‘It was not so big,’ Mrs Kiss said slowly, making a small rectangle in the air with her index fingers. ‘It was black with tarnish, very old. I think there was writing on it. I put it in the pocket of my coat when I dressed Gyorgy in Kattie’s spare clothes.’
‘What happened to it, woman?’
‘I found it again in the DP camp after the Red Cross had taken Gyorgy away. It had worked through the pocket lining, you see.’
The stranger was on his feet, trying to keep his voice calm.
‘And then? Think hard, Mrs Kiss. It is vitally important.’
‘But it was just a piece of blackened metal. It had no value.’
‘You didn’t throw it away? You didn’t sell it?’
‘Huh, who would want it? No, I kept it, that and a holy ikon I had brought with me … ’ She gestured to a small ikon depicting ‘The Unexpected Joy whose dark colours were agleam in die light of a little ruby lamp.
‘I kept the metal in memory of Gyorgy. I had to remember … ’
‘Then you still have it?’
‘Of course.’
‘I must see it, it could establish all the proof I need. The little boy you befriended grew up but did not forget you. Now he wants … well, first I must examine that plate.’
‘Plate? Oh, the metal. It is in my kitchen drawer. Wait, I shall get it. It will take me a little time. My old legs … ’
The stranger sat twining his long fingers as he watched Mrs Kiss painfully heave herself up and with the aid of her frame shuffle into a tiny kitchenette.
There came the squeak of a drawer being opened, followed by rummaging sounds, a metallic tinkle and then the wheezing breath of the old woman as she made her laborious way back into the room. In her shaking hands she held an old tobacco tin. She opened it and took out something wrapped in a fading silk handkerchief. Mutely she handed it to him, and there was a look of intense expectation on her face as she watched him carefully unwrap it.
Was this the moment she had been waiting for all these years?
The stranger stepped to the window and pulled back the curtains to see the blackened object better in the daylight. He held it close to his glasses, his breath coming fast.
‘This is it,’ he whispered.
‘You recognize it, then?’ Mrs Kiss asked, moving closer and closer with her walking frame.
‘Yes. Yes.’
She was close behind him now. He continued.to squint at the engraved lettering which appeared faintly through the oxidization.
‘If you have seen it before, you can only be Gyorgy,’ Mrs Kiss said in a flat tone.
Grasping her frame with her left hand, she withdrew the carving knife from under her old cardigan with her right. Then, swaying as she tried to balance, she held the handle with both hands and raised it high. With an ultimate concentration of her strength, she brought it down in a gleaming arc to pierce the stranger’s back. The slender steel vanished with sickening ease into the fabric of his coat.
Still clutching the metal plate, he turned so that the knife handle was wrenched from the old woman’s grasp. Frantically she grabbed at her frame. The stranger’s glasses slid comically down his finely formed nose, the look of bewilderment on his features dissolved into a rictus of agony and he collapsed on his side. Bright blood began to meander across the Delft pattern of the worn linoleum.
‘Ai, ai, I have waited a long time for this,’ cried Mrs Kiss, struggling back to her chair. ‘But the good God told me you would come. Only after you had been taken from me, Gyorgy, did I see the naked body of my Kattie and realized that you had sucked her life so that you might live.’
With a sob Mrs Kiss sank into her chair. The sobbing continued and then became something more harsh.
* * *
When the welfare visitor received no reply to her prolonged knocking, she hurried to the nearby Ladbroke Grove police station. A young constable came back with her and forced the door with professional dexterity. They found Mrs Kiss sitting rigid in her chair, her eyes fixed uncomprehendingly on ‘The Unexpected Joy. She made no answer when the policeman touched her on the shoulder and said kindly: ‘What’s wrong, mother?’
He turned to the girl.
‘Looks like a stroke, I’m afraid. I’ll wait with her if you’ll go and phone for an ambulance.’ But the visitor was pointing with disgust at her crimson footprints on the lino.
Miss Kiss never moved or spoke again, and the congealing blood which dyed her floor remained a mystery.
