The Fascinating Doctor, page 17
‘I am worried to death. Is it any good ringing up the station? They have no right to keep him all this time and ruin the dinner party, no right at all. Somebody ought to ring them.’
‘I will,’ said Dr. Bruce, ‘but I’ll do it in the other room. It is high time he came back.’
‘High time,’ and even this quite charming lady was getting distracted.
He was gone some time, when he returned he sat down on the sofa beside Aunt Hetty.
‘You have got news?’ she asked.
‘Yes. There has been some mistake. I think they must realize that it is a mistake, but for the moment there is nothing they can do. They are keeping Jason there.’
His aunt had gone sheet-white.
‘But how can they when he has done nothing, and does not know why they even wanted to talk to him? They can’t keep him without some reason. They just can’t do it.’
The doctor had great charm. He said very gently indeed, ‘Now look here. I would suggest that we do not jump to conclusions. There has been a shocking mistake.’
‘But why have they kept him? There must be some charge? The police cannot run people in and give no reason for it, nor explain anything of it. Why is it?’
‘I did not go into that one,’ and somehow Lesley knew that the doctor was lying.
Aunt Hetty broke into tears. They got some brandy for her. She said that she had for some weeks been haunted by an awful apprehension which would not let her go, and which had distressed her terribly. Now she knew what it was about; she knew what had happened, and was terrified. It was one of his books, of course! She had always said that it was madness to write books of this kind, and one of these days there would be a row about it. Though how they could object to works on black magic, she did not know.
They let her rant on.
Then, towards the end of it, it was the doctor who spoke to her. ‘We have got to bear it, as he would ask us to do. It is so plain that there is some grievous error.’
She sobbed more.
‘But is there? Jason was always silly; he was always ready to do agitating things. I am so deeply worried, but what can I do for the moment? I suggest that we ring up the police station again.’
‘Is … is Jason all right?’ Lesley asked Dr. Bruce.
‘Of course he is! He is not detained as a prisoner, though they may be suspicious. The thing to do is to realize that danger may be approaching, then someone will have to act.’ He paused. Then in a low voice he said, ‘I suspected this from the first.’
That was when the telephone bell rang, and the butler answering it came to Lesley with the news. ‘It is your housekeeper, Doctor.’
She had never thought of Mrs. Higgins being her housekeeper, but just the woman who ran the doctor’s house; the butler gave her the rank which he felt to be desirable for her.
‘I’ll come,’ and she picked up the receiver. ‘Yes? Doctor speaking.’
‘There is an accident case in Rural Lane, Doctor, and they want you there; it is a gentleman in a car that ran into the hedge, or hit a tree, or something, but if you could go along?’
‘I’ll go right now,’ she said, and turned to Aunt Hetty. ‘I’m afraid an accident case in Rural Lane wants me. Will you forgive me being called away? It … it seems awful of me when you are in such trouble, but I shall have to go.’
‘Of course. If it is nothing much and you can come back, please do.’
‘Yes, I will.’
It was the doctor who came out into the hall with her.
Perhaps both of them had been aware of some strange underlying story. Tonight Jason had not seemed to be entirely himself. Half of her felt that she was being a little mad in her conclusion; the other half recognized the fact that madness and the living of life run side by side together, and are closely connected; and this was where the major danger lay.
‘Do let me know what happens?’ she said.
She went out to the car, the little old butler fussing around.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ she told him, and only hoped that she sounded amiably sure.
‘Yes, Doctor, I know that, but whilst things are in this state it is a little difficult. Just a little difficult. I never like it when the police come into an affair. Very embarrassing for everybody.’
‘Perhaps for them also,’ she suggested as she got into the car.
‘That, Doctor, would not distress me,’ he said, and with such conviction that as she turned out of the gate she laughed at the memory. She realized that he had never been more certain.
She went fast. Nobody ever knew what sort of an accident it was until they got to it, and a life might be in danger. She turned sharply into Rural Lane, a short rather badly made-up lane which ran from the brick works to some wild land, where there was said to be some of the best shooting in the country. She slowed down, for the surface was so bad, she could understand anybody having an accident here, that almost went without saying. But she could find no collection of people, which she had expected. Then, at the far end, in full view of the wild land, she saw a car standing at the side of the road, a man by it. There was something about the man which she thought she had seen before; she slowed down and came to a stop.
‘I say,’ she called, ‘I’m a doctor and had a call to an accident here in this lane, have you any idea where it is?’
The man walked to her car, and there was something vaguely familiar about his gait. He laughed then, and of course she knew that laugh. It was Ron!
‘Darling, it’s only me,’ was what he said. ‘No accident, but I thought it high time that we had a talk, and this was the sure way to get you to come to me.’
The moon was almost at the full. It irradiated that very good-looking face of his, but at this moment the very gaiety struck her as being impudent. Now, as a doctor qualified, and in practice, she thought that there was nothing more despicable than to divert a doctor out at night, when at home there might be some honest-to-God case waiting for attention.
