Green for Danger (32 page)

“Poor Esther,” said Woody sadly.

They were all silent for a little while. “Do you think Esther was mad, Barney?” said Frederica at last.

“Major Moon told us once that all murderers are a little mad,” he said. “I think she was sane enough on every other point but just this one. She thought she had to revenge her mother's death and on that subject she was mad. She killed Higgins and then she silenced Bates and after that I think she was sliding back into being perfectly normal and happy with William, and then she suddenly learnt that he was one of her mother's ‘murderers' too—and I think that did knock her right over the edge, into real insanity. Think of her after that—always white and strained and weeping; nervy and hysterical and not able to eat or sleep.… Of course we put it down to this obsession about William dying under the anæsthetic, but even that was very abnormal, when you come to think of it.…”

“She must have been a very good actress to deceive us all for so long.”

“Cockrill says that her mother was a terribly theatrical type of woman; she was never on the stage or anything like that, but he says that she was always acting in private life. I suppose it was ‘in' Esther to be able to put on a show.…”

“But she was so sweet and gentle and everything I mean, that was genuine enough,” insisted Frederica. “How could we ever have known that she was—wasn't normal?”

“We might have guessed,” said Woods. “She was very queer when she first came back, after her mother was killed, you know, Freddi. She used to forget things terribly and she was vague and nervy and always crying in odd corners; I'm sure she never slept—I used to hear her tossing and turning all night. It got better, of course, and one thought it was just the shock and sorrow and that she would get over it; but she was terribly devoted to her mother and it must have been the most ghastly experience waiting, literally for days, for her to be rescued.…”

“Thousands of other peole have had to do the same thing in this filthy war,” said Frederica.

“You can't match suffering,” said Eden, soberly. “Because thousands of people have had the same experience, it didn't make it any better for Esther. She must have gone through hell. And then, perhaps, when she was getting over it, getting back to normal again, Higgins was brought in, and she recognised him as the foreman who had refused to go on searching for her mother. He was perfectly right, I expect; he couldn't sacrifice his men for a hopeless cause. But of course she would only think that if they hadn't waited for the proper demolition squad, her mother might have been saved—would have been saved, in fact, because she was still alive two days later. What Esther didn't take into account was the fact that the ordinary rescue squad could probably never have got through to her anyway.”

“Why didn't Higgins recognise Esther?”

“I suppose she was covered in dust and filth when he spoke to her; she'd been digging with the rest of them. He probably wiped the worst of it off his face before he went to her. William too—he was working there but they didn't ever see each other except coated with filth from the debris.”

“I can't understand how she never realised that William had been brought in with Higgins,” said Woody. “Everyone else did. I did. I don't know how I did or who told me, but I seem always to have known that the fractured tib. and fib. was one of the lot who were hit in the A.R.P. centre.”

“A pub in Godlistone was hit at the same time,” suggested Eden. “I expect she vaguely connected it with William and his beer. Her mind would obviously be entirely given up to the problem of Higgins and what to do about him.”

“Higgins kept saying that night that all his mates had been killed,” said Freddi. “He didn't realise that William was still being dug out, and William was unconscious most of the night with anæsthetic and morphia; by the time he came to, Higgins had screens round him for X-rays and preparation for operation and all that; I don't suppose he ever saw William. He thought he was the last of his squad.”

“That may have put the idea into Esther's head: all the others had been punished and Higgins was not to escape retribution either, especially as he had been the one to give the order to cease digging.”

“No wonder Higgins heard all that had gone on in the bunk next door to him,” said Barney, who still did not know
all
that had gone on in the bunk. “She withheld the morphia from him. I suppose she just gave him a shot of sterile water, so that he could suffer through a long night of pain as her mother had suffered for three days and three nights.… And then as she left the ward, she saw one of the Colonel's tins of paint; and the whole idea popped into her mind at once.”

It seemed awful to order more drinks in the middle of the conversation that had grown up round their innocent evening's amusement, but Eden was hot and thirsty, and he got up, unobtrusively and returned from the bar with four pint pots held groggily by their handles. “… must have been ghastly for her, standing there watching Higgins die,” Freddi was saying.

“She looked terrible. I remember during the operation before Higgins, I made her sit down,” said Woods. “Of course I thought she just couldn't take it. It was her first abdominal.”

“And poor old Higgins was so sort of pathetic with her. He kept calling her ‘my dear'.”

“Mrs. Higgins told Cockie that Esther was hard and cruel,” said Eden. “The old girl must have spotted what all the rest of us missed.”

“But Esther wasn't cruel,” insisted Woody, earnestly. “She hated doing it. She just had this—Cockrill called it an
idée fixe
—she thought it was wrong not to revenge her mother.”

“She didn't kill Sister Bates to revenge her mother. She killed her so that she herself shouldn't be found out.”

“Yes, but you can see how the thing worked in her mind. She thought she'd done right; she thought she ought not to be punished. She sort of owed it to her mother
not
to be. You see what I mean?”

“No, I don't,” said Freddi.

“Yes,
I
do,” said Eden. “It was as if the magic would go out of her revenge if she were found out and punished for it. Of course she was happier, she'd met William by that time, and perhaps she
wanted
to live; but I think the other was the really important reason, the real reason why she went on fighting discovery. That's why she started collecting the morphia; it had become an obsession with her that she shouldn't be caught and punished for her mother's death; she might kill herself—I don't think she would have minded so much doing that; but she would not accept punishment.”

Frederica who was accustomed to refer always to her patients with opprobrium, and to her calling with much humorous contempt, was the first to be scandalised at the breach in the ethics or practices of nursing. “To think that she should let the men suffer, just that she could save some morphia! It was too awful; I can't forgive Esther that part of it; it's the worst of all to me!”

