No Escape Page 12

  Chapter Twelve

  The second patient to be ushered into the X-ray Department the next morning by the nurse in charge of the waiting hall was Gerald Stone.

  Jane was walking across the reception room of the department, on her way to take orders from Miss Gleaning when he came in. She stopped dead when she saw him, her heart racing.

  Gerry grinned at her, swung out his left arm, which was in a sling and said, “Tripped myself up. It’s my wrist.”

  Miss Gleaning, who had been directing the first patient to the cubicles, turned her head.

  “Tell Susan I’ll use the number one room for that man. What’s this? Query Colles, query scaphoid? They don’t seem to have got very far. Take a straight film and get it done at once. They’ll want him back in Casualty.”

  “Yes, Miss Gleaning.”

  The shock of his arrival had passed. Jane said, coldly, “Will you leave your coat and jacket in the second cubicle, please, and come back here.”

  “I don’t think I can manage,” he said, gently. “Won’t you—?”

  “Nurse will help you,” Jane said, moving away to give Miss Gleaning’s message to Susan in the next room.

  When she went back into the reception room she found Gerry sitting in a chair against the wall. The nurse had gone back to the waiting hall.

  “Come this way, please,” Jane said. He got up and followed her meekly.

  She settled him on the table, took his arm gently from the sling, rolling up his shirt sleeve above the elbow. She saw that the wrist was slightly swollen, but there was no displacement of the bones, no marked bruising. He made rather too much fuss over the way she moved his arm to place it in the right position for the picture.

  “How did you do it?” she asked, presently.

  “Tripped on some steps. Put my hand out to save myself. Ouch! Have a heart!”

  “Sorry.”

  She stepped back, swung the apparatus into position, arranged the correct exposure. Another girl came into the room.

  “Miss Gleaning said she’d like me to see this.”

  “Yes, Audrey.”

  Had Miss Gleaning noticed the recognition? Probably. And had sent Audrey to put a stop to any unprofessional exchanges. The Gleaning could not know how grateful she was, Jane thought, laughing inwardly.

  She instructed her junior carefully, took pictures in two positions, and removing the exposed films, went to the door.

  “Will you take this patient back to his cubicle, please, Audrey,” she said. “He will need help with his jacket. I shouldn’t bother about his overcoat. He’ll have to go back to Casualty when we’ve got the result.”

  She went briskly across reception to the entrance of the dark room. As she moved along the passage she heard Miss Gleaning say, “Audrey!” and a second later Gerry’s voice.

  “I can manage. Honestly. I’ll just sling it round me.”

  Jane got to work. The bones came up clear, sharp-edged. She was holding the two films on their frames, trying to identify the small wrist bones, when she heard a movement behind her and swung round. Gerry stood there.

  “You can’t come in here!” she said, tensely. She was very angry.

  “Why not? It’s my wrist, isn’t it?” He moved closer, holding out his good hand.

  “Patients are not allowed—”

  “Oh, come off it! Listen. I must see you, Jane. There are things I must say to you. I’ve tried to get in touch. You were always out.”

  “Not my fault. You didn’t leave any proper message or anything.”

  “I know. I can explain that. Look, when can I see you? Quick! Tell me!”

  She had to get rid of him. Apart from anything else he was holding up the work. She ought to be taking the next case.

  “All right,” she said. “I haven’t got my diary here so it may be no good, but the day after tomorrow, evening, about six?”

  “That’ll be fine. I’ll call for you.”

  “Give me your phone number. In case I can’t make it.”

  He hesitated. But before he could answer, Miss Gleaning’s voice, raised, was calling for Jane and a few seconds later she appeared in the dark room in person.

  “Well!” she said, standing very stiffly in the doorway.

  “This patient wanted to see the film—” Jane began.

  “Have I done wrong?” Gerry asked. His voice was polite, confident, unrepentant, disarming. Miss Gleaning drew a deep breath.