Chapter 9
Snails’ trails of moisture crawled down the plate glass of the hospital window. As she lay on her special bed, her body encased in the transparent plastic ‘lung’, Jennifer listened with pleasure to the heavy raindrops tapping the glass. The only other sounds were the hiss-swish of the machine which kept her paralysed lungs working, and the shallow breathing of the other woman in her room.
Wax-faced, the patient lay a slender, unmoving shape beneath the red hospital blankets. Jennifer sensed that, although she lay so still, within her frame physical forces were engaged in a life-and-death struggle to combat the effect of the operation which had siphoned out a malignant tumour.
Staff Nurse Hoskins came in and fitted a new plasma bottle to the transfusion equipment which stood by the bed of the unconscious woman. She bade Jennifer goodnight and continued on her round. Through the partially-open door Jennifer could hear the familiar sounds of the ward settling down to sleep. As she drifted towards slumber her memory strayed back to a day when her ex-fiancé had taken her to the Sussex Downs. On a hilltop they had lain in each other’s arms, and while he kissed her she had kept her eyes open watching cumulus clouds harried by a salty sea wind. At that moment she felt she held the whole world in her arms — now those arms were stiff and useless beside her.
She remembered how Roddy had visited her at first and the unintentional look of repugnance on his face when he saw how she was utterly dependent on the gadgetry of her breathing apparatus. She could not blame him when the visits petered out. He had a horror of sickness, and there could be no future for them.
Everyone had been impressed by the way she accepted the inevitable following those few hysterical hours after the padre had read her the brief note breaking the engagement. How could they know the thoughts that went on behind her now placid features, thoughts that tonight made tears run down her face. Then, her sorrow spent and wishing she had accepted a barbiturate which would have kept dreams at bay, she began to doze.
Jennifer had no idea of the time when a slight sound roused her. By swivelling her eyes she saw the door was slightly ajar. Enough light glimmered from the subdued lamp in the corridor to outline a dark shape by the bed of her comatose companion. It reminded her of a Burmese shadow theatre she had studied in her student days. She thought it was a doctor on his round until she noticed the figure was swaying in a drunken fashion. It raised its hands to the chromium rod on which a plasma bottle was held by a clamp. With a clumsy gesture it wrenched the tube from the patient’s arm and to Jennifer’s amazement raised it to its mouth. Above the surf murmur of the respiratory machine, she heard the sound of sucking.
‘Oh God!’ she whispered. ‘What are you doing?’
Slowly the silhouette turned. The dripping tube fell away from its hands and dangled from the transfusion stand. It began to advance across the room and there was something about its walk which for a split second reminded the girl of a diver, a languid slow-motion movement. Adrenalin pumped through her useless body, her mind raced and, turning her head a fraction, her lips encountered the mouthpiece of a pipe attached to her life-sustaining equipment.
It was an alarm system. All she had to do was blow to activate an electronic device which would buzz and blink in Sister’s office. Desperately she sought to grip the plastic tube with her lips but, before she could exhale a weak breath, a hand reached over and nudged the arm of the pneumatic instrument a couple of inches away from her mouth. Unable to turn her head sideways, Jennifer sensed tho
se two inches meant the difference between life or death.
‘Please, don’t do anything silly,’ she begged in a sibilant whisper.
The intruder made no answer, but dropped out of her line of vision. She knew something very terrible was about to happen. Her only hope was to try to call for help. She waited for a moment until the pressure within the plastic ‘lung’ was forcing the breath from her so the exhalation would enable her to cry louder. But the sound died in her rigid throat. There was a click as the power supply for the pump was switched off at the wall. For several heartbeats Jennifer was conscious only of the terrifying silence which replaced the rhythmic surge of the machine. Then the standby mechanism, provided in case of power-cuts, began to draw current from the twelve-volt emergency battery, and the hiss-swish recommenced.