“She gave them a little, Freddi; she gave them half doses and things like that. Altogether in the three nights she was on, she must have had, say eight grains to give out. Suppose she kept back four, with the two original grains and then the extra quarter grain she pinched from your haversack that day we were going for a drive—of course she hadn't known before that you'd got it—she had six and a quarter grains, and there was the original quarter that she didn't give Higgins. That would almost certainly have killed her, quite apart from her having managed to get some into the vein.”

“Of course that's why she died so quickly?”

“Of course. It takes hours of coma and what-not in the ordinary way. I don't think Moon would have saved her anyway, with his injection of strychnine; but I suppose the old boy did the first thing that came into his mind. If he could stall Cockrill off for a bit, he might pull her round.…”

“And then when Cockie broke in before he could give her the antidote they both said ‘Thank God!'”

“Well, yes; Moon must have seen then that the game was up for poor Esther. It was best that she should die.”

“But, Gervase, Cockrill obviously knew by then that it was Esther who had—had killed Higgins and Bates.…”

“We don't know that Moon realised that. I believe he thought that Cockie really suspected
him.
Don't you remember how he called out to stop Esther from confessing. I believe he'd have given himself up for the murders, to save her. After all, he didn't care about life, very much, even then.”

“Of course, it wasn't a postman's bicycle that he saw?”

“No, no, of course it wasn't,” said Barnes. “Cockrill was just stringing Esther along, trying to work her up to tell the real truth; though it's true that ten or fifteen years ago, when Moon's child was killed, country postmen did have red bicycles. No, this was a silver-plated thing belonging to a young fellow in the neighbourhood; he saw it gleaming in the sun. He's told me about it, often.”

Gervase got to his feet. “Well, what about another?”

“No, oi, Eden; it's my turn.”

Woody patted her diaphragm. “Well, personally, I should blow up and go off with a loud bang.”

“You always have such pretty little ways, my love,” said Gervase.

They strolled off down the road, Freddi and Barney arm in arm. “Tell me about the hospital, Woody darling, and how you're getting on.”

“Oh, my dear, it's too grim without you; without you and Esther. I'm sharing the cottage with Mary Bell and a frightful new girl called Bassett. Mary's nice of course, and she washes and does all the sort of normal things like sleeping with her window open, but Bassett's too ghastly. Com tried to wish Hibbert on to us, but I said to her, ‘Madame,' I said, ‘you
know
Hibbert goes to bed in her vest and knickers, because I remember you driving her down to the shelter in them one night. You
must
admit, Madame,' I said, ‘that Hibbert would be
too
much for us to bear!' so she very decently said we could have Bassett instead; but sometimes Mary and I wish we'd had Hibbert, vest and knickers and all.”

“What's wrong with Bassett?”

“She snuffles at night, my dear, in the most peculiar way; I suppose that's where her family got the name from. I mean they do sort of sniff their way after things, don't they, Gervase?”

“Don't what sniff their way after what?”

“Bassetts, of course, darling, or Bassett hounds or whatever you call them.”

“I don't call them anything, Woody,” protested Eden. “You know I'm no good at nature study.”

Frederica suddenly stood still in the middle of the road. “Oh, gosh, talking about nature study—I forgot to tell you, Woody. I'm going to have a baby.”

Woody thought that Gervase would never stop laughing. “You
are
awful,” she said to him severely as they branched off alone towards the hospital. “It's most serious that Frederica is going to have a baby. You can see dear, old Barney's as proud and pleased as a dog with seventeen tails. What did you want to go and laugh for?”

“It was so absolutely typical of Freddi, the way she came crashing out with it in the middle of a country road; and six months before any nice girl would give away her pretty secret anyway. ‘Oh, talking about nature, Woody, I'm going to have a baby!'” He went off into a fresh fit of laughter.

“Well, personally, I think it's heavenly, and I shall start off right away, knitting it a little woolly vest.”

“You ought to have a family of your own to knit little vests for, Woody,” said Gervase.

“What me, at my age?” said Woody, laughing.

“Yes, it's time you left off nursing and married and settled down. I think you'd have rather nice babies, darling; comic little things with shiny, boot-button eyes and lots of frizzy little curls like piccanninnies. What's more I think you'd make a very nice mother; and a very nice wife.”

“Do you, Gervase?” said Woody, her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her suit because they had begun to shake.

“Yes, I do,” said Gervase.

The apples were young and green upon the boughs and all the air was sweet with the scent of a dying summer day. They walked in silence through the country lane, and in the rich fields the rabbits sat up to watch them, rubbing black noses on little, furry paws. The last soft rays of the sun gleamed on the whitened stems of the trees, and foxglove and ragged robin caught at them as they passed, as though to hold them for a moment longer in the magic of a Kentish twilight. Woody repeated softly: “Do you, Gervase?” and her face was young again with light and hope and tender, incredulous joy.

“Yes, I do,” said Gervase. “You're so—well, gallant is an overworked word, but I always think of you as a gallant person, Woody. Gay and gallant. Life isn't very good to you, always, and yet you never show that you're disappointed or hurt or afraid. You stick out your old chin and you make a little joke, and nobody would know that there was anything wrong at all.” He bent down to pick up a small stone and threw it at a rabbit, who turned a white scut and hopped leisurely out of the way; and as he took her arm and walked on up the lane, he added smiling: “I think the man who finally marries you is going to be a very lucky fellow.”

All the light went out of her face; but she did not falter in her step and if there were tears in her eyes, no tears were shed. “I always think of you as a gallant person, Woody. Gay and gallant.” She stuck out her chin and made a little joke, and nobody knew there was anything wrong at all.

Laughing and talking they strolled on up the hill, and if the ghost of an old man toiled ahead of them, carrying in his hand a letter signed with the name of his own murderer—they did not notice him.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.