Once a Widow

by Lee Roberts

  “What—what’s wrong?” It seemed to Coral that her voice was coming from the ceiling and that it made an echo.

  “Quite a bit, I’m afraid,” Dr. Shannon said with distressing grimness. It wasn’t like him to be grim. Coral saw him glance enquiringly at Chief Beckwith.

  The chief took the cigar from his mouth, cleared his throat. Before he could speak, Mr. Grange said quickly, “Do you mind if I question Miss Thatcher first?”

  Beckwith hesitated, frowned slightly, and then shrugged heavy shoulders.

  Mr. Grange fixed Coral with a headmaster’s stare. “Miss Thatcher, I assume that you are familiar with the rules and regulations of this hospital?”

  “Yes, sir.” Coral’s cheeks were now cold and she was shivering slightly.

  “Fine.” Mr. Grange smiled, but his small sharp eyes never left Coral’s face. “Then you are aware that no person is permitted in a patient’s room after, visiting hours without special permission from the head floor nurse?”

  “Yes,” Coral said, swallowing with difficulty. “I know that, certainly.”

  “Very good.” Mr. Grange rubbed his plump white hands together briskly. “You would not dream of breaking that regulation, would you, Miss Thatcher?”

  “No, of course not.” But even as Coral spoke, she thought suddenly of the handsome, dark-haired man she had permitted to go to room 102. She felt more faint than ever, and it seemed that Mr. Grange’s office was tilting a little, back and forth.

  “Thank you, Miss Thatcher.” Mr. Grange smiled smugly. “You were working late last night, as I instructed you to do, were you not?”

  “Yes, I—I was working.”

  “And you saw no one in the main corridor except staff people?” Mr. Grange paused and added sharply, “Isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes,” Coral said, swallowing once more.

  “Think carefully. This is important. Your office is directly opposite the front entrance, and not far from room 102. You saw no one but staff members, no stranger who might have entered room 102, perhaps between eleven o’clock and midnight?”

  “No, I did not,” Coral said distinctly, pleased at the firmness of her voice.

  “If anyone other than authorized personnel had been in the corridor, or entered room 102, you would have noticed, would you not?”

  “Probably,” Coral said, “but I was working on the statements and not—not paying too much attention to anything else. But why are you—?”

  Mr. Grange stopped her with an impatient movement of his hand. “Miss James says your time card was marked from nine until eleven-forty. Is that correct?”

  Coral nodded, wishing that she’d accepted Dr. Shannon’s invitation to sit down.

  Grange turned to Shannon. The curve of his lips was more of a sneer than a smile. “It appears that you were wrong about the time of the murder. It must have happened after Miss Thatcher left.”

  “Possibly,” Shannon said quietly. “The autopsy will place it more definitely.” He looked at Beckwith. “Chad, perhaps you’d better tell Coral what this is all about.”

  “I should have in the first place,” Beckwith said bluntly, cocking a bushy eyebrow at Grange. The administrator’s heavy pale face reddened and a glint of anger flared in his small black eyes. He was about to retort sharply, but Beckwith turned his back and spoke quietly to Coral. “There is no easy way to say this, Coral. Lewis Sprang was murdered in his room last night. We knew you were working late and thought you might have seen or heard something that would help us. You see, we—”

  “M-murdered?” Coral’s voice was stuttering and shrill. “Mr. Sprang? In his room? In 102?” Beckwith nodded silently.

  “But—but that can’t be true,” Coral said. “There was a—a woman in that room, the one they found on the island.”

  “She was moved back to 140,” Shannon said quietly, “where Mr. Sprang was. He was in the woman’s former room. Didn’t you know?”

  Coral shook her head quickly, almost violently, and wished that her heart would not beat so rapidly. She tottered forward two steps and clutched the back of the leather chair. What had she done? What was going on? She felt someone touch her arm, and when she turned her head she saw that it was Dr. Shannon. She heard his calm voice. “Don’t get excited. Here, sit down.” His hands pulled her gently and she felt herself sitting in the chair. Dr. Shannon’s voice came to her. “Don’t let it upset you. You’re not to blame. You were busy with your work, and someone could have slipped in, at that time of night, and entered Mr. Sprang’s room without your noticing. He was moved there around six o’clock. You were gone then, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Coral said, which was the truth.

