No Love Lost (2 page)

When
Chains
appeared, Francia was in it but not John. She made her first hit in that film in which Dolores Duse, the veteran French actress, was so moving, and in her next film she was a star. Since then she had gone from strength to strength. But John had vanished. If he was still married to her, he kept in the background. He never wrote and he never came back to Southersham.

Well, there it was, that was my story, and if I had not forgotten quite as completely as I had thought, I had at least got over it. That afternoon I honestly believe that the only thing I still felt I could not forgive John for was the waste, the wicked betrayal of his career. That was something a million times more important than I could ever be, and yet …

Old Dr Percy Ludlow saved me from myself just then. I glanced up to see him trotting across the meadow and I got up
to open the glass doors to meet him. Anyone less like the popular conception of a doctor I have yet to see. He is a tough, slightly horsy little man with a face like red sandstone and a gay, colourful style of dress he can't have changed since he was a boy. Local people whisper to me that he is eighty, which is absurd. He looks sixty and still rides to hounds whenever he gets a chance.

Percy has not been quite the same since he was ‘nationalized', as he is pleased to refer to his position under the new National Health scheme, and of course the change has been a sensational one from his point of view. After a lifetime of behaving like some benevolent and beloved Robin Hood, soaking his rich patients to pay for his poor ones, and preserving a religious impartiality in his treatment of disease wherever he found it, he awoke one July morning to discover himself a paid government clerk as well as an unpaid general practitioner. In fact, instead of having the one master in his sacred calling, he found he had two, and the second (who held the purse strings) was a vast, impersonal, remarkably uninformed machine with a predilection for having its million and one queries answered in triplicate. He says he's going to die of writer's cramp, but I think it is more likely to be apoplexy!

I suppose, in my more serious moments, I ought not to approve of him. He is obstinate and old-fashioned, hopelessly conventional and a snob. And yet, when science has let me down and a diagnosis is beyond me, when I've thought of everything and worked out everything and am still in the dark, he will shuffle up to the bedside, pull down an eyelid, sniff, and fish up out of some experience-taught subconscious an answer which is pure guesswork but which happens to be right.

Just then, as he came dancing in, I saw to my surprise that he was angry. His rather light brown suit was buttoned tightly round his compact body, and his vivid blue eye glared at me belligerently from his red face. He paused just inside the room and began to play with the coins in his trousers pockets.

‘I suppose you're very pleased with yourself, Dr Fowler.'

That ‘Doctor' was a danger signal, and I spoke cautiously.

‘Not more than usual. What have I done now?'

He thrust his chin out at me. ‘Overconscientious, that's what's wrong with women in the professions. No thought of consequences. Lose a packet of aspirin and rush off to the police,'

‘Oh,' I murmured, enlightened. ‘The Dormital.'

‘Dormital!' He repeated the word as though he had never heard of it, as perhaps he hadn't. ‘What is it? One of these rubbishy phenobarbituric derivatives, I suppose. Where did you get it? Some darned silly firm send it to you as a sample?'

Since he had clearly been talking to Brush, our local Inspector, to whom I had reported everything, this was not too clever of him. Had he been a little less angry I might have pointed that out. As it was, I nodded.

‘It's new. They've increased the solubility and –'

‘Have they?' He could not have been more disgusted. ‘Never dream of using that sort of filth myself.'

I knew he was reputed never to prescribe anything save senna or old port and I nearly laughed.

‘I'm sorry,' I murmured, ‘but it is a poison, and I think someone must really have taken it out of my bag when I was on my round, so I reported it.'

At first I thought he was going to explode, but he thought better of it, and I could see him making up his mind how he was going to manage me. Presently he disarmed me with a smile.

‘I like a girl who stands up for herself,' he announced. ‘You get that from your mother, no doubt.'

This time a grin did escape me. I had always suspected it was my mother's rather famous country family who had got me the job when Percy was checking my background. He shook his head at me then and asked me for the list of calls I had made on the day of the loss, and when I fetched it he went over each entry, calling everyone by his first name, which wasn't really surprising, perhaps, since he'd brought most of them into the world.

