A Coat of Varnish by C. P. Snow

Author:C. P. Snow
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: A Coat of Varnish
ISBN: 9780755120062
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-05-11T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three

23

It began to rain. This was at the end of the last week in August. The summer weather, unbroken, without so much as a drizzle, hadn’t deviated for four months. Then it began to rain. It continued to rain, not with the gentle patter of a London autumn, wistful, consolatory, as a leaf or two spiralled down to the spotted pavements, but real rain which, in spite of the steady cloud cover, the town didn’t often know.

People who had grumbled at the heat now, within days, began grumbling at the rain. The earth in the Square gardens was still parched, but gutters were swirling. The sky was low, dark, unchanging, not the sky of ordinary Atlantic showery weather. One morning, all lights switched on in his sitting-room, Humphrey had a thought intruding. During the past five weeks, since the murder, the weather had been hot and brilliant. There had been someone who must be milling about, going through the workaday routine which one takes as unthinkingly as breathing, in a state where anxiety was not far away – probably not continually present, from what Humphrey had observed of other suspects, but sometimes laden with something darker than anxiety, more like dread.

Had that person – Humphrey found that his suspicions were unstable, they flickered among three or possibly four – been taunted by the serene sunlight, benign but without pity? Alternatively, was that person, or maybe a couple of them, becoming more anxious in this pelting dark? It was depressing enough for one comparatively indifferent to climatic oddities. Humphrey was recalling the old thought about the pathetic fallacy. The external weather ought to match what was going on within. Either way the sky outside didn’t seem especially appropriate. Looking out of his window, Humphrey thought that, if he had been a suspect, he would have felt deranged.

Certainly the pathetic fallacy seemed to be under attack. On a sepulchral morning, clouds at their standard thousand feet, rain steady, Kate telephoned. Humphrey had seen little of her since they had exchanged their half-resolve. It would have been valueless to press her, he thought. She had said, to ease his mind, that she was occupied night and day with her hospital porters. He accepted that that was true. Yes, it was her duty, and she was obsessively dutiful. But Humphrey felt that it gave her an excuse for delaying their own decision. Perhaps he didn’t accept that she was as devoted to her job as he would have been himself.

Without any doubt, he didn’t accept, or like, her need to take advice from Ralph Perryman. It was sensible, Perryman was a doctor, he had contacts in the hospital, was more sympathetic to the disaffected, perhaps, than Humphrey could have made himself. He didn’t often feel old, but he tried to absolve his jealous pangs by thinking that his lifespan was dwindling away.

However, on the telephone that morning, very early, before he had gone down to breakfast, she was elated, astonished, disquieted.

‘Good news!’ Her voice was very warm.

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