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

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СКАЧАТЬ said Mavis, advancing. “I am so sorry she is not able to see you this morning, but if there is anything that I can tell you—you are a friend of Nurse Marston’s are you not?”

      “Her greatest friend, I believe,” Charlotte returned in her brisk, matter-of-fact tones. “We were probationers together, though Mary was some years the younger, and we have kept in communication with one another ever since. Ah, I see you did not think I was a nurse”—as Mavis glanced at her serviceable green dress and plain hat—“but I don’t wear uniform as a rule in my holidays! To tell the truth it is a relief to get out of it and dress like other people sometimes. I have a month off, Miss Hargreave, and I came to Lockford yesterday. I mean to find out what has become of Mary Marston, and I want you to help me.”

      “I only wish I could,” Mavis said earnestly. “But nothing we do seems any good. You know my brother has had a detective down?”

      “I have heard so.” There was a pause. Charlotte was apparently studying the pattern of the carpet. Garth, from the point of vantage he had taken up in a distant window-seat, watched her, and decided that she was at a loss how to begin. “I am sure of one thing—that Mary Marston had no idea of going away of her own free will that night; her letter to me proved it.”

      Mavis drew a long breath.

      “Ah, I heard you had a letter, but she must have left the house of her own free will, I think! I should like to see the letter.”

      Charlotte raised her hands.

      “I wish you could!” she said. “I never thought it was of any particular importance, and I should have my work cut out for me, with my luggage, going about as I do, if I hoarded up letters. I always burn them after they are read.”

      “Oh, what a pity it is!” Mavis said as she drew up a chair. “Sit down, Nurse Gidden; you must be tired if you walked up.”

      “Yes, it is a goodish way by the road—thank you!” Charlotte said as she accepted the courtesy. “Not but what I remember pretty well what was in the letter,” she resumed after a pause. “She said that nobody knew who the young lady was that she was nursing, but that she herself had seen her in different circumstances, and she felt it was her duty to tell Lady Laura at once, as she thought Lady Laura ought to know who she had in the house. I can’t remember that she said anything more definite”—wrinkling up her brows—“but I know the impression left on my mind was that she thought Lady Laura would soon get rid of the young lady when she did know. The other thing I can recall is that she had only come to the Manor temporarily, that she said she didn’t like leaving her mother just then, and if it had been anybody but Mr. Garth Davenant who asked her to she didn’t think she should have gone.”

      “Oh, yes,” Mavis said quickly. “I can understand that! Her mother nursed Mr. Garth Davenant and his brother, and they have always been very kind to the Marstons.”

      “So I have heard. That part of the letter does not puzzle me, Miss Hargreave,” remarked Charlotte composedly. “It shows though that Mr. Garth Davenant had a pretty strong influence over her—that is what I notice; but my opinion, looking at the case all round, is that that young lady she was nursing knew she was recognized, and, having her own motives for stopping at the Manor, contrived to get Miss Marston out of the way somehow, so that she should not tell Lady Laura who she was. That is where I fancy you can help me, Miss Hargreave.”

      Mavis shook her head.

      “You are quite on the wrong tack, Nurse Gidden—I can vouch for that. Hilda was lying in a semi-conscious state all the time the nurse was in the room. I don’t think she had any idea that Nurse Marston had recognized her, and that she had nothing to do with her subsequent disappearance I am absolutely certain, because I went into her room when the nurse came out to see my mother, and remained there until her absence caused uneasiness and they came to make inquiries. It is out of the question that Hilda could have had anything to do with it.”

      “Not herself, certainly; she could have got some one to do it for her perhaps,” suggested the other.

      “Impossible! Nobody had been in the room all day but ourselves and my maid. After the nurse came she sat by the bed all the time. Hilda had no opportunity of plotting anything of the kind, even if she were inclined, which I do not believe for one moment. Nurse Marston’s disappearance and the rumours connecting her with it have been a real trouble to her.”

      “Um!” Nurse Gidden, evidently a lady of free and easy manners, unfastened her coat and leaned back in her chair. “Well, what you say does seem to put this young lady out of count,” she observed; “but I don’t know what to make of it. Can’t you help me at all, Miss Hargreave?”

      “I wish I could,” Mavis said, with a heartfelt sigh. “I was just saying when you came in that the atmosphere of the Manor is dreadful just now. Suspicion seems to be in the very air.”

      “It is bad for you—anyone can see that,” Charlotte agreed sympathetically. “Well, as it is no use thinking any more of the lady, I must trust to the gentleman and look after Mr. Garth Davenant a little more closely than I fancy he has been looked after yet.”

      Mavis started, her eyes flashed.

      “I do not—”

      Garth interrupted her.

      “One moment,” he said, coming forward. “I think before you go on, Nurse Gidden, I ought to tell you that I am Garth Davenant.”

      Charlotte did not seem in the faintest degree discomposed; her clear grey eyes met his frankly with just a touch of amusement in their glance.

      “I guessed as much from the first,” she said equably, “and I am glad to tell you to your face, Mr. Davenant, how things look to me. I say to myself, times and again, that only some very strong motive could have taken Mary out of this house that night. How she could reconcile it to her duty to her patient to go at all I cannot imagine, but some one must have had a pretty strong influence over her—the motive must have been urgent to induce her to do so. Now from her letter, as well as from her mother, I know that she would do a good deal for Mr. Garth Davenant, and I am told that only the week before she came here she was engaged on some private business with Mr. Garth Davenant in Exeter. It seems to me that it is possible that that same business might require more attention later on, and that Mary might have been persuaded to go away to look after it, and kept away. That is the only other theory that I have been able to evolve.”

      Garth had taken up his favourite position with his elbow against the mantelpiece, one hand shading his eyes, the other playing absently with his watch-chain. Was it Mavis’s fancy, she wondered, or did his face pale as Nurse Gidden spoke?

      There was a long pause. At last Davenant raised his head and straightened himself.

      “Would it be any use my giving my word of honour that I have not heard one word of Nurse Marston since she left this house, that my business—the subject of which I was talking to her in Exeter—is entirely at an end, and had absolutely no connection with her disappearance—could have had none?” he added vehemently.

      Charlotte looked at him doubtfully.

      “Well, I am glad to hear you say so, though I can’t say that I mean to place implicit reliance on what anyone else tells me,” she remarked frankly. “I intend to thrash matters out for myself. But—well, I don’t mind saying that I am glad I have seen you and spoken to you, Mr. Davenant.” She rose. “I wanted to ask Miss Hargreave if her ladyship would allow me to see Mary’s room, СКАЧАТЬ