Buried for Pleasure (16 page)

‘Rubbish.' Fen spoke with considerable severity. ‘You were going to say something quite different. Out with it. This evasiveness wouldn't be much appreciated in Oxford, you know.'

‘Oh, God.'

‘
What
is it that Elphinstone has a phobia about?'

Boysenberry's feeble essay in deceit collapsed like a pricked bladder. ‘I didn't tell the police when he escaped,' he moaned, ‘and I haven't dared mention it since, for fear they'd be angry with me for not mentioning it in the first place.'

‘
What
is it that El – –'

‘But I had good reason for not mentioning it.' Boysenberry was now sitting bolt upright and sweating with despair. ‘After all it was my duty to make sure that Elphinstone wasn't frightened out of his senses – even further out of his senses, that's to say – by panic-stricken housewives waving lighted matches at him.'

‘
Lighted matches?
'

‘There's one feature of his lunacy which has been quite invariable.' In the extremity of his consternation Boysenberry now wholly collapsed, shrivelling up in his chair. ‘He is utterly unable to tolerate – by which I mean – –'

‘Utterly unable to tolerate
what?
'

‘Fire,' said Boysenberry weakly. ‘Fire.'

Three minutes later Fen was striding rapidly away from the Hall; a faint music which pursued him indicated that Boysenberry was seeking balm for his shaken nerves in
She is far from the Land
– but there would be needed a good deal more than that, Fen thought, if his self-assurance were to be wholly restored. . . . It was a fairly long walk from the Hall to the inn, and the church clock was striking half past midday by the time he arrived there. His car – returned at some immoral hour of the night by Olive and Harry – stood in the yard, its front wing much dented by an impact with some immovable object. Near it, the non-doing pig was consuming a large swede turnip, while Myra stood watching it.

‘Still eating his head off,' she commented with vague wonder. ‘Thank God, Farmer Lumley's coming to take him away again tomorrow. And there's another funny thing about him: he sometimes makes a barking noise, more like a dog.'

‘He looks to me,' said Fen, climbing into the car, ‘like almost anything but a pig.' He had started the engine when a line of inquiry occurred to him. ‘Myra,' he said, ‘what do you know about the lunatic?'

‘
Know
about him, my dear?'

‘About the form his lunacy takes.'

‘Well, he thinks he's some American President, doesn't he? And they say he's got a passion for gloves.'

‘Do you think most people would know that?'

‘Everybody knows it, my dear. The men as have been searching for him have talked a lot about him.'

And that meant, Fen reflected as he drove into Sanford Morvel, that anyone could have obtained the data necessary for counterfeiting the lunatic's presence in the golf-course shelter and his raid on Mr Judd's house:
Down with Taft
had obviously been a deliberate manœuvre to associate Elphinstone with the theft of the knife. And for all that he had left Boysenberry weltering in the horrible conviction of his own insufficiency, Fen felt that there was reason to be grateful to the man; but for his occlusion of the vital fact, the death of Bussy would certainly have been attributed to Elphinstone – whose subsequent denials, even if he could have been brought to understand the accusation, would not have been believed; and
X
once again would have escaped the judgement and the rope. . . .

Sanford Morvel police-station was situated in the outskirts of the town, and consisted, as so many country police-stations do, of two semi-detached brick houses knocked together into one. As Fen drove up, Wolfe and Humbleby were emerging from its gate, apparently on their way to lunch.

‘Morning,' said Wolfe cheerfully. ‘Thanks for sending us the village wooing last night. Its evidence 'll be useful.'

‘One felt,' said Humbleby, ‘that one's anxiety about the birthrate had been premature.'

‘One's conclusions about Bussy have been premature,' Fen answered a shade grimly. ‘I've some more evidence for you.'

Wolfe's brow darkened with anxiety. ‘Let's hear it,' he said quietly.

And Fen told them of his visit to Boysenberry. There was a long and very thoughtful silence when he had finished speaking.

‘Well, we can't ignore that,' said Humbleby eventually. ‘
Item
, there was only one person at the hut apart from Bussy and yourself.
Item
, that person was not Elphinstone, since a fire was lit, and Elphinstone can't tolerate fire.'

