The Chianti Flask by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Author:Marie Belloc Lowndes [Lowndes, Marie Belloc]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Devon mystery, 1930s, holiday reading, courtroom mystery, Golden Age Crime, amateur detective, criminal psychology
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2021-05-09T22:00:00+00:00

VII

A further week went by, and Mark Scrutton stood outside the great front door of Loverslea. It was close on noon, and he had had a long morning’s work.

His face was set and stern, for his last call had been on a rich retired London tradesman, who had declared it to be his belief that Mrs. Dousland had been certainly guilty. When asked the reason for that belief by his pretty nurse (whom Scrutton to himself described as “an impudent hussy”), the old man had observed, with a chuckle, that he shouldn’t be a bit surprised if it came out some day that the standoffish fine lady, for so he designated her, had been fond of the Italian fellow! Hadn’t she taken Angelo Terugi’s part when in the witness-box, and that though his evidence concerning the disappearance of the Chianti flask had gone some way towards hanging her? To that the nurse had observed, with a smile at the good-looking doctor, that it must be trying for a young woman to be married to a man nearly thirty years older than herself “and dotty for love of her.”

“‘Amorous’ was the word the judge used in his summing-up,” had added the patient, and Mark Scrutton had listened to that interchange of words in a turmoil of anger and of disgust, too.

Was that sort of base insinuation always made when a woman—however noble-minded and innocent—became the central figure of a cause célèbre? He had seen a good deal of the ugly side of humanity in his thirty-three years of life, but he was primarily a scientist, and between his first experiment in private practice, and the few months he had just spent at Silchester, what to himself appeared a lifetime had elapsed. With all his soul he pitied the general practitioner who has to endure the sort of vapid, vulgar and, as he had experienced to-day, grossly libellous talk from patients he must not, or dare not, offend.

It was with a certain grim satisfaction that he remembered, now, how he had put the fear of God into that old beast. He had done it very quietly, and suavely too, by simply observing to the nurse, in her patient’s presence, that she must be most careful not to repeat what had just been said, even if only in joke, as Mrs. Dousland could obtain enormous damages against any man, or woman, too, if it came to that, who in the presence of a third party had expressed disbelief in the justice of the verdict which had exonerated her. This especially would be the case if the remark were coupled with any doubt as to her moral character. “It would be,” he had concluded with what he hoped had appeared to be a smile, “a case of paying up and looking pleasant, for no lawyer would advise his client to go to court if threatened with such an action for libel and slander.” And at once the old man had adjured both the doctor and his nurse to forget what had been said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.