by Susan Barrie
HEART SPECALIST
Susan Barrie
“I am not the marrying kind.”
However long she lived, Valentine would never understand Amelia Constantia’s will! Why would a woman who had known her so briefly leave her all that wealth on condition that she marry within a year?
Dr. Leon Daudet was curious, too— especially as the money would pass to him if Valentine defaulted.
But why should he be so angry? As Valentine told him, she had no intention of getting married—ever!
CHAPTER ONE
Martine was looking harassed when Valentine met her in the corridor. She handed over Fifi, of whom she disapproved in any case, with a remark about Miss Constantia being in no mood for lapdogs, and then went on her way with only a slight lightening of her expression.
Valentine called after her.
“Your mistress had a good night, Martine?”
“A disturbed night, mademoiselle!” the dour Breton voice floated back to her. “I am on my way now to telephone the doctor. It is as well, I think, that he should see her.”
Valentine made no further attempt to delay her, but hugged Fifi against her white candlewick dressing gown and went on her own way to the bathroom. She decided that this morning there was every reason for hurry, and there could be no lingering in the bath with the new bath essence that she had so extravagantly purchased on her last free afternoon in the rue de la Paix. The sooner she made her more personal inquiries about the state of Miss Constantia’s health the better, although if she had got to know her employer at all well in the three months that she had worked for her—and somehow she believed that she had got to know her very well indeed—the replies to her inquiries could quite easily be extremely misleading.
Miss Constantia would probably be sitting up in bed in her blue bed jacket, and on the satin eiderdown there would be her breakfast tray as usual. Her letters, which her thin, blue-veined, slightly trembly hands had struggled to open with an old-fashioned ivory paper knife that she had used for years, would be scattered all over the place, and even the begging letters would receive as careful a scrutiny as those from her nieces and nephews. Later on they would be handed over to Valentine to deal with, just as the nieces’ and nephews’ letters would in the end be answered by Valentine. And when asked how she was feeling she would look up and smile with the twinkle that was seldom absent from her faded blue eyes, and say, “Oh, I ate too many marrons glaces after dinner last night, and of course I had to have one of my tablets about four o’clock this morning! If I will not control my gluttony I must expect a little pain, mustn’t I?” Or, “Just a little fussing on Martine’s part, my dear, you know how she loves to fuss! But there is really nothing wrong with me!”
But Martine’s expression had indicated that the “little pain” had been rather more acute than usual, and although it was true that she fussed endlessly over her mistress, she was an extremely practical woman. That she had thought it necessary to summon Dr. Daudet—probably without her mistress’s permission—was an indication in itself that there was an urgency abroad this morning.
Valentine decided to take a shower instead of waiting to fill the bath, and while she toweled herself Fifi sat on the bath mat and whimpered as she always did when she was banished from her adored owner’s bedroom. Valentine gathered her up and took her along to her own room when she went to dress, and enthroned her on her bed while she slipped into a navy blue silk dress with a little white collar and cuffs. It made her look very slim and Anglo-Saxon, with her strikingly fair complexion and blue eyes, and hair that Martine had once described to the cook as “a mass of gold cobwebs” when it was first combed out.
Outside the window, while she dressed, a Paris morning got gradually into its stride. It was a morning that had dawned beautifully because it was spring, and even the new young leaves on the chestnut trees were glistening and gay with promise. The sunlight was as golden and mellow as a primrose, and the air seemed saturated with the perfume from the flower market in the shadow of the Madeleine and the bright beds in the Tuileries Gardens.
Normally, while she was going through the process of dressing, Valentine stood near her fine net curtains and peered out at the greening trees and the rooftops opposite. She loved to know that those rooftops were the rooftops of Paris, and although it was very quiet and dignified where Miss Constantia passed her gentle dignified days, not so very far away were the Champs Elysees and the fashionable hub of Paris.
But this morning was no time for dwelling on her extraordinary good fortune in finding such an excellent job in the world’s most exciting capital. She barely waited to flick a powder puff over her nose, and to use a lipstick lightly before darting back along the corridor to Miss Constantia’s room. She shut Fifi into the little room next door where she worked, and where her typewriter was as yet covered. The desk drawers were locked, so little harm could be done. She then waited for permission to enter her employer’s room.
It came almost immediately, in a rather thinner, fainter voice than usual.
“Ah, there you are, my dear child.” It was the same greeting, however, and the same pale lips smiled at her. But Miss Constantia was not sitting up this morning, and the bone structure of her face was emphasized by the exhausted tightness of the skin that was stretched across it. There were tiny blue shadows at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes seemed to have retreated into very deep sockets, although they were still the delicate blue of harebells. She put out a thin hand to beckon Valentine closer, and for an instant the blue depths were lit by a faint conspiratorial sparkle. “Martine is being obstinate,” she confided, “and I hadn’t the courage to go against her. She has insisted on summoning Dr. Daudet, but the poor man won’t be at all pleased, because I’ve been as had as this before. We all know that my heart is groggy, but Dr. Daudet himself has said that it will last me for years yet, and naturally it will play up from time to time. I have his tablets, so why summon him?”