  “You must know perfectly well we can’t have patients interfering with the work,” she said, more mildly than Jane would have thought possible. “Come with me, please.”

  She stood aside for Gerry to pass out in front of her. Turning to Jane she said, “Let me see.”

  She took the two frames, held them up, stared at them intently. “I should say a totally negative result,” she said in a low voice. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Jane nodded.

  “I’ll send him back with a note suggesting a possible scaphoid. They’ll put him in plaster. Serve him right. Impudence.”

  She was gone and Jane, after another look at the negatives, hung them up to dry. You couldn’t really tell in the dark room if there was any bone injury or not. Dr Milton, viewing them properly, would have to give his opinion. Poor old Gerry. He hadn’t won out on this, thanks to Miss Gleaning. Serve him right, as she’d said. But he certainly had damaged his wrist slightly. She wondered how this had really come about.

  At the end of the morning she went to Casualty to see if they had reacted as Miss Gleaning hoped. Just as she expected G. Stone’s wrist had been enclosed in a plaster and an appointment had been made for him to attend the orthopaedic surgeon’s out-patient clinic in two days’ time.

  Two days from now. Her date with Gerry was on the same evening. She went on to find her lunch, thoughtful, not a little afraid.

  But before this, in the middle of the morning, Miss Gleaning had sent her up to Alexandra Ward about a requisition form that had come down unsigned. Jane saw that Sister was busy at the end of the ward with one of the senior consultant physicians and his houseman. Presently, as she waited outside, occasionally taking a look through the glass upper panels of the double door, she saw the houseman move from the group at the bedside and walk briskly down the ward.

  As he passed through the door, Jane accosted him.

  “Do you mind? This form—it isn’t signed. Miss Gleaning sent me up—”

  The young man turned the paper in her hand without taking it from her.

  “Not me,” he said. “Not one of my beds. Try Ferguson. Or Sister will tell you.”

  He was gone, leaving Jane to shower curses impartially on all staff, both nursing and medical.

  But the consultant’s round had come to an end. He and Sister were pacing solemnly back down the ward, looking neither to right nor left, ignoring patients who smiled and waved and those others who leaned forward, half out of their beds, hoping to ask the question they had wanted to put since the last visit, but had had no chance to utter while the technical words flew backwards and forwards between the doctor and Sister over their prostrate, uncovered bodies. The consultant now deliberately ignored all overtures. He had already spoken briefly to all his patients in the ward, confirmed their treatment, or revised it; encouraged them by assurance of progress or exhorted them to have patience. Until he was quite out of their hearing he would not give his views or his orders to Sister.

  Jane knew this. She stood back as the pair left the ward.

  “Just carry on, Sister,” the consultant said, hardly pausing in his stride. “Mrs Winthrop’s going downhill fast, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, sir. Her daughter knows. She comes up very regularly. She and her husband will be glad when it’s over. They had her like this, in their own home, off and on, for five years.”

  “Good for them. You can tell them there won’t be any ‘off’ this time. I give her a week, at most.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sister gave Mrs Winthrop forty-eight
hours. She had watched her face during this last examination. Her expression confirmed the outlook, which was without hope. She had not been deceived by the physician’s bland manner. So now she would stop fighting; she would allow herself the peace of acceptance.

  “That wretched young neurotic next door upset her a lot, didn’t she? While she was in.”

  “Miss Burgess? Yes. I think she did. She was a very disturbing factor in the ward all the time she was in. Even if it was only a few days.”

  “Oh, well.”

  The consultant had reached the main corridor. These last words were spoken absent-mindedly, for his thoughts were already with the male patients he was about to see in the next ward he would visit. He looked up and down the corridor.

  “Oh, there you are. Did you find it?”

  Jane saw the houseman’s young face, red from his rapid sprint to and from the Path Lab, appear beside his boss, smiling success.

  “Good. Let’s get on, then.”

