Next morning the report of Lady Kean was reassuring and Fayre felt at
liberty to devote himself to his own business.
Immediately after breakfast he betook himself to the library in the
vain hope of finding a medical directory. A brief survey of the rows
of calf-bound volumes convinced him that his search was vain and he
was obliged to fall back on the telephone-book. Here, rather, to his
surprise, he found what he was looking for.
“_L. S. P. Henderson, M.D. 24.a. Selkirk Road. Carlisle._”
He scribbled the address and telephone number on the back of an old
envelope, reflecting that, once more, his luck was in. He had not only
found his man, but found him at Carlisle, of all convenient places.
Things could not have fallen better to his hand. There was nothing to
prevent his running over to Carlisle that morning and it struck him
that, while he was about it, he might call at one or two of the big
garages and try to find out if they had housed a car answering to the
description of the one seen near the farm. Given the London number, it
was on the cards that the man had made a bolt for the south in his
flight from the scene of the murder. Unless he made an all-night job
of it he would probably break the journey at Carlisle. At any rate, it
would be worth trying.
His next step was to telephone. Here again he was fortunate, for
Henderson himself answered the call. He was enthusiastic when he
discovered Fayre at the other end of the line and pinned him down then
and there for lunch at his house.
Lord Staveley, as soon as he heard his plans, insisted on his
commandeering one of the cars for the day and by twelve o’clock he was
in Carlisle. He chose a busy garage near the station as a likely place
to start his inquiries.
He found the manager in the office and, on the plea that he was acting
for a farmer whose cart had been run into on the evening of March the
twenty-third, ascertained that no car answering to the very meagre
description he was able to give had been garaged there on the night in
question. He drew as complete a blank at three other garages he
visited and was compelled at last to give up the quest in despair. In
one case he did hit on a car with _Y.0.7._ as the beginning of the
registered number, but the owner was well known to the garage
proprietor and the car had been in his keeping for a week prior to the
day of the murder and, to his knowledge, had not been outside the
garage during that time.
Rather disheartened, he drove on to Henderson’s and found the doctor
and his wife awaiting him. They gave him a welcome that more than made
up for his unsuccessful morning. Henderson, a huge, burly man with the
strength of an ox and the gentlest of bedside manners, had married in
the interval and was evidently immensely proud of his tiny, very
capable-looking Scotch wife. They entertained Fayre lavishly and, so
infectious was their open-hearted friendliness, that, by the time
lunch was over, he felt as though the intervening years had vanished
like a dream and that he was back again in his old student days.
Henderson was able to give him news of several old friends he had lost
sight of and they were so deeply engaged in discussing the past that
it was not until they were settled with their pipes beside the fire in
the doctor’s study that Fayre found an opportunity to bring up the
subject of Gregg.
Henderson recognized the name at once as that of a man he had known
fairly well at St. Swithin’s and was interested to learn what had
become of him.
“Very able chap, he was, but a bit of a roughneck. He was very raw
when he first arrived, I remember, and had to put up with a good deal
of chaff. Came from somewhere in the North, I believe, and had got
most of his training from an old local doctor who took an interest in
the boy. Apart from that he was mostly self-educated. Correspondence
schools and that sort of thing. Rather an interesting fellow, in his
way.”
“Did you see anything of him after he left?”
“Lost sight of him entirely. I’ve a sort of idea that I heard a rumour
at one time that he had a practise somewhere in London, but I’m rather
hazy.”
“Do you remember at all who his associates were at the hospital? I’ve
an idea that he knew some one I’m interested in and I don’t care to
ask him point-blank.”
“His great pal was a man named Baxter. They used to go about a good
deal with a couple of nurses, one of whom was by way of being engaged
to Baxter. I remember that because there was a certain amount of talk
about it. The girl had the reputation of being hot stuff and Baxter
was supposed to be making rather a fool of himself over her. It’s
extraordinary how it all comes back when one starts talking about old
times. There was a St. Swithin’s man here the other day and we began
gassing and, I give you my word, I felt at the end as if it was
yesterday that we were there together. We were talking about Baxter,
among other things, so that he’s fairly fresh in my memory.”
“What happened to him?”
“According to Parry, the fellow who was here the other day, he married
the girl and the thing proved a ghastly failure. Parry said he
believed he was dead. Gregg would know, though; they were very thick
with each other.”
“You don’t remember the names of the two girls? They may have been
friends of the person I’m after.”
Henderson shook his head.
“I haven’t the remotest idea. They were pretty girls, I remember. The
sort that take up nursing to get away from home and have a bit of
fun.”
