Willow, who knew that he had a series of important meetings that morning, urged him to leave her. His anxiety was difficult for her to absorb and yet there was nothing she could do to soothe it. He stood at her side, looking down, biting his lips.
‘Don’t worry so, Tom. Some new mothers are bound to be let out this morning and then I’ll get a bed. I’m fine here. It doesn’t hurt any more. Kimmeridge has done everything that needed to be done. I’m not going to roll off the trolley or anything like that. You go to work. We’ll be fine.’
‘I can’t leave you like this. What’s the time?’
‘Just after nine. You’re going to be terribly late.’
‘Blast. Look, that business manager you mentioned must be here now, even if he is a clock-watcher. I’ll have a word with him.’
He had gone before Willow could protest, and so she lay back, wishing that one of the nurses would bring Lucinda for her feed. Willow’s breasts were heavy with milk and becoming painful.
Tom came back, looking better, ten minutes later.
‘You should get a bed quite quickly now, my love,’ he said, leaning down to kiss her forehead.
‘Why? What did he say?’
‘Say?’ Tom grinned. ‘He didn’t get a chance to say very much. I gave him a good strong lecture about what his hospital had done to you, what sort of state you were in last night, how dangerous it had been for you that they had been careless enough to leave half your placenta behind …’
‘It doesn’t work quite like that, Tom,’ Willow said, but he hushed her.
‘That doesn’t matter. Durdle was impressed – or scared – enough to assure me that you would get the first available bed this morning. I’ll be off now, but I’ll drop back as soon as I can. Okay?’
‘Fine, Tom. Thank you. You’ve done brilliantly.’
‘Not so bad,’ he said, looking remarkably pleased with himself.
He turned at the end of the corridor and waved. Willow waved back and wished she had asked him to bring her a book.
She was allocated a bed just before lunch and was wheeled into one of the bays in the maternity unit in time to eat a hospital cheese salad and a bowl of tinned fruit. Lucinda’s cot was pushed into place beside her bed.
The library trolley was brought into the ward just after Lucinda had finished her feed and Willow browsed contentedly among the romances and detective stories until she found one that appealed to her. She was glad to see that there were several of her ‘Cressida Woodruffe’novels and that they looked well used. One of the other women in the ward chose one and Willow watched her covertly as she returned to her bed and started to read.
When Willow was satisfied that the woman was not going to throw the novel on to the floor in disgust, she opened the one she herself had chosen and was well into the second chapter before the first few visitors appeared in the ward. Not expecting anyone herself, since only Tom and Mrs Rusham knew where she was, Willow went on reading until she was disturbed by Emma Gnatche’s voice, saying: ‘I went to the mews and Mrs Rusham told me you were here. How are you? It sounds as though it was all quite terrifying.’
‘Emma! How lovely to see you!’
‘You sound remarkably cheerful. Wasn’t it awful?’
‘For a time; but it’s over now. Don’t let’s talk about it. It’s really good of you to have come. How did it go with your tutor?’
‘I think I’m beginning to recover from her savaging,’ said Emma cheerfully as she sat down and crossed her bare, slender legs. ‘But it’ll take a day or two more, I suspect, before I don’t sweat at the thought of meeting her again.’
‘Was it really as bad as that?’
‘Almost. I know she only does it for my own good, but I do sometimes feel flayed by the things she says to me. You see I’ve been accepted for a post-graduate course, but if I don’t get a good enough degree that’ll be a washout. She’s as anxious for me to make it as I am.’
‘Postgraduate? Emma, you continue to surprise me. What’s your speciality going to be?’
To Willow’s amusement, Emma’s eyes slid sideways as they had done in the old days whenever she was embarrassed, and she even pushed her fingers behind her ears as she had so often done when her blonde hair was long enough to scoop back.
‘Criminology, in fact,’ she muttered.
‘Oh, good for you! Emma, that’s terrific news. I should think it’d be fascinating. Why are you looking so coy about it?’
‘Well, it’s such a change from the sort of life I always assumed I’d live that I feel a bit of an imposter. And also …’ She broke off and pushed her non-existent hair behind her ears again. ‘In a way I felt as though I was sort of copying you, if you see what I mean. I hoped you wouldn’t mind. I …’
‘Emma, Emma, stop it.’ Willow touched her hand for a second. ‘You’re not like that any more: sweet and desperate to please. You are yourself with a right to your own ideas. But tell me: what made you choose criminology?’
‘I suppose it was partly because I had a kind of …’ She broke off, laughed at herself and started to look less childish.
‘I admired you so much after you found out who killed poor Algy Endlesham all those years ago that I began to read everything I came across that had to do with crime and the law. And I couldn’t help noticing that there are a lot of cases in which the police appear to know exactly who committed the crime – as do all the lawyers involved – but the evidence isn’t admissible or not enough to persuade a jury to disbelieve an ingenious defence. I really hate that, but it didn’t occur to me for ages that I might actually do anything relevant. Then I heard about this postgraduate course and thought I’d have to have a bash at it, see where it takes me.’
‘I think it’s wonderful news.’
