It was the eighth of November, a day which, though she never
realised it, altered the whole of Ivy Lexton’s life. And this was the
more extraordinary because she was usually quick enough to realise the
importance of everything that concerned herself.
But on this day she was feeling secretly excited, anxious, and what to
herself she called “nervy,” for her husband’s illness, though it had
only lasted just over a week, seemed to her intolerably
long-drawn-out.
Jervis Lexton, poor devil, was putting up a grim, instinctive fight
for life. Coming of a long line of sporting, out-of-door, country
squires and their placid wives, he was magnificently healthy,
hard-bitten, and possessed of reserves of physical strength on which
he was now drawing daily larger and larger drafts.
On the morning when she had first been told that Jervis had been taken
ill in the night, Ivy had gone down to Rushworth’s city office. There,
as she put it afterwards when telling the invalid of her interview
with Mr. James, the man he called his boss, “red carpets had been put
down for her,” and no difficulty at all had been made as to Lexton’s
staying away.
As a matter of fact, the young man had very soon been sized up as
being, from a business point of view, hopeless. But his pleasant, easy
manners, and his inexhaustible fund of small talk and of good stories,
amused the boss. Also--and that, naturally, was the one thing that
mattered--Jervis Lexton was a pet of Miles Rushworth.
After Mrs. Jervis Lexton’s visit to the office, however, what had
seemed a mystery had been at any rate partially explained. What man,
so Rushworth’s London agent asked himself smiling, could resist that
deliciously pretty and sweet-mannered little woman? No wonder a job
had been invented for her husband, who was, after all, a decent chap.
A day was to come when Mr. James would try to remember how Ivy Lexton
had impressed him, and when all he would succeed in remembering, very
vividly, was how agreeable that impression had been, and how
touchingly the lovely lady had revealed her devotion to her husband,
fortunate Jervis Lexton.
On the second day Jervis had said he felt so queer that he would like
to see their old friend, Dr. Lancaster. And by now, after five days,
that genial general practitioner, though utterly unsuspicious of the
truth, was nevertheless becoming slightly uneasy at the persistence of
the illness.
He had insisted, much against Ivy’s will, on sending in a nurse, a
placid, kindly woman named Bradfield, who had often nursed for the
doctor before.
Small wonder that the patient’s wife was also becoming just a little
fretful, and more than a little anxious. How long, she often asked
herself restlessly, was her ordeal going to last?
Yet another fact added to Ivy Lexton’s discomfort during those long
days of waiting.
That fact, or rather problem, concerned Roger Gretorex. She found it
increasingly difficult to prevent him from coming to the flat. When
alone with her he made no secret of his dislike of meeting her husband
on “Hail fellow, well met!” terms, and yet he longed to be with her
every moment of his scanty leisure.
At times she felt she almost hated him, for by now her whole mind was
filled with the thought of Rushworth, and of all that she felt
convinced Rushworth was going to mean in her life. But she could not
yet afford to break with Gretorex. Afford, indeed, was still the right
word, for again he was supplying her with what had always been to Ivy
the staff of life--petty cash.
But she came to one great resolution, and that was to go no more to
the humble little house in the Westminster slum with which she had now
a secret, terrifying association. And so, as her slightest wish was
law to Gretorex, the two began meeting now in a picture gallery, or,
when it was a fine day, in Kensington Gardens, which was conveniently
near the charming flat the Lextons owed to the generous kindness of
Miles Rushworth.
So far Ivy had managed to conceal her husband’s illness from Gretorex.
With regard to that mysterious illness, it was of her lover, and of
her lover alone, that up to now she had felt afraid.
As a matter of fact Roger Gretorex had already completely forgotten
that idle talk of theirs concerning the Branksome poisoning mystery.
But every word that had been uttered during the evening when she had
had supper at Ferry Place, and every moment that she had spent in the
surgery, remained uncannily present to Ivy’s mind.
And now, on this eighth of November, she had been out for an hour,
looking into the shop windows which line Kensington High Street. She
had even gone into one famous emporium and bought a new, and very
expensive, black model hat. Though quite unobtrusive in shape, it was
at once as simple and as unusual as only a French model hat can be.
She had felt that she might have cause to be really very much put out
if that perfect little hat were bought, over her head so to speak,
during the next few days.
At last, feeling more cheerful, she walked briskly back to the Duke of
Kent Mansion. The pleasant-spoken porter--all men, even lift porters,
were always pleasant-spoken to Ivy Lexton--took her up in the lift.
She let herself in with her latchkey, for she always liked slipping in
and out of the flat alone.
As she went through the hall towards her charming bedroom, the door of
her husband’s room opened, and Nurse Bradfield came out, looking
flustered and worried.
