The Little Doctor (13 page)

And—justifiably or unjustifiably—he doesn’t trust Eddie, Jane thought. She put the telephone back on its cradle. Valerie, I wish you were a hundred miles away from Edward Jakes, she thought.

When Valerie eventually appeared in Allingham she was particularly amenable. She even offered Jane her old ski clothes.

“You won’t mind about them being two seasons out of date,” was how she put it, “and they’re really still quite smart.”

Max had brought her down and they had a quick meal together before he went across to the hospital to get the results of the laboratory tests for which he was waiting. When he came back he looked a little less worried.

“It looks as if we know what we’re doing now,” he told Jane. “Bellerby can cope with the surgeries and I can get out to the farms. The M.O.H. has traced the source, so we’re getting somewhere at last.”

There was no suggestion that he could leave with Valerie, after all. Not at this stage, Jane realized. There could so easily be a fresh outbreak of the trouble within the next few days. It would take more than a week to be absolutely sure.

And Valerie did not even suggest that they should wait that week beside her husband. She seemed to be impelled by an overmastering urge to put distance between herself and the dale as swiftly as possible.

Before they left for London Max came to see Jane at the hospital.

“There’s just one more thing,” he said, and once again there was that fleeting suggestion of hesitation in his manner. “Valerie has odd giddy spells—headache and that sort of thing—brought on mostly by too much excitement. I’m not putting a burden of restraint on your shoulders, Jane—within limits she can do almost anything—but if you would veto—the highly imaginative adventures, I should be obliged.”

“You’re making me feel like an over-strict nanny!” she smiled gently.

His answering smile was one-sided and amused.

“That’s not what I want you to feel,” he said. “I’m hoping you are going to enjoy yourself, too.” Suddenly his face sobered. “You’ve no flesh on you, Jane,” he said almost harshly. “You need this holiday far more than Valerie does.”

Jane said, “I’m hoping to enjoy it,” wondering why she should feel so lost when she looked at him.

He felt the inside pocket of his jacket, producing a long manilla envelope that had not been addressed. It was however, sealed. Holding it out to her, he said:

“I want you to take this with you. There’s a letter inside, and another addressed to a very old friend of mine in Zurich—Professor Zooltan. If anything should happen to Valerie—anything at all—I want you to open this and send off the letter.” He put the envelope on the table between them. “I don’t suppose for one minute that you will have to open it. It’s no more than a precaution I’m taking, but if you do you will get in touch with me immediately.” He took a pace or two about the room. “I’m sorry to sound so mysterious,” he added abruptly. “It’s purely a medical precaution, and one day I shall tell you all about it.”

“Max,” Jane asked, “is this serious?”

He took a full minute to consider the question.

“No,” he said at last with slow deliberation, which reminded her instantly of his former reserve. “Nothing—drastic can happen. I think the best thing you can do is put it all out of your mind—and bring the letter back to me when your holiday is over.”

“You don’t expect to come out, then?”

“I shall be able to answer that better by the end of next week,” he said.

Jane and Valerie journeyed separately to London. Valerie went on a day ahead because she still had some last-minute shopping to do and “some friends to meet.” She did not tell Jane who the friends were and Jane did not ask. There seemed to have been a theatre party and supper afterward. Valerie turned up at the airport looking pale and tired.

With Max’s letter pushed into her travelling bag, Jane viewed the result of one evening’s frivolity with an unusually apprehensive eye. Valerie looked exhausted, with a nervous twitching at the corner of her mouth that Jane did not like. But since there was no complaint of fatigue there was really nothing to be done but climb aboard the plane and find their seats.

Valerie was used to air travel and bored by it. Soon she fell asleep, with her fair hair pillowed near Jane’s shoulder.

Jane looked beyond her out of the window, but there was nothing to be seen beyond the silver shield of the wing except thick white cloud, through which they travelled for most of the journey.

Deprived of a view, she found herself studying the fine contours of her companion’s face. In sleep Valerie looked younger than ever.
T
he blue-veined eyelids and the long sweep of the amazingly dark lashes gave her face an expression of youthful innocence that was hard to dispel. Even the droop of the soft, petulant mouth suggested immaturity, and Jane found herself forgiving Valerie many things. Perhaps one day she would grow up into a fitting companion for Max, his wife in the fullest sense of the word.

They spent the night in Zurich, wandering out along the lakeside to look at the mountains glittering in bright, frosty moonlight. Jane was entranced. This lovely city was more like a dream to her than any reality, and even Valerie was fascinated by the lavish, pre-Christmas displays in the shop windows when they walked back through the town.

“I could quite cheerfully stay up all night just wandering around
looking
!”
she declared. Sleeping is such a waste of time when there’s so little time.”

“We have over a fortnight,” Jane reminded her, thinking that she was speaking about their holiday.

“
I
didn’t mean that.” Valerie’s mouth looked suddenly pinched. “
I
was thinking about how little time we have to live, Jane. Only a few years, really.”

“Don’t let’s be too morbid,” Jane said sharply. “I think we ought to go to bed when we begin talking like that.”

“
Sorry!” Valerie was instantly apologetic. “I have these thoughts sometimes, but they don’t worry me for very long. They come mostly when I’m depressed, I guess.”

She was probably missing Max already, Jane thought, but could not find words to comfort her.

The journey to Klosters was slow, and at Malans, where they changed trains, the real cold of the mountains met them. The invigorating air penetrated deeply into Jane’s lungs and she began to be glad that she had come. Quite apart from helping Max, she was really going to enjoy all this. She had never been able to travel. There hadn’t been the money at home, for one thing. In the long vacation she had taken a job, content to work because it supplemented her income during term and sometimes even helped with the purchase of textbooks or clothes. It had been no real hardship as far as she had been concerned. She had loved the different sort of life and gone back to her studies completely refreshed.

