Lay Her Among The Lilies

I dug my thumb into the bell-push and waited. After a while I became aware that someone

was peeping at me though the sunblinds. There was nothing I could do about that except put

on a pleasant expression and wait. I put on a pleasant expression and waited.

Just when I thought I would have to ring again I heard the kind of noise a mouse makes in

the wainscotting, and the front door opened.

The woman who looked at me was thin and small and bird-like. She had on a black silk

dress that might have been fashionable about fifty years ago if you lived in isolation and no

one ever sent you Vogue. Her thin old face was tired and defeated, her eyes told me life

wasn’t much fun.

“Is the doctor in?” I asked, raising my hat, knowing if anyone would appreciate courtesy

she would.

“Why, yes.” The voice sounded defeated, too. “He’s in the garden at the back. I’ll call

him.”

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

“I wish you wouldn’t. I’d as soon go around and see him there. I’m not a patient. I just

wanted to ask him a question.”

“Yes.” The look of hope which had begun to climb into her eyes faded away. Not a patient.

No fee. Just a healthy young husky with a question. “You won’t keep him long, will you? He

doesn’t like being disturbed.”

“I won’t keep him long.”

I raised my hat, bowed the way I hoped in her better days men had bowed to her, and

retreated back to the garden path again. She closed the front door. A moment later I spotted

her shadow as she peered at me through the front window blinds.

I followed the path around the bungalow to the garden at the back. Doc Bewley might not

have been a ball of fire as a healer, but he was right on the beam as a gardener I would have

liked to have brought those three Crosby gardeners to look at this garden. It might have

shaken up their ideas.

At the bottom of the garden, standing over a giant dahlia was a tall old man in a white

alpaca coat, a yellow panama, yellowish-white trousers and elastic side-boots. He was

looking at the dahlia the way a doctor looks down your throat when you say ‘ Ah-aa’, and

was probably finding it a lot more interesting.

He looked up sharply when I was within a few feet of him. His face was lined and

shrivelled, not unlike the skin of a prune, and he had a crop of coarse white hair sprouting out

of his cars. Not a noble or clever face, but the face of a very old man who is satisfied with

himself, whose standards aren’t very high, who has got beyond caring, is obstinate, dull-witted, but undefeated.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Surgery hours are from five to seven, young man,” he said in a voice so low I could

scarcely hear him. “I can’t see you now.”

“This isn’t a professional call,” I said, peering over his shoulder at the dahlia. It was a

lovely thing: eight inches across if it was an inch, and flawless. “My name’s Malloy. I’m an

old friend of Janet Crosby.”

He touched the dahlia gently with thick-jointed fingers.

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

“Who?” he asked vaguely, not interested: just a dull-witted old man with a flower.

“Janet Crosby,” I said. It was hot in the sun, and the drone of the bees, the smell of all those

flowers made me a little vague myself.

“What of her?”

“You signed the death certificate.”

He dragged his eyes away from the dahlia and looked at me.

“Who did you say you were?”

“Victor Malloy. I’m a little worried about Miss Crosby’s death.”

“Why should you be worried?” he asked, a flicker of alarm in his eyes. He knew he was old

and dull-witted and absent-minded. He knew by keeping on practicing medicine at his age he

ran the risk of making a mistake sooner or later. I could see he thought I was going to accuse

him of making that mistake now.

“Well, you see,” I said mildly, not wanting to stampede him, “I’ve been away for three or

four years. Janet Crosby was a very old friend. I had no idea she had a bad heart. It was a

great shock to me to hear she had gone like that. I want to satisfy myself that there was

nothing wrong.”

A muscle in his face twitched. The nostrils dilated.

“What do you mean—wrong? She died of malignant endocarditis. The symptoms are

unmistakable. Besides, Dr. Salzer was there. There was nothing wrong. I don’t know what

you mean.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it. What exactly is malignant endocarditis?”

He frowned blankly, and, for a moment, I thought he was going to say he didn’t know, but

he got hold of himself, stirred his old withered memory and said slowly as if he were

conjuring up a page from some medical dictionary, “It’s a progressive microbic infection of

the heart valves. Fragments of the ulcerating valves were carried by the blood stream all over

her body. She hadn’t a chance. Even if they had called me in sooner, there was nothing I

could have done.”

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

“That’s what’s worrying me, doc,” I said, and smiled to let him know I was on his side.

“Just why did they call you in? You weren’t her doctor, were you?”

“Certainly not,” he said, almost angrily. “But it was quite proper to call me in. I live close