From beside her bed came a low, unintelligible mutter as the enemy’s hands fumbled over the respirator in a futile endeavour to locate the master switch. Again the paralysed girl tried to summon up the energy to call; but there came a new sound, a tearing sound as teeth bit savagely at the polythene airline through which the fluctuating pressure from the pump forced her chest to expand and contract.
There was a sigh of escaping air as the tube was perforated. The respirator pump continued functioning uselessly for now the pressure in the ‘lung’ was lost Jennifer was speechless and dying. She had the sensation of falling away from the world — her last thought was of fluffy white clouds sailing across a brilliantly blue sky.
* * *
The Metropolitan Police inspector was more sympathetic than Peter Pilgrim had expected, standing up politely when he entered Sister’s office in Fleming Ward.
‘I gather you know what’s happened?’ he began.
‘I’ve heard rumours,’ Peter answered.
The inspector said, ‘Then you probably know as much as me. All I’m certain of is that two people in this hospital were attacked in the early hours. Dr Stromberg, who I understand is here on some sort of semi-official visit, was found in the corridor leading to this ward with a stab wound in his back. The state of his clothing indicated he’d lost a great deal of blood, though there was hardly any on the floor … because of his raincoat, I suppose.
‘Around the same time a girl suffering from paralysis was killed by someone interfering with her respiratory equipment.’
‘Is it true the air supply pipe was bitten through?’ Peter asked.
The inspector nodded.
‘Incredible as it seems, it was. So, I have one case of murder and one of attempted murder. It’s bizarre and I must confess I’m out of my depth.’
‘Has Dr Stromberg told your men anything?’
‘No. Sir Henry Beresford had him put in the private ward — Millionaires’ Row, isn’t it called? — where he’s having a transfusion. As yet he hasn’t been able to say anything coherent. He seems to be in a severe state of shock.’
‘He would be if he lost so much blood. I suppose if he was stabbed from behind he wouldn’t have seen anything anyway.’
‘True,’ the inspector agreed. ‘And no weapon has been found. The surgeon who attended to him said it was a clean knife wound. The knife could have come from the kitchens.’
‘We certainly don’t have knives lying about the wards,’ Peter said. ‘But if the attacker was the same who went into the paralysed patient’s room, why didn’t he use the knife on the plastic air tube? Why bite it?’
‘You have put your finger on the problem. What do you think, Dr Pilgrim?’
‘Obviously it can only be the work of someone extremely disturbed mentally. We do get such cases from time to time, usually people suffering from certain forms of schizophrenia. They may have hallucinations which cause them to do violent acts. By law, we cannot restrain such persons until they are officially “committed”; I mean we can’t tie them up or anything like that.’ He gave a ghost of a smile at the way he had expressed himself. The inspector nodded understandingly.
‘But if we have a patient who is likely to go berserk we keep a very watchful eye on him. He’d be in a room to himself, and there would be a brawny orderly with him. I obviously don’t know all the patients in this hospital, but I know of no cases like that at the moment.’
The inspector pulled out a packet of cigarettes, looked around the white office and replaced them unopened.
‘I rather gathered that from other members of the medical staff I’ve spoken to,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Tell me, doctor, in your opinion, would it be possible for a patient with schizoid tendencies to get up, carry out his attack and then go peacefully back to bed again?’
‘Anything is possible where the human mind is concerned. Having done it once, of course, he would be likely to do it again. Most probably he would be hallucinated and hear voices commanding him to act in this way, perhaps to destroy something evil. In a mystical hallucination — such as some saints have had — he might have thought that Dr Stromberg was the Devil. He might have bitten the air tube because his “voices” told him it was the Breath of God.’
‘A plasma bottle had been interfered with. Could he have thought it was the Blood of the Lamb?’
Peter almost smiled. He said, ‘Perhaps. As I said, anything is possible. If a patient got up, committed the crime and then went back to bed, blood stains on his pyjamas would soon be noticed. And where would he hide the knife? Nothing can remain long in a hospital without it being seen. They’re always tidying up and cleaning in the wards.’
