No Escape Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/josephinebell

  Contents

  Josephine Bell

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Josephine Bell

  No Escape

  Josephine Bell

  Josephine Bell was born Doris Bell Collier in Manchester, England. Between 1910 and 1916 she studied at Godolphin School, then trained at Newnham College, Cambridge until 1919. At the University College Hospital in London she was granted M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. in 1922, and a M.B.B. S. in 1924.

  Bell was a prolific author, writing forty-three novels and numerous uncollected short stories during a forty-five year period.

  Many of her short stories appeared in the London Evening Standard. Using her pen name she wrote numerous detective novels beginning in 1936, and she was well-known for her medical mysteries. Her early books featured the fictional character Dr. David Wintringham who worked at Research Hospital in London as a junior assistant physician. She helped found the Crime Writers’ Association in 1953 and served as chair during 1959–60.

  Chapter One

  Timothy Long ran down the steps of the West Kensington Hospital entrance, crossed the front sweep, passed the gates and turned left, heading for the river.

  It was the first break he had had that day, which had begun at five in the morning with the arrival of an acute appendix case. A very acute appendix, he found, when he reached the blackened, stinking thing, cooked by its owner for three days of agony before the doctor was called. These incredibly courageous fools Tim thought. Or was it fear, not courage? Fear of the doctor’s verdict, which might be death. Fear of unknown horrors, worse than present pain. Well, the G.P. had wasted no time and the idiot would live—which he scarcely deserved.

  Timothy swung left again, which brought him to Hammersmith Broadway and its tricky crossings. The London evening air, though petrol-laden and heavy with the remains of last night’s fog, began to lift his spirits and drive out the more soporific fumes of the operating theatre. He had certainly had his fill of that hot house atmosphere today. After the early emergency, a full list of his own confronted him. This had taken from nine o’ clock until after one. Another look at the appendix chap, conscious now, supremely sorry for himself, almost persuaded that the surgeons had killed him, as he knew all along they would.

  A late lunch, an afternoon in the Out-Patient Department, followed by a slow visit to the wards with his boss. Old Beech-Thomas at his most pontifical, his most exacting. No let-up at all until the old boy had stared at the clock in Nuffield Ward, compared it with his own watch, eyebrows raised incredulously and said, “I’m supposed to be meeting my wife in half an hour.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tim had said, hopefully. “Shall I get her on the phone for you?”

  “Certainly not, boy, certainly not!” The suggestion was having the desired effect. Beech-Thomas was pounding towards the ward door. “I have to leave you, Sister. Mr Long will finish for me. Nothing else of urgent importance, is there? Don’t follow me. Good-day to you. Thank you.”

  He was gone without waiting for an answer, the double swing doors of the ward clapping behind him. Sister had been left far behind, only Nurse Copper waited at Tim’s elbow, face entirely composed, eyes gleaming with secret laughter.

  Tim passed through the ward doors himself, the nurse following. He paused, leaning dramatically against the wail of the corridor.

  “The old slave-driver!” he said, weakly. “He knows my day began at five. Thirteen and a half hours already, with twenty minutes for a so-called lunch and he expects me to finish his round for him. What would Sister say if I fainted on the ward floor? What would you do if I collapsed here and now?”

  “Go and find Sister,” Nurse Cooper said, her face including her eyes, now altogether cold.

  Sister in Nuffield Ward came quickly, assuring Tim she had no more problems at present. He met a junior houseman further along the main corridor who wanted advice about a patient due to leave the next day. After that there were notes to write up, a couple of telephone calls to attend to and dinner in the Resident Staff dining-room. Tim’s job as surgical registrar involved spending two nights a week in residence. This was the second of them.

  Now, at nine o’clock, in what appeared to be a complete lull, he was making his dash for the river and fresh air. Hammersmith Bridge, lights gleaming, was ahead at the end of the approach road. He was taking a chance on no one wanting him for the next half-hour. With luck no one would want him until tomorrow morning, though he intended to take another look at the appendix case before he turned in. Emergency operations two nights running would be perfectly possible, but it didn’t happen every week. It ought not to happen at all. But the Ministry of Health, having built a new annexe to the hospital to fill the urgent needs of an increased local population, had not yet appointed an extra consultant surgeon to do the extra work. They were going to do so, at the end of the year, but they were proposing at the same time, to cut out the junior registrar’s job altogether. So things would be much the same for him. The usual sweated labour. Why, after fifteen years’ training, did anyone work an average sixteen hours a day for a salary that wouldn’t tempt a beginner in the business world? Crazy, of course, but there was nothing else he wanted to do. And the politicians were not ashamed to soak him for it.

