Salt is Leaving

by J. B. Priestley

  ‘Peggy’s written,’ she said as soon as they were settled in that small, smelly front room. ‘She’s staying with her auntie in Birmingham till she gets a job, and she’s trying for one at a picture palace – she didn’t say which but of course there’s lots in Birmingham and she’s had experience, Peggy has. And she ran away ’cos a very nasty young chap told her to keep her bloody big mouth shut and slapped her face and kicked that tin box she puts the half tickets in. She thinks it’s to do with Noreen Wilks. Is that right, Doctor?’

  ‘I think it is, Mrs Pearson. But you can tell her from me that if she wants to come back, she can – not this week, perhaps, but next.’

  ‘I’ll write and tell her that, Dr Salt. You say she’ll be all right, do you? Then I’ll write this morning.’

  ‘You do. Now – about Noreen. Have you been through her things?’

  ‘I haven’t laid a finger on ’em, Doctor – not a finger. I’ve been expecting her back every day, so I haven’t touched nothing. There’s two letters come for her since she left – and I done nothing except put ’em behind the tea caddy in the kitchen. I didn’t tell that sergeant who come asking questions – ’cos I didn’t like the look of him and it’s none of their business. Shall I fetch ’em for you, Dr Salt?’

  ‘Yes, please, Mrs Pearson.’

  ‘Wait here, then. Won’t take me a minute.’ She left him staring at nothing over his pipe.

  ‘Well, I must say,’ she cried on her return, ‘I’ve never seen you looking like that before – right down in the mouth. I used to tell my friend Mrs Muston that you were always so cheerful it did me good just to go and see you. And Peggy used to say the same.’

  ‘You were patients then, Mrs Pearson. But if I was looking miserable, I’m sorry. I was thinking – and they weren’t very cheerful thoughts. The truth is, I’m convinced that Noreen Wilks is dead.’

  ‘Oh – no—’

  ‘Yes. And that’s why I’m here, Mrs Pearson, I can’t leave Birkden without finding out exactly what happened to Noreen Wilks. It’s no use keeping letters until she comes back. She isn’t coming back.’

  ‘I knew it, I knew it,’ said Mrs Pearson, beginning to cry. ‘I’ve known it somewhere inside ever since that night. I said as much to Peggy, and she laughed at me and said Noreen was having a high old time at the seaside in France. Oh – the poor little thing! You’re sure, are you, Doctor?’

  He nodded, then regarded her gravely. ‘But I have to prove it, and that could be a tricky business. Do you trust me, Mrs Pearson?’

  ‘Dr Salt – you’re the only man I’ve known for a long time I would trust – the only one. Oh – I feel so upset – just excuse me a minute—’

  When she came back from the kitchen – and the bottle in the cupboard – she was still carrying the two letters, and now he held out a hand for them. ‘You must give me those letters, Mrs Pearson. If they are what I think they are – and the police got hold of them – some nice people I know might soon be very unhappy.’

  ‘I’m sure you know best, Doctor.’ And she handed them over.

  ‘And now I want you to go up to her room, search her things carefully, and if you find any letters or notes she’s kept – and I’m certain you will – then please let me have them. They may be very important.’

  ‘All right, if you say so.’ She made a hurried move, but then stopped in the doorway. ‘Do you think it happened that night – September 12th?’

  ‘That night or early next morning – yes.’

  ‘Well, do you think she was suddenly taken ill and just died – or did somebody kill her? I mean – you don’t think she might have been murdered – do you, Doctor?’

  He held her fearful stare steadily for a moment. ‘I don’t say you haven’t a right to ask that question, Mrs Pearson. But it’s just possible I might run you into trouble if I answered it. All I’ve told you this morning is that I believe Noreen Wilks is dead. And if you’ll hand over any letters – anything in writing she kept – I’ll take the responsibility.’

  ‘Yes – yes, I’ll do that. I don’t even want ’em about here.’ And off she went.