‘How dare you!’ she said.
He rested his arm on the open window. ‘It is time we talked, darling,’ he said.
She let fly then! She would never remember what it was she actually said, for she did not wait to choose her words. She was too furious for that. She saw his face cloud. She remembered that he was one of those men who could never stand for a row, and she got into this one a burst of vigorous home truths.
‘Get out!’ she said, and realized that in her anger she was actually talking through clenched teeth. ‘You are the man who never got anywhere and never did anything, save a few stupid flirtations! The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was when your wife came and stopped the honeymoon. That could have been nothing but disaster, and I mean this. Now go out of my life for ever, or I shall report you to the police.’
‘If you do, you will get yourself involved,’ he reminded her.
‘I possibly have a better character to withstand rumour, than you have! At least I am here in a reliable and rewarding job, and you have never done a job in your life. Now get out of here, and out of this place before I report you to the police as being a public nuisance.’
She would never know how she came to say that, but it burst out of her. He backed away.
‘You are accusing me of doing something which I have never done. Germaine biased you. She biased you badly, and you ought to know it. I tell you, the whole thing was cleared up! I was free to marry if I wished, and I did wish, and I married you.’
‘If you force me, I shall fight that one.’
He looked at her. Now his face had gone duller, his eyes were not bright with fury. He said, ‘I’m damned if I am so keen on marrying you after all.’
‘Then I shall go to law, and make sure that I am rid of you for ever,’ she told him.
‘There is no need to go to law, for I shan’t argue. I tell you that I know when I am not wanted.’
‘Make quite sure that you do, for you are not wanted here,’ and she was surprised that she could say it quite so convincingly.
In that moment he did one of those surprising things at which he had always been so adept. He leant forward to where her face came through the window of the car, and he would have kissed her if she had not realized what he was about to do, and drew back. Then she hit him really hard. She had never thought that she would do that to any man. She put her foot down on the accelerator and took the car to the end of the lane and turned it there. Not easy, maybe she would never have done it so well if she had not been in such a furious temper. She spun it round, and was in such a rage that she was not even alarmed lest she overturned it. She came down the lane again. Ron was getting into his own car.
‘This is the end of it all,’ she told herself. ‘This is where we write finis to it, and I go home. Now I can start again. Now I can do what I always wanted to do with my life. I am going to be happy.’
She put her foot down and shot down the rough, little lane, leaping over tussocks and stones. If she did not overturn now, she never would, and the absurd thing was that she laughed at the idea. She came into the main road, with the moon risen above her. ‘Shall I go back to the Old Manor?’ she asked herself, ‘or shall I go home and wait for the doctor there?’
She was suspicious that the night was not yet over. There was a lot more to it yet.
Chapter Thirteen
Mrs. Higgins was in bed when she got back, and she was thankful for that. It was always so much worse when this woman came peering out, wrapped in a dreadful old red dressing-gown, her hair in curlers, to see if there was anything she could get or do.
But tonight she was asleep. Out of the distance there came the faint echo of snoring. Let’s hope she keeps that way, she thought, and settled in to wait for Alan Bruce.
She was sure that he would come and tell her what had happened, he was the sort of reliable man who would keep his word. She did not have to wait too long.
It had been a desperate evening, and maybe she would have enjoyed herself far more if she had gone out with Peter Cross, but somehow she felt that she had passed the boy friend phase. Living is in phases, affection comes and goes. She had been young at hospital with Peter, and they had shared the fun and the difficulties, the arduous demands of their teachers, and the horror of facing crises. But that era had passed. The attraction had been part of that time, no more. Now she had changed a great deal, so probably had he.
Coming face to face with private practice, she had learnt the formidable lesson that in life one has to pay one’s debts, and one pays the big debt to the establishment of life itself, by working for others.
When she was training she had thought that there was nothing so much in that Hippocratic oath, but now, quite suddenly, she saw it almost in letters of gold, and it bound her fast. Maybe she had grown up, fully grown up for the first time, practising here as a doctor, with authority compelling her, and justifying those years of training.
‘I want to be a good doctor,’ she told herself. ‘I do want it, and it does not matter where it is that I work, but I want to be good at it.’
Perhaps she was finding her real self at last.
Within a quarter of an hour she heard the sound of a car approaching the house and stopping outside. If it was another case, she thought she would go mad, and rushed through the list in her mind, but there was no baby due till the end of the month.
This is a crisis in my life, she thought, something that I have to meet and face. Something that is real and vivid, maybe a turning point in my whole life.
She went to the door. Alan Bruce was standing there.
‘How’s things?’ she asked.
‘Bad, I’m afraid, I want a word with you.’
‘Come in and sit down, and tell me. Jason has not been allowed to go back home?’
‘No, and I never thought he would. But I rang up Miss Pottenger; she is a great friend of his aunt, and I thought someone ought to come in and be with her tonight. I did the best I could.’
