A Deadly Affair, page 16
“Doctor Constantine,” said the nurse.
The doctor was dressed in European clothes, but his face was swarthy and his eyes were dark and oblique with a peculiarly piercing power in their glance.
“So this is my patient?” he said in a low, vibrant voice.
“I’m not a patient,” said Mrs. Rymer.
“Your body is not sick,” said the doctor, “but your soul is weary. We of the East know how to cure that disease. Sit down and drink a cup of coffee.”
Mrs. Rymer sat down and accepted a tiny cup of the fragrant brew. As she sipped it the doctor talked.
“Here in the West, they treat only the body. A mistake. The body is only the instrument. A tune is played upon it. It may be a sad, weary tune. It may be a gay tune full of delight. The last is what we shall give you. You have money. You shall spend it and enjoy. Life shall be worth living again. It is easy—easy—so easy. . . .”
A feeling of languor crept over Mrs. Rymer. The figures of the doctor and the nurse grew hazy. She felt blissfully happy and very sleepy. The doctor’s figure grew bigger. The whole world was growing bigger.
The doctor was looking into her eyes. “Sleep,” he was saying. “Sleep. Your eyelids are closing. Soon you will sleep. You will sleep. You will sleep. . . .”
Mrs. Rymer’s eyelids closed. She floated with a wonderful great big world. . . .
When her eyes opened it seemed to her that a long time had passed. She remembered several things vaguely—strange, impossible dreams; then a feeling of waking; then further dreams. She remembered something about a car and the dark, beautiful girl in a nurse’s uniform bending over her.
Anyway, she was properly awake now, and in her own bed.
At least, was it her own bed? It felt different. It lacked the delicious softness of her own bed. It was vaguely reminiscent of days almost forgotten. She moved, and it creaked. Mrs. Rymer’s bed in Park Lane never creaked.
She looked round. Decidedly, this was not Park Lane. Was it a hospital? No, she decided, not a hospital. Nor was it a hotel. It was a bare room, the walls an uncertain shade of lilac. There was a deal washstand with a jug and basin upon it. There was a deal chest of drawers and a tin trunk. There were unfamiliar clothes hanging on pegs. There was the bed covered with a much-mended quilt and there was herself in it.
“Where am I?” said Mrs. Rymer.
The door opened and a plump little woman bustled in. She had red cheeks and a good-humoured air. Her sleeves were rolled up and she wore an apron.
“There!” she exclaimed. “She’s awake. Come in, doctor.”
Mrs. Rymer opened her mouth to say several things—but they remained unsaid, for the man who followed the plump woman into the room was not in the least like the elegant, swarthy Doctor Constantine. He was a bent old man who peered through thick glasses.
“That’s better,” he said, advancing to the bed and taking up Mrs. Rymer’s wrist. “You’ll soon be better now, my dear.”
“What’s been the matter with me?” demanded Mrs. Rymer.
“You had a kind of seizure,” said the doctor. “You’ve been unconscious for a day or two. Nothing to worry about.”
“Gave us a fright you did, Hannah,” said the plump woman. “You’ve been raving too, saying the oddest things.”
“Yes, yes, Mrs. Gardner,” said the doctor repressively. “But we musn’t excite the patient. You’ll soon be up and about again, my dear.”
“But don’t you worry about the work, Hannah,” said Mrs. Gardner. “Mrs. Roberts has been in to give me a hand and we’ve got on fine. Just lie still and get well, my dear.”
“Why do you call me Hannah?” said Mrs. Rymer.
“Well, it’s your name,” said Mrs. Gardner, bewildered.
“No, it isn’t. My name is Amelia. Amelia Rymer. Mrs. Abner Rymer.”
The doctor and Mrs. Gardner exchanged glances.
“Well, just you lie still,” said Mrs. Gardner.
“Yes, yes; no worry,” said the doctor.
They withdrew. Mrs. Rymer lay puzzling. Why did they call her Hannah, and why had they exchanged that glance of amused incredulity when she had given them her name? Where was she and what had happened?
She slipped out of bed. She felt a little uncertain on her legs, but she walked slowly to the small dormer window and looked out—on a farmyard! Completely mystified, she went back to bed. What was she doing in a farmhouse that she had never seen before?
