Green for Danger (9 page)

“How can a high ding-a-ding in Devon or Cornwall or whatever it is, be the slightest good to us here?” said Eden.

“Torrington in Kent, not Torrington, Devon,” said Moon.

“I didn't know there was one.”

“Well, there is. It's in the middle of the downs, and you never heard of downs in Devonshire, did you?”

“No, so I didn't,” admitted Eden, laughing.

“Cockrill was on that murder case last year, at Pigeons-ford … there was a terrific fuss in the papers at the time about it; you must remember it?”

“Well, for goodness' sake, this isn't a murder case,” said Barney, summoning up a faint smile.

Major Moon turned away towards the washrooms, peeling off his gloves, lifting the head-lamp with a weary gesture, from his forehead. He said, looking back, raising a quizzical eyebrow: “I trust not! The circle of suspects would be rather a narrow one, wouldn't it?”

“What nonsense you two are both talking,” said Eden, laughing, following them out.

2

Detective-Inspector Cockrill, arriving at the hospital two days later, could not have been in more entire agreement. “Don't see what all the fuss is about,” he grumbled to Moon, fishing for papers and tobacco in the pockets of his disreputable old mackintosh. “Just another anæsthetic death. You doctors slay 'em off in the thousands. However, I know young Barnes's Papa quite well and I happened to be over this way, so I thought I'd look in myself. I suppose you can give me some lunch?”

The Mess Secretary was with difficulty persuaded that rations for twenty might, without positive hardship to anybody concerned, be stretched to supply twenty-one. Afterwards Inspector Cockrill made a tour of the hospital, popping his head into wards and operating theatres in his darting, bird-like way; small and brown and irascible, his shabby old felt hat that crammed sideways on his head in the familiar, Napoleonic fashion; Sergeant Bray following ponderously in his wake, keeping a weather eye open for anything gorgeous in the shape of V.A.D.s. “There's nothing much to be done here, Moon,” said Cockrill at last briefly. “I want to get back before the black-out, so I'll just see the widow first, as she seems to be clamouring for audition, and then I'll buzz off home and report that the death was just the private misfortune of the gentleman in question, and that they may as well let the thing drop.” He stumped off to the small and dusty office that had been put at his disposal for the afternoon, and, rolling himself a wispy cigarette, flung his hat and mackintosh into a heap on the desk and sat down before it and composed himself to give ear.

A large round black bundle was led in by a stony-faced corporal and dissolved immediately into a flood of tears. “Never a cross word,” sobbed Mrs. Higgins, standing patiently with out-thrust behind until somebody should put a chair under her. “Never a cross word in all our thirty-seven year of married life. Thirty-seven year and every year as happy as the year before; and all to end like this, first of all that 'Itler and now this 'ospital, first of all them bombs and now this sinful neglect of my pore old man. For sinful neglect it was, Inspector, and you can take my word for it; the things I've seen in this 'ospital, well you wouldn't believe; the goings
on!
And now there 'e is, lying there dead in a nasty mortuary, a thing I couldn't abide even to pass, let alone go into one; and all cut up and poked about by a lot of prying people that don't know their own business and wouldn't if they saw it. Thirty-seven year of married life and never a cross word, Inspector, and all to end like this!”

“It's very hard on you, Mrs. Higgins,” said Inspector Cockrill, who knew better than to try and stem the flood before the first spate had exhausted itself.

Mrs. Higgins gave a perfectly dreadful sniff. “Hard! Hard it is indeed, Inspector, and worse than hard! Here's my pore old Joe, took in this 'orrible way, and me a widder and my fatherless orphans cast upon the world and what is the Government going to do about
that
I should like to know?”