  He looked at the two unopened letters, both addressed in the same neat hand and bearing the Hemton postmark. Slowly, very reluctantly, as if he hated doing it, he opened and then read the letters. It would be wrong to say he gave a sigh afterwards – definite sighing seems to have gone out – but his breathing was heavier and seemed to have something melancholy in it. And when at last he put the letters into an inside pocket, he found that the pipe still in his mouth was cold.

  Five minutes later Mrs Pearson returned. She had powdered her grief-stricken face so thoroughly that it was now a lilac shade. ‘These are all I could find.’ She pushed about a dozen letters at him. ‘Usual place – tucked away below her stockings and undies. I haven’t stopped to read ’em. I know we’re all supposed to be so bloody curious – but I don’t want to read ’em.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ He stuffed the letters into a side pocket and then got up. ‘But I must find out all I can about her. Thank you, Mrs Pearson.’

  She stopped him just as he was opening the street door. ‘Dr Salt, if she really is dead, what am I going to do with all her things?’

  ‘Better hang on to them for a while – and then do what you like with them.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I mean, poor Noreen hadn’t anybody, had she? No relations – nobody—’

  ‘She had one, I think. Whether he’d want some little thing belonging to her, I don’t know. Probably not. Thank you again, Mrs Pearson. And tell Peggy she can come back if she wants to – any time next week, I think.’

  3

  After he had read the letters that Mrs Pearson had found for him, Dr Salt made a list of local nursing homes – and it was quite short – that he and Maggie would have to visit. Feeling then it was time to attend to his own affairs, he put in an hour’s good work sorting out the books, refusing himself the luxury of dipping into those he was doubtful about keeping. So it was nearly twelve when he heard a ring at his door.

  ‘Hello – are you Dr Salt?’ The girl was wearing a mink coat over a black sweater and blue jeans, no hat but a lot of hair that needed washing, and was an expensive slut with a long loose face and body.

  ‘I am. Who are you?’

  ‘Erica Donnington. Well, let me in – for God’s sake – we can’t just stand here. And if you want to call it a professional visit – okay, go ahead – and I’ll pay you whatever we pay silly old Dr Bennett—’

  ‘Not necessary.’ He stood aside and then followed her into the sitting room.

  ‘My God – I thought my room was a mess – but as a jumble this is really fab. How can you be a doctor and live like this?’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t. I’m leaving – so I’m sorting things out.’

  ‘Where do you suggest I sit?’

  ‘Wait.’ He took some books out of a chair. ‘Try that. And now you know where, you might tell me why.’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why you’re here. You can’t consult me professionally even if you do pay me whatever you pay silly old Dr Bennett—’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so square, Dr Salt. I think I’m going to be disappointed. I believe you’re just another doctor. Of course it was just curiosity – after what I heard last night. But I’ll explain all that over a drink. Gin and tonic, please. Plenty of gin and not too much tonic. And even if you’re breaking all your rules, for God’s sake give yourself a drink too. I hate drinking alone.’

  He gave her rather a long, hard look, nodded without smiling, then went into the kitchen for the gin and tonic and a little neat whisky for himself. He could hear her moving around the sitting room. Having made a fuss about where she should sit, now she wasn’t sitting. He took his time over the drinks, wondering how to deal with her. His natural inclination was to be sharp and hard with a type like this, but he realized that he might learn more if he appeared to be sympathetic.

  ‘You were saying you were
curious – after last night – Miss Donnington—’ She had her drink now.

  ‘Erica, do you mind? Otherwise, you’ll soon be asking to look at my tongue or my eyeballs—’

  ‘Only for cash down, Erica. But what happened last night?’

  ‘Oh – I’m not sure. I was half stoned, anyhow. I nearly always am now. Not in the morning – at night, I mean. You don’t look very clever.’

  ‘I know.’ He lit his pipe very carefully and then looked at her blankly, as if he might never speak again.

  It worked. ‘Has anybody ever told you I’m queer?’

  ‘Nobody’s ever told me anything about you, Erica.’

