by Pauline Ash
Regretfully, Sir Jules watched her go. “A pity you had to come in then, Annabel,” he grumbled. “That girl was just going to disclose something that might have helped find the person who took your clip. She’s shielding someone.”
Lady Frenton snorted. “So that’s her story! Well, it’s as good a story as any, I suppose. You can’t prove or disprove it. At least, I’m not sure ... what I came in to speak to you about was Gwen’s insistence that a nurse came into the house on the day of the party. Gwen’s just come to tell me she’s recognized her today—the girl Derek brought home for the afternoon.”
“You mean Lisa herself?” Sir Jules asked incredulously.
“Exactly, Lisa herself.”
The talk with Sir Jules had disturbed Lisa very much. He was not the first person to insist on warning her that a person suffering from kleptomania needed medical help.
When she got back, a sealed envelope was waiting for her. It had come by hand.
She discovered it was a brief note from Ellard.
“I keep forgetting—I simply must repay you the cash you trotted out from your hard-earned savings to redeem my cigarette case. Not for my benefit, I’m well aware, but as always to save the worthless skin of that sister of yours. Here it is, Lisa, my dear, every cent of it, in convenient notes. I’m sure you can do with it. And don’t dare return it to me nor argue about it when we next meet—which will be soon, won’t it?”
Lisa was glad of the return of her savings, but felt that the underlining of the last two words spoiled an otherwise friendly letter and somehow constituted the hint of a threat.
She sighed and put the cash into her handbag. She had almost made up her mind to go straight to the Post Office and put it in her savings account when she recalled that she had promised to go for dinner and dancing with Randall Carson. She recoiled from the idea of wearing the amber dress, lovely as it was, because of its associations with Ellard on the night Randall saw her there with him. She decided to spend some of the money on a new dress.
As she had not yet told Mary about her proposed date with Randall Carson, she decided to do her shopping alone. She went on a day when Mary was taking the bus home to her parents and merely said she had some shopping to do.
Mary was so thrilled by her own news that she forgot to ask Lisa why she was taking a bus to Chertonbury, when they usually shopped locally.
“Remember Jerry, the tall medical student? He’s asked me out for a show and supper afterward next Saturday. How’s that for fast work? You must help me choose something really nice to wear, Lisa. I’m going to work on my father this afternoon, to foot the bill.”
Feeling miserable, Lisa watched her friend ride away. They had always shared everything. This was different. As she chose her new dress, in one of the big stores in Chertonbury, she reflected that she dared not let Mary know beforehand or the hospital grapevine would know all about her date with Randall Carson before it even happened. Yet as Lisa tried on the soft gray blue dress, which brought out the color of her eyes, and spent the rest of her money on matching kid shoes and purse, and blue jacket lined with short gray fur, she realized that part of the pleasure was missing, in not sharing all this with Mary.
Mary’s father made her a present of a fur coat to go with her new dress, and until the Saturday came, Mary could think of nothing else. Lisa knew that she was to go out with Randall Carson that night, and her feelings were mixed. The only thing about it that she was thankful for was that Mary left earlier than she did, with her friend Jerry.
Randall Carson was in full evening dress, as he had been on that other occasion. As Lisa got in his car, he put on the lights and flashed a quick glance at her.
“Blue suits you,” he said briefly, when she was settled, but as he put the light off, she noticed that his face was less grim, and she guessed rightly that he had been really looking to see if she was in the amber dress.
She wished, as they went up the broad flight of shallow steps into the Gloucester Hotel in Chertonbury, that he had chosen some other hotel. This one, she knew, was frequented quite often by Ellard, and was more to Ellard’s taste than Randall Carson’s, she thought with surprise.
But once seated at the table, with Randall smiling across the bowl of low purple flowers at her, she felt happy again. It was so bright and gay.
Randall chose the meal and the wine; then he looked at her as if she were the one woman he wanted facing him.