‘If only it’d been last week, when I was away on holiday,’ sighed the inspector. ‘I don’t like this one at all. How about the staff?’
‘That’s probably more likely than the patient angle. A hospital worker, a nurse or a doctor are just as likely to suffer psychiatric disorder as anyone else.’
‘Can you think of anyone?’
Peter shook his head, then asked; ‘It couldn’t have been a child, could it?’
‘Doubt it. Why?’
‘Just thinking out loud.’
‘Really, doctor? You must have had some reason?’
‘All right, a little while ago a child patient of mine bit an orderly. It was a nasty bite, and he’s on leave to get over it. She’s narcoleptic, and a strict watch is kept on her wakeful periods. I’ll get the report if you like.’
‘Please. No stone unturned and all that sort of thing.’
A minute later Peter returned.
‘She’s in the clear. She slept right through the night, and she’s still asleep.’
‘Thank you, doctor,’ said the inspector who had brought out his cigarettes unconsciously for the second time. ‘If you have any ideas, or hear anything, you’ll let me know?’
Peter nodded and walked into the hospital where, despite the efforts of the ward sisters who had been briefed by Matron, the virus of fear was spreading through the circulation of the establishment. The most popular rumour was that a homicidal lunatic was at large. No one wanted to be alone with anyone else. Nurses walking down the long fluorescent-lit corridors started with terror when there was a footstep behind them. A patient by himself in a bathroom would hastily leave if another came in.
Only Old Billy down in the bright white morgue ignored the contagion. When a porter came wheeling in a shrouded trolley, he waved to the coffin-sized drawers in the large refrigerated wall and said: ‘At least my customers won’t be sticking knives in me.’
He thought his remark so witty he repeated it to even one who came within earshot that day.
It was the day which was to become known in the history of the London Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System as Black Friday. As usual Sister was a few minutes early when she came on duty in Fleming Ward. The night staff were finishing their chores and yawning, the day staff were also yawning as they arrived. On the surface routine seemed normal, beneath it Sister could sense suppressed tension.
A day had come and gone since the police arrived to investigate Jennifer’s death, but no clue to the killer had been found. In the
exclusive private ward at the top of the building Dr Stromberg had opened his eyes and told the inspector weakly that he had no recollection of the attack.
Fearing the killer might strike again (as Fleet Street had put it) policemen, obvious in green porter’s coats, patrolled the hospital passages, but nothing abnormal had transpired. Peter Pilgrim, along with his fellow doctors, had spent the night checking patients’ dossiers, searching for some hint which would indicate sudden psychotic violence. Not only were the files of those actually in the London searched, but also a vast amount of material relating to discharged patients who would be familiar with the hospital layout. Their work ended abruptly at 8.30 a.m. when an Irish wardsmaid in Fleming went into the men’s bathroom suite.
She began sweeping the floor and the cubicles. The door of one of these was closed. She hit it with her knuckles.
‘Hurry up in t’ere,’ she called impatiently. ‘Yers should be finished by now.’
There was no answer. For a while she continued sweeping, muttering complaints under her breath, until there was only the closed cubicle to be cleaned.
‘Come on out, will yers,’ she cried. ‘T’ink I got nuttin’ to do but wait for yers.’
There was no answer, so she pressed the door. At first it would not open, but then with a scraping sound (a chair had been wedged against the handle) it swung inwards, and the girl’s shriek echoed through the ward. When Sister and a staff nurse arrived moments later the girl was standing outside the door, wringing the hem of her brown uniform and crying: ‘Holy Mother of God! Holy Mother of God!’
Pushing her aside, Sister entered the cubicle. In the bath lay Lionel Tedworth. His clothes were folded neatly on the floor. It was obvious he had climbed into a hot bath and cut his wrists. Now he lay up to his chin in pink, cold liquid.
‘Holy cow!’ exclaimed the Australian staff nurse, looking over Sister’s shoulder. Hardened as she was, the sight of the white, drained face with its glaring eyes was too much. She was sick in the washbasin but recovered quickly.
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