No Love Lost (4 page)

It was a quarter before four before I realized it and I had to
make a Cinderella exit and fly for Barton Square. It is no good pretending that I did not regret my promise to Peter Gastineau just then. I wished him and his poor Madame Maurice, if not at the bottom of the sea, at least in the middle of next week. They would wait for me, I had no doubt, but even so there was none too much time as I had promised to have tea with Matron at St James's at five.

I found Barton Square without much difficulty, and the narrow, slightly tattered grey houses rose up like a cliff above me as I crept round it looking for the number. To my astonishment there was no sign of the ambulance. I hoped they had not run into trouble on the road.

Number 14 was a surprise, too. For one thing, it was shut up like a Bedouin lady in walking-out costume. Drab curtains covered the windows and there appeared to be no lights behind them. It was one of those narrow slices of building with steps to the front door, and an area with a lion's cage of a railing round it. I went up and rang the doorbell. I could hear its hollow clanging echoing through the hallway within, but there were no answering footsteps.

For some time I stood waiting, the cold wind whipping round me. Presently I rang again, and again I heard the bell, but still no one came. I was beginning to wonder if there could be two Barton Squares in the west of London when I thought I heard a movement in the basement below me. I suppose I had grown so used to admitting myself into patients' houses in Mapleford that I did not hesitate. I scrambled down the worn stone steps of the area and, skirting the ash-can, entered the tiny porch which I found there. The inner door was closed and, after knocking without results, I tried it.

My hand was on the knob when a most disconcerting thing happened. It turned in my fingers as someone grasped it on the other side, and the door jerked open, pulling me in with it so that I finished up with my nose less than six inches from another face immediately above me.

‘Oh,' I said inadequately.

To do him justice, the stranger seemed just as startled as I was. He was a tall, middle-aged man with a gentle, vague expression.
His good brown suit was loose for him, and he clutched a well-brushed hat and a carefully rolled umbrella. Just now he was hesitating, waiting for me to speak first.

I must have been rattled, I suppose, for I said the first thing that came into my head. I said: ‘Have you seen the ambulance?'

The question shocked him. I saw his eyes flicker and he said in a quiet, pleasant voice which yet matched his vague expression: ‘Oh, there was an ambulance, was there? Oh dear.'

I am afraid I am one of those people who can't help going to the assistance of the socially put out. Although I was half-way into someone else's house, and in the wrong if anyone was, I felt I ought to help him, he looked so worried.

‘I'm Dr Fowler,' I explained. ‘I've come to see a patient who, I understand, is to be taken into the country by ambulance. Her name is Maurice. Is this the right house?'

He peered at me in what seemed to be distress, and it occurred to me that I must make a rather odd sort of doctor in my all too feminine clothes, but apparently he did not doubt me.

‘Do you know, I really can't tell you,' he said at last, adding sincerely, ‘I'm so sorry. No one seems to be in the house at all except – well, perhaps you wouldn't mind coming to see for yourself?'

He turned and, highly mystified, I followed him into a labyrinth of those gloomy dungeons and subdungeons which our ancestors were pleased to call ‘domestic quarters'.

The first, which was unfurnished as well as deserted, led to a second, smaller room fitted up snugly enough as a kitchen. There, stolidly eating her tea and toast, as if no one had been ringing a bell or standing on a doorstep, was a large clean elderly woman with the eyes and jaw movement of a cow in a field. She looked up as we appeared, smiled pleasantly, and just went on eating. It was, I think, the most unnerving welcome I have ever received.

As soon as I attempted to speak to her the mystery was solved. Still smiling, but with the complete indifference of one who knows something is hopelessly beyond her, she shook her head and with a forefinger pointed first to one ear and then the other. She was stone deaf, poor soul.

I opened my bag and was ferreting round in it for a pencil when a voice murmured in my ear.

‘Well, you know, I fear that's no good,' muttered the man with the umbrella. ‘She doesn't read English. I tried that.'

‘What nationality is she?'

‘That's it, I can't find out.' He sounded as helpless as I felt, and added as if he thought I ought to have an explanation, ‘I just happened to call, you see.'