  Sister had seen Jane, standing respectfully against the wall. As soon as the other two had gone she turned to her, holding out her hand. Jane did not have to explain.

  “They don’t seem able to keep their minds on what they’re supposed to be doing,” Sister grumbled. “I have all the forms laid out on my desk, names filled in, requests, even. And they can’t make enough effort to add their own names to them.”

  “It’s Miss Dennison again,” Jane said. “If you could sign it yourself, please, Sister, ‘p.p.’ whoever it ought to be—”

  “Miss Gleaning won’t mind and Dr Milton will never know? Very well. Come into my room. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  Jane followed her, a little surprised by the cordial tone of Sister’s voice. She had not been to the ward since the day of Sheila’s death. She was afraid Sister would connect her permanently with that unfortunate girl.

  Perhaps she did. But not with any animosity.

  “Did you have to give evidence at the inquest?” Sister asked, handing back the completed form.

  “Sheila, d’you mean? No, thank heaven.”

  They looked at one another for a long moment. Then Jane said, quietly, “Mr Long and I went to Reading yesterday afternoon to see her mother and father. They’re very respectable, very puritanical, terribly strict with her, I think. They’d lost a little boy.”

  “Typical,” said Sister and sighed.

  “Mrs Burgess gave me some beads of Sheila’s. A long chain of white heads.”

  “Beads?” said Sister and stopped.

  “Yes. I was going to ask you sometime. Show them to you. Mr Long thinks she wore them in the ward.”

  “A short string round her neck, almost a choker.”

  “If you doubled them, yes, it would make a choker.”

  “Single,” said Sister, with emphasis.

  Jane stared, then shrugged.

  “Oh well, they’re poppets. You can do anything you like with them, can’t you? Break them or join them any length. Mrs Burgess said she must have been wearing them when she was killed because they came back to her with the clothes after the police had seen them. They kept the suitcases. The police, I mean.”

  “Sheila wasn’t wearing beads—or any kind of jewellery—when she left this ward,” said Sister.

  Jane suddenly remembered the paper in her hand.

  “I must fly,” she said. “I’ve been ages too long already. May I show you the beads? I’d like to know if you saw them ever?”

  She ran all the way back to the department. Miss Gleaning had been very busy while she was away and had not noticed the passage of time. Jane slipped back into the routine.

  During her lunch hour she went away to the flat to get the beads, banging them round her neck inside her polo-necked jumper as Sheila had worn them in the train. At the end of the afternoon she went up to Alexandra Ward to show them to Sister.

  “Just a minute,” Sister said. She went into the ward kitchen where one of the nurses was making tea in a very large teapot.

  “Nurse Kimmins,” said Sister, formally, “you know Miss Wheelan from X-ray, don’t you?”

  The nurse, a dark girl with an olive skin and blue-black hair, turned and smiled.

  “Tell Miss Wheelan about Sheila Burgess,” Sister went on. “What you told me and what you thought.”

  “Well, I was seeing to her a good deal, you know, and I was struck by her changes of mood. She’d be up and down half a dozen times a day. I know she was a query nut case, but—”

  “She was perfectly sane,” Jane said, steadily. “She was frightened, that was all.”

  “It depends if you’re frightened of something real or not, doesn’t it? I mean, if it’s imaginary then it’s neurotic and that’s—”

  “Still not insanity. But I agree with you about her moods,” Jane said. “Absolutely. I never knew if I should find her excited and cheerful or down in the dumps, crying her eyes out.”

  “That’s agreed between you, then,” said Sister firmly. “Now let’s go back to my room, Miss Wheelan—”

  “But the beads—”

  “Pardon?” said the nurse.

  “Back to my room,” repeated Sister. Jane obeyed.

  When she had shut the door Sister said, “I don’t want that girl connecting the beads with Sheila’s behaviour. You see now what I’m driving at?”

  Jane did see. Sheila’s anxiety over her possessions. Her constant wish to go back to her lodging. Her insistence upon having her suitcases in the ward. Her wearing these beads.

