A Dead Man in Malta

by Michael Pearce

‘Yes. We went past that quickly.’

  ‘You could see into the ward, though?’

  ‘Yes. There was no door nor nuffing.’

  ‘And you looked in?’

  ‘Sort of glanced. As we were going past. I was going to give him a bit of a wave.’

  ‘To cheer him up?’

  ‘That’s right. Poor bugger needed it, with his jaw all wired up like that.’

  ‘You had called in on him earlier, of course?’

  ‘That’s right. We’d just dropped in to see how he was getting on, like.’

  ‘And how did you find him?’

  ‘All right. He’d had the wiring done that morning and his face was all swelled up. Like a football. He could hardly speak. We asked him if he’d like a fag and he just shook his head. But we gave him one all the same.’

  ‘Could he manage it?’

  ‘Not really. He had a puff or two and then put it by. Said he’d come back to it. So we knew he wasn’t feeling too good.’

  ‘But - how shall I put it - not too bad, either?’

  ‘No. We said we were going to look up a little nurse we knew and asked him, by way of a joke, if he’d like to come along. “You bet!” he said. We knew he was all right, really. Still, he didn’t come along. Tried to, but then thought better of it. “What’s the use?” he said. “With me face in a cage?’”

  ‘He seemed pretty all right, then. So were you surprised the next day that you heard - ?’

  ‘That he was dead? You could have knocked me down with a feather! “What, old Bob?” I said. “Why, he seemed as right as rain when I saw him yesterday!” And that’s what Pete and Joe said, too. Right as rain! And then I got to thinking. “That’s how he was then,” I said. “What’s in your mind, Terry?” said Pete. “If he was fit as a fiddle one day, how come he was dead as a doornail the next? It don’t seem right. It doesn’t happen like that.” “No more it does,” said Joe.

  ‘So, as I say, we got to thinking. Went over it in our minds, like. And it was then that I remembered.’

  ‘What was it exactly that you remembered?’

  ‘Just a glimpse. That’s all it was. But there was this bloke bending over him with a pillow. Well, then we went on and thought no more about it till the next day. And then my mind went back.’

  ‘To what happened in the Singapore hospital?’

  ‘What I heard happened in the Singapore hospital. There were these blokes, see. And one of them was that heavy a snorer that the others couldn’t get to sleep. Night after night. It got them down. They tried everything in waking him up, putting a sock in his mouth, putting a peg on his nose - but nothing worked. And it went on night after night. And in the end it really got them down. Really down. So one of them says: “Look, either he’s got to go or I’ve got to go.” And they was that desperate by then that they said: “Look, give him a warning, and then if he still does it So that’s what they did. Put a pillow over his head. And ...’

  ‘And?’ prompted Seymour.

  ‘Nothing came of it.’

  ‘Nothing came of it? He didn’t die? Then - ’

  ‘No, no.’ said Cooper impatiently. ‘He died, all right. But there was no follow-up. Nothing happened. Like here. The docs signed the certificate and that was the end of it. No one heard nothing more.’

  ‘I see.’ said Seymour.

  ‘Happens all the time,’ said Cooper expanding.

  ‘When people are snoring - ’

  ‘No. No. When they’re in hospital. People are dying all the time, and no one knows why. So they just cover it up. The doc signs the certificate and that’s the end of it. No questions asked. Finis, like it says in the Bible.’

  ‘Yes, but in this case questions are being asked.’

  ‘Ah, well - ’

  ‘Partly because of what you said you saw.’

  ‘Not saw. Heard.’

  ‘But you said that you saw someone bending over Bob - ’

  ‘Not saw: might have seen.’

  ‘With a pillow.’

  ‘Could have been a pillow. Might not have been. It was that quick.’

  ‘Are you sure that you saw anything at all?’

  ‘We-e-ll ... All I’m saying,’ said Cooper, ‘is that there was something fishy about it.’

  ‘Right, well, thank you, Mr Cooper.’

  ‘Glad to help,’ said the seaman, getting up.

  Seymour got up, too.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ he said, ‘can I just confirm one point in what you said?’

