Green for Danger (28 page)

“I suppose it easily might,” said Major Moon, shaking his head.

“Surely nobody could possibly want to kill any of those girls, though.… But there,” said Eden, shrugging his shoulders, “why go over and over it? Somebody tried to kill Frederica without any apparent motive; and if the creature's mad—why not here again, or either of the others. I suppose he
is
mad.”

“All murderers are a little mad,” said Moon. He added abruptly: “I've felt like a murderer myself, and I know.”

Barnes looked at the old man affectionately. He was indeed old, aged twenty years before his time. “I can't see
you
a murderer, I must say,” said Barney, smiling.

Major Moon left them rather abruptly and went on into the Mess. “There goes one at least that's innocent,” agreed Eden, looking after him.

“If this were a detective story, he'd be the murderer for a certainty, though,” said Barnes. “They always pick on the benevolent elderly gent, because you'll never think it
could
be him!”

“Ah, but nowadays they're more subtle; they know that the reader's wise to that trick and the older and more benevolent a character is, the more he'll be suspected.”

“Perhaps it's gone all the way round and come back full cycle,” suggested Barney, laughing; “and elderly gents and paralytics in bath chairs are suspects number one all over again because the reader doesn't think the author would be so obvious. Anyway, this isn't a detective story, and it certainly wasn't old Moon.”

“So that leaves you and me and the three girls,” said Eden, grinning sardonically. “A charming alternative.”

Barney jammed his fist down into the pockets of his British Warm. “Oh, that
must
be rubbish.…”

“Cockrill doesn't seem to think so, old boy.”

“It's unthinkable,” said Barney wretchedly.

“I suppose you'd really like it to be me,” said Gervase, watching him half-humorously out of the corner of his eye. “By a process of elimination, I mean. I can't say I wish it was you, Barney; you're the last person I can imagine as an assassin.”

“Thanks very much,” said Barney. He added, shrugging his shoulders: “Apart from your intuition on the subject, there's the fact that I had no earthly motive for the murders.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” said Eden, still half-laughing. “What about your discovery by old Higgins as the slayer of his aunt's cousin's sister-in-law's daughter?”

Barney's face changed. He said shortly: “Oh, yes; I heard you were talking to Higgins about that.”

“I should say I was. It took me half an hour to convince the old fool that the girl's death was no earthly fault of yours, and that he was going to get himself into a mess if he started uttering libels about a doctor's work. I frightened him out of his wits! I meant to tell you about it afterwards, but that morning the old boy pipped off in the theatre, and I haven't thought of it since.”

Barnes looked at him steadily. “Sister Bates had a rather different account of what you said to Higgins.”

Gervase looked startled. “Marion Bates? How the hell could she have heard what I said?”

“She was waiting for you outside the ward.”

“Well, all the more reason why she couldn't know what I was saying. I hope you didn't take any notice of her tittle-tattle, old boy?”

“Not when I'd thought it over,” admitted Barney candidly.

5

A policewoman sat up all night by the fire in the downstairs room at the cottage. When Esther, sleepless, got up for some aspirin, she was up the stairs three at a time, and at her side. “Did you want something?”

“I want some aspirin,” said Esther faintly, standing at the dressing-table.

“I see. Very well,” said the woman. She took the little tube from the drawer, scrutinised it carefully, and grudgingly doled out two tablets; got the water from the tap in the bathroom, and filled a glass. “You have to commit murder to get yourself waited on in the V.A.D.s,” said Freddi, watching them from her bed.

“It's for your own safety,” said the policewoman resentfully, and marched downstairs again.

CHAPTER XI

1

T
he policewoman's name was Miss Pine. “I don't know about pining—I wish to God she would fade away,” said Woody crossly, after a full day spent under this lady's observation. “The only place you're private in, is the huh-ha and even then she rattles at the door and asks if you're all right.”

“It's for your own safety,” said Frederica, mimicking Miss Pine.

Moon and Eden and Barnes were under the care of a gentleman called P. C. Willing, and it became the preoccupation of what Woody called Lepers' Paradise, to promote a love affair between Miss Pine and P. C. Willing. “But Mr. Willing won't,” said Woody plaintively, after a long evening spent in this exercise.

“Darling, your puns couldn't be more nauseating,” said Frederica.

They played interminable games of Rummy, coining new rules as they went, and often growing acrimonious over fancied injuries. Miss Pine and P.C. Willing took turn about in watching over these games, and if any party left the group for any purpose whatsoever, solemnly accompanied them; though whether to see that their occasions were lawful or to protect them from sudden attack, nobody could determine. Frederica and Woody took much pleasure in suddenly announcing that they were going to be sick and rushing off in opposite directions for the pleasure of watching the indecision of the guardian as to which to follow, nor did a gentleman ever rise in the middle of a game and announce a necessity to wash his hands, unless poor Miss Pine were in charge. It was pitiful to see her, hanging miserably about outside the gentlemen's cloakroom at the Mess. Reinforcements put an end to these delights; but anyway, they had already begun to pall.

