Ten minutes later, Ada Rogers was cosily ensconced in a creaking wicker chair in front of the fire, her black alpaca skirt folded back over her bony knees, and a cup of thick Indian tea within reach of her right hand.
Mrs. Dukes’ sitting-room was drab-looking and over-furnished, for here the odd knick-knacks of furniture banished from other parts of the building by the doctor found a resting-place. But to Ada Rogers it was easily the nicest room in the Hydro, and if she had ever had the chance of furnishing a sitting-room herself, she would have made it an exact replica of this.
“That’s new, isn’t it, Emmie?” she asked, pointing to a tripod of bamboo, with three swinging ferns, supporting an aspidistra in a garish green pot.
Mrs. Dukes popped the last piece of buttered toast into her mouth and nodded, licking her fingers.
“Um. The doctor found it somewhere in the Hydro and I shouldn’t like to say what he called it. He told me to throw it out on to the rubbish-heap, but I couldn’t do that. Waste not, want not, is what I say, though I’m sure I get no thanks for it.”
“You’ll get your reward in heaven, dear,” replied Rogers. “We all know that this place could never last a minute without you. Just you try giving them notice and see what they say. If the doctor doesn’t like plants about the place I’m sure it’s his loss, and they look very pretty in here. But then, this is such a tasteful room. I must say that I’m surprised at the doctor using language about things. It isn’t like him, from all accounts.”
Mrs. Dukes ran her tongue noisily over her top teeth (in the privacy of her room she allowed herself natural manners which the maids had never seen), and pursed her lips.
“Well, it is and it isn’t, in a manner of speaking,” she replied. “He used to be the perfect gentleman to me and to everyone else. Indeed, I’ve often thought he overdid the genteelness. It’s quite correct when he’s talking to you or me, of course; but when it comes to saying ‘please’ to a lazy good-for-nothing like that Amy Ford whose mother was no better than she ought to be, well, it’s too much, if you take my meaning.”
Rogers nodded sleepily, for Mrs. Dukes had added “a little drop of something” to her tea, and its effect was soothing.
“But that was before young Bobby Dawson was murdered,” Mrs. Dukes continued. “Ever since that day, the doctor’s been a different man, snapping at you when you ask a straightforward question, and swearing at a bit of dust which he’d never have noticed before. Well, I won’t say that it isn’t natural for him to be that upset and him thinking that his own daughter might be the next to be murdered, but I was all upset myself and no one could say I wasn’t, and I never took on like that. No, you take it from me, Ada, there’s another reason.”
Rogers reacted in true Hydro form to this hint, and, blinking the sleep from her eyes, gazed expectantly at her friend.
“Another reason? You mean...?”
Mrs. Dukes nodded heavily.
“Yes, a woman. Oh, I know, Ada. Men are men the world over. They can’t throw dust in my eyes. I’ve buried two husbands—”
“And if they were alive, you wouldn’t be here now,” Ada supplemented rather ambiguously. “But you don’t mean to tell me that the doctor’s in love, Emmie?”
Mrs. Dukes nodded again.
“Oh, Emmie, not – not with you?”
Mrs. Dukes drew herself up rigidly.
“Ada Rogers,” she said, and her voice was grim, “I may have my ambitions, but I hope I know my place, which is more than some people do that I could mention. I must say that I’m surprised at you saying such a thing to my face. I’m sure I gave you no reason for it. There’s talk enough and to spare behind my back, without my best friends insinuating things.”
Whether her indignation was really due to this remark or whether the gin in her tea had caused this morose effect, Rogers could not discern; but the housekeeper was genuinely upset, and it was some twenty minutes before she would allow herself to be pacified, and Rogers left at half past eleven without having had her curiosity satisfied.
“No, Ada,” were the housekeeper’s final words, “I know my place and no one can say that I make mischief. But you’re an intelligent woman, just keep your eyes and ears open. That’s all I’ll say.”
