The Other Devil's Name

by E. X. Ferrars

  “That would be very good of you. Thank you, Andrew.”

  “Will you come too?”

  “Would you mind going alone? I don’t think Lorna Grace likes me very much.”

  “For any special reason?”

  “A kind of jealousy, I think. Of my job and my having been fairly successful in it. She resents it in another woman.”

  “I see. Well, tell me her address and I’ll go.”

  “Shall I drive you to the village, or would you sooner walk?”

  “I’d rather like the walk. And don’t brood too much while I’m gone, Constance. I know it’s because of Mollie’s general state of mind that you’re so worried. You’re afraid she may have done something fairly crazy. On the other hand, she may walk in at any time with some perfectly reasonable explanation of what she’s been doing. I know I haven’t seen much of her, but she didn’t give me the impression of being someone who was on the verge of a breakdown. But just tell me how to find Miss Grace. And don’t be too disappointed if I don’t find out anything. We can always fall back on the police, you know, if Mollie seems really to have vanished.”

  He saw her start as if until he mentioned the police she had not been taking her own concern really seriously. Then she opened her handbag, which was on the floor near to the chair where she was sitting, took out a small address book and told him where to find Lorna Grace.

  A few minutes later, as Andrew set off along the lane towards the crossroads, he found to his intense annoyance that brave Horatius had taken possession of his mind once more. It churned around in his head.

  “For how can man die better

  Than facing fearful odds,

  For the ashes of his fathers,

  For the temples of his gods…?”

  The trouble was not that in going to see Nurse Grace he felt that he was facing fearful odds. It was true that he did not look forward to it. She was only too likely, he thought, to consider his anxiety, or rather Constance’s anxiety about Mollie’s non-appearance, as foolish. Mollie was a grown woman who surely could look after herself. But what had really distressed him and what he was trying to blot out of his mind with a dose of Macaulay was the thought of his own tactlessness in referring to Mollie as possibly having vanished.

  The moment that he had used the word he had seen the stricken look on Constance’s face, and though she had done her best to erase it immediately, it had of course reminded him that one of the reasons why he was in Lindleham was to investigate the strange way in which a number of its inhabitants had vanished. An old man. A young boy. An unfaithful husband. A wife who for whatever reason had also absconded.

  How Mollie’s failure to return home from the surgery could tie in with any of these he had no idea, but it was plain that Constance thought that it could. Or was he making a mistake by assuming that? Was the reason for her distress something quite different?

  She had spoken of Mollie having had two breakdowns, but that was a word that could mean almost anything. It could mean, for instance, that Mollie had had intolerable attacks of depression and had sat and wept for several hours at a time without knowing why and had perhaps even attempted suicide. It could mean that she had suddenly and inexplicably turned against Constance and had gone wandering off by herself, forgetting who she was or where she was going. If that was what had happened Andrew could understand why Constance was so anxious now. But there were all sorts of possibilities. Schizophrenia, for instance. He was not sure exactly what the word meant, but he knew that it was a pretty bad thing and that it would be terrible if Mollie was suffering from it or anything like it.

  Against that, he remembered that she had struck him as a reasonably normal woman. Not nearly as intelligent as her sister, but there had been no lack of good sense in the way that she had attempted to comfort Leslie Gleeson about the continuing mystery of her missing child. She had been calm and kindly. All the same, if she had had her bad times and Constance had had to cope with them, it was clear enough why she was so worried now.

  Thrice looked he at the city;

  Thrice looked he at the dead;

  And thrice came on in fury…

  That bloody Horatius again! After a few quiet curses, Andrew did his best to drive him out of his mind. He was not aware of going anywhere in a fury, but only into the village of Clareham, and he was not expecting to have to look at anyone dead even once, let alone three times. Reaching the crossroads, where he could see the attractive Georgian house where Dr. Pegler lived, he turned to the left and continued towards Clareham.

