Friday cont.
Gary’s morning was stressful, not least because he had had to
go to the hospital to ask questions about the two deceased women.
The ward sister was visibly distressed by the visit of a
police detective.
“If I had been on night duty it would not have happened,”
she sniffed.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” said the sister. “The person who
told you could have been the night nurse. She was on duty until eight because
night duty always includes washing the patients and getting them ready for the
day.”
“So you came in for eight and were confronted with those two
tragic events, were you?”
“Yes.”
“Hadn’t the night nurse raised the alarm earlier? I thought
those patients died during the night.”
“I don’t know when it happened,” said the sister. “I did not
come into the ward until I came on duty.”
“But the woman who was smothered could not have smothered
herself, Sister, so who came in and did it?”
Gary’s voice was taking on a hard edge. He was glad he had
come himself.
“Isn’t it customary and even necessary to keep a constant
watch on seriously ill patients?”
“I said I wasn’t here,” said the sister, who was getting
nervous and snapped at Gary. “If the night nurse was negligent, she’ll have to
answer for it, won’t she?”
“I’m not blaming you, Sister. What is that night nurse’s
name? I’ll talk to her. I expect you saw her when she was leaving.”
The nurse looked uncomfortable.
“Well not exactly. I was a bit late.” She admitted.
“So the patients were left to their own devices, were they?”
“No. A helper was here.”
“What kind of a helper?”
“A trainee. I was only a few minutes late.”
Gary refrained from commenting that the hospital authority either
did not have a very clear idea of who should be responsible for patients, or
was unaware that a beginner was allowed to supervise an intensive care ward.
“I see from your badge that you are Sister Amy,” he said and
detected a slight shrinkage in the woman’s self-confidence.
Was shirking responsibility part of being on the staff of
that hospital? Had Nurse Amy lied in order to get her own head out of a
possible noose?
Sister Amy looked in the duty rota. Gary’s observation was
accurate. She was now seriously worried. What if this policeman reported her
late arrival?
“Mrs Crown was on night duty. She’s been here a long time.”
“How long?”
“She’s close to retirement age and she was getting on when I
came ten years ago. I was a junior nurse then,” she said.
“Isn’t there an age limit for night duty nurses?”
“We are glad of anyone we can get,” said the sister.
“What is you surname?” said Gary.
“Goodman,” she said reluctantly.
“I’m not planning to put a nail in your coffin, Sister,”
said Gary. “But I need to get at the truth, whatever it is. I’m not here to
apportion blame.”
***
Gary wondered what the woman was afraid of. She had not been
on duty when the deaths occurred. Some past demeanour must be troubling her
unless it was just that she started work late.
***
“Do you make a habit of starting work late?” Gary asked.
The woman looked startled.
“It’s only happened once or twice in ten years, Chief
Inspector,” she said, flipping through the pages where incidents and visitors
were recorded.
“There is no record here of anyone coming into this part of
the hospital during the night.”
“Someone must have got in and out again without being seen
then,” said Gary.
“Or somehow the pillow suffocated the patient by itself,”
said Sister Amy.
Now it was Gary who looked startled.
“Do you really believe that?”
“It has happened before when patients have pulled the pillow
over their face because they did not like the light and the nightlight has to
stay on.”
“Really? You must tell me more about that. It probably means
that such cases were not thought suspicious. Were the police ever called in?”
“No. We were not going to call in the police this time if
nobody had spilt the beans.”
Gary thought the situation was rather sinister and the
woman’s attitude somewhat perfidious.
“But someone did spill the beans. To me, Sister. Where are
the bodies now?”
“Downstairs in the mortuary.”
“Can you take me to them?”
“I can’t leave the ward, but I’ll phone down and someone
will collect you.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry about all this,” said Amy Goodman, hoping to
rescue some of her credibility.
“Not as sorry as those two in the mortuary,” said Gary.
***
Gary hated the idea of inspecting the two dead women, but he
knew it was expected of him. He wished he was at home having his second
breakfast, but he would have to go through with the ordeal of visiting the dead
before he could leave. He would take photos of the corpses and pass them on to
Cleo. She might know if they had been Finch Nightingales. Or Dorothy would
know.
Meanwhile it was clear that both dead women would have to be
subjected to police autopsies. Made a note of the name plasters stuck on the women’s
arms, then notified Chris and instructed the medic on duty in the mortuary that
a police inquiry was unavoidable and that the post mortems would be performed
in the pathology lab at HQ, to which end the corpses were to be sent there as
soon as possible.
Death certificates had been issued by a young hospital
doctor in his first week at the hospital. He had not even been properly aware
of the poisoning event. The certificates were inadequate given that the women
had been admitted to hospital for food poisoning or, as at first suspected,
some tropical disease or other. Everyone dies of heart failure, but people
don’t usually smother themselves, so at least one death was suspicious. Gary speculated
on whether both woman had been in the chorus as it would substantiate the idea
that someone was intent on wiping out the whole lot of them.
