The Wench is Dead (3 page)

‘All right, chief?’

‘On the mend,’ said Morse cautiously.

‘Huh! That’s exactly what the old Colonel used to say: “On the mend”. Poor old boy!’

‘I see,’ said Morse, with some unease.

After Greenaway’s eyes had unclouded from their appropriate respect for the departed Colonel, Morse continued the dialogue.

‘No tea for you, then?’

Greenaway shook his head. ‘They know best, though, don’t they?’

‘They do?’

‘Wonderful – the doctors here! And the nurses!’

Morse nodded, hoping indeed that it might be so.

‘Same trouble as me?’ enquired Greenaway confidentially.

‘Pardon?’

‘Stomach, is it?’

‘Ulcer – so they say.’

‘Mine’s perforated!’ Greenaway proclaimed this fact with a certain grim pride and satisfaction, as though a combination of the worst of disorders with the best of physicians
was a cause for considerable congratulation. ‘They’re operating on me at ten o’clock – that’s why I’m not allowed a drink, see?’

‘Oh!’ For a few seconds Morse found himself almost wishing he could put in some counter-claim for a whole gutful of mighty ulcers that were not only perforated but pierced and
punctured into the bargain. A more important matter, however, was now demanding his attention, for Violet had effected a U-turn and was (at last!) beside his bed.

She greeted her new charge with a cheerful grin. ‘Morning, Mr, er’ (consulting the Biro’d letters on the name-tab) ‘Mr Morse!’

‘Good morning!’ replied Morse. ‘I’ll have some coffee, please – two spoonfuls of sugar.’

‘My, my!
Two – sugars!
’ Violet’s eyes almost soared out of their whitened sockets towards the ceiling; then she turned to share the private joke with the grinning
Greenaway. ‘Now, look you here!’ (reverting to Morse): ‘You can’t have no coffee nor no tea nor no sugar neither. Oh right?’ She wagged a brown forefinger at a point
somewhere above the bed; and twisting his neck Morse could see, behind his saline apparatus, a rectangular plaque bearing the sad little legend NIL BY MOUTH.

D
ETECTIVE
S
ERGEANT
L
EWIS
came into the ward just after seven o’clock that Sunday evening,
clutching a Sainsbury carrier-bag with the air of a slightly guilty man walking through the Customs’ shed; and at the sight of his old partner, Morse felt very glad, and just a little
lachrymose.

‘How come you knew I was here?’

‘I’m a detective, sir – remember?’

‘They phoned you, I suppose.’

‘The Super. He said you sounded awful poorly when he rang yesterday morning. So he sent Dixon round, but you’d just been carried off in the ambulance. So he rang me and said I might
like to see if the NHS is still up to scratch – see if you wanted anything.’

‘Something like a bottle of Scotch, you mean?’

Lewis ignored the pleasantry: ‘I’d’ve come in last night, but they said you weren’t to have any visitors – only close relatives.’

‘I’ll have you know I’m not quite your “Orphan Annie”, Lewis. I’ve got a great-aunt up in Alnwick somewhere.’

‘Bit of a long way for her to come, sir.’

‘Especially at ninety-seven …’

‘Not a bad fellow, Strange, is he?’ suggested Lewis, after a slightly awkward little pause.

‘Not when you get to know him, I suppose,’ admitted Morse.

‘Would you say
you’ve
got to know him?’

Morse shook his head.

‘Well?’ said Lewis briskly. ‘How
are
things? What do they say’s the trouble?’

‘Trouble? No trouble! It’s just a case of mistaken identity.’

Lewis grinned. ‘Seriously, though?’

‘Seriously? Well they’ve put me on some great big round white pills that cost a couple of quid a time, so the nurses say. Do you realize you can get a very decent little bottle of
claret for that price?’

‘What about the food – is that all right?’

‘Food?
What
food? Except for the pills they haven’t given me a thing.’

‘No drink, either?’

‘Are you trying to set back my medical progress, Lewis?’

‘Is that what – what
that
means?’ Lewis jerked his eyes upwards to the fateful warning above the bed.

