The Little Doctor (5 page)

Thankfully she closed the door behind them, leaning back against it for a moment and closing her eyes. For the first time in her life she had a headache.

Olive Baxter came to the door.

“Have you a minute, Doctor?”

“Yes—coming.” Jane dipped her fingers in the hand-basin and turned to find a towel. “What is it, Nurse?”

Olive stood in the narrow doorway, hesitant, not quite pleased. “There’s someone asking to see you. Not a patient. Someone privately.”

Jane’s heart gave a quick lurch and all her pulses were pounding in sudden confusion as she looked towards, the outer door. The girl in the yellow coat who had driven the convertible so recklessly along the road just before two o’clock was standing outside in the waning sunlight, waiting.

Jane put the towel away. Each movement seemed weighted with the desire to escape this last unexpected interview. She could easily tell the woman—whoever she was—that she had arranged to see expectant mothers the following week.

Whoever she was. But she knew that it was Valerie, standing out there in the last of the sunshine, in the slanting golden rays that were no brighter than her own hair.

Perhaps she had known the girl’s identity all along. That odd sense of recognition right at the beginning had been very strong, the fleeting glimpse of the golden girl in the other car strangely familiar as she had flashed past at such a reckless speed.

Bracing herself against the first moment of contact, she moved toward the outer door and down on to the step. Valerie was standing perhaps a yard away, with her back turned, cradling one elbow in the palm of the other hand as she puffed swiftly at a cigarette. She wheeled round when she sensed that Jane was watching her, and for a split second there was antagonism in the lovely blue eyes. In the next instant, however, Valerie was smiling.

“Surprised to see me, Jane?” she asked.

“Not entirely.” Jane drew in a swift breath. What did Valerie want? She didn’t look pregnant. “I knew you had come here with Max.”

Valerie’s thick, dark lashes came halfway down over her eyes and her lips parted a little. She considered Jane for a full second in complete silence.

“When did you see Max?” she asked.

Jane bit her lip.

“He came with a friend at Allingham to a small party I gave two weeks ago.” She saw no reason she should hide the fact of Max’s visit from Valerie. “He was as surprised to meet me as I was to see him.”

“Yes, he mentioned that,” Valerie said. “I wasn’t quite sure
where
you had met, though. All Max told me was that you would be coming to the dale with the Mobile Unit once a week. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

Jane began to unfasten her coat.

“I suppose so,” she admitted flatly. “These things happen.”

“But they shouldn’t have happened to you and Max,” Valerie suggested.
“
Isn’t that what you really think, Jane?”

I hadn’t considered it at all.” Jane’s voice was very firm. “And now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Oh, but I won’t!” Valerie was quite cheerful again. “I’ve come to see you. This is a social call.” She put one foot on the caravan step as Jane turned. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

“Of course, if you would like to come.” Jane passed Nurse Baxter in the tiny waiting cubicle and went toward her consulting room. “Will you come in while I clear up? We’re rather late this afternoon
and
it’s slow going back to Allingham for the unit on these winding roads.”

She had not been able to resist that, but Valerie did not seem to consider that she had been driving too fast.

“I passed you on the way in,” sh
e
said, “but there wasn’t time to stop and say ‘hullo’. I was in a tearing hurry. I had to get to the Fleece before two, otherwise I wouldn
’
t have got any lunch.” She gazed about her, examining this and that with vague, unprofessional curiosity. Was she not at all interested in her husband’s job? “Isn’t this rather like playing house for you, Jane?” she ran on. “It’s all so small and cramped.”

“And very necessary,” Jane said bluntly. “It takes quite a load off the local doctor’s shoulders, for one thing.”

Valerie stubbed out her cigarette on the nearest dish with a complete disregard for its legitimate use.

“And,
my goodness, does Max need to shed a few loads!” She sighed resentfully. “I’ve never met anyone who worked so hard. He’s like one of those energetic red squirrels in a cage who go round and round on a revolving drum! Max makes work for himself by being altogether too conscientious!”

“A doctor can’t be too conscientious,” Jane pointed out quietly. “Max always worked hard.”

