“It’s often more convenient not to know,” rejoined Macdonald.
CHAPTER X
“Sister Monica was an exceedingly obstinate woman,” said Dr. Brown. He spoke wearily, and his voice, despite the conditioned note of professional certitude, sounded disillusioned.
Macdonald and Reeves were sitting with the old doctor in the latter’s consulting room. Reeves, doing his “silent act,” was very much aware of his surroundings. Even on this day in midsummer the room was dim and dank and green. “Like a newfangled aquarium with the lights turned off,” thought Reeves; “we might all begin to swim in a minute, like deep-sea fishes.”
Green walls, green paint, green curtains, green carpet, all faded to despondency; green aspidistras in the fireplace, green rhododendrons and laurels and yews too close to the windows; green mosses and algae in glass tanks and beakers and test tubes, for Dr. Brown had turned naturalist in his retirement and was writing a treatise on fresh-water algae. (“Spirogyra and Hydrodictyon? See dictionary,” noted Reeves.) “I’d hate to be doctored by him: this room must be a real breeding place for bugs. I shall be getting a sore throat myself next,” thought the hardened Cockney while Dr. Brown went on:
“Of course she was too old for the job. I admit it and I admit I knew it. But when you’re old yourself you find it hard to be censorious about people who’re a dozen years younger than yourself. She’d run that place for nearly thirty years, and she’d run it well, efficiently, wisely, economically. When younger folks complained she was old-fashioned and harsh in her methods, I reminded them that that house had a better record for health than any other children’s home I know of. She’d worked non-stop, unsparingly, without holidays and without diversion. Unwise of her? Maybe, but I come of a generation that respects hard work. She’d worked herself out, like an old cart horse. She didn’t want to give up and I didn’t want to be the one to tell her to pack up. I was wrong. I admit it—but I’m not ashamed of it.”
“I respect your point of view, sir,” said Macdonald quietly, “but I have been sent here to get facts. The most important facts you can give me are those concerning Miss Torrington’s health. You were her medical adviser.”
The old man snorted. “Yes. I was her medical adviser. During all the years I’ve known her she’s never complained to me about her health, never asked for physic, never taken to her bed. I said just now she was like a horse, and she was as strong as a horse. Barring looking at her tongue, peering down her throat, taking her pulse, and taking her temperature—which she was quite capable of taking herself—I’ve never examined her. Never so much as seen her with her uniform frock unbuttoned. No need to. She’s had colds, she’s had throats, but she’s never been really ill. Not up till this last six months. And then it wasn’t disease. It was anno domini, tiredness, frayed nerves, and the knowledge that she herself was failing. I knew it couldn’t go on, but I’d set a term to it in my own mind, and I’d told her so. This was the result. It preyed on her mind and broke her up.”
“Will you enlarge on that point, sir?” asked Macdonald, and the old man cleared his throat noisily.
“You know I retired last spring. I kept on Gramarye at Sister Monica’s request. She didn’t want a change, not at her age. For over a quarter of a century, barring my own holidays, I’d been to that house at eleven o’clock every Monday morning. The drill was always the same. Hannah showed me up to the little dispensary where Sister Monica was waiting, and Hannah paraded those tots past me, each taught to say ‘Good morning, Doctor’ and ‘Thank you.’ If there were any cot cases, those two women would march me up to the dormitories, regulation hospital fashion. I’ve seen them through their measles and mumps and chicken pox, prescribing the same medicine and treatment, which Sister Monica knew as well or better than I did. At the end of it Hannah would march me to the front door—always the same, Monday after Monday. Sister Monica, and Hannah too, knew all about the treatment for children’s ailments, knew it by heart. They didn’t want any bright young fellow with new ideas coming along, turning everything upside down.” He broke off and sighed, a heavy, old man’s sigh, and then went on: “When I retired, I thought I’d live out my natural span here, pottering about with algae and fossils, but it wasn’t so easy. That young chap, Ferens, he’s a capable fellow: up-to-date, au fait with all this hooey over glands and hormones and vitamins and antitoxins and antibodies and all the rest. Quite right, too. But his very existence up there was an implicit criticism of all I’d ever done. I’m not criticising, mind you, and I’m not grumbling. But when old Anna Freemantle lost her husband—my wife was a Freemantle—when Anna suggested she’d got a big comfortable house and not too much money to run it on and why not come along and share the expenses and the comfort, well, I thought it was a good idea.”
He cleared his throat again and said: “I’m rambling on, but let me tell you my own way. I’m too old to learn new tricks.”
“I ask nothing better than for you to talk in your own way, sir,” said Macdonald. “You’re giving me a vivid picture of things which I’d only guessed at.”
“You’re a good listener, Chief Inspector. Shows your wisdom and your manners, too,” growled old Brown. “Where was I?”
“Anna Freemantle,” prompted Macdonald, and he went on:
“Yes. Anna. Seventy-five last year, but spry as they make ’em. In Wiltshire she lives: nice place, nice stretch of river, a bit of fishing, and a good housekeeper
