The House Above the River, page 12
“And the boat had gone?”
“No. Luckily she hadn’t. In fact they were looking for this chap. Half the crew were up on the quayside, arguing, and calling out for him and to one another.”
“Calling him by name?”
“I suppose so. But the Breton dialect is beyond me, except for a few odd words. It wasn’t beyond the sick type, though. As soon as we got near, he hobbled away without a word of thanks, and they closed round him and practically lifted him on board, and were off in a matter of minutes.”
“That sounds remarkably like our Henry,” said Giles. “Just the manners we got. A surly beggar, from start to finish.”
“So he’s gone fishing,” said Tony.
“Oh, no.” Jim looked at each of them in turn. “The Marie Antoine isn’t a fishing boat. She carries onions. This chap was dressed like a typical onion seller, black beret, blue blouse and all. Marie Antoine hasn’t gone fishing. She’s gone to Southampton. She’ll be there tomorrow morning, at the latest.”
Chapter Eleven
Giles went to St. Malo by train early the next morning. He was lucky enough to find a returned seat on a plane for England, and by the afternoon had arrived in Southampton, booked a room at an hotel there for the night, and set out to find Henry Davenport.
He went first to the docks in search of Marie Antoine. This proved more difficult than he expected, until he realised that the Brittany boat had probably left port again. He changed his method of inquiry and soon found that this was so. Marie Antoine had docked the day before, discharged her cargo of onions and onion peddlers, taken on board a few stores, and left on that morning’s tide.
This was unfortunate. Giles had hoped to find the boat still at Southampton and his task a comparatively easy one. Now he was back where he had started. He was not even certain that the sick Englishman described by Jim Hurst was really Henry. Whoever he was, three things might have happened. He might have gone back to Roscoff on Marie Antoine; he might have been well enough to set out with his bicycle and his onions, and be anywhere at all in the southern counties; or he might have landed, been too ill to go on, and be now lying sick in lodgings or in hospital.
Having reached these conclusions, Giles decided that it was not possible for him to investigate any of them but the last. His enthusiasm was considerably damped. He had rushed off from Morlaix without really thinking the thing out. All the way to Southampton he had promised himself a dramatic encounter with Henry, thinly disguised, on board Marie Antoine. He might have guessed he would be too late for this. In his own eyes he had lost face, so naturally his resentment against Henry grew.
It was easy enough to get a list of the local hospitals from the main post office. A co-operative clerk told him the most likely one in which to find a sick seaman. But there was no patient there called Henry Davenport.
“Admitted yesterday, some time, I think,” said Giles, when the porter at the hospital had gone carefully through the admissions book.
“No, sir. No one of the name of Davenport. No Englishman at all yesterday, as a matter of fact. Two Indians and one Chinese.”
A thought occurred to Giles.
“This man was on a Breton boat,” he said. “Probably he’d come up with the Breton skipper. They might not be speaking English; most probably wouldn’t be. He can talk both Breton and French.”
The porter’s face lit up.
“A French case?” he said. “Now why didn’t you say so before?”
He turned to the girl at the telephone panel behind him.
“Didn’t you have a call from Out-patients to transfer a French case to the General?” he asked.
The girl, attracted by Giles’s appearance, had been listening to the conversation. She nodded.
“End of the afternoon. Dr. Mathers saw the case in Casualty. We hadn’t got a bed in a medical ward here. I transferred it to the Bed Service.”
“Do you know what the name was?” Giles asked.
“I don’t remember. I’ll get E.B.S. for you and inquire.”
She pulled out plugs and pushed them into a new formation, and presently was speaking to the telephone exchange of the Emergency Bed Service.
“The name was Henri Dupont,” she announced, “and they got him a bed at the General.”
“That’s right,” said the porter, complacently.
Giles thanked them both and left the hospital. Having got so far, even if it proved to be a false track, he decided he must check it. He made his way to the General Hospital, and asked boldly for news of a seaman, Henri Dupont, admitted the day before.
The porter at the General got on to the ward.
“Comfortable, Sister says,” he reported.
“Can I see him, do you think?”
The porter looked at the dock.
“Not visiting hours. But you could go up to the ward if you like. You a relative?” he asked, doubtfully.
“Friend,” said Giles.
“Well, go along and see Sister. She might be able to help you. He’s not on the danger list, or anything like that.”
“Good,” said Giles, trying to sound relieved.
He was told how to find the ward in question. When he reached it, a nurse made him wait outside, but promised to tell Sister he was there.
Giles began, once more, to feel a fool. Suppose it was not Henry at all? Why the devil should he give his name as Dupont when it was Davenport? The latter could be pronounced in a French way quite easily and would pass as French, if he wanted to conceal his nationality. But why should he? This must be some unknown type, not Henry at all, and he would be justifiably abusive if Giles succeeded in reaching his bedside, only to tell him he was not the man he expected to find.
He was just making up his mind to creep away and disappear, giving up the whole preposterous business, when Sister arrived.
“Do you speak English?” she asked, briskly.
Giles told her who he was, and what he wanted.