‘Is the lady all right?’
‘Very worried, but thank Heaven I don’t think she is fully aware of what could happen. She thinks it is all some dreadful mistake, and tomorrow will clear it up.’
‘It was not a mistake?’
He sipped his whisky. ‘I’m afraid not. Ever since I came to this part of the world five years back, I have felt that there was something very strange going on at the Old Manor.’
‘And did you realize what it was?’
‘Yes, I did. Not at first. Later, very definitely. I wondered if you did.’ Again she saw anxiety in those very charming eyes of his.
She said, ‘I was worried. It was my first contact with black magic at such close quarters. The book he gave me worried me stiff, and then when I had to go to that poor girl I was more concerned. Very much more.’
‘Yes, of course. I think the man is slightly mad, one of those egotistical persons. He has lived here surrounded by women, and it has been a bad background for him. He never lasted very long at school or at Cambridge; both careers came to a sticky end, put down to ill health and all the usual things. It was just he himself who was responsible. Doing well with the books was the most fatal thing for him, but nothing could be done to stay it.’
‘They … they don’t accuse him of murder?’ and she asked it aware that her voice fluttered.
‘They will. They will have to do this, for undoubtedly he did it. He will be exonerated, for he is mad, in a curious way.’
‘But what will happen?’
He said, ‘I don’t know. It is a tragic thing that at this crisis in our lives we have come to a point when we make no proper laws for these people. Broadmoor, perhaps.’
‘Oh, not that?’
‘I hope not. My worry is for his aunt.’
‘Is there nothing that we can do?’
He said, ‘Would you go to her in the morning? I feel that this is a moment when a woman doctor could be particularly useful and know the answer. Would you go to her?’
‘Yes, of course.’
He paused. He fingered the glass she had given him, he said, ‘And you yourself …?’
‘When I was a child I was taught that in life everything happens at once; it comes in a bounce, and that is what is happening to me just now. Dr. Bowler wants me to go into partnership with him and take over the major part of the practice, the part which is killing him, when he returns.’
‘And you will?’
‘I don’t know yet. Apparently the cruise has not done an awful lot of good, which I can understand. He does not feel that he can cope, but he could if I stayed on.’
‘So what do you think about it?’
‘I can’t make up my mind yet. I have changed a lot since I came here, even if it was only a short time ago. I realize far more than I ever did before that I owe something to the community, a duty which I have to pay, and I like being here. I want to help the old man if I can, but somehow I do not want to spend the rest of my life here.’
She had seen the advertisement entirely by accident, and later driven to the doctor’s village, which was but a few miles away. At that moment she had realized that the most important thing in her whole life was to get herself satisfactorily established in a job, and then she would have time to think about what had happened. For now she was too confused. Also she wanted to escape Ron, who she was sure would follow her if he knew where she was. This was the hour when she must dedicate herself to a new life.
The job had been offered to her, and she had reached out both hands and had grabbed at it.
She had never regretted that hasty decision, for in her new work she had been able to forget the old worries. She had done well, she believed, she liked the patients and felt that they liked her. She had immediately been flung into an arduous work, one she had never known could ask so much of her, but all that had been to the good. If she did not work, she would never forget.
It had been a great help to the old doctor, for he had been able to go off on his cruise without any worry at all, and she had prayed that there he would recover. Now he had written and asked her about carrying on. She did not want to be here for ever and a day, and she said so.
‘It did a lot for me coming here at a time when I needed work,’ she said, ‘but in spite of all that I should not want to be tied here for ever.’
‘Surely you could make some arrangement? No partnership, but to stay on for a year or so and see how things shape up? Would not that be the wiser choice for you?’
She looked at him.
‘I’m such a fool. He would get used to me and I would feel in a year that if I went back on him, he would be utterly lost and wretched, and I could not break away. I should feel like that, you know.’
He smiled.
‘Yes, of course; I suggest that first of all you take the trouble to consult a good solicitor about your marriage. That must be legally obliterated, you can’t keep it as it is. In the town there is old Mr. Fielding. He is a nice old chap, and reliable. He is not too expensive, so they tell me, and would do it quietly for you. You ought to get rid of Ron.’
She admitted this.
‘He is naughty and will do anything. I do not want him coming down here as he has done. Perhaps I am the luckiest girl in the world not to be tied up permanently to him.’
‘You’ve got something there,’ he agreed.
‘The future worries me,’ she said.
‘But it is never so bad when it becomes the present,’ he reminded her.
‘I cannot think what will happen to Ron.’
‘I don’t suppose that is your business really. Let him go. He is the sort of man who will always have a girl in his life. His kind do.’
‘I shouldn’t want harm to come to him.’
Her companion laughed, and he had a delightful laugh with real amusement in it. ‘I don’t think you would ever be able to save him from himself, for he is that sort of man. You have got to think of your own future.’
She paused and then she said the very thought which had lain close to her own heart for quite a time, though she had tried hard to set it to one side.
