So Bad a Death (30 page)

Two or three men struggled to bring Connie to her feet. They half led, half carried her to the corner where the local council had placed a seat uncomfortably open to the weather.

“OK,” I said, dismissing them. “I'll be right now. Your bus is about to leave.”

The crowd was piling onto the bus. There were many loud-voiced comments and much peering back at us. I supported Connie as best I could. Her apparently inexhaustible supply of tears flowed over me in competition with the rain. I was thankful when Doctor Trefont parked alongside and we pushed Connie onto the back seat. I was becoming tired of so much moisture.

Doctor Trefont said: “I'll take you along to my surgery and fix something up for Mrs Bellamy. It will ease the shock and make her sleep.”

Connie's crying had eased. She spoke in a trembling voice.

“I was pushed,” she repeated. “I was deliberately pushed.”

Doctor Trefont gave me a swift frowning glance, which I returned. A cold hand seemed to close down all over me. Quite suddenly I was frightened.

Connie spoke again. “I might have been killed. Why should anyone want to push me under the bus?”

“Shut up,” I said, in a crisp voice. She had been speaking in a calm wondering tone that I disliked even more than the hysteria. “Pull yourself together, Connie.”

Connie fell silent, while I tried to shake off the feeling of that heavy cold hand. I had one horrible suspicion that was gradually forming into a reality. Two words in the form of a question burned in my brain. “Why Connie?”

Doctor Trefont drove on at a steady pace through the wet darkness, his eyes on the road. Why had Connie been pushed deliberately
in the way of the oncoming bus? Had she imagined it? Was it just an accident brought on by the carelessness of the surging mob?

I shut my eyes tight in order to gain a mental recollection of the crowd at the bus stand. I had felt bodies but not hands. Certainly not two hands as Connie firmly avowed she had. Why had it been Connie? Why was it not I? A tremor was set in motion through my body.

Doctor Trefont said without turning his eyes from the road: “A sedative won't do you any harm either, Mrs Matheson.”

I clenched my teeth. “I daresay it won't,” I struggled to reply.

Across my mental vision streamed faces—familiar faces and ones I recognized. People who had travelled across to Ashton with us in the bus. They must all have been standing in the crowd behind us. Waiting, while Connie and I stood on the very edge of the wet pavement. As a shape in the dark and drizzle Connie might easily have been mistaken for me. It was all so horribly simple.

Connie spoke again. “It will be marked,” she said in a hopeless voice. “My baby will be marked. And I have been so careful. Whatever will Harold say?”

Doctor Trefont laughed gently beside me.

“Don't be idiotic!” I said crossly.

Connie was offended, which was about the best thing that could have happened. Her unnatural silence broke up and she began to give cases where prenatal shocks had definitely left some weird mark on the child. I let her ramble on unchecked. By the time we arrived at the surgery she was barely in need of “a shot of something in case of trouble.” Doctor Trefont swabbed her arm with cotton wool and turned to me, needle in hand. His brows were raised inquiringly.

“I don't think so,” I said in a would-be light tone. “After all, I wasn't pushed under a bus.”

He gave me a hard look as though he read a double entendre. It was not until he had dropped Connie at her gate that he made any direct remark concerning the accident. He spoke to me over his shoulder.

“I should hate Mrs Bellamy to lose her child. Do you think you
can help by making her forget the affair? There may be serious repercussions. The next week or so will show.”

I could not resist the opening Doctor Trefont had given me. I answered him deliberately. “I will do what I can. It is an odd role for you, is it not? This sudden concern for the unborn?”

The car was passing his home in the High Street as I spoke. He pulled it up with a jerk. In a moment's panic I thought he was going to throw me out and make me walk home alone for my impertinent remark. While not prepared to eat humble pie, I did not relish a solitary hike at that hour.

He sat very still in the driver's seat, the engine still running and with undecided hands on the wheel. Suddenly he threw his arm over the back of the seat and opened the door of the car.

“Come in to the surgery again,” he ordered abruptly. I got out and followed him in with a hard-beating heart. I had a notion that the cards were about to be placed face up on the table.

III

In the clear white light of his office I expected to see his face angry, and was braced to meet it. I clutched my handbag tightly, mindful of the evidence it held which would substantiate my first clumsy remark.

Oddly enough, Doctor Trefont did not seem at all annoyed. His mild eyes were thoughtful, almost considering. He turned away and lit a small spirit stove which stood on a bracket in a corner of the room.

“Will you have some coffee?” he asked politely. “My housekeeper usually has it ready here in case I am called out at night.”

I hesitated for a short moment. He noticed the pause, even though his back was turned.

“I am not that sort of killer, Mrs Matheson,” he said.

I accepted his offer and sat down in the patient's chair opposite his desk.

“Morally,” I spoke deliberately again, “there is no difference between the extinction of life whether it be in embryo, or embodied in a seventy-year-old man.”

Doctor Trefont nodded slowly. “Morally, you are quite correct. So you did follow me up. What did you discover?”

I drew the copy of the receipt out of my bag and passed it across the desk in silence. The doctor changed his spectacles and perused it carefully.

“Very damning,” he said, raising his head at last and changing back his glasses. “For two reasons. You have caught me out in a lie—or shall we say an omission? You must recall Mrs Yvonne Holland's name never came into the conversation I had with your husband. I flatter myself I evaded the issue rather well. Secondly, my professional attendance in connection with Barry Clowes is likely to be looked upon with suspicion. Even so, I doubt if the Medical Association would dare question his part in any activity. You may be certain he has himself well covered. Who showed you the original of this receipt? Mrs Holland?”