  “And you saw no one last evening?”

  Coral hesitated, thinking of the handsome stranger who looked so much like Arthur Standish, feeling the blood pound in her ears, and then said quite calmly, “No strangers, if that’s what you mean. Miss James made her rounds, and looked into all the rooms. She—”

  “We’re not concerned about the staff,” Mr. Grange snapped. “We know that Mr. Sprang was given a quarter grain of morphine at nine-thirty—on Dr. Shannon’s orders—and Miss James gave him a grain and a half of seconal at ten. She looked in on him at eleven and he was sleeping soundly at that time.” He nodded at Coral and added curtly. “You may go, Miss Thatcher.”

  Chief Beckwith glared at Grange and started to speak, but Shannon shook his head quickly. Beckwith chewed on his cigar grimly and said nothing. Coral stood up and Dr. Shannon opened the door for her. As she went out, he smiled and patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. We just hoped you could help.”

  “I—I’m sorry, Doctor, but really, I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Forget it,” Shannon said, and quietly closed the door.

  Coral stood in the corridor, oblivious of the passing hospital personnel, shocked at the lie she’d told. But what else could she have done? If she had told them that she’d exceeded her authority in permitting a visitor to see a patient after visiting hours, she’d be in trouble with both Miss James and Mr. Grange, would probably lose her job, especially in view of what had happened to Mr. Sprang. It had been her fault. The dark-haired man had killed Mr. Sprang, she knew. She took a deep shuddering breath, and her fingers went to her. throat. No wonder he had not wanted to stop and talk to her, afterward. But why had he killed Mr. Sprang, when he’d asked for that woman’s room number. His sister, he’d said.

  Coral wanted to scream. Inside Mr. Grange’s office the pink fog had gone away almost as quickly as it had appeared, but now it was coming back again, swirling lazily toward her from the far end of the corridor. Her fingers tightened convulsively on her throat, to keep the scream from coming out.

  Chad Beckwith turned away from the window in Charles Grange’s office and spoke harshly. “You and your damned penny-pinching. It’s time you spent a little money on wages and hired some people to be on duty at night around here. This thing wouldn’t have happened if you’d had decent night supervision.”

  “There is no need for a full staff at night,” Grange said coldly. “I know what I’m doing. This hospital was losing money until I took over.”

  “I agree with the chief,” Shannon said, “and I’ll take it up at the next board meeting. We need more help around here, even if we have to pay higher wages.”

  Grange flushed. “Dr. Shannon, I must remind you—”

  “Aw, shut up,” Beckwith said. “I’ve got a killer to catch. And from now on I’ll do the talking. You certainly screwed things up the way you handled that poor Thatcher woman. You had her scared to death.”

  Before Grange could speak, Beckwith turned to Shannon. “Clint, can you do that autopsy right away?”

  Shannon sighed. “No point in putting it off.”

  “Good,” Beckwith said crisply. “After we know the time of death, and get the lab reports, we’ll know better where we stand. Right now, I’ll start questioning the hospital staff, all of ’em.”

/>   “There’s no need for that,” Grange protested. “You can’t mean that anyone here—”

  “Routine,” Beckwith snapped. “We’ve talked with Martha James and Coral Thatcher. Start sending in the rest, one at a time, everybody.”

  Grange’s fat little lips compressed, but he picked up the phone on his desk. As he began to give instructions, Beckwith said to Shannon, “You’d better get going. The department’s allowance for an autopsy is one hundred dollars.”

  “I don’t want it,” Shannon said in a tight voice. “This is personal.”

  “You’ll get it anyhow. Make it good, Clint—don’t miss anything.”

  “I won’t,” Shannon said, dreading his task.

  Beckwith said gently, “I know how you feel, Clint. Lew Sprang was a friend of mine, too. We’ll find the bastard who did it.”

  “If you don’t, I will.”

