by John Creasey
‘I won’t,’ promised Watts; he was already picking up the telephone.
‘You’ll be there officially about O’Hara, but make sure Greatorex isn’t out of sight,’ Roger urged.
Watts began to talk on the telephone, but he nodded understanding to Roger, who went back to his desk and dialled Coppell’s office on the internal system. Coppell picked up the receiver almost before the bell started to ring.
‘Coppell.’
‘Raymond Greatorex has asked me to go and see him at Borelee Studios,’ Roger said. ‘He’ll be there until six thirty, so I’m going to see the girl first, then go out to Borelee.’
‘Better have Greatorex watched,’ Coppell said.
‘It’s in hand, sir. One other thing.’
Coppell grunted; the grunt might have meant ‘good’, or it might have meant ‘what?’
‘I’d like to know if Donovan does work in a garage in a village called Leary, ten miles from Cork. Would it be better for you to check that, through Dublin?’
‘Yes,’ answered Coppell. ‘I’ll see to it.’
Roger rang off and went out, and in five minutes he was driving towards Whitechapel. It was nearly twelve o’clock. He was already wishing he could be in two places at once. As he couldn’t, the obvious priority was a talk with Mary Ellen. Traffic was very thick in the City which had been so deserted the night before, and the crush of heavy lorries in Aldgate and Whitechapel made it a stop-go, stop-go journey. At least it gave him time to think and to reflect on the calm way in which Raymond Greatorex had spoken.
At last he turned off the main road, and slowed down as he approached Berne Court, the name of the apartment building. It was odd enough in itself to find a ‘Court’ in Whitechapel. All the old standards were changing, and this time for the better, for Berne Court was one of the most attractive blocks Roger had seen in London. There was a Swiss air about it, with plenty of wood, balconies, gables – Berne, of course! It was painted white and pale blue and was new enough to have been little affected by London’s soot and smog.
Two uniformed policemen and a plainclothes man were in the entrance and a plainclothes man from the Division approached Roger.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘’Morning. Any sign of movement at Mrs Mallows’ place?’
‘She’s been out shopping, sir, but she’s back. A flour salesman called, for twenty minutes or so, to see the cook. And two women we took to be nurses have gone in, but no one’s come out except Mrs Mallows and the salesman.’
‘Right,’ said Roger.
‘One thing, sir.’
‘Yes?’
‘Detective Sergeant Pell is ready to report.’
‘Where is he?’
‘At Division, sir.’
‘Tell him to be here when I come out,’ said Roger. ‘In half an hour from now.’
‘Right, sir!’ From the brightness in the man’s manner, Roger judged him a friend of Pell.
Roger went up in an automatic lift as modern as any in Mayfair. It stopped smoothly at the fifth floor, and as he stepped out he saw a plainclothes man on duty in the passage leading to Apartment 5c.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘’Morning. No excitements?’
‘None at all, sir,’ the man said. ‘Shall I press the bell?’
‘Please.’
An attractive Jamaican girl opened the door, dark skin shown in fine relief by her white smock. She wore a nurse’s cap, and had the wholesome, well-scrubbed look of a professional nurse.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘I’m Superintendent West and would like to see Mrs Mallows,’ Roger said.
‘Surely, sir—please come inside.’
Obviously the nurse had been given instructions about police visitors, for she led Roger straight to the room where Pell had first seen Mrs Mallows in the early hours of the morning.
The woman stood up from a small desk. She wore a dark, chocolate brown suit, beautifully made, and she was expensively turned out and made up.
‘Please don’t get up,’ Roger said, and as she dropped back in her chair, he added: ‘How is Mary Ellen?’
‘Very tired,’ Mrs Mallows answered quietly.
‘That’s hardly surprising, is it?’
‘What I mean,’ said Mrs Mallows, ‘is that I hope you won’t have to wake her.’
‘But I understood she was awake.’
‘She’s dropped off to sleep again, and—well, there is no greater therapy than natural sleep, Mr West.’
‘I suppose not,’ agreed Roger heavily. ‘But I must talk to her, now.’
Ivy Mallows’ fine brown eyes seemed to glow.
