by Francis Iles
Four evenings later he proceeded to put it into action. Curiously enough, there was grape-fruit for dinner. Dr. Bickleigh took the coincidence for a lucky omen, and smiled as he dusted the powder over Julia’s portion. Julia’s headache that night was even worse than the last, and it was she herself who suggested morphia. That too, Dr. Bickleigh thought, was a good augury.
The next evening Julia had another headache, and the next, and the next. On the fourth evening Dr. Bickleigh thought it advisable to increase the dose of morphia a little, and told Julia so, explaining that her powers of resistance to it were getting greater. Julia, white with pain, quite agreed.
It distressed Dr. Bickleigh that Julia should have to suffer like this, but he quite saw that it could not be helped; in any case, it would not be for long. The two were living now on outwardly quite good terms, or as good as they ever had been. Madeleine’s name was never mentioned. Julia, who rose above her sex in many particulars, did so in this one too, and, whatever curiosity she may have had to stifle, never asked a thing about the progress of the affair. So far as one could judge, she had simply wiped the whole thing out of her mind. She had not even attempted to stop her husband from going up to The Hall before Madeleine went away, and, though she must have known they were in correspondence, she never once gave any indication of it. Julia was really a most exceptional woman. It was a pity, thought her husband with real regret, that she had got to die.
All through December and January she continued to suffer intermittently from her headaches, and Dr. Bickleigh, solicitous and sympathetic, continued to relieve her with morphia. Early in February she went away for a change to see if that would do her any good, though Dr. Bickleigh did not seem to think it would; they were both right, for, though she had felt much better during her fortnight’s holiday and had not had a single headache during that time, they began again immediately she got back.
“You ought to have taken a month,” Dr. Bickleigh told her sympathetically.
“Quite impossible,” said Julia. “What would happen to the house?” Which of course was unanswerable, even for a medical attendant and husband combined. “Besides,” she added, “there is no reason at all why I should be run down.” And one gathered that if there was no reason, then it was out of the question that Julia should be run down.
Dr. Bickleigh, it appeared, was inclined to agree with this. “I’m very much afraid it isn’t just a matter of being run down, after all, my dear. It looks to me like something organic.”
“Well, what?”
“That I can’t say. But if these headaches go on, I shall have to take you up to see a specialist.”
“You will do nothing of the kind, Edmund,” said Julia indignantly.
But the headaches did go on, and Dr. Bickleigh gained his point. They went up to London, with an appointment to see Sir Tamerton Foliott himself.
Sir Tamerton made a most thorough examination of Julia’s teeth, her eyes, her ears, and most things that were hers, keeping up all the time a running accompaniment of searching questions. Julia, who had taken a strong dislike to him at first sight, told her husband afterwards that she was sure he would have whisked out her liver and had a good look at that through his eyeglass before putting it back if he could have done so, he talked so much about it. However, Julia had not been manhandled for nothing, for Sir Tamerton was able to say with confidence and precision exactly what was wrong with her. She was eating too much, and the wrong foods: there was an old tooth-stump, which must come out at once; and, while she was about it, she had better have her tonsils out too, as they were most probably the cause of the whole trouble—one of them showed distinct signs of sepsis, de-fi-nite signs—have a look for yourself, Bickleigh; yes, they should come out without delay.
Sir Tamerton then jotted down a diet for her, tapped his teeth with his gold pencil a great number of times, swung his eyeglass (which he used, though no one would ever have believed it, because his left eye was slightly myopic), passed another reference or two to Julia’s liver in a chatty way, as if asking after an old friend who had gone a little downhill and was no longer quite so respectable as one could have wished but whom one wasn’t going to be so snobbish as to cut for all that, and finally shook hands most warmly considering that he was getting no fee for all this trouble. He also assured her that in future she would have no headaches, with such conviction that for the moment Julia actually believed him. It was just this conviction coinciding with his patients’ wishes which had made all the difference to Sir Tamerton Foliott between Harley Street and Wyvern’s Cross.
