Green for Danger (10 page)

Sergeant McCoy was astonished beyond measure at the effect of his recital, and hastened to spread the extraordinary news that the detective (who was naturally immediately promoted to Scotland Yard), had actually turned back and was staying for the night; the story lost nothing in the telling and by seven o'clock that evening the original author would have been puzzled to recognise it. The sinister word ‘murder' licked through the hospital like a forest fire, and an agitated Commandant summoned the Inspector to the V.A.D. Mess, to calm her young ladies down.

Sixty faces turned towards him through a fog of Irish stew as he made his way to their dining-room and solemnly mounted a chair. He stood before them, completely unselfconscious, his mackintosh hanging in folds about him, his felt hat crushed into a bundle under his arm, ceaselessly rolling a chain of untidy cigarettes, and made them a little speech. He knew how to be charming when he would, and now shamelessly exploited this gift. “You all look like sensible, responsible (and very delightful) young ladies,” was the burden of his song. “I'm here on a perfectly ordinary, uninteresting, regulation inquiry into the death of a patient in the operating theatre, and I look to you not to talk a lot of nonsense about it; or better still not to talk about it at all.” The unit beamed back into his bright old eyes, and vowed in their hearts that no word about the matter should ever again pass their lips; subsequently, by their mysterious deportment, spreading rumours like wildfire round Heronsford. In response to a further appeal, half a dozen girls who could claim to having had some connection, however slight, with the patient in question, gathered outside the Commandant's office to speak to him; and the rest retired bitterly regretting having had none.

Esther and Frederica and Woods, who usually carried their food to their quarters and there reheated and consumed it, had been obliged to have their supper in the Mess, on account of Cockrill's visit. They assembled with the two V.A.D.s on duty in St. Elizabeth's, who on account of a superficial resemblance were commonly known as Chalk and Cheese; and one, Mary Bell, who had been in the Reception Room when Higgins was admitted. Cockrill saw this lady first, while the others lounged on the bench outside the office complaining about the smell of Irish stew and languidly discussing the case, to the virtuous indignation of Chalk and Cheese, who sat with sealed lips until they should be called in.

Mary Bell emerged from the office. “What's he like?” asked Chalk and Cheese.

“Well, rather an old pet actually; not at all terrifying. There wasn't much I could tell him.”

“Why did you volunteer? Because you were there when Higgins was admitted?”

“Yes, I thought I'd better. Of course I didn't even see him actually; Major Moon took him in and sent him straight down to St. Elizabeth's by the outside stretcher-bearers who brought him in the ambulance. Nobody knew his name; we didn't even get it till early in the morning when they rang up asking if any such person had been brought in here. His wife arrived about seven, and I had to cope with her, poor old dear. I was as late as hell going off duty.”

“What else did the detective ask you?”

“Well, he wrote down my name and address and he asked me if I'd ever seen or heard of Higgins before, and of course I never had. He said again that there wasn't the slightest suspicion of foul play, as he rather divinely called it, but that he just had to fuss round and see that mistakes weren't being covered up or anything like that. What did you think of the Little Talk?”

“All done by mirrors,” said Woody promptly. “He took one look at us, sized us up quite correctly as a horde of sex-Starved women, and exerted his doddering masculine appeal to lull us into a false security.”

“Sex-starved yourself!” said Mary Bell, and laughed and went away.

“
Def
initely not the murderess,” said Freddi.

“No, definitely not. Personally I think it was Chalk and Cheese.”

Chalk and Cheese were now closeted with the Inspector. “Why on earth them, Woody?” said Esther, laughing.

“I think they gave Higgins the wrong pre-operative injection.”

“Oh, nonsense, darling; how could they?”

“Well, I don't know, but it's just the sort of thing they
would
do.”