  It was a straggle of houses along the main road to Maddingleigh. One or two small side roads branched off it, one leading down to a triangular green with a church and a school facing onto it, as well as the village hall, in which Constance had told Andrew the surgery was held twice a week. She had told him that Miss Grace lived in a small semi-detached house just beyond it. Andrew found it without difficulty and had just turned in at the gate when a blue Mini stopped in front of it. He recognized it as the nurse’s car and a moment later Miss Grace came trotting briskly up the garden path after him. There was a pleasant smile on her round, blunt-featured face.

  “Good afternoon,” she said. “I know who you are though Mr. Ryan didn’t introduce us yesterday. You’re Professor Camm’s friend, aren’t you, and you’re staying with her and Mrs. Baird? I don’t know your name, but Mrs. Baird told me about you. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “My name’s Basnett,” Andrew answered, “and as a matter of fact I wanted to ask you something about Mrs. Baird. If you’ve time to spare at the moment and could give me a few minutes I’d be very grateful.”

  “Come in and have a cup of tea,” she said. “I’m going to make one for myself. You don’t know how badly I want one around this time of day. And I’m finished with my work, I’m glad to say, unless I’m called out. So come in and make yourself at home.”

  She unlocked her front door and led him into a small sitting room so tidy and so clean and so bright with polishing that he felt almost afraid to walk across the gleaming floor and sit down in a shiny, plastic-covered armchair.

  She had taken off her blue uniform jacket and her neat little navy-blue hat, shaking loose her short grey hair that had been squashed flat by it, and in spite of Andrew’s protest that she should not trouble about tea for him, as what he wanted to ask her would take only a few minutes, she disappeared into the kitchen to make the tea.

  In a little while she appeared with a tea tray.

  “There,” she said as she handed him a cup, and subsided with a little sigh of weariness into another plastic-covered chair. “That’s better.” Her eyes, behind her thick round spectacles, had a gleam of curiosity in them as she surveyed him. “I need my tea. Now tell me what you want to ask me about Mrs. Baird. We’re old friends, you know. In the days when I used to go up to Lindleham House to attend to poor old Mrs. Ryan after her stroke, we got to know each other very well. She was wonderful with the old woman. So patient and understanding when she got a bit difficult towards the end. Mind, I’m not saying there was anything wrong with Mrs. Ryan mentally. There wasn’t. She could be as sharp as a needle when she chose. Sometimes a bit too sharp, in fact, always criticizing Mrs. Baird as if she wasn’t doing her very best for her, and some of the things she used to say to me—Well!” She gave a laugh. “Of course, I’m used to old people. Half my job’s with them and I don’t take offence. And sometimes she used to be quite amusing. I remember once when Dr. Pegler put her on to some new pills and she shouted at him, ‘Pills, pills, that’s all you can do for me, nothing but pills! If you picked me up and shook me, I’d rattle!’”

  “I believe Mrs. Baird went into his surgery this morning to collect some pills,” Andrew said.

  “Did she? Yes, of course she did. I think she said that was what she’d come for. I happened to have dropped in for a few minutes to ask Dr. Pegler something and I met her there.” She paused. Her eyes looked abnormally enlarged behind the thick len
ses of her spectacles. “I’m sorry. You didn’t come here just to hear me chatter, though I do enjoy it when I get the chance. Is something wrong with Mrs. Baird?”

  “It’s just that she hasn’t come home since she set out to the surgery this morning,” Andrew said, “and Professor Camm’s troubled about her. We were told Mrs. Baird left the surgery with you and we wondered if she’d said anything to you about what she was meaning to do then.”

  “Yes, we left together, that’s true,” the nurse said, “and I gave her a lift to the crossroads. I’d a visit to make further on, a dressing to do for an old fellow with a nasty abscess, and I saw Mrs. Baird start up Bell Lane. You mean you haven’t seen her since then?”

  Andrew shook his head. “About what time would that have been?”

  “About half past eleven, I should think, or thereabouts.”

  “And she didn’t say anything, as far as you can remember, about calling in on anyone, or anything like that?”