“Mr. Lexton doesn’t seem so well, and as we haven’t seen Dr. Lancaster
for two days, I telephoned to say I’d like him to come now. But oh,
Mrs. Lexton, such a dreadful thing has happened!”
Under her delicately applied rouge, the colour drifted from Ivy’s
face.
“Something dreadful?” she repeated mechanically.
“Yes, indeed, for Dr. Lancaster has gone and broken his leg playing
golf! He was staying with his brother-in-law at Seaford, for one night
only, but now he’s laid up there, and they don’t know for how long.”
Ivy’s first feeling was one of relief. She had been so dreadfully
frightened just now lest “something” should have been found out.
But even so, as the nurse went on speaking, there did come over her a
slight feeling of misgiving.
“However, Dr. Berwick, the doctor who works in with Dr. Lancaster, so
to speak, is coming round instead!” Nurse Bradfield continued.
“I hope he’s nice,” said Ivy earnestly.
The accident to Dr. Lancaster was real bad luck. He was a dear old
thing, and so truly fond of her. When they had been almost penniless,
he had attended her twice for nothing.
There came a curious look over the nurse’s face. She hesitated, and
then made up her mind to be frank.
“To tell you the truth, Mrs. Lexton, I don’t much like Dr. Berwick!
But then I’m prejudiced, for I once had a nasty little scrap with him
when I was nursing another case for Dr. Lancaster. I consider that Dr.
Berwick was very rude to me.”
“How horrid of him!” exclaimed Ivy sympathetically, although she had
not really been attending to what Nurse Bradfield was saying.
But she did listen, with startled attention, when the nurse suddenly
added:
“However, he’s said to be very clever, and he’s much more up-to-date
than Dr. Lancaster. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if Dr. Berwick
finds out what really is the matter with Mr. Lexton!”
Ivy stared fearfully at the speaker, and again there swept over her a
strong feeling of misgiving, if not of fear.
Thus was effected the entrance of Dr. Berwick into the lives of Ivy
Lexton and her husband.
In spite of his shrewdness and long professional experience, it took
the new doctor some days to become even vaguely puzzled--so true is it
that murder is the one chink in the armour of a civilised
community--over certain unusual features in his patient’s case.
On the occasion of his first visit to Jervis Lexton, Dr. Berwick had
been in a great hurry, and though he had seen his new patient’s wife
for a few moments, he had impatiently dismissed her from his mind as
a foolish, frivolous little woman. Indeed, considering the manner of
man he was, he could hardly have told, after that brief interview in
the dimly lighted hall, whether young Mrs. Lexton was pretty, or just
ordinary, though he had noticed, with disapproval, that she was very
much made up.
Ivy on her side, if feeling slightly surprised by the doctor’s lack of
interest in her attractive self, was at the same time reassured by the
fact that Dr. Berwick evidently thought her husband only suffering
from a temporary, if obstinate ailment, brought on, most probably, by
something he had eaten during the evening which had preceded the night
he had first been taken ill.
And yet her feeling of misgiving prevailed so far that she
deliberately tried to keep out of the new doctor’s way. This was quite
easy, for she was out to most meals, and owing to Lexton’s illness she
had stopped giving her pleasant little bridge-parties at the flat.
But as the days dragged on, as Jervis Lexton, instead of responding to
treatment, grew steadily worse, Dr. Berwick began to feel really
puzzled. He made up his mind one day to see Mrs. Lexton. On that day
Ivy was going to be motored to Brighton by a new admirer, and she had
said she would come in after lunch to fetch her fur coat. So the
doctor, believing she would be back soon, waited for her. But the
moments became minutes, and the minutes mounted up to close on half an
hour.
Feeling very much annoyed, he was just about to leave the flat, when
Ivy walked into the drawing-room, looking, as he instantly
acknowledged to himself, charmingly pretty and gay.
“I waited to see you, Mrs. Lexton, because I am not satisfied with
your husband’s condition. From what the nurse tells me, Dr. Lancaster
was puzzled too, though he said nothing of that in the notes he sent
me concerning the case.”
Then, almost in spite of himself, he was touched by the look of
distress which at once shadowed her lovely face, and it was in a
kinder tone that he went on:
“If he does not pick up in the next day or two, I should very much
like to have another opinion. Will you try to persuade him to see a
specialist?”
“Of course I will,” she said quickly. “Though he can’t bear any fuss
made over him, poor old boy! He very much objected to our having a
nurse; but she’s such a comfort to me.”
Dr. Berwick disliked Nurse Bradfield. He thought her slow and
old-fashioned. So now he told himself that, though she might be a
comfort to Mrs. Lexton, he would far prefer a different kind of nurse
to tend one as ill as he now realised Jervis Lexton to be.