As Mrs. Higgins would have a pension from the Post Office where her husband had worked for many years, and as her fatherless orphans were grown men and women, making a nice little thing out of various aspects of the war effort, it was not likely that the Government was going to do very much. “Anyway, I'm glad to have a few words with you, Mrs. Higgins,” said the Inspector, crushing out his cigarette without much regard to table, office, Army clerks, for the use of, and immediately lighting another; “I'd like to know if you have any particular complaints to make, or if you know of anything which you think might explain your husband's death …”

Mrs. Higgins had spent a profitable hour at her husband's bedside on the morning of his operation, listening to the account of the sleepless night he had passed. “Goings on, sir! They shove 'im in a corner bed, right next to the little room where them nurses sits; and the goings on in that little room, you wouldn't 'ardly believe.” She related them in detail and the Inspector believed about half of it. “'Eard every word, 'e did, and saw everything that went on. Nurses and sisters and all—flirting away with them doctors in a way I wouldn't like to describe,” cried Mrs. Higgins, describing it in detail all over again. “Call themselves nurses, indeed! Sluts, more like! And cruel—well! Left 'im lying on 'is bed half an hour or more before they even washed the dirt off of him; never give him a nice cup of tea or anything; just a nasty prick with a needle and told 'im to go to sleep. Sleep! Much sleep he could get with all them goings on to be watched through the window of that little room. And the next morning! Five o'clock they had 'im up and washed his face all over again, as if he could of got dirty, laying there in a nice clean bed; and one miserable cuppa tea, and nothing else till 'e went for 'is operation. I wish I'd of known, I'd of smuggled 'im in somethink, but of course how was I to know he'd have the operation, and it's my belief he'd of been a lot better off without it, anyway; always cutting bits off of you, these doctors are. I don't ‘old with it, myself. So there 'e was, 'ungry as a 'unter, pore old boy, and no bloody wonder, well, excuse my language, Inspector, but you know what I mean. I 'adn't 'ardly settled down to have a nice chat with him, when a whole lot of men come in and starts giving him an X-ray, or some such, a nasty looking lamp affair they had with them, and I don't know what all; then they put a lot of screens round him and started getting him ready for the operation; no sooner than I sits down again, and it's one of the doctors comes and wants to listen to 'is chest; and 'e was just going to tell me somethink, I don't know what, and then another one comes and there's a lot more screens put round 'im and I'm turned out again; and two minutes later I'm told, ‘You'll 'ave to go now, Mrs. 'Iggins!' ‘Well, all right,' I thought to meself, ‘I'll go, but I won't go far,' and I stood in that round hall place outside the ward, and I watched them wheel him out on a stretcher thing, all covered up with blankets and 'is pore old face quite red, laying on the pillar. That young 'ussy was wheeling him, that Nurse Samson, they call her; a cruel girl she is, cruel hard to the patients, Inspector, I can tell you that. ‘Well,' I thought, ‘that's a nice thing,' I thought, ‘leaving my pore old man in charge of a chit like that,' and I was just going up and say somethink about it, when another one come up to her, the night nurse, Lingley or some such name. ‘Oh,' 'allo, Nesta,' she says …”

“Esther?” interrupted the Inspector, leaning forward with a gleam of interest. “Esther Sanson? Is
she
here?”

“Well, Esther or Nesta, I don't know and I don't care,” said Mrs. Higgins, not pleased to be checked in the narration of her history. “‘Oh 'alio, Nesta,' she says, or Esther, if you like, and she stops and says, ‘Who's this?' she says, ‘is it 'Iggins?' she says, and she stoops down over him and she says, ‘Pore old 'Iggins,' she says, ‘but don't worry,' she says, ‘you're going to be all right,' she says, quite kind like, and then she goes on and she says, ‘Oh, Nesta,' she says, ‘I'm so tired I don't know what to do with meself. I've been wandering about ever since I came off duty trying to make myself want to go to bed. It was a terrible heavy night last night,' she says; ‘but I wanted to tell you that I've taken over our laundry so you don't have to bother about it,' or something of that sort; and then she has another word with Joe, ‘don't you worry,' she says, and then off she goes, and the other one wheels him away into the operation theatre and that's the last I see of him.…”

“Very sad for you,” murmured the Inspector, devoutly hoping that this was the last he would see of Mrs. Higgins.

“… and the next thing is they comes and tells me he's dead,” said Mrs. Higgins, beginning to weep again. “And the next thing is they'll have to inform the Coringer. ‘I'm not going to 'ave any nasty inquests on my old man,' I says: ‘I'm not going to 'ave 'im cut about and that's flat!' ‘I'm afraid we can't prevent it,' they says, ‘any case of death under annersetic has to be reported to the Coringer, and if he orders a poce mortem there's nothing we can do about it.' So the next thing is there's the inquest, and the next thing is I come up here to find out what's what, not being satisfied with the Coringer's Verdick myself: and now here's Scotland Yard, narking and questioning and bullying and me a pore widder thirty-seven year married and …”

“And never a cross word,” finished Cockrill, and bowed the lady out without further narking or bullying.

