She looked at her watch.
‘Do you have to get back?’
‘No. I’ll stay while it’s done.’ She had no idea if the cat belonged to someone. ‘I didn’t see your assistant when I came in.’
‘This isn’t a clinic day,’ Tony Harrison told Alex. ‘Radhika doesn’t come in until later. I’m just glad I was here.’
‘I forgot.’ She shrugged and said, ‘Sorry.’
He held the cat she’d found in a rubbish bin in the yard at her pub, the Black Dog. The animal looked more dead than alive, its orange tabby fur matted, his ears torn and badly mended from fights, and his long-legged body hanging limp in Tony’s arms.
‘I’m going to get on with it. I’ll let you know how he does.’
‘I wonder who he belongs to,’ Alex said. ‘I haven’t seen him before.’
Tony looked from the cat to Alex. He smiled a little, the corners of his mouth turned down, which she knew meant he was about to say something he didn’t like. ‘I don’t think he belongs to anyone. If we pull him through we’ll have to decide what to do next.’
‘You can do his eye on your own?’ Alex said, closer to tears than she would ever admit. ‘Someone must have thrown him away.’
‘Or he was looking for food,’ Tony said, his dirty blond hair curling around his ears and jumbled everywhere else, the same as usual. Folly-on-Weir’s only vet turned heads but not because he worried about details like frequent fashionable haircuts. ‘I can manage on my own. It’s not optimum but once he’s under it’s no sweat.’
‘Under?’
‘Anesthetized.’
She dumped her gilet and cardigan on a chair in the cottage clinic sitting room and started rolling up her sleeves. ‘I can help. Just talk me through it.’ She avoided looking at him. ‘Come on, he doesn’t look good.’
Without a word, he led the way to his combination examination and surgery room. He’d told her he was having a separate operating room designed but for now he made do.
‘I won’t ask if you’re sure you’re up to this but if you change your mind just tell me you’re leaving.’
She snorted. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve always been bloodthirsty.’
Tony gave a short laugh, pulled out a heating pad and a towel from a drawer and set them on the steel table. He settled the cat on the table and plugged in the pad. ‘Poor fellow,’ Tony said when the cat didn’t attempt to move.
‘He seems out of it already,’ she said, worried. ‘Is he going to die?’
‘Let’s do this, nurse.’ He gave an injection and the already lethargic animal relaxed in seconds. ‘I’m going to intubate him and start some fluids in case he gets into any trouble and needs them. First, a little lidocaine spray to make it less painful for his throat and easier on all of us. Put your hand over the top of his head and grasp his upper jaw to hold it open … great. You’re a natural.’
Through sliding a tube down the animal’s throat, flushing out his eye with saline and trimming away fur and eyelashes, Tony didn’t speak. Alex stroked the unconscious cat.
Tony looked up at her. ‘Now we need to change the towels he’s on for dry ones and get him positioned for the surgery. His head needs to be at this end. Can you do that while I set out a surgery pack and scrub up?’
‘Yes, I can.’ She was certain she could have done anything to help the cat and did as she’d been told.
‘Then give your hands a good scrub.’
Alex did as he asked, grateful to be busy, too busy to give in to a jumpy tummy.
‘Enucleation of the eye,’ Tony said, glancing up at her over his mask, his dark-blue eyes darker than ever. But he was so matter-of-fact she knew this was where he was most comfortable, with his patients. ‘This incision lets me get at the muscles. Hand me those scissors, please, the curved ones.’
She followed his instructions, aware that he gave her another glance as if gauging if she was about to pass out. ‘It’s interesting,’ she said, although she felt a bit wobbly. ‘I feel useful even if I’m not.’ She laughed.
‘You’re wonderful, but we already know that.’ There was no laughter in his eyes.
Alex returned her attention to the cat. She and Tony were great friends and could easily be more if the right things happened at the right moments.
‘I clip all the muscle attachments to expose the globe and take out the eye,’ he said. ‘Not a moment too soon – it’s leaking pus.’
Alex clenched her teeth and didn’t look too closely.
