by June Wright
II
I left her, wondering why I was good at giving such advice when I did not use it myself. Had I known then that my presence was no longer a safety to the murderer but a menace, it might have been different.
Unfortunately I did not take the killer’s first warning to heart. I should have retired from the lists then. After the second warning something happened which involved Tony, and naturally I was in the game until the bitter end.
I worked without John’s knowledge because I considered that my unconventional approach to the case might help bring things to a head more quickly, which indeed it did. Even the abortive attempt to remove me from this earthly sphere helped.
I owe to Connie Bellamy the privilege of being able to explain to those who are interested my particular part and reactions to the crime and other mysteries which took place in Middleburn. But I am afraid Connie is unconscious of her great deed even to this day.
On the evening of the day I went to the flat, Connie and I arranged to see a show together. Middleburn does not boast a theatre, but several are accessible by bus routes. One of these theatres is very popular with Middleburn inhabitants. So much so that the bus is always very crowded, carrying about five times the number its licence allows.
There were many familiar faces amongst our fellow picturegoers. I must have seen them in the village at some time. One or two I recognized and we exchanged nods. Ames and his wife were having a night out together. Also another member of the Hall household, Nurse Stone. Maud Cruikshank stepped on at the bus stop just outside the shop. She stared through me after favouring Connie with a wide ingratiating smile.
As the bus started off again a man came running towards it and made a flying leap for the step. It was Nugent Parsons. He chatted to the driver all the way over to Ashton. He glanced at me several times when he thought I was not looking. Once our eyes met and we both glanced away.
“Do you know that fellow?” Connie whispered.
“Only slightly. Do you?”
“Not to speak to. He is considered the village Lothario. I have heard a few stories about him. Nice looking, don’t you think?”
It was quite a good show. I enjoyed what John scornfully terms “ersatz emotion” because it freed my mind from real and less pleasant matters. The only flaw in the evening’s enjoyment was the fact that a corner of the screen was obscured by the head of the person in front. Not much, but just enough to keep me conscious that I was not deep in the heart of Texas, as the title insinuated. It was also enough to puzzle me why the head looked familiar.
At interval time the head turned around and the mild eyes of Doctor Trefont surveyed us.
“Why! Good evening, doctor,” Connie said. “Are you enjoying the programme? I didn’t know it was you in front there.”
“Had I known it was you, Mrs Bellamy, I would have requested before that you refrain from tapping your foot out of time to the music. I am reserving the sharper rebuke planned.”
“She will under one condition,” I retorted, “and that is you will move your head about three inches to the left. You are spoiling my vision.”
“After that exchange of fault-finding, and with the promise that we will do as we would be done by, permit me to buy you both some refreshment.” Dr Trefont called to a boy with a tray.
Connie said: “I think ice-cream will be best for me, don’t you, doctor?”
I wriggled, but the doctor answered her gravely. His gentle gaze met mine for a minute as the lights faded.
“This way,” Connie urged, when we emerged from the theatre. “The bus won’t be there yet, but we’ll get a good position before the rest of the crowd.”
The Middleburn bus stand was obscurely placed amongst the many others that circulated from Ashton. To make matters more difficult a misty drizzle had commenced.
We placed ourselves on the edge of the pavement. Very soon a large crowd was banked up behind us and we were forced almost to the gutter. With the press of humanity and the seeping rain, I found it an uncomfortable end to a night’s enjoyment. I longed for bed.
Two women arrived and forced themselves into a position beside us. I threw them a hostile look, which did not have any effect as it was very dark. One started complaining in an endless whining tone about the lateness of the bus. I felt like screaming with exasperation. I turned to her and pointed out the illuminated clock on a nearby shop.
“Look!” I said acidly. “It is only five minutes past the hour. The bus is not due until eleven-ten.”
