He arrived at Dr. Williams’s house just as the evening surgery was beginning. As it was the middle of August, with many people on holiday and no epidemic about, the session did not promise to be a heavy one. Nevertheless he experienced some difficulty in getting an interview with the doctor, who had a justifiable dislike of consultations at second-hand.
By persistence and many-times repeated explanations, however, Giles persuaded the receptionist to add him to the small queue of eight in the waiting-room, on the understanding that he would give up his place to any genuine patient that might turn up later. None such appeared, and Giles, after reading steadily through the back numbers of two popular magazines, was alone in the waiting-room.
Dr. Williams came in person to show him into the surgery.
“You want to see me about one of my patients?” he asked. He did not seem surprised; merely attentive, in a competent, professional way. Giles liked the look of him.
“Yes. I apologise for gate-crashing, but …”
“What is his name? Or her name?” There was a very slight emphasis on the pronoun. If Giles had been a vain man, which he was not, he might have been gratified.
“Henry Davenport. He sees you about once a year for his back.”
“That chap!” Dr. Williams got up briskly and went to a small cabinet where his private patients’ notes were kept. He found Henry’s card and brought it to the desk.
“I’m prepared to listen to what you say, but I don’t promise to tell you a single thing,” he warned. “Not even if you are a near relative.”
“I’m no relative at all.”
“Well, go on,” said the doctor, glancing at the last entry on the card, then sitting back to listen.
He was a first-class listener, Giles decided. Not absolutely silent, so that you wondered if he were still with you. On the contrary, when you were searching for a way to explain a tricky point, he would prod your mind along with a useful word or two. At the end of it he sat, looking at Henry’s record card, turning it over and back and considering.
“You say you aren’t related to him? Are you an old friend?”
“No. Not even a friend. A very new acquaintance.”
“You did not go to this river on purpose to see him?”
“No.”
“Or his wife?”
Dr. Williams asked the question casually, but Giles resented the implication. He was about to explode when the doctor went on, quietly, “You see, he wrote to me a few days ago for an appointment. I was expecting him yesterday. He wrote in his letter that his wife had been very much upset by some yachting people, who had stayed at the château during a storm. So I wondered. You appear to be one of the visitors he meant.”
“I see.”
This called for a good deal more explanation, of a kind that was not directly any business of Dr. Williams. Giles decided not to give it.
“Henry asked me to tell you where he is,” he said, going back to the reason for his call. “He seems to me to be desperately ill, and he thought you could help the hospital doctors with the diagnosis. He thinks he has been poisoned.”
“That is quite possible,” said Dr. Williams, unexpectedly.
“What d’you mean?”
“The fellow is always taking new so-called cures. He has half a dozen patent medicines with him every time he comes over. A new set each year. Most of them seem to be harmless enough; just the old salicylates got up in a new dress. But last summer he turned up with one of these new drugs.”
“Such as?”
“A complicated chemical of the butazolidene type, that does definitely work, at least temporarily. He won’t consider an operation, which might cure him. Nor even a supporting jacket. Says it hampers his movements on a boat. So we have to find something to relieve the pain caused by the displaced disc. We’ve had this sort of drug in England for quite a time, but I never prescribed it for him, because I didn’t feel he was sufficiently under my control. It certainly relieves pain temporarily. Davenport’s Paris specialist gave it to him, and warned him, quite properly, against going on with it for more than a week or two at a time, without checks.”
“What checks?”
“A blood count, principally. Some people are allergic to it.”
This was a word Henry had used. Giles repeated what he had said about himself.
“Then the hospital may be on the right track. He’s probably been overdosing himself.”
“He spoke as if someone else had been overdosing him, and he’d only realised it when these swellings started, and he began having dizzy attacks. So then he did a bunk, only a bit late in the day.”
Dr. Williams looked at his watch.
“Yes,” he said. “A bit late in the day. I’ll ring the hospital at once. Perhaps you’d like to hear what they have to say.”
“Thank you very much.”
The hospital had very little to say, but it appeared from the surgery end of the conversation that Dr. Williams was being encouraged to go there and say his piece at a consultation about to take place at the bedside.
He dropped Giles at his hotel on his way to the General. Before they parted, he said, “I think I ought to let his wife know.”
