Lady Parsons was waiting for Judy and Nicholas in the lounge of The Bull. On a table in front of her were two cocktails. She nodded at them with pride.
“I’ve bought you both a cocktail. The gin seemed to be giving out, so I thought I’d better have them ready as you were sure to be tired.” She lowered her voice. “And, of course, I wanted to keep a table. Now don’t keep me waiting. What did you find out? The moment I got your telephone message I got on to Doctor Mead. He’ll be here to supper. Oh, I forgot.” She opened her bag and took out an envelope. “The letter’s come; nobody will ever know what I’ve endured not opening it. I so wanted to open it this afternoon that I had to take Scylla and Charybdis for an immense walk to keep my mind off it. They tried to catch a squirrel, and they are both exhausted and asleep on my bed.”
Judy opened the envelope. It was a big envelope and there were a number of papers inside. The one on the top started “Dear Miss Former”. Nicholas gave her hand a pat.
“Go on, don’t be a meany, read it out aloud.”
“Dear Miss Former,” Judy read, “I am so glad to hear from you. Yes, your father did intend to send his great-grandson to me. You will see from the enclosed correspondence why he chose this school, but actually I learnt more of his reasons by word of mouth. You are evidently not aware that some time before his death your father met me in London. He told me he was not much of a hand at letter-writing and he found it easier to talk. From what he told me of your great-nephew I felt he was a child I could help. My school is for backward and difficult children who are quite unsuited to ordinary forms of education. Desmond was to be put under my sole charge for at least two years, during which time you were to decide if I were the right person to train him. If he proved suitable I should then keep him until he was old enough to be placed in some profession. My aim, in which I may say I have been very successful, is to fit the boys and girls given into my care to take a more or less normal place in the world. If you consider sending Desmond to me I should be very glad if you would come over to see us and see my work. I quite understand about the mother. Your father had explained this difficulty to me and it is one which I am very used to handling. Yours sincerely, Joseph Bloomfield.”
Nicholas picked up the other letters which were enclosed. They were dated over some months. He glanced at Judy.
“Shall I read these?” She nodded. The letters were creased with much reading. He smoothed them flat and put them in order. “The first is from Mr. Former. ‘Dear Sir, I am a Mason and I have heard through a fellow Mason of your establishment and would be grateful for all particulars, having under my care a boy about whose mental state I am not satisfied.’ To that Mr. Joseph Bloomfield has enclosed a copy of his reply, simply saying that he encloses a printed book about his school and could Mr. Former come and see him, and what age is the boy.” Nicholas laid the two letters aside and opened a third. “Mr. Former was evidently right in saying that he was not much of a hand at writing, for this one simply gives the date of Desmond’s birth and says thanks for the enclosure of the 27th inst. Then I think there must have been a letter from Mr. Joseph Bloomfield missing because this last one is from Mr. Former again. ‘Dear Sir, In reply to yours received yesterday, I beg to inform you that I will be in London on Wednesday, the 18th, as you suggest, and will meet you in the lounge of the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria, at twelve noon’.”
Nicholas folded the letters and passed them back to Judy. “He sounds rather a nice old boy, old Former.”
Judy looked down at Joseph Bloomfield’s letter.
“I like the sound of Mr. Bloomfield. I wonder if he could have done anything with Desmond if he’d had him. I wouldn’t wonder a bit if he could. I’m perfectly certain that he needn’t be anything like he is.”
Lady Parsons tapped on the table with her fingers.
“I’ve been very patient, dears. Will you now please tell me what you discovered in London? What was the woman seen carrying away from the ruins? Was it arsenic?”
Nicholas got to his feet.
“Here’s Doctor Mead. We know what she took away, but we haven’t the faintest idea whether it’s the answer. Here’s the man to tell us that.”
Because the bar was getting crowded they went into the dining-room and sat at a corner table which was set well apart from the others. Nicholas ordered Doctor Mead a drink and told Judy to give him Mr. Bloomfield’s letters.
