Fancies and Goodnights

MIDNIGHT BLUE

Mr. Spiers came in extremely late. He shut the door very quietly, switched on the electric light, and stood for quite a long time on the door-mat. Mr. Spiers was a prosperous accountant with a long, lean face, naturally pale; a cold eye, and a close mouth. Just behind his jaw bones a tiny movement was perceptible, like the movement of gills in a fish.

He now took off his bowler hat, looked at it inside and out, and hung it upon the usual peg. He pulled off his muffler, which was a dark one, dotted with polka dots of a seemly size, and he scrutinized this muffler very carefully and hung it on another peg. His overcoat, examined even more scrupulously, was next hung up, and Mr. Spiers went quickly upstairs.

In the bathroom he spent a very long time at the mirror. He turned his face this way and that, tilted it sideways to expose his jaw and neck. He noted the set of his collar, saw that his tiepin was straight, looked at his cuff links, his buttons, and finally proceeded to undress. Again he examined each garment very closely; it was as well Mrs. Spiers did not see him at this moment, or she might have thought he was looking for a long hair, or traces of powder. However, Mrs. Spiers had been asleep for a couple of hours. After her husband had examined every stitch of his clothing, he crept to his dressing room for a clothes-brush, which he used even upon his shoes. Finally he looked at his hands and his nails, and scrubbed them both very thoroughly.

He then sat down on the edge of the bath, put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, and gave himself up to a very profound train of thought. Now and then he marked the checking-off of some point or other by lifting a finger and bringing it back again onto his cheek, or even onto the spot behind his jawbone where there was that little movement, so like the movement of the gills of a fish.

At last Mr. Spiers seemed satisfied, and he turned out the light and repaired to the conjugal bedroom, which was decorated in cream, rose, and old gold.

In the morning, Mr. Spiers arose at his usual hour and descended, with his usual expression, to the breakfast room.

His wife, who was his opposite in all respects, as some say a wife should be, was already busy behind the coffee service. She was as plump, as blonde, as good-humored, and as scatterbrained as any woman should be at a breakfast table, perhaps even more so. The two younger children were there; the two older ones were late.

«So here you are!» said Mrs. Spiers to her husband, in a sprightly tone. «You were late home last night.»

«About one,» said he, taking up the newspaper.

«It must have been later than that,» said she. «I heard one o'clock strike.»

«It might have been half past,» said he.

«Did Mr. Benskin give you a lift?»

«No.»

«All right, my dear, I only asked.»

«Give me my coffee,» said he.

«A dinner's all right,» said she. «A man ought to have an evening with his friends. But you ought to get your rest, Harry. Not that I had much rest last night. Oh, I had such a terrible dream! I dreamed that —»

«If there's one thing,» said her husband, «that I hate more than a slop in my saucer — Do you see this mess?»

«Really, dear,» said she, «you asked so brusquely for your coffee —»

«Father spilled the coffee,» piped up little Patrick. «His hand jerked — liked that.»

Mr. Spiers turned his eye upon his younger son, and his younger son was silent.

«I was saying,» said Mr. Spiers, «that if I detest anything more than a filthy mess in my saucer, it is the sort of fool who blathers out a dream at the breakfast table.»

«Oh, my dream!» said Mrs. Spiers with the utmost good humor. «All right, my dear, if you don't want to hear it. It was about you, that's all.» With that, she resumed her breakfast.

«Either tell your dream, or don't tell it,» said Mr. Spiers.

«You said you didn't want to hear it,» replied Mrs. Spiers, not unreasonably.

«There is no more disgusting or offensive sort of idiot,» said Mr. Spiers, «than the woman who hatches up a mystery, and then —»

«There is no mystery,» said Mrs. Spiers. «You said you didn't want —»

«Will you,» said Mr. Spiers, «kindly put an end to this, and tell me, very briefly, whatever nonsense it was that you dreamed, and let us have done with it? Imagine you are dictating a telegram.»

«Mr. T. Spiers, Normandene, Radclyffe Avenue, Wrexton Garden Suburb,» said his wife. «I dreamed you were hung.»

«Hanged, Mother,» said little Daphne.

«Hullo, Mums,» said her big sister, entering at that moment. «Hullo, Dads. Sorry I'm late. Good morning, children. What's the matter, Daddy? You look as if you'd heard from the Income Tax.»

«Because of a murder,» continued Mrs. Spiers, «in the middle of the night. It was so vivid, my dear! I was quite glad when you said you were back by half-past one.»

«Half-past one, nothing,» said the elder daughter.

«Mildred,» said her mother, «that's film talk.»

«Daddy's an old rip,» said Mildred, tapping her egg. «Freddy and I got back from the dance at half-past two, and his hat and coat wasn't there then.»

«Weren't there,» said little Daphne.

«If that child corrects her elder sister, or you, in front of my face once again —» said Mr. Spiers.

«Be quiet, Daphne,» said her mother. «Well, that was it, my dear. I dreamed you committed a murder, and you were hanged.»