“He’ll be dead against it. Do you know the address?”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t. He never gave me any address. And he always pays on the nail. No National Health Service for him, he says every time. He thinks it’s a scandal to provide free treatment and drugs for foreigners. Of course we rather agree in this town. We feel many people nurse their troubles at Cherbourg, to unload them, gratis, on us when they land here.”
“Quite.”
“Perhaps you can give me the address?”
But Giles had not been lulled into unawareness by the doctor’s bland technique of distraction.’
“I’ll go one better,” he said, easily. “I’ll tell her myself. I’m going over again in the morning.”
Dr. Williams drove off. He knew that Giles had no intention of telling Mrs. Davenport anything at all about her husband. So he concluded that he shared the sick husband’s melodramatic suspicion. Well, well, it all made for variety in a mainly drab world. Brittany was a long way off, and he was not in any way responsible for the goings-on there.
Giles got back to Morlaix the following afternoon. Tony and Phillipa were busy polishing the bright work on Shuna’s decks. Her wounds had been healed and she looked her smart self again.
“The types were on board all yesterday,” they explained, “working like beavers. We can go off again tomorrow, can’t we?”
“Look here,” said Giles, solemnly, “you two have been simply marvellously patient over this caricature of a cruise. It wasn’t my fault we got the fog and the gale. But in a way it was my fault we got mixed up in affairs at the château. I’m damned sorry, but the business isn’t finished yet. In fact, I’m up to the neck, now, quite apart from Susan.”
He told them what he had been doing in Southampton and finished up with more apologies.
“It wasn’t your fault, my dear,” said Phillipa, soothingly. “If it was anyone’s, it was mine. You didn’t want to land on their stage, remember? I made you. And Tony and I are having a wonderful time. We did an extended bus tour yesterday. The country inland is delightful. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
“Hear, hear,” said Tony, polishing hard.
Phillipa dropped her rag and dived below into the cabin, coming up with two letters.
“From Susan, I should think,” she said. “We collected them this morning.”
She took up her rag again and Giles went below with his letters.
He sat on his bunk, looking at the addresses on the envelopes.
“Giles Armitage, Esq., Poste Restante, Morlaix.” The handwriting on the envelopes was strange to him. He had never seen Susan’s writing before. It was a measure of the shortness of their acquaintance, which he was unwilling to acknowledge. She had been so continuously in his thoughts for so many days now, that he had enlarged their friendship and love to unbelievable heights of intimacy. But her writing was strange to him.
Reluctantly he tore open the envelopes, looked again at the postmarks to get them in the right order, and began to read.
As soon as he reached the foot of the first page he forgot all about the writing. When he had finished both letters he rushed back on deck.
“Things have been moving in Penguerrec,” he told his friends, “and fast, too. Miriam has gone off to Paris. That’s in the first letter, so she must have decided to go immediately after we left. Yesterday the police arrived at the château, and they’re combing the woods for Henry’s body. Susan thinks Francine got them in, but the old woman doesn’t tell her anything. We’ll have to go back there. Would you mind, terribly?”
“Of course not,” Tony answered, and Phillipa nodded agreement.
“We don’t mind where we go,” she said. “Why don’t you ring Susan up and go over and see her tomorrow?”
“Bless you both,” Giles said.
Susan was delighted to hear his voice. He learned that Miriam was still away and the police were still at the château, turning out all the drawers and cupboards, including those in her own room. But they were perfectly polite and considerate, she said, and had asked her very few questions. There was still no sign of Henry.
Giles passed this over. He did not want to discuss Henry on the telephone. He told her that Shuna was ready to go to sea again and that he intended to bring her back to Tréguier at once.
“When will you start?”
“Tomorrow morning, about six from the dock, I think it will be. We shan’t get in till after dark, I don’t suppose. That’s if we can make it on one tide.”
“You won’t, will you? Why not stop on the way?”
“At Perros, you mean? It’s an idea. I could get over from there to Penguerrec tomorrow evening, couldn’t I? On a bus, or something?”
“Yes. It would be better than coming here very late, after dark.”
She heard him laugh.
“I feel I know the Tréguier river pretty thoroughly now. But you’re perfectly right. Anyway, it would make a change for Tony and Pip. They’re having a very thin time this cruise, I’m afraid. Though they don’t complain.”
