Death of an Avid Reader (11 page)

We were kneeling on either side of the patient, Wallis leaning forward. I moved back slightly, so that our heads would not touch.

I watched as the inspector searched the man's pockets. Looking at the top of Wallis's head, at his blond wavy hair, I had the odd sensation of seeing a Viking searching a vanquished opponent on the battlefield. The wavy hair must have been a trial to him as a boy. When he looked up, having found a couple of tab ends, matches, and a rosary, I noticed his deep blue eyes and dark lashes that a woman might envy. He stood, went close to the fireplace and threw the tab ends and matches into the fire. ‘What are his chances?'

I thought the man may hear me and so simply said, ‘He needs a bed bath, a nightshirt, and a poultice to ease his chest. He will feel better for being clean.'

If he did not recover, then at least he would meet his maker in a respectable manner, having had a little comfort.

‘I suppose he'll want this by him.' Wallis handed me the rosary, letting it fall into my hand.

I put it back in the man's pocket and stood.

‘PC Hodge tells me you waited behind to make a statement, Mrs Shackleton.'

‘Yes. I may have been one of the last people to have a conversation with Dr Potter. We spoke on the landing earlier today.'

Hodge knocked and came into the room. ‘Sir, they won't take him at the Workhouse Infirmary. Full up and had one of their outbreaks. He can be accepted at the General Infirmary. I said yes. Hope that's all right, sir.'

Why was Wallis frowning? ‘Inspector, that will be the best place for him. Not so far to travel and our patient will stand a better chance, particularly if they have enough staff on hand to take care of him straight away.'

‘Why wouldn't they, Mrs Shackleton?'

‘They'll be doing the changeover between day and night shift. Occasionally, someone is left waiting on a trolley.' I had left my scarf on the chair and now wound it loosely around the man's throat. ‘When he is taken to the ambulance, we can cover his mouth with the scarf, to protect him from the cold air.'

Inspector Wallis spoke to Constable Hodge. ‘After we've finished here, go up to the infirmary and keep an eye on him. I want a statement as soon as he recovers, if he recovers.' Wallis turned to me. He hesitated, as if what he was about to say came with some difficulty, and that he may be weighing a past resentment against present expediency. ‘Madam, you would be doing the police force a service if you would travel with him. I want this man kept alive.'

‘So do I, Inspector.'

We both knew that he might hold the key to Dr Potter's murder.

Wallis regarded me as useful, but probably a nuisance. I regarded him as a detective without experience in a murder enquiry. I hoped he would call in Scotland Yard, but something told me he would want to try and solve this case himself.

I did not trust him.

Ten

The two ambulance men wore navy uniforms and caps. One was short, the other tall. As they carried the stretcher bearing the sick organ grinder, one man raised his arms and the other bent his knees.

Constable Hodge opened the library's outer door.

In France during the war, the Ford Model T field ambulance had been the last word. Here, in peacetime, it seemed incongruous to see its solid, square outline in the quiet, foggy street. Three men came out of the nearby Mitre, and stopped for a moment to watch the stretcher being manoeuvred into the back of the ambulance.

The taller of the two ambulance men then went round to the driver's side of the vehicle and climbed in the cab. The other man stayed in the back of the ambulance for another moment or two, fastening belts to keep the stretcher in place. He then reached out to me.

‘Up you come.'

He jumped out, shutting the doors behind him.

Constable Hodge opened the door a fraction, long enough to say, ‘All right, Mrs Shackleton?'

‘Yes thank you.'

‘I'm to come along later, so I'll see you there.'

He closed the rear door as the engine cranked into life.

My semi-conscious patient wheezed. His chest rattled. I pushed at the flat pillow to try and give him more support and would have liked to raise him up but he was so exhausted that I merely rolled him onto his side and hoped that he would survive the short journey that lay ahead.

He still had my soft scarf around his throat and mouth which might give him a little protection against the icy chill. When the damp towel I had brought to soothe his brow became warm from his burning forehead, I took off a glove and lay my hand on his brow. He burned with fever, yet he shivered too. I tapped lightly on his back, hoping it might give some slight relief to the congestion in his lungs.

