When they reached Whistlefield, Ernest Shandon was the first person who came to meet them.
“This is a terrible business!” he lamented, as he came into the study where they were. “It’s a dreadful affair, really. A dreadful affair! Ardsley’s very down about it, very down. You know, he wouldn’t do for a doctor in practice. He’s most unsympathetic. Most doctors are careful: they don’t blurt things out in the callous sort of way that Ardsley does. He doesn’t think about one’s feelings in the slightest. One expects a little decent circumlocution from a doctor; but there’s none of that about him. I asked him this morning if Sylvia had passed a good night; and he just glared at me and snarled that she was lucky to be alive at all; snarled it out as if she had been one of the dogs he cuts up. Is that the way to break bad news to a relation? I call it beastly. He never thinks of what it means to us. It’s just a case to him, I suppose. But look what it means to us. Sylvia runs the house so well. I don’t know what we’ll do without her.”
Sir Clinton had let him run on; but quite evidently he had no intention of wasting much time listening to Ernest’s lamentations.
“Miss Forrest must be resting just now, I suppose?”
“Yes,” Ernest assured him, “she was up helping Ardsley until the nurses came; and after that she didn’t seem able to sleep, so she sat up for a while. Ardsley came down and found her in the early morning, so he sent her off to bed. So he told me. I had gone to bed myself some time before.”
Sir Clinton made no comment and Ernest proceeded with his complaints.
“What I feel is that the police aren’t doing anything. Why haven’t you arrested somebody? My nerves are beginning to wear thin under this strain, I tell you. Here we have some murderer haunting the neighbourhood. He kills my brothers; he attacks me; he brings my niece to death’s door—and all the time the police look on with their hands in their pockets. What are they paid for? That’s what I ask you. Why don’t they lay hands on the fellow? What sort of a life do you think I’m leading just now? Every time I go outside the house I have the feeling that the scoundrel may be lurking behind the next bush, getting his gun ready. That’s a pretty state of things. And not a finger do you lift to help!”
“I offered you a guard of constables for Whistlefield not so long ago, Mr. Shandon. You refused it then. I’m sorry it isn’t available now. I have other work for my men at present.”
Ernest was somewhat taken aback by this reminder.
“So you did, so you did. I’d forgotten that.”