Pocket Full of Rye - Agatha Christie [1]
Mr. Fortescue’s contribution to the ritual was a grunt.
Seated at her own desk again Miss Grosvenor proceeded with the business in hand. She made two telephone calls, corrected some letters that were lying there typed ready for Mr. Fortescue to sign and took one incoming call.
“Ay’m afraid it’s impossible just now,” she said in haughty accents. “Mr. Fortescue is in conference.”
As she laid down the receiver she glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes past eleven.
It was just then that an unusual sound penetrated through the almost soundproof door of Mr. Fortescue’s office. Muffled, it was yet fully recognizable, a strangled agonized cry. At the same moment the buzzer on Miss Grosvenor’s desk sounded in a long-drawn frenzied summons. Miss Grosvenor, startled for a moment into complete immobility, rose uncertainly to her feet. Confronted by the unexpected, her poise was shaken. However, she moved towards Mr. Fortescue’s door in her usual statuesque fashion, tapped and entered.
What she saw upset her poise still further. Her employer behind his desk seemed contorted with agony. His convulsive movements were alarming to watch.
Miss Grosvenor said, “Oh dear, Mr. Fortescue, are you ill?” and was immediately conscious of the idiocy of the question. There was no doubt but that Mr. Fortescue was very seriously ill. Even as she came up to him, his body was convulsed in a painful spasmodic movement.
Words came out in jerky gasps.
“Tea—what the hell—you put in the tea—get help—quick get a doctor—”
Miss Grosvenor fled from the room. She was no longer the supercilious blonde secretary—she was a thoroughly frightened woman who had lost her head.
She came running into the typists’ office crying out:
“Mr. Fortescue’s having a fit—he’s dying—we must get a doctor—he looks awful—I’m sure he’s dying.”
Reactions were immediate and varied a good deal.
Miss Bell, the youngest typist, said, “If it’s epilepsy we ought to put a cork in his mouth. Who’s got a cork?”
Nobody had a cork.
Miss Somers said, “At his age it’s probably apoplexy.”
Miss Griffith said, “We must get a doctor—at once.”
But she was hampered in her usual efficiency because in all her sixteen years of service it had never been necessary to call a doctor to the city office. There was her own doctor but that was at Streatham Hill. Where was there a doctor near here?
Nobody knew. Miss Bell seized a telephone directory and began looking up Doctors under D. But it was not a classified directory and doctors were not automatically listed like taxi ranks. Someone suggested a hospital—but which hospital? “It has to be the right hospital,” Miss Somers insisted, “or else they won’t come. Because of the National Health, I mean. It’s got to be in the area.”
Someone suggested 999 but Miss Griffith was shocked at that and said it would mean the police and that would never do. For citizens of a country which enjoyed the benefits of Medical Service for all, a group of quite reasonably intelligent women showed incredible ignorance of correct procedure. Miss Bell started looking up Ambulances under A. Miss Griffith said, “There’s his own doctor—he must have a doctor.” Someone rushed for the private address book. Miss Griffith instructed the office boy to go out and find a doctor—somehow, anywhere. In the private address book, Miss Griffith found Sir Edwin Sandeman with an address in Harley Street. Miss Grosvenor, collapsed in a chair, wailed in a voice whose accent was noticeably less Mayfair than usual, “I made the tea just as usual—really I did—there couldn’t have been anything wrong in it.”
“Wrong in it?” Miss Griffith paused, her hand on the dial of the telephone. “Why do you say that?”
“He said it—Mr. Fortescue—he said it was the tea—”
Miss Griffith’s hand hovered irresolutely between Welbeck and 999. Miss Bell, young and hopeful, said: “We ought to give him some mustard and water—now. Isn’t there any mustard in the office?”
There was no mustard