Mrs. Gardner re-entered the room with a bowl of soup on a tray.
Mrs. Rymer began her questions. “What am I doing in this house?” she demanded. “Who brought me here?”
“Nobody brought you, my dear. It’s your home. Leastways, you’ve lived here for the last five years—and me not suspecting once that you were liable to fits.”
“Lived here! Five years?”
“That’s right. Why, Hannah, you don’t mean that you still don’t remember?”
“I’ve never lived here! I’ve never seen you before.”
“You see, you’ve had this illness and you’ve forgotten.”
“I’ve never lived here.”
“But you have, my dear.” Suddenly Mrs. Gardner darted across to the chest of drawers and brought to Mrs. Rymer a faded photograph in a frame.
It represented a group of four persons: a bearded man, a plump woman (Mrs. Gardner), a tall, lank man with a pleasantly sheepish grin, and somebody in a print dress and apron—herself!
Stupefied, Mrs. Rymer gazed at the photograph. Mrs. Gardner put the soup down beside her and quietly left the room.
Mrs. Rymer sipped the soup mechanically. It was good soup, strong and hot. All the time her brain was in a whirl. Who was mad? Mrs. Gardner or herself? One of them must be! But there was the doctor too.
“I’m Amelia Rymer,” she said firmly to herself. “I know I’m Amelia Rymer and nobody’s going to tell me different.”
She had finished the soup. She put the bowl back on the tray. A folded newspaper caught her eye and she picked it up and looked at the date on it, October 19. What day had she gone to Mr. Parker Pyne’s office? Either the fifteenth or the sixteenth. Then she must have been ill for three days.
“That rascally doctor!” said Mrs. Rymer wrathfully.
All the same, she was a shade relieved. She had heard of cases where people had forgotten who they were for years at a time. She had been afraid some such thing had happened to her.
She began turning the pages of the paper, scanning the columns idly, when suddenly a paragraph caught her eye.
Mrs. Abner Rymer, widow of Abner Rymer, the “button shank” king, was removed yesterday to a private home for mental cases. For the past two days she has persisted in declaring she was not herself, but a servant girl named Hannah Moorhouse.
“Hannah Moorhouse! So that’s it,” said Mrs. Rymer. “She’s me and I’m her. Kind of double, I suppose. Well, we can soon put that right! If that oily hypocrite of a Parker Pyne is up to some game or other—”
But at this minute her eye was caught by the name Constantine staring at her from the printed page. This time it was a headline.
DR. CONSTANTINE’S CLAIM
At a farewell lecture given last night on the eve of his departure for Japan, Dr. Claudius Constantine advanced some startling theories. He declared that it was possible to prove the existence of the soul by transferring a soul from one body to another. In the course of his experiments in the East he had, he claimed, successfully effected a double transfer—the soul of a hypnotized body A being transferred to a hypnotized body B and the soul of body B to the soul of body A. On recovering from the hypnotic sleep, A declared herself to be B, and B thought herself to be A. For the experiment to succeed, it was necessary to find two people with a great bodily resemblance. It was an undoubted fact that two people resembling each other were en rapport. This was very noticeable in the case of twins, but two strangers, varying widely in social position, but with a marked similarity of feature, were found to exhibit the same harmony of structure.
Mrs. Rymer cast the paper from her. “The scoundrel!”
She saw the whole thing now! It was a dastardly plot to get hold of her money. This Hannah Moorhouse was Mr. Pyne’s tool—possibly an innocent one. He and that devil Constantine had brought off this fantastic coup.
But she’d expose him! She’d show him up! She’d have the law on him! She’d tell everyone—
Abruptly Mrs. Rymer came to a stop in the tide of her indignation. She remembered the first paragraph. Hannah Moorhouse had not been a docile tool. She had protested; had declared her individuality. And what had happened?
“Clapped into a lunatic asylum, poor girl,” said Mrs. Rymer.
A chill ran down her spine.
A lunatic asylum. They got you in there and they never let you get out. The more you said you were sane, the less they’d believe you. There you were and there you stayed. No, Mrs. Rymer wasn’t going to run the risk of that.
The door opened and Mrs. Gardner came in.
