Seaside Hospital (11 page)

“What happened?”

“Oh, she handed it over, after a bit of argument, to the redhead, but of course by then the poor woman was distracted, rushes out, and then there’s all this hullabaloo about the child being on the road.”

“But what happened about the redheaded woman?” Lisa gasped. “Why didn’t she go to the ambulance with the little boy? She just vanished. That’s the whole point!”

“No good asking me, miss. I had my cloakroom to look after. But I must say I feel better for getting it off my chest, for if I’ve said it once to myself I’ve said it a thousand times since then—if that girl hadn’t hung onto that ring and argued about who it belonged to, that child wouldn’t never have been run over.”

Fear clutched Lisa’s throat. “Would you recognize her again?” she asked, half-afraid to voice the question.

“I don’t know as I’d
recognize
her,” the woman said unwillingly, “seeing as she was wearing sunglasses at the time, but I’ve got my own ideas about who she is. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t that Jacqueline at the Coronet—minces along like that girl, and the same color hair.”

“But that’s only guesswork. It won’t help us, I’m afraid,” Lisa sighed, but there was relief in her heart. So Jacky had had the sense to keep her dark glasses on! Would she never learn to keep those fingers of hers off other people’s property?

Lisa went out into the sunshine again. How much further had she got? She was still no nearer to the mystery of why that woman had abandoned her child the minute he became involved in a street accident! And what had happened to the man old Simeon had referred to as a city type?

Very reluctantly, Lisa set her steps toward the Coronet Theatre. At least she must try to make Jacky talk.

It was too early for Jacky to be at the theater, so Lisa went and sat on the pier and watched some fishermen. Below the pier, Derek was standing in a small powerful motor boat, with a look of bliss on his face. He looked up and caught sight of her, and bounded up the steps.

“Lisa! Just the one I want to see! Look what I’ve got—brand new. Isn’t she a beauty? Come and try her out!”

“I can’t, Derek. Not in my uniform! I’ll get soaked,” Lisa laughed.

Derek’s smile vanished. “For a girl who’s just made it up with her boyfriend, you’re not over-enthusiastic, are you?”

“What on earth is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t laugh at me, Lisa! You’re a dark horse—first you’re seen dancing with Carson at the Gloucester and then you’re seen around with Lindon—I never knew you had so many blokes crazy about you!”

“They’re just friends, Derek.”

“Oh, I’m not complaining. I like a girl to be popular, but I like to have her to myself sometimes. Look, do come for a ride, Lisa. I promise you I won’t go fast enough to give you a ducking. Anyway, there are some oilskins in the locker. Come on, be a sport!”

“All right, then, but you must get me back in time.”

It was cool on the water, and when he pulled into a quiet cove around the headland, Lisa reflected that it was a nice little break after the heat of the town.

“Lisa, let’s sit on these rocks,” Derek said, with a persuasiveness alien to his usual demanding nature. “I want to talk to you. I haven’t had you to myself since you came out to our place, and there are lots of things that are puzzling me. What’s Mother got against you?”

“Oh, Derek, don’t be silly! You know she’s never liked me,” Lisa protested.

“Yes, but she says you were in the house the day her beastly clip got taken, and that wretched maid Gwen says she spoke to you.”

“Well, that’s true,” Lisa said quietly. “That was as far as I got—speaking to Gwen at the telephone. I was looking for someone, but I went out into the grounds again at once and found the person I was searching for.”

“Who was it?” Derek asked quickly.

“As a matter of fact, it was my sister Jacky. Why are you asking me all these questions, Derek?”

“Maybe I’m not very quick on the uptake,” he said, rather unwillingly. “You asked me to get the clip back for you, with a lot of hush-hush about it, and I asked no questions. Since then Mother and Dad have been on the warpath about what happened to it, and they seem to think
I
had something to do with it! Now I freely admit I’m a lazy hound who never did a day’s work in my life, but
I’m blessed if I’m going to have it said that I pinch things! That’s not my line at all!”

“Don’t be silly, Derek. Why should they think that?”

