And all this with a sharp beady eye on me to see how I reacted to these suggestions.
Fortunately, long association with Caroline has led me to preserve an impassive countenance, and to be ready with small non-committal remarks. On this occasion I congratulated Miss Gannett on not joining in ill-natured gossip. Rather a neat counterattack, I thought. It left her in difficulties, and before she could pull herself together, I had passed on.
I went home thoughtful, to find several patients waiting for me in the surgery.
I had dismissed the last of them, as I thought, and was just contemplating a few minutes in the garden before lunch when I perceived one more patient waiting for me. She rose and came towards me as I stood somewhat surprised. I don’t know why I should have been, except that there is a suggestion of cast iron about Miss Russell, a something that is above the ills of the flesh.
Ackroyd’s housekeeper is a tall woman, handsome but forbidding in appearance. She has a stern eye, and lips that shut tightly, and I feel that if I were an under housemaid or a kitchenmaid I should run for my life whenever I heard her coming.
‘Good morning, dr Sheppard,’ said Miss Russell. ‘I should be much obliged if you would take a look at my knee.’
I took a look, but, truth to tell, I was very little wiser when I had done so. Miss Russell’s account of vague pains was so unconvincing that with a woman of less integrity of character I should have suspected a trumped-up tale. It did cross my mind for one moment that Miss Russell might have deliberately invented this affection of the knee in order to pump me on the subject of Mrs Ferrars’s death, but I soon saw that there, at least, I had misjudged her. She made a brief reference to the tragedy, nothing more. yet she certainly seemed disposed to linger and chat.
‘Well, thank you very much for this bottle of liniment, doctor,’ she said at last. ‘Not that I believe it will do the least good.’
I didn’t think it would either, but I protested in duty bound. After all, it couldn’t do any harm, and one must stick up for the tools of one’s trade.
‘I don’t believe in all these drugs,’ said Miss Russell, her eyes sweeping over my array of bottles disparagingly. ‘drugs do a lot of harm. Look at the cocaine habit.’