“Of course,” Valerie said, looking at her keenly, “you know about Max. You made the effort with him at St. John’s, didn’t you? Not so long ago.” She appeared to be thinking about something else. “I really called in to ask you to come and renew the acquaintance this evening,” she added, lighting another cigarette, which she extracted from an expensive-look
in
g gold case. Her clothes, Jane noticed, were expensive, too. “We’re having a few people in for dinner. Max has a surgery, of course, but he
’ll
come up just as quickly as he can. Don’t refuse, Jane,” She added peremptorily. “He wants you to come.”

In spite of herself Jane flushed. She didn’t believe that Max had said he wanted her to come to his home. It had been Valerie’s rather cruel way of trying to disconcert her.

“I really ought to get back to Allingham with the unit,” she tried to excuse herself.

“Doctor Curtis never went back with the caravan,” Valerie informed her. “He came quite often to dinner while he was in charge. It can go back under its own steam, can’t it? You don’t need to be there all the time, do you?”

“Not really,” Jane had to confess, “but—”

“You’d rather not come?”

Valerie was forcing her into a position where it would be difficult to go on refusing without suggestion that she did not want to meet Max again.

“I’ve had rather a busy day,” she began, but Valerie brushed that aside.

“But this is a party—entirely different from work! Even doctors have to relax some time. I keep telling Max so, but it doesn’t cut much ice, I’m afraid. You know how he smiles and says ‘try to understand’!”

Jane’s heart turned over. Max had said just that to her when he had married Valerie. “Try to understand, Jane!”

She had tried. She had reasoned it all out, over and over again, lying awake while the slow tears had welled in her eyes and spilled down on to her pillow. Reasoning and accusing and excusing, telling herself that no man was worth all that pain, yet knowing deep in her heart that even final disillusionment would not make the slightest scrap of difference to her love.

A month ago she had believed that she had put distance between herself and her hurt, but now it had come near again, so near that she could feel the renewed agony of it like a physical pain, gnawing and gnawing at her breast.

And now Valerie! Valerie standing there confident and sure of her husband’s love, speaking about Max as if nothing in the world could divide them.

That was how it should be. What reason had she to think that Valerie was not in love with Max—apart from her own senseless jealousy?

“Then you will come?” Valerie had the look of someone who had won a major victory. “You can have a wash and brush up at Marton Heights before the others arrive—before Max comes in from his surgery. It isn’t far. I’ll hang around and show you the way,” she adde
d
obligingly.

Jane had expected Max’s home to be in Kirby Marton, part of the village itself, but apparently only his surgery was there.

“
I won’t be long,” she promised, watching as Valerie strolled back toward the Golden Fleece, where the convertible was still parked outside the door.

“If you would like to get away now,” Olive Baxter offered, “I can easily square up in here.”

“I’m in no hurry.” Jane was packing up her instruments with none too steady a hand, wondering if she had been utterly weak to give in to Valerie in this way. “Doctor Kilsyth is giving a small dinner party and Mrs. Kilsyth has asked me to stay for it,” she explained to Olive. “We knew each other in Scotland,” she added almost lamely.

“Mrs. Kilsyth’s very lovely, isn’t she?” the nurse mused. “Such beautiful hair! And she seems so light-hearted. Not the sort of person you could imagine being a doctor’s wife, really.”

Jane tried to dismiss the statement with a brief smile.

“What makes you say that?” she asked lightly. “Is there a special brand of doctor’s wife?”

Olive flushed sensitively. They were on very good terms, but at times she was shy and a little reticent when Jane asked her opinion.

“Well I don’t suppose there is, but it just struck me that Mrs. Kilsyth was sort of different. She doesn’t look as if she ought to work at all. She’s so—so exquisite!”

Olive was floundering in a sea of her own confusion. Clearly she wished that she had never made that first impulsive statement about Valerie, since she had no idea just how well acquainted with the Kilsyth’s Jane really was. It had been made almost without thought, although it was a pretty shrewd assessment of Valerie. Valerie was not the sort of person who would make Max a good wife, Olive had said in effect, and Jane supposed it was amazingly near the truth. She could not see Valerie as the hard-working partner so essential to a man in general practice, the woman alwa
y
s at hand, taking messages, answering the telephone, sharing the load.

