Richard Gordon - DOCTOR AT LARGE

Fortunately, Nurse Macpherson became more romantic as we left the outskirts of London, and began stroking my arm against the steering-wheel while murmuring that she felt deliciously abandoned. She even managed a few flattering words about Hilda, expressing surprise that the car had managed to travel so far without stopping or coming off the road. This was encouraging, but I was too busy to listen attentively through contending with the traffic on the Great North Road, which that afternoon was composed only of cars driven by men late for important interviews, bicycles propelled by blind imbeciles, and lorries carrying boilers for ocean liners. But we progressed without breakdown or accident, and when darkness fell I was delighted to find that the headlights shone more brightly than before, sometimes both of them at once. By the time The Judge's Arms appeared in front of us I began to feel more cheerful and more appreciative of the unusual treat in store for me.

'Here we are, Nan,' I said, as I pulled up at the front door.

She peered through the cracked window. 'Are you sure? It looks like a municipal lunatic asylum to me.'

'It's very romantic inside. And-according to a friend of mine who ought to know-they're very broad-minded.'

My heart was beginning to beat more quickly. 'Sure you've got the ring on the right finger?' I asked nervously.

'Of course I have. Put these parcels in your case, will you? I can't possibly get them in mine.'

We got out of the car.

When I had asked Grimsdyke more about The Judge's Arms he had murmured that it was a coaching inn in the best English tradition'. It was in the English inn-keeping tradition, right enough, but the most widespread rather than the best. The walls of the hall sprouted thickly the heads of deer, otters, badgers, foxes, ferrets, stoats, and weasels, among the glazed bodies of pike, salmon, trout, perch, and bream in generous glass coffins; in the corner a pair of rigid snipe huddled beneath a glass dome, and over the stairs was impaled the horned skull of a buffalo. The place was so dark, empty, and musty that it immediately reminded me of a corner in the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road.

On one side of the hall was a door with a cracked frosted-glass panel embossed with the words 'Coffee Room' in curly letters; opposite was a similar door marked 'Lounge'. In the corner, carefully hidden by a spiky palm leaning in a large brass pot, was a hatch with a panel inviting 'Inquiries'. In front of the hatch was a ledge bearing a small brass hand-bell, secured to the wall by a length of chain.

'Cosy place,' murmured Nurse Macpherson.

'It's bound to be rather quiet,' I said, feeling I ought to defend the hotel as well as Haemorrhagic Hilda. 'We're in the country, you know.'

She made no reply, so I set down our cases, picked up the bell, and gave a timid tinkle. She began to make up her face, and I read a large notice in a black frame explaining that it was your own fault if anyone walked off with your valuables. As no one appeared, I rang the bell again.

Not a sound came from the hotel.

'I suppose they haven't all been scared away?' said Nurse Macpherson, snapping her compact closed. 'You know, like the _Marie Celeste?'_

'It's just a sleepy part of the world,' I told her testily, for my throat was beginning to hurt badly. 'We're not in Piccadilly Circus, you know.'

'I can see it now,' she went on, gazing at the sooty ceiling where it was gathered round the root of the tarnished chandelier. 'We shall find every room empty, meals half-eaten on the tables, baths filled, beds turned down, fires burning in the grates. Some awful thing came through the front door, perhaps from Mars. Everyone has fled except for one corpse in the garden, with its features twisted into an expression of spine-chilling terror. What a wonderful story for the newspapers! We'll phone the _Daily Express,_ and in no time there'll be reporters and photographers and these tedious little men from television saying, "Now, Doctor, will you explain how you happened to be here with a trained nurse-"'

'Please be quiet for a minute. I'm doing my best.'

I rang the bell again, as though vending muffins. With the other hand I rapped the frosted glass, and Nurse Macpherson tapped a large and greasy gong with her foot.

'Yes?'

The coffee-room door had opened. Through it poked the head of an old man, in no collar and a railway-porter's waistcoat.

'We want a room.'

'I'll fetch Mrs Digby,' he said, disappearing.

We waited in silence for some minutes. I was beginning to wonder whether it would be less trouble to bundle Nurse Macpherson into Haemorrhagic Hilda and turn her out at the Nurses' Home, when the glass suddenly shot up beside me.

'Yes?'

I turned to meet one of the most disagreeable-looking women I had seen in my life. She had a thin peaky face, cropped hair, a gold pince-nez on a chain, and a dress apparently made from an old schoolmaster's gown.

'Oh, er, good evening. You're Mrs Digby?'

'Yes.'

'Good. Well, you see, I wanted a room.'

'Yes?'

'You have a room?'

'Yes.'

I was now plainly nervous, for we had reached the point in our adventure that I had rehearsed the most in, the secrecy of my room. It all seemed so easy in novels and the Sunday papers: once the initial difficulty of persuading the girl was overcome, the rest of the trip was sheer enjoyment. I had hoped at least for a genial boniface at the reception desk, but now I felt more confident of seducing a hundred women than convincing this sharp-eyed shrew that we were married.

'What name?' she demanded, opening as ledger like the Domesday Book.

'Phillimore,' I said. I had decided that was the most natural-sounding alias I could imagine.

'Sign here.'

She handed me a pen, and spattering ink freely over the page I anxiously filled in the name, address, and nationality. I noticed that the last column left a space for 'Remarks.'

The manageress blotted the book. 'Which of you's Framleigh?' she asked, frowning.

'Eh? Oh, yes, of course, I am. I'm Framleigh. Mr Framleigh. The young lady's Phillimore. Miss Phillimore.'

I cursed myself. Framleigh had been my second choice of _nom d'amour,_ and in my agitation I had scrawled it over the visitor's book. Mrs Digby was now looking at me like Hamlet sizing up his uncle.

I tried to smile. 'We want two rooms,' I said.

'And I should think so, too!'

I put my hands in my pockets, took them out, and scratched the back of my head.

'The young lady must register.'

Mrs Digby handed the pen to Nurse Macpherson, who coolly wrote across the page 'Hortense Phillimore. Park Lane, London. Manx.' Feeling I should offer some innocent explanation of a young unmarried couple arriving for a single night in an unfrequented hotel in mid-winter, I said, 'We happened to be travelling north. We're cousins, you see. We're going to our uncle's funeral. Charming old gentleman, in the brass business. You may have heard of him. We both work in London, and to save the expense we decided to come up together by car, and we asked a man on the road for a good hotel-'

'Er-nest! Mrs Digby poked her head out of the hatch like a cuckoo-clock. 'Er-nest! Where are you, Er-nest?'.

The head reappeared from the coffee-room. 'Yes?'

'Ernest take up the baggage.'

Ernest, who looked unfit to carry anything heavier than a letter, creaked arthritically across the floor.

'The lady's in number three,' said Mrs Digby, taking from the rack behind her a key secured to a steel flag nine inches long. 'And the gentleman-' She carefully went to the far end of the rack. 'Is in number ninety-four.'

'Right, said Ernest, picking up our cases. 'Foller me.'

'We happen to be cousins,' I told him as he stumbled up the stairs. 'We're going north for our uncle's funeral. He used to be in the brass business, poor fellow. We happen to work in London, so Miss Phillimore and I decided to come up together. On the road we met a man, and I asked him to recommend a good hotel, He said, "You can't beat The Judge's Arms-"'