“You might read those,” he said. “It hitches on to what Judy and I have got to say.”
The waitress seemed to take an unconscionable time taking their order and bringing their food, but as soon as she had put their meat in front of them, Judy, unable to hold back her question any longer, almost hurled it at the doctor.
“Could Mrs. Former and Mr. Former and Mr. Jones have died of injections of adrenalin?”
Doctor Mead had face muscles trained to resist shock. Years of leaning over patients and seeing signs of a hitherto unexpected disease had taught him to speak casually and soothingly, while his mind worked furiously on known facts and so far unconsidered trends. He did just that at this moment. He was faced with what to him, as a doctor, was an appalling suggestion. He it was who had, as it were, put the hypodermic into Clara’s hands, he it was who with just a grain of dissatisfaction had signed Mr. Former’s death certificate. He it was who had watched the post-mortem on Mrs. Former with a dim knowledge of what he was looking for. Adrenalin! An overdose of that! He would have to go into the subject more closely, but surely it was undetectable? Why had he never thought of it? Because, of course, no ordinary person would be in possession of sufficient quantities of adrenalin to give a lethal injection without the knowledge of their doctor. His face, however, looked unmoved and his voice was unexcited.
“Adrenalin. Well, we must look into that. There might be possibilities there.”
Nicholas grinned at him.
“Now then, you old professional, no bedside manner with us. Could you, or couldn’t you, kill a person with an overdose of adrenalin?”
Doctor Mead sipped the glass of sherry at his side. His eyes twinkled at Nicholas.
“You’re a professional yourself, my boy. If I were to spring a question upon you at this moment as to how much explosive we should need to blow up the whole Bigfields factory, you wouldn’t snap out and tell me off hand, there’d be a lot of humming and hawing. Tell you the truth, I don’t know the exact answer about adrenalin. I’m absolutely sure that you could inject a lethal dose to kill, but I’m not sure how detectable it would be in that quantity.”
Judy startled them all. She gave a little gasp and her hands clutched the edge of the table. Her face had turned white.
“Oh, goodness! I must have helped to murder Mrs. Former.”
Doctor Mead gave her a professional glance. His voice was rough but comforting.
“If it comes to that, my dear girl, I must have helped to murder people ever since I took my Hippocratic oath. The little slip there, and the little mistake here, and the blind unenlightened ignorance that, I regret to say, has dogged me all my life. I’m probably responsible for a nice row of stones in the churchyard by now.”
Nicholas was sitting on Judy’s right. He gave her hand a squeeze under the table.
“Don’t look like that, you old idiot. It’s not like you to dramatize yourself.”
Judy nodded, but she was still appalled at what she could see in her mind. She spoke slowly, recalling what had happened incident by incident.
“It was still light. Clara had given Mrs. Former sleeping stuff in some soup and when we came upstairs the old lady was drowsy, too drowsy to mind who gave her the injection. We made the bed and washed her. The tray with the injections was on the window-ledge. There was the insulin and the syringe; the syringe was in bits and the needle was detached and they were all lying in a jar of cotton wool soaked in surgical spirit.”
“Who put the syringe together?” Doctor Mead asked.
“Clara. Very neatly, in an experienced sort of way.”
Doctor Mead was watching Judy’s face.
“You actually saw her draw the insulin into the syringe?”
Judy nodded.
“Yes. Twenty units.”
Nicholas’ voice was eager.
“And then what happened?”
Judy turned to him.
“Yes, you’re quite right, that’s where I’ve been wrong all the time. Clara sent me to strip back the sheets and asked me to dab a little bit of spirit above Mrs. Former’s knee, and in that time she could have squirted the insulin out of the window and refilled the syringe with adrenalin.” Her voice trembled a little. “I watched the needle go in and I saw Clara take it out and tuck the old lady up. Then she went away. She said she would draw the curtains because of the morning light. She laid the syringe on the tray and in the most ordinary way in the world asked me to take it apart and put it back in the spirit. How easy it was for her! Fancy making me an accomplice! Oh, haven’t I been a fool?”