Valerie had never been tied down in all her life. She had been utterly free to try her wings in any direction that suited her, and somehow Jane felt that her sense of allegiance to Max’s job wouldn’t be very strong.

Immediately angry with herself for such a thought, she decided that she had no right to sit in judgment. Max had always been a man who knew; what he wanted and he had, after all, chosen Valerie as his wife.

Leaving the nurse to pack up the remainder of the stores with Joe’s help, she went out to her own car when they were ready to lock up the caravan.

“I’m sorry we’re so late,” she apologized. “I think we’d better go direct to Thornley in the morning, Joe. If you’ll pick up Nurse on your way, I’ll join you there.”

Joe nodded, and Olive climbed into the jeep beside him.

“It’s a lovely evening for the run back,” she remarked with a peculiar gratefulness in her voice. “You don’t want any message taken to the hospital, do you, Doctor?”

Jane thought about Nicholas and then shook her head.

“I won’t be very late,” she said. “See you both in the morning!” When she turned toward the Golden Fleece, Valerie was in conversation with a small, florid-faced man dressed in riding-breeches and a loudly-checked jacket. He had horses written all over him so she was not surprised to see the riding crop in his hand when she drove slowly across the cobbles toward them.

“This is ‘Jim’ Crow,” Valerie introduced them. “He
has
another
Christian name, but nobody ever uses it!” Her laughter was high-pitched and infectious. He’s our local trainer and might just be persuaded to give you a tip or two, straight from the horse’s mouth! Jim—” she laid a slim, elegantly-gloved hand on the checked sleeve—“I want you to meet our new doctor. She will be coming up with the caravan every now and then, but she’s also an old friend of Max—Jane Langdon.”

Jane found her hand gripped in hard, leathery fingers while two brilliantly blue eyes smiled into her own. “Jim” Crow was probably just under five feet tall—shorter than her own height—a small, compact man in his middle thirties who looked as if he had started life as a jockey. He had probably gravitated to the training side when his weight had tipped the scales heavily against him in his former profession. He had an open-air look about him and his frankness pleased Jane. Valerie seemed to be very well acquainted with him.

“See you about seven-thirty, Jim!” she called as he bent to close the door of the convertible after her. “Tell Eddie I’m not going to excuse him this time!”

Jim said that it wouldn’t be necessary, but Jane caught an oddly-guarded look in his honest face as Valerie drove away.

“I
’
ve got to keep Mrs. Kilsyth in sight,” she excused herself when he walked toward her. “I’m following her home.”

Jim’s shrug was briefly condemnatory.

“You certainly won’t pass her,” he said.

It was no easy task to follow Valerie. If there hadn’t been only one main road through the dale and with the trees thinning out as they began to climb, Jane would have had considerable difficulty in keeping the big white car in sight. On the winding stretches of the moor road, however, it appeared every now and then on the brow of a hill, like some gigantic, low-flying white bird, urging her ever on.

But how far had they to go? Already Jane had clocked up four miles. It was far too far away for the local doctor to live.

When she saw the house she thought that she understood. Valerie had chosen it and Max had bowed to the inevitable, as it was obviously his wife’s money that had made its purchase and upkeep possible.

Marton Heights was a large, sprawling, stone-built mansion. Not the place, Jane thought involuntarily, for a village doctor.

Valerie swung her car in between the massive stone pillars of the gateway, sweeping up a wide, gravelled drive to the front door. She was standing waiting by the time Jane had parked behind her.

“You’ll be all right there,” she decided. “I’ll take this thing round to the stables m a minute. Come and have a drink!”

They entered a wide, airy hall with high pillars supporting one of the most unusual staircases Jane had ever seen.
It was made of stone and built into the wall in a wide and graceful spiral, with only a thick scarlet cord slotted through brass eyelets to act as a handrail. It led giddily up to the floor above, a veritable death-trap for the unwary, Jane mused, staring up at it.