‘That’s just precautionary,’ said Morse, with unconvincing nonchalance.

Lewis’s eyes jerked, downwards this time, towards the carrier-bag.

‘Come on, Lewis! What have you got in there?’

Lewis reached inside the bag and brought out a bottle of lemon-and-barley water, and was most pleasantly surprised to witness the undisguised delight on Morse’s face.

‘It was just that the missus thought – well, you know, you wouldn’t be allowed to drink – to drink anything else much.’

‘
Very
kind of her! You just tell her that the way things are I’d rather have a bottle of that stuff than a whole crate of whisky.’

‘You don’t mean that, do you, sir?’

‘Doesn’t stop you telling her, though, does it?’

‘And here’s a book,’ added Lewis, withdrawing one further item from the bag – a book entitled
Scales of Injustice: A Comparative Study of Crime and its Punishment as
Recorded in the County of Shropshire, 1842–1852.

Morse took the thick volume and surveyed its inordinately lengthy title, though without any obvious enthusiasm. ‘Mm! Looks a fairly interesting work.’

‘You don’t mean that, do you?’

‘No,’ said Morse.

‘It’s a sort of family heirloom and the missus just thought—’

‘You tell that wonderful missus of yours that I’m very pleased with it.’

‘Perhaps you’ll do me a favour and leave it in the hospital library when you come out.’

Morse laughed quietly; and Lewis was strangely gratified by his chief’s reactions, and smiled to himself.

He was still smiling when an extraordinarily pretty young nurse, with a freckled face and mahogany-highlighted hair, came to Morse’s bedside, waved an admonitory finger at him, and showed
her white and beautifully regular teeth in a dumbshow of disapproval as she pointed to the lemon-and-barley bottle which Morse had placed on his locker-top. Morse, in turn, nodded his full
appreciation of the situation and showed his own reasonably regular, if rather off-white, teeth as he mouthed a silent ‘OK’.

‘Who’s that?’ whispered Lewis, when she had passed upon her way.

‘That, Lewis, is the Fair Fiona. Lovely, don’t you think? I sometimes wonder how the doctors manage to keep their dirty hands off her.’

‘Perhaps they don’t.’

‘I thought you’d come in here to cheer me up!’

But for the moment good cheer seemed in short supply. The ward sister (whom Lewis had not noticed as he’d entered – merely walking straight through, like everyone else, as he’d
thought) had clearly been keeping her dragon’s eye on events in general, and in particular on events around the bed where the dehydrated Chief Inspector lay. To which bed, with purposeful
stride, she now took the few steps needed from the vantage point behind the main desk. Her left hand immediately grasped the offending bottle on the locker-top, while her eyes fixed unblinkingly
upon the luckless Lewis.

‘We have our regulations in this hospital – a copy of them is posted just outside the ward. So I shall be glad if you follow those regulations and report to me or whoever’s in
charge if you intend to visit again. It’s absolutely vital that we follow a routine here – try to understand that! Your friend here is quite poorly, and we’re all trying our vairy
best to see that he gets well again quickly. Now we canna do that if you are going to bring in anything
you
think might do him good, because you’d bring in all the
wrong
things,
OK? I’m sure you appreciate what I’m saying.’

She had spoken in a soft Scots accent, this grimly visaged, tight-lipped sister, a silver buckle clasped around her dark-blue uniform; and Lewis, the colour tidally risen under his pale cheeks,
looked wretchedly uncomfortable as she turned away – and was gone. Even Morse, for a few moments, appeared strangely cowed and silent.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Lewis (for the second time that evening).

‘You have just had an encounter with the embittered soul of our ward sister – devoted to an ideal of humourless efficiency: a sort of Calvinistic Thatcherite.’

‘And what she says …?’

Morse nodded. ‘She is, Lewis, in charge, as I think you probably gathered.’

‘Doesn’t have to be so
sharp
, does she?’

‘
Forget
it, Lewis! She’s probably disappointed in her love-life or something. Not surprising with a face—’

‘What’s her name?’

‘They call her “Nessie”.’

‘Was she born near the Loch?’

