Before Buller had time to reply, Dr. Maxwell cut in: “That’s all fine, I’ve no doubt, but you chaps can lend a hand and let the red tape go. I want these trolleys out of the way and the stretcher beside him—here. Don’t argue. This patient’s alive—just. We don’t want him to die while you’re havering about detection. Right. That’s it. Now who’s learnt to lift a stretcher case? Good, two of you, and me at the head—and his life depends on careful handling. Careful, careful. . .”
They got the long-limbed fellow on to the stretcher, sweating in the chill, dank air from the effort to synchronise their movements, and the doctor arranged pads to steady the head before they lifted the stretcher back on to its wheeled carriage. Willing undertook to walk ahead with a police torch, Buller pushed the stretcher, and Dr. Maxwell, with another torch, walked alongside. So they proceeded up the carriageway, while the thickest “London particular” for half a century swirled round them, noisome, poisonous, terrifying: a monster of a fog, strangling all movement in the streets, weighing down the cheerful, terrifying the fearful, dealing death to the frail.
“. . . tons to the square yard . . . carbon deposit, sulphur dioxide, and what have you . . . civilisation? It’s a damned scandal,” grumbled the doctor.
A moment after the sound of the doctor’s voice had died away, when the tramp of the constable’s boots was only an echo in the fog, there was another movement in the station approach, only it was so silent that the newly arrived Constable Strong hadn’t a chance of hearing it: as for seeing it, visibility was now officially nil. Under the arc lamps you could recognise a familiar face a yard from you, but away from the direct glare the fog triumphed. It was a blanket: a fortunate blanket for the man who squirmed like a reptile between the wall and a row of trolleys, not six feet from the place where the casualty had lain. This fellow had been lying on his face under the trolleys, as thin and flat a human snake as ever took cover in a dark corner. He knew he’d got to get out, now, before the other Paddington police arrived; he’d had luck so far. Buller had been preoccupied with the casualty, and the two runaways had distracted his attention. But in another minute the others would arrive. Crawling, writhing, with hammering heart and clammy face, the weedy fellow wormed his way out: only a coupla’ yards and he’d risk getting up and running. No one could swear to anything on a night like this. Clear of the trolleys, he crouched on all fours for a second, heard a woman’s voice raised in nervous protest: “It’s no use, dear. I simply can’t face it. I’d rather sit in the station all night.”
“O.K.” thought the human snake. “This is where I can make it.” And make it he did, another shadow in the murk, his mind busy with one thought only: “What’s it worth to me. What’s it worth? . . .”
4
Once inside the great hospital, Constable Buller became a mere cipher, just something getting in the way of busy people. He was used to it. Most policemen have to sit beside hospital beds in the course of their duty at one time or another, generally in charge of attempted suicides. They don’t like it: the nurses don’t like it: the other patients don’t like it, and the bored policemen get their only variety from the cups of tea which are brewed for them in ward kitchens or sisters’ cubbyholes. But Buller hadn’t even got a bed to sit beside. It was his job to wait for the clothes stripped from the casualty in order to examine the contents of the pockets and discover name and address. Dr. Maxwell, on the contrary, became a person of importance as soon as he stepped inside the hospital: he was obviously well known there: Casualty Department leapt to his bidding: the stretcher was wheeled away with the swiftness of extreme competence and happy obedience among murmurs of Operating Theatre Sister, number so and so, housemen, anaesthetist, and Mr. Horrocks, Horrocks, Horrocks. . . .
Buller felt a little cynical. He had been in a number of out-patients departments, and not always had his casualty attained priority. It wasn’t a poor ruddy policeman these nurses jumped for, he contemplated. It was the doctor. “Well, it’s what they’re trained to do, I suppose,” he thought, “but I’d never’ve believed a hospital sister’d hop it like that. They’ll have that Horrocks on the poor blighter’s brain faster than they’d put a stitch in anyone else.”
They told Buller to keep out of the way . . . until somebody (a probationer) said something about the doorman and a cup of tea.
It was about an hour later (or several cups of tea later) that a saucy young thing in immaculate uniform and bright cherry lipstick told Buller he could collect the laundry.