‘You’re almost the first person who’s said anything like that,’ said Emma with a wide, grateful smile. ‘As you can imagine, my brother was appalled when I told him.’
‘Criminology not being a suitable interest for a nice girl?’
‘Pretty much, and I think he feels that I’ll become somehow contaminated and a bit disgusting if I so much as think about crimes, let alone encounter any criminals. He probably has visions of me walking the streets around King’s Cross and getting picked up and murdered – or worse.’
Amused by Emma’s doomy voice, Willow thought about her first meeting with the pompous, self-satisfied Anthony Gnatche. He had only recently left the army then and still seemed to be locked into the conventions he had learned from his brother officers. From what Emma had just said, it sounded as though he had not changed much.
He was a lot older than she and had always done his best to take the place of their father, who had died during Emma’s last year at school. Anthony’s motives for telling her what she might and might not do had probably been thoroughly admirable, but he had known so little of what went on beyond the tight world of his class and smart regiment that she would have been severely limited if she had obeyed all his orders.
‘You’ve done well to stand up to all his prejudices, Emma,’ said Willow. ‘I think you’ll be a great success.’
‘I haven’t done anything yet and I may discover that I’m useless or that criminology and I don’t mix, in which case I’ll have to think again.’
‘I don’t think you need worry,’ said Willow, realising that Emma might be in a position to help with her own investigation. ‘Listen, I’ve got a problem at the moment. I can’t talk to Tom about it because he’s being even more protective than usual and I need to talk in order to sort out my ideas. They’re in a complete muddle at the moment and whenever I’m on the point of getting somewhere Lucinda wakes up and distracts me. See what you can see in it all, and tell me if I’m being particularly obtuse about some obvious solution.’
‘I don’t suppose I’ll see anything you haven’t,’ said Emma frankly, ‘but I’d love to hear all about it.’
And so Willow described yet again everything she knew of what had happened to A
lex Ringstead, what she had discovered about his life within the hospital and beyond it, and which inhabitants of his various worlds might have hated him enough to kill him. It amounted to pitifully little.
‘So have you discovered who might be so devoted to this Marigold woman that he could have committed murder on her behalf?’ asked Emma when Willow had finished.
Willow shook her head. ‘I haven’t found out anything at all since I saw her. I’ve been hoping that the student nurse – Susan Worbarrow – will appear so that I can ask her. She’s always been much the chattiest of them all and clearly loves to gossip.’
‘But would she know much about this? It sounds as though she’s very young and can’t have been here long.’
‘Emma, you are wonderful. I knew talking to you would help. That hadn’t even occurred me, but of course you’re right. I’d better set my sights on Sister Lulworth. She’s been here for years and is occasionally prepared to tell me things. Although, you know, devotion to Marigold does seem to be about the least convincing motive for murdering someone as admirable as Alex Ringstead.’
Sensing disagreement in Emma, Willow looked at her and after a moment said warily: ‘Am I making a clot of myself again? You’re looking rather critical. What have I missed in the Marigold saga?’
‘It’s not that,’ said Emma with a sweet smile. ‘I was just thinking that from everything you’ve said, he doesn’t actually sound all that admirable.’
‘In that case I can’t have described him properly,’ said Willow. ‘He was charm personified, an extremely good doctor, and funny, too.’
‘Yes, I know. I got all that from what you said. But you also said that he was a rake whose relationships kept failing: first his marriage; then what sounds like a long-term affair with Marigold. He took pleasure in the public humiliation of people like Mark Durdle who’d annoyed him. He pursued vendettas over trivial things like the carpark space. He went to extraordinary lengths to resuscitate babies whose chances of living a full or healthy life were so low that other doctors would have allowed them a merciful death without interference. He wouldn’t listen to anyone who disagreed with his ideas. He may even have blocked the chances of another doctor’s promotion by giving him unfairly bad references. Honestly, you know Willow, he sounds deeply unattractive to me, however charming and charismatic he might have been to meet.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Willow as her eyebrows twitched together. ‘But although different people have alleged things like that, they don’t give a fair picture of the whole man. They really don’t. No one could have been as kind to his patients as Ringstead was if he’d been the selfish villain you just described.’
‘Although,’ said Emma, watching Willow with a surprising depth of compassion, ‘there are men – and women, too – who find it much easier to be impersonally kind to people who pass through their lives, stopping only briefly, than to those with whom they have to live in any kind of intimacy. Perhaps it was his inability to empathise with people in any long-term way that both ruined his relationships and made him able to ignore the costs of saving the lives of the very ill babies. After all it was a cost that would not have been paid by him but by the child and its parents for years and years and years.’
‘True, but …’
Before she could finish her sentence Willow saw Sister Chesil coming down the ward towards them. She stopped at the foot of the bed.
‘Mrs Worth.’
Willow, who had forgotten both the harshness of her voice and the intensity of her angry personality, tried to look welcoming.
‘Hello, Sister. I’m surprised to see you in the daytime.’
‘My night duty ended last week.’ Sister Chesil picked the chart up from where it hung at the foot of Willow’s bed and clicked her tongue. ‘I need to talk to you.’
She turned to look at Emma with a frown that carried an unmistakable order with it. Emma smiled back blandly and waited.
