Chapter 1 #2
Daisy was halfway across the waiting room when she heard hasty footsteps crunching on the gravel outside. The door swung open and a young woman in a grey cloak and white nurse’s cap appeared, high-coloured and breathing hard.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she cried. Even in her flustered state she was quite pretty, though rather sharp featured.
She stripped off her gloves, dropped them on the desk, and cast off her cloak to reveal a neat navy frock with white collar and cuffs.
“I’m Nurse Hensted, and you must be Mrs. Fletcher.
Mr. Talmadge hasn’t called you through?”
“No. I knocked and there was no answer.”
“That’s odd. He’s usually ever so punctual. But so am I, and look at me.” Miss Hensted checked the watch pinned to her bodice. “Nearly ten minutes late! Lucky for me he is too. I’ll just go set everything ready for you and by that time he’ll be here.”
Daisy resigned herself to going through with the dreaded business.
The nurse turned the handle of the connecting door, but it didn’t open. “Oh dear! I wonder why he locked it? Maybe he decided to go out to lunch. He usually leaves it unlocked when he’s in the house.”
“He must have been delayed,” said Daisy, seizing the chance of a reprieve. “I can come back another time.”
“Oh no, Mrs. Fletcher, I’m sure he’ll be here any minute. There’ll be plenty of time for an examination at least, even
if you should need another appointment. I’ll tell you what, I’ll go round to the front door and check if he’s just got busy with something and not noticed the time. I expect that’s it. Why don’t you come with me?”
By this time Daisy was beginning to be distinctly annoyed with Talmadge.
She was, after all, a neighbour as well as a patient, and he ought to have had the courtesy to be on time for her.
Rather than twiddle her thumbs in the depressing waiting room, she accompanied Nurse Hensted, hoping for another opportunity to flee without looking like a coward.
A shower began to spatter down as they turned onto the paved path.
“Botheration,” said Daisy, “I’ve left my umbrella in the waiting room. I’d better fetch it.”
“It will wait,” Miss Hensted pointed out, apparently without humorous intent. “We’ll be inside in a moment, if you come along. Otherwise I may get left on the doorstep while the maid goes to find Mr. Talmadge. They all know Mrs. Talmadge gets snippy at me going through the house.”
She seemed quite apprehensive, so Daisy, with an internal sigh, agreed. They hurried to the front door and had just reached it when a taxicab turned into the drive.
Mrs. Talmadge emerged. She wore a smart fawn coat, its shawl collar and wide cuffs trimmed with dark bands of astrakhan, as was her cloche hat.
Even her handbag had astrakhan trimmings.
As she approached, she put up the hat’s short veil and Daisy saw in her face signs of agitation or distress, a redness around the eyes, not quite concealed by careful make-up.
“What is going on, Nurse?” she asked sharply, and then, “Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Fletcher, good afternoon. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Good afternoon,” said Daisy.
Before she could explain, Miss Hensted interrupted, sounding quite antagonistic. “It’s Mr. Talmadge. Mrs. Fletcher came for her appointment and he’s not there. The door’s locked so we came round to see if maybe he’s overslept his forty winks or something.”
Mrs. Talmadge, her hand on the door handle, glanced back.
A brief look passed between the two women.
A shared secret, with no trace of liking, Daisy thought.
Did Raymond Talmadge sometimes drink too much at lunch?
But no, his reputation as a first-class dentist would never have survived that kind of overindulgence.
“We had a difficult morning,” the nurse continued. “Two screaming kiddies, and old Mr. Pettigrew, who’s set on keeping all his teeth though half of them ought to be pulled.”
“My husband will be so sorry to have kept you waiting, Mrs. Fletcher. Do come in out of the rain.”
“Thank you, but I won’t stay. I can make another appointment and come back another day.”
“Oh no, you mustn’t do that. I know how difficult it is to nerve oneself to see a dentist. Raymond will certainly fit you in this afternoon.”