‘Clamping the stalk, including nerve and vessels. Two ligatures. Transecting the globe. Flush orbit with warmed saline.’ Once again he looked at her before continuing. ‘Adding some ampicillin – the orbit looks clean but infection is always the risk with something like this. That and bleeding. I’m trimming this small bit of tissue where the lashes were so the skin will grow together, and now I’ll close.’
The lesson ended there. He stitched the wound and stood back an instant with his gloved hands held up. ‘Good job, Nurse Duggins. I think I could use another assistant. I’m not sure how on-the-job training works but we’ll figure it out.’
She stroked the cat’s side again. ‘You can’t afford me,’ she said. ‘His breaths are short.’
‘Regular,’ he said. ‘I know you must need to get back but thanks for the wonderful help. You are one capable woman.’
It was true they’d been through some nasty times together before and she hadn’t swooned or crumpled. The thought made her smile. ‘Harrison and Duggins. Emergency Situations, Ltd.’
This time his look was long enough to make her uncomfortable. They walked the fine line of trying to find their way to whatever they were meant to be to each other and it frequently became almost painful.
‘Doesn’t sound bad,’ he said finally. ‘Now, this fellow will be kept warm and watched for bleeding and infection. Radhika will be in before too long. She’ll baby him.’
Alex nodded at that. ‘Lucky you that she came along when she did.’ Tony’s former assistant had left to get married but Radhika, a knock-out gorgeous Hindu woman in her twenties, had moved into the village a few months earlier and had nursing skills that answered Tony’s needs well.
In addition to being wonderful with the animals, Radhika was organized and managed the task Alex would have thought impossible, she ran Tony’s practice smoothly. She was a friend of Vivian Seabrook who ran stables for the Derwinters, the big local landowners and self-appointed ‘lords of the manor.’ However, Radhika’s reasons for settling in a small English village remained a mystery.
‘Don’t feel you have to stick around,’ Tony said, taking a thin blanket from a warming drawer. ‘I’ll keep him beside me in the office until Radhika gets here.’
Already Alex was worrying about the cat’s future. ‘Should I put up signs to see if anyone’s lost him?’
He reached out to ruffle her short, dark curls and she smiled. ‘Ever the caretaker, Alex. Put something up at the Dog, if you like. The word will get out from there. All we have to do is tell Harriet and Mary Burke – they’re as good as a megaphone.’
The elderly sisters owned Leaves of Comfort, the village tea and book shop, and kept their fingers on the pulse of local affairs from their reserved table at the Dog.
‘You’ve got a point there,’ Alex said. She bent over the scruffy, unconscious cat and kissed the top of his head through her mask before taking it off. ‘OK, I’ll get out of your way. If you feel like—’
‘Tony, where are you?’ a familiar male voice bellowed, cutting off the invitation Alex had almost issued for Tony to stop by for a pint and a pie at lunch time.
Tony’s father, Doc James, the local GP, walked in. Even with his white hair and weathered network of life’s lines on his angular face, there was no mistaking the resemblance between father and son.
Doc James went to give the cat a critical once-over. ‘Poor fellow lost an eye? How’s he doing?’
‘We’ll see in a few hours.’
&
nbsp; ‘Looks like a punched-up fighter. How old?’ He looked at Alex who shrugged.
‘Alex found him in the rubbish,’ Tony said. ‘He’s maybe a year. Eighteen months.’
Doc James took in the scene in the room, raised his brows, but made no comment.
‘Police been here yet?’
Tony picked up the cat, the blanket wrapped around him, and headed for the door. ‘Why would the police come by? Did you give me as an alibi again?’
‘No.’ And Doc James didn’t crack a smile. ‘Were they at the Dog yet, Alex?’
‘No.’ She frowned at him as she followed Tony to his office. He had two kennels under the window and settled the still flaked-out cat in one. He turned on a small electric heater and pulled it to one side of the open door.
His dog, a big, sandy terrier named Katie wandered into the room, looked curiously into the open kennel and lay down almost inside, her head on her paws, her eyes watchfully worried.
‘Katie’s into patient care, too,’ Tony said. ‘What’s up, Dad?’
‘The police are searching the area. Constable Frye came to see me. He’s no longer our dedicated plod but he made a point of coming in and talking to me. They’re trying to get a timeline.’