“And there’s nothing in any of the pockets,” she added cheerfully. “Not a sausage. We noticed it at once. And there won’t be any laundry marks, either, because his shirt and pants are quite new. But he’s doing nicely. Theatre Sister says it’s a lovely job.”
“Nothing in any of the pockets,” said Buller. “You shouldn’t have——”
“Oh, don’t get upstage,” she replied blithely. “You’d better go to the office. They want a name of some sort. Yours might do. We’re calling him Waterloo, because you found him at Paddington and he nearly got his anyway, didn’t he? Waterloo . . . it’ll look lovely on his chart.”
Buller collected one raincoat, flannel bags, tweed coat, and waistcoat, new collar, tie, shirt, vest, pants, braces, socks, shoes. “Just demobbed,” he hazarded. “They often grow out of their clothes. Not a . . . what was it she said, the young Jezebel. Not a sausage. That’s a funny thing, that is. Waterloo, indeed.”
CHAPTER TWO
“WELL, THAT’S THE way of it,” said the Paddington Superintendent of Police to Chief Inspector Macdonald, C.I.D. “It looks like being one of those interminable jobs. Our chaps have all got three hands full and then some, so if C.O. will take this one on it’ll help a lot.” He paused and then went on: “You’ll be seeing the surgeon yourself: Horrocks his name is, and he’s a very helpful, intelligent fellow. That’s leaving his professional reputation aside—I believe he’s a top-notcher. He says his guess is that the lad was knocked out with a straight one on the point—knocked right out—and his pockets looted. Then he was deliberately hit over the head with that iron bar while he was down, the bar being swung bludgeon-wise. Horrocks says his pockets couldn’t have been searched after he was bludgeoned, because turning him over would have killed him.”
“I’m quite willing to take Horrocks’s opinion on the matter,” said Macdonald, and the Super nodded, hearing the dry tone.
“Yes. A dirty business—cold-blooded brutality. And there’s not a thing on him to give us a lead as to who the lad is. His clothes are nearly new: mass-produced, all of them, obtainable in any town from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. It seems likely that he’s straight out of the Forces—if he’s British. We don’t even know that. And as to whether he was just going to the station, or coming away from the station, or meeting someone for a quiet talk, or doing some dirty work on his own—well, it’s anybody’s guess. And no one of his description has been reported missing.”
Macdonald nodded. No one was better qualified than he was to know that until a victim has been identified the police have no solid ground beneath their feet. An unknown victim attacked by an unknown assailant spells the detective’s Waterloo (the young nurse’s name for the nameless patient in St. Monica’s had gone all round the local police). This victim was not only nameless: he had been struck down in London’s famous fog: that evening of solid black-out when nobody noticed anybody.
“It’s not only a negative, it’s a fogged negative,” said Macdonald.
The Super chuckled. “True enough. Now, for what it’s worth the surgeon said he’d have placed the boy as decent middle class—professional class rather than working class. He was clean, well-kept hands and feet, healthy and wholesome, an outdoor rather than indoor type. Not a tough or a lout or a lounge lizard. No sign that he smoked or drank. A nice-looking chap, the nurses said—you can’t see much now but bandages.”
“I think I’ll go and have a look at him,” said Macdonald. “We shall have to get the
Press and the B.B.C. to issue descriptions. Somebody may have noticed him somewhere—the policeman’s abiding hope.”
“It often works,” said the Super. “Well, here’s wishing you luck—and I’ll get back to my juvenile delinquents. If I’d been told when I was a raw constable that gangs of twelve-year-olds were going to give me a headache I wouldn’t have believed it. We had a tough of ten last week—robbery with violence, can you beat it?”
Macdonald set out for St. Monica’s Hospital. It was still foggy, but not with the standstill blackness of last night. Today traffic moved slowly through yellow curtains of grime, grinding along in a convalescent sort of way and jerking to a standstill occasionally, when tired drivers got the gremlins and saw nightmare shapes looming up through the eye-stinging abomination which usurped the air.
Arrived at the hospital, Macdonald was sent up to Lister Ward, where Staff Nurse was slightly obstructive to begin with, but eventually decided that the quiet-voiced C.I.D. man was to be trusted. Lister was a small ward, and a very quiet one. Its quietude was a little ominous, for the patients here had no energy to complain; what energy was left to them was directed to the primary business of keeping alive.
