I said: “I’m sorry to interrupt the first aid but I want to patch up young Allen a bit. I wonder if “Mary dear will look after Mary darling for a bit?”
“Mary dear?” Conrad raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“To distinguish her from Mary darling,” I explained. “It’s what I call her when we’re alone in the long watches of the night.” She smiled slightly but that was her only reaction.
“Mary dear,” Conrad said appreciatively. I like it. May I call you that?”
I don’t know,” she said mock-seriously. “Perhaps it’s copyright.”
“He can have the patent under licence,” I said. I can always rescind it. What were you two being so conspiratorial about?”
“Ah, yes,” Conrad said. “Your opinion, Doe. That stone out there, I mean the lump of rock Stryker was clobbered with. I’d guess the weight about seventy pounds. Would you?”
“The same.”
“I asked Mary here if she could lift a rock like that above her head and she said don’t be ridiculous.”
“Unless she’s an Olympic weight-lifter in disguise, well, yes, you are ridiculous. She couldn’t. Why?”
“Well, just look at her.” He nodded across at the other Mary. “Skin and bone, just skin and bone. Now how-”
“I wouldn’t let Allen hear you.”
“You know what I mean. A rock that size. “Murderess,” Judith Haynes called her. Well, so OK, she was out there looking with the others, but how on earth–”
“I think Miss Haynes had something else in mind,” I said. I left them, beckoned to Allen then turned to Smithy who was sitting close by. I require a surgery assistant. Feeling up to it now?”
“Sure.” He rose. “Anything to take my mind off Captain Imrie and the report be must be writing out about me right now.”
There was nothing I could do to Allen’s face that nature couldn’t do better so I concentrated on the gash on the back of his head. I froze it, shaved the area around it and jerked my head to Smithy to have a look. He did this and his eyes widened a little but he said nothing. I put eight stitches in the wound and covered it with plaster. During all of this we hadn’t exchanged a word and Allen was obviously very conscious of this.
He said: “You haven’t got much to say to me, have you, Dr. Marlowe?”
“A good tradesman doesn’t talk on the job.”
“You’re just thinking what all the others are thinking, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what all the others are thinking. Well, that’s it. Just comb your hair straight back and no one will know you’re prematurely bald.”
“Yes. Thank you.” He turned and faced me, hesitated and said: It does look pretty black against me, doesn’t it?”
“Not to a doctor.” `You-you mean you don’t think I did it?”
“It’s not a matter of thinking. It’s a matter of knowing. Look, all in all you’ve had a pretty rough day, you’re more shaken up than you realise and when that anaesthetic wears off you’re going to hurt a bit. Your cubicle’s next to mine, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but-”
“Go and lie down for a couple of hours.”
“Yes, but-”
“And I’ll send Mary through when I’ve finished with her.”
He made to speak, then nodded wearily and left. Smithy said: “That was nasty. The back of his head, I mean. It must have been one helluva clout.”
“He’s been lucky that his skull isn’t fractured. Doubly lucky in that he’s not even concussed.”
“Uh-huh.” Smithy thought for a moment. “Look, I’m not a doctor and I’m not very good at coining phrases but doesn’t this put a rather different complexion upon matters?”
“I am a doctor and it does.”
He thought some more. “Especially when you have a close look at Stryker?”
“Especially that.”
I brought Mary Darling in. She was very pale, still apprehensive and had a little girl lost look about her but she had herself under control. She looked at Smithy, made as if to speak, hesitated, changed her mind and let me get on with doing what I could. I cleaned and disinfected the scratches, taped them up carefully and said: “It’ll itch like fury for a bit but if you can resist the temptation to haul the plasters off then you’ll have no scars.
“Thank you, Doctor. I’ll try.” She looked very wan. “Can I speak to you, please?”
“Of course.” She looked at Smithy and I said: `You can speak freely. I promise you it will go no further.”
“Yes, yes, I know, but-”
“Mr. Gerran is dispensing free Scotch out there,” Smithy said and made for the door. “I’d never forgive myself if I passed up an experience that can happen only once in a lifetime.”
She had me by the lapels even before Smithy had the door fully closed behind him. There was a frantic worry in her face, a sick misery in the eyes that made me realise just how much it had cost her to maintain her composure while Smithy had been there.
“Allen didn’t do it, Dr. Marlowe! He didn’t, I know he didn’t, I swear he didn’t. I know things look awful for him, the fight they had this morning, and now this other fight and that button in-in Mr. Stryker’s hand and everything. But I know he didn’t, he told me he didn’t, Allen couldn’t tell a lie, he wouldn’t tell me a lie! And he couldn’t hurt anything, I mean just not kill anybody, I mean hurt anybody, he just couldn’t do it! And I didn’t do it.” Her fists clenched until the knuckles showed she was even, for some odd reason, trying to shake me now and tears were rolling down her face, whatever she’d known in her short life hadn’t prepared her for times and situations like those. She shook her head in despair. I didn’t, I didn’t! A murderess, that’s what she called me! In front of everybody, she called me a murderess! I couldn’t kill anybody, Dr. Marlowe, l–”
“Mary.” I stopped the hysterical flow by the simple process of putting my fingers across her lips. I seriously doubt whether you could dispose of a fly without worrying yourself sick afterwards. You and Allen together, well, if it were a particularly obnoxious fly you just might manage it. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.”
She took my hand away and stared at me: “Dr. Marlowe, do you mean-”
I mean you’re a silly young goose. Together, you make a fine pair of silly young geese. It’s not that I just don’t believe that Allen or you had anything to do with Stryker’s death. I know you hadn’t.”
She sniffed a bit and then she said: “You’re an awfully kind person, Dr. Marlowe. I know you’re trying to help us-”
“Oh, do shut up,” I said. I can prove it.”
“Prove it? Prove it?” There was some hope in the sick eyes, she didn’t know whether to believe me or not, and then it seemed that she decided not to, for she shook her head again and said numbly: “She said I killed him.”
“Miss Haynes was speaking figuratively,” I said, which is not the same thing at all, and even then she was wrong. What she meant was that you were the precipitating factor in her husband’s death, which of course you weren’t.”
“Precipitating factor?”
“Yes.” I took her hands from my now badly crushed lapels, held them in mine and looked at her in my best avuncular fashion. “Tell me, Mary darling, have you ever dallied in the moonlight with Michael Stryker?”
“Me? Have I–”
“Mary!”
“Yes,” she said miserably. I mean no, no I didn’t.”
“That’s very clear,” I said. “Let’s put it this way. Did you ever give Miss Haynes reason to suspect that you had been? Dallying, I mean.”
“Yes.” She sniffed again. “No. I mean he did.” I kept my baffled expression in cold storage and looked at her encouragingly. “He called me into his cabin, just the day we left Wick, that was. He was alone there. He said that he wanted to discuss some things about the film with me.”
“A change from etchings,” I said.
She looked at me uncomprehendingly and went on: “But it wasn’t about the film he wanted to talk. You must believe me, Dr. Marlowe. You must!”
“I believe you.”
“He closed the door and grabbed me and then–”
“Spare my unsullied mind the grisly details. When the villain was forcing his unwelcome attentions upon you there came the pit-a-pat of feminine footsteps in the corridor outside whereupon the villain rapidly assumed a position where you appeared to be forcing your unwelcome attentions upon him and when the door opened-to reveal, of course, none other than his better half-there he was, fending off the licentious young continuity girl and crying, “No, no, Nanette, control yourself, this can never be” or words to that effect.”