Her dress was held up with shoulder straps of silver leaves, so she had bought some more to fix, coronet-fashion, round the plaited bun on the top of her head. He noticed that.
“I ... like long hair very much,” was all he said, yet the tone made her glow with pleasure.
Jerry and Mary came to the Gloucester for supper after the show. Jerry said, “Hang the expense, this is my birthday!” and he had marched her straight to the bar. On the way back to the restaurant, they looked in at the dancing.
“Do you see what I see?” Mary gasped. “Surely that isn’t our Randall Carson, dancing with the woman in blue? What’s the matter with him? He looks as if—”
“He looks as if she’s knocked him for six. Ever see a man in love before?” Jerry murmured; then laughing a little, he muttered, “Fancy old Carson getting taken like that. Can’t see her face—oh yes, they’re turning this way.”
As Randall and Lisa reversed, they caught sight of her face. Lisa didn’t know they were there. She was dancing with her eyes closed, transported in a blissful dream, from which she did not want to wake.
“Lisa!” Mary whispered, and looked doubtfully at Jerry. “She never mentioned her date!” she muttered, looking very hurt.
They were gone by the time Randall and Lisa stopped dancing and returned to their table. A bland voice cut into their thoughts, startling them.
“Good evening, Lisa. I wasn’t expecting you here tonight,” Ellard Lindon said, a mocking smile on his face.
Randall Carson rose to his feet, his face set.
Lisa, flustered, began to make hurried introductions, but Randall interrupted her.
“We’ve met,” he said curtly. “How’s the arm, Lindon?”
That, of course, spoiled the whole evening. Ellard did not stay long at their table, but it was too long for either of them to repair the damage afterward. They were both relieved when Lisa said she had a headache and wanted to go back to the hospital.
Later, looking back on the evening, Lisa felt she must have imagined that she and Randall Carson had been close, even for a moment.
She recalled, with a fresh gust of anger, the way he had looked after Ellard had gone.
“How did you come to know that fellow?” he had asked brusquely. “Everyone knows his type!”
“I don’t see—” Lisa began frostily, because Randall’s manner had become the hectoring one she knew from experience.
“All right, I know it's no concern of mine,” he had put in swiftly. “I just wanted to make sure you knew what he was like,” and after that, he had been cold and unfriendly.
“He’s merely an acquaintance—” Lisa had tried to explain, unwilling to have the evening completely ruined.
“Please don’t try and explain now,” Randall had said.
Next day everything seemed to go wrong. Mary was a little strange in her manner, but as Lisa was late, having overslept after a restless night, she hardly noticed it at first. Later, when she tackled Mary about what was wrong, Mary said, in a rather offended voice, “Well, I did tell you about Jerry, didn’t I?” and would not explain any further.
In the press of other things, Lisa dismissed the matter, but later, when she stood by the bedside of the still little form of Christopher, she recalled that she had promised to make some inquiries about him, and with the memory of Randall Carson came the thought of Mary’s odd manner that morning.
Later, as she hurried to another ward to find Sister, she passed Jerry, who rolled his eyes, and with the candor of the medical student, he leaned forward and said in
a stage whisper, “My hat off to you, fair lady, for humanizing the Old Man! Whew-ew! I saw him last night! He was treading on clouds with you!”
Lisa flushed painfully and hurried on, guessing the rest. So that was it. Jerry and Mary must have seen them, at some time during their evening out together, and now it would soon be all over the hospital. Considering the way she and Randall had parted company, it was beyond thinking about.
Unwilling to face Mary so soon, Lisa hurried out of the hospital to spend her free time on the task Randall had assigned to her. In her trim nurse’s uniform, she called at as many shops and booths near the scene of the accident as she could. It was near the pierhead that she ran into Ellard, his hat pulled down at a rakish angle, taking a stroll along the promenade. His face darkened as he saw her.
“Lisa! Just the one I want to see,” he said at once.
“Not now, Ellard, I’m on hospital business.”
