The Bungalow Mystery (17 page)

“Indeed!” Roger raised his eyebrows as she laid her hand on the door. “What is her name, Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

“Vonnerhart, sir. Mrs. Vonnerhart she put down in the visitors' book.”

“I never heard the name,” Roger said as he entered.

One glance was enough to show him that the woman who lay in the middle of the great four-post mahogany bedstead, propped up by pillows, and fighting desperately for every breath, was indeed very ill, though her case was scarcely so desperate as Mrs. Hollingsworth supposed. Fortunately, however, his little medicine-chest contained most of the remedies likely to be needed, and his administration of oxygen brought a certain amount of immediate relief. But the paroxysms of pain, though yielding to his treatment in a measure, were recurrent and terribly severe. It was broad daylight long before Roger could leave her with any feeling of security. When at last he came down the stairs, looking worn and weary in the clear morning light, his dark hair crumpled, red lines round his eyes, he found Mrs. Hollingsworth waiting for him at the bottom.

“You'll take a cup of coffee before you go, doctor,” she said coaxingly. “And there's a beautiful dish of ham and eggs, and Will Jones has brought in some fresh mushrooms.”

The odour coming from the kitchen close at hand was irresistible to a hungry man; Roger allowed himself to be persuaded.

“But, indeed, you are too good to me, Mrs. Hollingsworth,” he said as he seated himself at the round table standing in the big bay window looking into the old-fashioned inn garden.

“Nay, sir, never say that.” Mrs. Hollingsworth was bustling round pouring out a steaming cup of coffee and supplying him with provisions. “What we should have done without you this past night is more than I can tell. You think she will do well now, sir?”

“For the present, yes,” Roger replied guardedly. “Is she quite alone here, Mrs. Hollingsworth? If she has any friends, I think they ought to know of her state, though the immediate danger is past.”

The landlady flung up her hands.

“And me knowing no more about her than yourself, sir. She wrote to me from London last week, saying she wanted to stay a week or two in this part, and as she had heard my house well spoken of, she would be glad to know if I would let her have two rooms, a private sitting-room and a large bedroom, from to-day—that is now, you understand, sir. Well, of course I wrote back and said I should be pleased to have her, and I would do my best to make her comfortable. But I got no answer, and I thought either that my terms did not suit her, or that she had given up the idea of coming into the neighbourhood at all; and I must say I thought she might have had the manners to write and tell me so. I am sure I never was more astonished than when I got her telegram, ‘Coming 6.15,' yesterday afternoon.”

“And you had no idea who had mentioned your name to her?” Roger interposed, when the worthy woman paused to take breath.

Mrs. Hollingsworth fanned her hot face with her apron.

“No more than the dead, sir. The idea did cross my mind before I sent for you as it might have been yourself; she was asking so much about you and seemed that interested in you.”

“I cannot understand that; certainly she is a perfect stranger to me.”

Roger was making a hearty breakfast. Mrs. Hollingsworth's viands certainly deserved the encomiums lavished upon them by the travellers who frequented the Courtenay Arms.

“And she did not say anything, sir, to tell you who she was, or how she had heard of you?” Now that Mrs. Hollingsworth's alarm was abating, her curiosity was having full sway.

Roger shook his head.

“She is in no condition to tell me anything yet, poor soul. Well, I must leave it in your hands, Mrs. Hollingsworth. If you can see your way to letting her friends know in the course of the day, I should do so. I will write to Dr. Arnold about the case, and no doubt he will be up some time this morning. If he should wish it I shall be pleased to meet him.”

“She asked me last night,” Mrs. Hollingsworth said, “whether you often came down to the village, and rare and disappointed she seemed when I said you didn't, sir. And then she asked me a rare lot of questions about you, sir—what you was like, and how long you had been here, and whether you and Sir James were old friends.”

“I cannot understand it,” Roger said musingly. Truth to tell, in spite of his very real sympathy with her pain and suffering, his new patient had not impressed him favourably. There was something in the glance of her big black eyes, a masculine strength about the modelling of chin and jaw, which he found almost repellent. He could not imagine what could be the secret of her interest in him, and could only surmise either that his name in the medical journals had attracted her attention, or that she might be a patient of his uncle's, and had possibly brought an introduction from him.

