Strange Recompense (5 page)

“Which doesn’t make them two of a kind,” Dennis Tranby reminded her dryly. “Women like Sara Enman have to be taken in small doses.”

“I know you don’t like Sara,” Ruth smiled, “but she’s my friend and I believe I know her quite well. She’s terribly efficient—”

“Terribly is the operative word,” Tranby agreed, “and no one will ever really know the Saras of this world. I’m sorry if I seem to be trying to disillusion you, my dear, but one is much better after
having faced these things. People like our Sara are a law unto themselves.”

“She can’t possibly be as obscure as you make out,” Ruth said almost testily, thinking that it seemed ridiculous to have to defend Sara like this. “She’s quite open hearted, really, and so far she has been a good friend to me in time of need.”

“A good friend, maybe, but no one will ever open Sara’s heart,” Dennis objected.

He sauntered back to where Anna still sat beside the stream, raising his cup to Ruth with light mockery in his hazel eyes, but Anna felt that these bantering exchanges veiled something much deeper between the doctor and Ruth.

“Anna,” Dennis Tranby was saying, “would you like to see Glynmareth? A quick once-over,
I
mean. I’m going to the clinic to vaccinate some babies and you could come with me if you like.”

Anna hesitated, curiously fearful of leaving Ruth’s garden and the security she had come to feel there, but there was much in Dennis Tranby’s warm smile to reassure her.

“Take a coat with you,” Ruth advised. “I’ll expect you back for lunch at one.”

“You’re sure about this?” she asked when Anna had gone in search of her coat. “Taking her to the clinic,
I
mean?”

“Everything is in the nature of an experiment in these cases,” Dennis answered seriously, adding wicke
d
ly: “I’d ask you, too, but two’s company, you know! Besides, I’m sure you would refuse me in favor of gooseberry pie or some other vile concoction!”

“Since I was about to suggest that my ‘vile concoctions’ might be acceptable to you for lunch your remark has been decidedly ill-timed!” Ruth told him severely. “Please
don’t
come back to lunch, Doctor Tranby!”

“This is too kind of you, Ruth!” he grinned. “Can you cope with four, though?” he added more seriously. “Since Anna is under observation—unobtrusively, of course—I’d like to come. The reaction I want at the moment,” he went on, “is what she feels about being in a car—hence the invitation to go to the clinic with me. There might also be her reaction to children to check up on, suggesting whether she has any of her own, although we tried her out on that one with the mention of the quads—without success. Noel is going very carefully in this case. He believes that she may prove sensitive to too much direct questioning.”

“I wonder who she really is, Dennis,” Ruth mused. “She must be suffering all the tortures of the damned, not knowing.”

Tranby led the way through the shrubbery to where his car stood parked at the end of the drive in full view of the windows of the nurses’ home, and Anna saw a curtain drawn hastily aside in a room on the first floor and the flash of white apron behind it.

“Look!” Jill exclaimed as she gazed down into the doctor’s garden. “There she is. She’s getting into Doctor Tranby’s car.” Behind her the slightly older Megan pinned her apron into place preparatory to going on duty and came to look over her friend’s shoulder.

“Can’t see her properly from this distance,” she grumbled, “but you’re certainly in for it if Matron ever finds out about that ring you put on her finger!”

Jill’s face paled. Matrons moved on a different plane from Jill and upon them depends the whole chance of a girl’s future career, but she was not prepared to let Megan get away with such a completely sweeping statement without attempting to defend herself.

“Why shouldn’t I have put her ring on?” she demanded. “Maybe it had come off and she had put it in her pocket to keep from losing it because it was slack or something, but she ought to have had it on if she was going to die.”

“Well, she didn’t die,” Megan retorted.

“What difference does it make? It was her ring.”

“Maybe it wasn’t her ring.”

“You don’t go round carrying a wedding ring that isn’t yours!” Jill pointed out scornfully.

“Well, anyway, you had no right to put it on,” her friend assured her, “though it’s a bit late to go blurting out about what you did now. They
’ll
be making inquiries about it by this time, I suppose, and if Matron knew what you’d
really
done, or Duchess Sara ever found out, you’d be for it! You’d never get any further than the probationer stage!”

With this final barbed shaft, a very new certificated nurse buckled her belt round her trim waist and rushed off downstairs, leaving a shaken and decidedly frightened probationer to digest all she had said.

And down on the tar macadam of the Melford’s drive, Dennis Tranby was helping Anna into his car, well aware of the tremor which passed through her as he opened the door. There was hesitation and fear in her clear eyes and her fingers gripped the top of the door as if she were trying to force something away from her.

There was little to be made of it, as far as Dennis could see at the moment, and almost instantly she pulled herself together and sat down beside him, stiffly upright, it is true, but completely composed.

Her delight when they reached the clinic was the natural reaction of someone who was genuinely fond of children in general, but it did not suggest any direct contact with a child of her own, and he drove her back to the villa at one o’clock with a decided sense of disappointment.

“Do you like travelling by car?” he asked as they neared the hospital gates.

“Not very much.” She had answered him laboriously, holding her throat with one hand as if the words were being forced out and hurt her. “I could not bear to drive really fast.”

“You can drive, then?”

“Oh, yes.”

There had been no hesitation about her reply. The answer had come quite naturally to her, and suddenly she sat round in her seat to face him, saying in a strained undertone:

“Doctor Tranby, if—this can’t be put right, if Doctor Melford fails to establish my identity, what am I to do? Shall I be able to work, to earn my own living? You know I can’t go on accepting Miss Melford’s kindness indefinitely, and I don’t consider myself ill enough to be kept permanently in a hospital ward.”