Mrs. Henderson, who had been busy over the coffeepot, looked up
suddenly.
“If you’re wanting information about any of the nurses at St.
Swithin’s, why not go to Ella Benson?” she suggested.
Her husband brought his hand down on the arm of his chair with a whack
which made the dust fly.
“By Jove, she’s right! Mrs. Benson’s a friend of my wife’s and lives a
few doors up this street. She was a nurse at St. Swithin’s and she’s
up in all the gossip of her day. She’s probably at home now.”
“I’ll stroll along and see when I’ve finished this,” said his wife.
“She often drops in after lunch. Her husband’s a surgeon and we see a
good deal of them, one way and another. She’s a decent little body.”
“Since when have you taken an interest in the medical profession?”
asked Henderson lazily, his shrewd eyes on his friend.
Fayre laughed rather guiltily.
“It’s curiosity, mostly, about Gregg. He’s a queer stick and when he
flatly denied having met some one I’m pretty sure used to know him in
the past, it was too much for my inquisitive mind. I remembered that
you were a St. Swithin’s man and thought I’d sound you when I saw you.
It’s not important. The truth is, that I haven’t got enough to do,
nowadays, and I’m developing into a confirmed busybody.”
Henderson grinned.
“Very good,” he said appreciatively. “As far as it goes. But you
weren’t in the habit of doing things without a reason in the old days
and you don’t look as if you’d changed much.”
Fayre felt himself redden.
“Confound you!” he said. “To be frank, it isn’t all curiosity, but
I’ve got so little to go on that I’d rather not say anything yet.”
“Right,” was Henderson’s good-tempered answer. “That’s good enough for
me, but what are we going to say to Mrs. Benson? She’s a lady with a
very efficient tongue and not particularly lacking in imagination!”
“Why not leave Gregg out of it? Put it that I knew Baxter years ago
and want to find out what has become of him. That ought to be enough
to lead her onto the girls.”
“Ella won’t want much leading, if it’s a question of St. Swithin’s,”
remarked Mrs. Henderson, as she finished pouring out the coffee. She
rose and slipped out of the room before Fayre could apologize for the
trouble he was giving her.
“What’s your program now?” asked Henderson.
“You’ll find vegetation a bit of a bore, won’t you?” Fayre settled
himself luxuriously in his chair.
“I don’t know about that. I’ve done my share of hard work and had one
go of fever too many and I shan’t be sorry to settle down. I shall
loaf round for a bit, looking up old friends and that sort of thing,
and then take a little place in the country with a spare bedroom or
two and a bit of fishing. I might perpetrate a book. Like most of us
who’ve been in the East, I’ve got ideas I shouldn’t mind airing.”
They chatted desultorily until Mrs. Henderson came back with Mrs.
Benson, a plump, voluble little woman who seemed only too pleased to
find a fresh audience for her reminiscences.
“It’s funny you should mention Baxter,” she said as she settled
herself comfortably by the fire. “I turned up an old photograph of him
only yesterday in a group taken just before I left the hospital. I’m
afraid he made a mess of things, poor fellow.”
“Do you know if he’s alive? Henderson seems to think that he died.”
“He went to pieces after his wife left him. He took to drink, I
believe, and ended by drinking himself to death. He was a fool ever to
have married her.”
“There was a certain amount of gossip, I hear, over that affair.”
“Gossip about her. She was a bad lot from the beginning. We nurses
knew a thing or two, both about her and her great friend, a girl
called Philips. They and Baxter and a man called Gregg were always
about together and they got themselves a good deal talked about. We
were all surprised when Baxter married her, not on his account, he was
dotty about her, but because we all thought she was after bigger game.
She was the sort of girl who’s set on making a good marriage and
generally succeeds in the end, too. Usually, she hooks a rich patient
after she’s left the hospital, and both she and the Philips girl were
clever enough to do it.”
“Was Gregg in love with either of them?” asked Fayre.
“I shouldn’t think so. He amused himself with Philips all right, but
he wasn’t taken in by her. He was dead against Baxter’s marriage, I
know, and did his best to stop it. He wasn’t a bad sort, old Gregg. He
was surly and bad-tempered, but we liked working with him.”
“What happened to Mrs. Baxter after she left her husband, do you
know?”
“I’ve no idea. He divorced her in the end, I’ve been told. She was the
sort to fall on her feet.”
“What was her name before she married? It’s funny I never heard it,
but most of this happened after I had left England,” explained Fayre,
carefully avoiding Henderson’s malicious eye.
