‘All right. Prepare a bed and a tray, will you? I’ll bring the insulin.’
She dug in her pockets for her keys, and Barney leaned back, his hands in the pockets of his own white coat, and watched her. Just looking at her, at the shape of her firm round body under the starch of her uniform made him feel good. Then he swore softly, and pulled his hand out of his pocket.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lucy had found her keys, and turned to look at him anxiously.
‘It’s all right—I’ve sliced my finger, I’ve got a stupid habit—will put empty ampoules in my pockets. It’s safer, really—stops the glass getting underfoot. I’ve just scratched myself on this one, that’s all.’
He pulled the sliver of glass from his finger, and put the empty little glass tube on the desk in front of him before sticking the finger in his mouth to suck it.
‘Now, there’s a nice hygienic trick!’ Lucy said. ‘Let me get this woman settled, and I’ll put a dressing on for you——’
She was taking bottles and phials out of the drug cupboard as she spoke, inspecting the labels carefully, and her forehead creased as one bottle after the other came out.
‘That’s odd——’
‘What is?’ Barney inspected his finger, which had stopped bleeding—not that he intended to say so. Letting Lucy put a dressing on it would be most agreeable.
‘Insulin. Plain insulin. I had a huge stock of it, I know I did, because I had to order a lot for a patient who was going home. Only she had a sudden heart attack and died, and I didn’t have to use it for her. That’s odd.’
Barney raised his hand, and looked at her, his finger forgotten, and then turned his head as a trolley went clattering past the open office door. Almost without thinking, he got up, and moved swiftly over to it, to stop the porter who was pushing it and stared down at the woman on it.
She was deeply unconscious, and her face was dry and wrinkled, and she was breathing heavily, with deep sighing breaths.
‘Oh, my God,’ Barney said softly, and stood back to let the trolley move on.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lucy said curiously, and then turned to Nurse Crowther, who was following the trolley into the ward, a set of case notes under her arm.
‘Nurse Crowther—look, nip across to Male Medical and get a hundred units of plain insulin from them, will you? I can’t think what’s happened to ours, unless the night staff lent it to someone and didn’t tell me. I know we haven’t used it. Then go and help Dr. Hickson give it and set up the drip, as soon as he gets here——’
Nurse Crowther nodded and went away, passing John Hickson at the door. He looked a little more like himself now, and he nodded briefly at Barney and Lucy as he took the notes from the hands of Nurse Crowther.
‘I’ll put up a drip, Sister,’ he said, and Lucy nodded crisply.
‘I think you’ll find everything ready, Dr. Hickson. Nurse will be back with the insulin in a moment——’ and with a brief smile at Barney, Lucy led the way down the ward and she and Hickson disappeared behind the screens round bed seventeen.
When she came back, Barney had gone, and she felt a curious sense of resentment. He might have said he was going, she thought miserably. After being with her all morning, he might have said——
The new patient claimed her attention then, and for the next few hours she was too busy to think much about Barney or anything but the comatose woman’s condition. But at half past six, when the woman had at last shown signs of recovering somewhat, and Lucy was supervising the serving of the patients’ suppers, he came back.
She turned from the shiny metal trolley, a plate and a serving spoon in her hands and looked at him, and he looked back at her with his face white and bleak.
And just as she had that time before—was it only yesterday? It felt like an eternity ago—she turned the job in hand over to Nurse Crowther, and led him into her office, and sat him down, and perched in the desk beside him.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, keeping her voice as matter-of-fact as possible. ‘Don’t look like that, Barney. Tell me what’s happened.’
‘I murdered him.’
She stared at him, feeling the colour drain out of her cheeks. ‘What did you say?’
He looked at her, and managed a strained smile.
‘Oh, my God, not deliberately! But I murdered him. He was a fit man, and I killed him——’
He began to shake, first his hands, and then his neck and shoulders until his whole body was trembling, and Lucy slid to her feet, and pulled him up, and put her arms round him and held him close, straining him against her own warm strong body, and gradually the shaking stopped, and he lifted his head from her neck where he had buried it, and looked down at her.
