Not to be Taken by Anthony Berkeley Read Free Book Online

as nurse; so we had been satisfied that everything was right in that department. Rona did all that possibly could be done to save John, and his death was a bigger blow to her than to anyone; she was really quite knocked out by it, and one could hardly recognise the old imperturbable Rona in the weeping, almost distraught woman who cried for an hour in our drawing-room on the evening that John died, and would not be consoled. Indeed, what with Rona there and Angela in a state of semi-hysteria at Oswald’s Gable, Frances and I had such an evening as we are not likely to forget.
    It may have been the strain of it which caused Frances to burst out when we were at last alone. She had borne up remarkably well so long as there was any need, as one could trust Frances to do; but once Glen had taken Rona home, and Angela had calmed down sufficiently to be left to the almost equally agitated Mitzi, Frances began to cry herself. She had been very fond of John, as all in our little circle were, and his death was a terrible shock to her.
    ‘Douglas,’ she cried as I tried to comfort her, ‘there’s something wrong. I know there is.’
    ‘Darling, what do you mean?’
    ‘Rona knows there is too. I’m certain she does.’
    ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘Rona seemed to be blaming herself for John’s death.’
    ‘Frances,’ I said sharply, ‘you’re talking nonsense.’
    ‘I’m not. Oh, I don’t mean blaming herself literally. But she kept saying, “I ought to have saved him, I ought to have been able to save him.” ’
    ‘My darling, you mustn’t attach any importance to what anyone says in these conditions. Rona’s been under terrible strain. She nursed John most devotedly, and she knocked herself up. I know for a fact that she didn’t go to bed at all for the first two nights. Besides, you know what Rona is. She can’t bear failure, and she’ll be feeling that somehow she did fail. She didn’t, of course, and tomorrow she’ll have recovered her balance.’
    But Frances was not convinced.
    ‘You can say what you like, but I believe that Rona was right from the beginning, and Glen wrong. I’m sure John didn’t die of epidemic diarrhoea.’
    ‘Pull yourself together, Frances.’
    ‘I know what I’m saying. What have you done with that bottle of medicine?’
    ‘It’s quite safe,’ I hedged.
    ‘Well, don’t throw it away,’ said Frances ominously. ‘It may be needed yet.’
    2
     
    How do rumours arise in a small village community such as ours? Nine times out of ten when you read of an exhumation taking place in a country churchyard, with all the melodramatic accompaniments of lanterns and secrecy, the act is the result of rumours with which the place has been seething for weeks.
    Frances based her suspicions (which, I must admit, appeared to me then of the wildest nature) on nothing but a medicine bottle which she and I alone in Anneypenny knew to be in our possession. No enquiries seemed to have been made for it; no one had appeared in the least interested in it; no one, outside our own small circle, had even heard of its existence. Yet I know now that within a few hours of John’s death people in the village were saying that there was something queer about it. What had they to go on? So far as I can see, nothing at all. Perhaps there are some people who say this over every death that occurs, and only cease to do so when no one takes any notice of them.
    I have often wondered whether Cyril Waterhouse was given some sinister hint by one of these rumour-mongers before he ever set foot in Anneypenny, which caused him to adopt the extraordinary attitude he did adopt, and take the otherwise almost inexplicable action he did take. There was an anonymous letter writer at work, the usual trouble-loving pest. Did Cyril receive some communication from that source? Or had he other, more sinister reasons of his own?
    Cyril Waterhouse is John’s brother and the last sort of man to be brother to bluff, simple-souled John