Strange Recompense (13 page)

She took up the pencil he had laid near her hand and began to play idly with it on the sheet of notepaper which he thrust across the desk towards her, but it was some considerable time before she began to write. Her thoughts had been too busy following his to swing away on their own, and suddenly he stood up, looking intently at her across the desk.

“You know about that sort of thing, Anna,” he said. “Now write what you know.”

He turned his back to her, gazing out into the garden while she sat at the desk without moving, and then, as if obeying some impu
l
se which she dared not refuse, she began to write, slowly at first and then more quickly until she had covered both sides of the sheet of paper.

By the time she had reached the bottom of the second page the effort had exhausted itself and she pushed both pencil and paper from her, staring down at what she had written as if it had been taken from her almost against her will.

Noel gathered it up without comment and put it in his pocket. He came round the end of the desk and put his arm about her shoulders, and the brief, friendly embrace all but reduced her to tears.

“Don’t give up,” he said steadily. “I really believe we may be getting somewhere, at last.”

She smiled at him, her heart recoiling in cowardly fashion at the thought of what must inevitably come of their success—parting and heartache and loss such as she had never experienced before. She knew that instinctively, but if Noel thought of it in that way there was no evidence of such thoughts in his expression as he walked with her into the garden where Ruth and Dennis Tranby had started to mow the lawn.

When they had had their evening meal they sat for an hour in the gathering dusk, chatting idly, until Noel rose to do his customary late round of the war
d
s. Tranby went out with him, crossing the shrubbery to the hospital in his wake, though neither of them spoke until they had reached Noel’s consulting rooms. Then Noel took the sheet of notepaper out of his pocket and passed it to him without comment.

Tranby read what Anna had written.

“Do you think she would have gone on writing if she had not come to the end of this?” he asked, flicking the paper with his thumb. “There’s quite a lot here, but most of it is inconclusive.”

“I think the effort exhausted her at that stage,” Noel returned. “She’s terribly sensitive about all this, Dennis, and I can’t take the risk of forcing her too far. What we’ve got there is interesting enough, and I believe I shall be able to work on alone for a time with the information on the paper.”

“There’s not a great lot,
”
Tranby mused. “Just this very beautifully expressed love of the countryside and a rather disjointed description of an old house standing on the moors.”

“ ‘An old grey farmhouse within sight and sound of the North Sea’,” Noel quoted. “And after that she has written the letters ALN—almost as if she were groping for a name.”

“They could be part of a word,” Tranby agreed, pacing up and down the room wit
h
the sheet of notepaper in his hand. “The name of a town or perhaps a village. Maybe it might be the name of the house itself,” he suggested, wheeling round to see how his friend took to the idea. “It’s pretty flimsy evidence to start a search with, I know, but it’s better than nothing at all.”

“I believe Anna came from the north of England,” Noel mused doggedly. “We have the mention of the North Sea to go on, which means it would be somewhere on the east, and then there’s the moorland country she remembers and describes so well. That would give us a stretch of the northeast coast from Yorkshire to Berwick to search, which is rather a tall order, especially since the police seem unable to help us with their list of persons missing. No
,
” he added with renewed vigour, “we can’t wait for the police.
We’ve got to tackle this on our own, and the three letters are our first real clue. ALN! I wonder what they mean?”

“After this case is cleared up to your satisfaction I’m joining the Sleuths Department of Scotland Yard!” Tranby grinned. “Let’s leave it for tonight, old man. It will keep. Anna is happy enough where she is.”

But not completely happy, Noel thought as he put the paper in a drawer and reached for his white coat. Not, completely happy. That’s something I may be able to do for her in time, though, and I’ve got to do it unselfishly. I even may have it in my power to give her the happiness she needs—indirectly.

He foun
d
Sara on duty when he reached the wards and she went round with him.

“I’m going on holiday next week,” she told him as she re-arranged the screens round the last bed. “I’ve ten days to take and Matron would like me to get them in right away. We’re not too busy and the weather is good at the moment.”

“Where do you intend to go?” he asked idly, consulting her report on the patient they had just left. “Abroad again?”

“You know I told you that I hadn’t booked up in time!” Sara felt like shaking him out of his obvious indifference. “I couldn’t fix anything definitely at the time of the epidemic, and after that it was rather late. I don’t really mind,” she added conscientiously. “I couldn’t have left Matron in a flat spin at the time with all the extra work on her hands, and sometimes I wonder if we don’t miss quite a lot of the beauty of our own country by rushing off to the Continent whenever we have a few days to spare!”