“Well, that’s a new one! You do think up some good excuses for avoiding me, don’t you, my dear?”
“It isn’t an excuse, but all right, I’ll spare you five minutes,” she said, aware that her feet were aching. “If you must know, I’ve been inquiring about the parents of a little auburn-haired boy who was knocked down along here a few days ago. We can’t trace anyone who was with him.”
“Good heavens, do they give you those jobs to do too? What are the police for?” he exploded.
“People don’t always confide in the police,” she said quietly and surprised a strange look in his face. “What did you want to see me for, Ellard?”
“Need you ask?” he returned coolly. “You’ve been putting off seeing me again, and then I find you with that stuffed shirt of a surgeon at the Gloucester. What’s the idea?”
Lisa was normally very sweet-tempered, but Ellard had already angered her by spoiling her cherished evening and making things awkward and miserable between Randall and herself. Throwing caution to the winds, she said crisply, “All right, you hold certain information that you tell me could make things uncomfortable for my sister Jacky, but that doesn’t mean that you control my life, Ellard! If I want to go out with anyone else meantime, that’s my affair. Please don’t butt in like that again!”
First surprise, then amusement, fled over his battered face, and finally he threw back his head and laughed. “All right, Lisa, you win! You infuriate me, you drive me crazy with longing, but you keep me amused, and I never know what’s coming next! What more can a man ask in his girlfriend?”
They had been sitting on a seat where the promenade jutted out in a deep bay. A secluded seat, screened off from the winds by glass paneling and a high clipped hedge.
Now he stood up, pulling Lisa to her feet, and before she was aware of what he was about to do, he dropped a light kiss on the tip of her nose.
“Don’t forget me altogether, that’s all I ask,” he said laughing; then his eyes narrowed. “Lisa, do yourself a favor, while you’re about it, and drop this searching business.”
“What do you mean, Ellard?” she asked indignantly. “I can’t—it’s part of my job.”
“Oh, be your age, my dear. Turn it in. Tell them you’ve tried—just how many inquiries have you made?”
“Quite a lot, but I haven’t finished.”
“Forget it, Lisa,” he repeated. “Or you might discover something that hits you personally.”
Ellard had just warned her off resuming her inquiries; everything in her revolted at being warned off, by him, but she had no idea where to go next. She had indignantly told him that she had not finished, but the truth was that her inquiries were exhausted, and if she couldn’t find another person likely to help her, it would look as if she had allowed Ellard to frighten her off.
Simeon! The old boatman flashed into her mind as the one likely person to have seen the child. She went at once to his end of the town.
Once there, she was astonished to find Randall’s car parked in the same place as he had left it on the night of the disastrous fishing trip. But this time he had a different passenger—Thalia. Lisa saw Thalia raise her tear-stained young face appealingly to Randall’s. Lisa’s soft shoes made no sound. The couple in the car were completely unaware that she had seen them, but to Lisa there was no mistaking that scene. Randall Carson was looking down earnestly into Thalia’s face, intent, tender.
Lisa swallowed the lump in her throat and quietly went back the way she had come. She managed to see Simeon, who had not made her any happier.
“Yes, I’ve seen the little lad, m’dear,” he had said at once. “Playing about on his little trike, he was, just about half an hour before it happened, I’d say. I was plying the coast, along there by the bandstand. I know who could help you. Someone sitting there watching the little ’un. Couldn’t miss her—that dancer at the Coronet. Always to be seen sitting about, letting folks look at her, she is!”
Jacky. Lisa’s heart had lurched as he had said it. Simeon didn’t know that Jacky was her sister, and she felt she didn’t want him to know.
“Was the little boy alone at the time, Simeon,” she had asked swiftly, “or couldn’t you see that much?”