“But really, Edmund,” said Julia, as they walked along Harley street afterwards towards Baker Street Station, “why my tonsils?”
“Tonsils?” repeated Dr. Bickleigh vaguely. He was somewhat engrossed in his thoughts. His opinion of Foliott had gone down. Not that the man could have been expected to diagnose the real trouble, of course; that would have been a clairvoyant’s job, not a medical man’s; but really, all that stale old stuff . . .
“What could tonsils possibly have to do with headaches?”
“Oh, Sir Tamerton’s very keen on tonsils.” Dr. Bickleigh’s tone implied no censure of Sir Tamerton’s hobby; it is well known that specialists must have their idiosyncrasies. “He always advises their removal. Now if we’d gone to Hameldown Beacon, who’s nearly as big a man as Sir Tamerton, he’d have gone for your antrum, and paraffin oil.”
“If you know in advance what any specialist is going to tell you, why bother to take me to one?” remarked Julia.
“Oh, a second opinion is sometimes very useful,” Dr. Bickleigh replied smugly.
They went to Madame Tussaud’s.
Dr. Bickleigh had never been in the Chamber of Horrors before. He was much interested.
3
IN THE middle of March, Dr. Bickleigh put the second part of his plan into action. This was where the possibility of failure lay. Things had to be left entirely to Julia, and if Julia did not follow the course mapped out for her, then all her headaches had been wasted.
For Sir Tamerton, it appeared, had been quite wrong. So far from having no more headaches, she had suffered from them even more violently than before. From being intermittent they had now become practically continuous. Julia was getting white and drawn, and her healthy robustness had quite disappeared. All Wyvern’s Cross had noticed the change in her.
Another short holiday at the end of February, just a week taken by her husband’s earnest demands, had had no effect at all, in spite of sea air. She had been in such pain the whole time that she could hardly leave the lodgings. Dr. Bickleigh, who had managed to take the week off himself to look after his wife, was loud in his disappointment.
It was not for want of effort that Julia grew worse. The tooth-stump had been removed; she rigidly followed the diet Sir Tamerton had prescribed. Only her tonsils she refused to part with, and in this Dr. Bickleigh strongly agreed with her. The removal of tonsils is a painful operation, and there was not the least need for Julia to suffer unnecessary pain.
During this time morphia had been her stand-by. She had admitted, with an unmirthful smile, that it was the only thing that had kept her from going quite out of her mind. Dr. Bickleigh, really anxious to save her suffering, administered it to her whenever she asked for it, which now was very frequently. To make it effective he had had to double the original dose for the injections, and then treble it, and still more. By the middle of March Julia was having a good five grains a day.
It was then that Dr. Bickleigh judged the time to be ripe.
When she asked for her usual dose one evening after dinner he began to hum and ha.
“But I gave you a grain, my dear, just after tea.”
“I know, and now my head’s worse than ever.”
Dr. Bickleigh stroked his chin and looked very grave. “You know, it can’t go on like this. It simply can’t, Julia.”
“What can’t?”
“All this morphia.”
Julia
turned leaden eyes on him. “What do you mean, Edmund?” She pressed her hand to her forehead and went on looking at him from below it in the same dull way, as if it really did not matter much what he meant.
Dr. Bickleigh had to turn away. “Well—it’s very bad for you, you know.”
“It can’t be worse than this.”
“No, I mean if you get to rely on it like this, can’t carry on without it, well . . .”
“Kindly put into plain words what you do mean, Edmund,” said Julia wearily.
“Well, then, to put it bluntly, it’ll become a habit.”
“Nonsense! If you’re hinting that there is a likelihood of my becoming a drug-fiend . . . Really, Edmund.”
“Oh, no; not so bad as that. I know you only want it when there’s real necessity for it. But for all that, Julia, it’s bad for you. Very bad. You must try to do without it.”
