Some Die Eloquent (15 page)

‘Highly,' said Sloan. All the people working in the department there had had head-to-foot white gowns on and masks and there were lots of glass barriers everywhere. ‘You could see things, sir, but not touch them.'

‘Supermarkets should be like that,' said Leeyes, momentarily diverted. ‘Save a lot of trouble.'

‘I gather,' offered Sloan, ‘that there's quite a bit of medical research going on in there too.'

‘There always is,' said Leeyes. ‘No one ever wants to get on with the actual job these days.'

The Administrator at the hospital and George Wansdyke of Messrs Wansdyke and Darnley, plastics specialists, had both spoken more reverently about research but Sloan knew what Leeyes meant. The well-meaning and the academic had both been researching into crime since Cain killed Abel without coming up with a satisfactory solution.

‘So,' Sloan resumed his narrative, ‘we didn't go in. We rang the bell instead.'

‘And,' snorted the Superintendent truculently, ‘the footman said he would enquire if there were any wanted men roaming around waiting to give themselves up.'

‘And,' said Sloan steadily, ‘we were told that even if Jack the Ripper were loose inside we wouldn't be allowed further in.'

‘In the name of the Law …' began Leeyes weightily.

‘Furthermore,' reported Sloan unemotionally, ‘we were also told that should we step inside as unauthorized persons we would be sent to an Isolation Hospital and kept in strict quarantine until such time as the medical authorities deemed us free of risk to the community.'

It was this threat more than the nameless horrors of the Plague that had deterred them.

‘And your man?' demanded Leeyes who never for one moment lost sight of essentials.

‘Disappeared.'

‘Carrying the Lord knows what in the way of germs all over the hospital?'

‘We don't know how near the real stuff he got. They said that the next set of doors was locked but they promised to do a big search themselves and tell us if they came up with anything.'

‘Was there another way out?'

‘Yes, sir.' Sloan had been a policeman long enough to know that there was always another way out. That went for secure accommodation, too, as often as not. ‘There's a little staff door at the other end of the laboratories by their changing rooms and …' he paused.

‘And?' prompted Leeyes urgently. ‘We haven't got all day, Sloan.'

‘And they have one of those small service lift shafts so that – er – items can reach the laboratory without people having to go there in person from other floors.'

‘Big enough for a man?'

The Administrator hadn't thought so for a moment but Sloan knew better. ‘At a pinch,' he said.

‘The hospital could be searched …'

‘Not without a handful of warrants and a couple of hundred men,' said Sloan vigorously. ‘You should have heard them when I mentioned it. It was about the only thing the Matron and the Administrator agreed about. Except,' he added, ‘that you haven't got to call her Matron any more. She's some sort of a nursing officer.'

‘And as some sort of a police officer,' said Leeyes without hesitation, ‘you shouldn't allow yourself to be bullied by her.'

But he said it without his usual panache.

‘No, sir.'

‘The house,' said Leeyes. ‘What did you find there?'

‘The insulin bottles,' said Sloan. ‘Five unopened ones that looked all right. One half-empty one that could be all wrong. They've gone straight round to Dr Dabbe's lab.'

‘Take out insulin and put in water?' mused Leeyes.

‘Simple, when you come to think of it, sir, isn't it?'

‘That reminds me, Sloan. What have you done with Crosby?'

Detective-Inspector Sloan had only one thought in his mind when he left the Superintendent's office and that was food and drink – well, a cup of tea anyway. The day was slipping by unpunctuated by refreshment for the inner man. There were, he knew, places of work where meal times were observed with military precision but the Berebury Police Station was not one of them. Fortunately their canteen staff were as resilient as the rest of them. If their customers wanted food and drink then food and drink would be there for the asking, irrespective of the clock.

And if by any chance a man thought he could eat and then found when faced with food that he couldn't – a common enough situation among men who had their ways among the sad end of society – then nothing was said on either side.

Inspector Harpe's plate was empty.

Sloan sat down beside him. ‘All quiet on the traffic front, Harry?'

