No Love Lost (7 page)

‘More than probable.' He jerked his chin up to show his complete distrust of all the millions in the world who had not got themselves born as close to Mapleford as possible. ‘Perhaps you'd better run down, though, eh?'

This was just like him. He would reproach me for visiting Peacocks at all and then insist that I answer the first telephone call at speed. It irritated me because I had been expecting Gastineau to ring all day, and, since I was convinced that there was no one very ill there, I was going to cajole Wells to take the call for me. Wells is an outspoken young man and I felt he might do everbody a bit of good. Percy made all this impossible.
I knew once I started to explain he would infer that Gastineau had been making passes at me, and nothing I could say would convince him otherwise.

Rhoda piled on the agony by remarking that the ‘foreign gentleman' wouldn't take no for an answer.

Percy nodded at me. ‘You change into a Christian skirt and pop down and settle the trouble,' he said cheerfully. ‘Dr Linnett and I will have a smoke until you come back. It won't take you ten minutes.'

I have given up wondering at Percy's impudence. I knew he was dying to get the lowdown on what he clearly thought was a new romance of mine. I felt John was going to have quite an experience, and I hoped he was up to that kind of catechism.

With a stab I realized that the chances were that he would say more to Percy, who was another man and a stranger, than he would to me, and that perhaps I would have to hear some of it secondhand. Yet I thought I could guess most of it.

At any rate, I got into my red wool and a coat faster than ever in my life, and was out on the road in less than five minutes.

I drove as if I was flying. The whole world seemed to have suddenly turned inside out and become marvellous. I knew nothing of John's story except the one thing that I suppose really mattered to me. He was in love with me still. I never doubted it. Whatever had happened was nothing to me. Whatever was coming to me, I did not care. Whatever the difficulties were, I felt certain we'd get over them. There was happiness ahead, real useful lives and happiness. It never occurred to me to remember I had something to forgive.

I was singing to myself, I think, as I drove down the lane. Certainly I waved at Miss Luffkin's house whether she was at the window to see me or not, and I pulled up outside Peacocks with a screech of brakes and a flurry of gravel.

Radek opened the door to me. His English was more than sketchy but he bowed to make up for it and said: ‘Come, please,' and led me to the staircase.

I ran up it, I remember, striding across the landing behind him with an eagerness I had not known since my student days.

Grethe opened the bedroom door to me and I noticed that she
was very pale. It was not so dark as on the night before. There was still some light from the windows and there was a lamp by the bed, but when Gastineau rose up from the shadows by the fireplace he took me by surprise. I had not expected him to be sitting there in the semi-darkness.

It was as I caught sight of him and was about to speak that I heard something from the bed that sent a chill through me. I turned away from him abruptly, so that he stood with hand still outstretched, and went over to it.

Francia Forde lay flat on her back, the light from the reading lamp full on her face.

She was breathing very slowly, with the deep stertorous respirations of coma, and her face was almost unrecognizable, it was so congested. I took her hand and it was flaccid and limp as a doll's.

No one came near me as I made my examination. I was quick, but as thorough as I knew how to be, and every new discovery filled me with more and more alarm.

She had no reflexes. I could not believe it. I tested her again and again, motioning to Grethe to come closer and give me the help I needed. It was no good. I tried her eyes and found the pupils semi-dilated, which puzzled me. Her temperature was up a little, not very much.

My bewilderment increased. This was no logical continuation of the condition in which I had seen her eighteen or so hours before. My experience was not vast like Percy's but I was competent. I should never have made a mistake of that magnitude. At midnight this woman had been suffering from acute alcoholism, not very serious and one of the simplest things in the world to diagnose. Now she was in a deep coma which could have only one end, unless a miracle intervened.

I put some questions to Grethe, who answered them promptly, and my suspicions grew into terrifying certainty.

‘How long has she been breathing like this?' I inquired.

The woman shrugged her shoulders and looked blank, so I put the vital inquiry into words.

‘What has she taken during the day? What drug?'

This time Grethe decided not to understand me at all. She
appealed to Gastineau and he came forward into the circle of light.

‘This morning she was very excitable,' he began softly, ‘almost demented. No one could do anything with her. Then at last she dropped into a sleep. At first no one worried, but at four o'clock Grethe came up and was frightened, I think.'

She nodded vigorously and turned away. I didn't realize that she'd gone out of the room until I heard the door close softly.

‘I shall need her,' I murmured. ‘Will you call her back please? I am afraid Madame Maurice is very ill.'

The news did not surprise him. His quiet dark eyes met mine.

‘I will ring in a moment. Before that, though, there is something I should say to you, Doctor.' He looked towards the bed. ‘You know who this is, don't you?'

I was silent a fraction too long and I heard him sigh.

‘Of course you do. You recognized her last night. Francia Forde, one of our leading film stars. A face that is very well known.'

He startled me horribly, not because he had told me anything new but because of a definite change in his attitude towards me. I took refuge in my most professional manner.

‘I hardly think her identity is of any great importance just now.' I said briskly. ‘What does matter is her condition. I tell you frankly that she has taken something since I saw her last, something – er – something of a strongly narcotic character, and if we are to save her life it is vital that I should know what it is. Do I make myself clear?'

I realized that things were going very wrong as I finished speaking. He showed no sign of any kind of feeling. He was not alarmed or worried or even particularly interested.

‘You may be right,' he said gently. ‘She was in a very strange mood when I persuaded her with such great difficulty to come with me into that ambulance which you so kindly arranged to send.'

I could hardly credit it, but there was, I was sure of it, a very definite emphasis on that last observation. It shook me. I certainly had hired the ambulance for him and because of one
thing and another half the town was aware of the fact. However, there was nothing awkward in that unless …?