In the darkness of the ambulance's interior, I listened to the sounds of our journey: the rasp of the wheels as the vehicle crossed tramlines, the regular thumpety-thump on the cobblestones, and the drone of the engine. He coughed again. I held him steady when we turned a corner, stilling his arms when he began to flail and throw off his blanket.

During the first part of the journey, I had my bearings. After five minutes of attending to my patient in darkness, I could not guess our position. Finally, the ambulance came to a halt.

‘Won't be long now. You are at the hospital. You'll be taken care of.'

In the cab, driver and stretcher bearer were talking quietly.

The door opened. The driver held out his hand to help me down.

As the pair lifted the stretcher, the shorter of the two spoke to the sick man. ‘Did we rattle you, pal? We're tekin you in now.'

I closed the vehicle's doors.

The Infirmary building loomed darkly in the fog, huge, forbidding as the Castle of Otranto. Nothing about this day, this evening, felt real.

This building should be familiar to me since I had been shown all around it, and was last here when the plaque was unveiled, commemorating the staff who had fallen in the Great War. At the time, I had not wanted to see Gerald's name there, still hoping that my husband could be missing, and that he may return.

In the lobby, a porter came to meet us, wheeling a trolley. Expertly, the ambulance men rolled the patient from stretcher to trolley.

The driver spoke to the porter in a hushed voice. ‘This lady's from the police. She's a nurse and will be in attendance. A constable will be here later.'

They took their leave.

The porter said, ‘We're on the second floor, nurse.'

As we walked towards the lift, I breathed in hospital smells. Disinfectant. Anxiety. Efficiency.

He pressed for the lift and said quietly, ‘Wrong un is he?'

Being ‘from the police' gave me a very good reason not to reply. But being polite costs nothing and sometimes pays dividends.

‘He has pneumonia.' This did not answer the porter's question, but stopped him from asking another.

In the lift there was a different smell: cabbage, boiled fish, body odour.

We rattled to the second floor.

He opened the lift doors and wheeled out the trolley, thanking me when I closed the doors behind us. Perhaps I might very soon be expelled from the scene; a hospital matron being a law unto herself. I followed the porter along a corridor at the end of which were double doors. He used the edge of the trolley as a battering ram to open the doors.

A little way into the ward, we paused by a table, lit by a dim lamp. A pen lay on a set of patient's notes beside a medication log. The chair had been pushed back.

From the nearest bed came gentle snoring. As always in such places, when patients are supposedly settled down for the night, there was one who moaned loudly. There was always one.

Each bed was separated from the other by precisely the same distance, as if measured by a ruler. I thought of the dead mathematician, Dr Potter, and what brainy measurements and calculations would remain forever undone.

The ward sister approached from the far end. The porter stepped up to her. They stood a couple of feet from the table, speaking in low tones. She glanced in my direction. This might be it: my marching orders.

She came towards me as the porter turned the trolley around and wheeled it back the way we had come.

‘I'm Sister O'Malley. I'm putting your man in the room at the end.'

She was in her late twenties, pale skinned with blue-grey eyes. A few strands of wispy black hair escaped from her cap.

Without another word, she strode ahead of the porter and opened the door to a room on the right, just inside the ward's double doors.

I followed her.

The room was about twelve feet long and ten feet wide, with a high window.

While the porter wheeled the patient into the room, she said quietly, ‘The porter tells me you are a nurse, and with the police.'

‘Catherine Shackleton, Sister. I'm a former VAD nurse, with connections to the West Riding Constabulary and I am called to help the Leeds police from time to time.'

This was true in part, although it may have given a slightly false impression. My only connection to the West Riding Constabulary is my father who is chief superintendent in Wakefield, and I once took a lost child to Millgarth Police Station.

Among many fully trained nurses there was disdain for us Voluntary Aid Detachment types, so it was best to have this out in the open. Fortunately, Sister O'Malley showed no signs of being about to snub me.

