running from navel to pubic hair, the incision for the ovariotomy which turned her barren.