Eric looked in but said he had promised to run some errands in Dunwiddleston to do with the funeral since Jarrell was tied up with the police from Burresford. Lisa tried to sleep again with no luck, then tried to read with no better luck. Why couldn’t she remember? Unrelated visual flashes were nothing more than tantalizing: a pony with its front legs broken, a market stall that wasn’t Uncle John’s and she didn’t think was even in Dunwiddleston, Toby showing her a red grouse’s nest, rain gleaming on cobblestones a long way below, a jolting ride in some kind of covered cart ... Meaningless bits and pieces. If she had worked for her Uncle Henry, surely she could remember it. Would her memory keep going until she sat around drooling and staring vacantly like old Mrs. Sallus, Amy’s grandmother?
“It’s time you got up, Lisa.” Mrs. Lewis broke into her dark thoughts. “You can wear this black dress of mine. We have to go early because the police want to ask you some questions, and Dr. Jarrell thought you might as well get it over with.”
Constable Ames was not quite the idiot Jarrell had accused him of being. Short and stocky, his high coloring and moist red lips gave him a boyish air that belied his forty-some years. Though there were two policemen present from Burresford, one of them in plain clothes, it was Ames who did the questioning.
“Ay’ll tell you wat we know, miss, and you tell us wat you know. Fair enough?”
She nodded.
“Very well then. First of all, you left for Burresford to work for your aunt and uncle there in their shop in September. Rob Murray, who took you, died last week of a kick from a horse, but ‘is wife and ’alf-witted son confirm this.”
So Toby’s father was dead, she thought. Poor Annie and Toby, what would they do now?
“Last month, in January, “Ames went on, “you come back for a visit ’ere and stayed some ten days, leaving for Burresford on the sixteenth of January with a man wat sold pots and pans. ’E left you off at the shop. That much we ’ave from your cousin wat put you up ’ere in Dunwiddleston and from the pot peddlar.
“Now then, the coroner in Burresford sent the doctor ’e allus uses, and ’e said eighteen to twenty-five days, give or take a couple, which puts the deaths between the twelfth and nineteenth of January. On the Fourteenth, John Price was at his stall as usual, which leaves five crucial days, from Saturday afternoon January 14 to Thursday, January 19. You was at your cousin’s from the fourteenth to the sixteenth, arriving at Henry Price’s shop the night of the sixteenth. Late on the night of the seventeenth you was run down on a Burresford street in a slightly suspect section of town. Henry and Harriet Price cannot be found, their neighbors and customers ’aven’t seen them since the seventeenth, and we fear that sommat ’as ’appened to them as well. There are traces of blood in a storeroom there.”
Lisa stared at him, trying to take it all m. Five whole months she had lost. More, because she didn’t even remember that she was supposed to go to her uncle in Burresford. Were Uncle Henry and Aunt Tatty buried somewhere as well? She noticed that Ames’ eyes kept sliding down to her crippled hand, which seemed to fascinate him, but she defiantly left it lying openly in her lap.
“First of all,” Ames asked, “How long ’ave you known Eric Jarrell?”
“Eric? Why, four or five days.” Why were they asking about Eric?
“But you was at ’Artsite from the eighteenth of January until today. You mean to say you never saw ’im in all that time?”
“I — I don’t know, I can’t remember. Ask Dr. Jarrell, he’ll tell you the blow on the head I got in the accident affected my memory.”
Ames was merciless. “Yet Dr. Curry tells us it would be ’ighly unusual for anyone to lose their memory for five months before and two weeks after a blow on the ’ead like yours. That memory of yours mightn’t be, ah, convenient, might it?”
“What are you trying to say?” Lisa demanded.
“Ay’m not trying to say nowt, only ’oping you’ll see fit to tell us wat ’appened after you got to Burresford on January 16. Could you and Eric Jarrell ’ave come to know each other, ah, quite well? Everybody knows ’e went to Burresford enough to get to know a dozen girls quite well. Was it ’im you was looking for when you was run down?”
Lisa’s impulse was to deny it all hotly, but she realized that unless she lied, she couldn’t. “I don’t know,” she said miserably, “I really don’t know.”