‘Is it so essential?’
‘Yes.’
Very deliberately, Mrs Mallows moved from her chair.
‘I don’t think she will be able to help you, Mr West. You seem to have formed a very definite idea as to this girl’s malady and condition. You must realise that I am not in a position to advise you on either.’
Roger said coldly: ‘Are you prepared to say who sent her here?’
‘That information too is absolutely confidential,’ answered Mrs Mallows, and suddenly, and rather attractively, she smiled.
‘How many patients do you have?’ asked Roger.
‘I suppose an average of ten a week,’ she answered. ‘Mr West, I must make one more appeal. Mary Ellen needs sleep.’
‘I have to talk to her now,’ Roger insisted.
Mrs Mallows gave a little shrug of resignation and rose to her feet. Roger followed her to Mary Ellen’s room, and they both went inside. The girl, tiny and fragile, was lying on her side, her back to Roger. The woman went to her and touched her shoulder gently.
‘Mary Ellen, wake up,’ she said, and when there was no response she shook her more firmly. But there was still no response, just stillness and silence.
Mrs Mallows looked back at Roger, fear suddenly brightening her eyes.
Chapter Eight
Fear And Promise
Very quietly, Roger moved towards the bed, drew the young girl’s arm from beneath the sheets, and felt for the pulse. Mrs Mallows breathed: ‘Oh, no.’ Roger’s forefinger moved over satiny skin, seeking the faintest of movements: and one came. His finger steadied. He looked across at the woman; she was staring at him wide eyed, and there seemed to be prayer and pleading in her expression.
The beating was subdued but steady.
‘It’s firm enough,’ he announced. ‘Send for a doctor, please.’
‘I—’ she began.
‘Quickly,’ Roger urged. ‘And send your staff in here.’
As she moved towards the door, Mrs Mallows said: ‘I’m sure none of them would do anything to her.’
‘Someone has,’ Roger retorted gruffly.
Mrs Mallows went out, and almost immediately her voice drifted back.
‘The Superintendent wants to see you, Rebecca.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The Jamaican nurse came in, walking with the lithe and supple movements of her race. She looked at Mary Ellen’s arm, outside the bedspread, and then back at Roger, startled. ‘Mrs Mallows says you want to see me, sir.’
‘Yes, Rebecca, I want to ask you some questions.’ He paused, and she nodded understanding. ‘How often have you been in this room this morning?’
‘Three or four times, sir.’
‘How did you find the patient?’
‘First time, about half past seven, sir. Mary Ellen was asleep, and I didn’t disturb her. The doctor doesn’t—’ She broke off, catching her breath.
Roger affected to notice nothing.
‘What about the second time?’
‘It was half an hour later, sir, and she was waking up. I brought her a cup of tea—and the next time, about half past eight, I brought in her breakfast. Mr—Mr Detective, she’s all right, isn’t she?’
‘Did you come in again?’ asked Roger.
‘Yes—to fetch the breakfast tray out.’
‘Was she aw
ake then?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Did you come in after that?’ Roger persisted.
‘No, sir, I was off duty for an hour. The doctor—’ Again the nurse broke off.
‘Nurse, what is your name?’
‘Rebecca—Rebecca Smith, sir.’
‘Nurse Smith, you keep mentioning “the doctor”. Which doctor do you mean?’
For the first time the girl looked away, in distress or embarrassment, possibly in fear. Her lips moved but she gave no answer.
‘Answer me, please,’ Roger said, still gently.
‘I—I didn’t mean to call her “doctor”, sir.’
‘Whom didn’t you mean?’ He was acting as if this were a cross examination and he must not give the witness a lead. He was aware of someone hovering at the door, someone who could hear every word that was said.
‘Mis’—Mis’ Mallows, sir.’
‘Do you usually call her “doctor”?’ asked Roger.
As the girl turned her head, as if in quest for help, Mrs Mallows came in, very self possessed. She smiled reassuringly at Rebecca Smith and she said crisply to Roger: ‘The staff often call me “doctor”, yes. I try to discourage the habit but in certain circumstances it isn’t easy. You see, they regard me as the resident doctor. They know that I am fully qualified as a gynaecologist but that I have been struck off the Register. Some of them believe that to have been an injustice.’