“English?” she said. “But he hasn’t spoken anything but French since he came in with his friends.”
“Friends?”
“The men off his ship. From Brittany. He’s a Johnny Onions you know.” She looked at him, sharply suspicious. “Or don’t you know?”
“Look,” said Giles, giving in. “I’m trying to find a friend of mine. I think this is the man, but I’m not dead certain. He seems to be using a different name. Can I just have a look at him, to make sure?”
“That’s a very odd story,” said Sister. But there was an amused gleam in Giles’s eye, and an air of authority about him that she could not resist. So she led the way into the ward and pulling back the closed curtains of one of the cubicled beds, stood aside for him to look in.
At first Giles thought he had failed. A pale bloated face lay on the pillow, eyes closed. Dark hair, disordered by restless sleep, lay across the forehead. The lips were blue and puffy.
“He is very ill,” whispered Sister, “and we don’t know yet what is wrong with him. Except this oedema—swelling,” she translated.
“They said downstairs he was not on the danger list.”
“I think he may be—now,” she answered. “The pathologist has just taken a blood sample, and the consultant will be seeing him again this evening. They are really worried.”
Giles was still staring. In spite of the astonishing change he decided that this was indeed Henry. When Sister asked, “Is it your friend?” he nodded, and was turning away when the sick man opened his eyes. For a few seconds he glared at Giles, recognition and astonishment plainly shining out, then, deliberately, he shut them again, and turned his head away. But Sister had been watching.
“Five minutes,” she said, and went away, closing the curtains behind her.
Giles moved forward and sat down beside the bed.
“I came after you,” he said, “to ask you what the hell you meant by tampering with my boat?”
This attack had the effect Giles intended. Henry turned to him with a convulsive movement. His pale distorted face grew scarlet.
“You must be mad!” he cried, hoarsely. “I never went near your boat.”
Giles told him what had happened to Shuna, and how they had taken her to Morlaix, and picked up Henry’s trail at Roscoff. He did not mention the hint they had got from the grocer’s wife, only the information supplied by Jim Hurst.
“Yes, he helped me,” Henry agreed. There was a bitter note in his voice. “He was about the only one of them who was any use. I’ve been coming over with the onion boats for years, but they wanted to dump me on the quay and leave me there. They were afraid to take a sick man, they said. I ought to be at home in bed.”
“So you ought,” said Giles.
“They asked me what to do if I died on board. I said they could put me in the drink and keep their mouths shut.”
“You’re in a pretty bad way, aren’t you?” Giles said, gently.
Henry nodded, struggling up on to one elbow.
“I had to get over here,” he said. “If there’s any cure for this, whatever it is, I’ll get it in this country. Nowhere else.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Giles, “is why you gave a wrong surname and why you’ve been pretending to speak only French or Breton.”
Henry gave him a queer look.
“I didn’t want to worry them at home,” he said, slowly. “The hospital would have wanted to contact them.”
Giles exploded.
“You left without saying a word! Without the slightest warning! You threw the whole household into the father and mother of a panic! Don’t pretend you’re being considerate. It doesn’t go down with me at all.”
Henry said, carefully. “I made up my mind rather quickly. I repeat, I did not want to worry them. After all, they know I generally go off on my own about now. They’re used to it. I like to meet old friends at Roscoff among the fishing fleet, and so on. We had some exciting times together in the war. And I like to go about Hampshire and Surrey on a bicycle, selling onions. You see the country that way, and all sorts of people. I have no relations to speak of. I don’t like Susan’s mother, my aunt, you know, and she doesn’t approve of me. They never understood my father’s settling in France in nineteen-nineteen, nor my mother staying there during the occupation.”
He stopped speaking, breathless with the effort and coughing a little.
“Time’s up,” said Giles, looking at his watch.
“No. Don’t go yet. They’ll throw you out when they want to. I didn’t take in properly what you said about your boat. What exactly happened?”
Giles told him again. He told him he could prove it, because Susan had watched him lengthen the anchor chain.
“Susan,” said Henry, thoughtfully.
“I intend to marry her,” said Giles. “I hope you have no objection. Not that it makes any difference.”
“I’ve no objection,” said Henry, smiling for the first time. “Her parents may have, though. She runs their house for them. They’re a selfish pair. I told you, I avoid them when I come over. They won’t like having to find a paid help, or do the chores themselves.”
“They’ll have to lump it.”
“Is Susan leaving Penguerrec?”
“I wanted her to. At once. I wanted her to go with us.”
“But she wouldn’t?”
“She wouldn’t leave Miriam.”
At the sound of that name Henry’s face set into a bloated mask, expressionless and grotesque, and to Giles very repulsive in its cold indifference.
He got to his feet, quite determined now to go away and not to come back. But as he watched, he saw a look of entreaty spread over the sick man’s features.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he found himself asking, against his will.
“Two things—yes,” Henry panted. He was coughing again and seemed to find breathing difficult. “Go and see my G.P. He doesn’t know yet that I am here.”
“Your doctor, do you mean?”
