She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. “I can’t tell you very much, for I was out a great deal yesterday. But nurse never left Jervis, not for one moment. She’s been most awfully kind, and—”
He cut her short, brusquely. “I know she’s a good old thing. What I want to know is whether Mr. Lexton received any visitor or visitors yesterday?”
“Visitors?” She looked at him in surprise. “Not that I know of. He was far too ill.”
In a tone which he strove to make light, he observed, “I thought that your husband might have seen Dr. Gretorex for a few moments.”
The colour rushed into her face.
“He can’t have seen him. Dr. Gretorex is in the country.” Then, a little confusedly, she added, “At least, I’m nearly sure that he is.”
“Ah, well, then he can’t have come in, of course.”
A knock sounded on the door, and Nurse Bradfield came into the room.
Ivy welcomed her presence. Looking up into the kind face, now full of sympathy, she exclaimed:
“Dr. Berwick has been asking me if my husband saw anyone yesterday? But I’m quite sure Jervis wasn’t well enough to see anyone.”
“Mr. Lexton only had one visitor,” said the nurse quickly, defensively, “and that was Dr. Gretorex.”
“I thought,” said the doctor, turning sharply on Ivy, “that you said just now that Dr. Gretorex was in the country?”
“He was to have been in the country, staying with his mother for a long weekend.”
There was no mistaking Ivy’s look of surprise. Not that she thought it mattered, one way or the other, whether Roger Gretorex had come in or not yesterday.
“At what time was he here?” asked Dr. Berwick.
The nurse waited a moment. “I suppose it would have been about four o’clock. He didn’t mean to see Mr. Lexton.”
Said Dr. Berwick grimly to himself, “Oh, didn’t he?”
Nurse Bradfield went on, a little nervously: “He asked for Mrs. Lexton, and when he heard that she was coming in soon—you said you wouldn’t be out long,” and she turned to Ivy—“he said he would come in and wait. After he had been in the drawing-room about ten minutes, he rang for the maid and asked to see me. I told him I thought Mr. Lexton on the whole better, and then he inquired if Mr. Lexton would care to see him. He said he couldn’t stay long, as he had a train to catch—”
Dr. Berwick said negligently, “Did you leave them alone together, nurse?”
“Yes, I did, doctor, for I knew they were great friends. Dr. Gretorex thought Mr. Lexton less well than the last time he had seen him. In fact, he saw a great change.”
“Did he tell you that?”
She replied quickly, “He told me that he thought him very far from well, and that he was distressed at the change he saw in him.”
“You never told me all that,” said Ivy plaintively.
“I ought to have done, Mrs. Lexton. But the truth is I was too upset, when Mr. Lexton took a turn for the worse, to remember anything.”
“I’m sure seeing Roger Gretorex for a few moments can’t have done him any harm,” said Ivy gently. “They were great friends.”
But as she made that commonplace remark, she flushed again, remembering Roger’s highfalutin’ letter—what a fool she had been not to destroy it at once!
“So I understood on that occasion when Dr. Gretorex, from my point of view, most improperly began to prescribe for him,” said the doctor, in a tone which, even to himself, sounded trenchantly ironic.
Meanwhile Nurse Bradfield, supposing that for the present the doctor had done with her, had turned towards the door.
“I should be obliged, nurse, if you would wait in the dining-room for a few moments. I should like to speak to you on my way out.”
“Certainly, Dr. Berwick.”
The good woman told herself with a touch of contempt that he could have nothing of any moment to say to her. She had done her duty, and more than her duty as a day nurse, to poor Jervis Lexton.
As she shut the door, Dr. Berwick turned to his late patient’s widow.
“In the circumstances,” he said, in a slow, emphatic tone, “I am afraid, Mrs. Lexton, that there must be a postmortem.”
“A postmortem?” repeated Ivy falteringly. “What is a postmortem, Dr. Berwick?”
She was trying to remember what it was exactly that Roger Gretorex had said about a “postmortem.” Much that he had said, during that conversation which had meant so little to him, and so much to her, was almost terribly present to her mind. But her memory as to that alarming word or expression had become dim.
Ivy Lexton had always remained, until today, most comfortably ignorant of all the terrible, strange, and awful things that now and again occurred outside her own immediate little circle of people and of interests.
The newspaper reports of a really exciting “society case,” of the kind which amused and intrigued her special set of friends, amused and intrigued her too; though only if there was nothing going on at the time in her own life of infinitely greater moment. As to what is called, often erroneously, “a murder mystery” she had never felt any interest at all.
Her look of innocent inquiry at once effaced from Dr. Berwick’s mind what might have been described as a gossamer suspicion which he had now and again entertained, during the last ten days, with regard to his patient’s wife.
He did not answer her question at once. Instead he asked her slowly, “I suppose you have some man relative who can see to everything for you? Though I advise that no arrangements be made today.”
“No arrangements?” She looked at him surprised. “Does that mean—” she waited for a moment, then went on, “that poor Jervis’s funeral cannot take place as soon as nurse thought it might?”
“Nurse? What did nurse say?” he asked quickly.
She realised at once that she had made a mistake in mentioning nurse.
Ivy was