‘I know how it was done,’ he said. ‘I know how it was done. And whoever wanted to do it used me—me—to do it for him. I—think I’m going to be sick——’
And he was, and she held his head as he leaned over the wash-hand basin in the corner of the office, and mopped his sweating brow and made him sit down again, shaken and spent.
‘All right,’ she said crisply. ‘All right. You now know what you suspected was true is true. All right. But you don’t have to panic. Just take it easy, and tell me exactly what you’ve discovered.’
He took a deep shuddering breath, and then looked up at her ruefully.
‘Sorry. I do get into a flap. But it was—such a shock to know I had actually killed a man, even though it was in all innocence. Listen.’
His eyes seemed to glaze slightly, as though he was watching some invisible action.
‘The private theatre anaesthetic room is very nicely organised. There’s a rack on the drug side, with holes cut in it. And in each hole there’s an ampoule of the drugs needed for an anaesthetic. One of pentothal. One of sterile water to mix it with. One of adrenalin, one of curare—you know. And when I work there, I automatically use the ampoules prepared.
‘Yesterday morning I did that. I picked up the sterile water ampoule, and opened it and drew the water out and put it into the pentothal. Then I dropped the empty ampoule in my pocket the way I always do. And I gave the mixture to that poor bloody sailor. Only it hadn’t been mixed with water. It had been mixed with insulin. Three hundred units of insulin. Enough to kill an ox!’
His voice rose again, and Lucy put out her hand and touched his cheek, and he held her hand against it with his own, and took a deep breath.
‘It was your insulin, Lucy. From this ward. It must have been. I’ve been over to the Pharmacy, and I’ve checked. Of course they’re in a fearful state there, trying to sort out what’s what after the fire, but the main drug supplies weren’t damaged, and Bruce swears no insulin was missing from his stock. And I’ve checked on the other wards, and they haven’t missed any. Only you have. And there’s another thing. The sterile water ampoules. The Pharmacy prepares them. They aren’t brought in, ready filled and sealed. They do their own. Someone stole your supply of plain insulin, and put it in an ampoule labelled sterile water, and set it in the private theatre waiting for me to use it. And I did.’
Lucy wrinkled her forehead, and rubbed her face as she tried to think clearly.
‘But I don’t understand—why? Just putting an ampoule of insulin in the theatre—that’s crazy. Anyone might have used it.’
He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said drearily. ‘Whoever put it there knew what he was doing. The operating lists go up in advance, the night before. The murderer just had to put it there, and leave it to me to do his killing for him. It must have been Quayle he was after—and got later on with the blood. But the emergency was put in instead and he got it, poor devil——’
They sat and stared at each other, and then Barney said huskily, ‘What do I do now? I know that’s what happened. Now the symptoms the man showed make sense. The sweating—a classic sign of insulin coma. The way he was breathing. The way his blood pressure reacted. It all makes sense now. But how the hell am I going to prove it? Prove it wasn’t w
ith my knowledge, I mean, that I gave the stuff?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said. ‘But it doesn’t matter, does it? You don’t have to prove it. It’s enough you’ve found how that man died. It’s not your problem to find out the way or the who. Come on——’
She went to the door, and Barney put out a hand to stop her.
‘Come on? Where?’
‘To see Spain, of course. Where else? Come on, Barney. You’ll have to face him sooner or later, so come now. It’ll be easier this way. We’ve got to take a chance on his believing you.’
CHAPTER NINE
SPAIN sat with his chin sunk into his heavy neck staring unwinkingly at Barney as he tried to explain as lucidly as he could what had happened the previous morning in the private theatres anaesthetic room. Once or twice Lucy cut in with a word of explanation, and then his eyes shifted to her face, but otherwise he made no move at all.
