CHAPTER XXV
There was little sleep for her that night. The most serious problem she had ever had to face presented itself, demanding a speedy solution. What course ought she to pursue? Hours passed and she had not found the answer.
Here was the difficulty: if she confided her dreadful suspicion to some member of the family and it was proved to be correct, then a criminal investigation would follow and her own position would be unassailable. But if, on the other hand, it were found to be false—and it seemed far more likely that this should be the case—then her career as a nurse would be absolutely, irrevocably dished. To bring an unfounded accusation against the doctor one worked for was an unpardonable offence. No physician would think of employing her again. She might have the purest motives for her action, they would not help her one particle. Henceforward she would be branded as flighty, irrational, not to be depended upon. Her living would be taken away, but something even worse might happen. She stood the chance of landing herself in a libel action, she might indeed be accused of having the intent to blackmail. She knew one case of the kind—the woman in question had been utterly disgraced.
No, only too obviously she could not afford the risk of sharing her secret doubts, or at least not yet. It was not as if by any possible knowledge or means she could save the old man, who was now doomed, beyond the shadow of a doubt. His symptoms were already those of the last, fatal stage of the disease. It was too late to hope for any change, had been too late for at least two days. No, whatever she did could only be in the interests of justice, unless…
Suddenly she thought of Roget. For the past few days he had shown definite signs of typhoid, mild, it is true, but unmistakable. She recalled the fact that the father, too, had suffered from a light form of the disease in the beginning. Roger's case was extraordinarily similar, allowing for his being a younger, more vigorous man. Of course, she reflected, veering round, typhoid was rampant in and about Cannes; it was not strange that two members of a household should succumb—no, more than two in this case, for first of all there had been the housemaid, then, later, Lady Clifford, only she had staved it off. There might well be someone in the house who was an unconscious carrier of germs, like the famous "Typhoid Mary," in America, some years ago. No, it might all be perfectly natural, and yet … there remained the poisonous doubt in her mind. It was just possible there was something wrong. What in heaven's name ought she to do?
It was not till early morning that she reached a decision. There was a thing she could and would do, to-morrow, without waste of time. Having made up her mind upon this point, she drifted off into a light and troubled sleep, so unlike sleep indeed that she could hardly believe she had lost consciousness when sounds in the hall roused her. She slid out of bed and into her dressing-gown. It was four o'clock. She knew by instinct what had happened.
Lights were on in the hall; she met the night-nurse coming softly out of Sir Charles's bedroom. It was true, the old man had breathed his last about a quarter of an hour ago.
"Sooner than I expected even. I gave him another twenty-four hours. No need to wake anyone, let them sleep, I say. But as you're already up, you may care to lend a hand."
Esther nodded and the woman hurried away. A door opened quietly and Roger appeared, heavy-eyed, flushed, his dark-blue dressing-gown wrapped around him. She turned to him with eyes of compassion.
"Is it——?" he asked.
"Yes, a little while ago," she told him gently.
He came and stood beside her without speaking. Almost instinctively his hand closed over hers and held it fast. She felt the dry heat of his skin, the hard throbbing of a pulse.
A sudden panic seized her; the very name of Typhoid had become a shapeless dread, a horror creeping unseen, singling out its victims, playing with them as a cat does with a mouse, letting them go, then springing… She wanted to cry out, to warn the man beside her of approaching danger.
Warn him? Of what? What was she able to say, what dared she say? She took a firmer grip on herself. She must remember there was about one chance in a hundred of there being anything in her mad idea; she must say nothing till she knew for certain. There could be no immediate peril, unless, of course…. The needle again! Those injections, of anti-toxin they kept talking about … if only she knew, could be sure! Fresh terror assailed her, she felt herself caught in a trap….
What was this Roger was saying?
"Esther, I wasn't joking when I said I couldn't bear to have things jabbed into me. I'm not bothered a hang about myself, but I can't have poor Dido worried unnecessarily, at this time and all. Tell me—since she keeps on about that anti-toxin stuff—would you have it, or wouldn't you?"
Why did he ask her that? Her tongue felt dry, she hesitated a long moment before replying.
"I wouldn't be forced into anything," she said as naturally as she could. "As you've already got the symptoms considerably developed, it wouldn't be absolutely infallible, anyhow."