Doctor Mead spoke quite sharply.
“You’ll be a fool, my girl, if you dramatize it. If this supposition is correct, and, mind you, it’s still a supposition, then she made an accomplice of me. All those stories about the old man complaining of being in a nervous state and getting fanciful. I thought at the time it was very unlike him. If your adrenalin guess is right and she wanted to make me order an injection, then I bet you the old boy was complaining about real things. Probably she moved things on purpose to get on his nerves. When I think of her standing in my surgery looking the picture of innocence, and saying in a low, anxious voice that perhaps she was being unduly fussy, but she was so fond of the old man, and then laughing and saying that she was afraid he was going to be a tiresome patient, that he was just like her husband, never could be persuaded to take a drop of medicine. My word! If we prove that she finished off the old boy I could strangle her with my own hands. It was just like him to take all that trouble to find a modern place for young Desmond. I looked up the history of Bloomfield’s school while you’ve been in town. It wouldn’t really have been old Former’s cup of tea. It’s partly a farm, he’d have liked that, but any amount of handicraft that he’d have thought arty and crafty, and, above all, the cure is based on music; no matter how unmusical the kids are when they come to him he squeezes them into an orchestra and they learn to play a drum or a cymbal or what-not. It’s a terrific experiment.”
Lady Parsons leant towards him.
“Why should this woman, Roal, have been so against the place? I mean, sufficiently to get rid of her husband’s grandfather in order that her boy shouldn’t go there.”
Doctor Mead laid down his fork and knife.
“I’ve been considering the question of Clara Roal. The Formers were a talkative old couple. Old Former particularly. He couldn’t bear Clara, you know, mainly because she is a clever woman and he detested clever women. I used to put it down as an age prejudice on his part. Now, of course, I can see what a fool I may have been. Like most people who deal with animals, he’d developed an extra sensitivity, and knew for a fact a whole lot of things that he couldn’t exactly explain, and, of course, one of the things he may have felt was that there was something queer about Clara. As far as I can remember from what the old people told me, she was the daughter of a greengrocer or something of the sort in Croydon, eldest of six, brilliantly clever, won a scholarship and was never able to take it up because there were all the other kids to look after. But the father was a queer character. Terrific preacher. Jehovah’s witness or something of the sort. One of those sort of Christians who think that he’s justified in letting the children go short of everything while he’s saving other people’s souls. But there’s a bit of the story missing that I’m sure the old man told me, or at least hinted at. It was either that Clara’s father finished in an asylum, or came to a violent end, or proved to be out of his mind. I can’t remember.”
“Then that would account for Desmond?” said Judy. The Doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe there’s a strain of madness running through the family. If it’s proved that Clara took the adrenalin – a very difficult thing to prove, by the way – I should think some queer family history might come to light.” The waitress came to the table to clear their plates. Nicholas waited until she had gone and leant forward and lowered his voice.
“Well, what’s the next thing? She’s got a locked box in her bedroom, that’s where she probably keeps the stuff. How are we going to have a look at it?”
“You’re not,” said Doctor Mead decidedly. “At the present moment, even supposing we’re dealing with a madwoman, there’s not the slightest danger to anybody, and, mind you, even supposing your guess is correct, I don’t consider she is mad in the sense of not knowing what she’s doing. Miss Rose, though she doesn’t know it, is being got out of the house to-morrow anyway. Judy can help us by returning home to-night with the news that she’s got a new billet.” He turned to Judy. “You can explain that Lady Parsons is going and that you’re moving into The Bull. If Judy starts to pack tonight Clara will feel that everything’s coming her way, and when I pop by to-morrow to get Miss Rose into my car it won’t be so difficult. Tonight I think you and I have got a job to do, Nick. Even though we’re dealing with little more than a suspicion, it’s time we told the police; it’s their business to decide whether a search ought to be made of Clara’s room. We’ll pop along and see them after dinner.”
Nicholas looked worried.
“I simply hate Judy going up there by herself.”
The Doctor nodded.
