Green for Danger (16 page)

2

Cockrill came, casting his hat down on to the desk in the centre of the room, shrugging off his mackintosh, feeling in his pockets for tobacco and papers, his bright eyes all the time searching their weary faces. They stared back, anxious and appealing, and he met their questioning glances with a cold hostility. There was none of the ‘old pet' about Inspector Cockrill now. He said, at last, grimly: “So Higgins
was
murdered after all! And now we have a second murder on our hands!”

They had spent half an hour convincing themselves of this; but it did not make it any the less horrible, to hear it put again, bluntly, into words. Shakily and miserably, they recounted again, piece by piece, the history of the evening: of the disastrous party, of the scene at the end of it, of the final departure of Bates into the dark night. He said at last, thoughtfully: “If she knew murder had been committed—why didn't she tell me earlier in the day?”

Nobody appeared to know the answer to that. He asked suddenly: “Does anybody know anything whatsoever about this crime that they haven't yet told me? Because, if they do, I should strongly advise them to speak up now. Sister Bates was obviously killed because she had this knowledge and it wasn't too late to stop her from telling it. Be advised and say everything you have to say,
now!
That at least would be one danger averted.”

“For God's sake, Cockie,” said Esther, white and trembling; “there isn't any
more
danger? This thing isn't going on and
on
…?”

He looked at her briefly but did not reply. Instead he said to Major Moon: “What constitutes a lethal dose of morphia?”

“Morphia?” said Moon, bewildered. He held a little consultation with his feet. “Well, I don't know; what would you say, Eden? Four grains? Five grains?”

“There've been lots of recoveries from that and more,” said Barney. “But that would be with treatment.”

“Would two grains be fatal?”

“Well, I don't know, Inspector; not necessarily, I shouldn't think.”

“Especially on a healthy subject,” suggested Eden. “On the other hand there've been deaths from half a grain.…”

“And recoveries from twenty grains,” said Barney.

Cockrill shook his head impatiently; there should be a lethal dose of a drug and a harmless dose and an in-between dose, and none of this vagueness. He felt disappointed in the medical profession which failed to keep its knowledge in neat little boxes; and said with some asperity: “Have any of you got any morphia in your possession?”

“Oh, hell,” said Frederica.

“I
beg
your pardon, Miss Linley?”

She fished in the recesses of her respirator case and, after some fumbling, produced a small white tablet and laid it on the table before him. “I
thought
that was coming; and I didn't want to give it up!”

“What is this?” said Cockrill sternly.

“Well, morphia, of course,” said Freddi; she put out her hand to take it back: “Don't you want it? Good!”

“Yes, I do most certainly want it; what are you doing with it in your gas mask?”

“Most of us keep a small dose handy in case of being buried in an air-raid,” explained Barney, glancing uneasily between Cockrill and Frederica. “If you were trapped and in pain, it would be comforting to have some, and might save another person risking their lives to give you a shot of something. I gave Miss Linley some, and I keep half a grain myself.” He produced a tiny box and emptied two little white pills on to the table.

“Here's mine,” said Eden, following suit, and as Major Moon also handed over two tablets, he added, grinning: “Come on, Woody—cough up!”

“Must I give you mine?” pleaded Esther, white to the lips.

Her mother had died after three days under the ruins of their home; Cockie looked at her from under his eyebrows and his look was full of pity, but he said, firmly: “I'm afraid you must, Esther, but I'll let you have it back the moment this affair is concluded.” He added, looking round at them with an ironical lift of the eyebrow: “I presume your being in possession of this stuff is—unofficial?”

“Just mildly unofficial,” agreed Eden, smiling back.

Cockrill gathered up the eleven little tablets and placed them in an envelope in his pocket. “Each of these is a quarter, is it? What's the normal dose?”

“A quarter of a grain,” said Moon.

“What
is
this, anyway?” said Eden suddenly. “What's morphia got to do with Marion Bates? She was stabbed, wasn't she?”

