The Nursing Home Murder Read Free Page A

asked that unfortunate youth if you had received any letter that might account for your otherwise rather unaccountable behaviour. He said a letter in this evening’s mail seemed to upset you. What was this letter, Derek? Was it another threat from these people — these anarchists or whatever they are?”
    He was not so angry that he did not hear an unusual note in her voice.
    “Such threats are an intolerable impertinence,” she said hastily. “I cannot understand why you do not deal with these people.”
    “The letter had nothing whatever to do with them, and my ‘unaccountable behaviour,’ as you call it, has nothing to do with the letter. I am unwell and I’m worried. It may satisfy you to hear that John Phillips is coming in this evening.”
    “I’m delighted to hear it.”
    The front door bell sounded. They looked at each other questioningly.
    “Ruth?” murmured Lady O’Callaghan.
    “I’m off,” he said quickly. Suddenly he felt more friendly towards her. “You’d better bolt, Cicely,” he said.
    She moved swiftly into his study and he followed her. They heard Nash come out and open the door. They listened, almost in sympathy with each other. “Sir Derek and my lady are not at home, madam.”
    “But there’s a light in the study!” They exchanged horrified glances.
    “Perhaps Mr. Jameson— ” said Nash.
    “
Just
the man I want to see.”
    They heard Nash bleating in dismay and the sound of Miss Ruth O’Callaghan’s umbrella being rammed home in the ship’s bucket. With one accord they walked over to the fireplace. Lady O’Callaghan lit a cigarette.
    The door opened, and Ruth came in. They had a brief glimpse of Nash’s agonised countenance and then were overwhelmed in embraces.
    “
There
you are, darlings. Nash said you were out.”
    “We’re only ‘not at home,’ Ruth darling,” said Lady O’Callaghan, very tranquilly. “Derek expects his doctor. It was too stupid of Nash not to realise you were different.”
    “Ah-ha,” said Ruth, with really terrifying gaiety, “you don’t defeat your old sister like that. Now, Derry darling, I’ve come especially to see you, and I shall be very cross and dreadfully hurt if you don’t do exactly what I tell you.”
    She rummaged in an enormous handbag, and fetched up out of its depths the familiar sealed white parcel.
    “Really, Ruth, I can
not
swallow every patent medicine that commends itself to your attention.”
    “I don’t want you to do that, darling. I know you think your old sister’s a silly-billy”—she squinted playfully at him—“but she knows what’s good for her big, famous brother. Cicely, he’ll listen to you. Please, please, persuade him to take just one of these teeny little powders. They’re too marvellous. You’ve only to read the letters— ”
    With eager, clumsy fingers she undid the wrapping and disclosed a round green box decorated with the picture of a naked gentleman, standing in front of something that looked like an electric shock.
    “There are six powders altogether,” she told them excitedly, “but after the first, you feel a
marked
improvement. ‘Fulvitavolts.’ Hundreds of letters, Derry, from physicians, surgeons, politicians—
lots
of politicians, Derry. They all swear by it. Their symptoms were precisely the same as yours. Honestly.”
    She looked pathetically eager. She was so awkward and vehement with her thick hands, her watery eyes, and her enormous nose.
    “You don’t know what my symptoms are, Ruth.”
    “Indeed I do. Violent abdominal seizures. Cicely — do read it all.”
    Lady O’Callaghan took the box and looked at one of the folded cachets.
    “I’ll give him one to-night, Ruth,” she promised, exactly as though she was humouring an excitable child.
    “That’s topping!” Ruth had a peculiar trick of using unreal slang. “I’m most awfully bucked. And in the morning all those horrid pains will have
flown
away.” She made a sort of blundering, ineffectual