‘Oh, this is Emma Gnatche,’ said Willow, impressed with her young friend’s surprising coolness. ‘Emma, this is Sister Chesil, who saw me through the whole business of Lucinda’s birth. She was wonderfully unflapped when things began to go wrong and no one could find poor Mr Ringstead.’
‘How do you do?’ said Emma. ‘Do you need to have some time alone with Willow?’
‘I do need to examine her,’ said the midwife in a slightly more conciliatory tone.
Willow shook her head, but Emma was not looking at her. She was watching Sister Chesil with as much directness as her innate good manners would allow.
‘I’ll nip down to the visitors’canteen, have a cup of coffee, and come back a bit later,’ said Emma at last. ‘We’ve still got lots to talk about.’
Before Willow could protest, Emma had picked up her shoulder bag and walked away, leaving Willow with Sister Chesil’s anger and her own anxiety.
‘Now, what can I do for you?’ Willow said as politely as possible.
Sister Chesil pulled the curtains shut around the bed before saying in a furious undertone: ‘I would like to ask what you think you’ve been doing.’
‘Nothing that could have given rise to the bleeding. It just happened. Doctor Kimmeridge did say it wasn’t my fault.’ Willow detested the pathetic sound of whining apology in her voice.
‘I am not talking about your health,’ said Sister Chesil impatiently. ‘You have been interfering in a police investigation. Does Inspector Boscombe know what you’ve been doing? I have a good mind to talk to her myself and have you stopped before you do any more damage.’
‘I haven’t been doing anything illegal,’ said Willow firmly. She was relieved that she had managed not to encourage Rob to bug the ambulance-drivers’telephone calls after all. ‘The police might resent my asking questions about what happened to Mr Ringstead, but this is still – just – a free country. They can’t stop me.’
‘Perhaps. But freedom entails responsibility. Don’t you think you should have considered the feelings of a woman you had no business even talking to at a time when she’s maximally vulnerable?’
‘Ah,’ said Willow, realising that she might be being presented with the answer to one of the questions Emma had just asked. She could not help looking at Sister Chesil’s strong hands with their neat, short nails. ‘You mean Marigold Corfe?’
‘Precisely. Don’t you think that she might have suffered enough without your self-indulgent curiosity? A man she thought was going to be her husband throws her over with no warning whatsoever because he likes the idea of a rich mistress who isn’t going to ask anything of him that he doesn’t want to give. She’s then forced out of the job she loves and loses the friends she’s worked with for twenty years. That same man, whom she still cares about in spite of his hideous behaviour, is found dead. Murdered. She’s badgered by the police, who assume that hell knows no fury like a woman scorned, but she survives it. And then she comes face to face with yet another woman who thinks her own amusement is more important than other people’s lives.’
‘When you put it like that,’ said Willow, determined not to let herself look away from her accuser, ‘it does sound inconsiderate. But it wasn’t like that. There was no amusement in it for me. And your friend did tell me that she was glad of the opportunity to talk about Mr Ringstead.’
‘I’m not surprised. She’s a generous-minded woman.’
‘You must care about her a lot.’ Willow thought that there was no point reminding the furious midwife that Marigold was quite tough enough to have refused to say anything at all. Having no official status, Willow could never have forced anyone to talk to her. After all, even the police found that pretty difficult with the sanctions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act hanging over them.
‘Enough to want to protect her from people like you,’ said Sister Chesil. ‘I’ve met prying voyeurs before and I know that you won’t stop asking questions and ferreting out things that are none of your business, but I don’t want her worried again. If you must ask questions, ask me. At
least I’m not emotionally involved.’
Willow blinked. The offer was far too good to refuse, but, coming unexpectedly like that, it was difficult to take up. Thinking that she might have discovered the source of Sister Chesil’s continuing anger, she asked the easiest question of all: ‘All right. Then who do you think killed Alex Ringstead?’
‘I have no idea, but I’ve always thought that the likeliest explanation is that it was a patient of the hospital’s long-stay psychiatric wing.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. The wing’s recently been closed and we’ve had some of the patients wandering into the hospital ever since then in search of somewhere safe and warm to sleep. I suspect what happened that evening was that one of them saw a man in a white coat and was paranoid or deluded enough to believe that he represented a threat. Mr Ringstead may even have said something that frightened the patient. Very few people who suffer from mental illness are violent, but sometimes, when they haven’t taken their medication and are confused or frightened enough, they can kill.’
‘I wonder if that’s the answer. I suppose it’s possible,’ said Willow, thinking about it.
‘Possible or not, it’s the only solution I can think of and so I told the police.’
‘Were they convinced?’
‘I have no idea and very little interest. It’s their business. Not mine and certainly not yours.’
‘I don’t see how that can be true,’ said Willow slowly, watching her heavy face with interest. ‘You’re far too conscientious a nurse to believe that it’s not your business if there’s a deluded and violent person wandering about these wards. The protection of the killer, let alone that of your own patients and their babies, would worry you a lot.’
‘Of course it would matter,’ said Sister Chesil sharply. ‘But the police know everything I know and it is their responsibility, not mine.’
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