She was silent for a moment, then she said: ‘Do you know how queer she’s been? Did Dr Leidner tell you?’
I don’t hold with gossiping about my cases. On the other hand, it’s my experience that it’s often very hard to get the truth out of relatives, and until you know the truth you’re often working in the dark and doing no good. Of course, when there’s a doctor in charge, it’s different. He tells you what it’s necessary for you to know. But in this case there wasn’t a doctor in charge. Dr Reilly had never been called in professionally. And in my own mind I wasn’t at all sure that Dr Leidner had told me all he could have done. It’s often the husband’s instinct to be reticent—and more honour to him, I must say. But all the same, the more I knew the better I could tell which line to take. Mrs Mercado (whom I put down in my own mind as a thoroughly spiteful little cat) was clearly dying to talk. And frankly, on the human side as well as the professional, I wanted to hear what she had to say. You can put it that I was just everyday curious if you like.
I said, ‘I gather Mrs Leidner’s not been quite her normal self lately?’
Mrs Mercado laughed disagreeably.
‘Normal? I should say not. Frightening us to death. One night it was fingers tapping on her window. And then it was a hand without an arm attached. But when it came to a yellow face pressed against the window—and when she rushed to the window there was nothing there—well, I ask you, it is a bit creepy for all of us.’
‘Perhaps somebody was playing a trick on her,’ I suggested.
‘Oh, no, she fancied it all. And only three days ago at dinner they were firing shots in the village—nearly a mile away—and she jumped up and screamed out—it scared us all to death. As for Dr Leidner, he rushed to her and behaved in the most ridiculous way. “It’s nothing, darling, it’s nothing at all,” he kept saying. I think, you know, nurse, men sometimes encourage women in these hysterical fancies. It’s a pity because it’s a bad thing. Delusions shouldn’t be encouraged.’
‘Not if they are delusions,’ I said dryly.
‘What else could they be?’
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say. It was a funny business. The shots and the screaming were natural enough—for anyone in a nervous condition, that is. But this queer story of a spectral face and hand was different. It looked to me like one of two things—either Mrs Leidner had made the story up (exactly as a child shows off by telling lies about something that never happened in order to make herself the centre of attraction) or else it was, as I had suggested, a deliberate practical joke. It was the sort of thing, I reflected, that an unimaginative hearty sort of young fellow like Mr Coleman might think very funny. I decided to keep a close watch on him. Nervous patients can be scared nearly out of their minds by a silly joke.
Mrs Mercado said with a sideways glance at me:
‘She’s very romantic-looking, nurse, don’t you think so? The sort of woman things happen to.’
‘Have many things happened to her?’ I asked.
‘Well, her first husband was killed in the war when she was only twenty. I think that’s very pathetic and romantic, don’t you?’
‘It’s one way of calling a goose a swan,’ I said dryly.
‘Oh, nurse! What an extraordinary remark!’
It was really a very true one. The amount of women you hear say, ‘If Donald—or Arthur—or whatever his name was—had only lived.’ And I sometimes think but if he had, he’d have been a stout, unromantic, short-tempered, middle-aged husband as likely as not.
It was getting dark and I suggested that we should go down. Mrs Mercado agreed and asked if I would like to see the laboratory. ‘My husband will be there—working.’
I said I would like to very much and we made our way there. The place was lighted by a lamp, but it was empty. Mrs Mercado showed me some of the apparatus and some copper ornaments that were being treated, and also some bones coated with wax.