The nameless casualty was in the bed in the far corner, screened from observation. Macdonald stood just within the screens and studied what the bandages permitted: chin, mouth, and nose. It was a comely face, he judged: firm chin and jaw, close, well-cut lips, almost smiling in their stillness. Whatever the lad might suffer later, thought Macdonald, he wasn’t suffering now. The tubes and tentacles of a blood-transfusion apparatus were beside him and Macdonald could see one relaxed hand, with long fingers and neatly cut nails. This interested him, because one of the fingernails showed a black mark of some previous injury—a week or more old. Any such detail might help in identifying him. Macdonald stood there for quite a long time: the boy must be alive, he knew, but he hardly looked alive. Only the closest observation showed the slow rise and fall of his breathing.
The nurse seemed to read his thought. “He’s doing very nicely,” she said evenly. “His pulse is really good.”
Macdonald smiled at her. “Thank you, Sister. I hope he’ll continue to be a credit to you. Now could I see one of the nurses who got him ready for the theatre? Or would they be on night duty, and asleep now?”
“Well, they would be in the ordinary way,” she replied, “but this was an emergency case and very urgent. One of the theatre nurses didn’t get back because of the fog and Nurse Bland came back on duty, though she’d been on full time. Well, never mind that. If you want to see her, you’d better ask Matron, but she’s in Simpson Ward.”
It wasn’t very long before Macdonald was taken to the sisters’ office of Simpson Ward, and a comfortable-looking, middle-aged staff nurse came and looked at him enquiringly.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Nurse. I know you’re always busy,” said Macdonald. “I’m a C.I.D. officer. It’s about this lad with the head injury who was operated on last night. Did you undress him?”
“Nurse Stone and I did it together. We had to be very careful. I expect you saw we cut his things off: we couldn’t move him.”
“Yes. I realise that. I’ve just been in to see him, but the bandages don’t give one much chance. Can you tell me what he’s like—colour of hair, eyes?”
“Oh yes. I see what you mean. His hair’s dark—tawny dark: not auburn, but dark brown with red lights in it, rather unusual. His eyes are grey, with dark rings to the iris. I think he’d be a very attractive-looking boy. He’s tallish, about five feet eleven, and healthy; good muscles, as though he’d had plenty of exercise, but not a labourer, or a boy who works with his hands. And I’d have guessed that he’s a country boy, his skin was cleaner and healthier than a Londoner’s would be. He’s got a wonderful constitution—heart and so forth. He’d never have lived else.”
“That’s all very helpful, thank you very much,” said Macdonald. “It’s my job to try to get him identified. Until we do that, we’re stuck. You seem to be a very observant person, Nurse. Is there anything you can tell me, even anything you surmised, that might help? Don’t be afraid of saying anything that came into your mind, however trivial it may seem.”
The nurse stood and studied the tall, lean, dark fellow beside her; she liked him, his quiet voice and direct gaze, his natural manner of speech and something intent about him, almost akin to the intentness of a doctor asking her about a patient. It was an approach which she recognised and appreciated because sensible doctors often do appeal to the sum of judgment and observation accumulated by an experienced nurse.
“Well, I shall only be guessing, but I couldn’t help wondering about him,” she said: “he was brought in from Paddington Station, wasn’t he, where he’d been knocked over the head with an iron bar, or something? I remember thinking he’d probably been in the train, in a smoking compartment, although he doesn’t smoke himself—you can always tell from a person’s hands. You see, his clothes smelt of cigarette smoke, and that meant he’d been sitting somewhere smoky for a good time. Of course he might have been in a cinema or a public house—it was just that as we got his raincoat off the smell of his clothes suggested train to me.”
“Thank you for telling me. We want very much to know if he’d been in a train.”
“I tell you I’m only guessing, but I don’t smoke myself and I do notice smells. Then I thought he was well looked after, as though he’d got a mother or somebody who took an interest in him. His underclothes were almost new, but they’d been washed at least once—at least, that’s what I thought; and the washing had been done at home, because there weren’t any laundry marks. I’d have guessed him to come from a country home, where they did their own washing.” She smiled at Macdonald, half apologetically. “I’m only guessing, of course, but we do get into the way of noticing our patients, and summing them up by little things other people might not notice. I thought this boy might be a student of some kind, an undergraduate perhaps. That’s not so fancy as it sounds; he’s got a fine head and good hands.”