The idea which had come into my head was so melodramatic that I discounted it at once. People were kidnapped from time to time as I knew from the papers, but when they were, surely they were never brought to ordinary places like Mapleford by ordinary people like Gastineau?

He had been watching me for some little time and presently he said something which set me back on my heels, while the hairs prickled on my scalp.

‘I came to live in Mapleford solely because of you, Doctor. Did you know that?'

‘No,' I declared, ‘and I can't think –'

‘Do forgive me for interrupting you.' His voice was gentle, even pleasant. ‘I know how anxious you are to get on with your work. I just want to tell you that I felt sure you would recognize Francia Forde when you saw her, and I also felt that you would appreciate my introducing her here under a name that was not so well known as her own. There is some sort of etiquette in these matters, I think.'

‘I had never seen Miss Forde before last night,' I began boldly.

‘No.' He smiled at me as if he were explaining some small social matter. ‘But you knew of her and you had good cause to – what shall we say – think of her quite a lot?'

There was a long silence. I think I was more terrified in that minute than ever before in my life.

He remained looking as I had always known him, bent and stiff and quietly polite.

‘I think I am right when I guess that had you known who my Madame Maurice was you would have hesitated to associate yourself with any illness she might contract. You do realize how far you are committed, don't you, Dr Fowler?'

Did I? Francia Forde was dying from a dose of poison, either self-administered or given her by this terrifying man in front of me. If there was ever any inquiry at all, it must emerge at once that it was
I
of all people who had cause not only to hate her but, since this afternoon, to be anxious to get her out of the way.
As I cast around me, every circumstance in the past few days seemed to conspire to point at me.

I got a grip on myself. ‘I think I must ask you to get other advice.' I heard the well-worn formula creep out in a little thin voice I scarcely knew. ‘Since you're – you're so well informed, you'll understand that in the circumstances I really – really couldn't take the responsibility.'

‘But of course you could and of course you will.' He spoke to me as if I were some kind of frightened child, scared of an exam. ‘You'll do your utmost for my poor friend Madame Maurice, widow of an East European refugee. I fear it may be a long business. Pneumonia may intervene even, and if at last the worst should happen, then we know that a constitution weakened by alcoholism does often succumb to any acute pulmonary infection. Isn't that so?'

He was talking like a medical book, trying to put a formula into my mouth which could appear on a death certificate.

I gaped at him. Only the dreadful breathing from the bed convinced me that I was awake and facing reality.

It was an invitation to connive at murder. More than that, it was a threat, with my career and even my life as the alternative.

‘This is nonsense.' I murmured. ‘You're making an idiotic mistake. I must ask you to go to the telephone and call another doctor. Someone must treat this woman immediately, but it can't be me.'

‘Don't you think so?'

As he spoke he stretched out his hand and slipped something into mine.

I looked down at it. It was the Dormital bottle and it was empty.

The great bedroom with its glistening black beam stretching across the low ceiling, and its diamond-paned windows letting in the last of the light, became very still.

The fire stirred and flared and a coal fell on to the hearth with a ghost of a clatter. Peter Gastineau did not move. He stood a foot or so away from me, looking at me steadily with his expressionless eyes. Downstairs someone was rattling crockery and there was the sound of footsteps and a door closing.

I remained looking down at the little bottle in my hand. I had never thought so quickly or so clearly and it was natural that I should have done it in the way I had been taught.

In this predicament I was thinking medically, sorting out the things I knew for certain from the things that were as yet doubtful, and putting myself in the background and the life of the patient first. Now that I knew what the trouble was, and understood what had happened to the snoring bundle of humanity on the bed, every other consideration slid into second place. There had been fifty tablets in the bottle, each one five grains. I raised my eyes to Gastineau.

‘Where did you get this?'

‘From a shelf in the bathroom.' He pointed to a door which I had supposed to lead into a cupboard and turned back to meet my gaze impudently. ‘I had never seen it before, of course.'

He was being the worried host again, completely acquiescent, leaving everything in my hands. Our conversation of a moment before might never have occurred.

As any doctor can explain, I ought at that moment to have fled. That move was the one thing that might have saved me. If I had done anything but stay – run to Percy, the police, anyone – I might just possibly have saved my own skin, but the woman would have died.

I didn't run. I thought she had an outside chance. People had survived larger doses.

As for the man in front of me, the fact that he was a potential murderer, that the Dormital was the Dormital I had lost, that he
had trapped me deliberately, all these things still remained half proved. Had they been medical facts I should not have been justified in acting upon them from the evidence I had so far. I decided not to now. Besides, let me be honest, I was not afraid of Gastineau. I thought I knew him and could manage him. So I made up my mind and walked straight into nightmare.

‘We must get a nurse at once,' I said.

He sighed. It was a little sound of pure relief. That ought to have settled it. It was my last chance, my last warning. I ignored it.

‘Where is the telephone?'

‘There is one in the hall and an extension in my sitting-room. Is there anything I can do?'

‘Yes, please. Get me Mapleford 234 and I'll follow you down.'

As soon as he was out of the room I went to the door and discovered, as I had hoped, that the key was still there. I took it and locked the patient in, and then I went downstairs. I suppose I thought it was going to be as easy as that.

The hall telephone was near the entrance and as soon as I came up Gastineau stepped back and handed me the receiver. He did not leave me, though. I could hear him breathing as he hovered in the background just out of my sight. The number I had given him was Nurse Tooley's and as I heard her voice my heart rose.

‘It's Peacocks Hall, Nurse,' I began, speaking very quietly and hoping that she would use her wits. ‘Could you come down at once and bring a night bag? I think you had better have your calls put through to Nurse Phillips. You may be out some time.'