Whereat she said “Oh!” in a disbelieving voice and turned her whining remarks to the weather. It certainly seemed more than five minutes before a pair of yellow eyes came through the gently falling rain. I had changed weight from one foot to the other and was yawning in boredom and weariness.
I was so tired and relieved to see the bus that even now I cannot quite work out how it happened. At the sight of the oncoming bus the enormous crowd, which seemed quite out of proportion to the size of the conveyance, surged forward like cattle. Chivalry and lady-like behaviour gave place to animal instincts. In that restless moment as the bus drew near, Connie was flung forward violently from her perch on the extreme edge of the pavement. I made a grab for her coat, but she slipped heavily onto the road.
It was a mad, horrible moment. I felt paralysed both bodily and mentally. I heard a short sharp scream from behind me in the crowd. The twin yellow eyes swerved quickly. The bus ran up on the opposite pavement and stopped with a jolt. There was a moment of complete immobility and quietness. Then the crowd pressed forward towards Connie, who was lying on the road.
I pushed my way towards her and said in a clear voice: “I was with that woman. Let me nearer, please.”
They fell aside at once. I knelt down on the wet road. Connie’s eyes were wide open but she did not move. When she saw me she began to weep with hysterical abandon. There was no blood anywhere, although a large bruise was spreading on one cheekbone. I ran my hands along her arms and was about to do the same to her legs when a familiar voice spoke through the crowd.
“Can I be of assistance? I am a doctor.”
I jumped up at once. “It is Mrs Bellamy, Doctor Trefont. I think she is all right, but she has had a bad shaking.”
“How did this happen?” he asked, on the road beside me.
I shook my head. “She must have slipped. The crowd was pressing forward just as the bus came. It was a wonder it didn’t run her down.”
Connie heard me through her hysterical sobbing. She said in a high-pitched voice: “Someone pushed me. I felt someone’s hands on my back. I was pushed.”
Doctor Trefont got up. “A case of shock, that’s all,” he said in an expressionless tone. “No bones broken. I’ll take you both home, Mrs Matheson. Wait here until I bring my car round.”
Two or three men struggled to bring Connie to her feet. They half led, half carried her to the corner where the local council had placed a seat uncomfortably open to the weather.
“OK,” I said, dismissing them. “I’ll be right now. Your bus is about to leave.”
The crowd was piling onto the bus. There were many loud-voiced comments and much peering back at us. I supported Connie as best I could. Her apparently inexhaustible supply of tears flowed over me in competition with the rain. I was thankful when Doctor Trefont parked alongside and we pushed Connie onto the back seat. I was becoming tired of so much moisture.
Doctor Trefont said: “I’ll take you along to my surgery and fix something up for Mrs Bellamy. It will ease the shock and make her sleep.”
Connie’s crying had eased. She spoke in a trembling voice.
“I was pushed,” she repeated. “I was deliberately pushed.”
Doctor Trefont gave me a swift frowning glance, which I returned. A cold hand seemed to close down all over me. Quite suddenly I was frightened.
Connie spoke again. “I might have been killed. Why should anyone want to push me under the bus?”
“Shut up,” I said, in a cri
sp voice. She had been speaking in a calm wondering tone that I disliked even more than the hysteria. “Pull yourself together, Connie.”
Connie fell silent, while I tried to shake off the feeling of that heavy cold hand. I had one horrible suspicion that was gradually forming into a reality. Two words in the form of a question burned in my brain. “Why Connie?”
Doctor Trefont drove on at a steady pace through the wet darkness, his eyes on the road. Why had Connie been pushed deliberately in the way of the oncoming bus? Had she imagined it? Was it just an accident brought on by the carelessness of the surging mob?
I shut my eyes tight in order to gain a mental recollection of the crowd at the bus stand. I had felt bodies but not hands. Certainly not two hands as Connie firmly avowed she had. Why had it been Connie? Why was it not I? A tremor was set in motion through my body.
Doctor Trefont said without turning his eyes from the road: “A sedative won’t do you any harm either, Mrs Matheson.”
