An Empty Death (14 page)
Authors: Laura Wilson
‘No, but some of them were people he’d referred from Casualty. Air raid casualties and car smashes and things like that.’
‘So he came to see them.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What about the other times?’
She put her head back and blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘Other times?’
‘You said he was there to see patients sometimes. What was he there for the rest of the time?’
‘Oooh . . .’ She did the head-on-the-side thing again, but with a lot less conviction this time. ‘I don’t think that’s for me to say.’
‘Yes it is,’ snapped Stratton. ‘This is a serious matter, Miss Maddox. Dr Reynolds is dead. Failure to tell me what you know could have serious consequences, and I don’t have time to sit here while you go through your Hollywood movie-star act, so I suggest you pull yourself together and start co-operating.’
Nurse Maddox, flushing, mumbled, ‘Sorry,’ and bent forward to grind out her cigarette in the ashtray. The humped shape of her shoulders, and the fact that she seemed to be taking a long time about doing it, made Stratton feel uneasy. His words had come out more harshly than he expected. Some chap had probably told the wretched girl that she looked like Veronica Lake or someone, and the poor kid had never got over it.
When she raised her head, Stratton saw fear in her eyes and realised that she’d never meant to say anything but hadn’t been able to help herself. It was entirely possible, of course, that she had absolutely nothing to tell. Either way, the thing had clearly gone further than she’d intended, but at this point he couldn’t risk passing up any information. ‘Tell me what you meant,’ he said.
The words came out haltingly, in an almost-whisper. ‘Sometimes he came to see one of the nurses. He pretended it was something else, but that’s why he was there.’
‘Which nurse?’
‘Marchant.’
Stratton looked at his paper. ‘Fay Marchant?’ he asked, without mentioning that she was the next name on his list, and probably waiting outside.
‘Yes. She used to work in Casualty. We get moved around, you see, and—’
‘Why did he come to see her?’ asked Stratton, neutrally.
‘He . . . Look, she doesn’t know I know about it. She’d never speak to me again if . . . It was only a couple of times. I just happened to catch sight of them, and then when he came in another time, I saw her looking at him, and it was, you know . . .’
‘When you caught sight of them, what were they doing?’
‘They were in the sluice.’
‘Sluice?’
‘The sluice room. For the bed pans.’ She gave a little moue of disgust.
‘Oh, yes. Of course. But a doctor wouldn’t normally be in there, would he?’
‘No. That’s why it was strange. The door was open a little way, and that’s when I saw them.’
‘What were they doing?’
‘He had his arms round her. He gave her a kiss.’
‘On the lips?’
Nurse Maddox shook her head - regretfully, Stratton thought. ‘On the cheek. But he was embracing her.’
‘When was this?’
‘A couple of weeks ago, I think. Maybe ten days. I can’t remember exactly.’
‘I see. Now, how about Nurse Leadbetter? Did you know her?’
‘I knew who she was, but . . . Not really.’
‘Do you think she might’ve had some connection with Dr Reynolds?’
‘Like that, you mean?’ The femme fatale returned as Nurse Maddox tossed her head. ‘Hardly!’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘She was a little mouse of a thing. Never went out or wore make-up or anything like that.’
‘Any boyfriends that you know of?’
‘No. She wasn’t interested in anything like that. Far too serious.’ Nurse Maddox leant forward, prurient, agog. ‘They’re saying she was strangled, Inspector. Is that true?’
‘We haven’t had the results of the post-mortem yet,’ said Stratton.
‘Well, I can’t understand it if she was - that’s a sex crime, isn’t it, strangling?’
‘Not always, Miss Maddox. Perhaps,’ suggested Stratton, gently, ‘you should spend less time at the pictures.’ He rose to escort her from the room. ‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.’
When he opened the door he saw, leaning against the opposite wall of the corridor, a slim young woman with smooth dark-brown hair tucked neatly under her cap. Nurse Maddox saw her too. She turned the colour of beetroot and uttered a little shriek before dashing away. The dark-haired girl stared after her for a moment, then turned to Stratton, eyebrows raised in surprise. He mirrored her expression with his own for long enough to convey that he had no idea why she’d reacted in such a fashion, then said, ‘Nurse Marchant?’
