CHAPTER 4

      It was no mere housemaid who wakened Elinor the following morning. It was Mrs Bishop in person, rustling in her old-fashioned black, and weeping unashamedly.

      ‘Oh, Miss Elinor, she’s gone…’

      ‘What?’

      Elinor sat up in bed.

      ‘Your dear aunt. Mrs Welman. My dear mistress. Passed away in her sleep.’

      ‘Aunt Laura? Dead?’

      Elinor stared. She seemed unable to take it in.

      Mrs Bishop was weeping now with more abandon.

      ‘To think of it,’ she sobbed. ‘After all these years! Eighteen years I’ve been here. But indeed it doesn’t seem like it…’

      Elinor said slowly:

      ‘So Aunt Laura died in her sleep—quite peacefully… What a blessing for her!’

      Mrs Bishop wept.

      ‘So sudden. The doctor saying he’d call again this morning and everything just as usual.’

      Elinor said rather sharply:

      ‘It wasn’t exactly sudden. After all, she’s been ill for some time. I’m just so thankful she’s been spared more suffering.’

      Mrs Bishop said tearfully that there was indeed that to be thankful for. She added:

      ‘Who’ll tell Mr Roderick?’

      Elinor said:

      ‘I will.’

      She threw on a dressing-gown and went along to his door and tapped. His voice answered, saying, ‘Come in.’

      She entered.

      ‘Aunt Laura’s dead, Roddy. She died in her sleep.’

      Roddy, sitting up in bed, drew a deep sigh.

      ‘Poor dear Aunt Laura! Thank God for it, I say. I couldn’t have borne to see her go on lingering in the state she was yesterday.’

      Elinor said mechanically:

      ‘I didn’t know you’d seen her?’

      He nodded rather shamefacedly.

      ‘The truth is, Elinor, I felt the most awful coward, because I’d funked it! I went along there yesterday evening. The nurse, the fat one, left the room for something—went down with a hot-water bottle, I think—and I slipped in. She didn’t know I was there, of course. I just stood a bit and looked at her. Then, when I heard Mrs Gamp stumping up the stairs again, I slipped away. But it was—pretty terrible!’

      Elinor nodded.

      ‘Yes, it was.’

      Roddy said:

      ‘She’d have hated it like hell—every minute of it!’

      ‘I know.’

      Roddy said:

      ‘It’s marvellous the way you and I always see alike over things.’

      Elinor said in a low voice:

      ‘Yes it is.’

      He said:

      ‘We’re both feeling the same thing at this minute: just utter thankfulness that she’s out of it all…’

      Nurse O’Brien said:

      ‘What is it, Nurse? Can’t you find something?’

      Nurse Hopkins, her face rather red, was hunting through the little attaché-case that she had laid down in the hall the preceding evening.

      She grunted:

      ‘Most annoying. How I came to do such a thing I can’t imagine!’

      ‘What is it?’

      Nurse Hopkins replied not very intelligibly:

      ‘It’s Eliza Rykin—that sarcoma, you know. She’s got to have double injections—night and morning—morphine. Gave her the last tablet in the old tube last night on my way here, and I could swear I had the new tube in here, too.’

      ‘Look again. Those tubes are so small.’

      Nurse Hopkins gave a final stir to the contents of the attaché-case.

      ‘No, it’s not here! I must have left it in my cupboard after all! Really, I did think I could trust my memory better than that. I could have sworn I took it out with me!’

      ‘You didn’t leave the case anywhere, did you, on the way here?’

      ‘Of course not!’ said Nurse Hopkins sharply.

      ‘Oh, well, dear,’ said Nurse O’Brien, ‘it must be all right?’

      ‘Oh, yes! The only place I’ve laid my case down was here in this hall, and nobody here would pinch anything! Just my memory, I suppose. But it vexes me, if you understand, Nurse. Besides, I shall have to go right home first to the other end of the village and back again.’

      Nurse O’Brien said:

      ‘Hope you won’t have too tiring a day, dear, after last night. Poor old lady. I didn’t think she would last long.’

      ‘No, nor I. I daresay Doctor will be surprised!’

      Nurse O’Brien said with a tinge of disapproval:

      ‘He’s always so hopeful about his cases.’

      Nurse Hopkins, as she prepared to depart, said:

      ‘Ah, he’s young! He hasn’t our experience.’

      On which gloomy pronouncement she departed.

      Dr Lord raised himself up on his toes. His sandy eyebrows climbed right up his forehead till they nearly got merged in his hair.

      He said in surprise:

      ‘So she’s conked out—eh?’

      ‘Yes, Doctor.’

      On Nurse O’Brien’s tongue exact details were tingling to be uttered, but with stern discipline she waited.

      Peter Lord said thoughtfully:

      ‘Conked out?’

      He stood for a moment thinking, then he said sharply:

      ‘Get me some boiling water.’

      Nurse O’Brien was surprised and mystified, but true to the spirit of hospital training, hers not to reason why. If a doctor had told her to go and get the skin of an alligator she would have murmured automatically, ‘Yes, Doctor,’ and glided obediently from the room to tackle the problem.

      Roderick Welman said:

      ‘Do you mean to say that my aunt died intestate—that she never made a will at all?’

      Mr Seddon polished his eyeglasses. He said:

      ‘That seems to be the case.’

      Roddy said:

      ‘But how extraordinary!’

      Mr Seddon gave a deprecating cough.

      ‘Not so extraordinary as you might imagine. It happens oftener than you would think. There’s a kind of superstition about it. People will think they’ve got plenty of time. The mere fact of making a will seems to bring