Free The Bachelors by Muriel Spark Page A

won’t ever let me use the needle on her.’
    ‘Do you
watch her taking it?’
    ‘No.
You see, she won’t let me see her doing it.’
    ‘I’ll
have a talk with her. I’d better come along.’
    ‘Well,’
Patrick said, ‘I don’t think that’s necessary. I’ll tell her she’ll die if she
doesn’t take her insulin. I’ll say you said so. How long would it take?’
    ‘It
varies,’ said the doctor. ‘My goodness, if Alice really did get negligent she
might die within a few days. But she knows—’
    ‘ Perhaps, on the other hand, she is taking too much insulin,’ Patrick
said. ‘Would that account for her symptoms?’
    ‘What
are the symptoms? Exhausted? Hungry?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Really,
you know, I’ll have to see her. What makes you think she isn’t following her
proper routine in the mornings?’
    ‘Oh, it’s
only an idea I had,’ Patrick said. ‘I may be quite wrong.’
    ‘Is she
testing her urine every morning?’
    ‘I don’t
know,’ Patrick said. ‘It’s all just a stupid idea in my mind that she may be
neglecting her insulin treatment. She’s probably just off colour, with the baby
and so forth…. It’s a worry for me. Tell me, if she took too much insulin,
what might happen?’
    ‘She’d
die. I’ll look in this afternoon,’ said the doctor.
    ‘Very
well,’ Patrick said. ‘Good of you,’ he said; and the doctor was vaguely
disturbed by his docility. Patrick was saying, his voice trailing off, ‘But my
suspicions may be quite unfounded, and how am I to know what she does with the
needle and so forth…?’
     
    ‘Feeling better?’ said
Patrick.
    ‘Heaps
better,’ she said. ‘I’m going to work tonight.’
    ‘Did
you miss me the last two days?’ Patrick said.
    ‘You
know I did, darling.’
    ‘I was
worried about you all the time,’ he said. ‘I asked Dr. Lyte to come and see
you.’
    ‘Oh! He
hasn’t been.’
    ‘He’s
coming this afternoon.’
    ‘Well,
you can put him off. It’s too late. I’m better.’
    ‘He’s
anxious in case you’ve been forgetting to take your insulin.’
    ‘I
never forget my insulin. But I’ve missed you giving me the injection.’ She took
his hand. ‘I’ve missed that little touch the last two mornings, Patrick.’
    ‘Dr. Lyte,’
Patrick said, ‘wondered if perhaps you were taking too much.’
    ‘I
never take too much. Does he think I’m an imbecile? I’ve been taking injections
for six years.’
    ‘Well,
I’ll ring and put him off,’ Patrick said.
    ‘I’ll ring and tell him what I think of him,’ she said. ‘Suggesting
that I’m negligent’
    ‘Now,
Dr. Lyte is a good friend. Better leave him to me. I’ll tell him you’re all
right now.’
    ‘And
then we’ll go out and celebrate,’ she said, ‘the collapse of the court case.’
    ‘Well,
it’s only in abeyance. Of course Freda Flower hasn’t a leg to stand on. But she’s
a dangerous woman, and she could change her mind.’ His voice faded away out of
the window where he was looking.
    ‘Hasn’t
she got a heart?’ said Alice. ‘Hasn’t she got a heart?’
     
    ‘The police want to
proceed,’ Martin Bowles told Ronald in the book-lined banisters’ chambers. ‘But
the widow won’t stand by her evidence satisfactorily. Seton has scared the
pants off her with messages from beyond the grave.’
    ‘Is it
forgery, then? I thought you said fraudulent conversion,’ Ronald said.
    ‘Fraudulent
conversion on one count. But Seton has now produced a letter by which he hopes
to prove that the widow gave him the money. Of course, it’s a forgery.’
    Ronald
looked at the letters and the sad second-hand-looking cheque with the bank’s
mark stamped on it.
    ‘She
wants them back,’ Martin said. ‘But the police are hanging on to them. We’ve
got photostats.’
    ‘I can’t
work from photostats,’ Ronald said, locking the documents away in his
brief-case. ‘The widow will have to wait.’
    ‘I’ll
give you a lift home,’ Martin said. ‘I’m going