“I see your point. Well, she’s got some luggage, I suppose, a case or something; suppose, Judy, that you say quite frankly that Nick’s going to leave it later on, and when he leaves it he can stay on and do his watchdog act – though, mind you, I can’t see that she’s got anything whatsoever against Judy, particularly as she’s leaving.”
Lady Parsons gave a little squeak.
“I tell you what, I’ll walk back with Judy. I’ve got to take Scylla and Charybdis for a little run anyway, and I’ll say myself that I’m leaving to-morrow and that Judy’s moving into my room. Incidentally, I don’t mind confessing I shall be delighted at the opportunity, I dare say it’s morbid of me, but I should like to have just one look at that unpleasant creature, Clara.”
Lady Parsons and Judy stood on the steps of The Bull and watched Nicholas and the doctor drive away, then Lady Parsons took Judy’s arm.
“There! I’m a clever old woman. I was determined to get you to myself. Has Nick said anything?”
Judy hesitated. Could she tell Nicholas’ mother what Nicholas had said? Suppose Nicholas was ill, there was no reason why Lady Parsons should know about it. She had suffered enough already in this war without that anxiety clutching at her. Then something about Lady Parsons’ face made her change her mind. Courage was written in every line of it. She was not a woman who flinched from knowing the truth.
“I’ll tell you exactly what he said. It was not said about me, but just about marrying. ‘It’s all too problematical. I’m not in a position to make a proposition involving the future.’ I’d always known he was delicate, but . . .”
Lady Parsons shouted to Scylla who was loitering. “Come on, you bad dog, how often have I told you not to hang about in the middle of the road? Nick isn’t ill. He was completely overhauled at the time of his registration; he’s not fit to be a Commando or anything like that, he’s just not robust, that’s all.” She walked a moment or two in silence, thinking. “What work does Nick do?”
Judy again hesitated. Nicholas had carefully not told his mother what work he did, so presumably he did not want her to know.
“Something or other to do with shells.”
Lady Parsons took Judy’s arm.
“Don’t be tiresome, dear. I’m not a child. What does he do?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know for certain. He never talks about it, but it must be something to do with special explosives because where he works isn’t just covered with grass, but, as well, he’s got a blast-proof wall around him. They say in the factory that if what he’s working on comes off it’ll make Hitler eat all the carpets in Germany – at least that’s how a setter put it.”
“Well, now, can’t a mother be an idiot! And all this time I thought Nick wouldn’t talk about his work because he was ashamed at having to do a civilian job, and that explains why, when he introduced me the night before last to one of the directors of the factory, the director said to me he supposed I must be very proud.” She turned to Judy with a smile extraordinarily like Nicholas’ own, “And that explains why a man who’s head over ears in love won’t ask the girl he loves to marry him.”
“He couldn’t be such a fool. Even if I knew everything was going wrong and the stuff he’s working on was going to blow him to pieces in three weeks’ time, I’d marry him. After all, in these times you’re very lucky to have even two or three weeks’ happiness.”
“There’s a bit more to it than that. Being in love is one thing, being man and wife is another. You don’t know how the constant anxiety might wear you down. You see, you feel different about a man when he’s yours. That, I think, is what Nick is afraid of for you.”
“But I’m not afraid of it for myself. I should think he might give me the chance to make up my own mind.” They were at the corner of the road. Lady Parsons had a double lead; she called Scylla and Charybdis and clipped the lead to their collars.
“Better not have the dogs digging over the place, the Roal creature might be annoyed enough to give them a dose of adrenalin.” She straightened up and laid a hand on Judy’s shoulder. “If you want your happiness, my girl, ask for it. You look Nick in the eye, forget all about Leap Year and that sort of rubbish, and if he tries to argue, talk him down.” She drew Judy to her and gave her a kiss. “Your marriage would give me a great deal of pleasure. I rather thought lately that I’d closed the door on personal happiness, but if I had you for a daughter-in-law I think I might see a little of it stealing back. Come on now, let’s go and have a look at your murderess.”