“Why should they?”
He wanted badly to tell her about Henry. It seemed unfair to leave her in ignorance of the latest development. But if he told her, she would feel bound to send word to Miriam, and until he had seen the police himself and explained to them the whole situation, as he saw it, he did not want Miriam to know that Henry was alive.
So he ignored Susan’s last question and said, simply, “I can’t wait for tomorrow evening. Take care of yourself, darling. Good night.”
He hung up, and walked back to the dock with her answering endearment echoing in his heart.
Giles arrived at the château the next evening. Francine opened the door to him,
He found her very much changed, even in the three days since he had last seen her. Then, she had been suffering from the sudden shock of Henry’s disappearance. Now she seemed to have accepted disaster in a mood of dull despair. Her former, confident air of authority had gone, and with it her neat well-preserved appearance. She looked an old woman, and a slovenly one at that. Giles was considerably shocked.
He inquired first for Susan.
“Mademoiselle is in her room,” Francine told him.
“And Madame? I was told she is in Paris. Has she come back yet?”
Francine clasped her hands in a sudden access of emotion.
“Oh, monsieur!” she wailed. “If only you had taken her away! If only you had understood her need, and taken pity on her! We are afraid for her. She is not at the address she gave.”
“Don’t tell me she’s disappeared as well!” he cried, in exasperation. “That really would be the end!”
Francine looked at him with hatred in her dark eyes. “You have no heart,” she said, bitterly. “I will see if Mademoiselle is allowed to speak to you.”
This roused some alarm in Giles.
“What d’ you mean by that?” he asked, quickly.
But Francine would not tell him. To punish him for his hard-heartedness she took him to the library, showed him in, and still without speaking, shut the door on him.
“She’s going round the bend, too,” he thought, gloomily. “What’s the matter with this hellish place, to unhinge the lot of them?”
But he decided to humour Francine, for he saw clearly that there was no other way of managing her. A few minutes later the door opened again, and Susan was in his arms.
He knew at once that something had upset her badly, and before long he heard the latest developments. Miriam had sent a long statement to the police in which she accused Susan of contriving Henry’s death. The motive was stated to be jealousy. The girl, according to Miriam, was madly in love with her cousin. He had responded to this passion and promised her he would get rid of his wife. Having failed in this, Susan, according to Miriam, became furious. She saw that he was half-hearted, that he would never leave his wife. So she had destroyed him.
“Did you ever hear such fantastic nonsense?” Susan said. “But the police inspector was here all the morning.”
Her voice quavered. It had been a day of hideous surprise and strain, and the relief of having Giles with her at last nearly broke her resolution.
“Of course it’s ridiculous,” said Giles, steadily. “But altogether in keeping with her extraordinary character. They can’t really believe a word of it.”
“I don’t know. The inspector told me he had tried to get in touch with Miriam at once after he got the statement, but she seems to have left Paris.”
“That was worrying Francine, too,” said Giles.
“Poor old thing. It’s Henry she’s chiefly upset about.”
Giles could no longer keep his secret. He was going to find the police directly after he had reassured Susan. All the same, he made sure there was no eavesdropper at the door before he told her, in a lowered voice, that Henry was alive and in England.
She was utterly bewildered.
“Then nothing makes sense,” she said, faintly.
“On the contrary, I think we’ve got a very considerable case against Miriam. And this latest ridiculous attack on you only helps it along.”
“Poor thing. You mean, she tried to kill Henry, because of her imaginings about him? Like a little girl inventing romantic melodrama, with herself as heroine?”
“Little girls of thirty-two can be dangerous, it seems.”
“You’d better see Inspector Renaud at once, hadn’t you?”
“The sooner the better. Come with me.”
“I’m not supposed to leave the château. So he said this morning.”
Giles was furious.
“Francine hinted at something of the sort. It’s preposterous. Where is the man, anyway? Where shall I find him?”
“I don’t know. We could ask Francine.”
The old woman was able to help them. Two uniformed police, she said, were guarding the château. They might know where Inspector Renaud could be found.
“Guarding the château?” Giles repeated, incredulous. “What for? What against?”
But Francine would make no suggestion. She merely gave him a stony look, and walked away.