I didn't quite, as it happened, but it was the woman I was interested in. At that moment she broke the silence. After taking a draught from her cup, which looked as if it contained something boiling, she wiped her mouth and, leaning back in her chair, spoke in the very loud toneless voice of one who cannot hope to hear.

‘All gone.' Her accent was unrecognizable and I could only just understand her. ‘All gone.' She smiled again. ‘No one.' She was trying hard and her hands illustrated the emptiness of the house above us.

‘Where?' I was trying her with lip language and she watched me carefully but shook her head. It was frightful. We were two intelligences with no hope of communication.

‘Who?' I tried again and she laughed.

I smiled back and shrugged my shoulders. There was nothing to do but go away and I had turned when her unnatural bellow filled the room again.

‘Sick woman,' she shouted.

I swung round eagerly and nodded to show we were on the right track.

‘Yes,' I agreed. ‘Yes. Where?'

She sat thinking. I could see her doing it, her broad forehead wrinkled and her eyes moving. Once or twice she began to frame a word, but it was not an English one, I thought, and she always rejected it. Presently she rose and pushed back her chair.

‘A-a-ah,' she began cautiously. ‘Sick woman. Morter. Morter …'

‘Motor,' muttered the man at my side. ‘I think she means motor car.'

I nodded at the woman, who smiled, well pleased.

‘Morter … whoosh … gone. Sick woman gone.' She sank down once more and pulled her plate towards her. We might not have been there.

The man with the umbrella accompanied me to the door, getting there first to hold it open for me.

‘Dr Fowler,' he began, giving me a tremendous start because I had forgotten that I had introduced myself, ‘there was a cream ambulance coming out of the square just as I came in.'

‘Really? When was this?'

He considered. ‘Now let me see. Yes. Yes, it must be just over an hour ago.' He was not at all happy, and his discomfort was nearly as evident to me as my own. ‘It was caught up in the traffic,' he continued casually, ‘and I happened to notice that it came from a place called Mapleford. Would that be the one, Doctor?'

‘Yes,' I said absently. ‘Yes, that's it. I wonder …'

I don't know what made me glance squarely at him at that particular moment, but I did, and what I saw set me back squarely on my heels. All the vagueness had vanished from his pale eyes and for a split second they were shrewd and hard and frighteningly intelligent. The next moment he was his old, apologetic helpless self again, but I was frightened and I bade him good afternoon and hurried off up the area steps, feeling almost panicky.

Before I drove off to see Matron at St James's I spoke to the officer on point duty, and he confirmed that an ambulance had called on that side of the square at about three o'clock.

I was furious. By that time I was disgusted with the whole business, and there is one unalterable rule for a doctor who begins somewhat belatedly to scent mystery: that is for him to wash his hands of the affair as quickly and thoroughly as possible. I put the whole business firmly out of my mind and did not think of it again until nearly half past eleven that evening when I was driving home. By that time I was better-tempered. The night was glorious and I had time to think. I decided to give Gastineau and his lady friend a rest for a bit. It would be quite easy for me to plead overwork and get young Dr Wells, Percy's other assistant, to take them over for a while.

By the time I turned into the familiar road I had almost forgotten Gastineau, and I saw the light on in the cottage with dismay. Rhoda never stays up for me when I go to town. She goes to the cinema first and then to bed. She leaves me a jug of milk and a biscuit on the table, and sometimes a few enlightening remarks scribbled on the pad. If she was still up, something very unusual must be afoot.

I left the car just outside the garage and sneaked in by the back door. Rhoda was in her basket chair, knitting furiously to keep herself awake. As I appeared she glanced up and put a finger to her lips.

‘Who?' I whispered.

‘He won't go.' She nodded at the inner door and, taking up a final stitch, rolled up the vest she was making. ‘It's that foreigner,' she murmured. ‘He came creeping in just as I was going to bed. Said he'd been trying to telephone here all the evening and just had to come and see you to satisfy himself.' She paused, her bright eyes meeting mine. ‘I can't say I think much of him now I've seen him.'

‘Nor do I,' I agreed, keeping my voice down. ‘Why didn't he go to Dr Wells?'