“They think you’re shielding someone.”

“Well, that doesn’t make that someone you, does it? Besides, I started to tell your father all about it, when your mother came in, and from what I managed to tell him, he knows perfectly well that I wasn’t shielding you.”

“Who are you shielding, then?”

“It’s
n
one of your business, Derek.”

He looked sulkily at her, and then suddenly he drew her into his arms and started kissing her madly.

As soon as she overcame her surprise at the suddenness of his move, Lisa pushed him away furiously. “You said you wanted a little talk,” she reminded him. “While we’re on the subject, I’ve decided against coming back to you. Whatever we used to be, we’re poles apart now.”

“But you promised, Lisa, if I took that clip back!” he protested.

“And you promised not to mention my name to anyone, but you broke your promise and told your father it was I who gave it to you!” she flashed back at him as she climbed into the boat.

He cast off, sending a shower of spray over them both. “I hadn’t any alternative. Dad made me, but surely it can’t matter who knows about it, if you did really pick it up in the grounds. Mother said you couldn’t have—she left it on her dressing table, and she’s never far wrong.”

“If you don’t believe me, say so, but I never said I picked it up. I said I came by it and wanted to put it back.”

They finished the trip in frigid silence, and Lisa went ashore with the coolest of goodbyes to him.

When she arrived at the Coronet Theatre, the doorman told her to go up. She found Jacky in front of the mirror savagely applying makeup to her little elfin face. Lisa, who had been rehearsing what she would say to her sister, had three different openings ready,
according to the way Jacky greeted her. She was used to Jacky’s moods, but the savage, bitter look her sister directed at her was a shock.

“You, here!” Jacky spluttered, turning around to stare at her sister. “I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve to come!”

“Eh? What did you say?” Lisa gasped, stunned.

“No wonder you weren’t keen on being introduced to Derek,” Jacky said bitterly. “You were seeing him all the time, behind my back!”

CHAPTER NINE

Lisa sat down, her face a study.

“I think you’d better explain what you mean, Jacky.” Looking rather taken aback at her sister’s calm manner, Jacky began to bluster.

“You can’t deny it! I’ve only just seen you both, kissing and petting, down in that cove!”

“Good heavens, how did you happen to be down there?” Lisa said wearily.

“You can’t deny it!” Jacky said shrilly. “I was with one of the girls, and she laughed at me—me!
—
and said everybody knew and they were all laughing at me because I thought I was going to marry him! Oh, how could you be so mean, you and your preaching ways! You’ve got a nerve, preaching at me, when all the time—”

“Now listen!” Lisa said, standing up and taking her sister by the shoulders, to give her a sharp shake. “He was my boyfriend first.” That acted like a shower of cold water over Jacky, and Lisa took advantage of her astonished silence to tell her, quickly and
concisely, a few things she felt it was high time that Jacky knew.

“You didn’t know that, because you never even asked me if I had a boyfriend,” she told her sister. “You came to this town and promptly got going with the richest young man in the place—well, we were going steady, Derek and I, and he threw me over for you!”

Jacky’s eyelids began to bat very fast with excitement. It made good hearing, that she could take Lisa’s boyfriend away from her as easily as that.

“Well, I got used to it,” Lisa went on, “and now it doesn’t matter, because I’ve met someone else. I wouldn’t have seen Derek anymore—he means nothing to me now—but you stole his mother’s clip and wanted it returned, and there was no other way but for me to ask Derek to take it back for you! Oh, don’t look so alarmed—he doesn’t know
you
were the one who took it,” Lisa said impatiently. “But it meant seeing him again, and if any of your friends have said they’ve seen us together, then you only have yourself to blame.”

“You didn’t have to kiss him this afternoon!” Jacky began, the stormy note back in her voice.

“You might as well know about that too,” Lisa said grimly. “His father doesn’t like the idea of him going out with a showgirl, and he threatened to cut him off without a penny if he didn’t come back to me. His father seems to think it would be good for him to be engaged to a nurse. Well, dear Derek made a bargain with me that he’d get the clip back, no names mentioned, if I went out with him again.”