“True enough,” Noel agreed. “I’ve met people in London whose knowledge of Paris and Geneva was far greater than any conception of their own country north of the Home Counties! Where had you thought of going?”

“Oh—possibly north,” she answered evasively. “I’ve never been to the Lake District—or to Scotland. By the way, Noel, I wonder if I might borrow that new book of yours on the streptomycin theory to take with me. I could read it through while I was away.”

“All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl!” he laughed, “but have it by all means, if you must!”

He thinks that my work means everything to me! Sara mused bitterly, forgetting that the impression was one which she had gone out of her way to foster in the past, largely for his benefit so that she might emphasize her own suitability as wife and helpmate to a busy doctor.

“I can’t see any hope of reading it through otherwise,” she said.

“You’ll find it in my consulting-room,’ he told her. “In the right-hand drawer of my desk, I think. By the way,” he added, referring to the report he still held, “I’d like a word with Greaves about this X-ray tomorrow. Arrange it for me, will you?”

“I’m going off duty now, but I’ll put in a note, and I’ll collect the book on my way.” She smiled at him as they parted. “Thank you, Noel!”

When she reached Noel’s room she looked about her as she usually did, with a kind of hunger in her eyes, and then she straightened her shoulders and pulled open the nearest drawer. A sheet of blue notepaper lay on top of the book she sought and she picked it up, staring at it curiously. Part of it appeared to be covered by what she could only describe as ‘doodling’ a mass of strange-looking hieroglyphics and half-formed sentences jotted down at random, while underneath was what read like a school girl’s essay on a day in the country.

Her face flushed dully as she read on, turning the page with a quick flick of her wrist so that her starched cuff crackled with the abrupt movement. She had even forgotten where she stood and that she was reading someone’s private papers, and the stiff front of her apron rose an
d
fell as her breath came more heavily between her parted lips.

When she had read to the end of the second page she laid the paper back in the drawer and turned towards the door with the book she had come to borrow clutched against her breast.

She had found a weapon near to her hand, at last, and she meant to use it with what speed she could.

“Ten days!” she murmured. “I could do it in less than that time, with any luck!”

Two days later she told Ruth that she was going off on a rambling holiday.

“Don’t expect more than the odd postcard,” she laughed. “I don’t intend to stay more than a day in any one place!”

“But surely,” Ruth objected, “you have some sort of objective, some definite end in view?”

Sara smiled thinly.

“I dare say, but quite truthfully I don’t really know what it is—not yet!”

Ruth considered her doubtfully. She had half expected Sara to suggest that they should go together, as she had done once before, but the invitation had not been forthcoming and, somehow, she had felt glad. One reason was that she did not want to leave Anna at this crucial stage in her journey back to memory, and the other was all tangled up with this new and distressing feeling of being entirely out of tune with Sara.

“You don’t mind going alone?” she asked, and Sara was swift to refute any suggestion of loneliness.

“Not in the least. I never did worry about being left in my own company,” she declared. “I can always find something to do.”

“Of course,” Ruth said, “if you’re going to move about
...”

“I intend to start at York and go north from there,” Sara said. “Old walled cities have always had a fascination for me.”

Ruth could not quite shake off the conviction that Sara was not telling the truth, although they had gone often enough to Chester together, and there was probably some fascination in linking up those old, walled cities and travelling down into the past. Sara had made her decision about that sort of holiday so quickly, however, that it seemed she might have another motive for journeying north so determinedly, and when she left Glynmareth at the end of the week she had a look in her eyes which did not seem to reflect the holiday spirit at all. But very soon Ruth had forgotten about Sara in her concern for her brother.

Noel was looking positively unhappy these days, she thought, with that tense, strained expression about his face and the remoteness deepening in his eyes. He ate so little, too, that she began to worry about his physical needs, but nothing she could say by way of protest called forth more than a deprecating smile.

“You know I never did eat a lot,” he would point out. “You’re becoming a Mother Hen!”

“I’m not the type who fusses unnecessarily,” she retorted sharply on one occasion. “You eat next to nothing and you work far too hard. What you need is a holiday.”

Surprisingly, he agreed with her.

“I’ve arranged with Tranby to take over for a few days,” he said.

“A few days isn’t going to do much good,” Ruth declared belligerently. “You’re entitled to a month. Why don’t you take it and get a real rest?”

Some inner sense, some urge to protect that which she loved, had prompted the suggestion, but suddenly they were both thinking of Anna and looking at one another with the knowledge of her dependence on them in their eyes.

“I’d take care of her,” Ruth promised. “You needn’t fear. There would be Dennis, too.”