Her voice had trembled over the last sentence, her courage shaken a little at the thought of being dependent on medical treatments for the rest of her life.

“There’s absolutely no reason why you should remain in hospital for any length of time,” Tranby assured her, “but Noel wants a reasonable period to work this out. It can’t be done in a hurry, and he has no hesitation about the ultimate result. Neither have I,” he added as further conviction.

“And—in the meantime?”

“Wouldn’t you be content just to let things go on as they are?”

“I should feel happier if I could do some sort of job.”

“What can you do?” he asked casually.

Her chin quivered.

“I don’t know what I am best qualified to do.”

“Can you use a typewriter?”

“I’m not sure. It—seems a familiar sort of thing to me.”

There was a silence as they drove up to the villa and stopped at the front door.

“Let things go just now,” he advised, “and I’ll have a word with Noel about the job later. He may be able to find you something to do in the hospital.”

She flushed at the suggestion, not saying whether she would like the idea or not, and he got out and opened the car door for her.

Noel was crossing the hall when they went in and she murmured an excuse at sight of him, running upstairs to leave her coat.

“We’ve been to the clinic,” Dennis explained.

“Any results?” Noel’s eyes were keen, his interest sharpened immediately. “I know you hoped for something.”

“There was definite reaction when she first entered the car, but she overcame it
almost at once. It was quite definitely fear, though. She went through with the journey, however, and I discovered that she could drive, by the way. Will that help, do you think?”

“Everything we discover about her will help.” Noel appeared preoccupied, deep in his own thoughts. “I’ve been in touch with the police again, but they have not had any inquiries yet about missing people. Tim Wedderburn is still away, and they’ve asked me to carry on in his place, so that more or less legalizes it!” He drew in a deep breath.
“
What a problem! I’ve sent the ring to London for investigation and possible identification, but it’s a very old one and may have been passed on from someone else as a matter of sentiment, so we can’t really expect too much from that quarter.”

“Noel,” Tranby said, “inevitably she’s going to begin to feel her position here. A girl like that is certain to. Couldn’t we, between us, find her something to do? It would be an alternative to sending her across to the wards,” he added.

“No one would be unkind to her there,” Noel said sharply, and Dennis thought that he might just as well have said, “No one would
dare
be unkind to her there!”

“I know that, but does she really need to go?”

“I must keep an eye on the case. I’m responsible for her—responsible to the authorities, I suppose.”

He said it distastefully, and Tranby nodded.

“I know how you feel, old man. That’s why
I
am suggesting the job.”

“What could she do?”

“You’re overworked, and so am
I
,” Dennis pointed out carefully. “We could both do with a competent secretary.”

Noel considered the suggestion.

“It may be part of the solution,” he agreed, at last, “to keep her employed while we grope about in this blind sort of darkness trying to discover who she is.’

“I’ll leave you to suggest the job to her,” he said briefly. “I could do with her assistance at least two days per week.”

When the meal was over Noel followed Anna out into the garden. “Anna,” he said, “I’d like a short talk with you.”

Her eyes met his apprehensively.

“You’ve found something?” she guessed.

H
e shook his head.

“No,” he was forced to admit. “I don’t expect it to come like that, Anna. I think you and I will reach the solution of this together. It may not be easy—I’ve never promised you that it would be,” he warned, “but if you’ll co-operate in every way you can I’ll try to do it with the minimum of strain on your part. There’s only one thing I want you to promise me,” he went on gently, “an
d
that is that you will come to me with the slightest detail of remembering. The most unimportant-seeming thing may be a key to a door in your mind that has been closed for the time being, so that we can’t afford to neglect anything at all.” He straightened moving a little way down the narrow path to stand staring at the shallow water at his feet as if he were about to ask some favor on his own behalf. “It would be much better if you found something to do while you are waiting,” he said slowly, “something to occupy that other bright part of your mind that is perfectly normal, and—I need a secretary.”

“Doctor Tranby mentioned that to you!” she exclaimed gratefully. “He has been so kind and helpful.”

She paused, feeling that she would never be able to express in so many words what she felt about his own part in this tangle of her living, that she could not even begin to try, and something small and forlorn raised its head within her, something acknowledging the need for companionship and love.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“A doctor has to handle a great deal of paper work these days,” he explained, “and I find it downright irksome after a heavy day at the hospital. If you could get through that sort of thing for me and do the same for Doctor Tranby it would prove a tremendous saving of our time and patience! Ruth will show you what I mean,” he continued. “She has been doing it for me, off and on, for almost a year, but she has so many other chores to attend to that I couldn’t ask her to do it indefinitely.”

“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t do it, why I should not try to repay you both in some way,” she said eagerly, grasping at the chance to serve him. “And if I could help Miss Melford, too, while I remain here
...”

Again she hesitated, the temporary nature of her sojourn standing between them like some kind of challenge, until he took her by the arm and said:

“ ‘Sufficient unto the day’, Anna! Are you prepared to start work in the morning
?
”

She nodded eagerly.

“Whenever you like,” she agreed, her eyes shining and every pulse stirring with the new experience of usefulness.

“There will be half an hour’s ‘third degree’ before you start,” he warned her lightly as they walked back to the house. “These questions we are submitting you to are absolutely necessary, Anna—you understand that? It is the only way we have of helping you.”