“That’s absurd. If you can’t cure me, Edmund, the least you can do is to relieve me. Kindly come to the surgery and give me an injection at once.”
“Julia, you must try to bear it.” Dr. Bickleigh showed nothing but concern, though his pulses were racing. “Honestly you must. Look at your arm: it’s covered with punctures already. It mustn’t go on. As your medical man, I must insist. If you want any more injections, you’ll have to—to change your doctor. I can’t administer any more, for your own sake, Julia.”
Mrs. Bickleigh, already at the door, answered in a voice made peremptory by pain, but she found her husband unexpectedly firm. Nor was he to be shaken in the argument that followed, by reason, or by as near as Julia could come to entreaties: no more morphia would he administer to her; if she wanted more, she must change her doctor, though no doctor who knew what she had been having would take the responsibility of giving her more. The discussion was ended only by Dr. Bickleigh going out of the house altogether on a night-call.
He did not get back till past eleven, and went straight to the surgery. His anxiety was so great that he could hardly bear to look at what he had come to see. Had Julia—or not? It was the question he had been asking himself continuously during his two hours of aimless driving that had occupied the place of the fictitious night-call.
If she hadn’t, it was not through care on his part. For over a month now he had been administering Julia’s injections in the surgery itself. The whole preparation was therefore familiar to her—she knew which bottle contained the morphia, knew the drawer in which he kept the syringe, knew as much about the method of administration as he did himself. No, if Julia hadn’t, it was simply that her will was not merely strong, but superhuman.
He pulled open the drawer where the syringe was kept as slowly as if the operation gave him real physical pain, and peered inside. The next moment he straightened up with a sigh of relief. The piece of cotton he had laid across the syringe was definitely gone.
Julia had followed the course prescribed.
4
AT THE beginning of April, Madeleine came back to The Hall. From Monte Carlo she had gone to Florence, from Florence to Rome, from Rome half over the rest of Europe. Dr. Bickleigh, guiltily knowing himself responsible for this Odyssey, felt a perfect scoundrel when Madeleine told him how little she had enjoyed it all.
Their meetings were resumed, but the old ardour was not altogether recaptured. Madeleine was nervy. Travel did not seem to have soothed her much in that respect. She asked many awkward questions, too, about Julia’s intentions. Was the divorce still pending? Nothing must be done without her own knowledge and consent: could Edmund promise her that he was keeping nothing back? Why did not Julia come to see her again and discuss the whole situation once more? She did want a Bickleigh divorce, she did not want a Bickleigh divorce; they must make a clean break after her long absence, her absence had only brought them closer together than ever. Madeleine’s mind was always being made up in contrary directions. Dr. Bickleigh quite understood how difficult it all was for her, and was as distressed over her distress as she was. He also seemed to be running into Denny Bourne at The Hall a good deal more than he liked, but that too he quite understood: Madeleine insisted that he should.
In the second week in April, Dr. Bickleigh began to perfect the final details of his plan. Without saying a word, he had kept replenished the rapidly dwindling stocks of morphia in his surgery. Nothing more had been mentioned about Julia’s injections. It was understood that she was managing without them. Actually, he computed, she had raised her allowance to quite six grains a day; which, in view of the constant pain she now suffered, was not excessive.
Dr. Bickleigh felt for her very strongly. Her drawn face and dulled eyes quite upset him; it was terrible that Julia should have to suffer like this, entirely through her own obstinacy. The sooner he was able to put her out of her pain the better. So the next time she was going into Merchester he asked her to get a supply of drugs for him from a chemist’s there. The order he wrote out was concerned almost entirely with a large quantity of morphia, and his signature to it was a little shaky. The chemist, however, who knew him well, and Julia too, fulfilled it without hesitation.
Dr. Bickleigh also wrote to Julia’s sister, asking her to propose herself for a day’s visit and not mention having heard from him, as he had something to communicate to her of the greatest importance and secrecy, and if there were any other members of the family available would they come too, but not Sir Charles himself.