Even now she did not stop to compare her life with Valerie’s. Above all things, she was happy in her work. She had learned to ski in her native Scotland, so that it was true enough to say that she had mastered, the art, but after their first day out on the snow above the little Alpine town she realized that she was no expert.

With a little flip of a metal ski-stick the far more accomplished Valerie left her standing and went skimming off over the snow.

“I don’t know why Max insisted on Klosters,” she grumbled at first. “We could easily have afforded St. Moritz. It isn’t far away, though,” she added reflectively as she studied their fellow guests at the small, polished wood tables scattered about the
breakfast room
of their hotel. “We could go by the postal bus through Davos and Sus, or over the Bergun Pass.”

“I think,” Jane advised, “we’d better stay put. Max will expect us to be here if he should suddenly decide to come.”

“You don’t think he will, do you?” Valerie asked almost anxiously. “I mean—he said he wouldn’t know about the epidemic for a week.”

“All the same,” Jane said firmly, “I think we’ll stay where we are.”

The hotel was popular and very comfortable. They saw a good deal of the night life of the resort and spent all the daylight hours on the surrounding slopes.

The great barrier of the Montafon, with the Silvrettahorn and the Fluchthorn piercing the sky above its lesser mountains, was the view which Jane’s eager gaze took in each morning; in the evening, when the sun had set, she watched the departing rays gilding the peaks to the west, turning them to flame and pink and opal before the gray shadows fell across them, stealing away all the light.

They made day-long excursions to Davos Platz and Davos Dorf, taking the lift to the Hospice, and wherever they went the inevitable skiers pulled Valerie into their midst.

She made friends easily, too easily, Jane sometimes thought. Then, one day, returning to the hotel, they saw a familiar figure standing on the steps of the glassed-in verandah, waiting.

Valerie was first to recognize him. It was almost as if she had known he would be there, one week from the day on which they had arrived.

“It’s Eddie!” she cried. “He said he might come.”

Edward Jakes stood where he was, smiling down at the
m
as they approached his vantage point. He had on a very workmanlike suit of black anorak and trousers, with a peaked cap shading his eyes from the last rays of the western sun.

As they reached the steps the sun sank abruptly over the rim of the mountains behind them, plunging the whole lost valley into sudden darkness.

Jakes had unfastened his own skis, and he came down to help Valerie with hers. Their heads were very near as he bent to the task; to Jane it was distastefully like an embrace.

“I didn’t expect to see you here, Mr. Jakes,” she said stiffly. “Have you come over from St. Moritz?”

He raised his head to smile at her, and in the uncertain light his eyes looked black.

“You haven’t any objections, have you?” he asked.

“I couldn’t stop you from coming, if that’s what you mean,” Jane answered.
“
Actually I had no idea you were even in Switzerland.”

His smile deepened.

“It’s quite amazing where I get to once the spirit has moved me,” he said.

Jane turned away. The man had a bad effect on her.

“Are you coming upstairs, Val?” she asked as they strolled towards the
ski room
.

“In a minute.” Valerie had every intention of lingering. “On you go, though, if you want a bath before dinner. I’ll follow in a jiffy.”

It was hopeless, of course, trying to dragoon a grown woman. That Jane had to acknowledge as she pressed the button in the self-operating lift and shot up to the second floor. Valerie would please herself. She would stand down there talking to Edward Jakes for as long as she chose to do so. What could anyone do to stop her? Furiously Jane ran water into her bath, turned off the tap and stood listening for the complementary sound from the bathroom next door, but all was silent in Valerie’s room.

Perhaps she was not very surprised when she finally went downstairs to discover that Edward Jakes had booked in at the hotel.

“A convenient vacant room,” he informed her, looking arrogantly handsome in a yellow sweater emblazoned with an antlered design in jet black wool. His narrow black trousers tapered into curious soft leather boots, as fine as a chamois-skin, and his hair was brushed down, dark and sleek, against his head.

He had all the marks of a philanderer, Jane decided, including the curious indifference. It was that, perhaps, that had kept him a bachelor for so long.

“You seem to resent me, Doctor,” he remarked conversationally as Jane glanced about the room for Valerie. “No,” he answered her unspoken question, “she isn’t down yet. We lingered rather long over our drinks, I’m afraid.” He lit a cigarette. Jane had expected it to have a black filtertip, but it was genuinely English, an ordinary make, which she knew Max smoked, too. “You haven’t managed as far as St. Moritz, I hear, but Val has promised to come over as my guest for Christmas Eve.”

“She can’t do that,” Jane said immediately. “We’re booked in here. There are ample festivities in Klosters, too, Mr. Jakes—”

“I’d like you to call me Eddie,” he said with a quick twist of his handsome mouth. “It sounds so much more friendly, don’t you think, and we really ought to be friends, Doctor. After all, we come from the same delectable part of Yorkshire and I’ve always found the English spinster quite agreeable to letting her hair down on the Continent.”

Jane flushed.

“You seem to have jumped to quite the wrong conclusions this time,” she returned frigidly. “If I should wish to ‘let m
y
hair down’, as you suggest, it wouldn’t be at the present moment.
”

“You’ve forgotten the ‘Mr. Jakes’!” he pointed out with a broad smile. “Look here!” He tried to take her arm. “Why can’t you and I be friends? I only hopped across to see Valerie, to make sure she was enjoying herself.”

“She has been enjoying herself very well up till now.” Jane’s voice was still frigid. “Her husband arranged everything with that end in view before we left England.”

“Kilsyth!” He sneered the word. “There’s a cold fish for you! Nothing matters but work. D’you honestly think the life he expects Val to live up there at Marton Heights would satisfy any woman?”