Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1446 page)

“And when — when —
 
— ” Lord Harry was frightfully pale. His lips moved, but he could not finish the sentence. The Thing he had agreed to was terribly near, and it looked uglier than he had expected.

“Oh! when?” the doctor replied carelessly. “Perhaps to-day — perhaps in a week. Here, you see, Science is sometimes baffled. I cannot say.”

Lord Harry breathed deeply. “If the man is in so serious a condition,” he said, “is it safe or prudent for us to be alone in the house without a servant and without a nurse?”

“I was not born yesterday, my lord, I assure you,” said the doctor in his jocular way. “They have found me a nurse. She will come to-day. My patient’s life is, humanly speaking” — Lord Harry shuddered — ”perfectly safe until her arrival.”

“Well — but she is a stranger. She must know whom she is nursing.”

“Certainly. She will be told — I have already told her — that she is going to nurse Lord Harry Norland, a young Irish gentleman. She is a stranger. That is the most valuable quality she possesses. She is a complete stranger. As for you, what are you? Anything you please. An English gentleman staying with me under the melancholy circumstances of his lordship’s illness. What more natural? The English doctor is staying with his patient, and the English friend is staying with the doctor. When the insurance officer makes inquiries, as he is very likely to do, the nurse will be invaluable for the evidence she will give.”

He rose, pulled up the blinds noiselessly, and opened the windows. Neither the fresh air nor the light awoke the sleeping man.

Vimpany looked at his watch. “Time for the medicine,” he said. “Wake him up while I get it ready.”

“Would you not — at least — -suffer him to have his sleep out?” asked Lord Harry, again turning pale.

“Wake him up. Shake him by the shoulder. Do as I tell you,” said the doctor, roughly. “He will go to sleep again. It is one of the finer qualities of my medicine that it sends people to sleep. It is a most soothing medicine. It causes a deep — a profound sleep. Wake him up, I say.” he went to the cupboard in which the medicines were kept. Lord Harry with some difficulty roused the sick man, who awoke dull and heavy, asking why he was disturbed.

“Time for your medicine, my good fellow,” said the doctor. “Take it, and you shall not be disturbed again — I promise you that.”

The door of the cupboard prevented the spy from seeing what the doctor was doing; but he took longer than usual in filling the glass. Lord Harry seemed to observe this, for he left the Dane and looked over the doctor’s shoulder. “What are you doing?” he asked in a whisper.

“Better not inquire, my lord,” said the doctor. “What do you know about the mysteries of medicine?”

“Why must I not inquire?”

Vimpany turned, closing the cupboard behind him. In his hand was a glass full of the stuff he was about to administer.

“If you look in the glass,” he said, “you will understand why.”

Lord Harry obeyed. He saw a face ghastly in pallor: he shrank back and fell into a chair, saying no more.

“Now, my good friend,” said the doctor, “drink this and you’ll be better — ever so much better, ever so much better. Why — that is brave —
 
— ” he looked at him strangely, “How do you like the medicine?”

Oxbye shook his head as a man who has taken something nauseous. “I don’t like it at all,” he said. “It doesn’t taste like the other physic.”

“No I have been changing it — improving it.”

The Dane shook his head again. “There’s a pain in my throat,” he said; “it stings — it burns!”

“Patience — patience. It will pass away directly, and you will lie down again and fall asleep comfortably.”

Oxbye sank back upon the sofa. His eyes closed. Then he opened them again, looking about him strangely, as one who is suffering some new experience. Again he shook his head, again he closed his eyes, and he opened them no more. He was asleep.

The doctor stood at his head watching gravely. Lord Harry, in his chair, leaned forward, also watching, but with white face and trembling hands.

As they watched, the man’s head rolled a little to the side, turning his face more towards the room. Then a curious and terrifying thing happened. His mouth began slowly to fall open.

“Is he — is he — is he fainting?” Lord Harry whispered.

“No; he is asleep. Did you never see a man sleep with his mouth wide open?”

They were silent for a space.

The doctor broke the silence.

“There’s a good light this morning,” he said carelessly. “I think I will try a photograph. Stop! Let me tie up his mouth with a handkerchief — so.” The patient was not disturbed by the operation, though the doctor tied up the handkerchief with vigour enough to awaken a sound sleeper. “Now — we’ll see if he looks like a post-mortem portrait.”

He went into the next room, and returned with his camera. In a few minutes he had taken the picture, and was holding the glass negative against the dark sleeve of his coat, so as to make it visible. “We shall see how it looks,” he said, “when it is printed. At present I don’t think it is good enough as an imitation of you to be sent to the insurance offices. Nobody, I am afraid, who knew you, would ever take this for a post-mortem portrait of Lord Harry. Well, we shall see. Perhaps by-and-by — to-morrow — we may be able to take a better photograph. Eh?” Lord Harry followed his movements, watching him closely, but said nothing. His face remained pale and his fingers still trembled. There was now no doubt at all in his mind, not only as to Vimpany’s intentions, but as to the crime itself. He dared not speak or move.

A ring at the door pealed through the house. Lord Harry started in his chair with a cry of terror.

