Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes

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СКАЧАТЬ what on earth do you mean? Certainly I am not Mary Marston! This is her home, isn’t it? That is her mother? Why should she faint if she did think I was Mary?”

      Ruth Carson answered the question by asking another.

      “If you are not Mary, who are you?”

      “A friend of hers—Charlotte Gidden by name,” was the brisk reply. “Pray, do you Lockford folk think that there is only one nurse in the world and that her name is Mary Marston? We were at Guy’s together, Mary and I; and as I am spending my holidays at Plymouth I thought I would come over and look her up. But let me see what I can do here.”

      She helped Ruth to assist the half-unconscious Mrs. Marston up the path and deposited her in the arm-chair. Then she took command of the situation and dispatched Ruth for simple remedies; after these had been applied for a few minutes Mrs. Marston opened her eyes.

      “Mary!” she said feebly. “Mary!”

      The nurse drew a little out of sight, and Ruth answered: “No, it was not Mary, Mrs. Marston, but it was a friend of hers.”

      “A friend of Mary’s,” the weak voice replied. “Who is it? I should like to see her. Has she brought any news?”

      “She will do now,” Nurse Gidden said as she stepped forward. “Yes, I am Mary’s friend, Charlotte Gidden; I am sure you have heard her speak of me, haven’t you, Mrs. Marston? Now I think the best thing for you would be a cup of tea; I can hear the kettle singing away on the fire, and I wonder if you would be good enough to give me a cup with you? It is a hot walk from the station.”

      “Ay, for sure!” Mrs. Marston said feebly. “You are kindly welcome to everything I have, for Mary’s sake. Many’s the time I have heard her speak of you. You know as she’s lost, maybe?”

      Charlotte Gidden looked bewildered.

      “Lost! Mary lost! I don’t know what you are talking about, Mrs. Marston.”

      “It is lost she is though, poor girl!” Mrs. Marston went on. “The trouble of it is like to kill me. Nursing that poor young lady up at the Manor she was, and just walked out of the room and never been heard of since.”

      “Never been heard of since!” Nurse Gidden turned to Ruth Carson, who, nothing loath, supplied the details in the intervals of laying the cloth and pouring out the tea.

      Charlotte Gidden, eating a slice of the thin bread and butter that Ruth had cut and sipping her tea, thought that she had never listened to a more extraordinary story.

      “Why on earth should she go away like that?” she debated. “I had a letter from her after she went to the Manor, and I am sure she was not thinking of leaving then, though she seemed put about over the young lady. She had seen her somewhere before, she said, and she thought it was her duty to tell Lady Laura Hargreave so at once, though she doubted how it would be taken, as she hadn’t much proof of what she said, and they were all so taken up with the young lady.”

      Mrs. Marston and Ruth were both gazing at her in amazement. The former was the first to speak:

      “You don’t mean you heard from her after she went to the Manor?”

      “Yes—the very night she got there,” Charlotte affirmed, helping herself to another slice of bread and butter. “She had just seen her patient when she wrote. What did they say when they found she had recognized her, Mrs. Marston? Were they surprised?”

      “Don’t you see, they never did know!” Ruth Carson burst out. “Mary had left the young lady with Miss Mavis while she told her ladyship, and she never saw my lady or nobody else. That letter of yours must have been wrote while she was waiting, and it was the last as she ever did write, poor thing—leastways, as we have been able to hear of.”

      “But—but it couldn’t have been that night she went away,” said Nurse Gidden. “She had no such notion in her head, I am sure, when she wrote to me.”

      “She had no notion of going away the day before she went up to the Manor, I am sure,” Mrs. Marston said tearfully. “We were sitting having our bit of dinner together as cheerful as possible and Mary, she was saying how glad she was to be at home with me for a bit, when Mr. Garth come in and asked her if she would go up and nurse the young lady that had lost her memory. I don’t think she would have gone, only being as it was Mr. Garth she couldn’t well refuse.”

      “Why not?” Nurse Gidden asked sharply. “She said in my letter she only came because Mr. Garth Davenant asked her. Who is he?”

      “Oh, Mary was so fond of all the Davenants,” said Mrs. Marston, “that I believe she would have gone anywhere for them! I nursed Mr. Garth and Mr. Walter both—Mr. Walter he was delicate, and I was as fond of him as if he had been my own child, and I had Mr. Garth till he was going on for two and I got married. My lady and all of them have been untold good to Mary—it was through her ladyship as she first took up with nursing. I wish she never had now,” the poor woman added, with a catch in her voice. “Maybe she would be here with me safe and sound but for that.”

      Nurse Gidden’s bewilderment appeared to increase as she thought the matter over.

      “What on earth could have induced her to go off like that! It seems to me”—thoughtfully—“that some one must have had a pretty strong influence over her to induce her first to go away and then to keep her silent all this time. I suppose this—”

      “They took the best way of keeping her quiet,” Mrs. Marston interrupted with a groan. “They made sure of that. Do you think anything would have kept my girl from letting me know where she was if she was alive? Her that thought so much of her old mother! If I only knew where they have put her!”

      In spite of her strong practical common sense, Charlotte Gidden shuddered, and her rosy, matter-of-fact countenance turned many degrees paler. To her, realizing to the full Mary Marston’s kindly, straightforward nature, as well as her love for her mother, it did seem almost an impossibility that she, knowing the anxiety she must be causing, should keep silence as to her whereabouts for six weeks. Yet she could not bring herself to believe that serious harm could have befallen her friend.

      “Perhaps her letters have been stopped?” she cogitated. “Everybody liked Mary who knew her; no one would want to hurt her, I am sure. But somebody must know where she is and have a motive for keeping quiet. The young lady she was nursing—I fancy Mary thought she would not like her speaking out—I suppose she couldn’t have anything to do with it?”

      “No, no! She was in bed and unconscious, poor thing! She knew nothing about it. A sweet, pretty young lady she is too!”

      Ruth Carson took the answer upon herself.

      “Beside, Miss Hargreave was sitting with her; she took the nurse’s place when she went away, and stayed there till they came and told her she was lost. Superintendent Stokes, he called here the other day and asked if Mary had ever a sweetheart.”

      “Sweetheart! Rubbish!” Nurse Gidden drew in her lips scornfully. “We nurses have something else to do than run about after them. No! Somebody that Mary thought a lot of must have met her on her way down to Lady Laura’s room and persuaded her to go somewhere else. Now we know that she wouldn’t have gone to the Manor but Mr. Garth Davenant asked her, and she couldn’t refuse him. How if he asked her to go somewhere else that night?”

      Ruth СКАЧАТЬ