Rogers made her way from the housekeeper’s room up the back staircase towards the long corridor known to the staff as “Spinsters’ Walk.” Bedrooms in the Hydro were allotted in strict accordance with propriety, and it was along here that unmarried women guests or widows, real or grass, slept. As she turned the corner, she saw a slim figure, wearing a blue dressing-gown and befeathered bedroom slippers, enter a door on the right. Few of these bedrooms were now in use, and the corridor was only dimly lighted, but Rogers was near enough to see that the figure in front of her was that of Miss Lewis, the doctor s secretary, evidently returning from the bathroom. For a moment she wondered what the secretary was doing in one of the guest-rooms, then remembered what the housekeeper had told her about Miss Blake’s bedroom. “A good idea of the doctor’s,” she had said, but Rogers had her own opinion of that.
As she drew level with the door of the room which would always be known to present and future generations of the staff as “That poor Miss Blake’s bedroom,” she noticed that it had been left ajar, and at once her unvoiced suspicions came crowding into her mind.
“A good idea of the doctor’s!” she thought again. Maybe and maybe not. There was more in most things than met the eye, and you don’t leave your bedroom door open at half past eleven at night by accident, she argued, not if you’re sleeping for the first time in a room whose last occupant had been murdered. Not you! Not unless – and she almost smacked her lips over the thought – not unless you were expecting a visitor.
The thought startled her, and she tried to justify it to herself. Well, that sort of thing did happen, didn’t it? It had happened more than once in this very hotel to everyone’s knowledge and it might happen again.
Her thoughts had taken her to the end of the corridor when she heard footsteps, muffled by the thick carpet, approaching along the right-angled turning facing her. She hesitated, then, obeying a sudden impulse, turned, and running softly back, entered a small, dark, maid’s closet with a conveniently open door which stood almost exactly opposite the room Miss Lewis had entered. Barely avoiding contact with the enamel pails and jugs which practically filled the confined space, she held her breath as the footsteps drew near and halted at the open bedroom door. Without hesitation the newcomer pushed the door still further open, saying, “Are you there, darling?” and was greeted by a flurry of pale-blue satin and bare arms as Miss Lewis greeted him and drew him into the bedroom. The door closed and the key clicked in the lock, but not before Rogers’ quick eyes had seen the familiar face and recognized the voice. A grim smile came to her lips as a low murmur of voices came from the room, and she stood still in a riot of triumphant thought.
The doctor! The doctor and his secretary! The dirty pair! Oh my, what a scandal! Well, Mrs. Dukes had told her to keep her eyes and ears open and she had done it to some purpose. So that was what Emmie had meant, was it? No wonder Miss Sly-puss Lewis hadn’t wanted to make any friends in the Hydro: she had been afraid that her little game would be spoiled, of course. Fancy now! The cheek of the doctor to bring his bit of skirt openly into one of the best bedrooms so that he could visit her at night. Perhaps she wasn’t the first one either. After all, a doctor could go so openly into a woman’s bedroom, and Miss Lewis wasn’t the first attractive woman to have stayed in the place. There had been Miss Blake and Winnie Marston, and look what had happened to them!
Oh, she knew what she knew, but she wouldn’t keep silent any longer. She’d spoil their little game for them. They’d been clever, too clever altogether for most people, but not clever enough for Ada Rogers. Oh no!
She extricated herself noiselessly from the closet, and with heightened colour and belligerent step, strode round the corner on her interrupted way to her own bedroom.
/> Chapter 40
Half an hour afterwards, Dr. Williams came out of his secretary’s bedroom, his thoughts in a turmoil.
Until tonight he had not realized that he regarded Gwynneth Lewis with any feeling deeper than the normal liking which any man possesses for an efficient secretary who helps to ease the difficult round of his daily work. He had thought of her as sweet-tempered, clever, and good to look at, but she had always lacked any definite personal attraction for him. She was always in the background of his life and he had come to regard her as something of a nonentity. As a very useful and necessary nonentity, be it said, but still, as a nonentity.