She smiled. ‘Yes, Inspector.’
Fay Marchant, Stratton thought, was beautiful. Her enormous eyes were deep chocolate brown with long lashes, her complexion was ivory and her lips were full. Stratton cast a discreet glance at her legs as she preceded him across the room. They might have been encased in thick black stockings, but they still looked shapely, and so, beneath the uniform, did the rest of her.
He seated himself in the swivel chair. ‘Would you like a cigarette, Miss Marchant?’
That smile again. ‘Thank you.’
Once the cigarette had been lit - this time with the minimum of fuss - Stratton said, ‘So, tell me about Dr Reynolds,’ and, putting his elbows on the desk, rested his chin on his hands in a manner suggestive of one about to hear a confession.
‘Well,’ Fay (it was impossible to think of her as Nurse Marchant, despite the uniform) hesitated. ‘It was a terrible shock, for all of us. And his poor wife . . . I wouldn’t say I knew him, really. Of course, I knew who he was, because I was in Casualty before I was transferred to Men’s Surgical.’
‘You knew he was married?’
‘Well, yes . . . I mean, it’s not as if it was a secret, or anything.’
‘But your relationship with him - you knew him quite well, didn’t you?’
Fay frowned. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘You were observed in a rather . . .’ Stratton paused deliberately to see if Fay’s face would betray anything, but she looked merely puzzled, ‘intimate position with Dr Reynolds.’
‘Was I? Who told you . . . ? Oh.’ Fay, evidently remembering Nurse Maddox’s odd behaviour, said, ‘Of course. You don’t have to tell me. Oh, dear. I didn’t realise.’ She stared down at the polished wood of the desk for a moment, then raised her head and, looking him straight in the eye, said, ‘She saw us in the sluice room, didn’t she? I did wonder at the time . . . Look, I can see why she came to that conclusion, Inspector, but it really wasn’t what she thought.’
‘What was it?’
‘It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t work here, Inspector.’
‘Have a go.’ Stratton gave her an encouraging smile.
‘Well, I was on nights, and one of the patients, an elderly man who’d been smashed up in an air raid - he’d had a couple of operations, but he was in a bad way, and we’d done everything we could . . .’ Fay looked at Stratton as if he might be in some doubt about this.
‘I’m sure you did. What happened then?’
‘He died. The night sister had called the house surgeon, and we’d all done our best, but it wasn’t any good. Dr Reynolds had come up, and—’
‘Why? Had he been called for as well?’
Fay shook her head. ‘He’d treated the man in Casualty, when he was first brought in, and he knew he wasn’t doing well . . . He did come to see me, sometimes, if he was on his rounds. Not because . . . what you thought, just . . . well, we had a sort of affinity.’ She gave Stratton a pleading look.
‘What sort of affinity?’
‘A mental affinity. It was dreadful, hearing he’d died like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Being attacked, and on his own. Horrible.’
‘You think that’s what happened to him?’
‘Well, it was, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Do you know anyone who might have wanted to harm him?’
‘No!’ Fay sounded shocked. ‘Of course not.’
‘You said you had a mental affinity. Meaning not emotional or physical?’
‘No. Well, a bit emotional, I suppose, but never physical. What I mean is, we got along in a friendly way, not—’
‘But he kissed you, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, but that was because of this patient. After he’d died I was upset, you see, and . . . I don’t usually react like that, I mean, when people die - it’s dreadful, but you get used to it, only he’d been there quite a while, and he was such a nice old man. A widower, but his daughter used to visit . . .’
‘At night?’
