A Question of Guilt

9

Hilldrop Crescent made a broad sweep from Camden Road, at the crest of a hill which rose from the Midland Railway cuttings. The houses were mirror-image pairs, three storeys high, pale yellow brick, with a shallow slate roof, sharing the stack of a dozen chimney-pots. Number 39 was a left-hand house in the middle. Its low brick wall was topped with black iron railings caging a privet hedge. An oak gate between square brick pillars led to a front garden five or six paces long, shared with the neighbours and containing four London planes which were starting to turn.

Ten stone steps, flanked by a pair of cement urns sprouting marigolds, led to a portico six feet wide which shaded the brown-stained front door. Eliot was amused by the architect's embellishments to his cheap suburban villa. The tall window beside the front door had an ornamental balcony, those above were edged with elaborate moulding in cement. The next pair of houses were only a couple of yards away, a narrow passage leading past the tradesmen's entrance to the back garden.

Nancy wore an accordion-pleated navy skirt with a lace blouse, Eliot a blue serge suit and white shirt. Pot-luck in Holloway did not seem to invoke dressing. The bell instantly brought footsteps. To Eliot's surprise Crippen himself answered the door. A professional man practising even as a dubious dentist should afford a servant.

'Well, how nice! Belle will be so delighted you could make it.' Crippen's affable greeting slid into the hushed remark, 'Mr and Mrs Martinetti have just arrived, the famous music-hall comic singing act, you know. Retired now, and he's not altogether A1.' His voice dropped further in professional confidence. 'He has to be regularly dilated.'

A narrow hallway with a well-varnished staircase and a hat-stand led to the parlour. It was all pink. Pink wallpaper, pink plush furniture, pink shades to the gas lamps, pink frames to the photographs on the piano, pink silk bows on the corners of the pictures and round the necks of the china cats on the pink-draped mantelpiece. At one side of the throatily roaring gas-fire sat a birdlike, bright-eyed woman in purple. Beside her stood a pale, grey, gloomy man, the comedian. Posed with one hand on a round, pink-draped table-which held a fan of theatre programmes, folded copies of the theatrical weekly Era, and a silver-framed picture of herself signed by Hana the theatrical photographer-was she to whom the room made a fitting compliment.

'So you're American too? Gee, it's great to meet you. I'm Belle Elmore.' Advancing with arms wide apart, Mrs Crippen clasped Nancy tightly. 'Which part are you from?'

'New York,' Nancy told her, breathless.

'So am I! Well, I'll be darned.' She had a Brooklyn accent, which Nancy had heard only from her servants. 'New York!' She gazed wistfully at the pink-washed ceiling. 'That's where I married Peter.'

It seemed that Hawley Harvey became plain Peter at home, while everyone flattered Mrs Crippen with her stage name. She was short and fat, her face Eliot thought as exciting as the top of a steak-and-kidney pudding. Her hair was piled high in artificial curls of gold darkening towards the roots. Her broad mouth was painted, her nose flat and her eyelids heavy with mascara. She was about ten years younger than her husband. She wore a pink satin dress with pink lace at the neck and in tufts from the shoulders, so pinched at the waist that her corset whalebones seemed any instant liable to spring like a bear-trap.

Her bosom made a pink cushion to display her jewels. A semicircular brooch the size of an orange segment represented in gold and diamonds a rising fiery sun. Pearls dangled like bunches of grapes from her dйcolletage, a diamond pendant swung on a gold chain. She wore two diamond and two ruby rings on one hand, a diamond and wedding ring on the other, on her wrist was a gold watch.

The gold was not false, nor the stones paste, Eliot noticed with curiosity. That accounted for economy over a servant's wages.

She introduced Paul and Clara Martinetti. It was to be a nice little dinner, Belle explained expansively, which she had cooked herself. They were to dine in the breakfast room, immediately under the parlour, which looked across the front garden beside the steps. Eliot discovered this less pink, though the wallpaper was pink-striped and the clock-face on the mantel a pink china rose the size of the dinner-plates. He was finding the evening hugely amusing. Nancy was baffled. Was this first English home to receive her typical of the whole country? Or did all ordinary Americans abroad behave so oddly?

'I'm cold, Peter,' complained Belle peevishly. The breakfast room had the only remaining open fire in the house, she had explained, sharing the flue with a kitchen-range next door, the rest was converted to gas. Crippen meekly took a black scuttle to the cellar opposite, whey they heard him scraping up shovelfuls of coal. Clara Martinetti brought in roast shoulder of mutton, glistening potatoes under it. Crippen carved. He fetched a pitcher of beer from the cask they had noticed in the passage, asking Nancy thoughtfully if she preferred something else. She did. He produced a jug of lemonade, covered with muslin weighted by a fringe of coloured beads.

