Dumb Witness Read Online Free PDF Page B

again.
    â€œIt’s the shock, poor dear,” said Miss Lawson.
    And she added with the kind of gloomy relish in disaster which brightens so many otherwise drab lives:
    â€œI daresay she’ll never be quite herself again.”
    Dr. Grainger, on the other hand, rallied her heartily.
    He told her that she’d be downstairs again by the end of the week, that it was a positive disgrace she had no bones broken, andwhat kind of patient was she for a struggling medical man? If all his patients were like her, he might as well take down his plate straight away.
    Emily Arundell replied with spirit—she and old Dr. Grainger were allies of long-standing. He bullied and she defied—they always got a good deal of pleasure out of each other’s company!
    But now, after the doctor had stumped away, the old lady lay with a frown on her face, thinking—thinking—responding absentmindedly to Minnie Lawson’s well-meant fussing—and then suddenly coming back to consciousness and rending her with a vitriolic tongue.
    â€œPoor little Bobsie,” twittered Miss Lawson, bending over Bob who had a rug spread on the corner of his mistress’s bed. “Wouldn’t little Bobsie be unhappy if he knew what he’d done to his poor, poor Missus?”
    Miss Arundell snapped:
    â€œDon’t be idiotic, Minnie. And where’s your English sense of justice? Don’t you know that everyone in this country is accounted innocent until he or she is proved guilty?”
    â€œOh, but we do know—”
    Emily snapped:
    â€œWe don’t know anything at all. Do stop fidgeting, Minnie. Pulling this and pulling that. Haven’t you any idea how to behave in a sickroom? Go away and send Ellen to me.”
    Meekly Miss Lawson crept away.
    Emily Arundell looked after her with a slight feeling of self-reproach. Maddening as Minnie was, she did her best.
    Then the frown settled down again on her face.
    She was desperately unhappy. She had all a vigorous strong-minded old lady’s dislike of inaction in any given situation. But in this particular situation she could not decide upon her line of action.
    There were moments when she distrusted her own faculties, her own memory of events. And there was no one, absolutely no one in whom she could confide.
    Half an hour later, when Miss Lawson tiptoed creakingly into the room, carrying a cup of beef tea, and then paused irresolute at the view of her employer lying with closed eyes, Emily Arundell suddenly spoke two words with such force and decision that Miss Lawson nearly dropped the cup.
    â€œMary Fox,” said Miss Arundell.
    â€œA box, dear?” said Miss Lawson. “Did you say you wanted a box?”
    â€œYou’re getting deaf, Minnie. I didn’t say anything about a box. I said Mary Fox. The woman I met at Cheltenham last year. She was the sister of one of the Canons of Exeter Cathedral. Give me that cup. You’ve spilt it into the saucer. And don’t tiptoe when you come into a room. You don’t know how irritating it is. Now go downstairs and get me the London telephone book.”
    â€œCan I find the number for you, dear? Or the address?”
    â€œIf I’d wanted you to do that I’d have told you so. Do what I tell you. Bring it here, and put my writing things by the bed.”
    Miss Lawson obeyed orders.
    As she was going out of the room after having done everything required of her, Emily Arundell said unexpectedly:
    â€œYou’re a good, faithful creature, Minnie. Don’t mind my bark. It’s a good deal worse than my bite. You’re very patient and good to me.”
    Miss Lawson went out of the room with her face pink and incoherent words burbling from her lips.
    Sitting up in bed, Miss Arundell wrote a letter. She wrote it slowly and carefully, with numerous pauses for thought and copious underlining. She crossed and recrossed the page—for she had been brought up in a school that was