But Doctor Baker was already searching his files. I saw his fingers delve into the pocket marked with D. He found it almost at once. He glanced down rapidly at his handwriting. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, Mrs. Danvers. I remember now.”
“Tall, slim, dark, very handsome?” said Colonel Julyan quietly.
“Yes,” said Doctor Baker. “Yes.”
He read through the files, and then replaced them in the case. “Of course,” he said, glancing at Maxim, “this is unprofessional you know? We treat patients as though they were in the confessional. But your wife is dead, and I quite understand the circumstances are exceptional. You want to know if I can suggest any motive why your wife should have taken her life? I think I can. The woman who called herself Mrs. Danvers was very seriously ill.”
He paused. He looked at every one of us in turn.
“I remember her perfectly well,” he said, and he turned back to the files again. “She came to me for the first time a week previously to the date you mentioned. She complained of certain symptoms, and I took some X-rays of her. The second visit was to find out the result of those X-rays. The photographs are not here, but I have the details written down. I remember her standing in my consulting-room and holding out her hand for the photographs. ‘I want to know the truth,’ she said; ‘I don’t want soft words and a bedside manner. If I’m for it, you can tell me right away.’ ” He paused, he glanced down at the files once again.
I waited, waited. Why couldn’t he get done with it and finish and let us go? Why must we sit there, waiting, our eyes upon his face.
“Well,” he said, “she asked for the truth, and I let her have it. Some patients are better for it. Shirking the point does them no good. This Mrs. Danvers, or Mrs. de Winter rather, was not the type to accept a lie. You must have known that. She stood it very well. She did not flinch. She said she had suspected it for sometime. Then she paid my fee and went out. I never saw her again.”
He shut up the box with a snap, and closed the book. “The pain was slight as yet, but the growth was deep-rooted,” he said, “and in three or four months’ time she would have been under morphia. An operation would have been no earthly use at all. I told her that. The thing had got too firm a hold. There is nothing anyone can do in a case like that, except give morphia, and wait.”
No one said a word. The little clock ticked on the mantelpiece, and the boys played tennis in the garden. An airplane hummed overhead.
“Outwardly of course she was a perfectly healthy woman,” he said—“rather too thin, I remember, rather pale; but then that’s the fashion nowadays, pity though it is. It’s nothing to go upon with a patient. No, the pain would increase week by week, and as I told you, in four or five months’ time she would have had to be kept under morphia. The X-rays showed a certain malformation of the uterus, I remember, which meant she could never have had a child; but that was quite apart, it had nothing to do with the disease.”
I remember hearing Colonel Julyan speak, saying something about Doctor Baker being very kind to have taken so much trouble. “You have told us all we want to know,” he said, “and if we could possibly have a copy of the memoranda in your file it might be very useful.”
“Of course,” said Doctor Baker. “Of course.”
Everyone was standing up. I got up from my chair too, I shook hands with Doctor Baker. We all shook hands with him. We followed him out into the hall. A woman looked out of the room on the other side of the hall and darted back when she saw us. Someone was running a bath upstairs, the water ran loudly. The Scotch terrier came in from the garden and began sniffing at my heels.
“Shall I send the report to you or to Mr. de Winter?” said Doctor Baker.
“We may not need it at all,” said Colonel Julyan. “I rather think it won’t be necessary. Either de Winter or I will write. Here is my card.”
“I’m so glad to have been of use,” said Doctor Baker; “it never entered my head for a moment that Mrs. de Winter and Mrs. Danvers could be the same person.”
“No, naturally,” said Colonel Julyan.
“You’ll be returning to London, I suppose?”
“Yes. Yes, I imagine so.”
“Your best way then is to turn sharp left by that pillar-box, and then right by the church. After that it’s a straight road.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
We came out onto the drive and went towards the cars. Doctor Baker pulled the Scotch terrier inside the house. I heard the door shut. A man with one leg and a barrel organ began playing “Roses in Picardy,” at the end of the road.