Belle meanwhile addressed them over the mutton like a star to reporters in her Drury Lane dressing-room. 'I decided to enter the profession at seventeen. Cora Turner I was in those days. Then I met Peter, who fell in love with me like that.' She snapped her fingers, ignoring the man silently slicing the meat at her elbow, 'Sure, he had to marry me right away. But I said to him, Nancy-I may call you Nancy, Miss Grange?'

'Oh, please.'

'I've got my artistic career to think of. Yes, sir. So I had my voice trained,' she said, as if referring to her poodle. 'Grand opera, that was my ambition. Carmen, Mimi in _La Bohиme,_ the Ring Cycle, y'know. And _Salome._ Especially Salome. I sure guess I could sing Salome a street better than Eva Tanguay right now in New York. They said in _Era _there was almost a riot, and it's been banned in Boston. She wears a stunning costume, seven veils with pearls, emeralds, rubies, diamonds, all as big as pebbles. Gee, I'd love to wear it,' she said longingly, munching half a roast potato.

'But Peter just had to come across here in 1900 as manager for Munyon's.' Crippen sat down to his own dinner. 'And like a good, dutiful wife I followed him a month or so later. Yes, sir, that was the end of my singing lessons. And my career in opera. So I went on the vaudeville stage instead. Peter! You've not served the onion sauce.'

Crippen hastily rose. So did Paul Martinetti, asking 'Might I visit a certain room?' with a lack of embarrassment indicating the request as familiar.'

Belle gave a generous smile. 'Peter, put down that sauce and take Paul upstairs. Be sure you close the window. He doesn't want to take a chill. But London disappointed me,' she continued solemnly. 'Why, London invented the music hall! I'd my idea for my own sketch, I had writers and composers hired, I could have played the Alhambra, the Empire, the Coliseum, the Hippodrome, Collins's, the Oxford. All I got was the Old Marylebone, the Euston Palace, the Camberwell. I've not worked for _three whole years,'_ she confessed indignantly. 'But I got me a bad agent. Yeah, several bad agents. They did me out of money, that all. Oh, I'll get a break, it's often as long coming as Christmas, isn't it, Clara?'

'Belle does such wonderful work for us at the Music Hall Ladies' Guild,' Clara Martinetti said admiringly.

'I'm the honorary treasurer,' Belle told them proudly. 'We've rooms in Albion House, just below Peter's surgery.'

'Which Belle arranged at a most reasonable rent. I don't know what we'd do without Belle, honestly,' Clara continued fondly. 'She's at every meeting every Wednesday-aren't you Belle? She organizes our charity performances, our dance at the Cri-a really big do every February-and lovely tea-parties and fresh-air outings for the kiddies. As I always say to Mrs Ginnett and Lil Hawthorne and to Melinda May-she's our secretary and lives in Clapham-Belle's a real ball of fire.' Belle simpered through this shower of adulation. Clara Martinetti explained to the visitors, 'The Guild performs charity work among those of the profession who have fallen upon hard times.'

Eliot hoped that few would fall upon times much harder than the three in the house. The Martinettis had faded without the limelight to the fragile paleness of dried flowers. Belle Elmore assumed the affectations and trappings of an actress, as a swindler enjoyed the fantasy of riches.

'Are you religious, Dr Beckett?' Belle asked with startling gravity, as the two men returned.

'I'm scientific, which is the same thing. I study reverently the process of life and death, and try to explain God in a chemical reaction.'

'I've been a devout Catholic,' she explained with the same solemnity, not seeming to hear him. 'Four years now, since we moved into this house. I'm gonna convert my husband.' She sounded as if still talking of converting the house to gas.

'My wife wants to choose my religion, as she does the pattern of my trousers,' said Crippen humorously.

'Peter!' Belle seemed more outraged by impertinence to her than to God.

'Or his skirts.' Clara Martinetti giggled. 'When are you going to dress up for us again, Peter? Wearing Belle's wig, and paste on your moustache, you make a lovely lady with your figure.'

Eliot's suppressed laugh at the image of the middle-aged doctor cavorting in his wife's clothes almost choked him on his roast potato. He wanted to leave the pathetic household as soon as polite. But there was the fruit pudding, then Belle said they must go upstairs for whist, adding graciously, 'First I shall sing you some of my numbers.'