  ‘Well, I am. And now it’s Jill Frinton. I’m crazy about her and I don’t care who knows it. So – being half stoned, of course I had to see her last night, though I knew damned well she didn’t want to let me in. She’d got a new boy friend there – one of those tall, dark, handsome devils – who was eating her with his eyes—’

  ‘Ah – yes. Alan Culworth. What was happening?’

  ‘What do you think? Not when I was there, of course – but they soon got rid of me. An hour or so afterwards I went back. No lights. And his little car was still there. They were in bed or on it. You can imagine what I felt. Talk about jealousy! I went screaming round the countryside – doing eighty most of the time – for two hours, trying to work it off. It was hell – still is.’

  ‘I see, Erica. Sorry about that. But where do I come in?’

  ‘Oh – I heard Jill telling Donald Dews on the phone how clever you’d been. Then I said I’d overheard my father saying something about you on the phone. And why was everybody suddenly Dr Salting it like mad? Incidentally, do you have to stare at me like that?’

  ‘No. It’s a bad habit some of us doctors have picked up. If your father’s Sir Arnold Donnington, I met him on Tuesday morning – with Superintendent Hurst.’

  ‘I’ll bet you didn’t like him.’

  ‘I might have done if he hadn’t so much weight to throw about.’

  ‘He’s so square – it hurts. No wonder Derek and I started kicking things around.’

  ‘Perhaps he gave your brother too big an allowance—’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny? Father kept poor Derek very short, especially after he’d been sent down from Oxford. If it hadn’t been for me – I have some money that came to me from my mother – Derek would have been wondering how to pay for a few double Scotches. Where did you get that idea from – that he’d plenty of money?’

  ‘Vague rumours, Erica. Talk among the peasantry. About taking a girl to the South of France. And having a flat or some place of his own in or near Birkden—’

  ‘Oh – for God’s sake! They’d have had to be giving ’em away. And I must say I don’t know what Jill was talking about, last night. I mean, about your being so clever. But perhaps you’re one of those people who aren’t very bright in the morning.’

  ‘I think I am – yes,’ said Dr Salt thoughtfully. ‘But of course I’m sorry if you’re disappointed. By the way, I met Mr Aricson last night. What about him?’

  ‘He is clever, up to a point. But I don’t like him – and he doesn’t like me, though of course I don’t see much of him. I don’t like men – and his wife isn’t attractive. Not like Jill, who’s madly attractive, both to you men and somebody like me. Didn’t you fall for her? And don’t tell me you’re too old. I’ve seen men a lot older than you – in Jill’s flat – just sitting up on their hind paws and begging.’

  ‘Well, I don’t do much of that, Erica.’

  ‘Are you going to give me another drink?’

  ‘No, I’m not. For two reasons. First, I’m running short of gin – and I’m mean. Secondly, I’m busy. So – some other time, please, Erica.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said, getting up. ‘And I might as well tell you, I don’t think you’re clever – and I also think you’re rather a miserable little sod – d’you mind?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ Dr Salt told her cheerfully. ‘And now – bugger off.’

  This startled her. ‘Is that the way you talk to people?’

  ‘Only if they call me a miserable little sod—’

  ‘Oh – shut up!’ She was hurrying out now. ‘And, anyhow, you don’t know what my life’s like – you can’t begin to imagine – silly bloody clown!’ She banged the door behind her.

  Dr Salt stood at the window watching her hurling herself into the cream Jaguar and then listening to her go roaring off. His face was heavy and frowning, but not with anger. Then he realized that he was beginning to feel hungry. He took the two glasses into the kitchen, where he decided to scramble some eggs.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Father is Found

  1

  Maggie was busy in the shop most of Thursday morning, dividing her time between the little back office and the front room, where she did her best to take her father’s place, even though she neither knew nor cared about books in general as he did. Moreover, she was worried about her father, about Alan, and in a confused sort of way about this odd Dr Salt. Where was her father? What had happened to him? And what had he to do with Dr Salt’s Noreen Wilks? As far as Alan was concerned, the situation was clear enough – no mystery there – for it was obvious he had gone and fallen at once for that artful bitch, Jill Thing. He had come down late, looking washed out, and though they had had the time and opportunity only to exchange a few words before she had had to leave for the shop, and nothing had been said about his Jill, Maggie knew at once he must have spent about half the night making love to her. And Alan was a serious character, not likely to grab some sex because it could be had, and if there was going to be much more of this Jill work, he might soon be in horrible earnest, while she was bouncing around again with salesmen and buyers. And if it hadn’t been for Dr Salt, Alan would never have set eyes on this blasted Jill.