  As he reached the bridge and slowed down, moving to the parapet to look over, Tim felt some of his protesting bitterness slide from him. It had other reasons behind it not at all connected with his professional standing, his work or its reward. Nurse Cooper’s attitude rankled. He was making no progress there at all. It annoyed and disturbed him. Earlier encounters with nurses and girl students and other girls outside medicine had not been entirely disappointing. He did not always expect to win; he was still not anxious to be married. But he liked to have a companion, even if nothing came of it, even if they quarrelled early and broke it up. Nurse Cooper, he did not even know her first name, looked exciting, had a wonderful voice, was extremely efficient and kept making it abundantly clear that she took no interest in him whatever.

  He swore to himself, staring at the lights on the water and the dark shapes of a tug with barges moving rapidly down-stream on the ebb. He noticed that the mud was already beginning to show under the wall. Some of the cluster of house-boats moored near the bridge were heeling over slightly as they settled. A dreary lot of craft, he thought. Who would go to live there in the cold and damp and noise, cut off from the shore at regular intervals by the tide? He shivered, his gloomy thoughts dwelling again, on Nurse Cooper, his memory presenting him with yet more evidence of her total disregard.

  And not only Coop
er. There had been that girl in the radiography department that afternoon. Beech-Thomas had asked for the report on a case. The films were there, a series in a large envelope, but no report. At first Beeeh-Thomas had said nothing, simply took the films to the viewing box and stuck them in one after another. Then back to the first, then mixing them up, dropping one or two, which Tim retrieved, finally, turning in exasperation to demand the report, which Tim could not find.

  Miss Gleaning, head radiographer, was not helpful. She resented Tim’s second intrusion into her department. Her girls were working at full stretch; as she was herself …

  “If Dr Milton made a report,” she said, “it will be with the films.”

  “But it isn’t.”

  “Are your sure?”

  Clutching his patience with both hands Tim said he was certain.

  “Then I can only suggest the report was taken out in the ward and mislaid,” Miss Gleaning said.

  Tim left her, found Dr Milton, the radiologist, in his room and appealed to him direct. Milton was more cooperative. He remembered the case. He looked up his notes. He summoned his secretary and went into the fate of the report. Finally he ordered a duplicate to be sent up to Beech-Thomas as soon as it was typed out.

  Tim stayed where he was during the unavoidable short delay, staring at one or two films stuck in the many viewing boxes round Dr Milton’s office walls. He said nothing; the radiologist ignored him.

  At last one of the junior radiographers, a dark girl he had noticed once or twice because she looked more alive than the others, came in with a sheet of paper in one hand and a wet film on a carrier in the other.

  “Mrs Brown’s gall bladder, sir,” she said to Dr Milton’s back, and in a side whisper to Tim. “The report for Dr Beech-Thomas, but Sister phoned down—”

  Dr Milton had risen to take the just developed film. He barely glanced at Tim.

  “Better get back with that, hadn’t you?” he said, ungraciously.

  “Yes. Thank you, sir,” Tim muttered and went quickly, colliding with the girl who stood back to let the registrar out first at the same moment that Tim, with automatic politeness, stood back to let her go before him.

  “Sorry,” he said with marked anger, as they both got out of the room.

  “That’s all right,” she answered. “I was trying to tell you Sister phoned down to say she’d found the report in another envelope.”

  “Damnation!” he exploded, clutching the duplicate so roughly it began to crumple in his hand. “Sorry,” he said again automatically polite.

  He looked at the girl. Her face was half-turned away. She was laughing her head off, he decided.

  On his way back to the ward he remembered her name. Jane Wheelan. What business was it of hers, anyway, that she should laugh at him? These women! Frigid robots like the Cooper wench or prying jokers like Jane Wheelan. He was sick of women.

  Standing on the bridge staring out over the black, neon-streaked water, Tim forced his mind away from these and other memories of his harassed day. He had not come down here to brood, he decided, beginning at last to laugh at himself. He began to turn away from the parapet and as he did so he heard a thin cry from the water behind and below him.

  He turned back. A seagull? Above the noise of the traffic on the bridge the sound had been faint; but quite distinct. There were no seagulls, or at least he saw none. So what—?

  He peered over the parapet but saw nothing, until suddenly a bundle swept into view and a thin white arm shot up from it, a round white face lifted despairingly, dipped and disappeared under the bridge.

  Tim found himself in the water without any conscious appreciation of time passing. He had shot across the traffic, causing two near-accidents and one genuine pile-up; he had torn off his duffle coat, shoes and jacket, tumbled over the parapet and was falling the considerable height to the water before he even considered what he was going to do when he got there. He had just time to wonder if the man in the water was clear of the bridge or if he would actually fall on top of him when he hit the water himself. The impact was fierce. He had gone in feet first and he sank some distance. He was gratified to find that he was clutching his nose as he had always done as a small boy until he was ten and learned to dive. He pushed himself back to the surface, shook his head free of water and looked about him, first back at the bridge, which seemed a long way off already, a dark mass with a row of dots along the top, the heads of an excited crowd; then at the water beneath, a rippling empty flood bearing down on him, carrying him along with it; then ahead, at the backs of the little waves curling over as they ran.