  ‘Pleasure.’

  ‘You said you saw a bloke bending over him?’

  ‘Ye-e-s ...’ said Cooper guardedly.

  ‘A bloke. Not a nurse.’

  ‘Some of the nurses here are blokes.’

  ‘Was it one of them?’

  Cooper seemed for the first time genuinely to be thinking. He hesitated.

  ‘No-o-o,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But a bloke?’

  ‘A bloke,’ said Cooper. ‘Definite.’

  Equally definite was the second seaman, Corke.

  ‘Bent right over poor Bob, he was. A biggish bloke. Sort of hunched.’

  ‘Hunched?’

  ‘Like in the picture.’

  He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a comic paper. There, on the page, was a scantily dressed, implausibly nubile girl. And there, bending over her, was an implausibly grotesque, hunchbacked man.

  ‘Like him.’

  Able Seaman Price, fair-headed, rosy-faced, and with a marked Somersetshire accent, had actually witnessed the original fight in the bar.

  ‘A mere bleedin’ tap!’ he said, in astonished tones. That’s all it was! You’d have thought it was nothing. But the next day his face was all swelled up.’

  They had taken him to the doc and the doc had said his jaw was broken.

  ‘And then they had put that wire right round his head. Sort of to keep the jaw together.’

  He had said he was all right, though, and had reckoned that he could be out the next day. But when they went to see, the next time they were in, he was still there. The doc hadn’t got round yet. He had gone on with the others to find Suzie. He hadn’t really noticed anything on the way back. But Terry - ’

  ‘And you yourself?’

  ‘Not, sort of, to notice. But Terry - ’

  It was only afterwards, when they got talking, that the thought had come.

  Seymour was inclined to doubt whether any of them had seen anything.

  Chapter Three

  The voice was not exactly loud but penetratingly clear. It came from the Registrar’s office, the door of which had been left ajar so that the air could circulate.

  ‘There will be fifteen of us.’ it was saying. ‘No, sixteen now, an extra one has just joined.’

  ‘Sixteen?’ said another voice, a man’s voice, incredulously. ‘That’s rather a large number!’

  ‘Not when spread over the whole hospital.’

  ‘The whole hospital?’

  ‘Yes. They could go to different wards and then change around.’

  ‘Even so - ’

  ‘And then, of course, we’d all like to see the specialist units. My husband says that the Ophthalmics here is particularly good.’

  ‘Yes, well, thank you. Or him. We are always glad to welcome a colleague. But, you know.’ - determinedly - ’a colleague is one thing, a party of ...’

  ‘Yes?’ said Mrs Wynne-Gurr.

  ‘Well, general visitors, shall we say - ’

  ‘Oh, we’re not quite general visitors. We have a lot of expertise and experience among us.’

  ‘- is another,’ finished the Registrar.

  ‘As I say, we have quite a lot of - ’

  ‘But, Mrs Wynne-Gurr, this is not really a question of First Aid, it’s sort of Second Aid. All our nurses are trained and qualified - ’

  ‘Of course they are! And quite right, too! That is what I keep saying to Headquarters. Nursing should be a profession a
longside other professions, and for that to happen, the highest standards must be maintained. I quite understand your concern, Mr Ormskirk.’

  ‘Oh, good - ’

  ‘But you need have no worries on that score. We would not dream of interfering. We would just help with the humbler things. No duty too humble for us, Mr Ormskirk. We are here just to watch and learn.’

  ‘Well, thank you. That’s very nice. But - ’

  ‘Here is the list of names. There are sixteen of them now. As I said, an extra one has just joined. When she heard about the Maltese visit she was particularly anxious to come. She’s from Tangier - ’

  Tangier, thought Seymour? Tangier? Surely -

  ‘And is thinking of starting up a branch here.’

  It couldn’t be! Surely!

  ‘She will be a great asset,’ said Mrs Wynne-Gurr. ‘And it will be very helpful for her to see another branch in action. I have written her name at the bottom. Miss de Lissac.’

  Miss de Lissac? It was Chantale! How the hell had she managed to attach herself to the party? She was not a member of the St John Ambulance. To the best of his knowledge she had never heard of it. How had she got to know - ?

