No Love Lost (10 page)

‘You wouldn't have dared.' He was appealing, he was hoping not accusing, and he went on talking still with the trace of uncertainty. ‘It was the only thing which made me wait so long. You give this profession of yours the passion you ought to give a lover. It is a religion with you. Yet you'll ruin your career if you don't go through with this.'

‘Should the patient die I shall have to risk that.' I believed it, and I said it, and it sounded true.

He lay back in the chair and stared at me. There was astonishment there, that and chagrin.

I don't know what would have happened then. There's a chance he would have cracked, or he might have gone for me, I don't know…. At that precise instant something happened which defeated me. It was the unkindest trick pure chance ever played. The telephone bell began to ring.

Gastineau was between me and the instrument and he took up the receiver.

‘Yes. Yes, I will tell her, she is here. Who shall I say is calling?'

I was watching him and I saw the change in his face. The blood raced into its greyness and his eyes grew bright. He turned to me with a smile of victory.

‘It is for you. Dr John Linnett.'

It was nearly half a minute before I took the receiver. My first impulse had been not to take it at all. When I did, my hand shook and I held my elbow to keep it still.

John's voice came through strong and natural and faintly apologetic.

‘Ann, this is to warn you. I'm running down to say good night.'

I moved back as far as I could from the man in the chair. The cord was very short.

‘Oh no,' I said firmly, ‘no, I shouldn't do that.'

‘Why not?' I knew that tone of John's. I had heard it a thousand times, from nursery days on. It meant he was going to have his own way. ‘I shan't keep you a minute,' he said. ‘I'll be at the front door in something under a quarter of an hour. I shall ring the bell like a proper little practitioner and ask for you, and you're to come out. Do you hear? Got that? Just say “yes”, and tell whoever's listening it's the Ministry of Health.'

‘No,' I said again, but he rang off.

I looked up at last to find Gastineau considering me speculatively. I said nothing. There was nothing I could say, and presently I turned and went out of the room. As I reached the doorway he spoke.

‘At any rate we know each other a little better, Doctor.'

I left him sitting there and went up the stairs again and across the deserted upper hall. From the grandfather clock in the corner I saw that I had not been away more than twenty minutes. I could have believed it twenty years.

Nurse Tooley had got the door locked and she arrived in something of a flutter in answer to my tap.

‘Oh, it's you, praise be,' she murmured. ‘I was wondering if I'd call you.'

I looked at the bed eagerly but she shook her head. ‘No change at all, poor soul, no change at all. The heart's keeping up though.'

‘Thank God,' I said fervently. There was not a lot more I could do. While her heart remained strong and there was no sign of lung trouble it was best to let the body do what it could for itself.

Nurse Tooley kept her bright eyes on my face. She was more flushed than usual and there was a hint of defiance in her which was new to me.

‘Will you look here, Doctor?' She pointed to something on the dressing-table and we went over towards it together. It was
the green plastic envelope which I had found in the bathroom and had not had time to examine properly. Nurse had been more thorough. The entire contents was laid out neatly on a folded towel, ready for me to see.

‘It's the only thing in the world the poor thing has with her,' she confided to me in a whisper, ‘or so you'd imagine from the nakedness of this room.'

I glanced at the exhibits and looked again. The usual paraphernalia was all there, but there was something else, something new which I had not found in my interrupted search. It was a little heap of small white pills and the sodden screw of paper which had once contained them. There were twenty-two of them, battered and sticky but still recognizable. I could make out a roman numeral stamped on the surface of the one I picked up.

I could guess what it was before I touched it with my tongue and tasted the bitterness.

‘What is it, Doctor? Luminal?'

‘I don't know.' I spoke woodenly because my heart had sunk with a thud. This explained the mystery of the deep and prolonged coma, which had been puzzling me. It also explained Gastineau's belief that Francia would die. ‘It's one of them.'

‘It's one of them.' Nurses's conviction echoed my own. ‘Medinal, Dial … something. You see, she's been in the habit …'

I cut her short. She had gone straight to the point, as usual. That was what this discovery meant. Francia Forde was in the habit of taking barbituric acid in some form, and one of its peculiarities is that it is cumulative. It remains in the system a considerable time. Therefore the sudden dose of Dormital must have merely added to the sum already in her body. There was no knowing what the total might be.

That it was a habit was clear. The patient who is given a few grains by his doctor to take in case of insomnia hardly keeps them loose in a sponge-bag. This contempt indicated a very considerable familiarity. I supposed she had been given them after her ‘breakdown'.

While I was digesting this appalling consideration, Nurse
Tooley made a remark which took some seconds to register on me.

‘Well, at any rate we know what it is. That's a tremendous comfort if anything should happen to the poor thing.'

It was the way she said it which startled me. There was a note in her voice which I had never heard there before. It matched the hint of defiance I had noticed in her manner. At last I recognized it. She was guilty about something.

My eyes strayed across the room, past the vast bed with its tragic little burden, and over to the chest. The lustre jug had been moved several inches nearer to the wall. I turned to Nurse and looked at her. She became very red and the involuntary thought shot through my mind that any prosecuting lawyer would have the time of his life with her if ever he got her on the stand. She was not designed for subterfuge.

When I went to the chest and looked the jug was empty.

‘Nurse.'

Her back was to me. She was poking the fire and making a blaze. The flame and her face were just about the same colour. She took a minute to make up her mind and then straightened her back, the iron poker still in her hand, so that she looked like something allegorical in a village pageant.

‘I soaked off the label and put it in the fire, and I smashed up the bottle on the hearth and put the pieces down the drain. So now you know.'

