Green for Danger (30 page)

“But why?” cried Major Moon suddenly, and his voice rose almost to a scream, and he moved across the theatre, crabwise, his eyes fixed on Cockrill's hands. “Why should I? What harm had she ever done me?”

“She had it in her power to do you harm,” said Cockrill, standing still, following him round with his eyes. “She had it in her power to tell us something—if only she had thought of it. You wanted to silence her before she should begin to guess.…”

Frederica stood, open-mouthed with astonishment. “I? What could I have possibly told about him? What did I know about him? What could I have guessed?”

“His child was killed by a man on a
bicy
cle,” said Cockrill, his eyes on the old man, now standing mumbling foolishly at the door of the anæsthetic-room. He added, his voice loud and harsh, with a sort of rising triumph ringing through his tones: “You could have guessed the colour of his bicycle!”

“His bicycle?” said Frederica stupidly. “His bicycle? What
was
the colour of his bicycle?”

Esther moved slowly forward from the window of the other room; in another moment she would have spoken, but Moon cried: “No, no! Don't say it. Don't tell them!” and his blue eyes blazed into hers in an agony of supplication, fear and pain. Into the ensuing silence, Cockrill's voice fell like a cold pebble into a sun-drenched pool. He said: “It was a red bicycle.”

A red bicycle.

A postman's bicycle.

At that moment Major Moon sprang.

5

Cockrill had been waiting for something, but not for this. As he reached the door of the anæsthetic-room, the key turned in the lock, and he heard the bolts being shot. Esther's voice cried suddenly, filled with terror: “No!
No!
NO!”

“I must do it, Esther,” said the old voice, gentle and mumbling. “I must do it. I can't help myself.…”

Cockrill battered with small brown hands at the door. “Major Moon! Moon! Open the door!” Woody screamed, rattling at the handle: “Esther, open the door! Get to the door and open it … !”

“The window!” cried Gervase.

“It's barred,” said Cockrill.

“Well—my God, there's the other door! Perhaps he's left the other door unlocked!” They were out of the theatre almost as he spoke. Frederica dropped on to her knees at the foot of the door, prodding through the keyhole with a probe to force out the key. She whispered in a voice of sick horror, peering through the aperture: “He's going across the room towards her.… She's standing with her back to the window, with her arms flung out, beseeching him.… He's got—oh, Woody, he's got a hypodermic in his hand.…”

He had forgotten the second door. Cockrill, bursting in with Barnes and Eden and Sergeant Bray at his heels, flung himself across the little room and, with all his wiry strength, tore the syringe out of the old man's shaking hand. It fell to the floor with a little tinkling crash, and the fluid ran, thin and pale, across the tile. “Thank God we were in time,” said Cockrill, staring down at it.

“Thank God,” echoed Frederica and Woody, crowding into the doorway after them; and Esther, still standing with her back to the window, arms outstretched, crucified against the cold winter sunlight, said with shining eyes: “Thank God! Thank
God
!” Shrinking away into a corner, trembling horribly, Major Moon also mumbled, “Thank God!” to himself; the tears ran unchecked down his pink and white wrinkled old cheeks, and his witless blue eyes were fixed despairingly on her flushed face.

Cockrill put his hand in his pocket and drew out the handcuffs; and she dropped her arms slowly and came forward smiling a little, quite gaily, and held out her wrists.

CHAPTER XII

1

C
ockrill slid the steel rings over the narrow hands and clicked-to the catches. He said, turning away his head: “Esther Sanson, I am arresting you for the murder of Joseph Higgins and Marion Bates; and for the attempted murder of William Ferguson; and for causing grievous bodily harm to Frederica Linley. You know that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence …”

Esther acceded to it all quite quietly. To their wordless astonishment, to Woody's noisy protestations, she responded only with a strange little smile. Her eyes were bright and tearless, there was unwonted colour in her cheeks; she seemed lit from within as she had been on the night that William had told her of his love. It was unendurable to see her standing there, so straight and slim, so lovely, so—so gay, with the ugly bracelets over her slender wrists. Into the terrible silence Woody cried: “Esther, say it isn't true! Say this isn't true! I can't bear it, Esther; tell us it wasn't you … !”

“Oh, but it was me, Woody,” said Esther, and turned upon her shining bright brown eyes. She said to Cockrill, smiling at him: “
You
knew, Cockie, didn't you?”

“Yes,” said Cockrill. “I knew.” He added slowly: “I knew almost from the beginning, but not early enough to prevent Bates being killed. After I understood about the cylinder, of course, I was certain; but I still had no proof.”

“It was bad about Bates,” said Esther. She passed her tongue over her lips and gave a little shudder. “You—you knew so much about it, Cockie. It was horrible and uncanny the way you kept describing it all, as though you had been there and seen it done. No wonder I had hysterics that night, just afterwards, when you questioned us; Woody explained it all away next morning, but I thought at the time that you must have been watching me … that you were stringing me along.”

“I wasn't certain,” said Cockrill. “It was her look of astonishment that gave me the first clue. She was expecting—if she was expecting anyone—Eden. Well, what told her in those few moments that it wasn't Eden? She couldn't have recognised the figure; she couldn't have recognised the voice … supposing it had been Barnes or Major Moon; she would have assumed it was Eden speaking.”