“Ah, you’ve drunk your soup, my dear. That’s good. You’ll soon be better now.”
“When was I taken ill?” demanded Mrs. Rymer.
“Let me see. It was three days ago—on Wednesday.
That was the fifteenth. You were took bad about four o’clock.”
“Ah!” The ejaculation was fraught with meaning. It had been just about four o’clock when Mrs. Rymer had entered the presence of Doctor Constantine.
“You slipped down in your chair,” said Mrs. Gardner. “‘Oh!’ you says. ‘Oh!’ just like that. And then: ‘I’m falling asleep,’ you says in a dreamy voice. ‘I’m falling asleep.’ And fall asleep you did, and we put you to bed and sent for the doctor, and here you’ve been ever since.”
“I suppose,” Mrs. Rymer ventured, “there isn’t any way you could know who I am—apart from my face, I mean.”
“Well, that’s a queer thing to say,” said Mrs. Gardner. “What is there to go by better than a person’s face, I’d like to know? There’s your birthmark, though, if that satisfies you better.”
“A birthmark?” said Mrs. Rymer, brightening. She had no such thing.
“Strawberry mark just under the right elbow,” said Mrs. Gardner. “Look for yourself, my dear.”
“This will prove it,” said Mrs. Rymer to herself. She knew that she had no strawberry mark under the right elbow. She turned back the sleeve of her nightdress. The strawberry mark was there.
Mrs. Rymer burst into tears.
Four days later Mrs. Rymer rose from her bed. She had thought out several plans of action and rejected them.
She might show the paragraph in the paper to Mrs. Gardner and explain. Would they believe her? Mrs. Rymer was sure they would not.
She might go to the police. Would they believe her? Again she thought not.
She might go to Mr. Pyne’s office. That idea undoubtedly pleased her best. For one thing, she would like to tell that oily scoundrel what she thought of him. She was debarred from putting this plan into operation by a vital obstacle. She was at present in Cornwall (so she had learned), and she had no money for the journey to London. Two and fourpence in a worn purse seemed to represent her financial position.
And so, after four days, Mrs. Rymer made a sporting decision. For the present she would accept things! She was Hannah Moorhouse. Very well, she would be Hannah Moorhouse. For the present she would accept that role, and later, when she had saved sufficient money, she would go to London and beard the swindler in his den.
And having thus decided, Mrs. Rymer accepted her role with perfect good temper, even with a kind of sardonic amusement. History was repeating itself indeed. This life reminded her of her girlhood. How long ago that seemed!
The work was a bit hard after her years of soft living, but after the first week she found herself slipping into the ways of the farm.
Mrs. Gardner was a good-tempered, kindly woman. Her husband, a big, taciturn man, was kindly also. The lank, shambling man of the photograph had gone; another farmhand came in his stead, a good-humoured giant of forty-five, slow of speech and thought, but with a shy twinkle in his blue eyes.
The weeks went by. At last the day came when Mrs. Rymer had enough money to pay her fare to London. But she did not go. She put it off. Time enough, she thought. She wasn’t easy in her mind about asylums yet. That scoundrel, Parker Pyne, was clever. He’d get a doctor to say she was mad and she’d be clapped away out of sight with no one knowing anything about it.
“Besides,” said Mrs. Rymer to herself, “a bit of a change does one good.”
She rose early and worked hard. Joe Welsh, the new farmhand, was ill that winter, and she and Mrs. Gardner nursed him. The big man was pathetically dependent on them.
Spring came—lambing time; there were wild flowers in the hedges, a treacherous softness in the air. Joe Welsh gave Hannah a hand with her work. Hannah did Joe’s mending.
Sometimes, on Sundays, they went for a walk together. Joe was a widower. His wife had died four years before. Since her death he had, he frankly confessed it, taken a drop too much.
He didn’t go much to the Crown nowadays. He bought himself some new clothes. Mr. and Mrs. Gardner laughed.
Hannah made fun of Joe. She teased him about his clumsiness. Joe didn’t mind. He looked bashful but happy.
After spring came summer—a good summer that year. Everyone worked hard.
Harvest was over. The leaves were red and golden on the trees.
It was October eighth when Hannah looked up one day from a cabbage she was cutting and saw Mr. Parker Pyne leaning over the fence.
