by Molly Thynne
“Probably,” said Fayre. “Though I don’t care for the chap myself. But it doesn’t follow that he mayn’t have a shrewd idea who did commit the murder and be shielding him for some reason of his own.”
Sybil Kean laughed.
“Edward would say we were a lot of old women, with our impressions and deductions. Still, considering the paucity of clues, it seems a pity to disregard anything.”
“Y.0.7.” admitted Fayre ruefully. “It’s not much to go on.”
Sybil Kean looked up quickly.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“All we have got of the number of the car. That and a stylographic pen that might have been lying in the grass for ages.”
“A pen!” exclaimed Cynthia. “This is quite new. You’ve been keeping it up your sleeve all this time, Uncle Fayre!”
“Didn’t Edward tell you? I suppose he hadn’t time. I picked up a red stylographic pen—a ‘Red Dwarf,’ I think they used to be called—by the gate the first time we went to the farm. The day we were there with you and Leslie. As I say, it may have been there for ages or, more probably still, was dropped by one of the reporters after the murder. I know he didn’t consider it of much importance.”
Sybil Kean rose to her feet.
“I must leave you, my children,” she said regretfully. “If I don’t go and rest, that sinister man, Gregg, will have my blood. If Hatter comes out with any more interesting revelations, mind you report to me, Cynthia.”
She moved slowly towards the house. Cynthia looked after her with a little frown of mingled pity and anxiety.
“She doesn’t seem to get any better,” she said. “I hope we haven’t tired her. She looked all in, just now.”
“I wonder what Gregg’s opinion really is …” began Fayre; then broke off with a sudden exclamation and sprang to his feet.
But he was too late. Sybil Kean had wavered for a moment, recovered herself, and then, before he or Cynthia could reach her, sunk in a huddled heap by the door leading from the terrace to the drawing-room.
Cynthia was by her side in an instant.
“Ring for her maid, quick!” she commanded. “And then get Dr. Gregg on the telephone. It’s her heart again!”
Fortunately the maid proved efficient and, while Fayre was ringing up the doctor, she and Cynthia got the unconscious woman to bed between them. Gregg was not at his house, but at the Cottage Hospital, where Fayre eventually ran him to earth and managed to get him on the end of the telephone. He promised to come at once and Fayre was waiting impatiently in the hall for his arrival when Cynthia joined him, looking worried and anxious.
“She’s still unconscious,” she said. “Her maid’s splendid—she seems to know exactly what to do; but I wish Dr. Gregg would come!”
“Do you think all that stuff about Gregg could have upset her?” asked Fayre, his conscience smiting him. “I could kick myself for being such a fool. After all, she’s entirely dependent on him while she’s here.”
Cynthia laid a reassuring hand on his arm.
“Nonsense, Uncle Fayre! Sybil’s got much too much sense for that. You’re not to blame. She gets attacks like this and they’ve been getting worse, her maid says. Probably the dinner-party last night knocked her up. It was pretty awful, according to Eve.”
Gregg arrived sooner than they had dared hope. He was upstairs for a long time and Fayre hung about miserably, wishing most heartily that the Staveleys would return from church, for Eve Staveley was one of those cheerfully competent people who are invaluable in a case of illness. He waylaid Gregg on his way out.
“She’ll do,” was his verdict in answer to Fayre’s inquiry. “But she won’t weather many more attacks like this. Each one is a fresh drain on her vitality. Blast that dinner-party!”
“You think that did it?”
“Sure. A stuffy dining-room and the effort of talking to a lot of stodgy people would be quite enough.” Fayre looked him squarely in the eyes.
“Is she going to get any stronger?” he asked. “I’m one of the oldest friends they’ve got and I’d like to know how things really are.”
Gregg shrugged his shoulders.
“The machine’s worn out,” he said. “We can patch it, of course, but every time we do, it becomes a bit weaker. Heart’s always the devil, you know. I wish I could speak differently,” he went on with a touch of real feeling in his voice. “She’s one of the best and pluckiest patients I’ve ever had.”