Opening the parlour door, she explained, 'Pink's my lucky colour, y'know. Lil Hawthorne at the Ladies' Guild has just gone and hung _green _wallpaper in her drawing-room. Gee, I told her, she'd got a real hoodoo there. She'll have bad luck, sure as fate. I won't have green in the house.'

Belle sat on the pink-topped piano stool and sang _Aubery Plantagenet, the Hero of the Penny Novelette._ Then _He's a Naughty Naughty Boy, _followed by _In Sweet Ceylon._ Paul Martinetti rose and said he wanted to visit a certain room again.

The poor fellow has a urethral stricture, the late result of the clap, Eliot diagnosed. He wondered if his wife knew. The exertion of Belle's performance sent her down to the kitchen for a bottle of brandy. She poured Eliot a glass, drank one herself and had started another when Crippen returned with Paul Martinetti, and bending over Eliot asked almost inaudibly if he would care to see a certain room, too. They mounted the front stairs, Belle setting out cards on a collapsible baize-covered table.

On the landing, carpet regressed to red linoleum. Two upstairs doors were shut, through another Eliot glimpsed a capacious bath-tub surmounted by a shiny brass geyser. He saw a narrow stair ascended to servants' rooms above. Curiously drawing aside a net curtain in the lavatory, Eliot could see across thirty yards of back garden and the gaslit rear windows of houses in Brecknock Road. Crippen waited solicitously outside.

Descending the stairs, Crippen volunteered, 'I expect you'd like to talk about that preparation, Tuberculozyne, Dr Beckett?'

'Very much. Have you the formula?'

Crippen apologized in his soft voice, 'It's the property of Munyon's Homeopathic Remedies, with whom I have severed my connection. I was obliged to resign because Professor Munyon considered that my wife's theatrical career diminished the dignity of his firm,' he confided, Eliot suspected untruthfully. 'But perhaps you've heard of Amorette, Dr Beckett? I invented it while manager of the Sovereign Remedy Company. A nerve tonic.'

Eliot shook his head. The name suggested that the nerves it stimulated were erotic ones.

'Would you be interested in entering partnership with me?' Eliot's head jerked in surprise. 'I'm greatly experienced in the marketing of medicine,' Crippen asserted. 'I can write an effective letter to a patient-whether satisfied or dissatisfied. I have quite a reputation for preparing advertising copy. And when the Drouet business failed, I acquired their mailing-list,' he added stealthily. 'I have Ј200 in the Yale Tooth Specialists-Dr Ryland contributes his experience, knowledge and skill, we split the profits fifty-fifty-which unfortunately leaves me short of capital for Amorette.'

'No,' Eliot told him.

'The remedies I have advertised through my professional life have given much benefit Dr Beckett,' he persisted. 'I have testimonials-perfectly genuine testimonials-to prove it.' He raised his bulgy eyes, staring plaintively through gold-rimmed glasses. 'I guess I practice as honestly as any who prescribe remedies they know in their hearts to be useless.'

Eliot struggled to be fair. Apart from digitalis for the heart, mercury for syphilis, codeine for a headache, no doctor gave any drug with sure effect. He wondered if Crippen flirted with the fantasy of being a serious physician, as Belle was wedded to hers of being a real actress.

'Perhaps Miss Grange' Crippen suggested, 'who from appearance strikes me as a lady of substance-'

'Your assessment is perfectly correct. Miss Grange has a fortune. She has also a sharp Yankee eye for a swindler.'

'It was impolite of me, bringing Miss Grange's name into our talk of business,' Crippen apologized mildly. 'I can't tell you how honoured I am, receiving a fellow doctor under my roof. To enjoy professional conversation, you know. Belle has many friends, she entertains a lot, she must keep up appearances, of course.' They had reached the hall. 'I hope you will not refuse my hospitality in the future?'

Eliot declined whist. Crippen was dispatched through the drizzle for a cab. Belle kissed Nancy several times. Eliot called his address to the driver, the pair of padded leather knee-doors slammed, the hansom clopped towards Camden Road.

They laughed, hugging each other with the delight of well-mannered children released from the ludicrous antics of adults.

'The opera! She'd grace the stage like a German street band in the orchestra pit,' Eliot decided.

'Can you imagine them making love? Lap-dog and hippopotamus!'

Eliot recalled that it was no distance to his lodgings. 'You're coming in, dearest?'

Nancy shook her head firmly. 'I must go back to the Savoy. There's Baby's telegram. It hadn't arrived when I left.'

