‘Burnett’s only just got to bed,’ Richard said. ‘Out on a case till midnight. Maternity.’ The partnership served a number of far-flung villages, a good sound practice, nothing showy but prosperous enough, well thought of in the countryside. ‘I’ll come over myself. I’ll be with you in five minutes. Keep him absolutely quiet, don’t give him anything, anything at all.’ He replaced the receiver and sprang out of bed, knocking over the small upright chair that held his suit neatly folded for the night.
‘Damn!’ He picked up the chair and began to struggle into his clothes, listening for a sound from Burnett’s room farther along the passage.
He heard the door open, Burnett’s measured tread coming towards him. He flung open his own door and stuck his head out.
‘Terribly sorry to wake you, I knocked over a chair. I’m off to Whitegates, Henry Mallinson’s having a heart attack, the nurse thinks. I can cope. You can get back to bed.’
‘Nonsense!’ Dr Burnett’s tone disposed of argument. ‘He’s my patient, I’ll go. You can go down and get the car out for me. I’ll be dressed by the time you get her started. Then you can go back to bed, you can take my surgery in the morning for me. I daresay I’ll be some time up at Whitegates.’
He went back to his room and without apparent haste but yet with swift, effectively-controlled movements he was dressed, and neatly dressed at that, in three minutes flat.
Before he left the room he paused for a moment with his fingers on the handle and glanced back at a photograph on the mantelpiece. A heavy old-fashioned silver frame. A young woman smiling out at the camera, a tall young man standing beside her with one arm round her waist.
He switched off the light, went quietly downstairs and out into the driveway where Richard Knight had the car drawn up with the engine running.
Thirty minutes later Dr Burnett drew the bedclothes over Henry Mallinson’s chest.
‘You’ll be all right now,’ he said. ‘You’ll be asleep in a few minutes. I’ll look in again around lunchtime.’ He suppressed a small unprofessional yawn. Before the lunch hour raced to meet him there was the surgery in a neighbouring village, the round of visits to be got through, the never-ending paperwork to be tackled – and it was already almost three o’clock. He sighed and picked up his bag. With luck he might manage four or five hours’ sleep. Retirement beckoned him once again with a smiling siren face … but in retirement a man might rust, might grow old, might die from nothing more deadly than simple boredom, from the unnatural emptiness that might descend like a lethal mist on a life suddenly released from the pressures of crowded days.
Henry Mallinson opened his eyes. His face looked peaceful now, pale and weary but free from distress.
‘Thank you, Edgar.’ He gave a fragmentary smile. ‘I’m glad you didn’t send young Knight. Old friends are best when you’re ill. It’s a comfort to have you near me.’ His eyes contemplated for an instant the possibility of death, of the vital forces within him being extinguished silently, without his knowledge, in the dreaming hours of some approaching dawn.
‘I’d like to see Kenneth,’ he said, raising his eyes to Dr Burnett. ‘Fix it for me, will you, Edgar?’
‘Yes, I’ll see to that. Where is he? Do you know his address?’ Kenneth Mallinson had quarrelled with his father years ago over the running of the family business, the chain of garages and motor-sales establishments Henry Mallinson had built up single-handed, starting out as a lad of fourteen tinkering with bicycles.
‘He’s up north. Gina will give you the address, it’s in the files.’ Mallinson’s voice broke suddenly. ‘Get him to come, Edgar. I’d like to …’ The voice tailed away. He can’t say, I’d like to make my peace with him, Edgar Burnett thought. Even now, with the notion of death scarring his consciousness, pride and obstinacy clip off the end of the sentence.
‘I’ll speak to him myself, I’ll phone him first thing in the morning. Don’t worry, Henry, leave it to me.’ Would Kenneth come? Every inch his father’s son, as proud and obstinate as the old man – and as gifted too? Had he made a success of the long years on his own? Dr Burnett didn’t know, Kenneth’s name hadn’t been mentioned between the two old friends since the day Mallinson’s elder son had flung a few clothes into a suitcase and banged the door of Whitegates behind him.
‘He’s done well for himself, from what I hear,’ Mallinson said, answering the unspoken question. He would have his sources of information of course, he would have kept track of what his son was doing over the long hostile years. Perhaps he loved his first-born in his own stiff-necked way.
Mallinson’s lids began to droop, the injection was taking effect. With an effort he jerked his eyes open again.
‘Have a glass of whisky before you go,’ he said haltingly. His lips turned up in a weary smile. ‘It’ll get you off to sleep again. Can’t be an easy life, a doctor’s.’ His face relaxed into a kind of peace. ‘I wouldn’t offer the whisky to everyone. My own special brand.’
Dr Burnett glanced at the decanter and the glasses standing beside it on a silver tray set on top of a chest of drawers against the wall.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I think I will.’ There was no sound from the bed. He stood looking down at Henry Mallinson for a long moment. The old man’s breathing was deeper now, more regular, he would sleep till well into the morning.
Burnett crossed to the chest and poured himself a tot of whisky, savouring the fine amber spirit with the relish of a connoisseur.
When he let himself quietly out into the passage he saw the nurse, Mrs Parkes, standing a few yards away, talking in whispered tones to Gina Thorson, Mallinson’s secretary. They were both in their dressing-gowns. They stopped talking when they caught sight of him, they looked towards him with their faces full of questioning. He gave them a reassuring nod and smile.
‘He’ll be all right now,’ he said in a low voice, gesturing them farther along the corridor, out of earshot of Mallinson’s drugged slumbers. ‘I’ve given him an injection, he’ll sleep for several hours. It was only a mild attack, no need to get him into hospital, he’ll be all right if he’s sensible, if he takes care. He may complain of a little indigestion when he wakes up, but it’s of no consequence.’
‘Was it a coronary?’ Gina ventured, stumbling over the frightening word.
He gave her a shrewd glance. ‘A kind of coronary. A ‘silent’ coronary, we call it. No pain, you see, just the extreme shortness of breath.’
He spent a few minutes giving nursing instructions to Mrs Parkes. A sensible woman, Mrs Parkes, able to cope with emergencies. Dr Burnett had recommended her to Henry Mallinson himself several months earlier when a severe bout of influenza had confined the old man to bed for some weeks. Mallinson had developed an unemotional attachment to the nurse, had come to depend on her more than he cared to admit, had resisted the notion of her going when he had finally recovered his strength after the influenza.
There were many little tasks she could perform about the great old house, he’d convinced himself, she was useful to the housekeeper, useful to Gina Thorson, his secretary, he was well able to afford her salary, there was no reason why he should deprive himself of the comfort of a trained nurse about the establishment, at his age one never knew … And so she had stayed on, glad enough of the comfortable post, the handsome salary. A widow with one son, a steady young fellow living down south, married with a couple of small children.