“Yes. I see him every year when I come over. My slipped disc. He knows my case. Has letters from my Paris specialist. Tell him—get in touch with the people here.”
“Yes. Yes, I will, of course. But why not tell the hospital doctors yourself?”
“They think I’m French. I told you. I don’t want them to know different.”
“You can’t keep it up. And if it’s only to keep your whereabouts secret, you can’t do that, now. I’m going back to Brittany tomorrow, and I shall tell them at the château, at once, where you are and what’s the matter with you.”
“You don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
This was perfectly true, but it seemed an odd remark coming from Henry, and it was oddly spoken.
“You’re ill. That’s good enough. The cause doesn’t matter.”
“It matters very much to me. That’s why I want you to see Williams. Dr. John Williams, Ashridge Road, Totton Park.”
He stretched out a swollen hand to Giles.
“This may be the end of me, Armitage. I feel awful, and I look awful. The doctors don’t know why, yet. They keep talking about allergy and acute rheumatism. But they’re wrong. I’ve been poisoned.”
When Giles did not show any startled reaction, Henry repeated, “Poisoned, I tell you. Deliberately poisoned.”
He lay still, staring at the ceiling, seeming to forget that Giles was still beside his bed, watching him. Presently he began to mutter, in a low, breathless whisper, “She never loved me. I loved her, but she never really loved me. Never loved anyone. Always changing. But loving herself. Always.”
He paused and looked up at Giles. Then he said, clearly, “Bored. Always bored. For years. Wanting to leave me. Now she’s getting rid of me. Poison. Miriam has poisoned me.”
The vacant eyes closed, and two tears ran out from under the swollen lids, and across the bloated cheeks. Giles crept away.
Chapter Twelve
He arrived at Dr. Williams’s house just as the evening surgery was beginning. As it was the middle of August, with many people on holiday and no epidemic about, the session did not promise to be a heavy one. Nevertheless he experienced some difficulty in getting an interview with the doctor, who had a justifiable dislike of consultations at second-hand.
By persistence and many-times repeated explanations, however, Giles persuaded the receptionist to add him to the small queue of eight in the waiting-room, on the understanding that he would give up his place to any genuine patient that might turn up later. None such appeared, and Giles, after reading steadily through the back numbers of two popular magazines, was alone in the waiting-room.
Dr. Williams came in person to show him into the surgery.
“You want to see me about one of my patients?” he asked. He did not seem surprised; merely attentive, in a competent, professional way. Giles liked the look of him.
“Yes. I apologise for gate-crashing, but …”
“What is his name? Or her name?” There was a very slight emphasis on the pronoun. If Giles had been a vain man, which he was not, he might have been gratified.
“Henry Davenport. He sees you about once a year for his back.”
“That chap!” Dr. Williams got up briskly and went to a small cabinet where his private patients’ notes were kept. He found Henry’s card and brought it to the desk.
“I’m prepared to listen to what you say, but I don’t promise to tell you a single thing,” he warned. “Not even if you are a near relative.”
“I’m no relative at all.”
“Well, go on,” said the doctor, glancing at the last entry on the card, then sitting back to listen.
He was a first-class listener, Giles decided. Not absolutely silent, so that you wondered if he were still with you. On the contrary, when you were searching for a way to explain a tricky point, he would prod your mind along with a useful word or two. At the end of it he sat, looking at Henry’s record card, turning it over and back and considering.
“You say you aren’t related to him? Are you an old friend?”
“No. Not even a friend. A very new acquaintance.”
“You did not go to this river on purpose to see him?”
“No.”
“Or his wife?”
Dr. Williams asked the question casually, but Giles resented the implication. He was about to explode when the doctor went on, quietly, “You see, he wrote to me a few days ago for an appointment. I was expecting him yesterday. He wrote in his letter that his wife had been very much upset by some yachting people, who had stayed at the château during a storm. So I wondered. You appear to be one of the visitors he meant.”
“I see.”
This called for a good deal more explanation, of a kind that was not directly any business of Dr. Williams. Giles decided not to give it.
“Henry asked me to tell you where he is,” he said, going back to the reason for his call. “He seems to me to be desperately ill, and he thought you could help the hospital doctors with the diagnosis. He thinks he has been poisoned.”
“That is quite possible,” said Dr. Williams, unexpectedly.
“What d’you mean?”
“The fellow is always taking new so-called cures. He has half a dozen patent medicines with him every time he comes over. A new set each year. Most of them seem to be harmless enough; just the old salicylates got up in a new dress. But last summer he turned up with one of these new drugs.”
“Such as?”
“A complicated chemical of the butazolidene type, that does definitely work, at least temporarily. He won’t consider an operation, which might cure him. Nor even a supporting jacket. Says it hampers his movements on a boat. So we have to find something to relieve the pain caused by the displaced disc. We’ve had this sort of drug in England for quite a time, but I never prescribed it for him, because I didn’t feel he was sufficiently under my control. It certainly relieves pain temporarily. Davenport’s Paris specialist gave it to him, and warned him, quite properly, against going on with it for more than a week or two at a time, without checks.”