‘No, that was when I was on days.’ Stratton made a note to check that this tallied with the nursing rota, and she continued, ‘I’d just started on nights, and it takes time to adjust. It can be tiring - I’m not complaining, it’s just that sometimes one can get a bit emotional about things. That time just before dawn, you can start to feel worn down, especially with something like that, and everything seems sort of dreary and hopeless. My fiancé was killed at Tobruk, you see, and that’s when it’s worst. When you see a body - someone you knew - and it looks like them but they’ve gone and it’s not them any more ... And Ronnie - that was my fiancé - he must have looked like that, too. It probably sounds stupid, but if you felt something for the patient . . . and I’d got fond of Daddy Banks. I went into the sluice room, just to be by myself for a few minutes, and Dr Reynolds saw me. He was just trying to cheer me up, that’s all. You do believe me, don’t you?’
‘I can see how such a thing might happen,’ said Stratton, sympathetically.
‘That means you can’t see.’ Fay sounded resigned. ‘Look, Inspector, I could get into terrible trouble if the matron heard about this. It really hasn’t got anything to do with Dr Reynolds dying like that, and I’d hate his wife to think that there was . . . anything . . . untoward . . . between us.’ Her words broke up into gulps, and Stratton could see that she was fighting to contain tears. If it wasn’t real, he thought, it was a bloody good performance, and he was discomfited, as he always was - no matter how many times it happened, which in his job was rather a lot - by the sight of a woman weeping. He produced his handkerchief - clean that morning, thank goodness - and passed it across the desk. ‘It’s bound to be distressing, but try not to upset yourself. We can,’ he added, with awkward gallantry, ‘be discreet, you know. Where were you on the evening of Wednesday the twenty-first?’
‘In the nurses’ quarters,’ said Fay, promptly. ‘All evening. With Maddox and some of the others.’ She gave him a watery smile. ‘She obviously didn’t tell you about that.’
‘What about Nurse Leadbetter?’ asked Stratton. ‘Was she there?’
‘I don’t think so. She was on nights. I’ve just gone back on to days.’
‘So she’d have been asleep during the day?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you know her well?’
Fay shook her head. ‘I don’t think she was a very easy person to know. She didn’t say much - kept herself to herself. She seemed . . . well, aloof, really, but perhaps she was just shy. I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to kill her.’
After she’d left, Stratton sat down to make some notes and collect his thoughts before admitting the next girl. As far as poor little Leadbetter was concerned, Fay’s comment was not dissimilar to Nurse Maddox’s, or, indeed, to several of the others’, in that no-one had considered her significant enough to warrant killing, but then nobody had admitted being sufficiently close to her to have enough of an idea . . . And if she was supposed to be asleep in the basement, what the hell was she doing in a disused operating theatre several floors up? After staring into space and tapping his pencil on the desk for several minutes, he was forced to admit to himself that he was doing nothing more productive than imagining what Fay’s breasts might look like. Regretfully dismissing the delightful image from his mind - it would never do if one of the other nurses, or, God forbid, the matron, came in and found him sitting there with an expression of slack-jawed lust - he applied himself to the probable nature of her relationship with Dr Reynolds. His instincts as a man told him to believe her, because he wanted to, because she was charming and beautiful; and because he hadn’t liked Nurse Maddox, the simpering tale-bearer. His instincts as a copper, however, made him question all these things. Admittedly, Nurse Maddox’s demeanour had suggested that she was quite capable of making something out of nothing. Perhaps she was jealous of Fay’s looks, too, but it did not mean that she was, in this particular instance, a liar. And - a definite point in her favour - she’d held back from describing the embrace she’d witnessed as a full-blown clinch.
As far as Fay herself was concerned, the fact was that women’s faces were not the indexes of their souls, and beauty was no guarantee of truthfulness. He recalled the photograph he’d been given of Reynolds, now at the station being duplicated for the men conducting the door-to-door enquiries. He wasn’t, Stratton thought, a bad looking man, but he wasn’t a matinee idol. Then again, you saw girls who were knockouts with all sorts of ugly men. Rich ones, usually, with influence, but weren’t all nurses supposed to want to marry doctors for that very reason? And for an unscrupulous girl, the fact that a doctor was already married would be neither here nor there . . .
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