He looked fixedly at his patient’s wife, debating within himself
whether he ought to impart to her a suspicion which was beginning,
only beginning, to touch his mind. Now and again, during the last two
days, he had felt a slight, half-doubting suspicion as to whether
certain untoward symptoms could possibly mean that Lexton was
absorbing some form of irritant poison. But even to hint or half-imply
such possibility is a very serious thing to do from a doctor’s point
of view, and so he fell back on what seemed the wiser course of
recommending a second opinion.
“Do you think Dr. Lancaster will be away long?” asked Ivy. “He’s such
an old friend of mine,” and she smiled, a pretty, disarming little
smile. “I know you’re ever so much more clever than he is----”
Dr. Berwick interrupted harshly, “That’s quite untrue! Dr. Lancaster
has had ten times the experience I’ve had, and I take my hat off to
him every time. But I fear he’s not likely to be back for a long time.
You see, he’s no longer a young man, and it is a great chance for him
to be invalided away from home, and where he can’t be got at by the
kind attentions of friends and--patients.”
The next day an untoward thing happened which, though it seemed at the
time of very little account, was yet to prove of considerable moment.
Roger Gretorex ran across a Mrs. Horley, whom he had often met in
Ivy’s company in the now far-away days when he would go anywhere, and
everywhere, just to see her, and to hold her hand for a moment. Mrs.
Horley naturally alluded to Jervis Lexton’s illness, and was evidently
much surprised to find that it was all news to him. To everyone but
Gretorex, Ivy constantly mentioned her husband’s unfortunate
condition, and expressed some measure of anxiety.
Though only half believing Mrs. Horley’s tale, or rather believing
that Lexton was suffering from some slight indisposition, Gretorex
went off to the flat, only to find that Ivy was out, as usual.
The cook had opened the front door. She knew Gretorex quite well by
sight, for in the early days of the Lextons being there, he had been
an occasional visitor.
He listened to her wordy account of “the master’s” illness; and then
the nurse, hearing voices in the hall, opened her patient’s door.
“Nurse! This is Dr. Gretorex, a great friend of the master and
missus,” said cook, retreating down the corridor towards her kitchen.
Nurse Bradfield, who found life very dull just now, was pleased to see
the fine-looking young man--a doctor, too.
“Will you ask Mr. Lexton if he would care to see me?” asked Gretorex.
He felt he could do nothing less, as he was there, and Ivy was out.
Poor Jervis eagerly, even joyfully, welcomed the suggestion, and the
nurse left the two young men together. They talked of all kinds of
things--things that interested Lexton rather than Gretorex.
At last the visitor rose. “I’ll be going now----”
“Must you? I get so bored lying here. I wish, old chap, you could
think of something that would make me feel the thing again? I don’t
think much of Ivy’s Dr. Lancaster. Besides, he’s just broken his leg!”
Then he went into details of what had become his wretched case, and,
after having heard him out, Gretorex produced a paper pad and a
fountain pen. Rapidly he began writing out a prescription, and he was
so absorbed in what he was doing that he did not hear the bedroom door
open.
Dr. Berwick, who was tired, having been up all night over an anxious
case, stared with anger, as well as amazement, at his as yet unknown
colleague.
“Hallo!” cried Jervis, trying to lift himself up from the pillow, for
he had become very weak. “Here’s a lark! An impromptu consultation,
eh?”
Then, as even he realised that Dr. Berwick looked like a thundercloud,
as he afterwards expressed it to the nurse, he went on,
apologetically: “I was joking of course! Gretorex, this is Dr.
Berwick, who has taken over Dr. Lancaster’s patients.”
Then, looking at Berwick, he went on: “Dr. Gretorex is a great friend
of mine and Ivy’s. He came in just now, and I told him about my poor
dry throat and asked him if he could think of something that might
give me a little relief. You don’t mind, do you?”
Dr. Berwick waited a moment. Then he said, in far from a pleasant
tone:
“Well, to tell you the truth, I do mind. You are my patient, Mr.
Lexton, not Dr. Gretorex’s patient.”
Gretorex rose from the chair on which he had been sitting close to the
sick man’s bed. The colour rushed up all over his dark face. He said
stiffly, cursing Lexton for a fool the while:
“Mr. Lexton had just told me that Dr. Lancaster has broken his leg. I
had no idea that someone else had already taken over the case----”
There followed an awkward silence between the two men. Dr. Berwick was
waiting for the formal apology which the other did not consider it
necessary to tender to him.
At last Gretorex took the piece of paper on which he had written out a
prescription for a soothing mixture and tore it in two.
“Well, Lexton,” he exclaimed, “I’ll be off now, leaving you, I’m sure,
in excellent hands! Tell Mrs. Lexton I came in. I’ve been so awfully
busy this last fortnight that I haven’t had a minute to myself. I’ve
taken over for a friend a practice in Westminster for a bit. It’s in a
slum, and means a lot of work----”
“And precious little pay, eh?” said Lexton.
