Emma Page - Every Second Thursday

Kelsey’s eyes rested on Miss Jordan. She had a certain air of breeding, of natural elegance. She was dressed in a dark grey tailored suit with a white blouse and a small hat; she wore no make-up. Her whole appearance suggested native taste and refinement. She looked the kind who could be relied on to keep her head in an emergency. Certainly Doctor Tredgold thought highly of her.

Not what you would call attractive, Kelsey pondered, and yet her features and general aspect had nothing irregular or ill-proportioned about them.

I think it’s mainly because she gives the impression of having no interest in men, Kelsey concluded after a few moments’ thought. The absence of those vibrations makes a man think she’s not attractive – a woman might see her differently, he reflected.

He looked along the row to where Alma Driscoll sat glancing about with lively interest. Alma was shorter than Edith Jordan, plumper, with a far less lithe and supple figure. She had no real advantage in looks that you could put your finger on. True, she had a fine head of auburn hair, but then Miss Jordan had a good head of dark hair.

But any man would call Alma Driscoll attractive – probably, the Chief considered, because Alma found men attractive, was interested in them, didn’t disguise that interest.

Miss Jordan inclined her head politely towards Mr Foster, then she took her seat beside Alma Driscoll. She leaned forward and exchanged a word and a pleasant smile with the two Pritchard men, then she and Alma began to chat in hushed tones.

Foster remained staring ahead. It must be an ordeal for him, Kelsey thought, waiting for proceedings to begin, having to go through it all yet again, hearing the same painful story once more from successive lips.

Doctor Tredgold came hurrying up the courtroom steps only a couple of minutes before the town-hall clock struck three. He glanced over at Kelsey as he came in and gave him a friendly nod, then he sat down at a little distance from the Lynwood party.

Kelsey saw that the doctor’s face wore a look of slight unease. No mystery about the cause of that unease. Tredgold couldn’t be happy about the fact that he’d prescribed another bottle of pain-killing tablets for Mrs Foster, tablets which she made use of almost at once to take her own life, when he knew that she had once before attempted suicide.

True, that earlier attempt had been passed off at the time by all concerned as an accidental overdose, but Tredgold knew well enough what that meant.

Not that the Chief Inspector was disposed to be critical of the doctor. He’d come across him many times over the years. He liked and respected him, had always found him helpful, a man of integrity and sound professional ability.

Easy enough to say with hindsight that the character of the dead woman was known to Tredgold, that he could have prescribed the tablets in much smaller quantities or entrusted their care and use entirely to Miss Jordan.

But there had been only the one previous attempt at suicide and that was nine years ago at a time of sudden and highly unusual stress. And a doctor didn’t perform his work in some ideal society but in the real world where haste and overwork, forgetfulness and irritation, hunger and fatigue all played their part.

I certainly wouldn’t like to be held up to public censure for every error I’ve made over the years, Kelsey thought with a shudder.

The clock struck the hour. At all events Tredgold’s lucky with the coroner, Kelsey thought as the proceedings began.

The coroner was a retired doctor who knew Tredgold well, belonged to the same golf club. Not likely to strive for press headlines by making noble utterances about the duties and responsibilities of the medical profession.

The afternoon wore on with no surprises. There were sympathetic looks for Gerald Foster as he gave his evidence. He stood looking straight ahead, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, his slight figure held stiffly upright.

Yes, he had known of his wife’s earlier attempt to take her own life. He had been one of the two people who had found her on that occasion, it was he who broke down the bedroom door and summoned the doctor. That was before he and Vera were married, when he had been an employee of her late father.

Yes, the marriage had been happy, he would call it very happy. He and his wife were well suited, there were no worries, financial or otherwise.

No, it had not seemed foolish to leave the tablets within reach of his wife. She had been subject to attacks of sciatica for some years, had had access to pain-killing tablets during all that time, with no untoward occurrence. And the earlier overdose was nine years before, in most exceptional circumstances. He had never had reason to suppose there would be any repetition.

He had phoned his wife as he always did when he was away, he rang her just after nine in the evening, from the Falcon Hotel in Lowesmoor. She had sounded very much as usual, she said nothing to cause him alarm.

No, she had left no letter – nor had she left any letter in the previous attempt. The card which lay under her fingers was one she had always treasured; it was the last written communication she had received from her father, a postcard he had sent her shortly before his death, on one of his rare absences from Lynwood.

The card was normally kept in a drawer of a small desk in her bedroom. The last words of the message had been heavily underlined. No, they had not been underlined by Duncan Murdoch when he wrote the card, nor had they been underlined the last time Foster had seen the card, which he thought must have been three or four months ago.

His wife would sometimes take the card out and read it, would talk to him about her father, and so on. Yes, he would definitely have remembered if the words had been underlined, he would have noticed it, would have commented on the fact to his wife.

He had no doubt that it was his wife who had underlined the words just before she took the fatal overdose. The pen she must have used lay on the bedside table. The sentence she had underlined read: See you very soon, my dearest.

There was a hush in the courtroom as Foster spoke the words. He stood for some moments with his head bowed.

Could he in any way account for his wife’s action in taking the fatal dose? the coroner asked gently.

‘I can only suppose,’ Foster answered in a tone of profound regret, ‘that the sciatica was more depressing than I realized. And the tablets must also have been more lowering than I realized. My wife was a woman of impulse. And she didn’t like—’ he hesitated – ‘she didn’t like the fact that she was no longer a young girl.’ He closed his eyes briefly. ‘She found it difficult to accept.’

Yes, he was some years younger than his wife. Not that this had made or ever would have made any difference to his feeling for her. But yes, it could have heightened her own sense of the passing of her youth, she certainly never liked to think of his being younger than herself, she would refer to it sometimes when she was in low spirits. Yes, he would agree that she could be fairly described as an emotional woman.

No, there was no spare key to either of the two doors leading into his wife’s bedroom. Or at least not to his knowledge.

Miss Jordan took the stand next. She gave her evidence in a calm and precise manner.

No, she had known nothing of the earlier attempt at suicide by Mrs Foster. She had been engaged some two weeks before Mrs Foster’s death to assist the lady during her illness. She had no previous acquaintance with Mrs Foster or with anyone else in the household, she had never in fact set foot in Abberley before going to Lynwood.

She had given Mrs Foster one of the tablets with a beaker of drinking chocolate – Mrs Foster’s usual night-time beverage – at a quarter to ten, and then settled her down for the night. She returned the bottle of tablets to the shelf in the little wall cabinet over the wash-basin in the bedroom. This was where such bottles were normally kept.