was dropping into a square enamel dish of carbolic the reddish-smeared glass slides he had been examining under the microscope. Nancy stood with hands clasped, parasol dangling. She met him there most days, when he had finished the Rцntograms.
'Have the Earl and Countess gone back to England?' he asked.
'They left the hotel early this morning.'
Monsieur Mittot had embalmed the body with pride. The undertaker had studied in Paris. He was a boon bestowed on Champette by the sanatorium, like trade for the shops. Sallow, fat, dark, heavily moustached, in crumpled sad black serge, he had hung about the Grand Hotel once the Earl and Countess arrived by overnight express to Basle, with their valet, lady's maid, frock-coated secretary and the British consul acquired at Lausanne. Not even the valet took notice of him. Monsieur Mittot expected the aristocratic corpse to be shipped in a splendid coffin, most rich families paying the fare home of their dead. But he was ignorant of a tradition in the Earl's family, since Wellington's Peninsular War, of being buried where they fell. The Earl thought the shuttling of corpses by railway vulgar.
Lady Sarah was buried in the English cemetery at Lausanne, among Indian Civil Servants and City men's widows. The consul murmured to the Earl in compensation that the chaplain had been to Eton. The small, bleak church was filled with patients from the Clinic Laлnnec fit enough to take the special train, weeping and coughing into their blue-glass bottles. Such emotion had startled Eliot. They shrugged at death, when it pushed past them in the corridors. A suicide-nobody believed the accident excuse-was different, real death. Dying from phthisis was the penalty of losing the game everyone played.
'When are you leaving Switzerland?' Nancy asked Eliot, as he dropped the last slide into the disinfectant.
He began washing his hands under the swan-necked tap. 'Wednesday of next week.'
'Taking a vacation before starting your politicizing?'
'This has been my vacation. Overpaid and overfed, the work demanding the abilities only of an earnest medical student. On my heels arrives Dr Hamish McCorquodale of Aberdeen University. A bachelor, the son of the manse-a cleric's offspring-he has sent in advance a packing-case weighty with medical books. He'll entertain you as adequately as me. Perhaps he'll bring his bagpipes.'
'Can't I do any work in the clinic? You know how I've longed to help the patients, instead of walking among them like some smug neutral in a war.'
'Why not come with me to London? Together we'll mount the quest for Crippen.'
'Together? Imagine the gossip!'
'Oh, everyone gossips all day about the pair of us.'
Nancy looked alarmed. 'How can I leave Baby? She was awfully upset over Lady Sarah. Her temperature's up a whole degree.'
'It'll be down in a month. She'd hardly notice you'd gone. I've never known a more dutiful relative than you, Nancy. If you don't take a holiday, you'll develop melancholia. Why not?' He was standing close to her. 'Perhaps you'll return with Dr Crippen's magic, to put the clinic out of business and bring upon Monsieur Mittot richly deserved ruin.'
'I cannot leave Baby,' she repeated firmly.
He clasped her. 'Self-sacrifice is so common in women, men take it for granted. It's not often combined with intelligence and determination. You're a woman with all the qualities I admire. Particularly when you've no more need to exercise them than to practice frugality.'
This compliment seeming to come from the brain rather than the heart, she was surprised when he kissed her for the first time. She felt it seemly to offer a mild struggle.
'I'll see what Baby says,' she told him breathlessly.
Baby was enthusiastic. 'Go to London and see the King,' she urged. 'Go right now, before the fog comes down. They say in November you can't see across the street. How will I know a month's passed, darling? Counting days is like counting the telegraph poles passing the window of your train.'
Maria-Thйrиse decided it. When Nancy suggested a month at home in Paris, she shed tears, fell on her knees, grabbed her mistress's hand and kissed it. Nancy was startled that her maid should be equally bored at Champette. It had never crossed her mind to ask.
