Green for Danger (15 page)

“And me,” said Barney. “I didn't, actually, but I suppose I could have; I was in the bunk talking to you.”

“Well, as it happens, you couldn't have, darling, because the corner bed was in pitch darkness, and with the light on in the bunk, you couldn't see a thing. I know, because to see if Higgins was all right, I had to use a torch. For the same reason, Night Sister couldn't have seen him, though she was in and out, and the orderly and people like that.”

“Weren't they in the ward?”

“Yes, but Higgins was behind screens and neither of them went in to him … even the outside orderlies didn't see him, because he was brought straight down to the ward by the ambulance people.”

“And nobody knew his name,” said Esther, in a subdued despairing voice.

They all sat silent, appalled by the reality of this fantastic situation. “One of
us
—I can't … Well, anyway,” said Woody generously: “It lets you out, Barney, dear.”

“Actually, Inspector Cockrill said he would have to include Barney because he gave the anæsthetic and I suppose he could have killed Higgins quite easily without us knowing; and without any preparation.”

“What do you mean, preparation?”

“Well, the point about us not knowing the night before is that if anybody really did murder Higgins they must have had it all fixed up somehow or other; I mean it couldn't have been done on the spur of the moment.…”

“I don't see why not,” said Barnes.

“But how could it, darling? I mean, even supposing someone gave him an injection of something peculiar, I don't know what, but just pretend they could have, and that affected him under the anæsthetic—well, even so, it would have to have some preparation, you'd have to know beforehand. And as it happens, only us six did anything for him before his operation; the X-ray people messed about with him of course, and the orderly in the ward probably helped Esther get him on the trolley, and things like that, but it was only sort of last-minute things.”

“You seem determined to keep it in the magic circle, Frederica,” said Gervase, with a wry smile.

“Well, I'm only telling you what the detective said to me.”

Esther had been deep in thought. She said suddenly: “Higgins was alone in the anæsthetic-room while the duodenal ulcer was being done; do you think anyone …?” but as Woods raised her head, she corrected sadly: “No, that's right, darling! Don't say it! I put the catch up on the outside door of the anæsthetic-room, so that nobody should come bursting in on him.”

“Besides, it's all hooey about giving him an injection of something,” said Gervase flatly.

“And especially as this does look as if there was something in McCoy's story of the masked figure taking the theatre key …”

“And that was before midnight, and before midnight
def
initely only Major Moon, and us three, Esther and Woody and I, and Gervase and Bates could have known about Higgins having been brought in.”

“Perhaps Bates killed Higgins,” suggested Woods, suddenly sitting up straight.

“But then who killed Bates?”

“God knows,” agreed Woods, giving way immediately.

“And, besides, Bates was killed because she had proof about the murder, and how it was done or who did it or something. I mean, obviously in that case she wasn't the murderer, was she?”

“We had better begin looking to our alibis for this evening,” suggested Eden, with bitter humour.

“Well, I haven't got one for a start,” said Woody, cheerfully. She sat on a window-sill in the stuffy little room in a favourite attitude, her long legs thrust out in front of her, ankles crossed, her arms folded lightly across her chest, and said to Eden, smiling: “You said you'd come back to the party and see me home, and I hung about for a quarter of an hour at the Mess and you never came, so I went on by myself. Now I shall probably be hanged for a murderer, because of course 1 took care to keep well out of sight, being a mere other-rank and having no right to be there ‘unattended by an officer'.”

“I went after Bates,” said Eden. “I thought she was much too whistled to go across the grounds by herself, and that she'd soon repent of her refusal to let me see her to her quarters. She must have run like a lamp-lighter, because I never caught her up; I went by the path round the hospital, right across to the Sister's Mess, and waited there for about five minutes, but she didn't turn up, so I suppose she must have gone in; I came back the other way, in case she should have gone up the avenue and through the hospital.…”

“So she did,” said Major Moon. “I met her legging it up like a bird afraid of the dark. She said something was following her; of course I thought it was all imagination; she obviously had a little too much to drink.”