"That settles it. I won't have it at all."
She felt she ought to say something more, but was not sure how to set about it.
"Still, Roger, you are ill, you know, and you certainly ought to be in bed. There's no good that can come of walking about with a temperature."
"Well, once this is over"—she knew he meant the funeral—"if I don't feel any better, I'll take your advice. Only, somehow, I don't awfully like the idea of…"—he did not finish, but instead looked about him with a slight gesture of distaste.
"Why do you stay here?" she whispered quickly. "Why not go to a nursing-home."
His eyes met hers in a flash of sympathetic understanding.
"Would you come and see me there?" he asked seriously.
"Of course. I'd even nurse you, if you wanted me to," she answered simply.
"If you really mean that," he returned, frowning earnestly down at her,
"I've half a mind to do it."
They moved apart as the night-nurse returned up the stairs. Esther felt slightly easier in her mind about him now. There was another thing, though. As he turned to go, she noticed that the bandage was off his right hand, and that the wound was open and bleeding again.
"That won't do," she chid him gently. "I must attend to it again before you get it infected. You really are stubborn, you know! Leave it till breakfast-time, though. Go back to bed and rest; you need it."
The day, begun so early, seemed interminable, yet there were so many things to see to that it was afternoon before she found an opportunity of carrying out her secret intention.
At last, about four o'clock, she set out in a taxi-cab to execute a number of small commissions for Miss Clifford, at whose desire she was to remain on in the house till after the funeral. The other nurse had already gone. Her errands finished, she stopped the taxi at a small chemist's shop which she had noticed before, not the one usually patronised by the Cliffords, but a smaller one about a mile away. It was neat and old-fashioned in appearance, with a row of majolica jars in the window. She went in briskly, resolved to show no nervousness and to state her request with perfect sang-froid. At any cost she must avoid the suspicion of anything out of the ordinary.
"What can I do for you, mademoiselle?"
She was relieved to find the assistant spoke English, it made it easier to explain what she wanted done. The man was a blond, pink-skinned Frenchman with half his face hidden by a curly fair beard. He eyed her indifferently while she undid the tissue-paper wrappings of her little parcel and displayed the hypodermic needle.
"I wonder if you could get this analysed for me?" she said, looking straight into his eyes with great frankness of manner. "You see there is a tiny drop of the stuff left. The doctor I am working with has reason to believe the mixture may not be quite the same he is accustomed to using."
She had prepared her speech carefully, but now she trembled within for fear it had not sounded plausible. However, the blond young man took the instrument and turned it about, examining it casually enough.
"Ah, yes, I understand. We do not ourselves make these analyses, mademoiselle, but we can of course have it done for you."
"How long will it take?"
He shrugged his shoulders expressively.
"That I cannot tell you, but I will try to get it for you soon as possible. What is your address?"
She told him, being careful to give her own name, not the doctor's. Then she thought that it might not be wise to have the report sent to the house at all. One never knew.
"If you can give me some idea of when it will be done, I will call for it myself."
"Shall we say, then, five o'clock to-morrow afternoon, mademoiselle?
Although, of course, I cannot promise."
With a sigh of relief to have this particular ordeal safely over, she walked out of the shop door—and straight into the arms of Captain Holliday! She pulled herself up abruptly, almost speechless with astonishment.
"Why—you!" was all she could ejaculate.
The sudden encounter with him, when she had confidently believed him miles away, took the wind out of her sails, upsetting her calculations completely. She continued to stare at him so stupidly that she could see he was beginning to wonder what was the matter. His car, travel-stained and looking as though it had seen hard service, stood close to the curb. He had been in the act of entering a tobacconist's next door to the chemist's shop.
"I'm not quite a ghost," he informed her with a short laugh, "although
I admit I feel rather like one."
He paused uncertainly, rubbing his hand over a day's growth of beard.
"But I—we—thought you'd gone to South America," she blurted out, then was sorry she had said it. "That is, we saw it in the Paris paper."
"Not yet; my boat sails in a few days. As a matter of fact"—here he shifted his gaze and glanced about in every direction except at her—"I felt I ought to come back here for the funeral, even though it made a bit of a rush. Old friend of the family and all that."
"Funeral!"
She could not keep her amazement out of her voice.
"But I don't understand. How did you find out…."