Clara was sitting in a chair on the lawn. Not, this time, upright and sewing, but lolling, her eyes on the sky. Lady Parsons did not wait for a formal introduction.
“Forgive my intruding on you, but I’ve only just walked up from the inn with Judy. I’ve been staying here to see something of my son, Nicholas Parsons, whom I think you’ve met. This naughty girl has made me cut my time here short, she is moving into my room tomorrow.”
Clara made no pretence that she was not delighted. “Good. This place is not at all suitable for Judy. It’s too lonely, and it’s been rather a sad house lately, and, to be honest, with a small boy and a rather incompetent great-aunt, I’ve got my hands full.”
Lady Parsons sat down without being invited.
“I’m sure you have. Looking after people is such a nuisance. What a pretty place you have here! What lovely roses! That’s a Madame Herriot climbing up the house, isn’t it? What a late flowerer!”
Clara, pleased at the thought of Judy’s departure, was unusually gracious. She turned to Judy.
“Take the scissors out of my work-basket in the drawing-room, Judy, and pick a few buds. You can reach them from the window in the passage.”
Judy went into the house. She collected the scissors, ran into her bedroom and threw her coat, hat and bag on the bed, then she went to the passage window. That window had unpleasant memories for her; it was there she had stood with Clara on the night of Mrs. Former’s death, and heard Clara gloat over the loneliness of the place. There were several buds within reach, and she leant out and picked a handful. Clara’s and Lady Parsons’ voices came to her. Then she heard another sound behind her; she turned and saw Miss Rose pressed against the wall.
Miss Rose’s appearance shocked Judy. Her face looked puffy and unhealthy, and there were streaks of tears on her cheeks. She spoke in a frightened voice.
“Oh, Judy, I heard what that lady said to Clara. You’re leaving to-morrow.”
Judy thought quickly. Was it wise to tell Miss Rose what was planned for her? She was silly and she was frightened, and might easily give away what she was thinking.
“It’s all right, darling. I know exactly what I’m doing. You can trust me, can’t you?”
“But you said you were going.”
“I know, darling, but you’ll just have to trust me that there’s nothing for you to worry about.” She held one of Miss Rose’s hands. “What are you letting Clara work you so hard for?”
Miss Rose’s manner changed. She tried to draw her hand away.
“Oh, she doesn’t! It’s just that I wish to work.”
Judy gripped her hand more firmly.
“I don’t believe a word of it. Come on, you and I have always been friends. What fearful secret has she found out about you?”
It was a shot in the dark, but it struck lucky. Miss Rose’s eyes were round with wonder.
“How did you know I had a secret? Did she tell you?”
“No, but I could see that she’d frightened you pretty badly. Come on, what have you been up to?”
Miss Rose looked up at Judy with anxious eyes.
“You would never tell anybody, would you, dear? I wouldn’t tell you, but, as you’ve guessed there’s something, you may as well know what it is. Clara says it isn’t safe to trust anybody when it’s something shocking like this is, but I think I could trust you. You wouldn’t go to the police, would you, Judy?”
Judy thought of Nicholas and the doctor at this very moment. She tightened her grip on Miss Rose’s hand.
“Come on, darling. Tell me everything, you know perfectly well you can trust me to help.”
Miss Rose reduced her voice to the merest breath of sound.
“It started while Mother was alive. What with one thing and another there never seemed to be a great deal to eat. You know how it was, Judy dear. Then one day when I was in the grocer’s that nice woman was serving at the provision counter, and she let me have a tin of pilchards.” Miss Rose paused and spoke in a gasp. “No points, dear. Well, that wasn’t the only time. I got into the way of coming home with little tins. It was very wrong, dear, I see that now. When Mother died I wasn’t well, you remember, and Clara came to my room, and why, I don’t know, but she opened my cupboard. It happened that there were four tins there: one of sardines that I’d put by for a treat for Mother, two of meat and one of salmon.”
Judy was struggling hard to look properly shocked. “And what did Clara say when she found them?”