‘Just the usual foul-up round the market,' he said, pushing his empty plate away. ‘I've got a friend of yours waiting to see me, though.'

‘Policemen don't have friends,' said Sloan. It was one of the things that worried him about his unborn son. Would he get roughed up at school because his father was a copper? He'd have to teach the boy how to handle that early on …

‘True.' Harpe gave a short laugh. ‘You'll be pleased to know that Larky Nolson was heard to describe you as a working acquaintance in the pub down by the railway last night.'

‘So who's the friend?' Some bait Sloan rose to, some he didn't.

‘A medico.'

‘Which particular pillar of the profession?'

‘Peter McCavity.' Harpe grimaced. ‘Hardly a pillar.'

‘More like an unsure foundation,' agreed Sloan.

‘Come in to confess about yesterday morning's bollard.' Harpe jerked his head sourly. ‘I dare say he's forgotten about Friday's by this time.'

‘Friday's?' Sloan let his interest in Dr McCavity's Friday's activities show.

‘He had the one on the corner of Cranmer Drive on Friday.'

‘That's leading into Ridley Road, isn't it?'

‘There's just the church in between,' said Inspector Harpe without conscious irony.

‘How do we know?'

‘Someone rang in to tell us he'd had it down.'

‘Who?'

‘Ah, they turned shy when we asked them that.'

‘Pro bono publico?'

‘Only up to a point,' said Harpe realistically. ‘An anonymous telephone call isn't evidence.'

‘Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells, then.'

‘There was one thing, though, that was odd, come to think of it.'

‘Yes?' said Sloan. It was the odd things that made up police work.

‘The caller was male.'

‘Now that is odd,' agreed Sloan. Most men who were car drivers had a ‘There but for the Grace of God …' approach to minor motoring matters. Bollards weren't exactly punchballs – but they weren't people either. Not by a long chalk. Bothering to ring in with the driver's car number was usually women's work.

‘Shouldn't think the good doctor knows what a no-claims bonus looks like,' said Harpe, ‘so he'll probably …'

‘When on Friday, Harry?'

Harpe looked up. ‘Late afternoon, I think. I could check.'

‘Please.'

‘Interested?'

‘Very.'

‘Want to come along while he's in?'

‘It might help.'

It did. In a way. An unexpected way.

Dr Peter McCavity didn't seem surprised to see Sloan. His lip curled. ‘“Cry Havoc,”' he declaimed, ‘“and let slip the dogs of war.”'

Sloan paused. He didn't go to Evening Classes like the Superintendent but sooner or later all boys' schools performed
Julius Caesar
– if only because it wasn't full of parts for boys who had to pretend to be girls pretending to be boys. Or worse: parts for boys who had to pretend they were girls.

For a moment he searched about in his memory for a suitable rejoinder but all that would come to his mind was something else from another school play. It was a picture of their third-form clown playing Stephano, the drunken butler in
The Tempest
– another play for schoolboys. Prospero's daughter was the only female called for: the competition, as he remembered, had been for the part of Caliban. Stephano had staggered on stage clutching a bottle and saying between hiccups, ‘Here's my comfort.'

Sloan did not say that now.

There was a time and a place for everything.

When he came to think of it, it was the people who did things out of time and out of place who gave them half their trouble down at the police station. The preacher who had written that bit in the Bible about there being a time for everything wasn't wrong. And this wasn't the time for bandying quotations with the doctor. Even if he could think of the right one, which he couldn't.

Inspector Harpe wasn't even attempting to. He was taking down the details of the accident to yesterday's bollard.

‘Corner of Eastgate,' he said patiently.

‘“The moving finger writes,”' said Dr McCavity, who had clearly recovered some of his spirits during the course of the morning.

‘How about the one you had down on Friday afternoon?' said Harpe impassively.

‘“And having writ, moves on”,' said Peter McCavity impenitently.

‘Friday,' said Harpe. ‘Junction of Latimer Avenue and Cranmer Drive.'

‘Another bollard?' said McCavity, faintly tentative.