But when Barney stopped speaking, he raised his chin, and said a little petulantly, ‘It sounds very plausible—like mystery films and plays are plausible. But is it likely? I mean—untraceable poisons an’ all that jazz! That’s what it seems like to me—an’ I’m a simple soul——’
‘Oh, for God’s sake man!’ Barney was suddenly flamingly angry. ‘D’you think I’m making it up? I’ve spent the whole afternoon chasing around the hospital checking on this, and I tell you that’s what happened! Why in hell’s name should I come here with a—a trumped up story out of a mystery film, as you put it? There’d be no sense in that——’
‘Oh, yes, there would,’ Spain said mildly. ‘If it was your negligence killed the man. That’d be a very good reason.’
Lucy put out a hand to restrain Barney, who looked almost murderous with rage, and spoke quickly.
‘You like facts, Inspector Spain. You’ve said that often enough. And we’ve brought you some. My insulin stock has disappeared. Barney has the empty ampoule it was in——’
‘Ah, yes.’ Spain reached out a long arm for the little glass ampoule Barney had put on the desk in front of him. ‘The ampoule. Would it be possible to discover traces of insulin in this, d’you think? That would go a long way to convincing a court of law. That’s all I’m interested in, y’know. Facts that can be brought to court as evidence.’
‘I don’t know,’ Barney said sulkily. ‘I’m an anaesthetist, not an analytical chemist.’
‘Then we’ll have to find one, won’t we?’ Spain put the ampoule into an envelope, and sealed it with a mobile pink tongue.
‘And if he finds insulin, then I’m prepared to agree, we may have murder on our hands. Look, let’s have a recap, eh? The anaesthetic room is arranged so that the drugs for the first case are set out in advance and are invariably used for that case. That’s the first point. The theatre staff nurse set ’em out the night before—illegally, accordin’ to that Sister Battleaxe—and then says she locked up the anaesthetic room. That’s the second point. In the morning, the room was unlocked. Point three. The keys to the theatres hang in the hall where anyone can get at ’em at any time. That’s point four. During the case, you needed another ampoule of water, and had to send for one, although that staff nurse said there should have been one there. Point five. That’s one in favour of your theory, by the way. Obviously if some feller put the insulin ampoule in the room he wanted to make doubly sure you’d use it, so he took away the spare one.’
‘Thank you!’ Barney said sardonically.
‘Not at all,’ Spain said equably. ‘Now, what is point six? Yes. The man who should have been first on the list, and would have died of the insulin if it hadn’t been for that poor ruddy sailor, he died later, under equally dubious circumstances. So that’s another bit of circumstantial evidence in your favour.’
‘Really, you get more and more obliging,’ Barney snapped.
‘Tut tut, Dr. Elliot! You really mustn’t be so touchy! What sort of a policeman would I be if I threw up my hands with joy whenever anyone came to me with what looks on the surface to be a cock and bull story, and shouted “Eureka”? A rotten policeman, that’s what. Of course I’ve got to query it! I keep tellin’ you I’ve got to find evidence that’ll stand up in court. Now, just you calm down and stop lookin’ at me as though I were Borgia’s Granpa, and help me think this business out. Hold his hand or somethin’, Sister Beaumont, and see if that’ll soothe him a bit.’
Lucy blushed, and immediately let go of Barney’s hand, which she had in fact been clutching.
‘Now, let’s see what we’ve got. A neat and tidy method of murder. Very neat, really, because from what you tell me the chances of it’s bein’ discovered were very slim. I mean, if it had been Quayle who’d died on the table that way, would you have been all that surprised?’ and he looked shrewdly at Barney.
Barney grinned a little at last. He couldn’t help it. ‘For a non-medical type, you’ve got a good grasp of essentials,’ he said grudgingly. ‘No, I don’t think I would have been. Quayle was a much older man, much less fit than that sailor. He was heavier, not in such good condition. I think I might have assumed heart failure or shock—especially as Quayle’s operation would have been a much bigger one—more debilitating.’
‘Which means if it hadn’t been for the accident of the emergency goin’ on the list first, there might have been a truly perfect murder committed—the perfect murder bein’ one where no one knows murder’s been done. Yes, very pretty. You’ve got to admire the bloke that dreamed it up, haven’t you? Now, all we’ve got to do is find out why someone was gunnin’ for Quayle, and then we’ve got a very good chance of findin’ out who that someone was.’