She examined the patient without speaking. Suddenly he began to cough, to choke. She glanced quickly at me. I went round the other side of the stretcher. Between us, we lifted him and sat him up. I slapped his back, so that he might bring up the plug of phlegm that threatened to choke him. I caught it in my handkerchief.

She and the porter transferred the patient to the bed.

‘Do the police want you to stay with him?' she asked. When I hesitated, she continued, ‘Only I'm on my own tonight. One of my nurses is sick and the other on an emergency in the women's ward.'

I want him kept alive, the inspector had said. So did I want the organ grinder to recover, not only for his own sake but because he may be able to shed light on Dr Potter's death.

‘I can stay, Sister. I could start by giving him a bed bath.'

‘Thank you. That would be a great help.'

I took off my coat. ‘I'm not dressed for the occasion.'

She smiled. ‘You'll find everything you need, including an apron, in the room on your left, in the corridor. Very bad congestion. You'll apply poultices?'

‘Of course.'

‘The porter tells me there's to be a constable on duty.'

‘So I understand.'

‘I dislike the idea of having a policeman on my ward. It seems quite unnecessary in the circumstances. Make sure the officer stays in the corridor.' She turned to the porter. ‘Wait with the patient for a moment, please.' She touched my arm ever so lightly but it was a friendly touch. ‘Come on. I'll show you where to find what you need.'

I followed her through the double doors and into the corridor. She opened a door on the left. It was the nurses' room.

‘Here you are. I suppose this will be quite familiar.'

The room was shelved on two sides. Below counter level were cupboards, and on the counter to the left a kettle on a gas ring. The upper shelves held sheets, towels and flannels.

By the window were three separate sinks. She pointed to them from left to right. ‘That one for my tea things, middle one for patients' crocks, and the one on the right for dressing bowls. That has the hot tap with sterilised water. You'll find an apron and cap in the far cupboard.'

‘Thank you, Sister, I'll manage now.'

‘I'll have a chair put in the corridor for the constable.'

When she left, I hung up my coat. Donning the starched apron and pinning the cap in place created the oddest sensation. It was as if I were leaving myself behind and becoming young again, Kate the nurse. The events of the evening had unsettled me. I washed my hands, filled a basin, picked up towels and nightshirt. These actions reminded me of my younger self, eager, energetic, speeding through the First Aid and Home Nursing examinations, being told what to do and when to do it, and never flinching.

With effort, I banished the memories and concentrated on the here and now.

Back in the room, the porter helped me take off the patient's overcoat. It was thick and too big for him but could be cleaned and would see him through a few more years, if God granted him more years. Some of his garments would be beyond saving.

‘You'll need more than one basin of water for this chap, nurse.'

‘I know.'

‘Want me to fetch another?'

‘Not yet because it would be cold by the time I'm ready, but you might fetch a laundry bag and disposal bag.'

‘Consider it done.'

I set to work, unlacing the badly worn shoes. They must have been on his feet for months and were stuck to his socks. The cardboard insoles, shredded to nothing, would not have kept out the cold and damp. His socks would need to be cut off, and I dreaded to think about the state of his feet. That would be a separate job.

The porter returned with laundry and disposal bags, together with a pair of scissors. ‘Reckon you'll need these. Anything else?'

‘Thank you, no. You've been very helpful.'

He left. The wheels of his trolley and the opening of the doors briefly broke the silence.

He was right about the scissors.

It was not too hard to remove my patient's upper garments but the lower ones were beyond saving and had to be cut off. As best I could, I kept him covered as I worked to remove his clothing, snipping through the thick tweed trousers with difficulty.

His middle was red and inflamed from the pressure of his makeshift money belt.

His face was not too dirty, so he must have rinsed it somewhere, but there was a tidemark on his neck.

Although I worked as gently as I could to get him clean, and into a nightshirt, the process must have exhausted him still more. Briefly, he opened his eyes and seemed to look at me but without making any sign that he saw me. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed.