The Nursing Home Murder

CHAPTER II Introduces a Patent Medicine

Friday, the fifth. Evening.

During the following week the Home Secretary followed his usual routine. He had become more or less accustomed to the attacks of pain. If anything they occurred more often and with increasing severity. He told himself that the day after he had introduced his Bill, he would consult a doctor. Meanwhile he took three tablets of aspirin whenever the pain threatened to become unendurable, and grew more and more dispirited and wretched. The memory of Jane Harden’s letter lurked at the back of his thoughts, like a bad taste in the conscience.

His sister Ruth, an advanced hypochondriac, with the persistence of a missionary, continually pressed upon him strange boluses, pills and draughts. She made a practice of calling on him after dinner armed with chemist’s parcels and a store of maddening condolences and counsels. On Friday night he retreated to his study, begging his wife to tell Ruth, if she appeared, that he was extremely busy, and not to be interrupted. His wife looked at him for a moment.

“I shall ask Nash,” she said, “to say we are both out.”

He paused and then said uncomfortably:

“I don’t think I quite like— ”

“I too,” said his wife, “find myself bored by Ruth.”

“Still, Cicely — after all she is exceedingly kind. Perhaps it would be better— ”

“You will see her then?”

“No, damn it, I won’t.”

“Very well, Derek. I’ll tell Nash. Has your pain been worrying you lately?”

“Quite a lot, thank you.”

“That, of course, is why you are irritable. I think you are foolish not to see a doctor.”

“I think I told you I would call in John Phillips as soon as this Bill was through.”

“It’s for you to decide, of course. Shall I ask Nash to take your coffee into the study?”

“If you please.”

“Yes.” She had a curiously remote way of saying “Yes,” as though it was a sort of bored comment on everything he uttered. “Good night, Derek. I am going up early and won’t disturb you.”

“Good night, Cicely.”

She stepped towards him and waited. By some mischance his kiss fell upon her lips instead of her cheek. He almost felt he ought to apologise. However, she merely repeated “Good night” and he went off to study.

Here his secretary Ronald Jameson awaited him. Jameson, just down from Oxford, was an eager but not too tiresomely earnest young man. He did his work well, and was intelligent. Normally, O’Callaghan found him tolerable and even likeable. To-night, the sight of his secretary irritated and depressed him.

“Well, Ronald?”

He sank down into his chair, and reached for a cigar.

“Sir John Phillips has rung up, sir, and would like to come and see you this evening if you are free.”

“Phillips? Has anyone been talking about me to Phillips? What does he want? Is it a professional visit?”

“I don’t think so, sir. Sir John didn’t mention your— indisposition.”

“Ring him up and say I’ll be delighted. Anything else?”

“These letters. There’s another of the threatening variety. I do wish, sir, that you’d let me talk to Scotland Yard.”

“No. Anything else?”

“Only one, marked personal. It’s on your desk.”

“Give it to me, will you?”

Jameson brought the letter and handed it to him. He looked at it and experienced the sensation of going down in a lift. It was from Jane Harden. O’Callaghan let his arm swing down by the side of his chair. The letter hung from his fingers. He remained staring at the fire, the unlighted cigar between his lips.

Ronald Jameson waited uncomfortably. At last he produced his lighter and advanced it towards O’Callaghan’s cigar.

“Thank you,” said O’Callaghan absently.

“Is there anything I can do, sir?”

“No, thank you.”

Jameson hesitated, looked uneasily at his employer’s white face, reflected that Sir John Phillips still awaited his message, and left the room.

For some time after the door had shut behind his secretary O’Callaghan sat and stared at the fire. At last, with an enormous effort, he forced himself to read through the letter. Jane Harden had written a frantic, bitter arraignment, rather than an appeal. She said she felt like killing herself. A little further on, she added that if an opportunity presented itself she would not hesitate to kill him: “Don’t cross my path. I’m warning you for my own sake, not for yours. I mean it, Derek, for you and all men like you are better out of the way. This is my final word. — Jane Harden.”

O’Callaghan had a swift mental picture of the letter as it would appear in the columns of the penny Press. Rather to his surprise O’Callaghan heard his wife speak to the secretary in the hall outside. Something in the quality of her voice arrested his attention. He listened.

“—something seems to be worrying him.”

“I think so too, Lady O’Callaghan,” Jameson murmured.

“—any idea — any letters?” The voice faded away.

“Tonight — seemed to upset — of course this Bill— ”

O’Callaghan got up and strode across the room. He flung open the door.

His wife and Ronald Jameson stood facing each other with something of the air of conspirators. As he opened the door they turned their faces towards him. Jameson’s became very red and he looked swiftly from husband to wife. Lady O’Callaghan merely regarded Sir Derek placidly. He felt himself trembling with anger.

“Hitherto,” he said to Jameson, “I have seen no reason to suppose you did not understand the essentially confidential nature of your job. Apparently I have been mistaken.”

“I’m — I’m terribly sorry, Sir Derek-it was only because— ”

“You have no business to discuss my letters with anyone. With anyone. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please don’t be absurd, Derek,” said his wife. “I asked Mr. Jameson a question that he could not avoid answering. We are both very worried about you.”

O’Callaghan jerked his head. Jameson made a miserable little bow and turned away. At the door of his own room he paused, murmured “I’m extremely sorry, sir,” and disappeared.

“Really, Derek,” said Lady O’Callaghan, “I think you are unreasonable. I merely asked that unfortunate youth if you had received any letter that might account for your otherwise rather unaccountable behaviour. He said a letter in this evening’s mail seemed to upset you. What was this letter, Derek? Was it another threat from these people — these anarchists or whatever they are?”

He was not so angry that he did not hear an unusual note in her voice.

“Such threats are an intolerable impertinence,” she said hastily. “I cannot understand why you do not deal with these people.”

“The letter had nothing whatever to do with them, and my ‘unaccountable behaviour,’ as you call it, has nothing to do with the letter. I am unwell and I’m worried. It may satisfy you to hear that John Phillips is coming in this evening.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

The front door bell sounded. They looked at each other questioningly.

“Ruth?” murmured Lady O’Callaghan.

“I’m off,” he said quickly. Suddenly he felt more friendly towards her. “You’d better bolt, Cicely,” he said.

She moved swiftly into his study and he followed her. They heard Nash come out and open the door. They listened, almost in sympathy with each other. “Sir Derek and my lady are not at home, madam.”

“But there’s a light in the study!” They exchanged horrified glances.

“Perhaps Mr. Jameson— ” said Nash.

“Just the man I want to see.”

They heard Nash bleating in dismay and the sound of Miss Ruth O’Callaghan’s umbrella being rammed home in the ship’s bucket. With one accord they walked over to the fireplace. Lady O’Callaghan lit a cigarette.

The door opened, and Ruth came in. They had a brief glimpse of Nash’s agonised countenance and then were overwhelmed in embraces.

“There you are, darlings. Nash said you were out.”

“We’re only ‘not at home,’ Ruth darling,” said Lady O’Callaghan, very tranquilly. “Derek expects his doctor. It was too stupid of Nash not to realise you were different.”

“Ah-ha,” said Ruth, with really terrifying gaiety, “you don’t defeat your old sister like that. Now, Derry darling, I’ve come especially to see you, and I shall be very cross and dreadfully hurt if you don’t do exactly what I tell you.”

She rummaged in an enormous handbag, and fetched up out of its depths the familiar sealed white parcel.

“Really, Ruth, I can not swallow every patent medicine that commends itself to your attention.”

“I don’t want you to do that, darling. I know you think your old sister’s a silly-billy”—she squinted playfully at him—“but she knows what’s good for her big, famous brother. Cicely, he’ll listen to you. Please, please, persuade him to take just one of these teeny little powders. They’re too marvellous. You’ve only to read the letters— ”

With eager, clumsy fingers she undid the wrapping and disclosed a round green box decorated with the picture of a naked gentleman, standing in front of something that looked like an electric shock.

“There are six powders altogether,” she told them excitedly, “but after the first, you feel a marked improvement. ‘Fulvitavolts.’ Hundreds of letters, Derry, from physicians, surgeons, politicians—lots of politicians, Derry. They all swear by it. Their symptoms were precisely the same as yours. Honestly.”

She looked pathetically eager. She was so awkward and vehement with her thick hands, her watery eyes, and her enormous nose.

“You don’t know what my symptoms are, Ruth.”

“Indeed I do. Violent abdominal seizures. Cicely — do read it all.”

Lady O’Callaghan took the box and looked at one of the folded cachets.

“I’ll give him one to-night, Ruth,” she promised, exactly as though she was humouring an excitable child.

“That’s topping!” Ruth had a peculiar trick of using unreal slang. “I’m most awfully bucked. And in the morning all those horrid pains will have flown away.” She made a sort of blundering, ineffectual gesture. She beamed at them.

“And now, old girl, I’m afraid you’ll have to fly away yourself,” said O’Callaghan with a desperate effort to answer roguishness with brotherly playfulness. “I think I hear Phillips arriving.”

“Come along, Ruth,” said his wife. “We must make ourselves scarce. Good night again, Derek.”

Ruth laid a gnarled finger on her lips and tiptoed elaborately to the door. There she turned and blew him a kiss.