“No, truly, Woody, you underestimate Chalk and Cheese. They're not bad at all, really they aren't. Besides, the poison cupboards and things were checked directly after Higgins died, and ours were certainly quite all right, because I was there. They couldn't have given an overdose, if that's what you mean; and, anyway, it wouldn't have acted like that on Higgins.…”

Chalk and Cheese emerged from the office and closed the door behind them. “My dears, he's too divine; no, honestly, he's a perfect lamb, isn't he, Elsie? He asked us our names and addresses and if we'd ever seen Higgins before, and of course we told him we'd never set eyes on him in our
lives
, and he asked if we'd nursed him while he was in the ward and of course we said we'd hardly even spoken to him, because as it happens we were off duty by the time he came in, and in the morning you looked after him almost entirely, Sanson, didn't you? and prepared him for operation and all that.…”

“So what was the point of your going to the detective at all?” asked Frederica.

“Exactly what
he
asked us!” cried Chalk and Cheese, much struck by the coincidence.

Cockrill came out of the office. “Now then, who's next? Why, hallo, Esther, my dear? I heard you were here …”

“Hallo, Cockie,” said Esther; she went a little white, for Cockrill had known her mother, and immediately a host of tiny memories clamoured for recognition in her sorrowful breast.

For Esther he shed his air of false benignity; he said nothing of sympathy or distress, but deep down in his arid old heart, there burnt a small glow of genuine pity. He took her quietly through the events of the night of the blitz, going with patient precision into every detail of the evening. “All right, my dear; thank you. That's very nice and clear. Send one of the other girls in to see me now, would you?”

“Bags I go next,” said Woody, receiving this message. “I won't be long, Freddi, and he'll take hours asking you about Higgins in the ward, and I want to get ready for the party. You don't mind, do you?”

“I couldn't care less, darling,” said Frederica, who, being on night duty in the ward, could not go to any party.

Inspector Cockrill was much amused by Frederica when at last she sat before him, tiny, erect, absolutely composed. She gravely related her share in the evening's proceedings up to the time that Esther had left the ward. “After that I went in and looked at Higgins from time to time, and sat by him for a bit now and then and let him grumble.”

“Grumble? What about?”

“Oh, just patient's grumble,” said Frederica indifferently. “I always let them do it. It keeps their minds off their real troubles. He was a dear old boy, really, but he couldn't sleep, and the pain made him fractious and crotchety. He got an idea into his head that they'd had no business to put him in a military hospital and that he was going to be neglected and would probably die—which seems to have been rather well-founded,” added Freddi coolly. “He said the nurses were cruel to him, by which I presume he meant poor Esther because nobody else had looked after him; and who happens to be an absolute angel to the patients, much
too
kind actually; and he said there were going-ons and he would have it reported; I don't know who to, and I don't suppose he did either.” Higgins had probably confided all this to his wife, and if anyone was going to tell the Inspector about it, it had better be oneself.

“What did he mean by goings-on?” asked Cockrill, smiling grimly at this transparent ruse.

“Well, I think he'd seen me kissing my fiancé in the sister's bunk,” said Frederica, blushing faintly. She qualified this rather shattering confession by a description of the sister's bunk.

“Oh,” said the Inspector. He turned the matter over in his mind for a moment. “Could he, in fact, have reported it to anyone? Is it quite the regulation behaviour to be kissing even one's fiancé in the sister's bunk?”

Frederica reflected solemnly upon this problem. “Well, if it was brought to the notice of the C.O. or Matron, I suppose they would have to make a song about it; but the trouble would be more that you let the patients see you, than what you'd actually done. The bunks are sort of ante-rooms; everybody meets here and talks and has tea and all that kind of thing. The sisters aren't above doing a bit of kissing there themselves, if they have anybody to kiss them, only most of them are such old battle-axes that they haven't.”

This was something of a revelation, even to Cockrill, who had believed in common with much of the laity that the nursing services consist of all-powerful, omniscient, stiffly starched automatons, incapable of human emotion other than a rarefied compassion for their patients, and certainly immune from the doubts and fears and disillusions of the everyday human heart. Freddi elaborated, watching his face with a small, ironical smile: “People are—just people, aren't they, where ever you go? I mean, I look upon detectives as superhuman creatures who press buttons and waffle about with a little grey fingerprint powder for a bit, and have their case all solved in half a minute; but I suppose you're really just ordinary people with worries about having a clean collar and eating your breakfast too quickly and things like that; and so are we.”