“Have the tablets helped at all?” Valentine asked, smoothing the fat white pillows behind the elderly gray head and then lifting her a little higher on them.
“Not so far, but they will.”
Although her breathing was irregular, and her eyes were dark with pain, she sounded almost complacent.
“Then I agree with Martine that it is highly important the doctor should be here!” Valentine knew she had never felt so decided about anything in her life, and she hoped that Martine had already got through to the doctor. Surely he would be in his house at this early hour of the morning?
“And drag him away from his breakfast?” Miss Constantia’s expression grew quizzical. “How unfeeling you are!”
“So many doctors have to forgo their breakfasts—and their lunches, too—that I’m not in the least worried about that aspect of the matter,” Valentine told her. “Dr. Daudet is there to be summoned, and he should be on his way quite soon.”
“Do you know, my dear, you sounded quite fierce when you said that,” Miss Constantia murmured, looking up at her. “Don’t you like Leon Daudet? He’s not just an ordinary doctor, you know, he’s a consultant. A very, very clever heart specialist. He doesn’t expect to have to run around after an old woman like me, an old maid whose heart is just a tired one and has never known any of the more exciting emotions, and is therefore a very dull affair indeed! Don’t you know that his women patients outnumber his male ones by almost three to one? And that at the moment he is the most fashionable thing in heart specialists in Paris?”
Valentine didn’t find it difficult to believe, for she had seen Dr. Daudet on about half a dozen occasions so far. He was “very French”—or that was the most immediate thing she had decided about him—so sure of himself that it was like an aura he carried
around with him, and young to be where he was—at the top, apparently, of his profession. She could imagine him in a sumptuous consulting room in one of the most salubrious corners of Paris, with a secretary who checked and double-checked all his appointments, and an enormous car waiting outside.
He breathed opulence and confidence and success, and ... ho, she didn’t like him! She didn’t like him because he had ordered her out of the room on the first occasion they met, and it wasn’t that she objected to being requested to leave a room, but to the way the request was made.
“Miss Constantia and I are old friends.” he had said, actually standing up and waiting for her to take her departure, his black eyes glinting derisively. “It is quite safe for us to be left alone together, mademoiselle. I assure you! And quite convenable.”
Valentine had finally left the room with the tips of her ears burning angrily. She had decided that he was an objectionable man.
But now she wished he would come quickly.
She drew a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, and Miss Constantia reached out a hand to her. She felt the old frail fingers clinging to hers.
“I like having you with me, child,” she said. “It has been most pleasant since you arrived, and I have enjoyed every moment of it. At first I thought you were much too young to be a secretary—an efficient one, anyway—but now I know you are the very soul of efficiency. How you manage it at twenty-three, I don’t know! When I was twenty-three I still had a governess—although I suppose she was really a chaperon—and my papa would have had a fit at the very idea of my crossing the street without her.”
Valentine smiled and held smelling salts to the pale distended nostrils.
“I wish I could get you a little higher on your pillows,” she said. “You ought not to be lying so flat.”
“No, no, my dear, I am perfectly all right ... until Dr. Daudet comes.” But her labored breathing belied the words. “Perhaps Martine is having difficulty getting him ...”
“Would you like me to find out how soon he will be here?”
“No, child, just let me hold your hand and ... let me talk for a bit!” The blue shadows kept disappearing and reappearing at the corners of her mouth, but she didn’t seem to be really distressed. “Talking is a good thing, you know. It’s a safety valve sometimes, and I have a lot to say. I am seventy-five, and that means I’ve had a very good life, so why should I worry what happens to me now? One shouldn’t be greedy about anything, and I’ve had so many material things, such a lot of money to spend. My papa was a very rich man, you know. My sisters and brothers all inherited considerable fortunes, too, but I was the one who had the most—the eldest!”
“Yes, yes, Miss Constantia,” Valentine said softly, trying to stem the flow of talk, “but you really mustn’t ...”
“I must and I’m going to, my dear child,” Miss Constantia insisted with the stubbornness of one who knew that the sands were running out. “I’ve said that I’ve had a good life, but it hasn’t been full enough—never with any of the things I really wanted, you know. A husband and children ... I always envied my married friends, particularly in the days when I was still young and thought how wonderful it would be to have a husband come hastening home in the evening with plans for taking me out to dinner, or perhaps with some little unexpected gift in his pocket ... Nothing expensive, you know, just a trifle, such as a pair of earrings that caught his eye, and that he’d bought because I’d such pretty ears. Or a box of bonbons! I’ve always bought my own bonbons, and I’ve so many pairs of earrings, most of them very valuable, which my nieces will fight over when I die!”
“Please,” Valentine begged her, “you simply mustn’t talk like that!”
“But it’s true, my dear.” The amusement in the old tired voice was hollow and strange. “And my nephews will fight over my first editions—I’ve collected such a number of them, and they’re in the library at Chaumont. And all my pictures, and china, and glass ...! My silver, my lovely period furniture, my collection of jade. There’s so much for them to fight over, and they’ll have a simply wonderful time the instant I’ve passed on! At least, they would have done, but for the fact that I’ve taken steps to prevent anything of the kind happening.” She chuckled suddenly—it was the strangest little chuckle in that silent room, and with her labored breathing acting as a background to it.
