The Little Doctor (7 page)

“He has a receptionist,” Valerie offered almost belligerently. “I only help with the telephone on her days off. It’s difficult to get people to stay in Kirby Marton.”

“Which means that your help must be invaluable to Max.”

Jane felt desperate. It seemed that she had to convince Valerie, for Max’s sake and, vaguely, for her own. Valerie could so easily wreck his life and she must try to stop her if she could.

“It’s probably very difficult to settle down in a quiet place after London,” she conceded, and then found herself saying almost apart from her own volition: “If you think that coming down to Allingham now and then would help, I’ll do what I can to introduce you to the people I know.”

Valerie made a small, distasteful grimace.

“Hospital people!” she said. “That’s all I ever meet in London—with Max. I’ve had to live all my life with them. Daddy talked and thought and lived hospitals! His profession was all he ever wanted. He could have had a wonderful life, too. There was always plenty of Lisbon money.”

“Your father
had
a wonderful life, Valerie,” Jane said sharply. “It was also a useful life. He was a great name in his profession. People came to him with confidence and he valued that more than anything else. And so does Max.”

It was all she had to say. She could not force Valerie to see the truth. She moved toward the door, and Valerie let her pass.

“You won’t tell Max?” she asked again with an odd little quiver in her voice. “It would hurt him, Jane—”

Jane’s fingers tightened over the handle of the door.

“No,” she said, I won’t tell Max.”

Driving back across the moors with Nicholas, she remained silent for a very long time.

“You can say ‘I told you so’!” she conceded, at last.

“About Valerie?” He drove in silence for a moment. “I thought I had her weighed up, but now I’m not so sure,” he added. “While I was paying my bill she came out looking for you with a very odd expression in her eyes. If I were capable of sentiment where someone like Valerie is concerned, I’d say she looked afraid.”

A
fraid of losing Max, Jane thought. Aloud she said, “What makes you incapable of sentiment when you consider Valerie?”

“Because I believe that I know her type.” Nicholas’ voice was dry, his words harsh in their utter denunciation. “Lovely to look at, sweet and charming to all outward appearance, Valerie’s Achilles heel is undoubtedly men.”

Jane was silenced.

“She can’t help herself, unfortunately,” Nicholas went on, “and she’s not going to be much help to Kilsyth. She hasn’t been in the past. There was affair after affair in London, apparently. Like so many harmless-looking women, Valerie is a little man-eater.”

“I want to defend my sex,” Jane said unsteadily, “but I can’t this time. I hate the way she’s treating Max, Nicholas, yet I can’t help thinking she really is in love with him.”

“How sentimental can you get?” Nicholas asked. “You just wouldn’t understand Valerie. There may be something Kilsyth can do himself.”

“But what? He can’t go changing practices all over the country all his life,” Jane protested.

“True enough, he agreed. “But is it really your worry, Jane?”

“I—feel that it is.”

He did not answer her, driving very fast for the remainder of the journey so that they were back at the flat before midnight. Where, Jane wondered, did Max believe Valerie to be?

In an odd sort of panic she hoped that Valerie would not say she had been to Allingham. Allingham was on the way to Scarborough. It would have been easy enough.

By the time the Mobile Unit was due back in the dale her thoughts were chaotic. She could not allow herself to become involved in Max’s life like this, although some sort of contact was inevitable. Her work was too precious to her to let it go easily and, over the past two years, she had built up a pleasant doctor-patient relationship with the caravan clinic which she valued. Nothing, she told herself,
nothing
was to be allowed to take that away.

The dale was mellow in sunlight as she drove along ahead of the caravan. She had a school clinic to attend in a nearby village at ten o’clock and had planned a picnic lunch by the riverside, knowing that Joe and Oliver Baxter would have the unit ready for action by the time she reached Kirby Marton at two.

The school clinic was a busy one. No babies here, apart from the visiting dentist who insisted on having everything his own way!

“You know, Doctor,” he complained with a peevish smile, “one has to serve one’s time at teeth. A smattering of knowledge just isn’t enough.”

Jane accepted the snub. She had been daring enough to suggest to him that one of her small patients might benefit by an extraction, but she accepted his ruling that the tooth should remain in the painful-looking little jaw for a week longer. Of course, the little man was quite right, she reflected. She ha
d
stepped across the boundary line of professional etiquette, no doubt, but she had never met anyone quite like this before. He was still in his early thirties and going bald, and he had a decided squint in one eye, which should have been attended to in childhood. Either the squint or the premature baldness had made him excessively aggressive and he was
not going to stand any nonsense, especially from a woman doctor.

“I’m in rather a hurry,” he announced at twelve o’clock. “I’ve Kirby Marton to do before I can even think about getting home. These dale clinics can be very trying,” he added with a heavy sigh, “especially when you think of the fellow in ordinary practice. I had to report one of them the other day for grossly unprofessional conduct, but, of course, nothing happened!”

Jane, giving only half an ear to his complaint, was already packing up her bag. He was, she felt sure, the sort of man who loved reporting people.

“I’ve finished now, Mr. Tinman,” she announced. “I’m pushing on to Kirby Marton myself. I may see you there.”

“But aren’t you having a school dinner?” he asked, appalled at the thought of her possible extravagance.

“I’m going on a picnic by the river while the sunshine lasts,” Jane tol
d
him with relief. “I brought sandwiches and a flask. It’s such a lovely day.”

“It’s October,” he grunted, possibly thinking that she was quite mad, but Jane was already making her escape.

Pulling up on the river bank, she found a sheltered spot to sit beside a shallow weir. The trees above her head had shed little drifts of leaves down into the water and they floated away like tiny rafts until they were sucked swiftly over the falls. There was hardly any sound; only the noise of the contented river and the distant bleating of sheep far up in the hillsides.