“You’re admiring my staircase?” Valerie smiled. “It was the main reason why I bought the house. The staircase was the thing! I had never seen one quite like it. Max wanted to have a wrought-iron rail built on the outside of it, but I wouldn’t agree. We’re still wrangling about it, as a matter of fact,” she confessed airily. “Don
’
t you think it would spoil the effect, Jane?”

“
I
think it would make the stairs a lot safer,” Jane was forced to say. “Especially where there were children—”

“But there aren’t any children.” Valerie treated her to an odd little forced smile. “There never will be. You see,” she continued deliberately, “Max objects.”

Jane drew a deep breath. She could not believe Valerie, yet why should Valerie lie to her in such a deliberate way?

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “It doesn’t alter my opinion about the stairs, though.”

“Well, don’t tell Max what you think,” Valerie smiled, pleasantly dismissing the subject. “He’d quote you against me.”

“That would be ridiculous,” Jane said without thinking. “My opinion wouldn’t matter in the least.”

“No,” Valerie mused, “perhaps not, as you say.”

She turned toward the stairs.

“Come and have a wash,” she invited. “We’ve got an hour before the others arrive.”

The stairs were shallow and easy to climb. The effect from the top, where there was a wrought-iron balustrade along the length of the landing, gave the impression of looking down into the hall from a minstrels’ gallery. The house was too new, however, for it to be any more than a copy of the original idea, but it gave the entrance hall character and grace.

Valerie flung open a bedroom door.

“I’ll put you in here,” she decided. “My own room is in chaos at the moment. I’ve had it altered and Agnes hasn’t got me properly settled in yet. My clothes are all over the place. Please say if there’s anything else you want,” she added on an odd little note of friendliness. “I’ll get it for you.”

“There couldn’t possibly be anything,” Jane said, surveying the elegant room and the bathroom leading from it. “But I’m rather in a dither about my working clothes. I really ought not to have come.

“Don’t worry about that,” Valerie assured her. “Nobody dresses elaborately up here, not on this sort of invitation. I just rang some people and asked them to come to meet you. Eddie Jakes will probably put in an appearance in tweeds. He’d come in riding
-
breeches, I suppose, if he could get away with it. He’s Jim Crow’s ‘owner’, by the way.”

Jane looked her surprise.

“Eddie owns the horses and Jim trains them for him,” Valerie explained, backing toward the door. “Max doesn’t entirely approve of Eddie, by the way,” she added.

Why, then, invite him to dinner? Sternly Jane reminded herself that it was no affair of hers.

Yet, somehow, as she washed in the elegant bathroom with its black glass walls stretching up to a high yellow ceiling, she could not quite convince herself that Maxwell Kilsyth’s ultimate happiness was of no concern to her. She wanted him to be happy and he needed a wife to walk hand-in-hand with him, to serve the practice, to be loyal and conscientious and true in all things. In other words, he needed a partner.

Going slowly down the staircase after Valerie had called her to come down when she was ready, she met Max in the hall.

He had come in at the open front door as she reached the final curve in the stairs and he stood looking up at her as if he had seen a ghost.

“Jane—of course!” he said, at last. “I should have remembered.” He had forgotten that she was coming. It was of little real importance to him. That was what he had been trying to say.

She bit back a little sound that was like a sob and smiled into his tired eyes. How weary he looked, strained and drawn about the mouth and warily conscious of each movement in the quiet house.

“Valerie asked me to come,” Jane found herself explaining for no very clear reason, “but if you’re tired, Max, after a heavy surgery—”

He shrugged the suggestion aside.

“The surgery was nothing. Merely routine work.” He smiled briefly. “It would have been much busier if you hadn’t been in the village with the caravan,” he assured her.
“
I should have had all these immunizations to cope with on top of my other work.”

“You haven’t an assistant?”

His face stiffened.

“No,” he said.

That was all. No explanation, no reason offered as to why so large and scattered a practice would not support two doctors.

“
We’ll have a drink, shall we?” he suggested. “Or would you rather see the gardens while there’s still enough light?” Conventional, correct, leaving all the past behind, Jane thought. Oh, well, perhaps that was the easiest way for both of them.