3

A little group met that afternoon in the central hall of the hospital. “We saw you trotting the Inspector round, Major Moon,” said Woods. “What did he say? Is he going to arrest us all for murdering poor old Higgins?”

“Really, Nurse Woods, the way you do talk!” cried Sister Bates, who did not care for this kind of conversation even in fun.

“He looked rather a sweet little man,” said Frederica.

Inspector Cockrill was anything but a sweet little man. Major Moon was about to explain this, though carefully exalting his many and genuine virtues, when he was interrupted by one, Sergeant McCoy, who, coming out of the reception-room, hesitated, saluted, and stood respectfully silent until given permission to speak. “What is it, McCoy?” asked Moon.

Sergeant McCoy was Orderly Sergeant on night duty in the reception-room, where, among other things, various keys were kept. He had been greatly excited by the rumour that a detective was going round the hospital, and he now had a tale to relate of which he proposed to make a great deal of capital, though, in his heart, he believed it to be entirely without significance. On the night of the blitz, the night of Higgins' admission, that is to say, a figure, masked and gowned, had come into the reception-room, taken the key of the operating theatre off its hook, and silently glided away: returning sometime later, unseen, and replacing the key on the hook. His expression added: There now! What do you think of
that
?

Major Moon thought very little of it. “Well, what about it, McCoy? You must often have people in their gowns coming in for the key.”

“But this was the key of the main theatre, sir; and it wasn't being used that night.”

“Well, somebody in the emergency theatre wanted something and sent up for it. Didn't you see who took the key?”

“No, I didn't, sir. I thought it was just one of the nurses, like you say; and then I was busy, sir, with the blitz and all, and so many admissions, and I didn't see anyone put it back.”

Sister Bates was up in arms at a fancied reflection on her staff work. “I'm sure there couldn't have been any need to send up from emergency. In fact, I asked the night staff afterwards and they said everything had been quite all right. They'd have told me if they'd had to borrow anything from the main theatre.… I even went down myself and checked up on everything before operating started, though I wasn't on duty; I'm sure there was nothing wrong.”

“What about you, nurse? You weren't on duty either, so I suppose you wouldn't know?”

“Well, no, I wasn't, sir,” said Woody; she looked at Barney, also standing by. “You would know if anything had been sent for.”

“I don't think anything
was
,” said Barnes.

Sister Bates marched to the telephone and rang across to the Sisters' Mess. “No, definitely nobody left the emergency theatre,” she announced triumphantly, rejoining them. “Sister Gibson was on duty and she says they had everything they wanted.”

“It seemed a bit funny, sir, being
masked
,” said McCoy, disappointed by the prosaic turn his blood-curdling story was taking.

“It would if it were any key but the theatre key,” said Moon impatiently. All the same it was odd. “What time was this?” he said.

McCoy had no idea what time it had been, but he had noticed the key back on its hook when he went to his meal at midnight. “Was it a man or a woman who came for it?” asked Barney, rather impatiently.

“I don't know, sir,” said McCoy, giving it a rather eerie emphasis.

“You don't know?”

“Because of the mask,” insisted Sergeant McCoy.

4

Which of the two bombshells it was that kept Detective Inspector Cockrill at the hospital that night, he never knew; or at any rate never acknowledged. He had one leg already in his car when Major Moon arrived to tell him about the first, and when the second crashed, without benefit of air-raid warning, in a neighbouring field. The syrens broke belatedly into their unearthly howl; a flare dropped slowly over the downs, out towards Torrington, splitting the early winter darkness with its gradually brightening gleam—and where there are flares, there are very soon going to be bombs. Inspector Cockrill was interested in bombshells and he did not like bombs; and there was a fifteen-mile drive home in the general direction of those flares. “I'll stay,” he said briefly, and withdrew his leg and marched back to his dusty room. Sergeant Bray, rejoicing, made tracks for the Sergeants' Mess.