“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. 75 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 and gardener. Worth thinking about. So I told her I’d pack up here round about Michaelmas, sell most of the furniture and take a few bits along and have a little comfort for my last year or so. Well, there it was. I told Sister Monica what was in my mind and said: ‘Why not retire? Lady Ridding’ll see you have a good cottage and a bit of a pension, and Hannah Barrow will be only too glad to stay with you and look after you.’ She just said: ‘I don’t wish to retire. When it’s time for me to retire the Almighty will make it clear to me.’ You can’t argue with that, you know. Once a woman gets it into her head she’s being guided, there’s no use talking to her.”
“True enough,” agreed Macdonald. “Now you said that Miss Torrington was tired and her nerves were strained. Did you prescribe anything for her?”
“I did. Wilson, the chemist in Milham Prior, sent the stuff up. I gave her a sedative—the usual bromide. Wouldn’t have hurt a baby. And a bismuth mixture: more peppermint than anything else in it. She’d got a sort of nervous indigestion. Hannah
