“Doctor! Doctor Na-tooo-sh.”
He paused, turned and waited. He was incapable, Troy thought, of looking anything but dignified. Miss Rickerby-Carrick closed in. She displayed her usual vehemence. He listened with that doctor’s air which is always described as being grave and attentive.
“Can she be consulting him?” Troy wondered. “Or is she perhaps confiding in him instead of me.”
Now, she was showing him something in the palm of her hand. Could it be a butterfly, Troy wondered. He bent his head to look at it. Troy saw him give a little nod. They walked slowly towards the Zodiac and as they approached, the great booming voice became audible.
“—your own medical man… something to help you… quite possibly… indeed.”
She is consulting him, thought Troy.
They moved out of her field of vision and now there emerged from the ruins the rest of the travellers: the Hewsons, Mr Lazenby and Mr Pollock. They waved to Caley Bard and descended the hill in single file, like cut-out figures in black paper against a fading green sky. Commedia dell’arte again, Troy thought.
The evening was very warm. She lay down on her bunk. There was little light in the cabin and she left it so, fearing that Miss Rickerby-Carrick would call to inquire. She even locked her door, and, obscurely, felt rather mean for doing so. The need for sleep that always followed her migraines must now be satisfied and Troy began to dream of voices and of a mouselike scratching at somebody’s door. It persisted, it established itself over her dream and nagged her back into wakefulness. She struggled with herself, suffered an angry spasm of conscience and finally in a sort of bemused fury, got out of bed and opened the door.
On nobody.
The passage was empty. She thought afterwards that as she opened her own door another one had quietly closed.
She waited but there was no stirring or sound anywhere and, wondering if after all she had dreamt the scratching at her door, she went back to bed and at once fell fathoms deep into oblivion that at some unidentifiable level was disturbed by the sound of an engine.
-3-
She half-awoke to broad daylight and the consciousness of a subdued fuss: knocking and voices, footsteps in the passage and movements next door in Cabin 8. While she lay, half-detached and half-resentful of these disturbances, there was a tap on her own door and a rattle of the handle.
Troy, now fully awake, called out, “Sorry. Just a moment,” and unlocked her door.
Mrs Tretheway came in with tea.
“Is anything wrong?” Troy asked.
Mrs Tretheway’s smile broke out in glory all over her face. “Well,” she said, “not to say wrong. It’s how you look at it, I suppose, Mrs Alleyn. The fact is Miss Rickerby-Carrick seems to have left us.”
“Left us? Gone?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you mean—?”
“It must have been very early. Before any of us were about and our Tom was up at six.”
“But—”
“She’s packed her suitcase and gone.”
“No message?”
“Well now — yes — scribbled on a bit of newspaper. ‘Called away. So sorry. Urgent. Will write’.”
“How very extraordinary.”
“My husband reckons somebody must have come in the night. Some friend with a car or else she might have rung Toll’ark or Longminster for a taxi. The telephone booth at the lockhouse is open all night.”
“Well,” Troy muttered, “she is a rum one and no mistake.”
Mrs Tretheway beamed. “It may be all for the best,” she remarked. “It’s a lovely day, anyhow,” and took her departure.
When Troy arrived in the saloon she found her fellow-passengers less intrigued than might have been expected and she supposed that they had already exhausted the topic of Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s flight.
Her own entrance evidently revived it a little and there was a short barrage of rather flaccid questions: had Miss Rickerby-Carrick “said anything” to Troy? She hadn’t “said anything” to anyone else.
“Shall we rather put it,” Caley Bard remarked sourly, “that she hadn’t said anything of interest. Full stop. Which God knows, by and large, is only too true of all her conversation.”
“Now, Mr Bard, isn’t that just a little hard on the poor girl?” Miss Hewson objected.
“I don’t know why we must call her ‘poor’,” he rejoined.
“Of course you do,” Troy said. “One can’t help thinking of her as ‘poor Miss Rickerby-Carrick’ and that makes her all the more pitiful.”
“What a darling you are,” he said judicially.
Troy paid no attention to this. Dr Natouche who had not taken part in the conversation, looked directly at her and gave her a smile of such clear understanding that she wondered if she had blushed or turned pale.
Mr Lazenby offered one or two professional aphorisms to the effect that Miss Rickerby-Carrick was a dear soul and kindness itself. Mr Hewson looked dry and said she was just a mite excitable. Mr Pollock agreed with this. “Talk!” he said. “Oh dear!”
“They are all delighted,” Troy thought.
On that note she left them and went up on deck. The Zodiac was still at Crossdyke, moored below the lock, but Tom and his father were making their customary preparations for departure.
They had cast off and the engine had started when Troy heard the telephone ringing in the lock-keeper’s office. A moment later his wife came out and ran along the tow-path towards them.
“Skipper! Hold on! Message for you.”
“O.K. Thanks.”
The engine fussed and stopped and the Zodiac moved back a little towards the wharf. The lock-keeper came out and arched his hands round his mouth. “Car Hire and Taxi Service, Longminster.” He called. “Message for you, Skipper. Miss something-or-another Carrick asked them to ring. She’s been called away to a sick friend. Hopes you’ll understand. O.K.?”
“O.K.”
“Ta-ta, then.”
“So long, then, Jim. Thanks.”
The Skipper returned to his wheelhouse doing ‘thumbs up’ to Troy on the way. The Zodiac moved out into mid-stream, bound for Longminster.
Dr Natouche had come on deck during this exchange. He said: “Mrs Alleyn, may I have one word with you?”
“Yes, of course,” Troy said. “Where? Is it private?”
“It is, rather. Perhaps if we moved aft.”
They moved aft round the tarpaulin-covered heap of extra chairs. There, lying on the deck, was an inflated, orange-coloured Li-lo mattress.
Dr Natouche, stooped, looked down at it and up at Troy. “Miss Rickerby-Carrick slept here last night, I think,” he said.
“She did?”
“Yes. That, at least, was her intention.”
Troy waited.
“Mrs Alleyn, you will excuse me, I hope, for asking this question. You will, of course, not answer it if you do not wish. Did Miss Rickerby-Carrick speak to you after she returned to the ship last evening?”
“No. I went very early to my cabin. I’d had a go of migraine.”
“I thought you seemed to be not very well.”
“It was soon over. I think she may have — sort of scratched — at my door. I fancy she did but I was asleep and by the time I opened my door there was nobody.”
“I see. She intimated to me that she had something to tell you.”
“I know. Oh, dear!” Troy said. “Should I have gone to her cabin, do you think?”