‘Oh, he wouldn't. He said it was personal.' She was watching me with the suspicion of a mother, ready to defend but prepared for the worst.

‘Rubbish,' I declared wholeheartedly. ‘I'll go and send him home. I've never heard such nonsense.'

Her pink face cleared. ‘That is a weight off my mind,' she said unnecessarily. ‘I couldn't see what you saw in him. Besides, I've had a letter today from Southersham. It came by the second post and there's real news in it. Something
you'll
never guess.'

I am afraid I interrupted her. Rhoda would pause for a good gossip if the house was on fire. Just then my mind was occupied. This development was more than I had bargained for.

‘I suppose you do mean Mr Gastineau?'

‘That's what he called himself.' She conveyed it was probably a pseudonym. ‘If you can get rid of him it's more than I could without taking my strength to him. Go and try. I'll pop the
kettle on, and when you come back I'll tell you my bit of news if you're in a better temper.'

Peter Gastineau was sitting by the fire, his elbows on his knees and his long hands drooping between them. He got up stiffly when he saw me and took a step forward. He was struggling with nervous excitement and his black eyes had a light in them I had not seen before.

‘I wouldn't have had this happen for the world,' he began. ‘Doctor, you must be so angry.'

‘Not at all.' I was not so inexperienced that I was going to let the party become in any way emotional. ‘I am very tired, I am afraid, but is there anything I can do?'

‘I hope so.' He spoke fervently. ‘I am in a dreadful predicament. I am so frightened that I have made a most serious mistake.' He sat down again without being asked and I noticed a blue line round his mouth. ‘I tried to catch you this morning, when I heard from London of the change of plan. You'd gone, of course.' He was not apologizing so much as stating the case, and I had the wind taken out of my sails.

‘I gathered that the patient was removed earlier in the afternoon,' I observed acidly, and at once he was interested and even excited.

‘Oh, you did see someone, did you? That is good. Who did you find there?'

‘A deaf woman and a man who was visiting her. What happened exactly?'

He did not reply directly. The discovery that I had not merely found the door shut in my face seemed to engross him.

‘If you saw somebody, made yourself known to them, that's something.' He spoke with relief and I found myself peering at him. He had changed somehow. There was something new about him, and to my annoyance I could not decide what it was. I wondered if he was stewing up for a nerve crisis. He caught my expression and pulled himself together. ‘I am almost beside myself,' he explained awkwardly. ‘As you know, since … since the war I have become such a lover of comfort and order and peace. Any change of plan makes me jitter. This morning the good woman who has been looking after Madame Maurice
telephoned to say that the hour of departure must be changed. I was in despair, you were in London and out of reach. Finally I got hold of the ambulance people and with some difficulty got them to go earlier.'

He took a deep breath and leaned back. The idea, apparently, was that I should sympathize with him.

‘Well, if you got her here, that's all right,' I said soothingly. ‘There was no need for you to come up here tonight.'

He opened his eyes wide. ‘But I came to fetch you. You must see her.'

‘Not tonight,' I said firmly. ‘That's out of the question. It's very late. Far better let her sleep now and I'll come round in the morning.'

He seemed astounded. I saw a glimpse of something in his face which startled me. I thought he was going to rave at me. It was a queer expression, very fleeting and familiar. I have seen it on the faces of tiny boys when they are suddenly deprived of something they want very much. It is elemental rage, I suppose. Anyhow he controlled it and said meekly enough:

‘She is so strange. Neither Grethe nor I know what is wrong. It is a great responsibility.'

‘Have you taken her temperature?'

‘Grethe tried. It was impossible.'

‘Is she delirious?'

‘I am not sure.'

I put my temper under hatches. Here was a fine household to undertake the care of an invalid.

‘Then you should have gone to Dr Wells, but it's too late now, I'm afraid. Look here, would you like to ring your housekeeper and see how she is?'

He shook his head. ‘You must come back with me.' He paused and added devastatingly, ‘Without you I cannot very well get home. I made certain you would come and so I sent my man back with the car. We could try to telephone for a taxi, I suppose.'