‘Lizzie Luffkin,' he read aloud, putting a square fore-finger on the page. ‘Yes, I heard you'd been there. She's a strange old lady, Ann, rather a dangerous old lady. Makes up what she can't learn. Pity you called. Left the car in the road, I suppose? Unlocked?'

‘I'm afraid so.'

‘Don't blame you. Never locked a car in my life. Told Brush so. No, there's no one doubtful on this list, Ann. You couldn't have taken it with you.' He eyed me with a curious expression which was half shrewd and half obstinate. ‘Make up your mind to that. You don't know Mapleford as I do. We're old-fashioned down here. Maybe we're even a little bit narrow. Am I making myself clear?'

‘Not frightfully,' I said helplessly, and he sighed.

‘You're young, my dear. The people down here are not, and I'm not speaking of years. Brush and I have been discussing the matter, and he agrees with me it would be very unwise to broadcast the loss. We don't want a lot of chatter in Mapleford about – well, to put it bluntly, about drugs.'

I gaped at him. To me all drugs are drugs, so to speak, dangerous or otherwise. I thought he was going to shake me.

‘Veronal!' he exclaimed, making it sound like an improper word. ‘Veronal, Ann. All your fancy barbituric fiddle-me-faddles are only veronal, and we've heard quite enough about
that
in our time.' He lowered his voice, although we were alone. ‘The old Duke's sister died of it, poor wretched woman. She was an addict.'

Perhaps I was not as impressed as I ought to have been. I knew the Dukes of St Pancras, whose gothic towers overshadowed the little town, still dominated Mapleford minds, but the ‘young Duke', as he was called, had seemed on the elderly side to me.

‘But
when
was all this?' I demanded.

Percy Ludlow met my eyes solemnly. ‘Only thirty years ago,' he said without a tremor. ‘No time at all in a place like this. I remember it as if it was last week. So do most other people. So you see, once we start muttering about lost or stolen veronal there'll be no end of talk. I know the people down here. Half of them have got nothing to do except chatter about their neighbours. You take my word for it, young woman, you'll have every maiden lady on your register suspected of taking narcotics if you're not very careful.'

It was a jolt to me. Although my intelligence told me he must
be crazy, I knew in my heart that he was right. It was his famous trick of correct diagnosis all over again. I might be right in theory, but he knew the people of his funny little town.

‘I'm terribly sorry,' I began, and he grinned at me.

‘I hate scandal,' he remarked. ‘In fact I'm terrified of it. I'll get you out of anything in Mapleford except scandal. Then I wouldn't lift a finger.' He shot one of his bright birdlike stares at me. ‘What's your new friend at Peacocks like?'

That took me by surprise. It showed me, too, what I ought to have known about the size and efficiency of Mapleford's espionage system. I had been down to Peacocks Hall exactly five times since old Mrs Montgomery had let the house to Peter Gastineau in February. This man was one of my very few private patients – that is to say, one of those who, although they paid the compulsory weekly premium under the new scheme, elected to pay their doctor as well. That alone made him something of a rarity. I explained at once.

‘Well, he's arthritic,' I said, ‘and he had quite a “heart”. He spent some time in a prison camp, and not one of the better ones either, by the look of him. He has a man and his wife looking after him.'

Ludlow grunted. ‘All foreigners, I suppose?'

‘Gastineau is naturalized, but I imagine he's French or Belgian born. The servants aren't English either.'

‘I see.' He seemed gloomy. ‘I don't like foreigners. Pure prejudice, of course, but they all seem sly to me … all except the Americans and the Scots, and they've got other faults no doubt. What did Alice Montgomery want to let her house for?'

‘She's gone to London for the spring.'

‘Oh.' That cheered him. ‘I didn't realize he hadn't come to stay.' He paused in his meanderings up and down the room and raised his eyebrows. ‘Very lucky to let that old house for such a short time this weather. Why does a foreigner want to come down here in the cold? Darned damp hole to take his arthritis to, I should have thought. Well, I shouldn't see any more of him than you need, you know.'

He went off to the french windows, but before he left glanced round.