Not until tonight had he realized that all this apparent lack of personality had been part of her pose as the perfect secretary, as part of her official make-up. Not that she used real make-up, he thought, somewhat inconsequently. He had always been glad of that. He sympathized every morning with the men in the newspaper advertisements who were eternally doomed to take out girls with cosmetic complexions, or lips that had that painted look. Not that it was really any business of his, of course, but still he was glad that he had had the sense to choose such a girl as his secretary. The thought held a subtle flattery.
But tonight he had realized that she was not really a nonentity but a most attractive, flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman he would choose to marry if he ever wanted to marry again, which, of course, he didn’t. The very idea was absurd, although a wife did help to make a doctor’s life a happier and more social affair, of course.
He puzzled over this change of attitude which had been so sudden and rather alarming. Perhaps, he thought, it had been her swift embrace and the perfume from her hair, or the pressure of her cool, bare arms. Perhaps it had been the sight of her, dressed in that blue silk thing with her hair brushed over her shoulders, and her bare ankles gleaming softly pink in the light from the fire. He had never seen her before dressed in anything but a neat costume or severe afternoon frock, for the staff were never encouraged to wear evening dress even at social functions like Lady Warme’s concerts. The residents did not approve of such things.
Sitting there, in the intimacy of the bedroom, he had felt most sharply attracted towards her; so much so that he had begun to wonder whether, after all, it was an entirely new sensation, or whether it had not always been there, whether he had been aware of it before and had deliberately stifled it. If he had belonged to any other profession, he might have put it all down to the natural reaction of a man who sees a pretty woman in the intimate warmth of her bedroom. But that was so much a part of a doctor’s routine that he dismissed the idea, although, to be sure, the women he visited professionally at Presteignton Hydro were usually anything but pretty – except Miss Blake and Winnie Marston, those poor unfortunate creatures; but they were different...
The thought of them brought back to his mind the reason why he was walking along the upper corridor at this time of night. No doubt Winkley had some reason for this play-acting, though what it was was quite beyond him. For the hundredth time, he wondered if it was possible that the police suspected Gwynneth Lewis of murder. She had seemed so remote from all the crimes that he had never even considered it until today; but the police must have thought it possible that she might have been in some way involved in them, or surely they would never have staged this night’s performance.
It was quite ridiculous to think of Gwynneth – such a pretty name, and how glad he was that she had never cut her hair short! – as a murderess; yet, strangely enough, it had been the thought of this possibility which had first made him aware of her as a woman.
He descended the stairs and paced the twisting corridors to his private rooms like a man walking in his sleep. He barely acknowledged the presence of Mr. Winkley, Inspector Palk, and Sergeant Jago, as he entered his study and sat down heavily in one of his leather chairs.
“Well.” he said with an effort, “I suppose it went off all right.”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Winkley. “It couldn’t have been better.”
Sergeant Jago, who had restrained himself with difficulty from making any remark that evening, could no longer contain himself.
“Ada Rogers!” he exclaimed. “Ada Rogers, of all the...! Well, blow me if I wasn’t right all along. When do we get an arrest?”
“You said it was Miss Brendon,” growled Palk, “and as for arresting anyone, don’t worry, it may never happen! We still haven’t got a stitch of evidence for arresting anyone, as far as I can see. I tell you frankly, Mr. Winkley, I still don’t see any sense in it. Yet you say that what’s happened tonight was what happened on the night that Miss Blake was murdered.”
Mr. Winkley regarded him with tolerant eyes.
“Something like that,” he said.
Chapter 41
The following night a watcher might have seen the same thing repeat itself. Dr. Williams walked along corridors, which were apparently deserted, to the same bedroom. But this time he remained behind its locked door for an hour before leaving, and this time Ada Rogers was not hiding in the maid’s closet.
Another hour passed.
Inside the bedroom, Gwynneth Lewis, wrapped in the blue satin dressing-gown, sat beside the few embers glowing in the old-fashioned barred grate. She felt partly excited, partly nervous, partly incredulous, and wholly conscious of another deeper and more overwhelming emotion underlying all others. She played nervously with a few strands of hair which fell in a soft, thick cloud over her shoulders, and listened to the faint creakings which are familiar to old houses at night. As always when alone, she thought of the doctor.
