‘No, of course. I think someone should see that she gets up to no tricks….’
Frederick seeing her back to the hospital….Leading her in, the heroine, pathetic or triumphant as best suited her; staging collapses, noisy outbursts about cruel Mrs. Harrison, yelling her bitchy little head off about Richard getting her into trouble, giving her a baby… Angrily boiling up the kettle in the kitchen, Stella thought with black despair that peace of mind was gone for ever: nothing, nothing would stop this girl. If one act failed, another would take its place; they would find her hanging about their door, besieging the houses of patients or friends, following Ricky about the hospital, making scenes in the wards Matron would bundle her off no doubt, at last; but the damage would be done by then. No use to plead, to appeal, to threaten, to command—the girl was lost to shame, beyond control; having nothing to lose, was in the strongest position of all. I wish to God she had taken morphia, thought Stella, pouring boiling water over the heaped coffee in the jug. Much I’d have done to bring her back to life! For two pins, I’d give her the damn dose myself! And straight upon the idle thought—formulate, positive, determination born complete and mature from the womb of necessity, it came—the knowledge of what she must do. Her heart reeled, her hands were clammy and cold, but without hesitation or remorse she recognised what was to be. Ann Kelly had told all the world that she had taken an overdose of morphia, that she wanted to die. Well, so she should.
A curtain descended between two distinct halves of her mind: the half that felt and the half that acted. All so easy, all so safe, so obvious. The note to the hospital authorities would be produced at the inquest; if morphia proved not to be missing from the hospital cupboard, it would be assumed that she had got it in some other way. The girl was hysterical, unbalanced, an exhibitionist; and in the family way. One more suicide by one more little psychopath; and no one, she had said, had been told the story about Richard Harrison being the father of the child….
Cool, decisive, without further reflection, she walked through to the surgery. ‘Ricky, I think you’d better take her through to the drawing room. We don’t want anyone to come in and find her here.’ She gave the two men no time to argue, hustled them, half dragging the girl, through to the other room. ‘Sit her down on the sofa. The coffee won’t be half a minute.’ She closed the drawing-room door behind her and, swiftly unlocking the cupboard in the surgery, took out the bottle of morphine tablets.
How many? She emptied half a dozen of the tiny pills into her hand, replaced the bottle, locked the cupboard and replaced the key. Back in the kitchen, she gave herself not a moment to reconsider: dropped the tablets into the cup, poured on the coffee, hot and strong, stirred in abundant sugar—walked through to the drawing room and thrust it under the girl’s nose. ‘Come on—drink this!’
The girl pushed it aside. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘Drink it!’ said Stella. The men looked up uneasily, half shocked by the vicious determination in her voice. The girl took the cup and drank, sipping it slowly, till all but a spoonful of dregs remained. Stella took the cup from her and went back with it into the kitchen; once there, she rinsed it out with scalding water, carefully preserving, however, the lipstick on the rim and the girl’s finger-prints and her own on the outside: stirred the coffee in the pot, poured into the cup just enough of the muddy deposit, left the cup on the draining-board of the sink and went back into the drawing-room. The whole thing had taken not half a minute. She said, taking care to preserve the irritable scorn of her manner, ‘I trust you’re now better?’ and could stand aside and wonder at her own grim determination; the subservience of her feeling self to the dictates of that remorseless, curtained-off other half of her mind.
They all stood looking down at the girl, Frederick impatient, Ricky on the hop because he ought long ago to have gone back to his case, Stella ice-cold and yet with a fluttering at her innermost heart. For now the other side of her mind had begun to work again, to admit the possibility of danger, the necessity to plan, to calculate. If the girl went back to the hospital now, they would soon enough see that she had indeed taken morphia and would deal with her accordingly. And to have her life saved now would make matters worse a hundredfold than they had been before, for the girl, conscious of no genuine attempt to administer poison to herself, would become aware that someone else had done it for her. And then—what a story would she not indeed have to relate?—confirmed by the fact that no morphia in fact would be found missing from the hospital. Or if she kept silent it would appear all a genuine attempt at suicide—since in view of her condition the dose would be diagnosed as a lethal one—and far more credence would be given to any story she chose to tell. No: the first step had been taken and from that there could be no going back. I am a murderess, thought Stella: a murderess—and from the very first step of my murder I am committed. I can’t turn back.