***
Away from the macabre chill and stench of that mortuary,
Gary stood outside for some time breathing in the fresh October air. He phoned
Cleo to describe his hospital visit and send her the photos he had taken of the
two corpses. Chris’s autopsies would deliver the exact causes of death. It was
not necessarily a question of hospital negligence, but it was possible that
someone had crept in unnoticed and killed one or both of the women.
Whatever the outcome, the hospital security issue would have
to be raised. The wellbeing of patients could hardly be guaranteed if there was
such under-staffing that someone could get in and out of the ward without being
seen.
***
Gary drove home from the hospital. He would go to HQ later.
He needed time out after that mortuary visit. A few minutes spent with his children
invariably refreshed him and brought that feeling of warmth back.
“I’m charging my batteries,” he told Cleo.
“I can see that, Sweetheart. At least Jane Barker is still
alive,” she said. “I don’t suppose you got to see her, did you?”
She wasn’t in the intensive ward. I’ll go back when things
have normalized,” Gary said. “The ward sister I talked to was not on duty when
it happened and I suspect that the night nurse, a woman close to retirement age
and possibly unwell, was asleep when the women died. It’s common practice for
night nurses to rest when everything is quiet. Someone must have got into the
ward and smothered the younger of those two women. Do you recognize her, Cleo?
I got their names from their labels in the mortuary.”
“Yes. Eileen was there when Laura took the chorus. Dorothy
talked about her being timid and cottoning on to that butcher woman Dorothy
thought was in charge when Laura’s back was turned. That’s why I remember. She’s
one of the Norton clan.”
“And the Nortons are all related. There’ll be ructions when
the brothers hear that one of their relatives has been murdered,” said Gary.
“What about the other woman? I don’t recognize her,” said
Cleo.
“Does the name Brenda Simpson ring a bell?”
“No. She might have been one of the visitors to that open
evening. What do you think the Norton brothers will do?”
“Ask me another. They are good at retribution, but they hire
others to do the dirty jobs.”
“I hope it’s not too late then. Eileen’s murder might be revenge
for something they did. They will not come to you unless it’s to make trouble
and they may even know who killed the woman.”
“They may not yet know about the deaths.”
“I expect they have informers at the hospital, too. People
do almost anything for money. Maybe the same person phoned me. It sounds like
you have some interesting investigating ahead of you.”
“I’d better get a move on then. My main concern is what will
happen if gang warfare breaks out.”
“If they know who the killer was, they will take the law
into their own hands, won’t they?” said Cleo. “I never knew a mid-sized market
town could house such criminal minds.”
“I’ve stopped being surprised.”
“You’d better be careful, Gary. I don’t want them turning
nasty on you for want of a better victim.”
“I’m sure that plenty want to get their own back on the
Nortons and Eileen may be the first of several sacrificial lambs. Are you OK? I
can’t do justice to my second breakfast this morning. I’m running late as it
is.”
“At least you spent few minutes with the little ones.”
“Not enough. It’s never enough.”
“Don’t stay out all day,” said Cleo. “We need you here.”
“I need my beautiful family, especially after a dose of a
sobbing ward sister and corpses in mortuaries, not to mention the prospect of
angry Nortons turning up at HQ.”
***
Dorothy was true to her word. She phoned the Crightons,
whose phone number she had fortunately noted because she had had doubts about
their son’s guilt at the time of Laura’s Finch’s murder and had kept track of
them when they moved to be near their dreadful son. Up to now, she had seldom
been able to express her feelings on the matter, not least because Gary was
sure that Laura’s murder had been solved satisfactorily.
Dorothy was relieved that she would at last be able to talk
to the Crightons. She wanted to clear Betjeman’s name now she was sure that
Barbarella Knowles had had both a motive and the incentive to kill Laura.
Despite the fact that Betjeman had been rude to her and guilty of despicable
behaviour, Dorothy was determined to right the wrong she was sure had been done.
Dorothy was not sure that Jason Finch had been killed by
Betjeman, either. The girl Jessica had hated her brother – if he was her brother – for what he had done
to her sister Rebecca. Dorothy wanted to get at the truth about Betjeman’s
involvement in the most horrendous crimes to occur in Upper Grumpsfield for
decades. The interview with the Crightons might bring her a step further and
might even lead to justice being done if it had not been done already.
***
Mr Crighton had been delighted to hear from Dorothy and
looked forward to her visit. Betjeman was in a prison near Oxford and the
Crightons had moved to the vicinity to be near him. Dorothy could catch a train
to Oxford and Mr Crighton would meet her there at four that very afternoon. The
sooner the better, Dorothy told Cleo when she reported her arrangement.