“Yes, she was stabbed.” He ground out his cigarette stub on the floor with the heel of his shoe, and immediately began rolling another; intent on the work of his fingers, he said evenly: “She stood with a look of—I think it was incredulity—on her face; and the murderer stabbed her in the breast, striking a little bit downwards to the heart.”

“Did you say ‘
incredulity
'?” said Woods, and her voice shook.

He looked at her sharply. “You saw the girl yourself; didn't you notice it?”

She stood like one in a dream, staring at him. “Incredulity! Yes, that was it! That was her expression!” and it seemed as though a great load was lifted from her heart. “She was—astonished!” she said. “She—she looked up and she couldn't believe what she saw!”

They all looked at her curiously. “Would Sister Bates have died at once, Barney?” said Frederica, in that little endearing way she had of asking such questions of him with a childish confidence in his ability to reply.

“If she was stabbed right through to the heart I should think she would,” said Barney. “Practically at once, anyway.” He glanced at Moon and Eden for collaboration.

Esther started to say something, but stopped. Instead, she asked: “What happened next?”

Cockrill had finished the cigarette, and he sat with his head on one side, watching it smoking wispily between his brown fingers. He said slowly: “What happened next was this. The murderer was dressed in a clean surgical gown, from the linen cupboard, and a mask of the more elaborate type, the kind that covers the whole head and leaves just a slit for the eyes. He had with him, or he went back to the laundry basket and fetched a soiled gown and a small, oblong mask. He took the girl's body and dressed it up in the gown and the mask, and he pulled rubber gloves on to the hands and thrust the feet into rubber boots; he laid the body out on the operating table and then …” He paused for a moment and added deliberately: “Then he stabbed the dead body again.”

“Oh, Barney!” said Frederica. He took her little hand and held it warmly in his own.

“Stabbed her a second time—when she was dead?” said Woods, recoiling.

“Yes, she was dead,” said Cockrill, drawing on his cigarette. “The second wound was smaller and closer than the first; and it hasn't bled at all.”

“How can you know which was first?” said Freddi.

“I happen to be a detective,” said Cockie, raising a sardonic eyebrow. “The smaller wound was made after the gown was put on. The first wasn't—there's a big, ragged hole in the gown, and they've tried to make it look as though both wounds were made when she already had the gown on; but I don't think they were. I think the gown was put on after she was dead; and then she was stabbed again.”

“But why?” cried Woody, shuddering horribly. “
Why
?”

Cockrill wished he knew; and because he did not know, because he was so anxious and uneasy, so helpless in face of the appalling absence of tangible evidence that confronted him, he grew, as always, nervous and irritable, staring at their pitiful white faces with a sort of irrational enmity. To-morrow there would be work to do, finger-prints to be checked, photographs to be pored over, innumerable answers to be noted and sorted and digested and compared; the whole, familiar, satisfying paraphernalia of police routine. But tonight—to-night there was nothing to be done. He must dismiss these people to their beds, and for all he knew, one of them was a murderer. He said suddenly and harshly: “The killer took two grains of morphia out of the poison cupboard; you'd better look out for yourselves!” and took an almost sadistic pleasure in seeing their faces grow even more white, even more taut with strain.

“The cupboard in the theatre?” said Woody stupidly.

“Yes, the poison cupboard in the theatre. Bates had hidden the ‘proof' there. She still had the keys in her hand as she lay dead on the table; but the cupboard was open and there was no morphia there.” He swung round upon Woods. “The poisons book show that there should have been two grains of morphia in the cupboard; is that correct?”

“I suppose it's correct, if it says so,” said Woods. “I know we were pretty low in morphia; we'd have been stocking up again tomorrow. “

“Perhaps that was the ‘proof',” suggested Eden. “The morphia phial, I mean.”