‘What do you believe?’ demanded Roger.
‘I broke the law quite deliberately, and was prosecuted with unremitting vigour,’ Mrs Mallows answered flatly. She went to Mary Ellen and tried her pulse. ‘Dr Galbraith will be here in a quarter of an hour or so. Can you continue your investigations in another room, Superintendent?’
‘No,’ said Roger briskly. ‘Nurse Smith, did you administer any drug to this patient today?’
‘No, sir, I did not.’
‘Not aspirin or any other sedative?’
‘Absolutely nothing, sir.’
‘Thank you. There’s no need for you to stay. Is someone else in the passage, Mrs Mallows?’
‘Nurse Trebizon,’ answered Mrs Mallows, and raised her voice slightly. ‘Nurse!’
A small, dark haired, Southern European looking woman came in, in her forties, Roger judged. Dressed exactly as Rebecca Smith, she looked unbelievably less attractive than the little Jamaican.
‘Have you been in this room before, this morning?’ Roger asked.
‘No, sir, I haven’t.’
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Yes, sir, she wasn’t my patient and I haven’t been in.’
‘Did you prepare tea or breakfast for the patient?’
‘No, sir, I didn’t.’
Roger turned to Ivy Mallows.
‘Do you know who did?’
‘Certainly, Superintendent. My cook would do that.’
‘Is she in the kitchen now?’ asked Roger.
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to see her,’ Roger said.
‘In here?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Superintendent, wouldn’t it be better if you allowed the patient—’
‘To be drugged again?’ asked Roger.
‘You surely don’t think—’ Mrs Mallows began in vexation.
‘I think it possible that an attempt was made to silence the patient,’ Roger interrupted. ‘As soon as I have a doctor’s approval I shall move her to a place where she can be in no danger. Then no one here can come under further suspicion.’ He saw the shock in the nurse’s eyes, the distress in Mrs Mallows’.
‘Fetch Cook, Nurse,’ Mrs Mallows ordered, almost humbly.
As Nurse Trebizon went out, Mrs Mallows looked down at the drugged girl, without speaking. Roger had to wait only about two minutes before a big, red faced woman, with hair dyed a flaming red, came in. Something about the cast of her face made him sure that she was Irish. There was flour on her cheeks and on a bright green apron, and she had obviously just dusted the flour off her hands.
‘I am Superintendent West of Scotland Yard,’ Roger said, less to announce himself than to make the woman edgy. ‘What is your name, please?’
‘I’m Mrs Maureen O’Malley,’ she answered in a joyous Irish brogue.
‘Thank you. Did you prepare this patient’s breakfast this morning?’
‘Sure and I did, and I gave her an extra egg and piece of bacon, Superintendent. Nurse Smith told me she was hungry and Irish into the bargain.’ The small deep set blue eyes twinkled.
‘Did anyone help you to prepare the meal?’
‘For pity’s sake, man, why would I want help to get a slip of a girl her breakfast? I’ve only eight or nine breakfasts to get here. Why, when I was cook at the Hotel Royal—’
‘Thank you. Was anyone with you in the kitchen at the time?’
‘And if there was why shouldn’t there be? It wouldn’t be the first time in my life I’d invited even a policeman into my kitchen, Superintendent!’
Roger refused to see the joke.
‘Did you have a man in there this morning?’
‘Just for a wee while, yes, only when—’
‘Was the “wee while” while you were preparing this patient’s breakfast?’
‘Come to think of it now, perhaps it was,’ admitted Maureen O’Malley.
‘And who was the man?’ demanded Roger.
‘Och, he was a friend of a cousin of mine from Dublin, and he’s a salesman for a flour and baking powder firm, so he was on business as well as pleasure. Why would you be asking all these questions? That’s what I would like to know.’
‘Because I want to know whether your cousin’s friend slipped a drug into the breakfast, or whether anybody else—’
Before the cook could explode with indignation, which gathered in her like a storm, there was a loud ring at the front door bell. As if to ease the situation for the cook, Nurse Smith said clearly from outside the door: ‘That will be the doctor.’
