On the day she travelled to Cotten Abbas to embark on her new life there—an icy day with more than a hint of snow in the air—Helen Downing was troubled by all the wild misgivings of a small boy on his way to a new school. She believed, without conceit, that she would be able to do her job well enough. But in addition to this she longed to live more fully, to have more to do with people and parties and entertaining, than had been possible up to now, and she was horribly afraid of spoiling her chances by a false start—by over-eagerness, or by too much reserve, or by some unimaginable but conclusive faux pas. Such fears, as she well knew, were not a little absurd in a person of her age, but her circumstances had been uncommon, and had militated more than she could be aware against the growth of self-confidence in her. Staring from her compartment window at the bleak, flat country through which the train was moving, she experienced at certain moments on that crucial journey an emotion not far removed from panic.
She need not have worried. Whatever their other faults, the people of Cotten Abbas were certainly not stand-offish or unfriendly. During that first week they called on her in droves to drink her tea, talk amiable scandal about one another, issue satisfyingly specific invitations, recommend pig-keeping (a flourishing local hobby), laud or denigrate tradespeople, and proffer advice on the best disposition of her father’s rather heavy and ecclesiastical furniture. In a word, they accepted her, without reservation or delay, as one of themselves. And since it never occurred to her that this excellent state of affairs might be due in any degree to her own personality and charm, Helen was deeply grateful. From the social point of view, she had been made magnificently welcome.
It soon became clear, however, that her professional welcome was likely to be of a rather less reassuring kind.
The prejudice against women doctors has in these days to some extent been overcome; but it would be foolish to pretend that its operation is not still powerful. Women, who on grounds of modesty alone might be expected to prefer being killed or cured by one of their own sex, prove as incalculable in this as in most other things; and as to men, it is rare, except among the poor, for a woman doctor to have more than a score or thirty of them among her patients. At the end of her first year in Gotten Abbas, Helen was already anxious. At the end of her third, her panel, far from increasing, had actually diminished, so that there were times when she was hard put to it to pay her modest bills. At the end of her fourth, she was very uncomfortably in debt.
Money troubles are seldom sudden. They accumulate, insidiously, over quite long periods; and after a certain point they appear, to the dismayed observer, to proliferate and multiply rather in the supernatural fashion by which wealth seems to beget wealth—without human intervention of any kind. It was in this disastrous situation that Helen found herself at the start of 1950. She had not been extravagant; she had not been idle; but just the same, she was in debt. And although her creditors were not pressing her, she could see, in her more pessimistic moments, no prospect of ever being out of debt again.
And the reason? Well, the main reason was Dr. George Sims. Before as much as six months were out, Helen knew that where Dr. George Sims was concerned her calculations and estimates had gone badly astray.
He had returned from the war, and taken over his father’s practice, only a few weeks before Helen’s arrival. It had been a good practice to start with, and he had soon, at Helen’s expense, made it an even better one. A tall, stringy, vehement man of thirty-three, with an unruly mop of red hair and a humorously ugly face, Dr. George Sims rattled about the roads and lanes in an ancient Morris, delighting his patients (and the women in particular) with uncomplimentary addresses on the subject of their appearance, tastes, habits, and mode of living.
‘What the devil do you expect,’ he would yell at them, ‘if you stuff yourself with potatoes and chocolate from morning till night? Look at all this disgusting fat! Look at it! Your heart’s labouring, your liver’s defective, your thyroid’s given up the ghost and you’re developing flat feet. Ill? Of course you’re ill! It’s a wonder to me you aren’t dead!’
And they loved it.
Even with women, Helen’s gentleness proved to be no match for George Sims’ cheerful violence. There was Beatrice Keats-Madderly, for instance. She had particularly befriended Helen—but when a doctor was wanted, it was George Sims she sent for.