‘I'm still a bit doubtful,' said Wolfe slowly, ‘about whether we're safe in accepting the evidence of these damned psychologists. They're capable of saying two things which are quite contradictory in the same breath.'

‘Agreed,' Fen nodded. ‘And for most of Boysenberry's views I wouldn't give a brass farthing. But on this one point he's quite definite, and I wasn't able to shake him at all.'

‘We can't ignore it,' Humbleby repeated with sudden authority. ‘The inquest this afternoon will have to be adjourned after identification. The case is open again. . . . And where, I wonder, do we go from here?'

CHAPTER 14

N
URSE
R
OSALIND
H
ICKEY
took her eyes from her book and stiffened where she sat; a rising tide of abdominal discomfort engulfed her, and as it reached its zenith she closed her eyes and prayed devoutly for it to recede – which after the established way of its kind it presently did. The relief of its passing did not, however, provoke Nurse Hickey to any feeling of gratitude for the short-livedness of such pains; it provoked her, instead, to a ritual of commination against the bodily upsets which so infallibly ensued from a sudden transference to night duty. And indigestion was particularly humiliating. Though hardened by her vocation to the diverse and appalling feebleness of the human body, Nurse Hickey had never been able to feel resigned about indigestion. Had she been older, or even less personable, she might have endured it with philosophic equanimity; but being young and (her glass assured her) reasonably appealing, she found this particular affliction incongruous and shameful. She blushed – and. this in spite of the fact that to all intents and purposes she was alone in the room.

Like all hospital rooms it smelt pervasively of ether and of surgical spirit. Above the iron bedstead hung a temperature chart, the violent fluctuations of whose graph might well have horrified even an uninstructed eye. On the locker stood a tray of medical impedimenta. Blanched chintz curtains stirred in a breeze from the open window, and the electric bulb over the bed had been shrouded in dark green cloth in order that no more than a minimum of light should filter through. Only where Nurse Hickey sat was there a pool of warmer light, from a small reading lamp on the dresser. It threw her shadow like a black
crêpe
band across the bed, and she had only to lean forward an inch or two for the shadow to thicken and wholly submerge the motionless, bandaged girl who was her sole companion.

Nurse Hickey glanced at her watch. Ten past one. Nearly five hours to go. . . . She got restlessly to her feet and went to the bed, where she stood looking down at the unconscious figure of her patient. Not bad-looking, Nurse Hickey conceded, and no doubt plenty of sex appeal when she was in normal health. Not too well-off, though, to judge from her clothes. And one knew nothing at all about her, except that she was probably foreign. That would account for the fact that she had not had any visitors, whether friends or relations. On the other hand, her
name
was English enough. . . . Nurse Hickey, her indigestion continuing in abeyance, grew sentimental. Probably this girl had a boy-friend somewhere; with her looks it was unbelievable that she hadn't. And now he'd be asleep in his own bed, not knowing how near to death she'd been. Well, with any luck she'd regain consciousness soon, and be able, perhaps, to tell them who he was, and they'd be able to send for him. . . .

Tears came unbidden to Nurse Hickey's eyes. Her kindly Irish heart doted on young love. And now, moving away from the bed, her thoughts turned to her own Reggie – he, too, slumbering unaware in the town below. She went to the curtains and opened them, thereby disturbing some creature of the night close outside, which rustled convulsively and then was silent. A square of yellow light from the window spread itself down the sloping lawn of the hospital. A rattle of china was distantly heard – Sister Bates, no doubt, trying to alleviate the tedium of her pernoctation by brewing tea. Clouds partially obscured the moon, but it was possible to make out the low tower of Sanford Marvel church, and the nearer roofs of the town; it was possible, by dint of belabouring the imagination, to fancy that one could make out that particular roof beneath which Reggie slept. At this very moment he might be dreaming of her, Rosalind; but more probably (she admitted to herself with considerable reluctance) he was not. What was certain was that he would be snoring, for Reggie, though handsome, vigorous, and in every other way presentable, invariably snored. His adenoids, Nurse Hickey considered, ought to have been removed in early boyhood; and, contemplating these offensive tumours, she frowned. They exemplified to her, the besetting problem of life, the problem of how romance, which was real and beautiful, was to be reconciled with the body, also real but all too frequently unalluring. And for this melancholy dichotomy Nurse Hickey knew of no remedy. Love-making embodied it in the plainest and most indisputable fashion. A boy kissed you, and that was romantic. But then he went a bit further, and that, though it might be pleasant, was not
romantic
. And somehow the two aspects of love never quite fused, as of course they ought to. . . .

