"…And if they do amalgamate it wouldn't be before the fall anyway, nor would it affect your job."
Response was automatic to the rise and fall of her voice, and suddenly she wheeled round, her face a mask of cream under the turban she always wore in the bath, and said, "You haven't been listening to a word I said!"
The change of tone shocked me to attention. "Yes, I have," I told her.
"What, then? What have I been talking about?" she challenged. I was clearing my things out of the wardrobe in the bedroom, so that she could take over. "You were saying something about Joe's firm," I answered, "a merger of some sort. Sorry, darling, I'll be out of your way in a minute."
She seized the hanger bearing a flannel suit, my best, out of my hand, and hurled it on the floor.
"I don't want you out of the way," she said, her voice rising to a pitch I dreaded. "I want you here and now, giving me your full attention, instead of standing there like a tailor's dummy. What on earth's the matter with you? I might be talking to someone in another world." She was so right. I knew it was no use counter-attacking; I must grovel, and let her tide of perfectly justifiable irritation pass over my head.
"Darling," I said, sitting down on the bed and pulling her beside me, "let's not start the day wrong. You're tired, I'm tired; if we start arguing we'll wear ourselves out and spoil things for the boys. If I am vague and inattentive, you must blame it on exhaustion. I took that walk in the rain because I couldn't sleep, and instead of pulling me together it seems to have slowed me up."
"Of all the idiotic things to do — You might have known… And anyway, why couldn't you sleep?"
"Forget it, forget it, forget it."
I rose from the bed, seized armfuls of clothes and bore them through to the dressing-room, kicking the door to with my foot. She did not follow me. I heard her turn the taps off and get into the bath, slopping the water so that some of it ran into the overflow. The morning drifted on. Vita did not appear. I opened the bedroom door very softly just before one, and she was fast asleep on the bed, so I closed it again and lunched downstairs alone with the boys. They chatted away, perfectly content with a 'yes' or 'perhaps' from me, invariably undemanding when Vita was absent. It continued to rain steadily, and there was no question of cricket or the beach, so I drove them into Fowey and let them loose to buy ice-creams, peppermint rock, western paperbacks and jig-saw puzzles. The rain petered out about four, giving place to a lustre-less sky and a pallid, constipated sun, but this was enough for the boys, who rushed on to the Town Quay and demanded to be water-born. Anything to please, and postpone the moment of return, so I hired a small boat, powered by an outboard engine, and we chug-chugged up and down the harbour, the boys snatching at passing flotsam as we bobbed about, all of us soaked to the skin.
We arrived home about six o'clock, and the children rushed to sit down to the enormous spread of tea that the thoughtful Mrs. Collins had provided for them. I staggered into the library to pour myself a stiff whisky, only to find a revitalised Vita in possession, smiling, the furniture all moved around, the morning mood, thank heaven, a thing of the past.
"You know, darling," she said, I" think I'm going to like it here. Already it's beginning to look like home." I collapsed into an armchair, drink in hand, and watched through half-closed eyes as she pottered about the room rearranging Mrs. Collins brave efforts with the hydrangeas. My strategy henceforth would be to applaud everything, or, when occasion demanded silence, to stay mute, play each moment as it came by ear. I was on my second whisky, and off my guard, when the boys burst into the library.
"Hi, Dick," shouted Teddy, "what's this horrible thing?" He had got the embryo monkey in its jar. I leapt to my feet. "Christ!" I said. "What the hell have you been up to?"
I seized the jar from his hand and made for the door. I remembered only then that when I had gone out from the lab in the small hours, after taking my second dose, I hadn't pocketed the key but had left it in the lock.
"We weren't doing anything," said Teddy, aggrieved, "we were only looking through the empty rooms below." He turned to Vita. "There's a little dark room full of bottles, just like the stinks lab at school. Come and look, Mom, quick — there's something else in one of the jars like a dead kitten—"
I was out of the library in a flash, and down the small stairway in the hail leading to the basement. The door of the lab was wide open, and the light was on. I looked quickly around. Nothing had been touched except thejar holding the monkey. I switched off the light and stepped into the passage, locking the door behind me and pocketing the key.
As I did so the boys came running through the old kitchen, Vita at their heels. She looked concerned.
"What did they do?" she asked. "Have they broken something?"
"Luckily, no," I said. "It was my fault for leaving the door unlocked." She was peering over my shoulder down the passage. "What is through there anyway?" she asked. "That object Teddy brought up looked perfectly ghastly."
"I dare say," I answered. "It happens that this house belongs to a professor of biophysics, and he uses the small room behind there as a laboratory. If I ever catch either of the boys near that room again there'll be murder!"
They stalked off, muttering, and Vita turned to me. "I must say," she said, "I think it's rather extraordinary of the Professor to keep a room like that, with all sorts of scientific things in it, and not make certain it's kept properly locked."
"Now don't you start," I said. "I am responsible to Magnus, and I can assure you it won't happen again. If you had only come next week instead of turning up this morning at an unearthly hour, when nobody expected you, it would never have happened."
She stared at me, startled. "Why, you're shaking!" she said. "Anyone would think there were explosives in there."
"Perhaps there are," I said. "Anyway, let's hope those kids have learnt their lesson."
I switched off the basement lights and walked upstairs. I was shaking, and small wonder. A nightmare of possibilities crowded my mind. They might have opened the bottles containing the drug, they might have poured the contents into the medicine-glass, they might even have emptied the bottles into the sink. I must never again let that key out of my sight. I kept touching it in my pocket. Perhaps I could get an impression made of it, and keep both; it would be safer. I went into the music-room and stood there, staring at nothing, thrusting my finger-tip into the little hole in the key.
Vita had gone upstairs to the bedroom. Presently, I heard the tell-tale click of the telephone from the bell in the hall. It meant she was speaking from the extension upstairs. I went and washed my hands in the downstairs lavatory, and then wandered into the library. I could still hear Vita talking from the bedroom overhead. Listening to conversations on the telephone is not a habit of mine, but now some furtive instinct made me cross to the instrument in the library and pick up the receiver.
"…So I just don't know what to make of it," Vita was saying. "I've never heard him speak sharply to the boys before. They're quite upset. He doesn't look awfully well. Very hollow-eyed. He says he's been sleeping badly."
"High time you got down there," came the answer. I recognised the drawl; it was her friend Diana. "A husband on the loose is a husband on the prowl, I've told you so before. I've had experience with Bill."
"Oh, Bill," said Vita. "We all know Bill can't be trusted out of your sight. Well, I don't know… Let's hope it will be fine and we can all be out a lot. I believe he's arranged to hire some boat."
"That sounds healthy enough."
"Yes… Well, let's hope that Professor of his hasn't been putting Dick up to something. I don't trust that man. Never have, and never will. And I know he dislikes me."