  “No, I just took for granted she was going straight home. Mind you…” She stopped.

  “Yes?” Andrew said.

  “Have some more tea,” she said. “You don’t know how I like my tea when I get home.”

  “You were going to say…?”

  “Oh, nothing special.” She took his cup from him and refilled it. “Professor Camm’s a very clever person, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Seems funny, somehow, a woman being a professor, but I suppose times have changed. You’re old friends, aren’t you?”

  Andrew remembered what Constance had said about the nurse resenting her.

  “Yes, we worked together in the same department for about twenty years,” he said, “and she was a great friend of my wife’s.”

  “You’ve lost your wife, then? You said Professor Camm was a great friend of hers.”

  “Yes, she died of cancer ten years ago.”

  “Sad, very sad. I’m so sorry. Of course, Professor Camm will be a rich woman if Mrs. Baird dies first. She inherited a lot of money from Mrs. Ryan, you know, though they like to live so modestly.”

  Andrew found it difficult to follow the nurse’s line of thought. It seemed to him disconnected. Then the suspicion suddenly came to him that she imagined that his friendship for Constance was based on some idea of his marrying her for the money that she might acquire if Mollie were to die first. In spite of the woman’s good-natured, rosy face and her cheerful smile, he began to like her less than he had at first.

  “About those pills she collected this morning…” he said.

  “Mild tranquilizers,” she said. “She was very upset when Mrs. Ryan died. After all, she’d lived with her for fifteen years. She was almost like a daughter to her. Well, I suppose it was that that upset her. Mrs. Baird got very nervous and depressed for a time, in spite of having been left all that money. And I’ve sometimes wondered… Still, I mustn’t gossip. I get to know a lot of things in my work, you know, but I’m very careful not to gossip.”

  “I’m sure you are.” He did not feel sure at all. “But I mustn’t keep you. I just wanted to ask you if you knew what Mrs. Baird might have done after you saw her in the surgery, but I gather you don’t know any more about that than we do.”

  “No, and I don’t wonder you’re worried if you haven’t seen her since then. It’s certainly strange.” But was there a glint of pleasure in those unnaturally enlarged eyes? “I expect it’ll turn out there’s some quite ordinary explanation of it. Suppose, for instance, she was asked in for lunch by some friend she met and tried to ring up Professor Camm to say she wouldn’t be home for some time, but it turned out the phone was out of order and she couldn’t get through. Things like that do happen and she might not have thought it would upset you much if you didn’t hear from her.”

  “Yes, that might be possible.”

  “It’s much more likely than that anything awful’s happened. When you get back you may find she’s got home already.”

  “I hope I do.” He stood up. “Thank you for the tea and for letting me bother you with my questions.”

  “My pleasure. I wish I could have helped more.” She stood up to open the door for him. “Actually I could tell you some things about Mrs. Baird… But it wouldn’t be right, and it’s got nothing to do with her not coming home today. No, I’ve told you all I can about seeing her today. We met in the surgery. She’d been shopping, I think. She’d a basket of groceries with her. And I gave her a lift as far as the crossroads, and we talked mostly about poor little Colin Gleeson going missing. He’s been gone now about a month and my opinion is that the poor child’s certainly dead. Not that I said so. The Gleesons are friends of Mrs. Baird’s and I didn’t want to distress her. Mr. Gleeson was in the surgery this morning and I saw her talking to him. Poor man, he must feel terrible, because everyone knows it was his fault the child ran away. I thought he was looking very poorly.”

  “I believe he’s got a bad back, which is enough to make anyone look poorly,” Andrew said. “Well, thank you, and perhaps, as you say, I may find Mrs. Baird has got home while I’ve been here, troubling you with my questions. You’ve been very patient with me.”

  However, when a little while later Andrew reached Cherry Tree Cottage and Constance let him in, Mollie had not returned. Constance offered to make him tea, but he assured her that he had been provided with more than enough by Nurse Grace. Constance’s face had a pinched look and there were shadows of anxiety under her eyes.