Nancy bought tickets from Thomas Cook's, beside the handsome Lausanne post office. A day's journey to Basle connected with the overnight express which ran up the Rhine to Strasbourg, Metz and Lille to Calais. She arranged drafts at the English-American Bank, and bought English books for the journey from Theodore Sack's shop in the Rue Central. Her father replied to her cable by offering a blank cheque for the rights of Dr Crippen's cure.
Eliot said nothing of his own travelling plans. He was preoccupied preparing his patients for Dr McCorquodale. On the Wednesday morning, Nancy crossed the square surrounded by staff from the hotel and the proprietor, so anxious to secure her return that he had been hovering outside her room with the assiduousness of Monsieur Mittot outside those of guests with dying relatives. The train was already in the station, stubby engine pluming smoke into the clear air. There was no sign of Eliot. Nancy looked anxiously up and down the narrow wooden platform. A minute before departure he appeared in his usual Norfolk jacket and a wide-brimmed brown trilby, over one shoulder a stone-coloured English raincoat and a canvas rucksack. Round his neck was a long brown knitted muffler, in his hand a cheap suitcase cracked at one corner and secured with a length of rope. He greeted Nancy casually, strolled past her and climbed into the third-class coach.
The train puffed down the mountain. Nancy grew angry. She had imagined socially difficult scenes between Eliot and herself on the journey but she had never imagined that he would travel third. Even Maria-Thйrиse sitting opposite was going first-class to Lausanne.
'Haven't you any more baggage?' Nancy demanded, approaching, him at Lausanne station.
'I should like to have. But this is the limit of my possessions.' Eliot's eyes turned to Maria-Thйrиse, fussing over the removal of Nancy's portmanteau from the van. 'I found a pleasant line in my Swiss Baedeker-'The enormous weight of the large trunks used by some travellers not infrequently causes serious injury to the porters who have to handle them.' People condemn men to a lifetime of invalidism, because they insist on moving round the world with sufficient hats and gloves and boots for a change every day.'
'If you are going to draw morals from everything you see, I shall avoid you all the way. Candidly, I think you're a fool. You could easily afford to travel like a gentleman.'
'I agree. Had I not better uses for my earnings than paying a bribe to discomfort.'
'If a hair shirt were the price of sable, you would still buy yourself one from your haberdashers.'
Eliot grinned. 'Perhaps you're right. You'll be staying at the Savoy?'
Nancy nodded. 'It's nine-and-sixpence a night, but there's a bath with the room. I'm surprised at that in England.'
'An Englishman does not care to pay extra for a bath. He regards it as a necessity, not a luxury. I think the Savoy's preferable to the Cecil next door, which may have a thousand rooms but is growing dreadfully shabby. My ducal connections are useful in advising on such things.'
'Where exactly is your Camden Road?' She had his address in her diary.
'Against the main railway lines north, near the Cattle Market and Pentonville Jail. There's always room for me at No 502. I lodged there since I was a medical student at St Bartholomew's.'
'Shan't you want to see your parents?'
'They're attending the Duke in Scotland. It's barely a month since the Glorious Twelfth, and their gun-barrels are still hot. Grouse, you know,' he explained.
She dropped her voice. 'When may I see you?'
'The Savoy at eleven, the morning after our arrival?'
'If you're showing me the sights, I insist on paying for the excursions. I'm sure you've far, far better use for your money than that.'
'I shan't be in the slightest embarrassed, when you feel in your handbag at Madame Tussaud's. The changing of the guard is viewed free.'
Nancy did not see Eliot when they left the crowded Lausanne train at Basle. She dined in the station restaurant, which had a star in Baedeker. She supposed he had satisfied himself with a _casse-croыte _and a bottle of beer. She noticed him on the platform only as she was handing her ticket to the conductor of her _wagon-lit._
'I shall feel awful, you sitting up all night,' she said with concern.
'I've slept on a hard chair often enough, during night duty in the receiving room at Bartholomew's.'