«Daddy hanged?» cried Mildred in the highest glee. «Oh, Mummy, who did he murder? Tell us all the grisly details.»

«Well, it really was grisly,» said her mother. «I woke up feeling quite depressed. It was poor Mr. Benskin.»

«What?» said her husband.

«Yes, you murdered poor Mr. Benskin,» said Mrs. Spiers. «Though why you should murder your own partner, I don't know.»

«Because he insisted on looking at the books,» said Mildred. «They always do, and get murdered. I knew it would be one or the other for Daddy — murdered or hung.»

«Hanged,»said little Daphne. «And whom did he murder.»

«Be quiet!» said her father. «These children will drive me mad.»

«Well, my dear,» said his wife, «there you were, with Mr. Benskin, late at night, and he was running you home in his car, and you were chatting about business — you know how people can dream the most difficult talk, about things they don't know anything about, and it sounds all right, and of course it's all nonsense. It's the same with jokes. You dream you made the best joke you ever heard, and when you wake up —»

«Go on,» Mr. Spiers said firmly.

«Well, my dear, you were chatting, and you drove right into his garage, and it was so narrow that the doors of the car would only open on one side, and so you got out first, and you said to him, 'Wait a minute,' and you tilted up the front seat of that little Chevrolet of his, and you got in at the back where your coats and hats were. Did I say you were driving along without your overcoats on, because it was one of these mild nights we're having?»

«Go on, »said Mr. Spiers.

«Well, there were your coats and hats on the back seat, and Mr. Benskin still sat at the wheel, and there was that dark overcoat he always wears, and your light cheviot you wore yesterday, and your silk mufflers, and your hats and everything, and you picked up one of the mufflers — they both had white polka dots on them — I think he was wearing one like yours last time he came to lunch on Sunday. Only his was dark blue. Well, you picked up the mufflers, and you were talking to him, and you tied a knot in it, and all of sudden you put it round his neck and strangled him.»

«Because he'd asked to look at the books,» said Mildred.

«Really it's — it's too much,» said Mr. Spiers.

«It was nearly too much for me,» said his spouse. «I was so upset, in my dream. You got a piece of rope, and tied it to the end of the scarf, and then to the bar across the top of the garage, so it looked as if he'd hanged himself.»

«Good heavens!» said Mr. Spiers.

«It was so vivid, I can't tell you,» said his wife. «And then it all got mixed up, as dreams do, and I kept on seeing you with that muffler on, and it kept on twisting about your neck. And then you were being tried, and they brought in — the muffler. Only, seeing it by daylight, it was Mr. Benskin's, because it was dark blue. Only by the artificial light it looked black.»

Mr. Spiers crumbled his bread. «Very extraordinary,» he said.

«It's silly, of course,» said his wife. «Only you would have me tell you.»

«I wonder if it is so silly,» said her husband. «As a matter of fact, I did ride home with Benskin last night. We had a very serious talk. Not to go into details, it happened I'd hit on something very odd at the office. Well, I had it out with him. We sat talking a long time. Maybe it was later than I thought when I got home. When I left him, do you know, I had the most horrible premonition. I thought, 'That fellow's going to make away with himself.' That's what I thought. I very nearly turned back. I felt like a — well, I felt responsible. It's a serious business. I spoke to him very forcefully.»

«You don't say Mr. Benskin's a fraud?» cried Mrs. Spiers. «We're not ruined, Harry?»

«Not ruined,» said her husband. «But there's been some pretty deep dipping.»

«Are you sure it's him?» said Mrs. Spiers. «He — he seems so honest.»

«Him or me,» said her husband. «And it wasn't me.»

«But you don't think he's — he's hanged himself,» said Mrs. Spiers.

«Heaven forbid!» said her husband. «But considering that feeling I had — well, perhaps the dream came just from the feeling.»

«It's true Rose Waterhouse dreamed of water when her brother was away sailing,» said Mrs. Spiers, «but he wasn't drowned.»

«There are thousands of such cases,» said her husband. «They're generally wrong on all the details.»

«I hope so, indeed!» cried Mrs. Spiers.

«For example,» said her husband, «it happens we both kept our coats on, and our mufflers too, all the time last night. The atmosphere was hardly intimate.»

«I should say not,» said Mrs. Spiers. «Who would have thought it of Mr. Benskin?»

«His wife, poor woman, would not have thought it,» said Mr. Spiers gravely. «I have resolved to spare her. So, Mildred, children, whatever has happened or has not happened, not a word, not one word, is to be said about this to anyone. Do you hear? To anyone! You know nothing. A single word might lead to disgrace for the whole wretched family.»

«You are quite right, my dear,» said his wife. «I will see to the children.»

«Morning, Mum,» cried Fred, bursting into the room.

«Morning, Guv'nor. No time for breakfast. I'll just get the train by the skin of my teeth, if I'm lucky. Whose muffler's this, by the way? It's not yours, is it, Dad? This is dark blue. Can I bag it? Why — what's the matter? What on earth's the matter?»

«Come in, Fred,» said Mrs. Spiers. «Come in here and shut the door. Don't worry about your train.»