“Can nothing be done?”
Gregg shook his head.
“She couldn’t be in the hands of a better man than Sir Victor, if that’s what you mean. No one in Europe can beat him in his own line. I know, because I worked under him at St. Swithin’s. He’ll do all that’s humanly possible. I must get back to the hospital. You can get me there or at home for the next few hours, but you probably won’t need me. With rest and care she should do all right now. I’ll drop in again this evening.”
He hurried away, leaving Fayre to make the most of the small comfort he had given him.
He proved right. By that evening Sybil Kean was noticeably better and Fayre was able to fix his mind once more on his own, or rather Leslie’s, affairs. As far as the tracing of the car was concerned, that was best left in Grey’s hands and, in default of a better job, he decided to turn his attention to Gregg. The doctor had mentioned St. Swithin’s and, for some reason he could not place, the name roused an illusive echo in his mind. For a long time he searched his memory in vain and it was not till he was in the act of getting into bed that he suddenly traced the connection. One Henderson, a man he had known well in his student days in London, had been at St. Swithin’s. He did not know Gregg’s age, but, from the look of him, they must have been contemporaries, more or less. It would do no harm to look the man up and ask him a few questions. In any case, he had been one of the many people he had meant to run to earth on his return to England and now, provided he was not in the Antipodes, would be as good a time as any. He made up his mind to get hold of a medical directory and write to Henderson at the first opportunity.
CHAPTER X
Next morning the report of Lady Kean was reassuring and Fayre felt at liberty to devote himself to his own business.
Immediately after breakfast he betook himself to the library in the vain hope of finding a medical directory. A brief survey of the rows of calf-bound volumes convinced him that his search was vain and he was obliged to fall back on the telephone-book. Here, rather, to his surprise, he found what he was looking for.
“L. S. P. Henderson, M.D. 24.a. Selkirk Road. Carlisle.”
He scribbled the address and telephone number on the back of an old envelope, reflecting that, once more, his luck was in. He had not only found his man, but found him at Carlisle, of all convenient places. Things could not have fallen better to his hand. There was nothing to prevent his running over to Carlisle that morning and it struck him that, while he was about it, he might call at one or two of the big garages and try to find out if they had housed a car answering to the description of the one seen near the farm. Given the London number, it was on the cards that the man had made a bolt for the south in his flight from the scene of the murder. Unless he made an all-night job of it he would probably break the journey at Carlisle. At any rate, it would be worth trying.
His next step was to telephone. Here again he was fortunate, for Henderson himself answered the call. He was enthusiastic when he discovered Fayre at the other end of the line and pinned him down then and there for lunch at his house.
Lord Staveley, as soon as he heard his plans, insisted on his commandeering one of the cars for the day and by twelve o’clock he was in Carlisle. He chose a busy garage near the station as a likely place to start his inquiries.
He found the manager in the office and, on the plea that he was acting for a farmer whose cart had been run into on the evening of March the twenty-third, ascertained that no car answering to the very meagre description he was able to give had been
garaged there on the night in question. He drew as complete a blank at three other garages he visited and was compelled at last to give up the quest in despair. In one case he did hit on a car with Y.0.7. as the beginning of the registered number, but the owner was well known to the garage proprietor and the car had been in his keeping for a week prior to the day of the murder and, to his knowledge, had not been outside the garage during that time.
Rather disheartened, he drove on to Henderson’s and found the doctor and his wife awaiting him. They gave him a welcome that more than made up for his unsuccessful morning. Henderson, a huge, burly man with the strength of an ox and the gentlest of bedside manners, had married in the interval and was evidently immensely proud of his tiny, very capable-looking Scotch wife. They entertained Fayre lavishly and, so infectious was their open-hearted friendliness, that, by the time lunch was over, he felt as though the intervening years had vanished like a dream and that he was back again in his old student days. Henderson was able to give him news of several old friends he had lost sight of and they were so deeply engaged in discussing the past that it was not until they were settled with their pipes beside the lire in the doctor’s study that Fayre found an opportunity to bring up the subject of Gregg.
