“You’re right,” she said, “I mustn’t take more than is good for me. But there is no reason why you shouldn’t have some more. Oh, please!” she urged, as I started to decline. “My husband will think I haven’t been entertaining you properly, and he is so attached to his old friends.”
I let her fill my glass. After all, a cordial glass is very small. A few moments later she filled it again, but I observed with satisfaction that she took my advice and had no more.
That Fior d’Alpi had an enormous kick, although it was slow in delivering it. I don’t know precisely when, but I was presently conscious of the very symptoms she had described: that is, my head felt giddy, in a most agreeable way, and I hadn’t a care in the world. Everything became rosy and delightful, and I expressed my feelings by beaming and grinning, in what must have been a rather foolish manner, though at the time it seemed appropriate.
She gave no indication that she knew what had happened to me, and I don’t know now whether she was aware of it. She was the perfect hostess. Under her guidance the conversation at last came around to something like this:
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” she was asking.
As I recall it, there seemed no reason for me to deny my profession, since she evidently knew it anyway; so I simply answered, “Yes. How did you know?”
“I know my husband, and I took it for granted. I think you’ll feel better, not having to go on pretending.”
“Thanks. You’re very considerate.”
“Not at all. And we’ll say nothing about what he wants you to find out. You can just tell him you couldn’t learn anything.”
“Yes, that’s what I’ll do.” It seemed at the time like a wonderful solution.
“That will be so much better.” Having disposed of that point, she went on to the next, in a way that in a more worldly person I would call business-like and efficient. “Let me see. I was to show you the first editions. I don’t think any of them are about medicine.” She was looking through the shelves now, for something that might appeal to me.
“I’m more interested in those,” I said, indicating the rows of paper-bound detective stories on the shelves.
“So am I. I get them as fast as they come out, but I’ve never found a perfect one.”
“Perfect in what way?” I asked, trying to sound profound. “As an escape from reality?”
“Why should I look for that? I believe in facing reality. I mean, not one of these books has presented a perfect murder. The murderer always gets caught.”
“Perhaps there is no perfect murder.”
“There must be. Some of these stories come very close to it. It may be that they’re not allowed to be completely clear about such a thing. But even I could imagine how it could be done. Almost, that is.”
“Ah! Almost.”
“I lack certain technical knowledge.”
“Such as?” I asked, amused by the incongruity of this lovely girl and her bloodthirsty little hobby.
“Knowledge of chemistry, for example. Now, you’re a doctor. You know all about that.” I nodded sagely, and prepared to consider the next point by drinking a little more of the Fior d’Alpi. I don’t know how my glass remained as full as it did — whether she was filling it or I was doing so myself. I wish I knew. But even more, I wish I could be sure about what came next, because that is what has kept me from sleeping ever since.
“Tell me,” I think I heard her ask, “isn’t there such a thing as a poison which would kill someone and then evaporate, so that death would look as if it had happened naturally?”
“If I knew of such a poison, I’d be in the same boat with those authors. I couldn’t tell it. And even such a poison could be traced. Records are kept by druggists, you know — of what they sell and to whom.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. How clever of you to think of it!”
The combination of alcohol and praise is a powerful drug in itself. And she was looking at me steadily, more steadily than I have ever been looked at, by anyone.
“If I wanted to commit a perfect murder,” is what came out of me, “I wouldn’t go about it like that.”
“How then?”
“I would study my victim. If I found, let us say, that he was inclined to apoplexy, and probably had high blood pressure, I would look into a medical book — not consult a doctor, mind you, because he might remember and tell — and find out what diet relieves the condition, and what aggravates it. Then I would get him to cat the wrong things, and goad him into fits of temper.”
“How long would that take?”
“It depends on how regularly you could get him to do what you wanted.”
“I see.”
My recollections of our tête-à-tête, which are vague enough about here, black out entirely at this point and leave only a gap. The next thing I remember, I was delivering a sort of lecture to her, on the subject of apoplexy, and was saying: “A characteristic attack presents the following phenomena. The patient—” I stopped short, in embarrassment, and said, “I must apologize. I’m talking too much.”
“Why do you apologize? You have been very entertaining.” With that, she put down a pencil which she had been holding, and laid it beside a pad. I realized the meaning of this: she had been writing down everything I said. Charmed by her though I was, this disturbed me, but when I looked closer at the pad, I was greatly surprised.
“You write shorthand!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. Didn’t Mr. Belmore tell you? I was his secretary.”
“No,” I replied, “but he did tell me some things.” I pointed to the tiny diamond and its narrow golden band. “That’s an engagement ring too, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Did he tell you that I and the boy who gave me this ring were both working for him?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Or that he fired him, and would have fired me?”
“Why?”
“To make sure we couldn’t afford to marry.”
“No, he didn’t tell me that either.”
Into that lovely, limpid voice of hers crept a note of incredible hardness, startling and unsuspected as the little diamond had been when its existence was revealed. “When Mr. Belmore asked me to marry him,” she said, with all the blood gone out of her tones, “he made something clear to me — something I had not understood before. Very likely I should be grateful to him for it, because it is absolutely true. Before two young people get married, and have a family, the first thing they must do — the very first — is to get money.”
At that moment Mr. Belmore returned. Waiting until his wife opportunely turned her head away, I managed to signal “No” to him, and soon after thanked both of them for a pleasant evening, and went home.
All of which leaves me in a quandary. If everything I suspect is true— But it can’t be. If I am even remembering correctly, if she really gave me too much to drink, in order to— But that can’t be, either. Not she.
Above all, can she really mean to— to— Because, if she does, why then I suppose I will have to dissuade her, or warn him — or do something. But can such an exquisite girl be capable of that? Can it actually have been her purpose from the start, and is that why she married him?
As a first step, before I can do anything else, I’ll have to make sure. Luckily, there is that arrangement with her husband by which she and I are frequently to be left by ourselves.
Meanwhile, all I know is this: the wearing of an engagement ring signifies an intention to wed.
He had a little shadow
by Charles B. Child[6]
The boy was a waif who frequented the great bazaar of Baghdad. He was small for his years, which were perhaps eight, very slim and high-waisted, with delicate hands and feet, a bright elfin face and large, dark eyes. He wore a ragged gown girdled with a piece of rope, his turban was a wisp, he had never owned shoes; his only possession was a basket which he used to carry the purchases of shoppers for a few pennies.