Hilda came, a large masterful woman, accompanied by her brother Victor, the one who found bridge and poker such useful accomplishments for an independently minded gentleman. Victor did not like either Julia or Hilda, and came most unwillingly.
After lunch, Dr. Bickleigh took them into his consulting-room, Julia having gone upstairs to rest, and spoke to them very seriously.
“You notice the change in Julia, of course? I’m sorry to have something most unpleasant to tell you. I thought it only right that her family should know. Besides, the responsibility is rather more than I care to shoulder alone.”
“Well, cut the preliminaries, Edmund, and tell us what is the matter,” said Hilda, with the family directness, and looked as she always contrived to look when addressing her brother-in-law— as if he really was not there at all.
“Dope,” observed Victor laconically, and lit a second cigar. He did not offer his case to Dr. Bickleigh.
“Really,” said Dr. Bickleigh, startled, “how did you . . . ?”
“Spotted it the moment I saw her. Seen plenty of cases in my time. No mistaking it, of course. What is it? Cocaine?”
“Morphia,” said Dr. Bickleigh, and told them the whole story.
“I should perhaps have been suspicious when she acquiesced so quietly in my discontinuing it,” he concluded, in the phrases he had rehearsed carefully beforehand, “but I’m afraid I hadn’t realised that it had got such a hold on her by then. I feel very much to blame.”
“But when you realised she was helping herself from your supplies, surely you cut them out?” suggested Hilda, addressing the window.
“Of course,” replied Dr. Bickleigh sadly. “But she forged my name to an order on a chemist in Merchester, and got a large supply that way.”
“Cunning,” remarked Julia’s brother, without very much concern; apparently the matter did not interest him particularly. “They always are. What you going to do, Bickleigh?”
“Well, that’s what I wished to see you about. In my opinion, she should be sent into a home. Only for a limited period, of course. Curative treatment.”
“Can you afford it?” asked Hilda bluntly. “It’s no good expecting us to help, you know.”
“I should be prepared to make such sacrifices as were necessary,” said Dr. Bickleigh, with quiet courage.
“I might be able to help a bit,” added Mr. Crewstanton sulkily.
“Humph!” said Hilda.
They fell into silence.
“I think,” said Dr. Bickleigh, “that I’d like you to see for yourself, Hilda. The punctures . . .”
>
“Surely there can be no need.”
“I think it would be better,” Dr. Bickleigh insisted gently. “My position is rather delicate, you see,” he added, with truth.
“If you mean, confirm what you’ve told us, I’ll ask her straight out. I don’t believe in beating about the bush,” said Hilda, to something just on the left of Dr. Bickleigh.
“That would be fatal,” the little man snapped, so firmly that his sister-in-law looked for a moment straight at him. “Your brother mentioned how cunning they are in—in this deplorable state. Julia would simply deny it.”
“Too ashamed to admit it, of course,” nodded Victor.
“But the evidence of the punctures can’t be got over. Really, I’d rather you did. You could easily make some excuse. The upper portion of the left forearm.”
“Very well,” said Hilda, rising. “If you really think it’s one’s duty.”
Dr. Bickleigh opened the door for her.
Victor and he discussed Julia’s illness in somewhat stilted terms. Dr. Bickleigh had only met this brother-in-law once before, at the wedding. To his enquiries about his sister’s breakdown in health, he replied that he very much feared it to be due to organic changes in the cerebral cortex, in which case things were very serious indeed. The pain would not only continue, but gradually increase. There could be very little hope.
“One mustn’t lose sight of the possibility of a cerebral neoplasm, you see; of course, that would induce pressure symptoms, and quite probably metabolic changes leading to cachectic conditions,” he explained earnestly.
Victor tried at any rate to look the wiser. “No hope, eh?” he repeated, flicking his ash carefully on the carpet. “Then in that case d’you know what I’d do? I’d give her her head with this morphia, and let her finish herself off.”