“Do the hangman out of one job, and give him another? That the idea?” he laughed pleasantly, and returned once more to his interrupted reading.
Kenneth controlled himself with difficulty and strode away. A boy went whistling down the lane. The doctor continued his reading. I looked at him slyly as he sat quietly engrossed by my side.
“I can’t help sympathizing with Kenneth and Ralph, you know,” I said. “It isn’t that I suspect you of having had anything to do with Stella’s death, but——”
“But——?” he interrupted quizzically.
I did not know how to finish my sentence; how to put into words that would not offend, the feeling I had that there was something foreboding, something suggestive, in his having made up medicine for Stella one night, and then again after the terrible disaster for Ethel. The circumstances were too much alike. Two taper glasses. Two——
“Come, Jeffcock,” he said kindly, when he saw my hesitation, “for heaven’s sake don’t let the hot weather get on your nerves too.”
“That’s all very well,” I reminded him, “but you must have had some very similar feelings yourself, or why did you want us to witness your making up of Ethel’s prescription?”
He looked at me and laughed outright. “Wrong again, I never felt a qualm. I wanted you and Margaret in the dispensary for a very different reason.”
I am sure that my astonishment was obvious, but he ignored my surprise and closed his book saying, “Now I’m going to bed. Thank God, this awful day is over.”
It was evident that I should get no further information from him as to his real reasons for our presence in the dispensary, even if I pressed him. The subject was closed. We walked slowly across the brown scorched lawn and back to the house.