Alex gave him her entire attention. A whisper of remembered awareness prickled up her spine. Tony’s hand on her arm startled her. ‘What?’ she almost shouted.
‘OK, OK, don’t worry. We’re in a different time now.’
He had felt her go on alert. ‘Not a different place, though,’ she said tightly.
‘Prue Wally didn’t notice anything was wrong until early this morning.’ Doc James looked troubled. ‘That’s the problem when you deal with people who keep odd hours – or don’t keep any particular hours at all. They’re looking for Pamela Gibbon.’ Prue was Pamela Gibbon’s housekeeper.
The tiny stream that ran past the cottage where Tony held his clinic, one of a row of chocolate-box buildings, was suddenly too loud. So were the occasional quacks of ducks out there.
‘She only goes into Cedric Chase in the afternoons so she didn’t think anything about the house being empty the day before yesterday. Yesterday she noticed the mail was still on the hall table where she put it the day before and there was more mail on the floor inside the door.
He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t have to mean anything. Some people are careless about that sort of thing. But they’re going all over the village and searching any empty surrounding buildings, so I thought if they hadn’t come yet, I’d warn you.’
‘Dad, stop pussyfooting around. Just spit out what’s on your mind.’
‘You’ve both been through enough this year. You don’t need more prodding and poking from the police. Frye said something about thinking they could need the Major Incident Team if things went badly.’
Alex froze inside. She swallowed and said, ‘You mean Inspector O’Reilly?’
The man shrugged. ‘If he’s the one who draws the short straw, I suppose.’
‘Did something happen to Prue as well?’ Tony spoke slowly. ‘Or are we only worried about Pam Gibbon?’
Doc James spread his hands and looked at the ceiling. ‘How can one small place be cursed with this sort of thing? Prue’s fine, shaken up but fine. It looks as if Pamela Gibbon has disappeared. There was nothing wrong with her before this as far as anyone knows. Alex’s new manager said she was in the pub a few days ago, as …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Just as comfortable and friendly as she always is with the, er, men, he said. The police think she’s been gone as long as two days – even three. Her car’s in the garage and she hasn’t been up to the Derwinter place to check her horse. Apparently she does that every day come hell or high water.’
‘She could have taken off for a couple of days,’ Alex said, but her heart beat hard. ‘She doesn’t have anything to tie her down.’
‘Who knows anything about her,’ Tony said. ‘I never heard any mention of family and I don’t think she and her husband had children.’
Doc James’ mind was elsewhere. ‘Pamela didn’t call a taxi and so far no one says they took her to the station or saw her on the bus,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t get far on foot.’
‘If they send in O’Reilly or someone like him,’ Tony said, ‘it’ll be because they suspect foul play.’
Alex whispered, ‘Murder.’
TWO
Hugh Rhys was one of those men women buzzed around like bees sucking up to lush roses in mid-summer.
There was nothing even vaguely feminine or rose-like about him. He was athletically built, tall, and he had magnetism … regular features, perfectly close-clipped dark hair and eyes just as dark that smiled, with or without help from a very sexy mouth. Hugh exuded an aura; it gave off his fearless view of life in waves. Even Alex sometimes looked at him and wondered what made a man like him happy to live in a small English village where he seemed to have few interests outside work – other than his outrageously gorgeous navy-blue-and-white Frazer Nash BMW 1937 convertible.
He nodded when she came through from the back of the pub and turned away from a larger than usual early-afternoon customer crowd. Liz Hadley who ran a struggling dress shop in nearby Broadway, but helped out at the Dog, flitted busily back and forth, keeping the customers happy.
‘Smell that?’ she said, passing Alex and rolling her eyes as if she’d pass out from bliss. ‘The Cotswold Farmer’s sausages and bacon. They’re going over like mad. Simple Suppers is packaging them now. I think we should sell them if people want us to.’
Alex waggled her head. ‘Always the entrepreneur, Liz. I think we’d get sent to Coventry by a few local businesses if we started retailing sausages, but they do smell good. I believe in getting along with people, though, especially when we do business with them.’
Smiling, Liz sailed on her way.
