Doctor Fisher of Geneva

14

I sent to Doctor Fischer the letter that he required. I wrote the dry facts of his daughter’s death and I told him when and where she was to be buried. It was not the hay fever season so that I could expect no tears, but I thought he might possibly turn up. He didn’t and there was no one to watch her being put into the ground, except the Anglican padre, our twice-weekly maid and myself. I had her buried in Saint Martin’s cemetery in Gibraltan ground (in Switzerland the Anglican Church belongs to the diocese of Gibraltar) because she had to be put somewhere. I had no idea what religious faith Doctor Fischer would have claimed to hold or her mother - or in what church Anna-Luise had been baptized - we had not had sufficient time together to learn such unimportant details about one another. As an Englishman it seemed the easiest thing to bury her according to English rites, since nobody so far as I know has established agnostic cemeteries. Most Swiss in the Canton of Geneva are Protestant, and her mother had probably been buried in a Protestant cemetery, but Swiss Protestants believe seriously in their religion - the Anglican Church, with all its contradictory beliefs, seemed closer to our agnostic views. In the cemetery I half expected Monsieur Belmont to appear discreetly in the background as he had appeared at our wedding and again at the midnight Mass, but to my relief he wasn’t there. So there was no one I had to speak to. I was alone, I could go back alone to our flat, it was the next best thing to being with her.

What to do when I was there I had decided beforehand. I had read many years ago in a detective story how it was possible to kill oneself by drinking a half pint of spirits in a single draught, As I remembered the story, one character challenged the other to drink what was apparently called a sconce (the writer was Oxford educated). I thought I would make certain by dissolving in the whisky twenty tablets of aspirin which was all I had. Then I made myself comfortable in the easy chair in which Anna-Luise used to sit and put the glass on the table beside me, I felt at peace and an odd sense of near-happiness moved in me. It seemed to me that I could spend hours, even days, like that, just watching the elixir of death in the glass. A few grains of the aspirin settled to the bottom of the glass and I stirred them with my finger until they dissolved. As long as the glass was there I felt safe from loneliness, even from grief. It was like the interim of relief between two periods of pain, and I could prolong this interim at will.

Then the telephone rang. I let it ring for a while, but it disturbed the peace of the room like a neighbour’s dog. I got up and went into the hall. As I lifted the receiver I looked back at the glass for reassurance, that promise of no long future. A woman’s voice said, ‘Mr Jones. It is Mr Jones, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Mrs Montgomery.’ So the Toads had caught up with me after all, ‘Are you still there, Mr Jones?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wanted to say.., we’ve only just heard… how sorry we all are… ‘

‘Thank you,’ I said and rang off, but before I could get back to my chair, the telephone sounded again. Reluctantly I returned.

‘Yes?’ I said. I wondered which one it would be this time, but it was still Mrs Montgomery. How long it takes such women to say good-bye even on the telephone.

‘Mr Jones, you didn’t give me time to speak. I have a message for you from Doctor Fischer. He wants to see you.’

‘He could have seen me if he had come to his daughter’s funeral.’

‘Oh, but there were reasons.,. You mustn’t blame him… He will explain to you,,. He wants you to go and see him tomorrow… Any time in the afternoon…’

‘Why can’t he telephone himself?’

‘He very much dislikes the telephone. He always uses Albert… or one of us if we are around.’

‘Then why doesn’t he write?’

‘Mr Kips is away at the moment.’

‘Does Mr Kips have to write his letters?’

‘His business letters, yes.’

‘I have no business with Doctor Fischer.’

‘Something to do with a trust, I think. You will go, won’t you?’

‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘tell him… I will consider it.’ I rang off. At least that would keep him guessing all the next afternoon, for I had no intention of going. All I wanted was to return to my chair and the half-pint glass of neat whisky: a little sediment of aspirin had formed again, and I stirred this with my finger, but the sense of happiness had gone. I wasn’t alone any more. Doctor Fischer seemed to permeate the room like smoke.

There was one way to get rid of him and I drained the glass without drawing breath.

I had expected, judging from the detective story, that the heart would stop as suddenly as a clock, but I found I was still alive. I think now that the aspirin had been a mistake - two poisons can counteract each other. I should have trusted the detective novelist: such people are said to research carefully when it comes to medical details, and then, if I remember aright, the character who drank the sconce was already half drunk while I was dead sober. So it is that we often bungle our own deaths.

I wasn’t, for a moment, even sleepy. I felt more than usually clear-headed as one does when a little drunk, and in my temporary clarity I thought: trust, trust, and the reason for Doctor Fischer’s message suddenly came to me. Anna-Luise’s money from her mother, I remembered, was held in some kind of a trust: she had received the income only. I had no idea to whom the capital would belong now, and I thought with hatred: He doesn’t come to her funeral, but he’s already thinking of the financial consequences. Perhaps he gets the money - the blood money. I remembered her white Christmas sweater stained with blood. He was as greedy as the Toads, I thought. He was a Toad himself - the King Toad of them all. Then suddenly, in the way that I had pictured death would come, I was struck down by sleep.