“Only it was a woman's voice,” suggested Esther, still faintly smiling.

“Yes. It was a woman's voice. There was only one thing that, in that brief moment, could have made her look so amazed and incredulous; the figure that she thought was Eden, stepped forward and spoke with a woman's voice.”

Woody looked up at her piteously, with streaming eyes. “Oh, Esther … how could you have
killed
her? How could you have
stabbed
her? And the second time …?”

“Yes, that was bad,” said Esther again, but she spoke with a sort of light-hearted carelessness, a sort of offhand irresponsibility. “Higgins was different, of course; he had to die. It was justice. And William, too, when I knew about him. But Sister Bates knew too much; and I couldn't let her speak. I should have been found out and punished—I should have been punished for doing what I knew was right. I couldn't allow that; it would have—sort of cancelled it out. I had to kill her.” She said to Cockrill: “I knew it would be fatal if you discovered about the paint. I had to prevent her from showing you the gown.”

Gervase Eden was recovering from the shock. He said, in his quick way: “Did you have to kill the girl, Esther, to prevent them knowing about the paint? It couldn't have told them who altered the cylinder?”

“It could tell them who hadn't,” said Esther. “For the paint to be dry, it would have had to be put on at least the night before the cylinder was used. About ten o'clock, the Inspector says. But at ten o'clock that night nobody in this hospital knew who Higgins was.”

“Except you,” said Cockrill.

“Except me. We didn't get his name until the next morning. Gervase saw him, of course, and any of the others might have seen him before he was brought into the ward; but they couldn't have recognised him. I didn't recognise him myself.” She played with them for a moment, deliberately holding their attention, tantalising them; it was almost as though she were enjoying herself, but at last she added softly: “Until I washed his face!”

2

“He was covered with dust and grime,” said Frederica, her eyes widening with comprehension. “He looked like—you couldn't have told who he was.” She insisted to the others, as though proof were necessary. “It's true. You couldn't have told
who
he was.”

“But Esther cleaned away the dirt,” said Cockrill, “and then she knew. None of you saw him after that until the next morning, when it would have been too late to have doctored the cylinder.”

“I saw him,” said Frederica. “I looked after him during the rest of the night.”

“Yes, but in all that time you never left the ward; you went out for twenty minutes to get your supper, but you didn't leave it afterwards; and that was before you could have recognised who he was.”

“And Esther …?”

“Esther left the ward at twenty minutes past ten; half an hour later she was only just joining Miss Woods at your quarters. It takes about five minutes to walk across the park.” He added, turning to her: “You made a slip when you mentioned to your William that you had seen him being wheeled along to the ward that night; that was thirty-five minutes after you were supposed to have gone to your cottage. I'm sorry, Esther. This is a terrible thing for me to have to do. I knew your mother, and I remember you when you were a little girl; but I must ask you to come along with me.”

“Can I have some water first?” she said.

He glanced at her suspiciously, but it was clear that the first flush of strength and excitement was fast ebbing away; her lips were dry and the colour fading from her cheeks. Woody fetched water from the tap, and she drank it gratefully and sank on to a stool, leaning back with a gesture of terrible weariness against the wall. “Just a minute, Inspector, while I pull myself together.” She added, with a last sparkle of laughter in her voice: “You can while away the time explaining to them all how clever you've been.”

He saw that she would not be fit to walk very far. “Order a car,” he said to Sergeant Bray who had stood all this time very pink and excited in the background. While they waited, Freddi said, as though struck suddenly by an idea: “But Esther—do you mean to say that it was you who tried to kill
me
?” and stared at her as though she could not believe her wits.

There was no more laughter now. She lifted sad, heavy eyes and held out her manacled hands in a little gesture that immediately she withdrew. “Oh, Freddi, darling … darling little Freddi—not to kill you; not to
kill
you! And after all it was I who dragged you into the fresh air. I wouldn't have let you die.…”

“She had to have morphia,” said Cockrill, since explanations appeared to be unavoidable. “She wanted you out of the way. She didn't want to harm you, only to get you out of the way for a day or two.…”

“For a night or two,” corrected Esther gently.

“For a night or two. She wanted to go on night duty in the ward.”

“They give out so much more morphia at night,” said Esther dreamily.

“No wonder the patients on St. Elizabeth's were restless and in pain,” said Cockrill. “That first night, after she knew who Higgins was—she kept back his morphia. I think she only wanted to torment him, to have him suffer, but it gave her a quarter of a grain. When she killed Sister Bates, she found more in the poison cupboard. She took that too. She was in danger of being found out, by then, and she wanted it for herself—in case of need. That was two grains and a quarter; but she couldn't be certain that that would be enough; she had to have more. She knew only one way to collect it, and that was to withhold it from the patients. Poor devils—she withheld the doses prescribed for the men on the ward.” He pointed with the toe of his shoe to the pool on the floor. “There it is now. Major Moon got here just in time to snatch it from her.”

“I saw her just about to use it when you turned your back to pick up my coat,” said Moon. He went to Esther and stood by her, putting his arms around her shoulders. She leaned back gratefully against him, closing her weary eyes. Cockrill saw the look on his face and did not interfere. “I—I wanted to save her, even yet,” said the old man sadly. “I bolted the door. I didn't have time to think of course, but I had a vague idea of saving her without your knowledge.”