  So one minute she was ready to like Dr Salt, so clever and helpful and attractively odd. Then the next minute she would decide that she was furious with him, that she didn’t like him at all, that he was only using the Culworth family, in a cold-blooded and quite ruthless fashion, to help him find out more about his wretched Noreen Wilks, and that he might be an unusual man, but that didn’t mean he was either attractive or friendly.

  She tried to explain some of this to Bertha Chapman during a brief elevenses in the office. But it was all too complicated and she cut it short by telling Bertha she was seeing Dr Salt again that afternoon and that he might have found out something about her father. ‘On the other hand,’ she concluded rather miserably, ‘I feel he’s quite capable of telling me that he hasn’t given us Culworths another single thought. And it’s now all such a mysterious tangle that if he won’t help me, I’ll feel absolutely bewildered and lost. It’s as if Birkden, which I used to sniff at and despise after London, has suddenly turned into a dark jungle. Yet somehow I believed Dr Salt yesterday when he told me he didn’t think anything very dreadful had happened to Daddy. Oh – Bertha – it’s all so mystifying and maddening.’

  Bertha gave her a look. ‘I can see that, dear. And how much of all this are you telling your mother?’

  ‘Hardly any of it. Only that I’ve met a Dr Salt who thinks he might be able to find out about Daddy. Just because he’s a doctor, Mother believes me. I feel a bit mean and rather guilty, keeping back so much from her—’

  ‘No, you’re quite right, Maggie dear. I know that if I were in your place – oh blast! – I’ll have to go. So will you, I think. There’s a run on us just because it’s half-day closing.’

  ‘I’ll have time for a quick lunch,’ said Maggie as they went out to the front shop together. ‘We’ll go to the Primrose, Bertha.’

  They hadn’t much time because it was ten past one when they reached the café, and Maggie would have to take the Birkden bus and then be at Dr Salt’s by half-past two. And though she was still ready to be furious with him – getting Alan entangled like that – she was also determined not to be a
minute late, feeling in some obscure fashion that if she wasn’t there on the dot he might vanish, like a magician in a fairy-tale. But over some tomato soup and woolly plaice, she was able to tell Bertha how she and Alan had begun to think, in the Fabrics Club, that Dr Salt was an absolute fool, and how they soon had to change their minds and felt silly themselves – at least she did.

  ‘Did he crow over you then – Dr Salt, I mean?’

  ‘No, he didn’t, Bertha. But, then, I don’t think he cared what we felt. On the other hand, I must say that when I suggested I ought to see him today, he told me at once to come at half-past two.’

  ‘That’s being a doctor, isn’t it? Making exact appointments – sharp – bang-bang-bang! What does he look like?’

  ‘Not specially odd and original – though he is. Rather ordinary until you take a good look at him. He had a wife – and obviously he adored her – and she died. And I don’t know whether it’s that or a lot of less important things all adding up, but he makes me feel he doesn’t like it here any more and wants to get back – oh – I don’t know – to places thousands of miles away, to where he was before he came to Birkden. And he’s only waiting now to find out exactly what happened to this Noreen Wilks.’

  ‘Perhaps he was in love with her, Maggie.’

  ‘I wondered about that, but I soon saw that he wasn’t at all. She was his patient. And rather special, not because he was fond of her but because she had to have this special treatment for her kidney disease. She’d been missing three weeks. Nobody seemed to care. So he decided to care. And he’s not only very sharp and clever but also – I’d say – very obstinate.’

  ‘Do you think he’s interested in you, Maggie dear?’