He heard them greet Sir John Phillips briefly and go upstairs. In his relief at being rid of his sister, O’Callaghan felt a wave of good-fellowship for John Phillips. Phillips was an old friend. It would be a relief to tell him how ill he felt — to learn how ill he really was. Perhaps Phillips would give him something that would help him along for the time being. He already felt a little better. Very likely it was a trifling thing after all. Phillips would know. He turned to the door with an air of pleased expectancy. Nash opened the door and came in.

“Sir John Phillips, sir.” Phillips entered the room.

He was an extremely tall man with an habitual stoop. His eyes, full-lidded and of a peculiarly light grey, were piercingly bright. No one ever saw him without his single eye-glass and there was a rumour that he wore it ribbonless while he operated. His nose was a beak and his under lip jutted out aggressively. He was unmarried, and unmoved, so it was said, by the general tendency among his women patients to fall extravagantly in love with him. Perhaps next to actors medical men profit most by the possession of that curious quality that people call “personality.” Sir John Phillips was, very definitely, a personage. His rudeness was more glamorously famous than his brilliant ability.

O’Callaghan moved towards him, his hand extended.

“Phillips!” he said, “I’m delighted to see you.”

Phillips ignored the hand and stood stock-still until the door had closed behind Nash. Then he spoke.

“You will be less delighted when you hear my business,” he said.

“Why — what on earth’s the matter with you?”

“I can scarcely trust myself to speak to you.”

“What the devil do you mean?”

“Precisely what I say. I’ve discovered you are a blackguard and I’ve come to tell you so.”

O’Callaghan stared at him in silence.

“Apparently you are serious,” he said at last. “May I ask if you intend merely to call me names and then walk out? Or am I to be given an explanation?”

“I’ll give you your explanation. In two words. Jane Harden.”

There was a long silence. The two men stared at each other. At last O’Callaghan turned away. A kind of mulish huffiness in his expression made him look ridiculous and unlikeable.

“What about Jane Harden?” he said at last.

“Only this. She’s a nurse at my hospital. For a very long time her happiness has been an important thing for me. I have asked her to marry me. She has refused, over and over again. To-day she told me why. It seems you made capital out of a friendship with her father and out of her present poverty. You played the ‘old family friend’ combined with the distinguished philanderer.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t lie, O’Callaghan!”

“Look here— ”

“I know the facts.”

“What sort of tale have you listened to!”

“One that brought me here to-night angrier than I ever remember myself before. I know the precise history of your — your friendship with her. You amused yourself, evidently. I dislike overstatement but I believe it would be no overstatement if I said, as I do say, that you’ve ruined Jane’s life for her.”

“Damn’ sentimental twaddle!” said O’Callaghan breathlessly. “She’s a modern young woman and she knows how to enjoy herself.”

“That’s a complete misrepresentation.” Phillips had turned exceedingly white, but he spoke evenly. “If, by the phrase ‘a modern young woman,’ you mean a ‘loose woman’ you must know yourself it’s a lie. This is the only episode of the sort in her life. She loved you and you let her suppose she was loved in return.”

“Nothing of the sort. She gave me no reason to suppose she attached more importance to the thing than I did myself. You say she’s in love with me. If it’s true I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s true. What does she want? It’s not— ” O’Callaghan stopped short and looked frightened. “It’s not that she’s going to have a child?”

“Oh, no. She has no actual claim on you. No legal claim. Evidently you don’t recognize moral obligations.”

“I’ve sent her £300. What more will she want?”

“I’m so near hitting you, O’Callaghan, I think I’d better go.”

“You can go to hell if you like. What’s the matter with you? If you don’t want to marry her there’s an alternative. It ought to be quite simple — I had no difficulty.”

“You swine!” shouted Phillips. “My God— ” He stopped short. His lips moved tremblingly. When he spoke again it was more quietly. “You’d do well to keep clear of me,” he said. “I assure you that if the opportunity presented itself I should have no hesitation — none — in putting you out of the way.”

Something in O’Callaghan’s face made him pause. The Home Secretary was looking beyond him, towards the door.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Nash quietly. He crossed the room with a tray holding glasses and a decanter. He put the tray down noiselessly and returned to the door.

“Is there anything further, sir?” asked Nash.

“Sir John Phillips is leaving. Will you show him out?”

“Certainly, sir.”

Without another word Phillips turned on his heel and left the room.

“Good night, Nash,” said O’Callaghan.

“Good night, sir,” said Nash softly. He followed Sir John Phillips out and closed the door.

O’Callaghan gave a sharp cry of pain. He stumbled towards his chair and bent over it, leaning on the arm. For a minute or two he hung on, doubled up with pain. Then he managed to get into the chair, and in a little while poured out half a tumbler of whiskey. He noticed Ruth’s patent medicine lying on the table beside him. With a tremulous hand he shook one of the powders into the glass and gulped it down with the whiskey.