He turned from her and strode to the window.

“I won’t be away for more than a week—perhaps not even that,” he said. “I’m going north, Ruth, to work on a clue we’ve picked up. Both Dennis and I believe that Anna came from somewhere in the north country—the north-east coast or the North Riding of Yorkshire.”

“Yorkshire?” Ruth stood questioningly before the word. “Does Sara know about this?” she asked bluntly.

“Sara? I shouldn’t think so. What makes you ask? She’s on holiday, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Ruth said slowly, “she’s on holiday. I wondered, though, if she knew before she left.”

“There’s no reason why she should have been told,” Noel answered indifferently. “It isn’t a hospital case.”

Ruth would not burden him with her thoughts at the moment, and so she switched the conversation back to Anna.

“I wouldn’t say she had a Yorkshire accent,” she demurred. “In fact, she hasn’t much of an accent at all.”

“We’re not going by an accent,” he told her. “It’s something far more definite than that. Anna wrote some impressions for me and the letters ALN appeared through them, suggesting that it was a familiar name out of the past, and both Dennis and I feel that we could help her if we could find this place. Of course, the greatest achievement would be to trace her relatives through it.”

“So that’s why you’ve been poring over all those old atlases,” Ruth guessed. “I wondered. It still seems an amazing thing to me that her people have not claimed her,” she added.

“It’s about the most callous thing I’ve ever known,” he returned, scowling. “Dennis established pretty firmly that she has both father and sister, during that hypnotic session last week, but he thinks her mother may be dead. Anna showed a quiet acceptance of that sorrow consistent with death in these circumstances. There was nothing like the distress registered when her marriage was mentioned, for instance.”

He spoke about Anna’s marriage so rarely now, but Ruth knew that the thought of it was constantly in his mind, as it was in her own. They could not get away from it, nor could she blind herself any longer to the fact that her brother was deeply in love with the girl she had brought home.

Remorse quite often pursued Ruth with a relentlessness which she could not turn aside, and yet, on the other hand, she could not regret having helped someone so much in need of her kindness and understanding as Anna had proved to be.

That the amnesia would be finally broken she had no doubt, her fears were for her brother in the process.

It was Anna herself who seemed to see farther than any of them, however.

The day after Sara had gone off on holiday she came across from the hospital at five o’clock, following Ruth into the sitting-room instead of going upstairs with her coat, as usual.

“Ruth,” she asked, “could you spare me a minute or two?”

“Ten, if you want them!” Ruth turned from the window to smile at her. “I don’t suppose Noel will be in much before six. He’s gone to Bristol about that new appointment.”

“I—hope he’ll get it,” Anna said. “But you’ll hate leaving here, Ruth.”

“Yes,” Ruth answered with absolute candour, “but I can’t stand in his way.”

“Making sacrifices is part of life,” Anna said in a strained undertone which completely changed her voice. “Ruth, I want to go away.”

Ruth glanced at her sharply.

“We’ve been over all this before,” she pointed out.

“I know, but—I feel it will be best to go. I’ve thought it all over. Sister Enman said once that a fresh mind on a case was sometimes nine-tenths of the way towards a solution, that—that a doctor could be too near to a case to see it objectively.” She paused, clenching her hands nervously by her side in an effort to still their trembling. “I wonder if Noel would put me in touch with the specialist he told me about in Bristol? He mentioned him the other day when—when we hadn’t got very far with the tests we were doing, and I thought I could—go into hospital there.” She raised dark, unhappy eyes to Ruth’s, as if pleading with her to understand. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate all Noel has done,” she begged, “or that I think he has failed. It’s just—just that I feel someone else might be—the best decision.”

Ruth came across the room to stand facing her on the hearthrug. “Anna, my dear, that isn’t your true reason for wanting to go is it?” she asked gently.

“How can I stay!” The cry came straight from Anna’s heart, wrung from her against her will. “How can I go on accepting your kindness and doing nothing in return! Ruth, I must go. I must!”

Ruth’s eyes lifted suddenly to the door to see her brother unexpectedly standing there with a look in his eyes that seared straight across her heart.

“Anna, what nonsense is this?” he demanded, striding across the room. “You know you have no right to talk like this—no right to leave us. You know I can keep you here by compulsion, if I wish!”

Softly Ruth tiptoed out of the room, drawing the door behind her, leaving them face to face with the most hopeless situation she had ever been a party to, her pity reaching out to them, yet conscious that there was nothing further she could do. It remained to Noel, now, to resolve their problem.