'The temperature will have settled by now, I'm sure.'

Nancy hesitated before admitting, 'And I'm worried about the sponge. It may not always work.'

'How the world has grown suddenly enlightened of its responsibilities to Dr Marie Stopes as to God,' said Eliot lightly. 'Science and passion make strange bedfellows, don't they? Oh, I'll visit a rubber shop. I'll spend two shillings on a dozen of their goods, constructed with the resilience of tyres on a motor-bus. You should anyway wear a Dutch cap, which is safer and more comfortable.'

She touched his cheek. 'Dear, I still tremble to talk of such things.'

'Many married couples never mention the entire business all their lives. Odd-the only bodily function they share. Creating children is the most serious thing any human being does for fun.'

'I'm your fun?' She nestled against him. 'How you delight in making fun of anything serious.'

'Who could bear contemplating marriage with the slightest seriousness? A commonplace one hangs together for its first year through passion, for the next five through respectability, and after that from habit.'

'You're lecturing me again!'

'You're coming back to London?' he asked earnestly. She kissed him. 'Sure, I am. As soon as Baby's settled.'

'I'd sail to see you in New York.'

'You wouldn't like me there. You wouldn't like anything about me.'

The horse slowed down. 'Whatever happens, we shall meet again,' she assured him solemnly.

'I shall cherish the idea, as sensible people of life after death. There's really no point in thinking otherwise, _is _there?'

They stopped. The small, square trapdoor overhead sprung open, with the customary rough and grubby cabman's hand from a frayed and greasy cuff, jerking one way and another for which passenger should pay the fare.

'The lady is going on,' Eliot directed upwards. 'The Savoy Hotel.'

A scatter of chimes from the church clock marked midnight. Eliot had three hours of his usual working day. He lit his gas, stoked the fire, boiled a kettle for a cup of tea. Changing coat for cardigan, he uncapped his fountain-pen and resumed _The Health of Nations._

He had been writing an hour when the front doorbell jangled violently. He took no notice. Men arrived unexpectedly at any hour of darkness-either commanding, desperate or frightened. The German housekeeper was trained for these emergencies. He heard footsteps on the stair, a knock came to his door, the maid white-faced in her shift admitted Nancy.

Her face was blotched and contorted. She threw a buff flimsy on his writing-block. Eliot read,

MISS NANCY GRANGE SAVOY HOTEL LONDON DEEPLY REGRET MISS JANE GRANGE PASSED AWAY AT SIX O'CLOCK THIS EVENING HER DEATH WAS SUDDEN AND PEACEFUL ANGLICAN PRIEST AMONG OUR PATIENTS WAS AT HER BEDSIDE STOP CAUSE OF MISS GRANGES DEATH TUBERCULAR MENINGITIS PLEASE ADVISE YOUR WISHES PROFOUND CONDOLENCES PASQUIER.

'There!' Nancy shouted at him. 'She's dead. I never saw her again. You made me come to London. You told me that temperature was nothing. When I should have been at her side, I was letting you make love to me like a woman off the streets.'

Nancy fell on the sofa, covering her face, starting to cry loudly. 'Baby darling, Baby! How I loved you, I loved you…'

Eliot put his arm round her shoulders, but she shook it off violently. She went on accusing him, 'You took advantage of me in that horrible Swiss place, advantage of my loneliness, my vulnerability, my exile. I hate you. Who are you, compared with Baby? A nobody, a nothing. My God! How I wish I'd kept you at your distance. Baby died alone among strangers, foreigners. I can't believe it, I can't believe I was such a craven fool to leave her.'

'Nancy-'

'Don't touch me. I've been wicked, you've made me wicked.'

The resilience and resourcefulness of Eliot's mind failed him. He sensed no point in words for his defence, or for her own. She was shedding guilt upon him before it crushed her.

'There's need for practical arrangements,' he suggested quietly after some minutes. 'May I help you? It's often the doctor's lot.'

He knew the first boat train left Charing Cross Station, near the hotel, at eight in the morning. The night porters at the Savoy would arrange tickets and reservations to Basle. The trying business of packing could be left to the maids. He advised her to get some rest, he suggested a sleeping-draught, but she objected. She had transatlantic telegrams to send her father, to Baby's friends. His deliberately diverting her mind to expediences calmed her. She had left the hansom at the door. He offered to return with her, but she angrily refused.

Eliot went back to his room and sat in the chair by the fire. He was still sitting there when daylight began to edge the curtains. He did not care in the least that Baby was dead. That Nancy had left him meant more than anything in his ambitious world.