I clenched my teeth. “I daresay it won’t,” I struggled to reply.
Across my mental vision streamed faces—familiar faces and ones I recognized. People who had travelled across to Ashton with us in the bus. They must all have been standing in the crowd behind us. Waiting, while Connie and I stood on the very edge of the wet pavement. As a shape in the dark and drizzle Connie might easily have been mistaken for me. It was all so horribly simple.
Connie spoke again. “It will be marked,” she said in a hopeless voice. “My baby will be marked. And I have been so careful. Whatever will Harold say?”
Doctor Trefont laughed gently beside me.
“Don’t be idiotic!” I said crossly.
Connie was offended, which was about the best thing that could have happened. Her unnatural silence broke up and she began to give cases where prenatal shocks had definitely left some weird mark on the child. I let her ramble on unchecked. By the time we arrived at the surgery she was barely in need of “a shot of something in case of trouble.” Doctor Trefont swabbed her arm with cotton wool and turned to me, needle in hand. His brows were raised inquiringly.
“I don’t think so,” I said in a would-be light tone. “After all, I wasn’t pushed under a bus.”
He gave me a hard look as though he read a double entendre. It was not until he had dropped Connie at her gate that he made any direct remark concerning the accident. He spoke to me over his shoulder.
“I should hate Mrs Bellamy to lose her child. Do you think you can help by making her forget the affair? There may be serious repercussions. The next week or so will show.”
I could not resist the opening Doctor Trefont had given me. I answered him deliberately. “I will do what I can. It is an odd role for you, is it not? This sudden concern for the unborn?”
The car was passing his home in the High Street as I spoke. He pulled it up with a jerk. In a moment’s panic I thought he was going to throw me out and make me walk home alone for my impertinent remark. While not prepared to eat humble pie, I did not relish a solitary hike at that hour.
He sat very still in the driver’s seat, the engine still running and with undecided hands on the wheel. Suddenly he threw his arm over the back of the seat and opened the door of the car.
“Come in to the surgery again,” he ordered abruptly. I got out and followed him in with a hard-beating heart. I had a notion that the cards were about to be placed face up on the table.
III
In the clear white light of his office I expected to see his face angry, and was braced to meet it. I clutched my handbag tightly, mindful of the evidence it held which would substantiate my first clumsy remark.
Oddly enough, Doctor Trefont did not seem at all annoyed. His mild eyes were thoughtful, almost considering. He turned away and lit a small spirit stove which stood on a bracket in a corner of the room.
“Will you have some coffee?” he asked politely. “My housekeeper usually has it ready here in case I am called out at night.”
I hesitated for a short moment. He noticed the pause, even though his back was turned.
“I am not that sort of killer, Mrs Matheson,” he said.
I accepted his offer and sat down in the patient’s chair opposite his desk.
“Morally,” I spoke deliberately again, “there is no difference between the extinction of life whether it be in embryo, or embodied in a seventy-year-old man.”
Doctor Trefont nodded slowly. “Morally, you are quite correct. So you did follow me up. What did you discover?”
I drew the copy of the receipt out of my bag and passed it across the desk in silence. The doctor changed his spectacles and perused it carefully.
“Very damning,” he said, raising his head at last and changing back his glasses. “For two reasons. You have caught me out in a lie—or shall we say an omission? You must recall Mrs Yvonne Holland’s name never came into the conversation I had with your husband. I flatter myself I evaded the issue rather well. Secondly, my professional attendance in connection with Barry Clowes is likely to be looked upon with suspicion. Even so, I doubt if the Medical Association would dare question his part in any activity. You may be certain he has himself well covered. Who showed you the original of this receipt? Mrs Holland?”
“The police have it,” I told him. “I warn you my husband is not too pleased with the way you, in your capacity as police doctor, deceived him. So far he does not place on it the same significance I have.”
Doctor Trefont turned off the spirit stove and poured the steaming coffee into two large cups. “And what significance do you place on this innocent-looking piece of paper?”
I sipped the coffee and found it good.
“I have seen quite a deal of Yvonne Holland during the past few weeks. From my observation of her mental and physical condition and along with other circumstances, I have formed my own conclusion. I believe that after her baby was born steps were taken by means of an operation whereby she would never have another child.”
There was a long pause. I felt that my words were hanging in the room and repeating themselves like an echo.
Presently Doctor Trefont gave forth a heavy sigh.
“A hell of a business.” His voice was sad and slow. “I wonder if you would believe me, Mrs Matheson, if I said that although I was the anaesthetist I knew nothing whatsoever about the operation?”
“I would find it hard,” I replied.
“True, nevertheless. I was called in at the last minute to administer the anaesthetic. Once Barry Clowes started I guessed what he was about. But what could I do? Jump up and leave the patient half-doped and stalk out of the theatre in professional dudgeon? What would you have done?”
“I am not a doctor,” I said. “Who authorized such an operation? Was it with Yvonne’s consent? Was the operation her idea?”
“I am not sure,” Doctor Trefont answered. “After the distressing business was over my first move was to call at the Hall and seek an interview with Mr Holland. I was not received over-courteously. There had already been a brush between us over a minor matter. When I accused him of tricking me into unethical behaviour I was ordered out of the house. I endeavoured to contact Mrs Holland, but I was met by a blank refusal to see me.”
“And yet,” I said, watching him closely—I had no desire to be a victim of a plausible explanation: “You went back to the Hall. You were there that day I went to see Mr Holland about the Dower House.”
He chuckled into his cup. “Not a very welcome guest, was I? I was hoping to come and go unobserved. I have to admit that the sight of you peering around the side of the terrace rather unnerved me.”
“You need not have worried. I thought you were some relative caught baby-talking. Why did you want to see the child and yet avoid Yvonne and the Squire?”
There was another long pause. Doctor Trefont eyed me again with that long considering look.
“Mrs Matheson,’” he began abruptly. “The game has not yet been played out. So far a murder has taken place at
the Hall, but that, I am convinced, is only part of the game. That part is your husband’s responsibility. Mine is in preserving life while I can.”
“Was someone trying to do the Holland baby an injury?” I persisted.
Doctor Trefont was silent. I lifted the receipt in a significant manner. The doctor shrugged helplessly.
“When a patient talks to a doctor,” he said, “it is an understood thing that the conversation will go no further. Now it is the other way round. I am asking you to treat what I am going to tell you as confidential.”
I thought this over for a moment. “Surely the police are entitled to know.”
“Not until I have proof. The game is too dangerous to go to the police without definite evidence. I am only telling you now because I consider that you are, somewhat unlawfully, entitled to an explanation. You have seen and overheard too much.”
I took the rebuke meekly.
He continued: “When you saw me on the Hall terrace that day I was bending over the Holland child. Has it ever occurred to you what I was doing?”
“You straightened up and put something into your pocket. I did not see what it was.”
He smiled faintly. “Since you did not see, I am almost inclined not to tell you. I was so sure you did. It was a small instrument used for taking a blood test. I wanted a sample of Baby Holland’s blood.”
“Why?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
“Mrs Matheson, your curiosity is insatiable. When it came to my ears that the Holland child’s health was deteriorating rapidly I began to entertain certain suspicions. By diverse means, with which I will not detain you, I discovered that the child’s diet was satisfactory, well-balanced and nutritive. There could be only one way in which the state of health became as it did. That was by the introduction into the system of some irritant. The smear test showed the red cells to be slightly stippled in appearance.”
“What does that mean?”
“The child was showing signs of lead poisoning. But for your inopportune appearance that day I might have had time to make an examination to further my diagnosis. As it is I can do nothing. Mrs Holland refuses to see me.”