Henderson recognized the name at once as that of a man he had known fairly well at St. Swithin’s and was interested to learn what had become of him.
“Very able chap, he was, but a bit of a roughneck. He was very raw when he first arrived, I remember, and had to put up with a good deal of chaff. Came from somewhere in the North, I believe, and had got most of his training from an old local doctor who took an interest in the boy. Apart from that he was mostly self-educated. Correspondence schools and that sort of thing. Rather an interesting fellow, in his way.”
“Did you see anything of him after he left?”
“Lost sight of him entirely. I’ve a sort of idea that I heard a rumour at one time that he had a practise somewhere in London, but I’m rather hazy.”
“Do you remember at all who his associates were at the hospital? I’ve an idea that he knew some one I’m interested in and I don’t care to ask him point-blank.”
“His great pal was a man named Baxter. They used to go about a good deal with a couple of nurses, one of whom was by way of being engaged to Baxter. I remember that because there was a certain amount of talk about it. The girl had the reputation of being hot stuff and Baxter was supposed to be making rather a fool of himself over her. It’s extraordinary how it all comes back when one starts talking about old times. There was a St. Swithin’s man here the other day and we began gassing and, I give you my word, I felt at the end as if it was yesterday that we were there together. We were talking about Baxter, among other things, so that he’s fairly fresh in my memory.”
“What happened to him?”
“According to Parry, the fellow who was here the other day, he married the girl and the thing proved a ghastly failure. Parry said he believed he was dead. Gregg would know, though; they were very thick with each other.”
“You don’t remember the names of the two girls? They may have been friends of the person I’m after.”
Henderson shook his head.
“I haven’t the remotest idea. They were pretty girls, I remember. The sort that take up nursing to get away from home and have a bit of fun.”
Mrs. Henderson, who had been busy over the coffeepot, looked up suddenly.
“If you’re wanting information about any of the nurses at St. Swithin’s, why not go to Ella Benson?” she suggested.
Her husband brought his hand down on the arm of his chair with a whack which made the dust fly.
“By Jove, she’s right! Mrs. Benson’s a friend of my wife’s and lives a few doors up this street. She was a nurse at St. Swithin’s and she’s up in all the gossip of her day. She’s probably at home now.”
“I’ll stroll along and see when I’ve finished this,” said his wife. “She often drops in after lunch. Her husband’s a surgeon and we see a good deal of them, one way and another. She’s a decent little body.”
“Since when have you taken an interest in the medical profession?” asked Henderson lazily, his shrewd eyes on his friend.
Fayre laughed rather guiltily.
“It’s curiosity, mostly, about Gregg. He’s a queer stick and when he flatly denied having met some one I’m pretty sure used to know him in the past, it was too much for my inquisitive mind. I remembered that you were a St. Swithin’s man and thought I’d sound you when I saw you. It’s not important. The truth is, that I haven’t got enough to do, nowadays, and I’m developing into a confirmed busybody.”
Henderson grinned.
“Very good,” he said appreciatively. “As far as it goes. But you weren’t in the habit of doing things without a reason in the old days and you don’t look as if you’d changed much.”
Fayre felt himself redden.
“Confound you!” he said. “To be frank, it isn’t all curiosity, but I’ve got so little to go on that I’d rather not say anything yet.”
“Right,” was Henderson’s good-tempered answer. “That’s good enough for me, but what are we going to say to Mrs. Benson? She’s a lady with a very efficient tongue and not particularly lacking in imagination!”
“Why not leave Gregg out of it? Put it that I knew Baxter years ago and want to find out what has become of him. That ought to be enough to lead her onto the girls.”
“Ella won’t want much leading, if it’s a question of St. Swithin’s,” remarked Mrs. Henderson, as she finished pouring out the coffee. She rose and slipped out of the room before Fayre could apologize for the trouble he was giving her.
“What’s your program now?” asked Henderson.
