By the Pricking of My Thumbs - Agatha Christie [54]
Tommy indicated a chair, suggested refreshment, placed cigarettes and matches by Dr Murray’s side. When the two men had established themselves comfortably Dr Murray opened the conversation.
‘I’m sure I’ve aroused your curiosity,’ he said, ‘but as a matter of fact we’re in a spot of trouble at Sunny Ridge. It’s a difficult and perplexing matter and in one way it’s nothing to do with you. I’ve no earthly right to trouble you with it but there’s just an off chance that you might know something which would help me.’
‘Well, of course, I’ll do anything I can. Something to do with my aunt, Miss Fanshawe?’
‘Not directly, no. But in a way she does come into it. I can speak to you in confidence, can’t I, Mr Beresford?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘As a matter of fact I was talking the other day to a mutual friend of ours. He was telling me a few things about you. I gather that in the last war you had rather a delicate assignment.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t put it quite as seriously as that,’ said Tommy, in his most non-committal manner.
‘Oh no, I quite realize that it’s not a thing to be talked about.’
‘I don’t really think that matters nowadays. It’s a good long time since the war. My wife and I were younger then.’
‘Anyway, it’s nothing to do with that, that I want to talk to you about, but at least I feel that I can speak frankly to you, that I can trust you not to repeat what I am now saying, though it’s possible that it all may have to come out later.’
‘A spot of trouble at Sunny Ridge, you say?’
‘Yes. Not very long ago one of our patients died. A Mrs Moody. I don’t know if you ever met her or if your aunt ever talked about her.’
‘Mrs Moody?’ Tommy reflected. ‘No, I don’t think so. Anyway, not so far as I remember.’
‘She was not one of our older patients. She was still on the right side of seventy and she was not seriously ill in any way. It was just a case of a woman with no near relatives and no one to look after her in the domestic line. She fell into the category of what I often call to myself a flutterer. Women who more and more resemble hens as they grow older. They cluck. They forget things. They run themselves into difficulties and they worry. They get themselves wrought up about nothing at all. There is very little the matter with them. They are not strictly speaking mentally disturbed.’
‘But they just cluck,’ Tommy suggested.
‘As you say. Mrs Moody clucked. She caused the nurses a fair amount of trouble although they were quite fond of her. She had a habit of forgetting when she’d had her meals, making a fuss because no dinner had been served to her when as a matter of fact she had actually just eaten a very good dinner.’
‘Oh,’ said Tommy, enlightened, ‘Mrs Cocoa.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Tommy, ‘it’s a name my wife and I had for her. She was yelling for Nurse Jane one day when we passed along the passage and saying she hadn’t had her cocoa. Rather a nice-looking scatty little woman. But it made us both laugh, and we fell into the habit of calling her Mrs Cocoa. And so she’s died.’
‘I wasn’t particularly surprised when the death happened,’ said Dr Murray. ‘To be able to prophesy with any exactitude when elderly women will die is practically impossible. Women whose health is seriously affected, who, one feels as a result of physical examination, will hardly last the year out, sometimes are good for another ten years. They have a tenacious hold on life which mere physical disability will not quench. There are other people whose health is reasonably good and who may, one thinks, make old bones. They on the other hand, catch bronchitis, or ’flu, seem unable to have the stamina to recuperate from it, and die with surprising ease. So, as I say, as a medical attendant to an elderly ladies’ home, I am not surprised when what might be called a fairly unexpected death occurs. This case of Mrs Moody, however, was somewhat different. She died in her sleep without having exhibited any sign of illness and I could not help feeling that in my opinion her death was unexpected.