Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes
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Название: Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume
Автор: Annie Haynes
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788075832535
isbn:
Arthur was left alone with his cousin; he crossed to her as she stood near the fireplace with Nero lying at her feet, his eyes upturned with an expression of ridiculous devotion.
“Dorothy, I wanted to ask you—”
The girl’s eyes glanced round nervously; the pretty faint colour in her cheeks flickered.
“I—I don’t think I must stay now, Arthur. I told Aunt Laura I would sit with that poor girl a while this morning. Dr. Grieve says she ought not to be left alone.”
“That is very good of you!” Arthur said heartily. Not for a moment did he glance at the girl’s downcast face—his eyes were straying absently to the door and watching Dr. Grieve as he bent down from his dog-cart for a last word with Garth Davenant. “It was about her that I wanted to speak to you,” he went on. “Have you seen her already? How does she strike you this morning?”
“I hardly know,” Dorothy said, vaguely chilled by his manner. “She has not spoken when I have been in the room, and Minnie says that for the most part she lies quite still with her eyes wide open, though every now and then she will moan or cry mournfully to herself.”
Her cousin’s face looked very pitiful.
“Poor girl! I wish we could do more for her.”
“It is very queer that we cannot hear of her friends,” Dorothy said thoughtfully. “She is very pretty, Arthur.”
“It is the most beautiful face I have ever seen!” he declared enthusiastically. “The features are perfect, and her colouring—did you notice what glorious masses of hair? Just the colour Titian would have loved to paint! One can only imagine what she would be like in health; but even last night—” He broke off suddenly. “Well, I must not keep you from her, Dorothy. If she will only let me paint her later on—”
For in the intervals unoccupied by his different crazes he was wont to devote himself to painting, and was by no means destitute of artistic abilities.
The vague unrest in Dorothy’s eyes deepened, her lips quivered a little.
“It—oh, I should think she will!” she said simply. “For the Elaine, you mean, don’t you? I—we must all try to persuade her, Arthur.”
“Thank you! Hasn’t she exactly the ideal face for which I have been waiting? I knew you would understand,” he said heartily. “Thank you for all you are doing for her, Dorothy.”
Chapter IV
“Minnie, can I speak to her ladyship?” said the nurse. The maid looked doubtful.
“Her ladyship has just gone downstairs; she told Mrs. Parkyns and me to see that you had all you wanted.”
The nurse paused a moment in indecision. She was a pleasant, capable-looking woman, nearly thirty years of age, with dark hair, already beginning to be streaked with grey, drawn back from her face and braided smoothly beneath her cap. “It isn’t anything of that kind. I have everything I need, thank you. But I should like to speak to her.”
Minnie shook her head as the sound of wheels became audible.
“It is no use now. We have a big dinner-party to-night and the guests are arriving. I couldn’t go to her ladyship. If Miss Mavis—”
“Miss Mavis wouldn’t do,” Nurse Marston said decidedly, frowning as if in perplexity. “I must see her ladyship to-night. It is about my patient.”
“Is she worse?” the girl asked in consternation. “We thought she was going on so nicely, and Dr. Grieve said—
“She is doing very well,” the nurse said absently. “It wasn’t about that I wanted to speak. It—well, I suppose you know how to keep a still tongue in your head, Minnie?”
“I should hope I do,” returned Minnie in an affronted tone. “I should hardly have risen from waiting on the schoolroom to being Miss Mavis’s own maid if I didn’t, let me tell you that, nurse.”
“Well, well, I dare say you wouldn’t,” conceded the nurse in a conciliatory tone. “The fact of the matter is I am so bothered that I hardly know what I am saying or what to do. But I understand that nothing has been found out about my patient, or who she is, since I saw Dr. Grieve this morning?”
“Not a word. I heard Sir Arthur tell Miss Mavis as much not half an hour ago on this very spot,” glancing down the corridor and at the door leading into the pink- room, which the nurse had carefully closed behind her when she came out. “None of the people around here know anything of her, and nobody seems to have met her on the way or seen her come into the park. We can’t see daylight in it—not Sir Arthur or any of us,” concluded Minnie breathlessly.
The nurse bit her lips nervously and glanced at the closed door behind her.
“Minnie, it is in this way—if nobody else has seen that young lady before, I believe I have,” she whispered. “Now you know that I must see her ladyship to-night and why.”
Minnie’s eyes opened to their fullest extent.
“You don’t mean it, nurse! Are you sure?”
“Sure enough!” the nurse replied with a significant nod. “We come across many folk, do we nurses, and little think how we shall see them again, some of them.”
“But where did you see her? Do you know who she is?” asked Minnie.
“I don’t know who she is, any more than you do yourself, but I may know what will lead to its being found out!’ the nurse replied enigmatically. “That will do, Minnie—the rest is for her ladyship’s ear only. Now, can you get a message to her? Tell her Nurse Marston must speak to her, and alone, to-night.”
“I don’t quite see how it is to be managed,” debated Minnie slowly, “but I will do my best. I’ll speak to Mr. Jenkins—or perhaps it would be better if you wrote a bit of a note, nurse, so as to let Mr. Jenkins give it to her ladyship.”
Nurse Marston hesitated a moment; then she tore a leaf from the notebook hanging at her side, and, after hastily scribbling a line or two, folded it up and handed it to the girl.
“There, if you can get that to her!” she said.
“I will try. And—and”—Minnie detained her—“won’t you tell me a bit more, nurse?” wheedlingly.
“Not a word!” said the nurse positively. “I dare say I’ve said more than I ought now.”
“But—”
With her finger on her lips to enjoin silence, and with a farewell nod, the nurse turned the door-handle and slipped quietly into her patient’s room.
Minnie went slowly down the passage, stopping a moment to peep over the СКАЧАТЬ