‘It’s no use, love,’ she said. ‘I’m too old to change my ways now. I dare say you’re a much better doctor than George, but I’d never get used to you, though you’re a dear girl… One of these days’—and here her eyes twinkled, as if at some secret joke—‘you’ll forgive me, see if you don’t.’
The inwardness of this cryptic prophecy was to be revealed soon enough. In the meantime, Helen went back to her bills.
And on Friday 26 May, 1950, she received, through the post, one of the first of the anonymous letters.
It came in a cheap envelope, addressed to her in round, illiterate capitals; and its matter consisted of certain brief and grossly obscene statements regarding the motives of women doctors who examine male patients.
Helen was not, of course, so innocent as to be unaware that such accusations are occasionally made; but at the same time she was not so sophisticated as to be immune from feeling sick and wretched when they were levelled at herself. Her fingers closed on the paper in readiness to crush it. Then she hesitated. Hadn’t it better go to the police? The idea of anyone else’s seeing such suggestions about herself was particularly disagreeable, but obviously she ought not to allow that sort of consideration to influence her. Other people might have received similar letters, and for all she knew, hers might be capable of providing the police with a clue which would enable them to expose the writer… Sitting at her breakfast table, with a face as white as skimmed milk, Helen forced herself to read the thing again. It looked the work of an illiterate—but the illiteracy of anonymous letters, she remembered, was more commonly feigned than genuine.
Her indecision did not last long. finishing her coffee, she put the letter and its envelope into her pocket and left the house. In another half minute she was knocking at her nearest neighbour’s front door.
Helen would hardly have believed that it was possible to live for six months next door to a man, and yet to know as little about him as she knew about Inspector Edward Casby; conventional greetings, and the usual exchange of weather-lore, made up the whole of her relations with him hitherto. She knew he was unmarried, and suspected him of being temperamentally a solitary person. But neither her own observation, nor the resources of her friends in the village, had been able to supply her with any more substantial information about him, and she had sometimes vaguely wondered why she should feel so inquisitive concerning a man whom she glimpsed, and spoke to, so briefly and so seldom.
He opened the door to her himself, and from his raincoat and brief-case she saw that he was on the point of leaving for Twelford.
‘I’m awfully sorry to bother you,’ Helen said, ‘and I don’t really know whether it’s you I ought to be bothering anyway. But the fact is, I’ve just had rather a disgusting anonymous letter.’
‘I see.’ He smiled his involuntarily twisted smile. ‘In that case it was very proper and sensible of you to bring it to me. Do come in.’
‘You were just going out,’ said Helen a little breathlessly. ‘I mustn’t delay you.’
‘They don’t make me clock in at Twelford,’ he answered, still smiling. ‘I’m much too exalted for that.’
‘No, of course not.’ For some reason Helen felt that she had spoken foolishly. ‘I will come in, thank you, just for a moment.’
He took her into his sitting-room. Though austerely furnished, it was scrupulously clean—and knowing Mrs. Flack, who ‘did’ for Casby, Helen felt tolerably certain that this latter circumstance could not plausibly be assigned to her efforts.
‘Please sit down,’ he said. ‘And would you like a drop of brandy? It would probably do you good.’
Helen l
aughed rather shakily. ‘Do I look as groggy as that?’
‘You’re a little pale,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I imagine this letter of yours has upset you—which isn’t surprising.’
‘Yes, it has.’ Helen produced the letter and handed it to him. ‘I’m over-sensitive, I expect.’
‘Are you?’ He unfolded the letter and glanced through it. ‘But not morbidly, I should have said… Yes, this is very much the usual thing. It’s good of you to let me have it, because one does feel shy about nonsense of this sort.’
Without in the least knowing why, Helen was flattered and gratified. She said: ‘You’ll want to keep it, of course.’
‘Yes, please. One or two experts will have to see it, but apart from them, no one need know anything about it. It came by this morning’s post, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
He put the letter and envelope carefully into his brief-case. ‘You’re not the only victim,’ he said. ‘Two other letters like this have been brought to us, and I’ve no doubt there are some we haven’t been told about.’