“That,” said the doctor, quietly, “is the nurse — the new nurse — -the stranger.” He took off the handkerchief from Oxbye’s face, looked about the room as if careful that everything should be in its right place, and went out to admit the woman. Lord Harry sprang to his feet and passed his hand over the sick man’s face.

“Is it done?” he whispered. “Can the man be poisoned? Is he already dead? — already? Before my eyes?”

He laid his finger on the sick man’s pulse. But the doctor’s step and voice stopped him. Then the nurse came in, following Vimpany. She was an elderly, quiet-looking French woman.

Lord Harry remained standing at the side of the sofa, hoping to see the man revive.

“Now,” said Vimpany, cheerfully, “here is your patient, nurse. He is asleep now. Let him have his sleep out — he has taken his medicine and will want nothing more yet awhile. If you want anything let me know. We shall be in the next room or in the garden — somewhere about the house. Come, my friend.” He drew away Lord Harry gently by the arm, and they left the room.

Behind the curtain Fanny Mere began to wonder how she was to get off unseen.

The nurse, left alone, looked at her patient, who lay with his head turned partly round, his eyes closed, his mouth open. “A strange sleep,” she murmured; “but the doctor knows, I suppose. He is to have his sleep out.”

“A strange sleep, indeed!” thought the watcher. She was tempted at this moment to disclose herself and to reveal what she had seen; but the thought of Lord Harry’s complicity stopped her. With what face could she return to her mistress and tell her that she herself was the means of her husband being charged with murder? She stayed herself, therefore, and waited.

Chance helped her, at last, to escape.

The nurse took off her bonnet and shawl and began to look about the room. She stepped to the bed and examined the sheets and pillow-case as a good French housewife should. Would she throw back the curtain? If so — what would happen next? Then it would become necessary to take the new nurse into confidence, otherwise —
 
— Fanny did not put the remainder of this sentence into words. It remained a terror: it meant that if Vimpany found out where she had been and what she had seen and heard, there would be two, instead of one, cast into a deep slumber.

The nurse turned from the bed, however, attracted by the half-open door of the cupboard. Here were the medicine bottles. She took them out one by one, looked at them with professional curiosity, pulled out the corks, smelt the contents, replaced the bottles. Then she went to the window, which stood open; she stepped out upon the stone steps which led into the garden, looking about her, to breathe the soft air of noon among the flowers.

She came back, and it again seemed as if she would examine the bed, but her attention was attracted by a small book-case. She began to pull down the books one after the other and to turn them over, as a half-educated person does, in the hope of finding something amusing. She found a book with pictures. Then she sat down in the armchair beside the sofa and began to turn over the leaves slowly. How long was this going to last?

It lasted about half an hour. The nurse laid down the volume with a yawn, stretched herself, yawned again, crossed her hands, and closed her eyes. She was going to sleep. If she would only fall so fast asleep that the woman behind the curtain could creep away!

But sometimes at the sleepiest moment sleep is driven away by an accident. The accident in this case was that the nurse before finally dropping off remembered that she was nursing a sick man, and sat up to look at him before she allowed herself to drop off.

Stung with sudden inspiration she sprang to her feet and bent over the man. “Does he breathe?” she asked. She bent lower. “His pulse! does it beat?” she caught his wrist.

“Doctor!” she shrieked, running into the garden. “Doctor! Come — come quick! He is dead!”

Fanny Mere stepped from her hiding-place and ran out of the back door, and by the garden gate into the road.

She had escaped. She had seen the crime committed. She knew now at least what was intended and why she was sent away. The motive for the crime she could not guess.

CHAPTER LI

WHAT NEXT?

WHAT should she do with the terrible secret?

She ought to inform the police. But there were two objections. First, the nurse may have been mistaken in supposing her patient to be dead. She herself had no choice but to escape as she did. Next, the dreadful thought occurred to her that she herself until the previous day had been the man’s nurse — his only nurse, day and night. What was to prevent the doctor from fixing the guilt of poisoning upon herself? Nay; it would be his most obvious line of action. The man was left alone all the morning; the day before he had shown every sign of returning strength; she would have to confess that she was in hiding. How long had she been there? Why was she in hiding? Was it not after she had poisoned the man and when she heard the doctor’s footstep? Naturally ignorant of poisons and their symptoms, it seemed to her as if these facts so put together would be conclusive against her. Therefore, she determined to keep quiet in Paris that day and to cross over by the night boat from Dieppe in the evening. She would at first disclose everything to Mrs. Vimpany and to Mountjoy. As to what she would tell her mistress she would be guided by the advice of the others.

She got to London in safety and drove straight to Mr. Mountjoy’s hotel, proposing first to communicate the whole business to him. But she found in his sitting-room Mrs. Vimpany herself.

“We must not awake him,” she said, “whatever news you bring. His perfect recovery depends entirely on rest and quiet. There” — she pointed to the chimneypiece — ”is a letter in my lady’s handwriting. I am afraid I know only too well what it tells him.”

“What does it tell?”

“This very morning,” Mrs. Vimpany went on, “I called at her lodging. She has gone away.”

“Gone away? My lady gone away? Where is she gone?”

“Where do you think she is most likely to have gone?”

“Not? — oh! — not to her husband? Not to him! — oh! this is more terrible — far more terrible — than you can imagine.”