  He realized, with sinking heart, how she had got to know. He himself had told her.

  Outside the hospital the boy was sitting morosely, looking at the ships in the harbour. He had plainly decided that he wasn’t interested in them, either.

  ‘Have they thrown you out?’ said Seymour.

  ‘More or less,’ said the boy.

  ‘Ophthalmics no good?’

  ‘Been there, done that,’ said the boy.

  ‘What haven’t you done?’

  ‘The Armouries. They’ve been closed ever since we got here.’

  ‘Too bad. Why are they closed?’

  ‘They’re rearranging things in the Apartments. The trouble is,’ said the boy, ‘they were what my project was going to be on.’

  ‘The school set you a project?’

  The boy nodded. ‘As part of the deal. They would let me off a week early so that I could come out here. But I would have to do a project.’

  ‘Couldn’t you do it on something else?’

  ‘I could, but I wanted to do it on weaponry. Dr Malia suggested I do it on the Infermeria. But I’ve gone off hospitals.’

  He looked at Seymour. ‘You’re a policeman, aren’t you? Investigating those murders.’

  ‘If they are murders, yes.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind doing a project on that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t find much to go on.’

  ‘But that would be the point, wouldn’t it? That would be real research. Not just looking up something in a book which everybody knows already.’

  He walked along beside Seymour.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind being a policeman,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not all like that,’ cautioned Seymour.

  ‘Are you CID?’

  Seymour nodded.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind being in the CID.’

  ‘You don’t usually go there straight away.’

  ‘Have you done other murders?’

  ‘It’s not all murders, of course.’

  ‘Still!’

  He was quiet for a moment.

  ‘And what about these murders?’ he said then. ‘In the hospital?’

  ‘We don’t know they are murders yet.’

  ‘My mum doesn’t think they’re murders.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘She thinks they’re just incompetence. But, then, she thinks that most things that go wrong are just incompetence.’

  ‘She may have a point!’

  ‘But Dr Malia thinks they are murders. He says that deaths in a hospital don’t happen just like that. He says the nurses are perfectly competent. And so are the doctors. They’re deliberate, he says. But I say, how can they be? You’ve got to have a reason for killing somebody. And if you’ve got three deaths, you have to have three separate reasons. And that seems unlikely. But Dr Malia says there might not be three separate reasons, there might be just one reason. He says there is a certain type of person who is drawn to people lying there helpless and in certain circumstances they might want to kill them. But that’s not a very nice thought, is it?’

  ‘It certainly isn’t. And while that may occasionally be true, it’s not true very often.’

  ‘But it could be true, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, it could be true.’

  ‘That’s what I told my mum. And she said that wasn’t a nice thing to think, and that I’d better stay away from Dr Malia if he’s putting thoughts like that into my head.’

  A girl down by the landing stage waved at him.

  ‘That’s Sophia. She’s got a project, too.’

  ‘What’s hers on?’

  ‘The Victoria Lines. But it’s a waste of time, she says, because we know all about them. They were built at the end of the last century and we know who built them: the British. They were intended to protect Valletta from a land attack from the north. Sort of like Hadrian’s Wall. But Sophia says that was a daft thing to do because all they had to do was sail round them.’

  ‘Sounds logical!’

  ‘She says they’re good for walking on, though. You can see for miles. She says she’d take me. We could have a picnic.’

  ‘It sounds a nice idea. Is she out here for a holiday, too?’

  ‘No, she’s here all the time. She’s Maltese. What do you think of the Maltese?’

  ‘They seem all right.’

  ‘That’s what I think, too. But my mum says: just be careful because they might not be. But she said that about Dr Malia too, and he’s a doctor.’

  ‘I think a schoolgirl might be all right.’

  They were lying there in neat rows, a row down each side of the ward. The beds were neat, too, with the ends of the blankets tucked neatly in. Beside each bed was a small locker and they were neat as well. The tops were kept clear. A glass was allowed to stand there but only a glass. Everything else, presumably, had to be kept inside.