“And now it turns out that it wasn't imagination,” said Freddi.

They glanced at each other uneasily, and hurriedly looked away, only to find their eyes travelling again to those well-known, those pleasant, familiar, everyday faces. One of them had followed her up the avenue, crept after her, poor fluttered, terrified, panic-stricken girl, like an animal, in the dark; crept up the long avenue of trees, like a beast of prey, pausing, hiding, standing alert and motionless, moving on again in horrible pursuit.… Impossible, horrible, grotesque, and fantastic thought! Little Major Moon, pink and chubby, creeping on his neat small feet with his mild blue eyes gleaming with predatory madness … or Woody, moving catlike on her beautiful legs; or Eden a grey wolf, head thrust forward, hunting down the quarry with relentless ease; or Esther, following with unhurried stealth, quiet, cool—deadly; or Barney, dear Barney, driven by God knew what compulsion, blotting out from his heart the pathos and helplessness of the trembling creature fluttering ahead; or little Frederica, neat, impersonal, fastidious; implacable … Barney, shuddering, put out his hand to her: “At least you're safe, darling; at least it couldn't have been you! You were on the ward, and nobody can question your movements.”

“Except that they consisted largely of sitting in the bunk, darling, with everybody sound asleep all round me, and not having the faintest idea of what I was up to!”

“And the theatre so handy, just across the hall,” said Woods, grinning.

Barney's face fell. “This is beginning to look rather awkward,” said Major Moon. “I went back to my room in the Mess after I met Sister Bates in the avenue; but I can't prove that. Where were you, Barney, my boy?”

Barnes looked uncomfortable. “I'm afraid you'll think it was cheek, Eden, especially as you've just said that you did go after her—but I thought it was wrong to let the girl go off on her own. I thought she was a bit tiddled and over-excited, and she might do something silly or, anyway, get frightened or upset. I'd taken Esther to the party, but she said she'd find Woody and go back with her, and anyway be all right, so I went along to see if I could catch up with Bates, only I took a few minutes explaining to Esther, and I must have missed her.”

“Which way did you go?” said Eden.

“The same way as you went, along the path round the hospital.”

“
I
didn't see you,” said Gervase.

“Well, for that matter,
I
didn't see
you
, old boy,” said Barnes apologetically. “I expect you'd hurried on ahead; and it was awfully dark.”

“What did you do after that, Barney?” said Woods. Barnes replied that he had come straight back to the Mess and gone to bed; and added, ruefully, that the truth was often a bit lame.

“Well, I think this is fun,” said Woody, who did not think it was fun at all. “Every single one of us was lurking about the grounds last night, except Freddi, and she wouldn't have had to lurk. What about you, Esther, darling? I suppose you looked around for me, decided that I'd gone on with—someone or other—and went over to quarters all by your little self?”

“Yes, that's exactly what I did do,” said Esther wearily.

“No one saw you come home, I suppose?” suggested Moon.

“No, of course not: Freddi was on duty and Woods was in the hospital, making her great discovery.”

“So there isn't one of us that couldn't have been the murderer!” cried Woody gaily.

Esther moved restlessly on her hard office chair, leaning back against the white-washed wall. “No, darling; it's charming.”

“Well, I don't want to go all grue,” said Woody, somewhat abashed. “But there's no use sitting round having inhibitions about it. Look what good's already come of discussing it.”

“You've established that any of us could have murdered Bates, you and Frederica between you; that's about all the good so far!”

“Not all of us; Major Moon couldn't have done it, now that I come to think of it,” said Woody, smiling at him.

“Thanks very much,” said Major Moon. “But why not me?”

“Because you had no motive.”

“What motive did the rest of us have?” said Eden irritably.

“Well, good lord, that's obvious. She knew who had murdered Higgins, and she had the proof and she was going to tell the detective; so, of course, we murdered her to keep her quiet—at least whichever of us murdered her did it for that reason.”