“I noticed his hands,” said Macdonald. “Well, thank you very much, Nurse. It’s very good of you to have taken so much trouble over my questions.”
“I’m only sorry I can’t help more. It seems a dreadful thing that a boy like that should have been attacked so brutally—but Sister says he’s doing nicely, and Mr. Horrocks is a wonderful surgeon.”
2
Macdonald’s next job was drafting a description of the injured lad, together with a description of his clothes, for publication in Press and B.B.C. Then he went to Paddington Station.
The area where the boy had been found was still roped off. The barrows and trolleys had been moved and a painstaking search made in the grime of the pavement. It was a wretched job, because there was no real daylight and searchers had to crouch low and grovel their way along the sooty footway. Nevertheless a keen young C.I.D. man named Denton had quite a report to offer. He showed Macdonald traces on the ground where the sooty deposit had been swept and dragged by the passage of a moving body, and where sharper marks indicated that the toes of somebody’s shoes had dragged over the ground.
“There was a trolley standing here, sir. I think it’s plain enough that some chap managed to worm his way underneath it and those marks show where he crawled out. If it’d been an ordinary night he’d have been spotted, but last night you couldn’t see a thing.”
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. I think you’re right. Those marks weren’t made by a sack being dragged, or anything of that kind, because the toe marks show clearly—it was somebody’s feet made those marks. But there’s nothing to show who made them.”
“Not a thing, sir. I hoped we might find a button that got dragged off, or something like that, but no luck that way. The only thing is that the chap must have got his clothes properly mucked up: there’s an oily patch on the ground there—you can see where it’s smudged. That’s paraffin from the lamps the navvies put round the place where they were
working, so the chap who wriggled under the trolley must have got paraffin soaked into his coat as well as the other muck.”
“Perfectly true, and very carefully observed, Denton,” replied Macdonald, “but can you tell me what he was doing there? If the chap under the trolley was the assailant, what was his object in getting under the thing when he could have bolted as easy as say-so? On a night like last night anybody could run round in circles and not get caught.”
“Mightn’t he have dropped flat when he heard Buller coming up, sir?”
“He might have, but it seems more likely to me he was under the trolley before Buller came up. Buller had a good torch: he saw the one chap on the ground: the probability is that he’d have seen the other unless he were concealed by something.”
“Somebody snooping, sir?” queried Denton.
“Maybe,” cogitated Macdonald, “but if that’s so it makes the whole thing more complicated. However, it’s no use guessing at this stage.”
Macdonald then went to consult with the railway authorities as to the trains which had arrived at the terminus between eight and nine o’clock last evening. It was five minutes after nine that Buller had found the injured lad, and Dr. Maxwell had said that when he examined the boy it was probably only about ten minutes since the injuries had been inflicted. While he had no evidence at all that the boy had arrived at Paddington by train, Macdonald had noted Nurse Bland’s belief that it was a country boy she had helped to prepare for the operating theatre last night.
Arguing on probabilities, using common sense because there was no evidence to help, it seemed to Macdonald more likely that the boy had arrived by an incoming train rather than that he was going to catch a train to take him out of London. Surely, if he’d been staying in London and was going to catch a train at Paddington, he would have gone to Paddington by the tube on a night like last night: the busses had stopped running before nine o’clock, and nobody but an experienced Londoner could have found his way on foot through the foggy streets. If he had come to Paddington by tube, the boy would have emerged straight into the station hall, and not gone near the carriage approach where he was found. If, on the other hand, he had just arrived from the country and didn’t know London well, he might not have known where the tube entrance was—and he certainly couldn’t have seen the “underground” signs from the arrival barriers last night. He was told that the train from the west of England—Penzance, Plymouth, Newton Abbot, Exeter, and Taunton—had arrived at 8:50; the Cardiff train had got in at 8:25, the Malvern one at 9:03.
Shroud of Darkness Page 2