“You’ll find vegetation a bit of a bore, won’t you?” Fayre settled himself luxuriously in his chair.
“I don’t know about that. I’ve done my share of hard work and had one go of fever too many and I shan’t be sorry to settle down. I shall loaf round for a bit, looking up old friends and that sort of thing, and then take a little place in the country with a spare bedroom or two and a bit of fishing. I might perpetrate a book. Like most of us who’ve been in the East, I’ve got ideas I shouldn’t mind airing.”
They chatted desultorily until Mrs. Henderson came back with Mrs. Benson, a plump, voluble little woman who seemed only too pleased to find a fresh audience for her reminiscences.
“It’s funny you should mention Baxter,” she said as she settled herself comfortably by the fire. “I turned up an old photograph of him only yesterday in a group taken just before I left the hospital. I’m afraid he made a mess of things, poor fellow.”
“Do you know if he’s alive? Henderson seems to think that he died.”
“He went to pieces after his wife left him. He took to drink, I believe, and ended by drinking himself to death. He was a fool ever to have married her.”
“There was a certain amount of gossip, I hear, over that affair.”
“Gossip about her. She was a bad lot from the beginning. We nurses knew a thing or two, both about her and her great friend, a girl called Philips. They and Baxter and a man called Gregg were always about together and they got themselves a good deal talked about. We were all surprised when Baxter married her, not on his account, he was dotty about her, but because we all thought she was after bigger game. She was the sort of girl who’s set on making a good marriage and generally succeeds in the end, too. Usually, she hooks a rich patient after she’s left the hospital, and both she and the Philips girl were clever enough to do it.”
“Was Gregg in love with either of them?” asked Fayre.
“I shouldn’t think so. He amused himself with Philips all right, but he wasn’t taken in by her. He was dead against Baxter’s marriage, I know, and did his best to stop it. He wasn’t a bad sort, old Gregg. He was surly and bad-tempered, but we liked working with him.”
“What happened to Mrs. Baxter after she left her husband, do yo
u know?”
“I’ve no idea. He divorced her in the end, I’ve been told. She was the sort to fall on her feet.”
“What was her name before she married? It’s funny I never heard it, but most of this happened after I had left England,” explained Fayre, carefully avoiding Henderson’s malicious eye.
“Tina Allen,” answered Mrs. Benson. “She came of quite good stock, I believe. I heard once that her people were pretty sick at her taking up nursing at all.”
For a moment Fayre was bereft of speech and, when he did speak, he controlled his voice with difficulty. That Mrs. Draycott should have started her career as a nurse at St. Swithin’s was the last thing he had suspected.
“She knew this man Gregg well, you say,” he asked at last.
“Must have. The four of them were always about together. I don’t think he liked her much, though. As I said, he did his best to stop her marriage.”
“You didn’t keep up with any of them after you left, I suppose?”
She shook her head.
“I married, myself, and came up here. I used to get news of all the old lot from time to time, from a friend who stayed on at the hospital. There were some funny goings on there, I can tell you!”
She rambled on, but the flood of her reminiscences rolled over Fayre’s head unheeded. He sat smoking, his thoughtful eyes fixed on the glowing fire, his mind full of Mrs. Benson’s last revelation. “Christina Mary Draycott.” The name had been given in full at the inquest. And Miss Allen had spoken of her sister as “Tina.” The vicar’s wife had alluded to her divorce from her first husband, but had not mentioned his name. Tina Allen, then Tina Baxter, and finally Tina Draycott! The whole thing fitted in with the precision of the pieces in a jigsaw-puzzle. Not only was her connection with Gregg explained at last, but his obvious venom was more than accounted for. And there was nothing surprising now in her curiosity concerning him, followed by her odd reluctance to meet him. Supposing they had come together at the farm that night! He could imagine what that meeting would be like and what it might lead to, given a man of Gregg’s temperament. He collected his scattered thoughts with an effort and turned to Mrs. Benson, who had paused for a moment for sheer want of breath.