Roger Gretorex smiled grimly, “But it’s all experience.”
Then he went out of the room, with just a cool nod to the other
doctor.
It was a very different Dr. Berwick who at eight that same evening
finished eating his well-cooked, daintily-served dinner. Janey Berwick
was what her husband’s old friends called, with truth, a thoroughly
nice woman. After their early marriage she and her husband had had a
bitter struggle, but that had only made them come the closer to one
another, and now that he was beginning to be really successful, she
was determined to make him, so far as lay in her power, comfortable.
She wore to-night her prettiest evening frock, and anyone, seeing them
sitting there side by side in front of their cheerful fire in their
pleasant sitting-room, would have thought them a pair of engaged
lovers, rather than a couple who had been wedded for close on twelve
years.
Janey Berwick still looked a young woman, for she had been only
nineteen when she had given up a comfortable, even luxurious, home, to
throw in her lot with the young man who till two or three months
before their wedding had been still a medical student.
He bore more signs than did his wife of the struggle they had gone
through. However, that struggle was now a thing of the past, or, at
least, so they both had good reason to think.
An intelligent doctor either shares everything or nothing with his
wife. Berwick shared everything and now he was engaged in telling her
about Jervis Lexton, and how puzzled he was fast becoming over
Lexton’s curious condition. He also told her how surprised, not to say
indignant, he had been to discover, when he had gone to see his
patient to-day, another doctor there, actually prescribing for
Lexton--true, only as a friend, but acting, even so, in a most
irregular fashion!
“I think I made him feel what I thought of such conduct,” he said with
satisfaction.
Then suddenly he asked her a question.
“D’you remember that your people took a shooting in Sussex many years
ago, when I first knew you, from a man call Gretorex?”
“Of course I do, darling! Anchorford was the name of the place.”
She was puzzled at the sudden change in the conversation.
“Well, this young chap I found prescribing for Lexton is Roger
Gretorex! I had a sort of feeling I’d seen him before.”
“But what an extraordinary thing--I mean, that he should be a doctor.”
“I don’t see why. Only the old house and that bit of shooting belonged
to them, even then. D’you remember Mrs. Gretorex? She was very much
the _grande dame_----”
“Yes, she was in a way, but so really kind. She took a great fancy to
me,” said Janey Berwick slowly.
“I don’t think she approved of me. She thought you ought to do
better.”
Berwick’s wife smiled. It was true that Mrs. Gretorex hadn’t much
cared for the dour, silent, medical student who was obviously in love
with her attractive young friend.
“It all comes back to me. They were fearfully poor; but Mrs. Gretorex
was keeping up all her charities in the village just as if she had
still been the rich lady of the manor. I thought it splendid of her.
What is Roger Gretorex like now? He was such a handsome boy,” she
concluded, with some curiosity.
Her husband waited a moment, then he answered: “He’s still
good-looking; I can tell you that much. But I didn’t like the look of
him. He said that he’d taken over a slum practice, somewhere in
Westminster.”
“Is he a great friend of Mr. Lexton?”
“He seemed to be, though they’re as different as chalk from cheese.
The one’s a born idler, the other I should say a born worker; though,
mind you, Squire Gretorex was a bad man. D’you remember the sort of
things we were told about him, Janey? How he had come in for thirty
thousand a year when he was twenty-one, and how by the time he was
fifty he had run through the whole of his fortune on the turf?”
“I expect Dr. Gretorex takes after his mother,” she said with a smile.
Suddenly there came the postman’s loud knock, and Berwick, jumping up,
went out into the hall.
He came back with only one rather bulky letter, addressed to himself,
in a woman’s sloping handwriting as yet unknown to him.
He opened the large, square, pale-mauve envelope slowly, deliberately.
It contained a note folded in two, and also an enclosure, an envelope
on which was written “Prescriptions.”
He glanced over the note:
Dear Dr. Berwick,
You asked me to send you Dr. Lancaster’s prescriptions. I found them
just after you left. Jervis is feeling better this afternoon, and the
nurse says that if you’re busy she doesn’t think you need come
to-morrow.
Yours sincerely,
Ivy Lexton.
He looked across at his wife. “It’s from Mrs. Lexton. She says her
husband’s better, and that I need not go there to-morrow. That’s a
comfort!”
Idly he took out what that other envelope contained. Dr. Lancaster’s
prescriptions might give him a clue as to what the old fellow really
thought of Lexton’s mysterious condition.
“Hallo!” he exclaimed in a tone of extreme surprise, for what was
written on a wide sheet of thin, common paper, folded in eight, ran:
_Friday night._