She broke off, colouring up to the edge of her nurse's veil. To tell the truth, she could not see how, since Sir Charles only died at four o'clock this morning, Holliday had received the news in time to be here in Cannes now, by car, too, all the way from Paris. It seemed incredible; if he had flown he couldn't have done it.
He shot her a shrewd glance, surmising her reason for being astonished.
"How did I find out Sir Charles was dead? I didn't, at least, not till a little while ago when I arrived in Cannes and rang up the house. But I knew he wasn't expected to live more than a day or two. You see, I've been in communication with—Chalmers more or less during the past few days. I asked him to keep me posted in case the old man got worse or anything. Yesterday he telephoned me that there was absolutely no hope. I hopped into the car and burnt up the road a bit."
He cast an approving glance at his somewhat battered Fiat.
"Fourteen hours from door to door," he remarked with satisfaction. "I didn't believe she could do it. By the way, I hear the funeral is arranged for the day after to-morrow. Is that right?"
"I believe so."
"I needn't have broken my neck to get here, after all. Still, there may be something I can do for the family, as I hear Clifford is on the sick list…. Is Sartorius still at the house?"
She replied that he was and, bidding a hasty good-bye, got into her waiting taxi. Once alone, the thoughts stirred up by the young man's unexpected appearance on the scene buzzed turbulently inside her brain. She could not get over the surprise of seeing him, nor could she help remarking how remarkably jovial and carefree he appeared, in spite of his lowered voice and studious air of reverence when speaking of the dead man. Moreover, there seemed to her something almost indecent in the haste with which he had arrived on the spot. It had less the appearance of solicitude for the sorrowing relatives than the eagerness of a vulture swooping down upon a good square meal it had long been hoping for. Had Chalmers really telephoned him? Somehow she could not believe it, apart from Holliday's very slight hesitation before pronouncing the butler's name. Whoever it was who gave the information must have been quite confident of Sir Charles's death, had indeed timed it with extraordinary accuracy—or so it seemed to her somewhat stimulated imagination.
Another disturbing idea now occurred to her. Would Holliday by any chance mention to the doctor that he had run into her coming out of a chemist's shop? It did not seem at all likely, and, of course, if her suspicions were wrong and she was doing the doctor a gross injustice, then the information would mean nothing at all. Still, if she was not mistaken…
"Oh, I must be mistaken!" she exclaimed vehemently in the seclusion of her taxi. "It is utterly absurd! I have made up the whole story out of whole cloth. In all that household no one but me has a thought of anything wrong. How ashamed I should be if they knew!"
Still, when on arriving at the house Chalmers opened the door for her, she could not resist saying to him:
"Chalmers, I ran into Captain Holliday in the town—such a surprise. He's hurried back to be here for Sir Charles's funeral. He says you telephoned him yesterday that Sir Charles was sinking very fast."
There was no mistaking the blank look on the old butler's face.
"Me telephone the Captain, miss? Oh, you must have misunderstood him!
I never even knew where he was stopping in Paris, miss."
So it was Lady Clifford herself who had done it! She felt sure on that point. Not that it meant anything in itself. Yet all the rest of that day and the next as well Esther found herself watching faces covertly, most of all the doctor's. In the midst of all the subdued but busy preparations for the funeral—undertakers coming and going, messengers with flowers and telegrams, strangers arriving on this errand and that—she was acutely aware of the heavy, silent man who, without doing anything in particular, gave her the almost morbid impression of dominating the scene. As an actual fact he almost effaced himself, but to her excited fancy he was omnipresent, overpowering. She thought of him now not so much as a python as in the form of a huge bloated spider in the middle of an invisible web, spinning, watching, closing in. She was ready to believe he was always watching her, spying on her movements, reading her secret thoughts. There were moments when she had a wild desire to scream aloud, so tense had her nerves become with the strain put upon them.
Then common sense came to the rescue, she realised the calm normality of the household life about her and, with an effort, was able to pull herself together. She had not long to wait, she told herself, before knowing the truth. Until then, she must remain perfectly cool.
At five o'clock in the afternoon she managed to slip out of the house and hasten to the chemist's shop, where a disappointment awaited her.
"I am extremely sorry, mademoiselle," the blond assistant made apology, "but the report has not yet come in. I am afraid now we shall not get it before to-morrow."