“You know what you need to find out, don’t you, Dorothy?”
“Yes, but I’ll have to improvise. I’ll get them to talk to
me before I say much if I can.”
“It is vital to know if Miss Knowles has been anywhere near
them. If she is as guilty as we think she might be, it’s possible that she went
there since she knew that Betjeman Crighton had confessed to a murder she had
committed.”
“I know that. Knowles may have visited them to make quite
sure that Betjeman was sticking to his story,” said Dorothy. “But at this stage
I can only be the friend visiting them, Cleo, and telling them to contact me if
there’s a problem.”
“If Knowles did go there she will have told them that she
was his friend and wanted to express her sympathy.”
“I’ll have plenty to think about on the train this afternoon.”
“Phone me when you get back, however late it is. I’m
curious!”
“So am I.”
“Don’t tell the Crightons more than they need to know!”
***
The first thing Gary did when he got to HQ was to ring Chris
Marlow to notify him that the two dead women named Eileen Norton and Brenda Simpson
would be brought in soon for the autopsies. He was less worried about that than
the knowledge that a woman nearing retirement age and possibly not fit to be on
night duty should have been in charge of a whole ward.
“I went to the hospital, Chris. Someone saying she was a
ward sister had rung me about the women dying, but it was not the ward sister I
met. Sister Amy was adamant that the police were not usually called in when
someone died and she was not on duty when the phone call came to the cottage.
So I have no idea who the informer was. Presumably the Norton brothers were
also informed anonymously since it was one of that clan who was smothered. The
older woman apparently died of a heart attack.
“The fatter the management team gets at that hospital, the
less management there seems to be.“
“Are you not normally notified about mysterious deaths?”
“Not by nurses, Gary. A doctor might call me in if he
suspects something. In this case the first I heard about it from you.”
“The sister I saw this morning was adamant about not being
on duty during the night.”
“And the caller, whoever it was, had a guilty conscience,”
said Chris, “especially if she did not give her name. It was a woman, wasn’t
it?”
“Yes, and I agree with you,” said Gary.
"Are you sure the caller was not looking for
Cleo?"
"I answered the phone because I was nearer. I've no
idea. Cleo was not mentioned."
"Talk to the nurse who was on night duty. She probably
made the call – she could have panicked."
“I’ll have to find her first. She’s a Mrs Kate Crown, too
old for night duty, but the hospital is forced to take what they can get. The
nurse I talked to, Amy Goodman, said that they did not like to call the police
in. I‘d also like to know how the caller had our private phone number.”
“It’s on Cleo’s card, Gary.”
“So it is.”
“So it’s strange that the caller did not ask to speak to her,
and where did she get Cleo’s business card?”
“Cleo should find out and remove your home number. I think
you should change it, Gary.”
“I’ll see to that rightaway. Sister Amy said they’d had more
than one incident of patients being smothered. She said the patients did it
themselves so the police were not called in.”
“I wonder how many of the dead slip through the net at that
hospital,” said Chris. “I mean the sudden, unexpected deaths, of course: The
ones that should have been reported. I don’t get to perform autopsies unless
there are suspicious circumstances, or the dead person is found somewhere.”
“The caller can only have been the nurse who was on night duty.
She was evidently so unnerved that she phoned the cottage. But why did she not
ask for Cleo?”
"I expect she
was in such a state that she was ready to talk to anyone who would listen. She
was going against house rules telling anyone," said Chris.
“One of the two women was smothered, Chris. You don’t
suppose that nurse could have done it, do you?”
“Not unless it was euthanasia.”
“That’s what Cleo would say. Do you think it’s possible to
smother oneself? The ward sister said it had been known to happen.”
“I’ve never heard of that happening. Someone must have
helped things along.”
“I think so, too. Let me know your findings a.s.a.p,
please.”
“Does that mean another weekend in the lab, or will Monday
do?”
"I'll leave that decision to you," said Gary
knowing that Chris could never leave work undone. “I’d better track down that
nurse today in case she decides to do a bunk or even take her own life.”
“I’ll take a close look at those corpses.”
“Thanks Chris.”
“I’m not leaving this job till all this is sorted out,
Gary.”
“That’s a relief, Chris.”
“To be honest, I was planning to take a month off before
starting my new job.”
“Tell me about it, Chris!”
“I’m going back to general medicine, Gary. On board one of
those huge cruise liners. I’d like to see some of the world after so long
working in the cellar.”
“You have my blessing, Chris. It was a good decision.”
“Back to work now, Gary. Hasta la vista!”
“Come to dinner before you leave, Chris. Charlie will talk
to you in Spanish.”
“I hope I can keep up with her.”
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