‘Well I can’t say the name means anything to me. Better go and talk to Mrs Boscowan.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘She was a good bit younger than he was, I should say. Quite a personality.’ He nodded his head once or twice. ‘Yes, quite a personality. You’ll fred that out I expect.’
He took the picture, handed it down the staircase with instructions to someone below to do it up again.
‘Nice for you having so many myrmidons at your beck and call,’ said Tommy.
He looked round him, noticing his sunundings for the first ‘What’s this you’ve got here now?’ he said with distaste.
‘Paul Jaggerowsld – Interesting young Slav. Said to produce all his works under the influence of drugs – Don’t you like him?’
Tommy concentrated his gaze on a big string bag which seemed to’have enmeshed itself in s metallic green field full of distorted cows.
‘Frankly, no.’
‘Philistine,’ said Robert. ‘Come out and have a bite of lunch.’ ‘Can’t. I’ve got a meeting with a doctor at my club.’ ‘Not ill, are you?’
‘I’m in the best of health. My blood pressure is so good that it disappoints every doctor to whom I submit it.’
‘Then what do you want to see a doctor for?’
‘Oh,’ said Tommy cheerfully – I’ve just got to see a doctor about a body. Thanks for your help. Goodbye.’ Il Tommy greeted Dr Murray with some curiosity – He presumed it was some formal matter to do with Aunt Ada’s decease, but why on earth Dr Murray would not at least mention the subject of his visit over the telephone, Tommy couldn’t imagine.
‘I’m afraid I’m a little late,’ said Dr Murray, shaking hands, ‘but the traffic was pretty bad and I wasn’t exactly sure of the locality. I don’t know this part of London very well.’
‘Well, too bad you had to come all the way here,’ said Tommy. ‘I could have met you somewhere more convenient, you know.’
‘You’ve time on your hands then just now?’ ‘Just at the moment, yes. I’ve been away for the last week.’ ‘Yes, I believe someone told me so when I.rang up.’ Tommy indicated a chair, suggested refreshment, placed cigarettes and matches by Dr Murray’s side. When the two men had established themselves comfortably Dr Murray opened the conversation.
‘I’m sure I’ve aroused your curiosity,’ he said, ‘but as a matter of fact we’re in a spot of trouble at Sunny Ridge. It’s a difficult and perplexing matter and in one way it’s nothing to do with you. I’ve no earthly right to trouble you with it but there’s just an off chance that you might know something which would help me.’
‘Well, of course, I’ll do anything I can. Something to do with my aunt, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘Not directly, no. But in a way she does come into it. I can speak to you in confidence, can’t I, Mr Beresford?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘As a matter of fact I was talking the other day to a mutual friend of ours. He was telling me a few things about you. I gather that in the last war you had rather a delicate assignment.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t put it quite as seriously as that,’ said Tommy, in his most non-committal manner.
‘Oh no, I quite realize that it’s not a thing to be talked about.’
‘I don’t really think that matters nowadays. It’s a good long time since the war. My wife and I were younger then.’
‘Anyway, it’s nothing to do with’that, that I want to talk to you about, but at least I feel that I can speak frankly to you, that I can trust you not to repeat what I am now saying, though it’s possible that it all may have to come out later.’
‘A spot of trouble at Sunny Ridge, you say?’
‘Yes. Not very long ago one of our patients died. A Mrs Moody. I don’t know if you ever met her or if your aunt ever talked about her.’
‘Mrs Moody?’ Tommy reflected. ‘No, I don’t think so.
Anyway, not so far as I remember.’
‘She was not one of our older patients. She was still on the right side of seventy and she was not seriously ill in any way. It was just a case of a woman with no near relatives and no one to look after her in the domestic line. She fell into the category of what I often call to myself a flutterer. Women who more and more resemble hens as they grow older. They cluck. They forget things. They run themselves into difficulties and they worry. They get themselves wrought up about nothing at all.