He stretched suddenly. ‘I’ve got work to do. A lot of work. Got to dig out some facts about poor departed Mr. Quayle.’
‘We were going to do that——’ Lucy said.
‘What?’
‘Last night. We’d come to the same conclusion, before the fire, I mean. We were talking in the “Ship in Bottle”, and though we didn’t know how it was done, we were sure he had been murdered and we said then we’d go to records and find out who he was, and where he came from and everything. Only then the fire happened and I forgot all about it——’
Spain smiled broadly at her. ‘Well, not to fret. That’s what I’m here for. Policemen never forget anything. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll turn you two out of here, and get on with my job. If anything else occurs to you, come and tell me, eh? I like gettin’ lots of co-operation from my suspects. It does make life so much easier. Good evenin’!’
They walked in silence back along the pathway that led from the administrative block back to the garden and thence to the courtyard and the hospital, but as they reached the garden, peaceful and pretty under the lengthening shadows of a summer evening, Barney stopped suddenly.
‘I don’t want to leave it to him.’
‘What?’
‘Spain. I don’t trust that man. He’s—he’s as smooth as melted butter, and I don’t trust him. I want to find out for myself, all about Quayle, I mean. Maybe we could find out something that would make it even more clear I didn’t know about the insulin—that I didn’t know I was killing that man——’
‘Barney—oh, no! I’m sure he doesn’t think that!’ Lucy said, all her instinctive desire to protect him coming boiling to the surface.
He looked down at her upturned anxious face, and smiled a little crookedly. ‘You’re a sweet loyal darling, Lucy, and I could kiss you for it. But let’s be realistic. That Spain thinks that I did kill the sailor, and won’t have any compunction about trying to prove it. And he’s no fool—if anyone can cook up a case on flimsy evidence, he can. I’ve got to protect myself.’
He touched her cheek with a gentle hand, and then turned her shoulders so that she was facing the hospital. ‘You go back to the ward. I’m going to the records office to look at Quayle’s notes——’
She shook her head. ‘They won’t be there, Barney. Will they? They’ll either be still on the ward, or in the mortuary with the b
ody, or in Stroud’s office waiting for the coroner, or—almost anywhere. But they won’t be in records.’
Barney swore, comprehensively. ‘You’re right, of course. Then I’ll have to go up to the ward. Sister Palmer might know something about him——’
He started to move, walking purposefully across the grass towards the side entrance to the Private Wing, and Lucy scuttled along at his side, anxiously.
‘Barney—not now! Spain’ll be sure to think of the same thing and come over himself in a minute. Do you want to have him find you pumping her? Do be a little more circumspect——’
But Barney shook his head, and walked on, dodging under the low hanging branches of the copper beech, plunging them both into the heavy plum coloured shadows. Lucy pulled at his arm again, and this time managed to stop him.
‘Barney, please——’ she said again, and then jumped, and whirled.
‘Who’s that?’ she said breathlessly, and then relaxed as John Hickson appeared sheepishly from the other side of the heavy gnarled trunk.
‘Oh, it’s you—you startled me. I do wish you wouldn’t be so silent,’ she said, and giggled a little nervously. Hickson really had alarmed her, appearing so suddenly and quietly.
‘Sorry,’ he said, mumbling a little. ‘Better get back——’ and he dodged under a particularly low branch and went loping awkwardly over the grass towards the main block.
‘That bloody man—we’re always falling over him,’ Barney said irritably, and then took a sharp breath.
‘Lucy—we are always falling over him, aren’t we? All through this business?’
They both moved around the tree and out into the brightness on the far side, and stood staring after the figure now disappearing along the covered way and into the consultants’ car park.
‘I suppose we are,’ she said slowly. ‘Last night, at the fire—and yesterday morning in the theatres—in the anaesthetic room, in fact——’
Death on the Table Page 10