I couldn't believe it. The statement took all the breath out of my body. I must have goggled at her. She came a step or two forward, still grasping the poker.

‘Now look, Doctor dear' – her accent had become as broad as a beam – ‘I'm an old woman by the side of yourself and I'm imploring you. There's never one word will be passed between the two of us or any other living soul on the subject again. There's no one knows better than I do what people will do. They'll pick up something out of your bag and leave it lying around for the first poor crazy thing that comes to the house to pick up.'

She was so earnest that her kind eyes were full of tears and she trembled till her apron crackled.

‘I know. I've seen even more than you have. But you're a fine doctor, conscientious, and as brave as a lion, and I'm not going to see you held up while the Coroner makes damaging remarks on carelessness and suchlike rubbish. As soon as I saw those little pellets in her sponge-bag I said to myself, “Here's something that will do, sent by the Lord”.'

Had I heard it at any moment but that one I could have laughed. As it was, I nearly wept. This was the first thing that she or I had done in the whole business which was actually wrong. We might have been silly but we hadn't been criminal. Without this I could have told my story and stuck to it and held my head up and prayed that the truth would save me. But this complicated the issue. This destroying the bottle proved that at any rate we weren't half-witted and that we knew what was happening.

‘Holy Mother, have I made a fool of meself?'

‘No,' I said hastily, trying to forget that I'd been relying on her for moral support, ‘No, it'll be all right …' and got no further because a tap on the door interrupted me. Nurse went over and came back with a note.

‘The foreign manservant's waiting outside for an answer,' she murmured.

The letter was from Miss Luffkin and it was typical.

P.S. Have spoken on phone to Miss Farquharson, Mrs Dorroway, and Betty Phelps in the village. They all say you must let them know if there is anything they can do to
help
. Shall run down with this myself.

It was the final line which I found most alarming, and I went to the door to speak to Radek. He seemed to share my anxiety, for he pointed to the floor below and put a thick finger over his lips. I took his tip and pencilled, ‘Nothing now, but thank you. Please don't worry, but get some sleep. A.F.' on the back of the envelope, and sent him down with it. I felt safer when the door was locked again.

I went back to the bed. Percy might turn up if she had been worrying him. It would hasten matters if he did. I had made up my mind to be quite frank with him and to take what was coming.

I went over the patient again. The breathing had not changed, the pulse was faint, and the temperature had risen half a degree. She was bathed in perspiration. The lungs were still all right.

‘What a pretty woman,' said Nurse, her homely face full of pity. ‘She's put me in mind of someone I've seen somewhere. Maybe one of the Holy Angels in the pictures. It would be that fair hair, no doubt. Do you know who she is at all?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Her name is Forde.'

It meant nothing to Nurse but it carried full weight with me. Until then I had striven to achieve the impersonal attitude which a doctor must preserve if he is to do any good and yet not tear himself to a rag. The chance remark had broken it down, and from that moment on her identity was as vivid to me as if I had been confronted with her alive and well. I could see her walking on those long slender legs, turning that perfectly shaped yellow head and smiling, perhaps.

I checked myself. This was not the time to bear even the recollection of jealousy. The new information made things just as bad as they could be. I began to see just exactly what was most likely to happen. The probability was that in the next twenty-four hours the coma would become even deeper and the heart, despite my stimulants, would slowly, slowly fail. Then, in the dawn perhaps, defeating all our efforts, while Nurse and I looked at her, both of us impotent and exhausted, it would flutter and be still. We should try artificial respiration. We should try everything. We should wear ourselves to shreds. But
it would be as hopeless as I ought to have known it would be, and I should do what I had to do and tell the police.

I had no illusions. I could see the rags of my career fluttering down over me like dead leaves. If that was all I should be lucky. If Gastineau stuck to the story he was clearly intending to tell I should find myself on a criminal charge,
for this was Francia
. I hated her. I still hated her, God forgive me. Somehow or other I had got to save her life and have her still tied to John. Otherwise very probably I should find myself arrested for murder.

I was not going to be able to save her. That conviction crept into my consciousness like a very small thin knife entering a vital part. There is no other way of describing it. It gave me that physical sense of extreme danger and despair which is like nothing else.

‘Look out!' It was Nurse. She came round the bend and caught my arm. ‘You've overdone it, Doctor me dear. I don't want you on my hands as well. Put your head down. Wait, I'll get a chair and have you round in a jiffy.'

I drew away from her and attempted a laugh. ‘I'm all right,' I said, ‘honestly. Look. Perfectly steady now. It was a little hot in here.'

‘I believe you're right.' Her relief was tremendous. ‘You gave me quite a turn for a moment. Upon me soul, every shred of colour went out of your face. You looked like a corpse. I'll get meself down to the kitchen and see if anyone in this benighted house can make a Christian cup of coffee.'

It seemed a most sensible suggestion and I returned to the bed as she went out. But she was back in a moment, very startled and put out.

‘It's himself, the foreigner, standing on the landing. He wants a word with you in private,' she whispered. ‘He said he'd not got as far as knocking and I think it's true,'

‘I'll go,' I murmured. ‘Stay with the patient.'

Gastineau was waiting for me, and it was evident that something had happened. He was angry and his stiff hands were trembling.

‘What have you done?' he demanded. ‘The police have been on the telephone.'

‘The police?' I had not known I could start so guiltily. ‘What about?'

‘That is what I want to know. I told them you were busy with your patient, who was very ill, and they asked would you ring back.'

I glanced at the clock. It was nearly ten, late for ordinary business calls from the police or anyone else. Gastineau was eyeing me suspiciously.