  She put her hand inside her jumper, pulled up the string again and breaking it at one bead, laid it out in a straight line on Sister’s table.

  “You mean there might be a pep drug or something in them,” she said.

  Sister opened a drawer and took out a pair of pliers.

  “My only tool, but good for nearly everything,” she said.

  She detached a single bead, put it between the jaws of the pliers and pressed them together. The bead cracked with a very faint noise. Opening the pliers, two small fragments of a tiny hollow case and a small heap of white powder fell to the table.

  “The powder may be the crushed part of the bead,” said Jane. “Are poppets hollow?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Sister said, looking for a duster in another drawer. “Make what you like of it. I think there’s quite a strong possibility Sheila took drugs. That’s all.”

  “So do I, now.” Jane answered. She was remembering the landlady, Mrs Coates, who had hinted at it in her bitter, resentful voice.

  She swept up the beads, fastened them round her neck again and thanking Sister for her help, went thoughtfully home to the flat.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Back in the flat Jane found Mary in the kitchen, ironing. This peaceful and prosaic scene, coming at the end of a working day so full of unusual, even fantastic happenings, made her laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Mary asked. The shirt she was ironing was an old one, but did not seem to her to be a worthy object of derision.

  “He’s turned up again,” Jane said. “Guess where?”

  “Who’s turned up?” Mary asked, defensively, then, her mind waking up, said, “Not that doubtful charmer—Barry—”

  “Gerry,” answered Jane. “Gerald Stone.”

  “Lying in wait for you outside the gates? Chasing you up the road?”

  “Neither. As a patient in the department.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, indeed. A genuine sprain of his left wrist. All puffed up and painful. Limited movement. But no fracture.”

  “So he wasn’t putting it on, but using it as an excuse to see you?”

  “Apparently. He overreached himself though. He didn’t know the Gleaning.”

  Jane told her friend the full story of that morning’s activities, including their outcome.

  “Are you really going out with him again? I thought he’d scared the pants off you over the films?”

  “In a way, yes. But I’m still cu
rious.”

  She regretted her promise to Superintendent Garrod, but having given it, she could not explain to Mary her position as potential informer or amateur sleuth. Instead she started on the afternoon’s discoveries. Mary showed more interest in these.

  “Let me have a look at the beads,” she demanded.

  Jane fished up the string once more, lifted it over her head and handed it to her friend.

  “What’s the point of wearing them inside your jumper?” Mary asked.

  “I didn’t put them on for show,” Jane answered. “Only to take them up to show them to Sister when I had time. The Gleaning doesn’t like us to wear jewellery of any kind at work, even plain white beads. Anyway a string this length would get in the way. I’m jolly glad I did have them out of sight, as it happens.”

  “Why?”

  “You never know. Gerry may have snoopers in the hospital for all I know.”

  “Honestly! Aren’t you overdoing the cloak and dagger just a tiny bit?”

  “Perhaps I am. After all, thousands of girls have white beads.”

  Jane described her conversation with Sister. Mary was highly amused. She went away and brought back a hammer. Putting a piece of newspaper on the hearth in the sitting-room, she unfastened two beads from the string, put them down and hit them hard.

  As before they disintegrated into a white powder and a few more solid chips.

  “Hollow!” she said, nodding agreement with Jane’s description.

  “Exactly. No, don’t smash any more. I agree with Sister we shall have to—”

  But Mary did not apply the hammer to the third bead she detached from the string. She put it into her mouth.

  “Sugar-coated,” she said, with satisfaction. “Like all the best pills, you can suck at the start. Pills they are, my girl. Sister was right when she suggested they might carry drugs. Ugh!”

  She ran back to the kitchen and spat out the remains of the bead into the sink.

  “Bitter in the middle,” she said, indistinctly, rinsing her mouth with cold water. “I wonder what the dope is.”