“You, Valentine, are much prettier than I ever was, but you’ve never had the things that set off prettiness, have you? Oh, of course you always look terribly nice—” her faded eyes smiling at the girl “—but you could look even nicer! And one day I hope you’ll have a husband, and a home, and children ...”
Valentine felt tears prick behind her eyes and she thought wildly, oh, why doesn’t Martine come? Why doesn’t the doctor come?
“They will come, my dear, in a few minutes,” Miss Constantia said, as if she could read her thoughts. “Just be patient with me a little longer.” She peered rather earnestly into the girl’s face. “It is true, isn’t it, that you are quite alone in the world? No parents? No close relatives? No one to whom you are even thinking of becoming engaged?”
“No one,” Valentine answered firmly, but she wondered why her affairs should be of the slightest importance at such a moment.
“Then I think I have acted wisely.” Miss Constantia sounded tired, and she relaxed against her pillows and closed her eyes, “I have given the matter a lot of thought and I think ... I have acted wisely!” She opened her eyes to smile once more at Valentine. “You mustn’t disappoint me, you know,” she said strangely and then seemed to lie listening for a short while. “They are coming. Martine walks so quickly because she is agitated, and Leon has such a firm tread!”
When he stood beside her bed Leon Daudet’s face became completely inscrutable. For the second time he ordered Valentine from the room.
“You had better go, Mademoiselle Brooke!”
CHAPTER TWO
Valentine wandered aimlessly up and down the big drawing room at Chaumont.
It was a lovely room, beautifully proportioned, with a garlanded ceiling and big windows overlooking the lawns at the back of the house. Just now the lawns were very green after the winter rains, and all the flower beds were a blaze of color. Miss Constantia had followed the English pattern for having grounds laid out, and at Chaumont there was a very English rose garden, and even a little herb garden. There was a lake, too, and beyond it the woods that crowded close to the village also crowded close to the lake.
Valentine stood near the window and watched the tops of the trees swaying dreamily against the deep blue of the sky. It was such a clear unsullied blue, and she thought:
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing...
Miss Constantia had been very fond of the bit about the ducks on the pond and the green bank beyond. “So peaceful!” she had declared. “And so like Chaumont!”
Miss Constantia had loved Chaumont, and the people of the village had benefited every time she stayed at the house. She had been absurdly generous and she knew all about their little affairs. Marthe Catinot, whose husband had died suddenly of pneumonia and left her with three children to support, had found it comparatively simple to carry on after Miss Constantia learned of her troubles; and the wheelwright’s daughter, Denise, whose father had refused to give her a dot for her marriage, had had everything satisfactorily smoothed over once Miss Constantia’s sympathy was enlisted.
But Miss Constantia would not come to Chaumont anymore—neither to live in the house, nor to listen to human beings’ troubles. She had been laid to rest that day in the family vault, and surviving members of her family, who imagined they were vitally concerned with her will, had congregated in the library to receive something in the nature of a shock. Valentine had wondered at the silence in which most of them had departed, their big cars gliding away with a fat hiss of tires on the well-kept driveway. In one case the blinds of a big American Cadillac had been drawn at the back, as if the occ
upants didn’t feel like being observed—particularly by eyes in the house!
Valentine began to feel as if the walls of the drawing room were closing in on her. She knew every picture on the wall and every cherished ornament in the glass-fronted cabinets after what seemed to her like hours of imprisonment, and all because she had felt she owed it to Miss Constantia to be there in her much-loved house when she was carried out of it. There was no one here who needed her, and tonight she would go back to Paris. Tomorrow she would make practical plans for going home to England. It was hardly likely that, if she stayed on in Paris, she would find another secretarial post that would compensate her for the loss of Miss Constantia ...
The drawing room door opened and Dr. Daudet came into the room. It was he who had suggested to Valentine that she remain where she was until the others had left: he would drive her back to the capital himself.
She thought he looked extremely composed, as usual, but he also looked a little strange. He was wearing a dark suit so beautifully tailored that it was a work of art in itself, and his black tie made his shirt look startlingly white by contrast. The light coating of bronze that she understood he had acquired during a recent holiday in the Bahamas seemed less noticeable at this hour of the day and in the dimness of the drawing room; and the one or two silvery threads in the night-darkness of his hair above the temples also failed to show up as much as she had more than once seen them do. His eyes were deep, brooding and thoughtful.
“So you’re still here, Miss Brooke,” he said, and the statement was so obvious that she looked at him for enlightenment. He picked up a delicate piece of porcelain and examined it with a slight frown between his brows. “I told old Dubonnet, when he wanted to call you in that I wasn’t sure where we could find you, and I promised to pass on the relevant information to you myself.” He glanced at her and then away. “In any case, he’ll be waiting for you at the apartment tomorrow morning—about eleven o’clock, if that is convenient to you?”