“Well, at first she said it was her duty to go straight to the police. That I was one of these black-market cases that you read of in the papers, and the punishment was prison, not only for me but for that nice woman at the grocer’s. Well, of course, dear, I can’t let that woman get into trouble, and I’m afraid for myself; it’s the shame, I could never face it.” She broke off for a moment. “Oh, Judy, now you know you won’t tell, will you? I’m so frightened that I wake up in the night in a bath of perspiration.”
Judy turned and peered out of the window to make quite sure that Clara and Lady Parsons were still talking. It was all right. The low murmur of their voices was still going on. She turned back to Miss Rose.
“And then Clara decided not to report you if you did exactly what she told you, including asking me to leave the house?”
“That’s right, dear. It was my punishment.” Tears rolled down Miss Rose’s cheeks. “I know it seems terrible, Judy dear, but you know I didn’t realize what I was doing. Of course, I knew that everything had to be on points, but they seemed such little things each time, and that woman at the grocer’s was so kind. Somehow until I saw Clara’s face I never knew it was what they call black-marketing.”
Judy put an arm round her.
“It’s all right, darling. A wrong thing to do, but nobody on earth would send you to prison for it.” She hesitated, longing to lift a little of the burden of fear off Miss Rose’s shoulders. There was to-morrow to think of. It would make Doctor Mead’s task of getting Miss Rose out of the house much more difficult if she showed even a shade of change in her behaviour and made Clara suspicious. Far safer after she was away from the house for Lady Parsons to handle the situation. Probably she would suggest something sensible, either a cancellation of present coupons or even a confession to a policeman. Once she was away it should not be difficult to put the old dears fears at rest. She gave Miss Rose a kiss. “Don’t cry, darling. Everything’s going to be quite all right, I promise you. Now I must take out these roses or Clara will suspect I’ve been gossiping with you.”
Judy walked with Lady Parsons to the gate. Lady Parsons held out her rosebuds.
“Very gracious, wasn’t she? She’s rather a good-looking creature. You know, Judy, I shall keep one of these rosebuds and press it. It’ll be interesting to have as a souvenir of having known a murderess.”
Judy shivered.
“I shall be glad when to-night’s over. I saw Miss Rose while I was getting the roses.” She described what had happened. “When she’s with you you could make her see sense about all that, couldn’t you?”
Lady Parsons nodded.
“She sounds exactly like Dibble. Once before the war Dibble smuggled half a bottle of brandy into this country. She looked ill for weeks afterwards, and I was just going to get a doctor to her when she confessed. ‘Wrapped in that fox fur of yours, my lady. If it had been found it was you who would have got the blame. I have nightmares every night, wake up with the shivers, my lady, seeing them leading you away’.”
Judy giggled.
“Did she enjoy the brandy?”
“Oh, dear me, no. She only brought it in to put in her medicine cupboard. She said, 1 like to have it by me, my lady, just in case. Not that I’d ever touch it, but it’s nice to know it’s there.’ I cured her conscience on that occasion by telling her to send a half-crown book of stamps to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We typed a nice little slip to go with it saying ‘conscience money’. Dibble recovered the second that was in the post.” They were at the gate. Lady Parsons kissed Judy. “Good night, my dear child. I shouldn’t leave you with that horrible woman if I didn’t know Nick would be along any minute. Don’t forget now what I told you to do. I expect a telegram from you both by at least the day after to-morrow.”
Clara was in the kitchen when Judy got back to the house. She was boiling some milk. She sounded unusually cheerful.
“I thought we both might have a cup of cocoa. That’s a nice woman, you’d never think her husband had been an earl. She talks just as simply as anybody else. She says I’m quite right to get you moved, it is lonely out here for a girl of your age.”
Judy did not really want the cocoa, but it was her last night in the house so she thought it might as well pass pleasantly. She sat down at the table.
“Nick will be up presently with my suit-case.”
Clara had put out two cups. She now nodded at the dresser.
“Better get out another cup and saucer then, maybe he’d fancy a cup.”