“You!” said Hannah, alias Mrs. Rymer. “You. . . .”
It was some time before she got it all out, and when she had said her say, she was out of breath.
Mr. Parker Pyne smiled blandly. “I quite agree with you,” he said.
“A cheat and a liar, that’s what you are!” said Mrs. Rymer, repeating herself. “You with your Constantines and your hypnotizing, and that poor girl Hannah Moorhouse shut up with—loonies.”
“No,” said Mr. Parker Pyne, “there you misjudge me. Hannah Moorhouse is not in a lunatic asylum, because Hannah Moorhouse never existed.”
“Indeed?” said Mrs. Rymer. “And what about the photograph of her that I saw with my own eyes?”
“Faked,” said Mr. Pyne. “Quite a simple thing to manage.”
“And the piece in the paper about her?”
“The whole paper was faked so as to include two items in a natural manner which would carry conviction. As it did.”
“That rogue, Doctor Constantine!”
“An assumed name—assumed by a friend of mine with a talent for acting.”
Mrs. Rymer snorted. “Ho! And I wasn’t hypnotized either, I suppose?”
“As a matter of fact, you were not. You drank in your coffee a preparation of Indian hemp. After that, other drugs were administered and you were brought down here by car and allowed to recover consciousness.”
“Then Mrs. Gardner has been in it all the time?” said Mrs. Rymer.
Mr. Parker Pyne nodded.
“Bribed by you, I suppose! Or filled up with a lot of lies!”
“Mrs. Gardner trusts me,” said Mr. Pyne. “I once saved her only son from penal servitude.”
Something in his manner silenced Mrs. Rymer on that tack. “What about the birthmark!” she demanded.
Mr. Pyne smiled. “It is already fading. In another six months it will have disappeared altogether.”
“And what’s the meaning of all this tomfoolery? Making a fool of me, sticking me down here as a servant—me with all that good money in the bank. But I suppose I needn’t ask. You’ve been helping yourself to it, my fine fellow. That’s the meaning of all this.”
“It is true,” said Mr. Parker Pyne, “that I did obtain from you, while you were under the influence of drugs, a power of attorney and that during your—er—absence, I have assumed control of your financial affairs, but I can assure you, my dear madam, that apart from that original thousand pounds, no money of yours has found its way into my pocket. As a matter of fact, by judicious investments your financial position is actually improved.” He beamed at her.
“Then why—?” began Mrs. Rymer.
“I am going to ask you a question, Mrs. Rymer,” said Mr. Parker Pyne. “You are an honest woman. You will answer me honestly, I know. I am going to ask you if you are happy.”
“Happy! That’s a pretty question! Steal a woman’s money and ask her if she’s happy. I like your impudence!”
“You are still angry,” he said. “Most natural. But leave my misdeeds out of it for the moment. Mrs. Rymer, when you came to my office a year ago today, you were an unhappy woman. Will you tell me that you are unhappy now? If so, I apologize, and you are at liberty to take what steps you please against me. Moreover, I will refund the thousand pounds you paid me. Come, Mrs. Rymer, are you an unhappy woman now?”
Mrs. Rymer looked at Mr. Parker Pyne, but she dropped her eyes when she spoke at last.
“No,” she said. “I’m not unhappy.” A tone of wonder crept into her voice. “You’ve got me there. I admit it. I’ve not been as happy as I am now since Abner died. I—I’m going to marry a man who works here—Joe Welsh. Our banns are going up next Sunday; that, is they were going up next Sunday.”
“But now, of course, everything is different.”
Mrs. Rymer’s face flamed. She took a step forward.
“What do you mean, different? Do you think that if I had all the money in the world it would make me a lady? I don’t want to be a lady, thank you; a helpless good-for-nothing lot they are. Joe’s good enough for me and I’m good enough for him. We suit each other and we’re going to be happy. As you for, Mr. Nosey Parker, you take yourself off and don’t interfere with what doesn’t concern you!”
Mr. Parker Pyne took a paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “The power of attorney,” he said. “Shall I tear it up? You will assume control of your own fortune now, I take it.”
A strange expression came over Mrs. Rymer’s face. She thrust back the paper.
