Читать книгу Payment Deferred. Psychological Thriller онлайн

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‘Has Mrs What’s-her-name been here to-day?’ he asked his wife. ‘Oh, you know who I mean—the washerwoman person.’

‘No, dear, of course not. She comes on every other Monday. She won’t be coming until Monday week.’

‘Well, she’s not to come at all. You must do the washing yourself if you can’t afford to send it out.’

‘Of course we can’t afford to send it out, dear. Laundries are dreadfully expensive now.’

‘Then you must do it yourself.’

‘But I don’t want to. Why must I, Will? It’s dreadfully hard work.’

‘Hard work never killed anyone yet. I’m not going to have strange women in my house and hanging up clothes in my garden any more. That’s why.’

‘But——’

‘That’s enough, now. Do what I say and don’t argue.’ And Mr Marble turned his gloomy gaze once more to the whisky bottle.

Poor Annie was almost crying. It had been such a nice day up to now, and now everything was going wrong. To cover her whimpering sniffs she took up the tray and went with it down the stairs into the kitchen.

Mr Marble eyed the whisky bottle. He felt he needed some, despite the fact that he had already had three or four—or was it five or six?—whiskies that day. He was very tired, very, very tired, and his head ached. Just as it ached this time yesterday. No, he didn’t want to think about yesterday. How his arms ached with that digging! He ought to have caught cold, too, seeing how it had been raining, but he hadn’t. Pure Scotch Whisky. Very plain on the bottle, but it was good stuff inside. God, but it was! An indescribably passionate longing to drink came over him, and he scraped his chair back from the table and fetched the corkscrew from the sideboard drawer. He drew the cork rapidly and dexterously. Not a scrap fell into the bottle. Then he found himself a tumbler and stood it beside the bottle. There was no soda-water left after last night, but he didn’t want soda-water. He didn’t want anything besides the relief that he knew a few sips of that yellow liquid would bring him. He fingered the bottle lovingly, still standing by the table. Suddenly he became aware of his children’s gaze upon him. Glad of the distraction from the drudgery of homework, they had been sitting silently watching his every movement. With a gust of fury Marble realized that it was impossible for him to drink with those solemn eyes upon him. He put the bottle down again upon the table with a thump.