  This was a naval hospital, of course and a disciplined place. But Seymour had a suspicion that the order was due less to the Navy than it was to the ward sister, a thin, redoubtable lady named Miss Chisholm.

  ‘You keep it all shipshape,’ he said.

  She smiled.

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  She said she had worked for the Navy all her life. Her last posting had been in a hospital in Cyprus. She liked working abroad, she said. The nurses were often better. There weren’t many jobs around for women so you got applicants of higher quality. And, no, they didn’t all run away to get married. They knew what marriage for many women was like and that they would be better off as a nurse; at least until they were thirty.

  But, surely, in a place like this they would have plenty of offers?

  ‘Oh, yes. The girls keep a league table pinned up in the nurses’ room. But every nurse knows that when a man is lying there he’s particularly susceptible. And that when he can get up ...’

  ‘Less?’

  She smiled. ‘It’s time for him to go.’

  ‘And you yourself ...?’

  ‘Bottom of the league.’

  She remembered the day well, and was scathing about the seamen’s suggestion.

  ‘This was an able-bodied seaman. Able-bodied in all senses. He had just been fighting in a waterfront bar. Yes, he’d been knocked about; but are you telling me he would have let himself be overpowered by a nurse? It’s usually the other way round.’

  ‘A man, then?’

  ‘Yes, but what man? As far as I’m concerned, there are only three sorts of men: patients, staff and visitors. We do have porters and orderlies, of course. We call them in if we want things moved around. But they don’t come into my ward unless I say so. And that afternoon I didn’t say so.’

  ‘Visitors?’ prompted Seymour.

  ‘I’m not against visitors, particularly in a place like this. It often does the lads good to
see their mates. But you’ve got to keep on eye on things. Otherwise they can get out of hand. You’ve no idea what they’ll get up to. Or what they think is a good thing to cheer up their mates. A bottle, usually. If you don’t watch out, in no time there’s a party going on. So I make a point of walking through the ward when we’ve got visitors. And no bottles come in on my watch, I can tell you.

  ‘I tell them, too. “Your mate wouldn’t be here unless he was ill,” I say. “And if you give him drink, he’ll be iller. When he’s out, he can drink as much as he wants. And so can you. But while you’re in here it’s got to be cut out. You go by my rules here. Chisholm’s Rules, they call it, and while I’m in charge they’re the rules we go by. Got it?” They usually do.’

  ‘And that afternoon ...?’

  ‘Three visitors together. All seamen. Cooper, Corke and Price. They’ve been here before and they know the rules. That doesn’t mean, of course, that they won’t try and break them. But I’m an old hand and they respect that. Anyway,’ she said, laughing, ‘I know them of old. I knew Cooper when he was on the Singapore station. And I don’t mind them. They cheer people up.’

  ‘They say that on their way back, after seeing someone else, they went past the door of the ward and saw someone bending over a patient - their mate - with a pillow - ’

  ‘Nurses are always bending over patients. And sometimes with a pillow.’

  ‘This wasn’t a nurse.’

  ‘No?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Cooper, Corke and Price are not altogether reliable, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t think for a moment that they were. Nevertheless . . .’

  She thought again. ‘I could ask around, if you like. The other nurses. And the patients nearby.’

  ‘It might be helpful.’

  ‘Well, it might be more helpful if I did it rather than you did it. I don’t mean to be rude, but most of the patients are seamen, and the lower deck tends to be suspicious of the police. No doubt with good reason.’

  ‘Might they not be equally distrustful of everyone in authority?’

  ‘They might,’ she conceded. ‘And that is why I shall conduct my inquiries through the nurses. Who are not viewed in quite the same way, especially if they are young and pretty!’

  The third person to die had died during the night. Here, again, there was a redoubtable ward sister. She was called Macfarlane; not Mrs or Miss Macfarlane, or even Jane Macfarlane; just Macfarlane. She seemed to be in charge of the ward both days and nights. It was her ward, she explained. Yes, there was a night nurse but Macfarlane, who had a long naval history behind her and seemed by now to have watch-keeping built into her, sometimes gave her ‘a turn below’.