“You don't for a moment believe that any of us did it, Woody,” said Esther, “or you wouldn't be talking like this about it.”

Woods laughed, wagging her head, half defiant, half ashamed. “Well, I do and I don't; my logic tells me that one of us must have; my sentiment tells me that it's quite ridiculous that any of us could have; and my curiosity makes me go on probing about to find out which of us did! Now, for example, we all heard Bates saying she has proof about the murder.…”

“Except Freddi,” said Barney.

“She dropped into the ward to tell me all about it, darling,” said Frederica, laughing.

“Yes, so she did! Well, I mean, she could have; we don't
know
that she didn't. But we do know that Major Moon wasn't at the party when she made her speech. He was doing his round.”

“Actually he was talking to me in the bunk,” said Freddi.

“Well, all right, darling, it doesn't matter where he was; the point is that he didn't hear what Bates said about her having discovered the murderer.”

“As it happens I did hear it,” said Moon mildly; “I heard it from her afterwards; she told me when I met her in the avenue. I thought it was just nonsense.”

“So did we all think it was just nonsense,” said Gervase wearily. He fished out his case and wordlessly handed round cigarettes.

“Only, of course, it wasn't nonsense, after all,” insisted Woods, “and the murderer knew that, and he followed her up the avenue and got ahead of her and hid in the theatre.…”

“How did he know she was going to the theatre?”

“My dear, she
told
us she had it hidden in the theatre! When she went in and got it, he—well, he stabbed her, poor little thing, and took the proof away.…”

“And where is it now?” said Frederica.

The ‘proof' was at this moment in the operating theatre, right under Cockrill's nose, if he and they had but known it; Gervase said, bursting out with it angrily, as though his nerves would stand no more of this talk and discussion and argument: “You're being very clever and constructive, Woody, my dear, but there's one thing you haven't explained. What were
you
doing, going to the theatre at midnight? You hadn't left your knitting there, I suppose, or forgotten a book, like they do in the sort of novels women write about country house-parties?”

“Darling—most acid!” said Freddi; but she, too, looked rather strangely at her friend.

“I—I discovered the murder,” said Woody uncertainly.

“Yes, we all know you discovered the murder; we're sick of the sound of it,” said Eden, with irrational irritation, for she had only told the story once and that under considerable pressure from himself among others. “But that isn't what you originally went to the theatre for, is it? Or is it?”

She looked at him with the oddest expression in her shrewd, dark, mascaraed eyes. “Well, no, Gervase, that's not what I went for.”

“Why did you go?” he insisted.

She would have to explain this to the detective too. She improvised hurriedly: “I—I was curious. I couldn't think what the proof could be and I thought it would be fun to see what she was doing there.”

“
Woody
—do you mean to say that it was you, following poor Sister Bates up the avenue?”

Woods looked about her wretchedly; but said at last: “Well, yes, it was me.”

“So you will have seen me speaking to her?” asked Moon.

“Yes. Yes, I did, Major Moon.”

“Whereabouts was I when I met her?”

Woody gave up the effort. “Under a mastic tree,” she said, laughing.

“There isn't such a tree in the grounds,” said Frederica.

Woods went off into a cackle of brittle laughter. “Honestly, Freddi darling, you're
per
fect. You have no sense of humour, have you?”

“No,” said Frederica placidly. “I never have had.” But Barney could feel the little quiver that ran through her, of hurt surprise at Woody's cruelty.

“She's quoting the
Scrip
tures, darling. Susannah and the Elders.”

“Oh, the
Scrip
tures,” said Freddi. After all, nobody could be expected to see anything funny in the Scriptures.

There was a miserable silence. Woods was stricken with remorse at having been betrayed by her exhausted nerves into such uncalled for sarcasm. Frederica opened her mouth to say once more that she did wish the Inspector would come and get it over with, and let her go back to her drip saline, but shut it again, abruptly. Esther, however, put the same thought into words: “If only he would come and ask us his questions and let us go.…”