“Tina Allen,” answered Mrs. Benson. “She came of quite good stock, I
believe. I heard once that her people were pretty sick at her taking
up nursing at all.”
For a moment Fayre was bereft of speech and, when he did speak, he
controlled his voice with difficulty. That Mrs. Draycott should have
started her career as a nurse at St. Swithin’s was the last thing he
had suspected.
“She knew this man Gregg well, you say,” he asked at last.
“Must have. The four of them were always about together. I don’t think
he liked her much, though. As I said, he did his best to stop her
marriage.”
“You didn’t keep up with any of them after you left, I suppose?”
She shook her head.
“I married, myself, and came up here. I used to get news of all the
old lot from time to time, from a friend who stayed on at the
hospital. There were some funny goings on there, I can tell you!”
She rambled on, but the flood of her reminiscences rolled over Fayre’s
head unheeded. He sat smoking, his thoughtful eyes fixed on the
glowing fire, his mind full of Mrs. Benson’s last revelation.
“Christina Mary Draycott.” The name had been given in full at the
inquest. And Miss Allen had spoken of her sister as “Tina.” The
vicar’s wife had alluded to her divorce from her first husband, but
had not mentioned his name. Tina Allen, then Tina Baxter, and finally
Tina Draycott! The whole thing fitted in with the precision of the
pieces in a jigsaw-puzzle. Not only was her connection with Gregg
explained at last, but his obvious venom was more than accounted for.
And there was nothing surprising now in her curiosity concerning him,
followed by her odd reluctance to meet him. Supposing they _had_ come
together at the farm that night! He could imagine what that meeting
would be like and what it might lead to, given a man of Gregg’s
temperament. He collected his scattered thoughts with an effort and
turned to Mrs. Benson, who had paused for a moment for sheer want of
breath.
“Would it be giving you too much trouble if I asked for a look at that
photograph you spoke of?” he asked. “I’d like to see one of Baxter
again.”
Mrs. Benson beat even her own record as a purveyor of information.
“I’ve got it here!” she announced triumphantly. “When I heard that you
were an old friend of Baxter’s I said to myself: ‘I expect that
photograph will amuse him.’ It was lying on my table where I put it
yesterday, so I just picked it up and brought it with me.”
She fumbled in her bag and produced a photograph which she handed to
Fayre. He looked at it eagerly and was at once confronted with an
unforeseen difficulty. Gregg he spotted at once, younger and a trifle
leaner, but unmistakable. He was sitting in the front row of a group
of about fifteen men. Any one of the other fourteen might have been
Baxter, for all Fayre knew. But which? And he did not dare ask!
It was Henderson who came to the rescue. He had risen and was leaning
over the back of Fayre’s chair, studying the photograph, and he
grasped the situation almost immediately. Out of sheer devilry he
allowed Fayre to sit for some minutes helpless, glowering at Gregg’s
not very pleasing features, racking his brains for a way out of the
difficulty, before he placed a finger on the portrait of a dark,
rather haggard-looking man at the end of the front row and remarked
lazily:
“Baxter looks as if he’d been making a night of it! It’s very like
him, though.”
“He was always a queer, nervous creature. But he was clever enough. I
know they thought a lot of him at St. Swithin’s,” rattled on the
unsuspecting Mrs. Benson.
Fayre was busy studying the photograph. The figures in the group were
small, but very clearly defined, and Baxter’s head stood out
distinctly against the white overall of the man behind him. Fayre
could place his type at a glance. Very dark, with a high, narrow
forehead and deep-set eyes and the too sensitive mouth of a man whose
nerves are perilously near the surface. The kind to fare badly at the
hands of a woman like Mrs. Draycott. No wonder the marriage had ended
in tragedy, he thought, and was not surprised that Gregg had done his
best to spare his friend.
He returned the photograph to Mrs. Benson with a sigh. He could
understand and sympathize now with many of the things Gregg had said
during their drive to the station. He felt a sudden, rather
disconcerting, sympathy for the man and was not sorry when Mrs. Benson
took herself off and gave him an opportunity to get away himself. He
wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
By tea-time he was back at Staveley. During the drive he had had ample
time for reflection, but it had not helped him much. He was still very
much at sea as to his next move and realized that it would need
considerable diplomacy to discover Gregg’s whereabouts at the time of
the murder without rousing his suspicions. And, keen as he was to
clear Leslie, he now found himself almost dreading the answer to his
thoughts.
Bill Staveley met him with the news that Leslie had appeared before
the Magistrate and been committed for trial at the Carlisle Assizes.