‘Who else has had them?’
He smiled at her. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Helen, confused. ‘It was very stupid of me to ask you.’
This seemed to surprise him. ‘I don’t see why,’ he retorted. ‘It’s natural to be curious. I’m sorry to say that so far we haven’t the ghost of a notion who’s writing the things, but we’re doing our best to pin him down.’
‘It’s usually a woman, isn’t it?’
‘In the past,’ he said carefully, ‘about seventy per cent of the writers of anonymous letters have turned out to be women. That’s not counting blackmail letters… By the way, if you get another of them—or something which looks from the outside as if it was another—will you bring it to me without opening it?’
‘You mean because of fingerprints?’
‘Partly that, and partly because almost all letters contain something in the way of hairs or dust. Laboratory analysis can sometimes show where the hairs and dust came from.’
‘It sounds like Dr. Thorndyke.’
‘It’s very like Dr. Thorndyke, except that with us it doesn’t come off quite as often as it did with him. Anyway, do you mind doing that?’
‘Of course not,’ Helen said. ‘Would it be indiscreet to ask if there are any clues so far?’
‘Well, we’ve got one or two rather anaemic specimens, but nothing at all decisive. Do you read many newspapers?‘
The question took Helen unawares. ‘Only one,’ she said.
‘Yes, it’s the same with most people… Thank you very much, Dr. Downing. I wish everyone was as sensible as you are.’
‘It isn’t being sensible,’ said Helen. ‘It’s reading detective stories.’
‘Well, then, I wish everyone read detective stories. Are you feeling all right now?’
‘Yes, thanks, perfectly.’
They left the house together, parting at the gate. And Helen, pensively clearing away her breakfast things, found that she was unable to make up her mind whether she liked Inspector Edward Casby or not. His cool common sense had, she knew, been precisely the right specific for the sick depression which the anonymous letter had engendered in her; but she thought that it had been calculated rather than natural, and was inclined—most unreasonably, as she herself admitted—to consider this an affront. Before setting off on her all-too-short round of patients, she succeeded, with something of an effort, in dismissing him from her mind. But he nevertheless showed an aggravating tendency to return there uninvited throughout the remainder of the day…
…And it hasn’t stopped there, either, thought Helen wryly as she swallowed, that Friday, the last of her very early morning tea. But it can’t be that I’m in love with the man, or any such nonsense as that, because although I keep thinking about him there isn’t a trace of affection in my attitude to him, or even of real liking. Odd. I suppose the fact of the matter is that he’s slightly mysterious—which means that once I find out what makes him tick I shall lose interest in him. Has he got any interests outside his work? On, the whole I imagine not: his room was about as impersonal as a room can be…
By now the full light had come. Slipping from her bed, Helen went to the window and looked out. There was a mist, she saw: but a gleam of weak gold on the angle of the church’s high, square tower suggested that the sun would soon disperse that. Dew winked on the yellow roses in the garden. The untidy graveyard looked, as always, more friendly than sinister, and apart from the birds Cotten Abbas was preternaturally quiet. Half past five. Well, there was no question of sleeping now; better get dressed and go for a stroll than sit moping in bed.
So that day claimed her, and the morning passed, and the sun grew hot towards his zenith. There were letters to be dealt with, surgery hours to be kept, a few patients to be visited in their homes. Helen worked hard, working to keep reflection at bay. By lunch-time she was almost cheerful.
And then, at shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon, the first blow fell.
Chapter Five
Lunch had been cleared. As Helen sat idly over coffee and a cigarette in her rather sombre little sitting-room, the telephone rang. Answering it, she missed the name and for a moment failed to recognize the voice.
‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t— Who is that, please?’
‘Sims.’ The word came thinly, a ghost at her ear. ‘George Sims speaking.’
‘Oh yes, of course. The line doesn’t seem to be very good.’