‘You got out of here at the right time,’ Hugh said, keeping his deep Scots voice low. His very Welsh name was something he’d never explained. ‘You missed Constable Frye and another copper in here asking about Pamela Gibbon. They can’t find her.’
‘Doc James came to Tony’s surgery and told us about it. Has Harry Stroud come in today? I’ve seen him in here talking with Pamela a few times.’
‘Not today,’ Hugh said. ‘And if you listen to the general village talk, those two do more than talk in other places. Do you know a Detective Inspector O’Reilly?’
‘Yes,’ Alex said shortly. ‘He’s been in Folly-on-Weir before.’
‘The plods said he might be back again.’ He watched her too closely. When she didn’t respond, he said, ‘How’s the wee cat? He looked half dead.’
‘Tony had to take that swollen eye out. It was already infected and useless.’
‘Might be better if it died.’
She glanced at Hugh. ‘If I ever have a bad eye infection, I’ll stay out of your way. He’s a lovely cat.’
Hugh grinned. ‘If you say so. I’d say he’s a rough and tumble bad laddie, that cat. But women go for bad boys, don’t they?’
Alex had to smile back. She glanced around, checking on who was there, starting with the regulars by the bar. Harry’s father, Major Stroud, was a fixture in the pub and she was relieved to see him, usual beer tankard in hand, sitting with Harriet and Mary Burke from the tea shop. Alex’s dog, Bogie, black ears plastered to the sides of his head, managed to stay by the fire but as far from Major Stroud as possible. The dog was otherwise gray and a mix of terrier with possible long-ago connections to poodle. He was a faithful love.
An unlikely group, Alex realized. The major liked to stand at the bar where he enjoyed an audience of men when they would listen to him.
‘He went straight over there,’ Hugh said, as if he read her mind. ‘Didn’t have anything to say to his regular bunch.’
‘I think it could be something to do with Pamela taking a hike,’ Alex said. ‘I hope she shows up, and fast.’
‘Could be with Harry somewhere,’ Hugh said. ‘Haven’t seen him in a couple of days.
I bet that’s what’s making Stroud edgy. He’s trying to fly the flag and be normal but he’s not pulling it off.’
‘They think Pamela’s been gone as long as two or three days.’
‘If she’s been gone that long—’
‘Exactly,’ Alex said. ‘It’s too long for us not to start thinking the worst.’
Hugh leaned closer. ‘As soon as this gets out – if she doesn’t come back, that is – we’ll have reporters all over us. Like as not the major will say something he’ll wish he hadn’t.’
‘Please let her come back,’ Alex said. ‘I don’t want to think about the alternatives.’
Harriet Burke’s waving hand caught her attention. The wave turned into an urgent beckoning. Major Stroud and Mary Burke looked anxiously in her direction.
‘Refills?’ Alex said, hurrying over to them. ‘A beef and onion pie would go well, too. I understand George’s outdid themselves today. We also ordered some brilliant cakes from them just to see if we’ve got any sweet tooths in the house.’
‘Has that O’Reilly man been in touch with you?’ Mary said, ignoring the question. She gripped her walker with one hand and leaned forward to look at Alex through glasses as thick as a couple of closed portholes. ‘You’d be the first to hear from him. We all know he’s got a soft spot for you.’
The comment surprised Alex. She and Detective Inspector Dan O’Reilly had liked one another when he’d been working on a murder near the village only months ago – mostly liked – but this was the first suggestion she’d heard that there was anything more than that.
‘Well?’ Major Stroud prodded, his perfectly clipped gray mustache bristling. ‘Have you?’
‘No,’ Alex said shortly. His demand annoyed her. ‘Can I get you anything?’
Harriet Burke, her hair as white as her sister’s but short and devoid of the sort of Spanish comb Mary favored wearing in her wiry chignon, held Alex’s eyes and gave her a deliberate smile. Whatever that smile was supposed to mean didn’t enlighten Alex.
The major’s face had reddened. ‘Would you tell us if you had?’
‘What’s the problem?’ Alex said. ‘Why not say what’s really on your mind? And for the record, Major, I would have no reason to deny hearing from the inspector if I had.’
Out Comes the Evil Page 2