“The gardens, please,” she decided without hesitation. “You have some lovely trees.”

He led the way through a small morning room at the back of the hall where french windows opened on to a paved terrace. Beneath it stretched a narrow lawn surrounded by rose pergolas, and all along the flower borders on either side the roses were still in bloom.

“Sometimes I think this sort of Indian summer is the loveliest time of the year,” Jane mused. “Late roses always seem so full of depth and color—”

“
Not washed out by the heat of the sun?” he smiled. “Perhaps you’re right. The midsummer sun can be so very fierce.”

Why should she feel that they weren’t talking about the roses at all? Jane found herself wondering, too, why Valerie had not joined them in the garden. She was somewhere in the house, in one of the downstairs rooms. She might even be able to see them from a window.

“It can be wonderfully peaceful here,” Max said, leaving the rose garden behind. “We plan to build a tennis court before next summer.”

He paused, as if there might be some doubt about the plan ever reaching fruition, and once again Jane was aware of that odd tension she had first experienced in the hall when Valerie had spoken about the staircase.

“I should imagine a court would be invaluable up here if you entertain a lot,” she said, and was surprised to see his mouth tighten before he answered.

“As you see, we do entertain quite a lot,” he said briefly, his eyes narrowed on the distant hill road along which two cars were approaching at breakneck speed.

They were obviously coming to Marton Heights and he turned, as if at a signal, to lead the way back indoors.

Valerie was waiting in the hall. She had changed into a white silk dress, pleated from neck to hem and completely sleeveless. It was girdled by a yellow silk cord and she wore court shoes of a matching colour. Standing there with her fair golden hair brushed into a soft, halo about her face she looked like some young sun goddess, and Jane’s heart turned over at the comparison.

How could anyone fail to love Valerie? Max, for instance, who had known her all his life? Always there had been that suggestion of white-and-gold about Valerie and, studied or unstudied, it had its effect.

She came toward them, smiling as she kissed Max on the cheek.

“Tired, darling?” she murmured. “Too bad! I’ll make your excuses for you while you go and change. It isn’t really a very big party and—it’s for Jane!”

For a moment Jane thought that Max looked angry, and then he said:

“The cars are coming over the hill. They’ll be here in less than five minutes. Timson should have taken the convertible round to the stables when he brought you back. I’ll have a word with him.”

There was a split-second silence before Valerie put a slim white hand on his arm.

“I wouldn’t lecture Timson, if I were you, darling,” she advised. “He gets so annoyed when he’s pulled up about little things like that. I didn’t remember about putting the car away to make room for the others.” She moved toward the door. “I’ll take it round now, before they get here.”

Max seemed to have forgotten Jane. His gray eyes were steady and compelling on his wife’s.

“You did take Timson with you this afternoon?” he asked.

Valerie’s lovely eyes widened as she looked straight back at him. They were a clear, almost baby blue.

“Of course, darling!” she said. “You know I always do.”

The deliberate lie stunned Jane. She could not look at Max who, for some reason, must have forbidden his wife to take a car out on her own.

“I won’t be a minute,” Valerie assured them, making her escape.

The atmosphere in the hall was tense. For a moment Jane thought that Max was about to make some comment, to offer her some sort of explanation, and then he turned without a word to the door through which Valerie had come.

“I think we ought to have that drink,” he suggested. “It won’t take me five minutes to change.”

The room they entered was large, airy and beautifully furnished and, as Jane had suspected, its long windows overlooked the rose garden. She watched Max pour their drinks without speaking. When he came back across the room with the two glasses in his hand their eyes met, but there was nothing to be read in his but an odd and touching gratitude.

Because she had refrained from saying anything? Because he knew, as well as she did, that Valerie had been lying?

“Sherry?” he said, holding out the glass. “I presume it’s still the same, Jane?”

The smile deepened in her eyes, although it was almost more than she could do to keep her lips from trembling.

“Still the same,” she told him.

Within these five minutes that Max had given himself, the quiet of the lovely room was shattered. The two cars they had watched from the garden drew up on the terrace and Valerie came back into the house with the first of her guests.