  “But if it isn’t too early, I could do with a drink,” Andrew said.

  She assumed that he wanted whisky and poured it out for him, then did the same for herself. But when he went into the sitting room and sat down she remained standing in front of the empty fireplace.

  “She’d nothing to tell you, of course,” she said.

  “I’m not sure that she hadn’t,” he answered. “You know, that woman knows something about Mollie. She went out of her way twice to tell me that she did and that her only reason for not saying more was that it would be unprofessional to gossip. She also said that it could have nothing to do with Mollie not coming home today, but I wondered if she was letting me know in a rather malicious way that was meant to puzzle me that she knows what Mollie did with Mrs. Ryan’s will.”

  “It’s possible,” Constance said. “She and David Pegler witnessed it. If she doesn’t actually know anything about how it disappeared, she may have her suspicions.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that she’s your blackmailer?”

  For a moment Constance did not answer, then she said, “As it happens, I’ve wondered about that myself.”

  “But you’ve no evidence that points to her?”

  “None at all.”

  “Well, now the question is: what are you going to do? Are you just going to go on waiting to see if Mollie comes back, or are you going to tell the police that she’s missing?”

  “Is that what you think I ought to do?”

  He had not expected her to say that. He had thought that at mention of the police she might shy as she had earlier when he had advised her to show them the anonymous letter. But it was plain that now she was prepared to listen to the suggestion.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “You’ve spoken of Mollie having had a couple of breakdowns, but you didn’t tell me what form they took. What actually happened to her?”

  She wandered away to the window, standing there with her back to him, as if she would have liked to blot out his question. Then she gave a little shrug of her shoulders, evidently deciding that it did not matter how much he knew.

  Returning to stand on the hearth rug, she said, “The first time it was simply intense anxiety and depression. She wouldn’t go out of the house. The thought of it seemed to terrify her. Agoraphobia, I suppose. And she wept a great deal. But it didn’t last very long. The second time was far more frightening. We were out together, having supper in a café, and I was just going to pay our bill and we were going to go home, wh
en all of a sudden she got up and ran out. She hadn’t even waited to put on her coat, she was wearing just a light blouse and skirt, and it was January and it was snowing outside, and she simply vanished into the snow. I went to the police then and they found her hiding behind a van in a car park some way off, but when they tried to persuade her to come home with me she fought and screamed and that was when I managed to arrange for her to be taken into a mental home. She was there for three months and when she came out you’d never have thought there’d been anything the matter with her. She talked about the whole experience quite rationally and told me that when she’d run away from me in the café it was because she thought she’d suddenly seen the devil looking at her out of my eyes. She was very sorry about all the trouble she’d caused and seemed to be completely back to normal. And that’s what I’ve assumed she was until she told me about how she’d destroyed Mrs. Ryan’s will. That started me worrying again, because she’s always been such an honest person, it wasn’t in character.”

  “And today you’re afraid she may have seen the devil again looking at her out of your eyes, or possibly mine, and that’s why she’s disappeared.”

  She made no response for a moment, then she nodded.

  “That other time it happened, I’d no warning,” she said. “There we were eating our fish and chips and talking about what we might watch that evening on television, and suddenly she was gone.”

  “As she’s gone now.”

  She nodded again. As she did so someone knocked on the front door.

  The way that Constance’s slim body jerked at the sound and that she spilled some whisky on the carpet showed how tense she was.

  Andrew stood up. “I’ll see who it is.”

  But she was out of the room ahead of him, had reached the front door before he could and had flung it open.

  A tall, thin man stood on the doorstep. A little way behind him stood another man, who was shorter, thickset and younger. In the lane was a car. The tall, thin man had a long, cadaverous face which was almost rectangular, with a pointed nose, a high, narrow forehead and grave brown eyes. He gave Constance a long, questioning look before he spoke and also took a quick look at Andrew, who had an impression, for no reason that he could name, that the man was glad to see him there.