“Good morning, Doctor! Or ought I to say ‘Good afternoon’? It must be after twelve o’clock, since you’re here.”

She turned at the sound of the familiar voice.

“Max!”

He came down the bank to where she sat, parting the overhanging branches to reach her.

“I didn’t hear your car,” she said, feeling that she had been caught unaware, after all. “Perhaps I wasn’t
f
ully conscious of the road.”

“Only the river and the hills!” He sat down on a stone beside her, looking into the brown water where the little flecks of foam eddied beneath them. “It’s very lovely here, and very peaceful. I left my car back on the road when I saw yours standing there. I wondered what had taken you down here, but I might have guessed.”

He did not remind her in so many words of those other days when they had sat above a noisy waterfall, when there had been pine and rowan over their heads instead of alder, and all the wide moors had been aflame with the gold or bracken after the heather had died. And Jane dared not suggest, even to herself, that he might be thinking of those far-off student days.

“
I find this cheaper and kinder to my figure than school lunches,” she smiled, offering him a choice of fruit. “On a day like this, too, it’s a relief to be out of doors.”

“Yes,” he agreed, refusing the proffered fruit but lighting a cigarette. “I’m sorry I had to leave Valerie behind in the surgery. She stands in occasionally for my receptionist.”

He was gazing down at his hands, and somehow it seemed to Jane that he had more to say about Valerie. Once again, however, he hesitated, brushing the momentary impulse at confidence aside. He sat until he had finished his cigarette, talking mostly about the practice, and then he got to his feet.

“I have to go,” he said regretfully. “I have a busy round this afternoon.” Again there was the barest hesitation before he added: “If you have time, Jane, perhaps you will call in and see Val? My surgery’s in Front Street, just beyond the hall.”

There had been no mention of any previous meeting between herself and Valerie. She had given Valerie her word, and Valerie had made her own excuses about her visit to Scarborough.

For Jane it was like acting a lie when she said,
“I’ll
see what time I have to spare, Max, but I would like to get back with the caravan tonight.
”

All the way to Kirby Marton she felt angry and humiliated.
Valerie had no right to place her in such a position, as little right as she had to lie
and
trick Max.

Was he really deceived? She could not help remembering the tightness of his mouth and the anger in his eyes as he had watched Edward Jakes and Valerie across the width of his own drawing room.

Why, then, should Valerie be afraid? There could be no doubt about her uneasiness when she had begged clemency a few nights ago in Scarborough. Jane came to the conclusion that all normal reasoning was useless in this case. She was too near to the heart of the matter to form an entirely unbiased opinion, perhaps; far too conscious of Max’s problem and what it could yet mean to his career. What Sir Francis had built up, his daughter could so easily tear down. In utter selfishness
and
an odd sort of ignorance, Valerie could ruin Max’s life for him.

Jane tried to concentrate on her own work. These few stolen moments by the river had left her with a strange feeling of elation, although they had contained no more than a request from Max to help with Valerie’s silly little burden of loneliness. Was it because it was something he had asked her to do for him without actually putting the request into words?

There was danger in that, of course, the feeling that she might be necessary in his life. She could not allow it to develop. Valerie was all he needed.

She dealt with the afternoon’s quota of patients, drank the tea that was brought to her and turned to the second half of her list.

She had administered two more doses of vaccine when Olive tapped rather urgently on the door.

“
Y
es, Nurse?
”

“There’s quite a commotion, Doctor.” Olive put an anxious face round the door. “There’s been an accident—rather a bad one I think. Someone in a car—”

Jane was on her feet, her thoughts flying to Max for no very justifiable reason. There were dozens of cars going up and down the dale.

“Why should there be a commotion?” she asked as evenly as she could,
f
or already she had caught a sense of urgency from the nurse’s manner. Olive was not the type of person to come rushing in in a flap, even over a serious accident. She had been too well trained for that. “Surely they’ve contacted the village doctor—”

For a split second she had forgotten that the local doctor was Max, but now a sort of cold horror took possession of her. It was a dread she could not explain, and simply and practically she dismissed it with her next question.

“They’ve surely contacted Doctor Kilsyth’s surgery?”

“Yes, Doctor, they did.” Olive hesitated to moisten her lips because the enormity of what she had to say had left her mouth and throat dry. “They have contacted Doctor Kilsyth’s surgery, but there’s no one there.
”

“But that’s ridiculous!” Jane protested. “Mrs. Kilsyth’s there. The doctor’s wife. She’s standing in this afternoon for the receptionist—”

Breathlessly she seemed to be repeating Max’s own words, while deep in her subconscious mind she knew that they meant nothing.

“No,” Olive returned firmly, “there’s nobody at the surgery. They’ve rung and rung, but the telephone isn’t answered. It’s half-past four,” she added, as if that might be some help.

“It wouldn’t matter if it was half-past ten!” Jane exclaimed. “There ought to be someone there
!”
Automatically she began to fix a syringe. “Have they tried the house? Doctor Kilsyth’s house, I mean,” she added more gently, when Olive looked taken aback. “Marton Heights. Mrs. Kilsyth would have the line switched through from the surgery board if she had decided to go home.”

“She didn’t do t
h
at,” Olive said definitely. “They’ve been through to the house and Mrs. Kilsyth isn’t there either.” She hesitated. “The servants don’t know where she is.”

“But surely they could say where Doctor Kilsyth had gone?” Even as she spoke Jane knew that an ordinary servant would have no knowledge of Max’s exact whereabouts. Only at the surgery would they have a copy of his list and be able to trace him,
and
the surgery had been deserted. Valerie, who was the only person who
k
new where to find Max within a reasonably given time, had simply walked out.