The Bronze Door by Raymond Chandler

Author:Raymond Chandler [Chandler, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, Raymond Chandler
Published: 2012-01-06T08:18:31+00:00

In the afternoon Mrs. Sutton-Cornish came back. She appeared quite suddenly before him in the study, sniffed harshly at the smell of tobacco and scotch, refused a chair, and stood very solid and lowering just inside the closed door. Teddy stood beside her for a moment, then hurled himself at the edge of the rug.

“Stop that, you little beast. Stop that at once, darling,” Mrs. Sutton-Cornish said. She picked Teddy up and stroked him. He lay in her arms and licked her nose and sneered at Mr. Sutton-Cornish.

“I find,” Mrs. Sutton-Cornish said, in a voice that had the brittleness of dry suet, “after numerous very boring interviews with my solicitor, that I can do nothing without your help. Naturally I dislike asking for that.”

Mr. Sutton-Cornish made ineffectual motions towards a chair and when they were ignored he leaned resignedly against the mantelpiece. He said he supposed that was so.

“Perhaps it has escaped your attention that I am still comparatively a young woman. And these are modern days, James.”

Mr. Sutton-Cornish smiled wanly and glanced at the bronze door. She hadn’t noticed it yet. Then he put his head on one side and wrinkled his nose and said mildly, without much interest:

“You’re thinking of a divorce?”

“I’m thinking of very little else,” she said brutally.

“And you wish me to compromise myself in the usual manner, at Brighton, with a lady who will be described in court as an actress?”

She glared at him. Teddy helped her glare. Their combined glare failed even to perturb Mr. Sutton-Cornish. He had other resources now.

“Not with that dog,” he said carelessly, when she didn’t answer.

She made some kind of furious noise, a snort with a touch of snarl in it. She sat down then, very slowly and heavily, a little puzzled. She let Teddy jump to the floor.

“Just what are you talking about, James?” she asked witheringly.

He strolled over to the bronze door, leaned his back against it and explored its rich protuberances with a fingertip. Even then she didn’t see the door.

“You want a divorce, my dear Louella,” he said slowly, “so that you may marry another man. There’s absolutely no point in it—with that dog. I shouldn’t be asked to humiliate myself. Too useless. No man would marry that dog.”

“James—are you attempting to blackmail me?” Her voice was rather dreadful. She almost bugled. Teddy sneaked across to the window curtains and pretended to lie down.

“And even if he would,” Mr. Sutton-Cornish said with a peculiar quiet in his tone, “I oughtn’t to make it possible. I ought to have enough human compassion—”

“James! How dare you! You make me physically sick with your insincerity!”

For the first time in his life James Sutton-Cornish laughed in his wife’s face.

“Those are two or three of the silliest speeches I ever had to listen to,” he said. “You’re an elderly, ponderous and damn dull woman. Go out and buy yourself a gigolo, if you want someone to fawn on you. But don’t ask me to make a beast of myself so that he can marry you and throw me out of my father’s house.

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