“The police have it,” I told him. “I warn you my husband is not too pleased with the way you, in your capacity as police doctor, deceived him. So far he does not place on it the same significance I have.”

Doctor Trefont turned off the spirit stove and poured the steaming coffee into two large cups. “And what significance do you place on this innocent-looking piece of paper?”

I sipped the coffee and found it good.

“I have seen quite a deal of Yvonne Holland during the past few weeks. From my observation of her mental and physical condition and along with other circumstances, I have formed my own conclusion. I believe that after her baby was born steps were taken by means of an operation whereby she would never have another child.”

There was a long pause. I felt that my words were hanging in the room and repeating themselves like an echo.

Presently Doctor Trefont gave forth a heavy sigh.

“A hell of a business.” His voice was sad and slow. “I wonder if you would believe me, Mrs Matheson, if I said that although I was
the anaesthetist I knew nothing whatsoever about the operation?”

“I would find it hard,” I replied.

“True, nevertheless. I was called in at the last minute to administer the anaesthetic. Once Barry Clowes started I guessed what he was about. But what could I do? Jump up and leave the patient half-doped and stalk out of the theatre in professional dudgeon? What would you have done?”

“I am not a doctor,” I said. “Who authorized such an operation? Was it with Yvonne's consent? Was the operation her idea?”

“I am not sure,” Doctor Trefont answered. “After the distressing business was over my first move was to call at the Hall and seek an interview with Mr Holland. I was not received over-courteously. There had already been a brush between us over a minor matter. When I accused him of tricking me into unethical behaviour I was ordered out of the house. I endeavoured to contact Mrs Holland, but I was met by a blank refusal to see me.”

“And yet,” I said, watching him closely—I had no desire to be a victim of a plausible explanation: “You went back to the Hall. You were there that day I went to see Mr Holland about the Dower House.”

He chuckled into his cup. “Not a very welcome guest, was I? I was hoping to come and go unobserved. I have to admit that the sight of you peering around the side of the terrace rather unnerved me.”

“You need not have worried. I thought you were some relative caught baby-talking. Why did you want to see the child and yet avoid Yvonne and the Squire?”

There was another long pause. Doctor Trefont eyed me again with that long considering look.

“Mrs Matheson,'” he began abruptly. “The game has not yet been played out. So far a murder has taken place at the Hall, but that, I am convinced, is only part of the game. That part is your husband's responsibility. Mine is in preserving life while I can.”

“Was someone trying to do the Holland baby an injury?” I persisted.

Doctor Trefont was silent. I lifted the receipt in a significant manner. The doctor shrugged helplessly.

“When a patient talks to a doctor,” he said, “it is an understood thing that the conversation will go no further. Now it is the other way round. I am asking you to treat what I am going to tell you as confidential.”

I thought this over for a moment. “Surely the police are entitled to know.”

“Not until I have proof. The game is too dangerous to go to the police without definite evidence. I am only telling you now because I consider that you are, somewhat unlawfully, entitled to an explanation. You have seen and overheard too much.”

I took the rebuke meekly.

He continued: “When you saw me on the Hall terrace that day I was bending over the Holland child. Has it ever occurred to you what I was doing?”

“You straightened up and put something into your pocket. I did not see what it was.”

He smiled faintly. “Since you did not see, I am almost inclined not to tell you. I was so sure you did. It was a small instrument used for taking a blood test. I wanted a sample of Baby Holland's blood.”

“Why?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

“Mrs Matheson, your curiosity is insatiable. When it came to my ears that the Holland child's health was deteriorating rapidly I began to entertain certain suspicions. By diverse means, with which I will not detain you, I discovered that the child's diet was satisfactory, well-balanced and nutritive. There could be only one way in which the state of health became as it did. That was by the introduction into the system of some irritant. The smear test showed the red cells to be slightly stippled in appearance.”

“What does that mean?”

“The child was showing signs of lead poisoning. But for your inopportune appearance that day I might have had time to make an examination to further my diagnosis. As it is I can do nothing. Mrs Holland refuses to see me.”

The whole foul business laid bare in this detached manner made me say sharply, “You have a good idea who is responsible for Baby Holland's health, Doctor. Tell me and I'll get my husband onto it right away.”

He shook his head in a kind of mild obstinacy. “Not yet. I must wait for proof. The child may have been sucking some lead toy. It has happened before.”

I snorted in exasperation. He smiled at me deprecatingly.

“You don't understand, Mrs Matheson. If I go to the police or let you use your influence as you suggested, my position will be made more difficult. My present status is not too secure. I have no desire to be suspected of murder.”

“Who would do that?” I demanded.

He gestured towards the receipt I still held in my hand.

“Your husband or Sergeant Billings certainly will follow that up sooner or later. My difference of opinion and ultimate quarrel with Mr Holland will then come to light. The motive put forward will be that I silenced him to save my professional reputation. I was actually in the vicinity of the Hall at the time of the murder.”

“Oh!” I said slowly. The thought flashed through my head that Doctor Trefont might have been playing ball with me up to a certain point in the hope of bluffing his way out. An ingenious trick to place all the cards on the table and retain the one that would prove him a murderer.

“I was on my way back from the hospital when my car broke down outside the grounds. I had considerable difficulty in starting it. It backfired once or twice.”

Immediately his words clicked with something I had been retaining at the back of my mind.

I asked quickly: “Your car backfired? Are you sure it was twice?”