In some such terms Nurse Hickey mused, as she stood gazing out of the window in the direction of the impervious Reggie. That Christianity offered a solution of her dichotomy she was wholly unaware. Like most of her generation, she was ignorant of even the elements of that hard and subtle doctrine. So she brooded, desponding, on indigestion and adenoids and sex and romantic love until such time as the first of these phenomena suddenly and without warning returned to plague her again.

Her face puckered with pain, she closed the curtains and stared wildly about the room in search of remedy. There was none. But in Matron's room, she remembered, bicarbonate of soda was to be found – and Matron was not in the hospital that night. . . . Of course, she oughtn't to leave her patient even for a minute, and the sensible course to take would be to ring for Nurse Temperley or Nurse Hall. But with Nurse Temperley and Nurse Hall her relations at the moment were far from cordial, and in such a summons they would be certain to find fresh matter for complaint. Better, after all, to go herself: her patient was no longer in danger, and no possible harm could come to her during so brief an absence. . . .

Spurred on by a fresh spasm of anguish, Nurse Hickey fled from the room.

She reached the Matron's room without being observed, purloined a sufficient quantity of bicarbonate of soda, and returned with equal impunity. And the mere possession of that healing powder seemed to do her good, for the pains abated on the way back, and by the time her hand was on the door-knob were almost gone. She sighed with relief and opened the door.

And as she did so, fear struck at her like a knife.

The lights were out. The curtains were open again. Someone was bending over the girl on the bed. Starlight shone faint on the glass and metal of a hypodermic syringe.

For an instant Nurse Hickey stood numb with shock. Then her courage reasserted itself, her fingers sought and found the book on the dresser, and she flung it with vehemence and accuracy.

The hypodermic spun away like- a dart, its delicate needle snapping in two against the wall. Momentarily, the person who had held it hesitated, but the instinct of flight and safety prevailed. Clutching at slippery cloth in an attempt to arrest the almost headlong plunge through the window, Nurse Hickey was kicked in the face and hurled back on to the floor. She sprawled there, dazed, as the running footsteps receded down the lawn. Then she struggled to her feet and turned – on the light over the bed.

The patient lay quiet and motionless, as before, but with her left arm bared and lying outside the covers. Sick with apprehension, Nurse Hickey groped for the fallen hypodermic and examined it with unsteady eyes.

It was full; it had not yet been used.

Nurse Hickey smiled a little, rang the bell, and fainted.

At nine-thirty on the following morning, Wolfe telephoned to Fen at ‘The Fish Inn' and summarized for his benefit the events of the night.

‘Jane Persimmons?' Fen echoed in bewilderment. ‘But why, in God's name, should anyone be trying to kill
her?
'

‘The devil only knows.' Wolfe's voice was the voice of a man who has slept too little and pondered too much. ‘This damned affair develops new ramifications every two seconds. Of course, the attack on the girl
may
not have anything to do with Hussy and Mrs Lambert. She's an oddly anonymous creature, and there's obviously some mystery about her, so the attack on her may be just coincidental with the other business. At the same time – –'

‘At the same time, one's instinct rebels against such coincidences.' Fen nodded approval at the instrument. ‘Look here; can you let me have the details? I'm aware I've no conceivable right to meddle in all this, but still, I propose to do so as long as I'm allowed.'

‘My dear fellow, we shall be only too glad of your help. You've had experience of police work, and can't be considered an amateur. I'm in a mental fog; so also – as far as I can gather – is Humbleby. I can assure you we shan't indulge in displays of professional jealousy if you can succeed in leading us out of it. . . . I say, are you electioneering this morning?'