“She was anxious about a letter that ought to have been here waiting for her last night,” Mrs. Hollingsworth went on. “From what she said I gathered that it was from some one in the neighbourhood. It put her out terribly when it didn't come.”

“Oh, well, I dare say we shall hear all about her before long; and we shall find that there is no mystery about it at all,” Roger concluded as he held out his hand. “Good-bye, Mrs. Hollingsworth, and many thanks. It is a curious name, Vonnerhart. I don't know that I ever heard it before.”

Mrs. Hollingsworth followed him to the door.

“I am sure I never did, sir. I said to the lady last night it sounded foreign; and she laughed and said she was as English as I was.”

“Oh, well, I dare say she is!” Roger turned down the village street towards the Manor. The school bell was clanging noisily behind him; he met the children running along the road. The girls in their clean, white pinafores smiled shyly at him, the boys touched their caps.

As he passed the Sturts' cottage, Mrs. Sturt stood at the door; he halted.

“How is Mary Ann, Mrs. Sturt?”

“Getting on nicely, sir, thank you.” The woman smiled and moved aside. “Here she is, sir.”

Little Mary Ann was sitting in a basket-work easy-chair piled with cushions, a doll, a couple of picture- books, two or three boxes of toys on a table beside her.

“Well, little one?” Roger laughed as he stepped over the threshold. “You look as if you were having a good time. Pretty comfortable, aren't you? You wouldn't mind breaking your arm every day at this rate, would you?”

“I'm sure she ought not, sir,” the mother interposed. “Never a day but things come down from the Hall for her, and anything she fancies she is to have. And I have had to give up all my work to look after her. Miss Elizabeth is seeing to that. She has been untold good to us!”

There could have been no more congenial subject to Lavington. With some laughing remark to the child he took up a toy puzzle.

“So Miss Elizabeth sent you this, did she? I was sure she would be kind.”

“Ay, she is that, sir,” Mrs. Sturt assented heartily. “I'm sure in the old days, before Sir James's accident, when the young ladies used to come visiting us poor folk together, I always used to think I liked Miss Luxmore best; she was more sympathetic, I fancied. Miss Elizabeth was more stand off, besides being younger and livelier. But I have come to see as nobody could be better than she is. Not a day has passed since the accident but she has been in to ask after Mary Ann and pass the time of day with her. And I believe, when the child's arm was painful at first, it hurt Miss Elizabeth more nor it did her. Mary Ann, she says it herself. ‘Mother,' she says to me one night, ‘I don't want to cry; it makes Miss Elizabeth so sad.' It is gospel truth I'm telling you, sir. A gentler, kinder, more motherly young lady than Miss Elizabeth Luxmore I never wish to see. But”—her whole face brightening as she looked beyond Roger—“they say ‘talk of angels and you see them appear'; we were just speaking of you, miss.”

A shadow fell athwart the threshold; Roger turned, to see Elizabeth Luxmore regarding him with serious, surprised eyes. A little fleeting smile flitted across her lips as she answered Mrs. Sturt and touched Mary Ann's curly head caressingly. Then she laid her cool, ungloved hand for an instant in Roger's.

“You are early, Dr. Lavington; I quite thought I should be Mary Ann's first visitor.”

Roger turned to greet Miss Luxmore; at the same moment his eyes met those of a man who was standing at the door of the little barber's shop at the other side of the street. For a moment he wondered why something in the steady gaze seemed familiar; then in a flash he remembered: transformed though he was by a longer, more unkempt growth of hair, by a straggling, sandy moustache, and by the discarding of his uniform, there was no mistaking Constable Frost's expression of stolid superiority.

Roger gave a great start of dismay. Why was the Sutton Boldon policeman here, spying on him?

Lavington's start of dismay and change of colour at the sight of Constable Frost were sufficiently obvious to attract Elizabeth's attention. She looked at him curiously as she settled herself on the seat beside Mary Ann.

“Nothing wrong, is there, Dr. Lavington? Mary Ann—”

“Oh, no! She looks all right,” Roger constrained himself to reply with a certain cheerfulness.