  “You stick to doctoring, hear? This is my job. Just do that post on Lew. If there is a chance he got it before eleven-thirty, we’ll have another little talk with Coral Thatcher. She had a front seat last night, and she acted kind of funny just now.”

  “Nervous, perhaps,” Shannon said, “but you can’t blame her for that—calling her in the first thing in the morning and firing questions at her.” He looked significantly at Grange, who avoided his gaze and began to shuffle papers on his desk. Shannon returned his gaze to Beckwith. “I think Coral was telling the truth.”

  “We’ll see,” the chief grunted.

  Shannon liked and respected Beckwith. He had been a police officer for over thirty years and knew his business. Harbor City was not a small town; it was a city of over forty thousand people, and Beckwith had organized its police department into one of the most modern and efficient in the state. All of his men attended the F.B.I. training school and he was known as a strict man, but a fair one. Harbor City was a clean and orderly city, in spite of the existence of two houses of prostitution. But Beckwith made it his business to see that the houses were operated in a discreet and orderly manner; the managers knew that drunkenness, violence, or any other violation of the chief’s rigid rules would result in padlocked doors. Beckwith was a firm believer in supervised and controlled prostitution, and as a result rape, assault, exposure, molestation, perversion—any sex crime—was almost unknown in the city. Beckwith had his critics from the church groups, the professional do-gooders, but he paid no attention. The mayor and the city council were wise enough to stand by him, knowing that girls and women walked the streets of Harbor City in comparative safety. It was a matter of record. Beckwith had a teen-age daughter of his own. The four classes of criminals he hated most were perverts, kidnappers, drunken drivers and murderers, in that order.

  Charles Grange said to Beckwith, “Your first—ah—witness will be here shortly, a young probationer named Susan Archer. Miss James will send the others in as fast as she rounds them up.”

  “Thanks.” Beckwith applied flame to his dead cigar and nodded at Shannon. “You go ahead, Clint. I’ll see you later.”

  There was a sharp knock on the door. Shannon opened it. Mrs. Andrews, the head day nurse stood there. “Can I see you a moment, Doctor?”

  “Sure.” Shannon nodded at Grange and Beckwith, stepped to the corridor and closed the door. “What is it, Helen?”

  Helen Andrews was noted for her calmness and efficiency in any crisis, but now she plucked nervously at the button of her starched uniform. “Doctor, your patient in 140, that woman—she’s gone.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Shannon frowned. “Gone? How could she be? She didn’t have any clothes. Did you look in the bathrooms and the lounge?”

  Mrs. Andrews nodded. “I looked all over. She’s not here. One of the aides took in her breakfast and she wasn’t there. She left the tray, thinking that she was in the bathroom. She became busy with other duties and forgot about the tray. When she remembered just now, and returned to the room, and saw that the woman was still absent, she reported it to me.”

  “Come on,” Shannon said.

  Mrs. Andrews followed him down the corridor to the north wing and down to room 140, almost at the end. The door was ajar and Shannon and the nurse stepped inside. The bed was empty and the room was empty. Shannon stepped to the open window. The screen had been removed and lay on the grass five feet below. He turned, gazed about the room. The closet door was open, revealing nothing but a row of wire clothes hangers on a rod. There was nothing on the shelf above. He opened the drawer of the bedside table, thinking that it would be empty, too. The woman had had nothing to put in it, no cigarettes, matches, money, comb, cosmetics, nothing. Her only possession had been the bathing suit. The drawer was empty. Shannon closed it and said to Mrs. Andrews, “Anything missing in here?”

  She nodded at the bed. “One blanket is gone—she had two. And the hospital gown she was wearing. Her bathing suit is gone, too. We had it washed and dried and placed it in this drawer.” She moved to the dresser, pulled out the top drawer, and then the other two. All were empty.

  “She can’t get far wearing a bathing suit, a hospital gown and a blanket,” Shannon said.

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Mrs. Andrews agreed, “not even in the dark. She must have left during the night.”

  “Yes,” Shannon said. “I’d better tell Beckwith. She’s an amnesia case.”

  “That’s what I understand,” the nurse said. “Doctor, that was—terrible about Mr. Sprang.”