‘It’s about Beatrice—Beatrice Keats-Madderly. There’s been an accident, I’m afraid.’
‘An accident?’
‘At her house. I’m going there now. I thought you’d want to know.’
‘But what exactly—’
‘I only know it’s bad, as bad as it could be.’
‘She—she’s not—not dead?’
There was a pause. Then:
‘Yes…I’m sorry.’
‘But how? How?’
‘I can’t be sure till I get there.’ An obvious evasion. ‘Shall I phone you again, or do you want to come yourself?’
‘I’ll come at once,’ said Helen, and rang off.
By action you could keep your mind empty and your emotions in suspense, like dogs beyond a paper door. Helen got her car out, drove to the main street, turned into it with her usual precaution, accelerated past ‘The Marlborough Head’, came into open country. Half a mile along the Brankham road she swung the car into a narrow but well-kept lane—high grass banks, thorn hedges, nettles in flower. The small house she looked for stood alone against a straggling frieze of larches on the left.
It was compact, modern, well-built, uncompromisingly symmetrical: the front door mathematically central, the letterbox mathematically central in the front door. A large, tidy garden invested it squarely, lawns mown close and paths swept. The gate was freshly painted green, and across the lane from it a hedger had recently been at work. Leaving her car parked behind another, which she recognized, Helen half walked and half ran to where Burns, the village constable, stood sentry on the front step. He saluted her uneasily, his normally ruddy and amiable young face strained now, and pale. But before either of them could speak the door was opened and Casby looked out.
‘I thought you were Sims,’ he said.
‘He’s coming. He rang me up. He lives further away than I do, so of course I got here first.’
‘Yes.’
‘But he didn’t make it clear what’s happened. Some sort of accident…’
‘You were close friends, weren’t you?’
‘Beatrice and I? Yes. Please tell me what’s happened.’
He looked at her steadily before he answered, appraising her fortitude, gauging the expected reaction; and the knowledge of his doing this somehow strengthened her. ‘What has happened,’ he said levelly, ‘is that Miss Keats-Madderly has hanged herself.’
Gravel crunched as Burns, who had
stood aside at Gasby’s appearance, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The hum of a third car sounded along the lane. ‘I see,’ said Helen in a flat voice; the paper barrier against emotion still held. ‘May I come in?’
‘Of course. But it’s not pleasant.’
‘I’ve seen a lot of deaths.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was forgetting.’
Red hair glowing in the sunlight, a medical bag in his hand, Dr. George Sims joined them. Beatrice Keats-Madderly had been his patient, not Helen’s, and in any case he was the local police-surgeon. They entered the house together, in silence, to look at what hung from the banisters…
And then minutes later: ‘Why?’ said Helen urgently. ‘For heaven’s sake, why?’
They had finished what needed to be done and had adjourned to the sitting-room. Casby, his elbow on the mantelpiece and his foot on the fender, was staring into the grate. Helen paced restlessly up and down. And George Sims, his white face giving the lie to rumours of his callousness, sat slumped in a chair.
‘As to why,’ he said slowly, ‘one just doesn’t have a clue. There was no suicide-note, I suppose?’ Casby shook his head. ‘No. Of course, convalescents do sometimes get bad go’s of depression, but I shouldn’t have thought that that by itself…’ His voice tailed away.
‘Convalescents?’ Helen echoed vaguely; and then, a half second after saying it, remembered. A fortnight or three weeks ago Beatrice had succumbed to measles—an unromantic ailment, but one which in an adult is apt to be dangerous. For at least three days her temperature had hovered in the region ofhundred and five, and it was said in the village that she had been intermittently delirious… Imbecile to have forgotten that. And of course George Sims was right: Beatrice was only just over it. ‘Tuesday was the last time I saw her,’ Helen said. ‘That was her first day up. She didn’t seem in the least depressed then.’
The Long Divorce Page 4