But Roger felt rather than saw that all the friendliness she had shown him in their last interview had vanished; in its place the vague, intangible barrier of which he had been conscious formerly had reared itself once more. As he stood aside while she talked to Mary Ann, he puzzled himself as to what could possibly be the reason of the change. He was not conscious of having offended in any way, and yet the slight, conventional smile with which she responded to a remark of his had precisely the chill air of aloofness which had galled him when he first met her.

He could not tear himself away while she was there, though; it was absolute joy to know that she was present, to feast his eyes on the wealth of dark, bronze hair—bronze that the sun, kissing, turned to burnished copper; on the delicate pink and white of the half- averted cheek, to hear her pretty, caressing tones as she talked to Mary Ann.

“Do you know why I have come, little girl?” she asked. Then, as the child shook her head: “Because I am going to drive to Afreton with Mr. Reggie, and we thought somebody might like to come with us—eh, Mary Ann?”

Mary Ann's eyes sparkled.

“Oh, Miss Elizabeth!”

“You would? Then that is all right. Mr. Reggie will be here directly, and I know some one who will most likely sit between us on the front seat.”

The child clasped her hands.

“Oh, Miss Elizabeth! Mother, where is my hat? Oh! But—”

“Well, what is it?” Elizabeth asked, as Mary Ann's face grew grave.

The little thing hesitated a moment.

“It—it isn't one of they motors, is it, miss? Because I'm frightened—”

Elizabeth laughed aloud, a ringing delicious sound that made Roger smile too out of pure sympathy.

“You funny mite! As if I did not know that. No; it is a dog-cart, and I believe I hear the wheels now. And Tompkins is going to sit behind. I believe if we asked Dr. Lavington he would lift a certain little girl I know of into the front seat, and then we should be quite sure the poor arm would not be hurt.”

Mary Ann's face was a picture of delight as the dog-cart drew up, and the great Dr. Lavington himself lifted her in his arms. Reggie stared and laughed as they emerged, while Elizabeth lingered behind for a last word with Mrs. Sturt.

“New work for you, isn't it, Lavington? Here, give me the kid! Well, how do you find yourself to-day, Pollie?”

“Pretty nearly well again, sir, thank you. Mrs. Sturt answered for her offspring, curtsying her gratification behind. “And very grateful for all your kindness.”

“Oh that's all right,” Reggie said carelessly. “It is our place to look after her, you know, as we did all the mischief. Hurry up, Elizabeth!” with a natural desire to cut the interview short.

Elizabeth opened her lips as if to speak again, but Reggie was in a hurry to be off; he touched the horse with his whip.

Roger was left with, amidst his consuming anxiety, an underlying ray of comfort. Clearly her tone, her words, had expressed a measure of concern for him. Her farewell smile was infinitely more friendly than the one she had accorded him on entering the cottage.

He walked across the street; the man whom he had taken for Frost was no longer in sight. Apparently he had taken advantage of the moment when Lavington's head was turned to answer Elizabeth, to make his escape. Wilkes, the barber, was in the shop. Roger looked inside.

“I fancied I recognized a man who was standing at your door just now, Mr. Wilkes. Is he still here? I should like to speak to him. Tallish sort of chap with a sandy moustache.”

Wilkes rubbed his stubby beard.

“Why, of course, that would be Mr. Barrington that is staying at Mrs. Corbett's, sir. He mostly comes in for a shave and a chat of a morning. Leaves his bicycle in the little yard at the back generally. I expect he has gone there now; that would be how you missed him.” He lifted up the dingy blind that hung over the little window behind the shop. “No. He must ha' gone off without so much as saying good morning! It isn't often he does that.”

It was a week later. Roger was enjoying his cigar on the divan near the smoking-room window when a footman entered.

“The lady at the Courtenay Arms has sent up, sir. She wants to know if you will kindly call in and see her some time before night.”

Courtenay had been specially trying all the morning; Roger had at last managed to quiet him and was now preparing to enjoy a well-earned rest. He was by no means inclined to welcome an interruption. An exclamation of impatience rose to Lavington's lips.

“I told Mrs. Hollingsworth that I should leave the case in Dr. Arnold's hands entirely.