Judy took down the cup and saucer, though she could not imagine Nicholas drinking cocoa. On the other hand he might be amused at drinking it with Clara. Whatever could have come over her to be so generous all of a sudden? Clara was pouring the hot milk into the two cups and stirring in the cocoa. She seemed to read what was in Judy’s mind.
“There was some extra milk to-day. It won’t keep this weather, I think there’s thunder about.” She passed Judy her cup. “It’s sweetened cocoa, it won’t want any sugar.”
“That’s more like herself,” thought Judy. She stirred her cocoa.
“I’m tired. It’s a long journey up and back from London. The train was very crowded.”
“Did you have a nice time with your cousin?”
Judy sipped her cocoa.
“Yes, and Nick took me to a theatre. It was all very nice really.”
“And what did you do this morning?”
Judy went on drinking while she thought of a good answer.
“We had to have rather an early lunch because of the train. We went for a bus ride. London was looking hot and dirty and dusty, we thought, but I suppose it wouldn’t be to you; you lived there, didn’t you?”
Clara had wandered over to the window with her cup of cocoa in her hand. She was peering down the drive.
“I don’t see Mr. Parsons. Funny his coming so late with your luggage.”
“He’s busy, I suppose,” said Judy vaguely. “He’ll be along presently.” She swallowed the last of her cocoa. “I’ll go upstairs and start getting ready for bed. I shall see him coming from the window.”
Clara nodded. “That’s right. Good night, sleep tight.” Judy went up to her room and leant out of the window. Nicholas was late, it was long after ten. The talk with the police must have taken longer than he had expected. It did not matter really; the later he brought the suit-case the sooner it would be dark, and that meant he had not got to go back, but could hide himself in the garden right away. How nice it would be at The Bull to-morrow! Poor Nicholas still would not have anywhere to sleep, but they liked him at The Bull and would probably give him a bed in a bathroom. Could Lady Parsons be right? Did Nick love her? What was it exactly Lady Parsons had said? It was at this point in her thinking that Judy suddenly realized that she was losing her grip on her thoughts and that her eyelids were closing. Good gracious, she thought, I’ve got most frightfully sleepy all of a sudden. I’d better start getting undressed or I shall go to sleep standing up. Blinking, she went across to her bed and picked up her coat and hat and went across to the wardrobe to put them away. As she reached the wardrobe she stumbled, and as she stumbled she jerked herself out of her drowsiness just sufficiently to think clearly for a moment. Swaying with sleep, the horrid realization crept over her. This was not normal sleepiness. This was drugged sleepiness. Clara must have put something in her cocoa.
Judy’s hospital training had included many lectures, and the words of one lecturer came back to her. It was a lecture on narcotic drugs. She could hear the lecturer saying, “Keep the patient moving, walk them about.” Judy forced herself to hang up her coat and then turned to her bed, where her bag was lying. “I’ll walk downstairs and say I’ll meet Nick. I’ll walk and I’ll walk and I’ll walk.” Her knees sagged under her and her head lolled forward. She pulled herself together. “Wake up, you fool. Goodness knows why Clara’s drugged you, but she has. Go on, open the door, walk down the stairs.” She pinched herself. “That’s better, that’s made you open your eyes, now try and think clearly. What are you going to do? You’re going to get out of this house and find Nick.” She picked up her bag. “You won’t want anything else. Everything you want is in your suitcase.” She stood there swaying, repeating stupidly to herself over and over again, “Everything you want is in your suit-case.” The thought must have connected in her brain with her bag, because she opened it. Like all women she had a system when filling a bag to see she had forgotten nothing. She repeated this now. “Handkerchief, comb, powder, lipstick, money, handkerchief, comb, powder, lipstick . . .” She broke off, staring at the bag. Surely there ought to be something in it that was not there. Surely she had put something important in it to-night. “Handkerchief, comb, lipstick” Then, through her sleep-sodden brain came a flash of intelligence. The envelope from Joseph Bloomfield. It was gone.