Giles got in touch with the inspector at last, very late that evening, in Tréguier. He told him everything he knew, from the time of his first visit to the château. He told him about discovering Henry in Southampton, and about the probable cause of his illness. He finished by asking what the hell they meant by ordering his fiancée not to leave the house.
“Your fiancée?” asked Renaud, with raised eyebrows. “Tiens!”
He considered Giles for a few seconds, and then said, “She told me nothing about that.”
“Why should she?” Giles did not add that he had not had time yet actually to fix the matter. “The point is you have no possible motive for restraining her actions.”
“Oh, yes, we have. And perhaps now you have explained your position in regard to her, I can tell you. It is for her own safety.”
Giles stared. The inspector went on, in a gentle explaining voice. “We are not so stupid, monsieur, even in Tréguier. And now we have the advice of the Sûreté. You see, we already know where this Monsieur Davenport is staying. We have known for two days. It was reported to us by the skipper of the Marie Antoine.”
Of course, thought Giles. What a fool I am. The fellow’s own friends were naturally anxious about him. And in all probability Henry had also told them his suspicions about the cause of his illness.
“We have daily reports of his progress,” Renaud went on. “He does not improve. He may die. Either during the next few days, or, if he survives this period, in a year or two from now. We are waiting for the immediate news.”
“But you have not told his wife? Or have you? You have not told anyone at the château.”
“It is not necessary to tell anyone at the château.”
He looked straight at Giles, who stared back, considering this ambiguous statement.
“Do you mean, they know? But I’m sure they don’t. Or didn’t, earlier today. Naturally I told Susan, Miss Brockley.”
“Naturally,” repeated the inspector, softly.
“Are you telling me Francine knows, and the maids know, and kept it to themselves?”
“I am not telling you anything.”
“Very well,” said Giles, stiffly, getting to his feet. “I’m sorry I came. You know it all already, and I can be of no use to you. But I shall see the nearest British consul tomorrow about your treatment of Mademoiselle Brockley.”
Inspector Renaud also rose to his feet.
“If what you tell me of your relations with Mademoiselle is true, then it is indeed necessary to protect her. But are you correct in what you say? It would be natural for her to mention this important fact when I was questioning her about your former engagement to Madame Davenport. She did no such thing. I ask myself if you invent it for your own protection.”
“Do you, indeed? I see.”
Giles saw, only too clearly. Henry had obviously put forward his suspicions of his wife. Someone, perhaps Susan, in her innocence, or Francine, who seemed to blame him for not championing Miriam, had explained his earlier tie. The logical French mind, used besides, to strong emotional reactions, would conclude, accurately enough, that Miriam, out of love with her husband, might wish to renew that tie. It would not seem altogether strange to this inspector that she might try to poison her husband; or even that Giles might be willing to help her.
Watching Renaud Giles was sure he regretted the further complication of Susan’s presence in all this. As a man of the world he could accept Giles’s fresh attachment, but he found it tiresome, all the same, and an added responsibility. Which must mean that he agreed with the possibility of Miriam’s guilt.
“You think Madame Davenport did poison Henry, don’t you?” Giles asked him. “And might go for Susan, now. If so, why don’t you arrest her?”
“First, because I do not know where she is,” answered the inspector, suddenly abandoning his official manner. “And second, because I expect her to come back to Penguerrec. They always return.”
He uttered this platitude as if it were a new discovery of his own, with a return of his former pompous authority. But seeing the gleam of amusement in Giles’s expression, allowed himself to laugh softly.
“Eh bien,” he said, leading the way to the door. “It is no good trying to impress an English yachtsman. They are all stubborn and reckless; a terrible combination.”
“I am never reckless—I hope,” said Giles, piously.
“You must not be so in this case,” the inspector told him, solemnly. “It is important that you keep your mouth shut. Madame Davenport is not to know that her husband lives. Not yet. No one is to know. Mademoiselle Brockley must tell no one.”
“She promised to keep it secret until I had seen you. But if Francine knows, and all the village …”
“Madame Francine is very discreet. The girls obey her.”
“What will you do next?”
“Wait, monsieur. I have no evidence of attempted murder. Or of any other crime. There has not, so far, been any murder. Therefore I must wait. We must all wait.”