“I don’t believe it! He wouldn’t do that!”

“Oh, stop it, Jacky! Don’t act for me. I know you too well. I suspect you know perfectly well what Derek’s like, by now, but you needn’t worry. He broke his word and told his father that I gave him the clip, so I’ve cut clean from him and this time it’s for keeps. The fact that he was kissing me this afternoon is no fault of mine—if you’d been near enough, you’d have heard what I said to him about it! Now, let’s forget about Derek and concentrate on something else.”

“You really mean you’ll leave Derek alone?” Jacky insisted.

“You have my word,” Lisa said wearily. “But I advise you to mend your ways, if you want to marry into that family. They know nothing about your little weakness, so for goodness’ sake have a bit of sense and stop taking what doesn’t belong to you!”

Again Jacky batted her eyelids, but this time, Lisa felt uneasily, it was from fright. Something tugged at Lisa’s heart, but she refused to think about it. There was no sense in anticipating trouble before it came, and perhaps she was only imagining that Jacky looked rather scared.

“Jacky, there’s a child in our hospital who was injured in a road accident, and he’s calling for his parents,” Lisa said desperately.

“Oh, gosh, you haven’t come to talk to me about those old patients of yours, have you?” Jacky said, restlessly moving her shoulders. “You know I hate hospitals and that sort of thing.”

“But you know this child, and I think you know his parents. They haven’t come forward, and you’re the only one who knows anything about it.”

Jacky sat very still, and Lisa could almost hear the sharp intake of her breath.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said at last, resuming the buffing of her nails.

“Think back, Jacky. It isn’t so long ago, and it’s very important. There’s an old boatman who says he saw you through his binoculars, sitting on a seat by those people, watching the little boy; it would have been just before he wandered onto the road and was knocked down. A little redheaded boy, and they say his mother was redheaded, too, and his father was well dressed—black coat, pin-striped trousers.”

Lisa saw that Jacky did remember them. They were the obvious sort of people not easily forgotten, she felt, but Jacky was clearly not going to cooperate.

“Good heavens, I must see thousands of people about this place every day,” she said, shrugging. “How can you expect me to remember every one of them?
”

“You ought to be able to remember these people because of something that happened in the ladies’ room not long afterward,” Lisa said sharply, watching her. “You picked up a diamond ring that, had been left behind, they say.”

“Who says?” Jacky asked shrilly, jumping up.

“The cloakroom attendant. She remembers you.”

“You’ve been snooping behind my back! Why don’t you mind your own business and leave me alone?”

“Jacky, it is my business,” Lisa said desperately. “I don’t care what happened about the diamond ring—I merely mentioned it to remind you of the incident. Jacky, you must believe me, all I care about is getting that child well again, and that means bringing his parents to his bedside.”

“You said that before. What’s it have to do with me?”

“Because you were listening to their conversation and you might have heard something—anything—that would give us a clue why they don’t come to him.”

“Did you mean it about the ring and not being interested?” Jacky asked, a sly look coming into her eyes. “I didn’t take the thing, anyway. I was only looking at it, but people tell lies about me, and you can’t expect me to—
”

“Jacky, you had dark glasses on—the woman admits she’d never be able to identify you. She only guessed it was you, and I put two and two together after Simeon told me what he knew. No one cares about the ring—the woman got it back again—but what did she say when you were sitting near her?”

Jacky relaxed and then began to look amused.

“She said quite a lot of things,” she chuckled. “In fact, they were having a beautiful row. I enjoyed myself.”

“Don’t pretend to be heartless—I know you’re not as heartless as that. What were they saying?”

Jacky shrugged. “The general impression was that they’d contracted a secret marriage, and the man’s old mother wouldn’t be exactly delighted to have the news, would cut him off just like that. Do you really expect those two to come forward for the child? Why, it’d blow everything open for them!”

Lisa was appalled. “Poor little boy,” she whispered. “Oh, but I don’t—I can’t believe it. Even if the father wouldn’t risk things by coming, his mother surely would.”