“Oh, aye, I could see it all,” Simeon had assured her. “Wasn’t much fish about, so I thought I’d try some trips round the point. Had me glass out, watching the crowds. There was this here little ’un, couldn’t miss him with his carroty hair, and there was a woman, smart-like, and her had carroty hair, too. I used to like redheads in me prime, lass,” he finished, chuckling. “There was this here dancer, seen her pictures everywhere, and come on my boat on trips in as daring a trouser suit as I ever set eyes on in Barnwell Bay before, and there was a man, city type, I’d say, striped trousers and all. Go and see this here Jacqueline, m’dear, she’d be knowing more than me, her being set there like.”
And so Lisa made her way back up the cliff steps to the town, to the theater, to see Jacky, and as she went, she remembered Ellard’s words of warning. “Forget it, Lisa, or you might discover something that hits you personally,” he had said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
With a heavy heart, Lisa retraced her steps to the hospital. She was very worried indeed. It now seemed Jacky was at the root of the problem. If old Simeon could really be trusted to have seen Jacky that day (and Lisa had no doubt at all that the old man was right) then undoubtedly there would be something Jacky could tell her about those people. Jacky was inquisitive. It was a favorite trick of hers to sit and shamelessly listen to other people’s conversations. But how to get the information out of her was a real problem.
Time, too, was another of Lisa’s problems. There was so little of it. She now had to go back on the wards, and her studies were somehow to be pulled up, before she went to bed that night.
With an ache in her heart, she remembered Randall Carson’s face, as he looked down at Derek’s sister, Thalia, in the car. There was no mistaking that look. Well, why should he not be interested in Thalia? She was a rich man’s daughter, and if he married her, he would be able to equip that clinic of his. Lady Frenton had flung them together enough. Even if Randall were not in love with Thalia, Lisa felt there was no doubt at all about the look on Thalia’s upturned face.
What a fool she had been to think that Randall Carson felt anything at all for her when they had danced at the Gloucester Hotel that night. She was only a nurse. Why hadn’t she seen that even Randall Carson could be affected by the bright lights and the music? Helped on too, perhaps, by that conscience of his because he had treated her badly for some time and wished to atone for it, was it not likely that he was merely going out of his way to give her a glamorous evening? After all, he had soon forgotten to look meltingly at her when Ellard had come to their table!
It was in a depressed mood that she went on to the wards. Her troubles seemed to be endless.
“Have you discovered anything yet, Nurse?” Sister Rudolph asked anxiously. It was not a question Lisa was prepared to face yet.
“I think I might have,” she said cau
tiously, “but if you don’t mind, Sister, I’d rather have another shot at following up what I think might be a lead, before I say anything.”
It was a rare thing for Sister Rudolph to look displeased, but she, too, was worried. “I should like you to tell me what you’ve found out,” she said, “however small a scrap of information it may be, for the child’s sake. The police might be able to make use of it, for all you know.”
“The police!” Lisa whispered, her eyes wide with horror. “Are they on the case?”
“You know they’ve been making inquiries, Nurse. And we’ve told them we have a nurse trying to get the confidence of the local people. Now, what is it you think you’ve found?”
There was nothing for it but to reply. “An old boatman thinks he saw someone through his glass that he knew, sitting by the people with little Christopher,” Lisa said carefully, “but he may have been mistaken. I didn’t have time to go and see the person myself.”
“Then this person must be seen by the police!”
“Oh no, Sister, please—let me see her first. You see,” Lisa said desperately, “I think she’s more than likely to take fright if the police go to her, if it’s the one I think it is, and she’ll deny having been there and it would spoil everything.”
“Very well,” Sister said at last, “but the child’s condition is giving cause for alarm. He’s asking for his parents.”
That night, when Lisa went off duty, she and Mary had their first quarrel. It distressed Lisa, because she had always felt that she and Mary were such close friends that nothing could go wrong between them.
“I wouldn’t say we were friends at all,” Mary said, in an offended voice. “At least, not my idea of friends. I thought friends told each other everything.”
“Well, I do tell you everything!” Lisa objected and then bit her lip. She guessed that Mary had remembered that she had not said she was going to buy the blue gray dress. Mary’s answer surprised her.