Inspector Cockrill could not imagine Frederica in any difficulty with clean collars or eating her breakfast too quickly, but he bowed to her superior ruling with a quizzical, small smile. Having thus effectively laid a smoke screen across the question of her having kissed anyone other than her fiancé in the sister's bunk, she answered the rest of his questions with serene despatch. No, Higgins had not made any particular accusations, except that there were goings-on. No, he had not told her anything about himself except that he was a postman and that the things people wrote upon postcards you wouldn't believe! Yes, she supposed she could have asked him his name then, but actually she had not thought of it; this had been in the early hours of the morning, and she had already forgotten that they did not as yet know who the old man was. Night sister had done a round at about four o'clock but Higgins had been asleep by then, and she had not disturbed him. She, Frederica, had not left the ward at all from the moment Esther Sanson had gone; an orderly had come on soon after the Surgeon on Duty had made a second round, at about a quarter to eleven (she blushed faintly again at this description of Eden's visit) and he could confirm that she had been there all the time. She raised her golden eyebrows at the necessity for any testimony on this point.

“So that nobody else saw the man until the morning? And then? I understand his wife arrived very early.…”

“Yes, she sat beside his bed till he went up to the theatre; he was on the Dangerously Ill list, or the Seriously Ill, I forget which.”

Cockrill registered mystification. “The dangerously ill list,” explained Frederica patiently, “as opposed to the seriously ill list. If you're on either your relatives can come and see you at any time, not only in the ordinary visiting hours; if you're on the D.I. they get their fares paid; if you're only S.I. they don't.”

“It's all very complicated, isn't it?” said Cockrill humbly. She looked at him suspiciously, but there was no sign of a twinkle in his beady eye.

He kept her waiting for several minutes while he read carefully through his notes; and when she thought he had almost forgotten her, said suddenly, sharply, looking up from under his shaggy eyebrows: “What do
you
think of this case—eh?”

“Who—me?” said Freddi; she considered for a moment. “Well—I just think it isn't a case.”

“Not a case?”

“Well, I mean I think Higgins died under the anæsthetic, that's all; and as for McCoy I think he's just talking through his hat.”

“And as for me, I'm an old fuss pot,” suggested Cockrill grinning horribly. He wagged a pencil at her: “Do you realise, my child, that if this does turn out to be ‘a case', you yourself are very intimately concerned?”

“Me? Concerned in the death of old Higgins …?”

The Inspector looked down at his notes again. “Captain Barnes administered the anæsthetic,” he said slowly, “so of course we have to put his name on our list; but apart from him, there were only—six—people in this hospital who had anything to do with the man; in fact, only six who knew that he was here. Major Moon admitted him; you and Miss Sanson were in the ward when he arrived; Miss Woods happened to be in the central hall when he was being carried through, talking to Major Eden and Sister Bates. You have told me yourself that nobody came into the ward after that; several people were in the sister's bunk, but Higgins' bed was in darkness and they couldn't have seen who he was. Nobody knew his name. Supposing for the sake of argument, McCoy's story is correct: between ten o'clock and midnight, somebody went into the main operating theatre where Higgins died next day … well, Miss Sanson left the ward a little before half-past ten; she went over to her quarters, but we don't know what she may have done in the meantime.… Sister Bates was free after she left the emergency theatre, Miss Woods says she was sitting in her quarters, but there was nobody there to tell us that this is true; Major Moon was in and out of the reception-room, Major Eden was wandering about the hospital, and Captain Barnes, though he was busy giving anæsthetics, was not doing that all the time, as you yourself know; besides, Captain Barnes is the anaesthetist, anyway.… I don't say that any of these people killed Higgins, of course I don't; I only say that
if
anybody killed him, it must have been one of these seven; and that includes you.”