  Shannon nodded grimly and stepped to the corridor. Mrs. Andrews followed and said plaintively, “What’s going on around here, anyhow? In all my years—”

  “I’ll see you later,” Shannon said. He walked swiftly to the administrator’s office and entered without knocking.

  The pretty little nurse-to-be, Susan Archer, was sitting on the edge of the leather chair. Charles Grange was at his desk looking bored, his fat white fingers making a tent. Beckwith was leaning against the desk facing the girl. All three looked at Shannon, who said to the police chief, “Come outside a moment, Chad.”

  Beckwith looked puzzled, but nodded and said to the girl, “Excuse me a second, Susan. There’s just a couple more questions, and then you can go.” He moved out to the corridor, ignoring Grange’s curious stare.

  When the door was closed, Shannon said in a low voice, “Chad, you knew about that woman they found on Snake Island?”

  Beckwith nodded. “Yep, I heard about her. Do you know who she is yet?”

  “No, but she’s skipped—sometime last night, without any clothes—just a bathing suit, a night gown and a blanket.”

  “Hmm,” the chief said. “She should be easy to pick up—if you want her picked up. Should I phone the station?”

  “Maybe you’d better. She shouldn’t be running around loose. Last night when I talked to her she didn’t seem to remember anything.”

  “Funny business,” Beckwith said thoughtfully. “Lew Sprang gets murdered, and now this. I—” He stopped abruptly and stared at the doctor. “Clint, that woman is not running around loose. I’ve got a hunch that somebody picked her up in a car.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Beckwith nodded at the closed door to Grange’s office. “That little girl in there mentioned while I was questioning her that around eleven o’clock last night the woman stopped her in the corridor and borrowed a quarter to make a phone call. The girl said she had a blanket draped around her and used the booth at the end of the north wing. She didn’t think anything about it and only told me when I asked her if she’d noticed anything unusual while she was on duty last night.”

  “Amnesia,” Shannon said with faint bitterness. “I had a suspicion that she was putting on an act, but you can never tell. She remembered a phone number, all right. And if she needed a quarter, it was a long distance call. A local call only costs a dime.”

  “And the person she called probably picked her up in a car and took her God knows where.” Beckwith sighed. “To hell with her. This isn’t helping me to nab the b
astard who did it to poor Lew.”

  “No, I guess not,” Shannon said.

  “I’ll call the station and alert the boys,” Beckwith said, “but you can be damned sure she isn’t walking around town in a blanket. You’d better get started on that autopsy.”

  “Yes.” Shannon moved away and Beckwith returned to Grange’s office.

  When the doctor was in his car he sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel and thought of the body waiting for him in Lee Hoyt’s embalming room, naked under a sheet, waiting for his scalpel. Shannon shivered a little, hating what he had to do, but knowing that it must be done. For the first time he was sorry that he was the county coroner. Grimly he started the motor and drove away.

  Lee Hoyt was waiting for him and as Shannon went down the steps to the basement embalming room the undertaker said anxiously, “Don’t mark him if you can help it, Clint—his face and head, I mean. Lew was a big man in this town and I want him to look nice. My professional reputation, you know. Must you open his skull? Lew’s hair is a kind of odd shade of light brown mixed with gray, and he wore it pretty long, and I don’t have a matching—”

  “Shut up,” Shannon said viciously.

  When it was over, Shannon gently covered the thin body with a sheet and murmured under his breath, “Sorry, old friend,” and began to strip off his rubber gloves.

  Lee Hoyt, who had been fussing around at the far end of the room with bottles, rubber tubes and jars of cosmetics, called eagerly, “All finished, Clint?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I have him now? People will be expecting him to be laid out by this evening. I’ve already had six baskets of flowers.”

  “He’s all yours,” Shannon said, thinking sadly that Lewis Sprang really belonged to no one now, not his body, or what was left of it. His kindly spirit was another matter. Shannon went up the stairs, feeling a tightness in his throat. Even without the lab reports he knew that the old lawyer had died before midnight the evening before, or not long after, at the latest, from a fractured skull and massive brain hemorrhage. He had probably not even stirred. The killer had been mercifully swift and accurate.