Was it possible that the police suspected him? If so, they were wasting their time. She knew him to be incapable of hurting a mouse: he could never destroy a human life, especially the life of a child like Bobby Dawson. Other people saw the doctor when he was on duty, his manner calm and reassuring: she saw him when he was irritable or tired or worried or angry, and she loved him all the more for these weak, unguarded moments. Other people might believe him to be capable of murder: she knew he was not.
She started, listening, conscious of the wild thumping of her heart, but any sound she may have heard was not repeated, and she returned to her errant thoughts.
The events of the last two evenings had shaken her out of the studied composure which everyone in the Hydro accepted so much as a matter of course. It was not easy for her to believe that the doctor really cared for her, and yet... She blushed at the remembrance of their last embrace at the doorway of her bedroom tonight, and at the recollection of the look in his eyes. A deep, startled look as if he was reluctant to believe what he knew to be the truth.
They had been very indiscreet. Could anyone have seen them, and if so...
A sudden alien noise broke across the night creaking of the hotel; a subdued but insistent knock, knock, on the door of her room. She started up, and by the dryness of her throat and the dampness of her forehead she knew that she was afraid.
Her thoughts became wild.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? Dawson, Dawson who? Daw’s son was murdered, murdered, murdered. Knock, knock. Palk. Pork and beans for breakfast. As if anyone would ever eat them for breakfast. Americans perhaps, you never knew with Americans. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Dukes. Duke’s son, cook’s son, son of a belted earl. Why were earls belted? Was it something to do with wearing a sword? Must look it up in the encyclopaedia tomorrow. If she was alive tomorrow, that was. Knock, knock. What a silly game! Who on earth had invented it? Someone on the Stock Exchange perhaps. But who is it at the Stock Exchange who does all this inventing? And why?... Knock, knock. The knocking on the gate in Macbeth. How did Shakespeare know about all the feelings the human mind was capable of? Had he ever lain awake at night with a murderer knocking on his door? A murderer! Knock, knock...
This was foolishness. She summoned all her courage and, as if in obedience to an unheard command, moved towards the door, and turning back the key, flung it open.
The corridor lights
were out and the figure outside was dim and shadowy in the distant, friendly haze from the lamp on the table beside the bed.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you,” said a gentle voice, “but I have such a dreadful headache. I thought you might let me have some aspirins. I haven’t any left.”
A shaky little laugh expressed Miss Lewis’s relief.
“Why, of course. Come in,” she said.
“I am so glad you’re not asleep. It’s quite an act of Providence that you were moved so near to me. I do so much dislike disturbing you, but I suffer so much with headaches. I’ve had them ever since I was a girl, but lately they have grown so much worse. I took coffee again tonight. It was very foolish of me. Coffee always upsets me.”
Miss Lewis went over to the table beside the bed and took up a small, transparent bottle. Her visitor closed the door softly, and came across to take it from her.
“Thank you so much. I’ll just take two out of the bottle, if you don’t mind, then I shall know how many to return to you tomorrow.”
Miss Lewis looked carefully at the thin figure in its unbecoming, shapeless dressing-gown and boudoir cap, and exclaimed in surprise:
“Why, you’ve brought your work-bag with you!”
“So I have. How stupid of me! I’m so used to carrying it about everywhere with me that I suppose... force of habit... very stupid, but when you’ve such a terrible headache...”
“Oh, it’s quite easily done,” replied Miss Lewis, simulating a cheerfulness she was far from feeling. “Perhaps you’d like to take the aspirins while you’re here.”
Her visitor smiled.
“How kind you are! I believe I will. No, please don’t trouble. I’ll pour out the water myself.” She stretched out a hand to take the glass from Miss Lewis, and as she did so, the two aspirins fell from her hand on to the floor. “Oh, how very stupid of me! How very clumsy!”
Knock, Murderer, Knock! Page 23