she worried. Had she annoyed a patient or forgotten something? Perhaps he had been crossed in love, unable to take his girlfriend out that evening. They might have quarrelled… She would have added to these speculations, only Mrs Keane poked her head round the door.
‘He’s in the car…’
Mr Fitzgibbon leaned across and opened the door as she reached the car, and she got in without speaking, settled herself without looking at him and stared ahead as he drove away.
He negotiated a tangle of traffic in an unflurried manner before he spoke. ‘I can hear your thoughts, Florence.’
So she was Florence now, was she? ‘In that case,’ she said crisply, ‘there is no need for me to ask where we are going, sir.’
Mr Fitzgibbon allowed his lip to twitch very slightly. ‘No—of course, you will have read about it for yourself. You know the place?’
‘I’ve been there with my brothers.’
‘The curator has apartments there; his wife is a patient of mine, recently out of hospital. She is a lady of seventy-two and was unfortunate enough to swallow a sliver of glass during a meal, which perforated her oesophagus. I found it necessary to perform a thoracotomy, from which she is recovering. This should be my final visit, although she will come to the consulting-room later on for regular check-ups.’
‘Thank you,’ said Florence in a businesslike manner. ‘Is there anything else that I need to know?’
‘No, other than that she is a nervous little lady, which is why I have to take you with me.’
Florence bit back a remark that she had hardly supposed that it was for the pleasure of her company, and neither of them spoke again until they reached their destination.
This, thought Florence, following Mr Fitzgibbon through a relatively small side-door and up an elegant staircase to the private apartments, was something to tell the boys when she wrote to them. The elderly stooping man who had admitted them stood aside for them to go in, and she stopped looking around her and concentrated on the patient.
A dear little lady, sitting in a chair with her husband beside her. Florence led her to a small bedroom presently, and Mr Fitzgibbon examined her without haste before pronouncing her fit and well, and when Florence led her patient back to the sitting-room he was standing at one of the big windows with the curator, discussing the view.
‘You will take some refreshment?’ suggested the curator, and Florence hoped that Mr Fitzgibbon would say yes; the curator looked a nice, dignified old man who would tell her more about the house…
Mr Fitzgibbon declined with grave courtesy. ‘I must get back to Colbert’s,’ he explained, ‘and Sister must return to the consulting-rooms as soon as possible.’
They made their farewells and went back to the car, and as Mr Fitzgibbon opened the door for her he said, ‘I’m already late. I’ll take you straight back and drop you off at the door. Lady Hempdon has an appointment for half-past four, has she not?’
She got in, and he got in beside her and drove off. ‘Perhaps you would like to drop me off so that I can catch a bus?’ asked Florence sweetly.
‘How thoughtful of you, Florence, but I think not. We should be back without any delay!’
Mr Fitzgibbon, so often right, was for once wrong.
CHAPTER THREE
MR FITZGIBBON IGNORED the main road back to the heart of the city. Florence, who wasn’t familiar with that part of the metropolis, became quite bewildered by the narrow streets lined with warehouses, most of them derelict, shabby, small brick houses and shops, and here and there newly built blocks of high-rise flats. There was, however, little traffic, and his short cuts would bring him very close to Tower Bridge where, presumably, he intended to cross the river.
She stared out at the derelict wharfs and warehouses they were passing with windows boarded up and walls held upright by wooden props; they looked unsafe and it was a good thing that the terrace of houses on the other side of the street was in a like state. There was nothing on the street save a heavily laden truck ahead of them, loaded with what appeared to be scrap iron. Mr Fitzgibbon had slowed, since it wasn’t possible to pass, so that he was able to stop instantly when the truck suddenly veered across the street and hit the wall of a half-ruined warehouse, bringing it down in a shower of bricks.
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