Curses, foiled again! Daisy meekly followed Mrs. Talmadge into the house, Nurse Hensted at her heels.
On her previous visit, Daisy had been too busy trying to recall the names and faces of new acquaintances to pay the
house much heed. The hall was welcoming, parquet floored, with daffodils in a green glass vase on the glossy walnut half-moon table.
Reflected in the looking-glass hanging over the table, the flowers glowed like an indoor sun.
Beside the vase, a silver tray held a couple of calling cards and three or four unopened letters.
Ignoring these, Mrs. Talmadge opened a door on the left and glanced into the room beyond.
“He’s not in his study. Surely he’s not still eating lunch.
It’s Cook’s day off, so she left him a cold lunch.
” As she spoke, Mrs. Talmadge crossed to the opposite door and opened it.
“He hasn’t eaten it. I wonder if he decided to go out instead and something delayed him? Just let me check the drawing room.”
They all trooped into the drawing room, a large room at the back of the house, furnished in the elegantly simple style of Sheraton or Hepplewhite—Daisy could never remember the difference.
The wallpaper, striped in muted tones of lilac and blue, was perfectly complemented by two vases of vibrant Dutch iris.
Yet the overall effect was lifeless, almost museumlike, wonderful for entertaining but unattractive for a cosy evening at home.
No books or magazines lay about, no chess or draughts board with a half-played game, no jigsaw puzzle begun and temporarily abandoned, not even a record left out on the gramophone.
It reminded Daisy of the Fletcher house before she had moved in and subverted the rigid order imposed by Alec’s mother. Unlike Alec, though, the Talmadges had no children, so excessive tidiness was more understandable, if not more inviting.
It had not, apparently, invited Raymond Talmadge to
snooze on one of those stiff brocaded sofas. His wife turned back, looking upset.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Fletcher. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling well and lay down upstairs.
Otherwise I’m afraid he must have gone out to lunch, though I can’t imagine what might have delayed him.
Oh, Gladys,” she said to a maid who was coming down the stairs at the rear of the hall, “have you seen the master?”
“No, m’m, not since breakfast. We’ve been upstairs doing some mending, me and Miss Kidd. I was coming down to clear the table. If you just came in the front door, I ’spect you just missed him and he’s in the surgery by now.”
“Of course, we must have just missed him!” Mrs. Talmadge went on past the stairs, her heels tapping on the parquet.
Daisy followed. A short passage to the right, leading to an outside door, had a door on each side, one to the kitchen and one to the surgery.
Opening the latter, Mrs. Talmadge stepped in. “Oh!” she exclaimed, turning as if to bar the way.
But Daisy was already through the door. There was the dentist’s chair. In it slumped the dentist, his pale hair unmistakable above the mask of the nitrous oxide apparatus clamped to his nostrils, half hiding his moustache. His eyes were closed, his lips curved in a happy smile, almost a grin.
Not a drinker but a dope fiend! Or perhaps laughing gas didn’t quite count as “dope,” but if his patients found out he was addicted to the stuff, his practice was bound to suffer.
Realizing she was too late to stop Daisy seeing him, Mrs. Talmadge turned back, saying sharply, “Raymond, this is no
time for … Raymond?” She clutched Daisy’s arm. “He’s awfully still!”
Daisy tore her gaze from Talmadge’s silly smirk. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she observed that his chest did not perceptibly rise and fall. She extracted her sleeve from his wife’s grip and moved forward, her only thought to remove the mask from his face.
But would that release the gas into the room and put them all under? She glanced back. Mrs. Talmadge stood stock-still, eyes wide, her hand to her mouth. Where was the nurse when she was needed? “Call Miss Hensted,” Daisy ordered, and reached for Talmadge’s wrist.
The dentist’s skin was chill to the touch, and try as she might, she could find no pulse.
“He’s killed himself!” shrieked Mrs. Talmadge.