‘You're a bit too pretty with that black hair and blue eyes, and your figure's too good,' he said seriously. ‘These old gals round here, they suspect that.'

(So it was Miss Luffkin, was it? Her little house was very near Peacocks. I might have known.)

‘Those are faults I'll recover from with the years,' I said aloud.

‘Eh? Oh yes, I suppose you will.' The notion did not appear to comfort him particularly. ‘Goo'bye, my dear. Not another word about that other matter, mind. Leave that entirely to me.'

He went dancing off across the meadow like a gnome, and as I watched him Rhoda came up behind me.

‘I couldn't help hearing and it reminded me,' she said brazenly. ‘This cottage is too small for secrets. That Mr Gastineau rang up twice this morning. He's quite well but he wants to see you very urgently. Wouldn't leave a message.'

I could feel her curiosity bristling like a hedgehog.

‘He's well over forty and he's one of the ugliest men I've ever set eyes on,' I observed.

‘Is he?' To my surprise she sounded quite relieved. As a rule any faint promise of romance sets her up for a week. I deduced that an arthritic foreigner was not acceptable, but as if she had been reading my mind she said suddenly: ‘I've been remembering Mr John, you see.'

So had I, of course. There are times when I find old Rhoda very nearly unbearable.

It was ten past five when I left the Cottage Hospital on the other side of town and surgery was at six, but as I neared the lane which leads past Miss Luffkin's cottage to Peacocks Hall I thought I could just fit in a call on Mr Gastineau. I was not going there because he attracted me irresistibly. He didn't. To my mind there was little that was entrancing about that battered and racked shell of a human being, but there was something there that I recognized and thought I could sympathize with, and the interesting thing about it was that I couldn't give it a name. He and I shared a frame of mind, or I thought we did. There was something about his attitude towards life which struck a responsive chord in me. I could not define it. I had no
idea what it was. It was an undercurrent, emotional and rather frightening, and it made me curious. I did not even like him, but I certainly wanted to know more about him.

Miss Luffkin was pruning the ramblers which grow over her hedge. As far as I know she never does anything else. Whenever I pass, be it winter or summer or merely the right time of year for pruning, there she is, secateurs in hand, snipping and brushing and tying and bending, while her quick eyes turn this way and that and her green gardening bonnet is never still.

I waved nonchalantly and sped by. I guessed she would stare after me and probably glance at her watch, so that later, when I came back, she could look at it again. It couldn't be helped.

Peacocks is one of those sprawling Elizabethan houses that seem to be nestling into the earth for warmth. As I pulled up, the front door creaked open and Gastineau himself appeared. He was delighted but also embarrassed to see me, I thought, and he came stiffly forward to open the car door.

‘This is so kind that I am ashamed,' he said in his clipped, over-precise English as he led me into the house. ‘I did not mean to drag you all the way out here. I merely have a little favour to ask, and I seem to be making all the trouble in the world.'

He glanced at me out of the corners of his dull black eyes and I thought again how extraordinarily ugly he was. He was a tall man who was bent into a short one and his skin was sallow and stretched over his bones. Worst of all, he gave one the impression that there had once been something vital and attractive about his looks, but that he was a ghost of himself and his deepset eyes were without light.

I did not sit down. ‘What can I do?' I inquired briefly. ‘Surgery at six, and I've got to get back.'

He grimaced. ‘Children with spots and old ladies with pains. An extraordinary life for such a pretty woman. But you like it, don't you?'

‘I love it,' I admitted, ‘and I'm afraid I never find it even distasteful.'

‘I see you don't. You are more than clever, you are kind. That is more rare,' he said gravely. ‘That is why I have turned to you. Doctor, I have to have an ambulance.'

It was so unexpected that I laughed and was sorry for it at once, he looked so worried.

‘I realize I am being ridiculous,' he said slowly. ‘I am – as they say – in a flat spin. A most awkward and difficult thing has happened and I have to do something about it. It is the widow of a very old friend and compatriot of mine. I have just heard that she is alone and ill in London. I fear she may be' – he hesitated and watched my face as he chose a word – ‘difficult, also.'