  At first he saw nothing, but just as he began to wonder if he had been altogether mistaken, in which case he was all kinds of a foot, he saw once more a thin white arm lift from the water and fall back. Putting his face down he made off towards it in a fast crawl, passed the floating object, turned on his hack and as it came up to him, grasped the shoulders of a human figure.

  It was a girl, he saw, without much surprise. Most of the river suicides they brought to the West Kensington as query corpses were women. This one, from what he could see in the dim light on the water was young. Short and slight too, he decided with relief, for as soon as he grabbed her she had stopped her own attempts to swim and lay still, her legs sinking down on to his.

  “Go on kicking,” he told her, “helps me and keeps your circulation going.”

  She did not attempt to answer but began again to use her legs and, as her face was now above water, to cough and spit to clear her mouth and lungs.

  Tim swam easily, holding her and turning his head at regular intervals to look for a possible landing place. He dared not try the mud which seemed here to reach right up to the embankment wall with no firmer stretch of shingle at the edge. Besides, there were no steps in the wall, which seemed to indicate that this was not a place where anyone could expect to climb up or down.

  He wondered how long they would have to swim like this before rescue came, a police launch or some other boat. He tried to go over in his mind the detail of the Boat Race course, but did not find it helpful. Putney. There were boat-houses at Putney. How far was it from Hammersmith to Putney?

  He found the girl was speaking.

  “I can’t go on,” she was saying. She seemed to be repeating it over and over again in the intervals of gasping and spluttering when waves washed over her upturned face. “Let me go. Save yourself. I can’t go on.”

  “Rot!” he shouted at her. “You’re doing fine. We’ll be making land in a minute. Keep it up! You’re doing fine!”

  He was beginning to feel cold himself. Not tired, hut miserably, dangerously cold. She must be worse. Her movements were very feeble now. He began to rage inwardly at the bare thought of failure, but he kept his steady pace, though he began to steer, away from the inhospitable left bank towards the centre of the stream. The tide ran faster here and there was less danger of being swept into moored boats and dragged under them by the current.

  And then a beam of light shot over the river from side to side and the sound of powerful engines roused even the girl. She began to struggle.

  “Shut up!” Tim yelled at her. “Keep still. It’s looking for us. They’ll pick us up. Keep still, damn you!”

  He went on shouting at her but she fought so hard he nearly lost his hold twice and in the end he had to dip her head under the water and hold her there before she became quiet enough to manage. When the police launch reached them and strong arms took her from him she was limp and still and rolled over on the deck of the launch, unconscious.

  Tim was pulled inboard. He stood swaying for a few seconds, feeling colder than ever in the keen wind that blew up the river. He began to shiver violently.

  “Come on,” one of the patrol said, urging him with a strong arm. “Get below and get those things off. Talk later.”

  Tim obeyed thankfully. In the warmth and shelter of the cabin below the wheelhouse, supplied with a dry towel, a pair of jeans and a sweater, he soon rec
overed. He had not been in the water for more than half an hour and was used to swimming for twice that time. The girl had been no trouble until just at the end. The girl—

  “Is she all right?” he asked, looking about him.

  Two men, whose backs had hidden her up to now, looked round.

  “She’ll do,” one of them said.

  “She was fine until your searchlight picked us up,” Tim said, moving forward. “Then she panicked. I had to be a bit rough—”

  “Why can’t they do it quietly at home?” the other man said. “Where nobody like you is on hand to interfere.”

  “Can I have a look at her?” Tim said. “I’m a doctor, actually.”

  He was annoyed by the man’s indifference, so he asserted his position with unnecessary vigour.

  “O.K.” the man who had first spoken agreed. “You a friend of hers?”

  “Good God, no! Never seen her before,” Tim answered, picking up the girl’s unresisting arm and feeling her pulses.

  She was lying on her back, very still, covered up to the neck in grey blankets. Her eyes were shut, her breathing rapid but regular, like her pulse.

  She was not unconscious, Tim decided, but she was desperately afraid.

  “Has she said anything?” he asked.

  “When we carried her down she said ‘I can’t go on—I told him I can’t go on.’ ”

  “That’s what she told me just before she began to struggle,” Tim said, nodding.

  “There you are, then.”

  They meant, clear case of suicide, isn’t it? But Tim was not convinced. She had cried out for help. She had signalled with her arm. She had accepted his help at first. She had even been co-operative. It was this particular form of rescue she wanted to avoid. The police were the cause of her immediate fear at least.

  He kept this conclusion to himself. A few seconds later a steaming mug of tea was put into his hands and the girl was lifted while another mug was held to her mouth.