Dr. Morelle and the Doll. Ernest Dudley
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seemed to recall that there was something scandalous about the ex-film star, some notoriety which he had brought upon himself. She wondered idly if it was this which had been responsible for the failure of his career.
She tried to recollect what it had been, what scandal had caught up Tod Hafferty and ruined him, but whatever it was, it escaped her. She looked at Dr. Morelle with rising interest. Was he interested in some case involving Tod Hafferty?
She started to question him about his apparent concern for the ex-film star, and then she remembered that he had mentioned someone named Carlton. Where did Carlton come in?
‘Who’s he?’ she heard herself saying, and then broke off with annoyance as Dr. Morelle lowered his book once again, and now she could see clearly under the title that it was by Derek Carlton.
He was tapping the book. ‘The author of this, of course.’
‘But I still don’t see what either of them have got to do with you. Tod Hafferty or, or—?’
‘Don’t you?’ He was smiling at her thinly. ‘Look in your handbag.’
Automatically she obeyed him, opening it without taking her eyes off him; she saw his glance fix itself on her hands clutching her handbag, and she looked down. It was empty, except for a gleaming hypodermic needle.
Then it was as if she was gazing into some dark whirlpool, she could hear a voice very near. It wasn’t Dr. Morelle who was speaking; as she opened her eyes, the dentist was bending over her.
‘That isn’t likely to trouble you again, Miss Frayle,’ he was saying.
‘Oh, hello?’ she said. ‘I was having a fantastic dream.’
He smiled at her sympathetically. ‘Hope it was a pleasant one.’
She nodded vaguely. She began trying to puzzle it out. The journey in the train; Dr. Morelle reading his book in the corner. Then she said: ‘How long was I unconscious?’
‘Not long. You didn’t require another shot. It was a nice, easy extraction.’
She nodded again, this time smiling wanly. She felt thankful it was all over. A surge of elation filled her, and she sat up in the chair. The anaesthetist had gone; the brunette nurse was busy in the background.
She stood up, the dentist’s hand at her elbow to steady her. She felt a little shaky, but pretty good. No pain where the wisdom tooth had been.
‘Feel all right?’
‘Perfectly,’ she said.
Ten minutes later, he was escorting her along the thickly carpeted hall to the front door. She was assuring him she would not require a taxi to take her the short distance back to the other end of Harley Street. He opened the door for her, while he asked her to convey his kindest regards to Dr. Morelle.
The door closed behind her and she stood at the top of the marble stairs which took two flights down to the street.
Beside her were the ornate gilt and black liftgates. She started to walk down, when the dentist’s words of greeting to Dr. Morelle echoing in her head made her stop. She turned back to the front door and looked at the neat brass plate over the letter-box.
Derek Carlton, the name was. That was his name. She had thought it was Derek, though she hadn’t noticed it particularly before.
She started downstairs again, frowning to herself. It was easy to understand why the reference to him had appeared in her mind while she was unconscious, though why as the author of The Life and Loves of Tod Hafferty was a bit fantastic. As fantastic as the idea of Dr. Morelle being so engrossed in the book, or in some case involving some faded film star named Tod Hafferty, whom Dr. Morelle would never have heard of.
Miss Frayle was smiling a little as she began walking up Harley Street. Tod Hafferty? She began searching her mind in an effort to remember when she had last seen him in a film.
She thought of the work which lay ahead of her; there was more than enough to be cleared up before she left with Dr. Morelle on this weekend visit tomorrow.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charles Hafferty and P.C. Jarrett pushed on silently, each peering out to the perimeter of his pool of light. The grass was soaking, it had been a heavy dew all right, as soon as darkness fell. It was rough going up to Asshe Woods; once Jarrett nearly twisted his ankle. The rubber boots were a size too big.
As they came up to the rough track, the wind sighed through the tangle of bushes and trees, and Jarrett saw the white outlines of the gate which the man beside him was indicating. ‘That’s the way my father goes,’ he said.
He unhitched the gate and they went through. A cheerless spot on a wintry evening like this, Jarrett decided, with a shiver. To their left a tangle of blackberry and thorn bushes and beyond it the black leafless trees. Where they stood was a small clearing, then the woods and further along, P.C. Jarrett remembered, was the chalk pit, an unsavoury place full of rusted tin cans and rubbish.
‘Straight through the woods,’ Charles Hafferty was saying, ‘and out the other side. But that’s not to say he did the same today.’ Jarrett didn’t say anything. ‘I mean,’ the other went on, ‘he didn’t get home, so something must have been different, somewhere.’
‘Shall we look at the chalk pit?’
‘He didn’t usually go that way.’
‘You just said he must have done something different today,’ Jarrett said. Charles Hafferty caught the faintly triumphant grin beneath the shadow of the helmet, and he nodded.
‘You’ve got a point there, too,’ he said.
Jarrett led the way; he crashed forward through the tangled bushes, blackberry thorns ripping at his coat, his torch-beam casting wavering shadows. They reached the chalk pit at a place where there had once been a wire fence, but it was now a tangle of rusty, broken wire strands.
A wicked place, Jarrett thought, standing as close to the edge as he cared to. Ought to be properly fenced off. A danger to children. The pit fell steeply down, its sides a jungle of bushes and debris; it had become the cemetery of rusted petrol or diesel oil cans.
The two torch-beams flickered over a holed bucket, an ancient iron bedstead, a battered pram, a twisted mess of chicken-wire.
Charles Hafferty said abruptly: ‘He’s not here. Better get on. It’s quite a way if we’re going all round.’
They turned away and started along the track that led through Asshe Woods.
Whippy branches caught at them, patches of leaves that concealed dips in the path caused them to stumble. Charles Hafferty keeping his gaze to the right, the other to his left, they pushed on. The leafless trees creaked in the wind, the surroundings assumed the quality of a dream.
P.C. Jarrett fell into a reverie, Marie Hafferty’s image jumping up disconcertingly in his mind.
A dangerous, discontented woman, he thought. Not the kind of wife he’d care to take on. How did Charles Hafferty cope with her? His thoughts switched to the task before him; it was beginning to look a little serious, Tod Hafferty’s failure to return home for his tea.
When they emerged from Asshe Woods at the other side, the wind hit them in a sudden squall, so that Charles Hafferty gasped and shivered.
‘If he is hurt, and stuck out on a night like this, it will give him pneumonia, at least.’
Jarrett murmured sympathetically. From where they stood he could see the lights of the Kellys’ house. Inviting lights on a chilly night. Only one light upstairs, Frank Jarrett noticed. Somebody sitting in their bedroom. Fay Kelly, he wondered romantically, alone and lonely?
He and his companion, who seemed to have become withdrawn and kept nervously glancing behind him, as if he had forgotten something, gained the road. They proceeded along it for a hundred yards, the road inclining slightly all the way. They paused. From this