Tyringham Park by Rosemary McLoughlin Read Free Book Online

Dixon.” Dr Finn smiled in the direction of the young woman he’d always thought of as “nervy” even though she stood straight and still with her
hands clasped in front of her; a picture of calm. Maybe it was the hurried way she spoke or the constant blinking that hinted at an uneasiness beneath the surface.
    He wondered if it was the police or the mother who had given the order to leave the cot exactly as it was. Whoever it was had neglected to ensure young Charlotte was moved to another room where
she wouldn’t have to look, on a daily basis, at the emptiness behind the bars of the cot.
    The girl in the bed kept her dull eyes on the doctor and didn’t smile or speak as he crossed the room. He hoped that the concern he felt on seeing her looking so ill didn’t show on
his face.
    “Well, how is my favourite girl?” he asked her, before shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the nanny, who immediately reverted to standing straight with her eyes cast down
and her hands clasped in front of her. “Now let me have a look at you, Miss Charlotte, and we’ll see what the problem is.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Tell your old
friend what the trouble is.”
    “She isn’t talking, Doctor,” said the nanny. “Not one word since the baby disappeared. And not eating neither. I keep saying if you don’t eat you’ll lose your
strength. I keep telling her that.” Her eyes closed as if for emphasis.
    “Thank you, Nurse,” he said. “How long has she been in bed?”
    “Four days, but she were poorly before that. Ever since . . . well, you know. Gets out to use the commode then crawls right back in again. Won’t let me help her neither.”
    He checked Charlotte’s pulse, temperature, throat, eyes, heartbeat and abdomen, all the while calling her his pet and his brave girl. “Now your lungs,” he said as he helped her
into a sitting position, noting how much weight she had lost since he last saw her.
    “Take a deep breath and hold it, there’s a good girl.” He lifted her nightdress and saw the large fading bruises in a line across her back.
    “Oh dear, that looks nasty. I thought that you’d given up falling off horses.”
    The nanny’s head bobbed down. “It weren’t the horses – it were horseplay on the bed, more like. Gets overexcited and don’t know when to stop.”
    “Will you ever forget your broken arm last year when you couldn’t ride for ten weeks? Now that wasn’t much fun, was it?”
    Charlotte looked at the doctor, then the nanny, and then finally, as she slid back onto the pillows, the ceiling.
    The doctor noticed that the nanny cast her eyes down when he spoke to her, but watched him when she thought he wasn’t looking. With his peripheral vision, the doctor noted the bobbing head
and the blinking eyes.
    “Will I ask Manus to find you a quieter pony?” asked the doctor and was pleased to see Charlotte smile as she shook her head. “I saw him on the way up riding your Mandrake.
What a big horse for a little girl of eight. He’d frighten the life out of me.” The smile grew wider. “Manus told me months ago you’re well able to handle Mandrake. He says
you’ve got a special talent and you’re nothing short of a champion. Actually, if I told you all the good things he said about you, you’d get a big swelled head.”
    Charlotte continued to look pleased but, as the doctor began to pack his black bag, a look of disquiet replaced the smile on her face.
    “And what’s this I’m told? That you’re not eating? Would I be right in saying that?” The doctor noticed out of the corner of his eye the nanny lifting her head.
Charlotte glanced at her before looking back at the doctor and nodding.
    “We’ll have to do something about that or Cook won’t be too happy, will she? And what about sleeping? Are you getting plenty of sleep?”
    Charlotte shook her head.
    “She’s awake half of the night and when she is asleep she’s tossing and turning around