MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES - British Murder Mysteries Collection: 17 Books in One Edition. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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so miserable! So miserable! I don’t know what to do!”
“Don’t you worry about anything, Mrs. Lexton. Dr. Berwick will be round pretty soon. I telephoned to his house just now, and left a message for him. Mrs. Berwick was shocked to hear our dreadful news. She said she was expecting the doctor back any minute now. I expect Dr. Gretorex will be in some time today, too. Surely he’ll see to all the things that have to be done.”
“All the things?” Ivy looked timorously at Nurse Bradfield, and shivered.
The other saw her look of dismay. “Poor little thing,” she said to herself, “she’s not much more than a child, after all.”
Aloud she said, “I thought of going out presently. Not for long”—fear had flashed into Ivy’s face—“only just for a few minutes.”
She added kindly: “I shouldn’t try to write, if I were you, Mrs. Lexton. I’d just lie down and have a rest. I don’t suppose you’ve had much sleep?”
Ivy answered plaintively, “I lay awake all night. You see it was such a shock, nurse, such a dreadful shock,” and she thought that what she said was true.
In a way it had been a dreadful shock, for Ivy had never come face to face with death. She had been still a pupil at a fashionable school when her father had killed himself.
The nurse led her to the comfortable sofa. “You lie down here.”
Ivy obeyed, wondering why she felt as she did feel—so thoroughly upset and unnerved.
She had been lying down perhaps ten minutes when she heard the now familiar knock of Dr. Berwick. She started up, and what natural colour she had left her cheeks. Angrily she told herself that it was stupid to feel frightened. There was nothing to be frightened about.
The door opened, and the doctor strode into the darkened room. He turned a frowning, preoccupied face on the newly-made widow. Then, when his eyes rested on the tear-stained little face, his expression softened.
“I’m more sorry than I can say that I happened to have been away all yesterday, Mrs. Lexton. I only came back this morning.”
Ivy began to cry, and again he felt touched by her evident distress.
“Sit down, Mrs. Lexton. Do sit down. I’m afraid you’ve had a terrible shock.”
“A dreadful, dreadful shock!” she sobbed, “I had no idea that Jervis was so ill.”
“Last time I was here he was certainly better,” he said quickly. “You thought him better too, didn’t you?”
“I did. I did indeed.”
She was trembling now, and though she was consciously playing a part, her emotion was still genuine.
She sat down on the sofa and the doctor drew up a chair and sat down too, a little to her surprise.
“If you feel up to it,” he said, “I want to ask you a few questions. I mean as to what happened yesterday?”
She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “I can’t tell you very much, for I was out a great deal yesterday. But nurse never left Jervis, not for one moment. She’s been most awfully kind, and——”
He cut her short, brusquely. “I know she’s a good old thing. What I want to know is whether Mr. Lexton received any visitor or visitors yesterday?”
“Visitors?” She looked at him in surprise. “Not that I know of. He was far too ill.”
In a tone which he strove to make light, he observed, “I thought that your husband might have seen Dr. Gretorex for a few moments.”
The colour rushed into her face.
“He can’t have seen him. Dr. Gretorex is in the country.” Then, a little confusedly, she added, “At least, I’m nearly sure that he is.”
“Ah, well, then he can’t have come in, of course.”
A knock sounded on the door, and Nurse Bradfield came into the room.
Ivy welcomed her presence. Looking up into the kind face, now full of sympathy, she exclaimed:
“Dr. Berwick has been asking me if my husband saw anyone yesterday? But I’m quite sure Jervis wasn’t well enough to see anyone.”
“Mr. Lexton only had one visitor,” said the nurse quickly, defensively, “and that was Dr. Gretorex.”
“I thought,” said the doctor, turning sharply on Ivy, “that you said just now that Dr. Gretorex was in the country?”
“He was to have been in the country, staying with his mother for a long week-end.”
There was no mistaking Ivy’s look of surprise. Not that she thought it mattered, one way or the other, whether Roger Gretorex had come in or not yesterday.
“At what time was he here?” asked Dr. Berwick.
The nurse waited a moment. “I suppose it would have been about four o’clock. He didn’t mean to see Mr. Lexton.”
Said Dr. Berwick grimly to himself, “Oh, didn’t he?”
Nurse Bradfield went on, a little nervously: “He asked for Mrs. Lexton, and when he heard that she was coming in soon—you said you wouldn’t be out long,” and she turned to Ivy—“he said he would come in and wait. After he had been in the drawing-room about ten minutes, he rang for the maid and asked to see me. I told him I thought Mr. Lexton on the whole better, and then he inquired if Mr. Lexton would care to see him. He said he couldn’t stay long, as he had a train to catch——”
Dr. Berwick said negligently, “Did you leave them alone together, nurse?”
“Yes, I did, doctor, for I knew they were great friends. Dr. Gretorex thought Mr. Lexton less well than the last time he had seen him. In fact, he saw a great change.”
“Did he tell you that?”
She replied quickly, “He told me that he thought him very far from well, and that he was distressed at the change he saw in him.”
“You never told me all that,” said Ivy plaintively.
“I ought to have done, Mrs. Lexton. But the truth is I was too upset, when Mr. Lexton took a turn for the worse, to remember anything.”
“I’m sure seeing Roger Gretorex for a few moments can’t have done him any harm,” said Ivy gently. “They were great friends.”
But as she made that commonplace remark, she flushed again, remembering Roger’s highfalutin’ letter—what a fool she had been not to destroy it at once!
“So I understood on that occasion when Dr. Gretorex, from my point of view, most improperly began to prescribe for him,” said the doctor, in a tone which, even to himself, sounded trenchantly ironic.
Meanwhile Nurse Bradfield, supposing that for the present the doctor had done with her, had turned towards the door.
“I should be obliged, nurse, if you would wait in the dining-room for a few moments. I should like to speak to you on my way out.”
“Certainly, Dr. Berwick.”
The good woman told herself with a touch of contempt that he could have nothing of any moment to say to her. She had done her duty, and more than her duty as a day nurse, to poor Jervis Lexton.
As she shut the door, Dr. Berwick turned to his late patient’s widow.
“In the circumstances,” he said, in a slow, emphatic tone, “I am afraid, Mrs. Lexton, that there must be a post-mortem.”
“A post-mortem?” repeated Ivy falteringly. “What is a post-mortem, Dr. Berwick?”
She was trying to remember what it was exactly that Roger Gretorex had said about a “post-mortem.” Much that