After a few moments Mrs Mallows appeared with a middle aged, well dressed man, with iron grey hair and a very prominent but thin nose. He nodded when introduced to Roger, felt the girl’s pulse and lifted her right eyelid, grunted and said: ‘Let’s have the room empty, all I need is the nurse present.’ The look which the cook gave Roger seemed to say: ‘That’s a poke in your eye.’ Roger went out with the others, and asked: ‘May I look at the kitchen?’
‘You won’t find a cleaner one in all the British Isles,’ the cook declared.
She was probably right, too, for the modern kitchen, overlooking an inside courtyard, was spick and span. She showed him the working top where the breakfast tray had been, where her visitor had been standing, where she herself had been, and she answered all his questions quickly, proving she had a good and alert mind. She admitted that the man could have dropped something into the coffee, or over the eggs and bacon.
‘The same as you could if you were quick enough to take advantage when me back’s turned,’ she said. ‘Will you have a cup of coffee, Mr West?’
‘Not now, thanks,’ Roger said, and was smiling when he went out.
Dr Galbraith had a simple report: ‘She’s had a large oral dose of morphia, not large enough to be fatal but I want her in hospital at once. You’ll need someone there, no doubt.’
‘Yes,’ Roger said. ‘I’ll have a man go with the ambulance and he can arrange for a woman officer to sit with her. Are you quite sure the drug was administered orally?’
‘That is my opinion, yes. There is no sign whatever of a hypodermic needle puncture.’
The two men, almost equal in height and size, stood facing each other, and there was challenge in the manner of each. Galbraith was obviously not going to say a word unless he had to. Roger wanted to ask what the doctor knew of the establishment, but that could wait. There were other, more urgent things to do at the moment, besides which, Galbraith might talk more freely in his own home or surgery.
‘I’ll be in touch,
’ Roger said. ‘Do you need to see Dr Mallows now?’
‘You mean Mrs Mallows,’ corrected Galbraith. ‘I must tell her what I’m going to do.’
‘Very well. Give me five minutes first, will you?’
Galbraith nodded, obviously with reluctance.
Roger went out, found one of the other doors open, and saw Nurse Smith enter. Mrs Mallows’ office-cum-living room door was also ajar. He gave a perfunctory tap and pushed it wider, in time to see her sitting at her desk with her face buried in her hands. Slowly, she straightened up, and for a moment Roger saw an expression of absolute despair.
He said gently: ‘The law isn’t always malicious, you know. Dr Galbraith is moving Mary Ellen to hospital so there will be no need for official action yet. I shall want to talk to you again, soon.’
‘I understand.’
‘Do you know Raymond Greatorex?’
She looked her surprise but nothing in her reaction, nothing in the denial which followed, suggested that she knew the man except as a film star.
‘I know of the Raymond Greatorex, and—’ Suddenly her expression changed, alarm flared. ‘Of course,’ she went on. ‘He must know—must have known Daniel O’Hara.’ She relaxed, and went on in a normal voice: ‘If you mean has he ever sent anyone here, the answer is no, not to my knowledge.’
There was no way of being sure that she was telling the truth. Roger was tempted to believe her, but knew the dangers of allowing personal attitudes to influence his thinking One moment of relaxation and he could miss an opportunity that would never come again. He simply had to be on the alert all the time. There were a myriad things to probe, but one could get swamped with detail, and he sensed the need to leave routine to others while he searched for the main lead.
As he reached the exit, an ambulance turned into the street. Pell, tall and almost saturnine with his film star looks, watching this, turned and saw Roger. He moved towards his car and opened the door.
‘Thanks,’ Roger said. ‘Get in the other side, will you?’ He took off the walkie talkie and was speaking to Information by the time Pell had settled himself. ‘I’m going to Borelee with Detective Sergeant Pell,’ he stated. ‘Tell East End Division, will you? And send word to Mr Coppell that the girl Donovan has been drugged but there’s no certainty that it was attempted murder. Then have East End Division asked to get a description of an Irishman who called at 5c Berne Court this morning …’ He gave more details about the flour salesman, then rang off.