It was now getting seriously on their nerves. You might treat it as a joke, but after all, it was not a joke. The men ate wretchedly in their Mess, conscious of the strenuous efforts of their comrades to ‘behave as though nothing were wrong'; the girls lived on top of one another in the close little house, making occasional sorties to their own Mess for their rations, dogged by an increasingly obtrusive Miss Pine. “Harass them,” had been Cockrill's instructions to Miss Pine and her new colleague Miss Brock. “Never leave them alone for a second. Get on their nerves; drive them to a frenzy.” Miss Pine and Miss Brock unconditionally obeyed. Woody made no more puns.

Cockie came down to the cottage on the second evening to prod his victims into a further fever. He felt a brute when he saw the six white faces turned towards him, lit for a moment with hope, falling back, at sight of his grim face, into grey despair; haggard with the strain of keeping back their resentment and irritation, of trying not to visit it on each other, their fellow innocents.… Innocents! Ever there, doubt ravaged them. They looked at each other, uneasily and unhappily.
Some
one had committed the murders. Someone must be guilty. They formed into changing camps … only faintly inimical, only vaguely suspicious, only unspokenly resentful or irritable or cross. But hostile. Freddi showed off before Gervase, Woody grew annoyed with them both, Barnes was hurt, Gervase himself was not impressed and anything but pleased. Esther was white and on edge; Moon irritated them all with his dotard devotion, following her every movement with dog-like, sad blue eyes. What had seemed to them a rather touching affection, now appeared just the Indian Summer of a doddering old man. They greeted Cockrill with voluble complaint.

“And if you tell us that it's for our own safety,” said Frederica, “we shall throw things.”

“Well, it
is;
for five of you,” said Cockie, rocking gently with his back to the fireplace, his eyes on their twitching hands.

Frederica always rose to Cockrill's baits. She said, not stopping to think: “And what about the sixth?”

“That's who I'm protecting you from,” said Cockie, grinning horribly.

Eden was perfectly aware that the Inspector was trying to goad them into carelessness; but his nerves reacted independently of his intelligence and he burst out testily: “Well, why the hell don't you pick out your murderer and arrest him?”

“Don't worry,” said Cockrill equably. “I will.”

“I can't see what you're waiting for,” said Barnes.

“I'm waiting for him to give himself away.”

Even when you were innocent, it was dreadful to be watched like this; to be driven into saying and doing things beyond your own control; to have your behaviour studied as though you were a guinea-pig inoculated with some strange disease and reacting willy-nilly to expectation. Even when you were innocent. The guilty sat with blenching knuckles tightening on the covers of a book; and blurted out, despairingly: “But supposing he doesn't give himself away? Supposing it goes on and on and on? How long have we got to endure this?”

“I've no idea,” said Cockrill, apparently all ready to lay siege for months.

“You can't keep us here for ever,” cried Major Moon.

“I won't have to,” said Cockie, coolly self-confident.

Yet another day passed. The O.C. Surgical Division laboured through the operating lists. Perkins gave blameless anæsthetics, Theatre Sister retailed for the thousandth time the drama of William's collapse. Chalk and Cheese fell gladly upon a deserted William and ministered to him; a friendship of fully three months' duration, foundered upon the rocks of his alternating favours; they vied with each other in their knowledge and appreciation of beer. Esther held occasional miserable interviews with him, Miss Pine or Miss Brock, vigilant at their elbows. The leg had finally been operated on by Colonel Greenaway and was, contrary to all uncharitable expectation, progressing perfectly well. A garbled version had been given to William of his unfavourable reaction to the first anæsthetic.

Another day passed.

There was an air-raid that night. Provision had been made for this eventuality, and the three girls found themselves imprisoned in a small Anderson shelter with Miss Pine. They sat huddled each in a corner, on the narrow wooden seats, unable to reach out their legs without inconveniencing their neighbours, unable to sleep, almost unable to breathe. Miss Pine was on night duty and required to keep awake, regaled them with improbable bomb stories. A man who was a cousin of a gentleman friend of hers, well, not exactly a cousin but a relation by marriage, sort of cousin-in-law she supposed they would call it, had been thrown right into a vat of molten lead at a printing press, and the corpse emerged encased in metal quite like a knight in armour, if they knew what she meant. She had always heard that if you popped your finger very quickly into a thing of lead like that, it didn't hurt at all, but evidently this could not apply if you put more than your finger in, for this poor gentleman, well, really, they had had to bury him just as he was, metal and all, though they did all they could to try and hammer it off, more for salvage than anything else she supposed. Another case she knew of, well, not exactly
knew
of, but she'd heard on absolutely unimpeachable authority …

A bomb fell very close. Miss Pine flung herself into a crouching huddle at their feet. The three girls sat perfectly still. “We're
trai
ned to throw ourselves flat,” said Miss Pine, scrambling back to her corner, flushed with illogical shame.

“How nice,” said Frederica, yanking back the sadly disorganised rugs.

Their backs were aching, their knees were stiff, their necks were all of a sudden too slender to support for a moment longer the weight of their lolling heads. “I think we'd better make a pact not to say another
word
,” suggested Woody, with laborious tact, “and try and get some sleep.” Miss Pine agreed heartily. Nobody else had spoken for the past hour.

The bombers were over their heads again; they could hear the monotonous drm-drm, drm-drm of their engines; they could hear the muffled reverberations of far-off guns, the sharp voices of the men in a neighbouring field, giving the orders to fire. There was a crack and a crash and a loud reverberation of thunder. “That was a near one!” cried Miss Pine.