‘
In
it, Lewis.’

The two men laughed just a little; yet the incident had been unpleasant and Lewis in particular found it difficult to put it behind him. For a further five minutes he quizzed Morse quietly about
the other patients; and Morse told him of the dawn departure of the ex-Indian-Army man. For still another five minutes, the two men exchanged words about Police HQ at Kidlington; about the Lewis
family; about the less-than-sanguine prospects of Oxford United in the current soccer campaign. But nothing could quite efface the fact that ‘that bloody sister’ (as Morse referred to
her) had cast a darkling shadow over the evening visit; had certainly cast a shadow over Lewis. And Morse himself was suddenly feeling hot and sweaty, and (yes, if he were honest) just a fraction
wearied of the conversation.

‘I’d better be off then, sir.’

‘What else have you got in that bag?’

‘Nothing—’

‘Lewis! My stomach may be out of order for the minute but there’s nothing wrong with my bloody ears!’

Slowly the dark clouds began to lift for Lewis, and when, after prolonged circumspection, he decided that the Customs Officer was momentarily off her guard, he withdrew a small, flattish bottle,
wrapped in soft, dark-blue tissue-paper – much the colour of Nessie’s uniform.

‘But not until it’s
official
like!’ hissed Lewis, palming the gift surreptitiously into Morse’s hand beneath the bedclothes.

‘Bell’s?’ asked Morse.

Lewis nodded.

It was a happy moment.

For the present, however, the attention of all was diverted by another bell that sounded from somewhere, and visitors began to stand and prepare for their departure: a few,
perhaps, with symptoms of reluctance; but the majority with signs of only partially concealed relief. As Lewis himself rose to take his leave, he dipped his hand once more into the carrier-bag and
produced his final offering: a paperback entitled
The Blue Ticket
, with a provocative picture of an economically clad nymphet on the cover.

‘I thought – I thought you might enjoy something a little bit lighter, sir. The missus doesn’t know—’

‘I hope she’s never found you reading this sort of rubbish, Lewis!’

‘Haven’t read it
yet
, sir.’

‘Well, the, er, title’s a bit shorter than the other thing …’

Lewis nodded, and the two friends shared a happy grin.

‘Time to go, I’m afraid!’ The Fair Fiona was smiling down at them, especially (it seemed) smiling down at Lewis, for whom every cloud was suddenly lifted from the
weather-chart. As for Morse, he was glad to be alone again; and when the ward finally cleared of its last visitor, the hospital system smoothly, inexorably, reorientated itself once more to the
care and treatment of the sick.

It was only after further testings of pulse and blood pressure, after the administration of further medicaments, that Morse had the opportunity (unobserved) of reading the blurb of the second
work of literature (well, literature of a sort) which was now in his possession:

H
ALF AN HOUR
after Lewis’s departure, Fiona came again to Morse’s bedside and asked him to unfasten his pyjama bottoms, to turn over on his
left side, and to expose his right buttock. Which orders having been obeyed (as Morse used to say when he studied the Classics), the unsmiling Nessie was summoned to insert a syringe of colourless
liquid into his flank. This insertion (he could see nothing over his right shoulder) seemed to Morse to have been effected with less than professional finesse; and he heard himself grunt
‘Christ!’ when the plunger was pressed, his body twitching involuntarily as what felt like a bar of iron was implanted into his backside.

‘You’ll feel a wee bit sleepy,’ was the laconic comment of the Loch Ness Monster; and Fiona was left to pour some disinfectant on to a piece of gauze, which she proceeded to
rub vigorously across and around the punctured area.

‘She’d have landed a top job in Buchenwald, that woman!’ said Morse. But from the uncomprehending look on her face, he suddenly realized that Nazi concentration camps were as
far back in the young nurse’s past as the relief of Mafeking was in his own; and he felt his age. It was forty-four years now since the end of the Second World War … and this young …
nurse … could only be … Morse was conscious of feeling very weary, very tired. ‘What I mean is …’ (Morse pulled his pyjama bottoms up with some difficulty) ‘…
she’s so … sharp!’ Yes, Lewis had used that word.