‘So we're told,' said Harpe.

‘So be it,' said Dr McCavity. Sobered, he was more presentable. He had a rather anxious air of willingness to please about him now.

Sloan stirred. ‘Near Miss Wansdyke's house.'

‘Really?' he said without apparent interest. ‘Yes, I suppose it would be that way. I don't know the house myself.'

Sloan maintained silence.

‘Dr Paston always looked after her himself,' said McCavity.

‘Except when he was away,' said Sloan.

McCavity shrugged his shoulder. ‘I couldn't even sign the cremation certificate, she being my partner's patient. He was ringing round on Monday to find someone outside the practice to complete the second part of the certificate.'

‘Cremation?' said Sloan. Morton's, the undertakers, had distinctly mentioned burial.

‘Didn't you know? She was going to be cremated. It was all laid on. It was what she had wanted and apparently she'd always said so but in the end they didn't take any notice. Nothing's sacred these days, is it?'

Detective-Constable Crosby was still at the Berebury District General Hospital.

His clothes, which lacked credence as a police officer, fitted his new role rather better. He was sitting in the corridor outside Fleming Ward disguised as an anxious relative. This meant that when necessary he was able to sink his head between his hands. Necessity only arose when a nurse who might be Briony Petforth passed.

From this vantage position he could at once observe the door of Sister's office and the swing doors that gave into the ward. There was another door beyond that of Sister's office that led he knew not where.

Yet.

Being young and as yet not in possession of any of Francis Bacon's hostages to Fortune, Crosby wasn't too familiar with anxiety and how it should be portrayed. Restlessness came into it, he knew, but too much of that might draw attention to himself and that was the last thing he wanted to do. He'd seen people pacing up and down in hospital corridors too, but not with their heads sunk in their hands whenever a certain third year nurse passed.

So he had settled for an uninviting bench clearly placed just where it was for those waiting for news from Fleming Ward. As a situation it was not without interest. Someone came through the swing doors every other minute and twice they were held open for a patient on a stretcher coming back to the ward from the operating theatre. There was, however, no sign of a young man with auburn hair and freckles wearing a donkey-jacket.

For some time he thought perhaps Briony Petforth wasn't on the ward and then, soon after the second stretcher case had arrived, she came through the swing doors and made straight for Sister's office. Seconds later Sister sallied forth in person and went through into the ward with Nurse Petforth. Moments after that an invisible loudspeaker started paging the duty house officer.

Crosby was so wrapped up in this living charade that he didn't even notice at first when a large woman approached. He gave a genuine start when she suddenly plumped down on the bench beside him.

‘Sorry, lad,' she said, ‘but there's only one bus I can catch in from Cullingoak to be at the hospital when visiting starts and I might as well wait here as at the bus station.'

He nodded and turned his attention back to the ward doors. As any television producer could have told him, it was compulsive viewing.

‘Got someone in here, too, have you?' enquired the woman presently.

‘Er – yes,' he said, collecting himself.

A harassed-looking young man in a white coat with a stethoscope dangling from his pocket had just turned on to Fleming Ward. He would be the house surgeon.

‘It's my husband,' she said gratuitously. ‘Hasn't been well all summer and in the end they said they'd better operate.'

‘Bad luck,' said Crosby.

‘What's yours in with?'

Crosby cast about swiftly in his mind. He had an aunt who had had to go into hospital once. ‘Gall-stones,' he said with conviction.

The fat woman patted his arm. For one awful moment Crosby was seized with sudden doubt, and he began to wonder if gall-stones were a peculiarly feminine complaint. Then she said kindly, ‘That's not serious, dear, these days, is it?'

‘With complications,' said the detective-constable a little coldly, his confidence restored. No hospital visitor likes to be demonstrated as visiting someone less ill than the next person's relative: even when it was not so much a case of
malade imaginaire
as of imaginary invalid.

‘Ah, that's different,' she said at once. The fat woman began to rearrange her parcels. ‘My hubby now – they said in the beginning that he wasn't going to be straightforward.'