Cockrill had finished with them; he turned away to the desk to pick up his mackintosh and cram the old felt hat on to the back of his head, preparatory to another plunge out into the night; and said, giving them only half his attention: “No, no, the morphia wasn't the ‘proof'. The morphia was kept on one of the middle shelves. The proof, what ever it was, was hidden on the bottom shelf under some lint and bandages and things; she stooped down to get it … she had her back to the room, all unconscious that she was being watched. But she was. Somebody was standing, masked and gowned, with one gloved hand on the lintel of the door, watching her quietly; and when she turned.…”

Esther screamed once; screamed out horribly, and burst into peal upon peal of laughter, hardly less horrible. They stood appalled, staring at her: Eden shuddered and closed his eyes as though he could hardly bear to see the blankness of her eyes and her mirthless, laughing mouth: Moon swayed in a daze of intolerable weariness, Barney put his arm round Frederica, and she turned away her head and stood against his shoulder, erect, but trembling from head to foot; Woody—Woody walked over to Esther and, as though all this terrible evening of fear and horror and suspicion and uncontrol were concentrated in this one action, hit her with all her strength across the face.

The silence that followed was most terrible of all.

3

Esther awoke with a headache, after only a couple of hours' sleep. “What with gin, excitement, and then hysterics,” she confided to Woods, as they stood at either side of their room in the cottage, their foreheads butted against the walls, arranging their caps.… “I feel like absolute death. I'm sorry about the outburst, darling; thank you for your rather drastic measure—it certainly did the trick.”

“I put all I knew into it,” said Woody, laughing. “I was a trifle frayed myself by then with, as you say, gin and shock. Actually the atmosphere at the party was a bit off to begin with, smoke and beer and what not.”

“Much you know about it,” said Esther, smiling at her. “You weren't in the room more than half an hour all told.”

“I was pursuing the plan,” said Woods, a trifle shamefaced.

“It begins to look as though the plan were pursuing you. Do go carefully, Woody darling; don't get yourself into a mess. I'm afraid Frederica will take this the wrong way, you know. I really do think it's unwise.”

Woods was beginning to think it unwise, also, but not entirely on account of Frederica. She shrugged her plump shoulders, however, and busied herself with their breakfast, confining the conversation to the murder of Sister Bates. “You simply can't
believe
it, my dear! When I woke up, I had that hideous sort of cloud hanging over me that you do when something ghastly has happened and you can't quite remember what it is.… Then suddenly it absolutely hit me like a hammer.… I mean, who could have dreamt that old Higgins was really killed—
mur
dered—and here in the hospital; and now poor little Bates.… It's simply fantastic!”

“How on earth can the detective have known all that about what went on in the theatre?” said Esther, pushing aside a plate of untouched food. “It was just as if he'd been there.”

“Good lord, no! Utterly elementary, my dear Watson; they work it all out from where the blood was and the direction of the wound and things like that.”

“Well, but how does he know where the ‘proof' was hidden? I still think it might have been the morphia.”

“He said it was on the bottom shelf; if you get a thing from a very low shelf, you squat down and steady yourself with one hand by gripping on one of the upper shelves. These shelves are glass; I expect he could easily see Sister Bates's finger-prints bunched together on the edge of one of them.”

“How terribly clever of you, Woody,” said Esther, quite impressed.

“Oh, my dear, I'm brilliant. S. Holmes in person. Hell, the gas is running out!”

Esther stood aghast. “My dear, it was my turn to get a shilling and I've quite forgotten!”

“Well, never mind, ducky, I can cope. We'll just have to give Freddi a rather mingy hot-water bottle, that's all.” She filled it up from the water remaining in the kettle and trudged upstairs with it.

It was agony to Esther's tidy soul to go away and leave cups and saucers unwashed, but she had adjusted herself to Woody's slapdash habits, and she now tidied the breakfast things neatly away and stacked them on a tray until their return from duty. Woody bundled the knives and forks into a jar of water. “Come on, sweetie, we're terribly late; it's half-past seven.”

“All right, half a second.” She ran upstairs but reappeared again in a moment. “I thought I'd just shut the window to warm it up a bit for Freddi; but I see you've done it.”

“Yes, of course I have; come
on
, darling!”

Eden and Barnes were both standing at their bedroom windows, in the Officers' Mess, Barney shaving, Eden apparently fully dressed. “They're up early this morning,” said Woody, waving to them as they ran in through the main gate to the park.