“I’ll warn you,” Ames said, “that if you even ’ave knowledge of a crime and don’t tell the police, you are an accessory and can be tried as such in a court of law.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I tell you,” Lisa cried. “I loved them, why would I harm them? Why would anyone harm them?”
“That’s enough, gentlemen,” came Dr. Jarrell’s calm voice from the open doorway. “This girl is my patient, she is recovering from a severe head injury, and she mustn’t get too excited Anything you made her say now I would repudiate to the proper authorities. Come, Lisa.”
None of the policemen made any argument, and Lisa and Jarrell left the house that doubled as the police station and Ames’ living quarters.
“They are trying to say I knew Eric in Burresford,” she said unsteadily. “They act as if he and I were the ones who murdered Uncle John and Aunt Sarah, and perhaps even Uncle Henry and Aunt Tatty as well.”
“Well, did you know Eric in Burresford?”
“I don’t see how I could have. He would have said something, wouldn’t he?”
They stopped walking as they reached the village green, and Jarrell turned her to look him full in the face. “Look at it from the police point of view. If you and he schemed to murder the Prices, though no one has been able to come up with a motive, of course Eric wouldn’t admit to having known you. But now I think you begin to see why you must remember and why you could be in real danger until you do. It is very possible that you do know why the Prices were killed and by whom. If I were the murderer, I should feel quite uncomfortable as long as you were alive. If you are shamming the loss of memory, it’s a dangerous game you are playing — unless, of course, you were involved.”
“You’re hateful!” she exclaimed, tears of anger in her eyes.
He took her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “You little ninny, I’m trying to save your life. Though I can’t think why when you’re so determined to throw it away on Eric.”
“What makes you think I’m throwing anything away on Eric?” she snapped.
He sighed and then smiled. “Lisa, why must you persist in making me feel so ancient? Your feeling for Eric is written on your face every time you look at him. Come on, we’re going to be late for the funeral.”
She lapsed into a sullen silence that matched the heavy grey overcast that had blotted out the afternoon sun. After the simple service in the church, which the circumstances made far better attended than any ordinary funeral, everyone trailed out toward the cemetary, following the cart on which rested the two coffins. A raw wind was blowing by the time they reached the double grave, whipping the women’s skirts and making them clutch at their hats.
Lisa stood dry-eyed and withdrawn, seeing no one and hearing little of what was said. Then she felt a warm hand take hers. Eric! she thought gratefully, but turned to find Toby next to her, his face twisted in sympathy. She squeezed his hand and felt the missing tears at last run down her face. Aunt Sarah’s niece Hallie threw the traditional flowers on the coffins in their final resting place, and as the crowd broke up into knots of people slowly making their way back through the village, the grave diggers were throwing shovelfuls of earth thunking into the gaping hole.
Toby and Lisa saw the Jarrell brothers coming toward them, and Toby gave her hand a final squeeze before slipping off.
“Who was that?” Eric asked.
“A boy I grew up with. His father died recently.”
Eric looked at her with cold eyes. “He looks a real country clod to me.”
“Why, Eric,” Jarrell said, grinning, “you of all people shouldn’t be
jealous.”
“You’re going to go too far one day, Mark,” Eric said, furious.
“For heaven’s sake, stop that silly bickering,” Lisa broke in. “I’m tired and my head hurts.”
They went back in the carriage Jarrell driving David and Jonathan, and Eric riding beside on Christian. Until they got clear of the village, they kept coming across little groups of people who would stop talking to turn and stare. Remembering the rumors about the Jarrells she had heard in past years concerning abortions and lovers and such, Lisa could just imagine what they were saying now. She was sure that the police conjecture about her and Eric was being bandied about, and she had no doubt that it included Dr. Jarrell as well.
Her guess about the rumors was borne out when they reached Hartsite. “You’ll have to do for the horses yourselves,” Mrs. Lewis told them from the front door. “Both stable boys have left and the scullery and upstairs maids as well. We’ve only got Mrs. Priddy and Amy Sallus left, and we’re lucky to have them.”
“Good riddance to the stable help, they weren’t worth a tinker’s dam,” Jarrell said. “Lisa, you get out here and we’ll go on around and see to the horses.”
“If you’re interested,” Lisa offered, “I know of a young man who would come. He’s a little simple, but he’s the best with horses I’ve ever seen. His father raised them.”
“I suppose that was the oaf you were holding hands with at the funeral,” Eric said sulkily.
“He can hold her feet as well for all of me as long as he knows horses and is willing to work,” Jarrell said. “We’ll sound him out tomorrow.”
Lisa felt a mixture of fond amusement and tickled vanity that Eric was acting jealous. In so many ways he was like a little boy, with a small boy’s temper and a small boy’s engaging qualities as well. With his ready smile and high spirits, he was all but irresistible. Impulsively she walked over and put a hand on his leg as he sat there scowling on the big red horse. His scowl turned to a sheepish grin and he touched her hair gently before turning and riding off toward the stables. Jarrell and Mrs. Lewis exchanged a long look, their faces expressionless. He swung the matched sorrels to follow in Christian’s wake.
“I’ll go,” Lisa said. “You have plenty to do.”
She and Mrs. Lewis were setting the table for a combination tea and supper and starting to carry in the hot covered dishes that Mrs. Priddy was serving. Eric and Jarrell, who were still working in the stable, needed to be called.
Mrs. Lewis put a restraining hand on her arm. “Have they been quarrelling?”
“Nothing serious. I take it that Dr. Jarrell doesn’t approve of Eric’s feeling for me.” Her tone was caustic, for she suspected that she wasn’t considered good enough for the high born younger brother.
“Nor should he,” Mrs. Lewis retorted. “Happily, Eric has a very short span of attention where girls are concerned, and I doubt that it will outlast your stay here.”
They treat me as if I were some sort of thing, all of them but Eric, she thought rebelliously as she made her way to the stables. The horses had been wiped down, watered, put away, and fed. The stalls were clean, and Eric and Jarrell in their shirtsleeves were polishing the tack in the last of the light.
“It’s too dark to do any more tonight anyway,” Eric said. “I had no idea those idiots were sloughing off so. The tack, except what they knew we used all the time, is filthy.”
“When the cat’s away, the mice do play,” Jarrell observed lightly. “You were never here, Eric, and I was busy with the book.” He turned the piece of harness he was working on this way and that in the dim light. “I hope your friend works out better than what we’ve had,” he said to Lisa. “Hurry up, Eric, I’m hungry.”
“Shows what a little honest work can do,” Eric grinned, and they walked through the dusk up to the house.
“Everyone will have to wait on himself,” Mrs. Lewis announced. “Dr. Jarrell will carve the roast, and we’ll pass the vegetables.”
Lisa smiled to herself. Where she had lived, everyone had always served himself, but then there wasn’t always that much to serve. For no reason, a vision of a glass-fronted cupboard full of plates flickered in and out of the edge of her mind. She tried to grasp the image, put it in context, but the surroundings eluded her. Her eyes must have been fixed in a vacant stare, for she suddenly became aware that she was looking at Dr. Jarrell without seeing him, and that he in his turn was watching her intently.
“You’ve lost it again.” His comment was a statement, not a question.
She nodded unhappily.
“Lost what?” Eric asked.
“Never mind. Lisa is tired and so am I. I’ve got to get up early tomorrow to see to the horses, and then I want Lisa to come with me to enlist the services of her friend.”
“I’ll come along, too,” Eric declared.
“Not if you two are going to squabble with each other,” Lisa protested.
“No quarrelling, I promise,” Eric said. “No snide remarks, Mark? Promise?”
“Agreed,” Jarrell said shortly. “So good night, one and all.”
Mrs. Priddy had thoughtfully beaten them all to bed, so Lisa and Mrs. Lewis did the cleaning up.
“We could leave it for Priddy in the morning,” Mrs. Lewis said, “but I do hate to face a dirty kitchen at first light.”
“Mrs. Lewis, Dr. Jarrell said you were the best surgical nurse he’d ever had. What does a nurse like that do?” Mrs. Lewis’s dish washing slowed, and a smile came to her face. “A nurse like that reads minds,” she answered. At Lisa’s puzzled look, she went on. “When a surgeon — a doctor who cures people by cutting out the bad parts and mending the good ones — operates, he needs someone to hand him his surgical instruments as he wants them. A good surgical nurse learns the operations so well that she can have the right instrument in her hand before he even asks for it. Beyond that, certain nurses and doctors become so used to working together that the nurse can almost read his mind.”
“Then Dr. Jarrell was a surgeon?”
“One of the best. He specialized in repairing injuries that would affect a person’s feeling about himself. For instance, a girl with a great ugly scar across her face suffers for the rest of her life, as does a child born with a bad birthmark.”
“Can he really fix things like that?”
“Sometimes. He used to say how much there was to learn and how little we knew. When a patient was willing, he would try experiments like trying to graft good skin to a bad scar. He was a great man.” Her eyes had a faraway look.
“You say ‘was.’ What happened to him?”
“Everything got to be too much, I suppose. His wife died in a carriage accident along with their unborn child, and at the same time he had a succession of failures. A girl committed suicide because though he told her he might not be able to do much, she believed in the miracle that never happened. When she saw the clumsy nose that was all he could give her, she never thought to thank God she had any nose at all after her own having been torn off. Instead, she killed herself.” Mrs. Lewis went on, her expression bitter. “His illustrious colleagues couldn’t wait to tear him to pieces, and Dr. Thomas, the surgeon he’d studied under, had had a stroke. They were all like a pack of jackals. Little men love to bring down great men to their own level; they hated him for being so young and so successful. He couldn’t take it. If his work had gone right or his wife had lived, even just one or the other, he wouldn’t have paid any attention to what anyone said. But as it was, they broke him and he lost his nerve. He was a better surgeon without his nerve than all of those prating, pompous little boobies, but he knew the difference and he wouldn’t settle for half a loaf.”
Lisa looked at her hand thoughtfully as she held a dish against her side with the useless thing to dry with the other. “Why did he want to operate on my hand?”
“I don’t know and I’m afraid to ask.” Mrs. Lewis wiped down the wooden counter by the sink. “I could hope that he was finding he couldn’t s
tay away any longer. You know, once he thought to make a house out in the country like this into a hospital, where people under repair so to speak wouldn’t have to face a lot of pitying stares while they were healing. It was Carrie’s husband, Matthew Stephens, who bought the place, and Dr. Jarrell bought it from Carrie to provide her with some money when her husband committed suicide. I can’t say it’s been a happy house, and the doctor bought it for a hiding place, not a hospital.”
“And are you here because the doctor is here?” Lisa asked, remembering what Mrs. Lewis had said when she left the room so hurriedly that time.
Mrs. Lewis turned her homely face toward Lisa, her great dark eyes bright and warm. “I know what you think, that I love him. Well, I do, but not the way you think. My husband John was training to be a doctor. He was the only man who ever saw past my face and made me feel beautiful.
“I was the ugly duckling daughter of a genteel family fallen on hard times, mainly because of my father’s drinking. I had my choice of becoming a governess or a nurse, and I chose being a nurse over bringing up someone else’s children. The first time John ever spoke to me, he told me what wonderful eyes I had, and we never looked back. You know what John died of?” Her tone was bitter again. “Measles. Plain, ordinary old measles that he’d caught from someone’s child. He died raving out of his head with fever, never knowing me enough even to say goodbye.
“Dr. and Mrs. Jarrell took me into their household and gave me reason to live. Ah, you should have seen the two of them together. They were young and handsome, and you’d never know it to see him now, but the doctor could be much like Eric, laughing and able to charm the birds from the trees. His wife Ellen was a little thing with big blue eyes and long blonde hair. She used to tease him something awful, until he’d laugh and pick her clear up off the floor and threaten to throw her out the window. You’d have thought all that love around me would have hurt, and sometimes it did, but it healed me, too. I’ve too much scar tissue to think of loving again — and just as well, too, an old maid like me — but I’d have done anything for Dr. Jarrell. But the only thing he ever wanted anyone to do was to bring her back, and that no one could do.”
Lisa Page 7