“You know, Henry,” said Mrs. Brownrigg suddenly, “I don’t feel ill. Those things you’re giving me are doing me good, I’m sure. I don’t feel nearly so tired at the end of the day now. Can’t you treat me yourself?”
The man in the bed stiffened. Any compunction he may have felt vanished and he became wary.
“Of course they’re doing you good,” he said with the satisfaction of knowing that he was telling the truth up to a point, or at least of knowing that he was doing nothing reprehensible — yet.
“I don’t believe in patent medicines as a rule, but Fender’s pills are good. They’re a well-known formula, and they certainly do pick one up. But I just want to make sure that you’re organically sound. I don’t like you getting breathless when you hurry, and the color of your lips isn’t good.”
Plump, foolish Millie looked in the mirror and nervously ran her forefinger over her mouth.
Like many women of her age she had lost much of her color, and there certainly was a faint, very faint, blue streak round the edge of her lips.
The chemist was heavily reassuring.
“Nothing to worry about, I’m sure, but I think we’ll go down and see Crupiner this evening,” he said, and added adroitly: “We want to be on the safe side, don’t we?”
Millie nodded, her mouth trembling.
“Yes, dear,” she said, and paused, adding afterwards in that insufferable way of hers: “I suppose so.”
When she had gone downstairs to attend to breakfast Henry Brownrigg rose with his own last phrase still on his lips. He repeated it thoughtfully.
“The safe side.” That was right. The safe side. No ghastly hash of it for Henry Brownrigg.
Only fools made a hash of things. Only fools got caught. This was almost too easy. Millie was so simple-minded, so utterly unsuspecting.
By the end of the day Mr. Brownrigg was nervy. The boy Perry had reported, innocently enough, that he had seen young Hill in his new car going down Acacia Road at something over sixty, and had added casually that he had had the Bell girl with him. The youngest one. Phyllis. Did Mr. Brownrigg remember her? She was rather pretty.
For a moment Henry Brownrigg was in terror lest the boy had discovered his secret and was wounding him maliciously. But having convinced himself that this was not so, the fact and the sting remained.
Young Hill was handsome and a bachelor. Phyllis was young and impressionable. The chemist imagined them pulling up in some shady copse outside the town, holding hands, perhaps even kissing, and the heart which could remain steady while Millie’s stupid eyes met his anxiously as she spoke of her illness turned over painfully in Henry Brownrigg’s side at the thought of that embrace.
“Hurry.” The word formed itself again in the back of his mind. Hurry... hurry.
Millie was breathless when they arrived at Doctor Crupiner’s old-fashioned house. Henry had been self-absorbed and had walked very fast.
Doctor Crupiner saw them immediately. He was a vast, dusty old man. Privately Millie thought she would like to take a good stiff broom to him, and the picture the idea conjured in her mind was so ridiculous that she giggled nervously and Henry had to shake his head at her warningly.
She flushed painfully, and the old, stupid expression settled down over her face again.
Henry explained her symptoms to the doctor and Millie looked surprised and gratified at the anxiety he betrayed. Henry had evidently noticed her little wearinesses much more often than she had supposed.
When he had finished his recital of her small ills, none of them alarming in themselves but piling up in total to a rather terrifying sum of evidence, Doctor Crupiner turned his eyes, which were small and greasy, with red veins in their whites, on to Millie, and his old lips, which were mottled like Henry’s ledger, moved for a fraction of a second before his voice came, wheezy and sepulchral.
“Well, madam,” he said, “your husband here seems worried about you. Let’s have a look at you.”
Millie trembled. She was getting breathless again from sheer apprehension. Once or twice lately it had occurred to her that the Fender’s pills made her feel breathless, even while they bucked her up in other ways, but she had not liked to mention this to Henry.
Doctor Crupiner came close to her, breathing heavily through his nose in an effort of concentration. He thrust a stubby, unsteady finger into her eye-socket, dragging down the skin so that he could peer short-sightedly at her eyeball. He thumped her halfheartedly on the back and felt the palms of her hands.
Mr. Brownrigg, who watched all this somewhat meaningless ritual, his round eyes thoughtful and uneasy, suddenly took the doctor to one side, and the two men had a muttered conversation at the far end of the room.
Millie could not help overhearing some of it, because Doctor Crupiner was deaf these days and Henry was anxious to make himself understood.
“Twenty years ago,” she heard. “Very sudden.” And then, after a pause, the awful word “hereditary.”
Millie’s trembling fit increased in intensity and her broad, stupid face looked frightened. They were talking about her poor papa. He had died very suddenly of heart disease.
Her own heart jumped painfully. So that was why Henry seemed so anxious.
Doctor Crupiner came back to her. She had to undo her dress and Doctor Crupiner listened to her heart with an ancient stethoscope. Millie, already trembling, began to breathe with difficulty as her alarm became unbearable.
At last the old man finished with her. He stared at her unwinkingly for some seconds and finally turned to Henry, and together they went back to the far end of the room.
Millie strained her ears and heard the old man’s rumbling voice.
“A certain irregularity. Nothing very alarming. Bring her to see me again.”
Then there was a question from Henry which she could not catch, but afterwards, as the doctor seemed to be fumbling in his mind for a reply, the chemist remarked in an ordinary tone: “I’ve been giving her Fender’s pills.”
“Fender’s pills?” Doctor Crupiner echoed the words with relief. “Excellent. Excellent. You chemists like patent medicines, I know, and I don’t want to encourage you, but that’s a well-known formula and will save you mixing up my prescription. Carry on with those for a while. Very good things; I often recommend them. Take them in moderation, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” said Henry. “But do you think I’m doing right, Doctor?”
Millie looked pleased and startled at the earnestness of Henry’s tone.
“Oh, without doubt, Mr. Brownrigg, without doubt.” Doctor Crupiner repeated the words again as he came back to Millie. “There, Mrs. Brownrigg,” he said with spurious jollity, “you take care of yourself and do what your husband says. Come to see me again in a week or so and you’ll be as right as ninepence. Off you go. Oh, but Mrs. Brownrigg, no shocks, mind. No excitements. No little upsets. And don’t overtire yourself.”
He shook hands perfunctorily, and while Henry was helping Millie to collect her things with a solicitude quite unusual in him, the old man took down a large, dusty book from the shelves.
Just before they left he peered at Henry over his spectacles.
“Those Fender’s pills are quite a good idea,” he remarked in a tone quite different from his professional rumble. “Just the things. They contain a small percentage of digitalin.”
One of Mr. Brownrigg’s least attractive habits was his method of spending Saturday nights.
At half-past seven the patient but silently disapproving Millie would clear away the remains of the final meal of the day and place one glass and an unopened bottle of whisky and a siphon of soda on the green serge tablecloth.