They shook their heads.
‘And you were waiting for her to arrive so that you could go off duty?’ He glanced at Sister Meecham.
‘I thought she might’ve overslept,’ Sister Meecham said. ‘I rang — there’s a telephone over in the lobby there but nobody answered so I slipped across to knock on her door. There was no answer and when I tried the knob the door opened. I thought at first she was asleep. I ran downstairs and phoned the police station at once, of course.’
‘Can any of you think of any reason why she would choose to kill herself?’
‘She didn’t check up properly on the patients on the night Mrs Cummings died,’ Sister Meecham said hesitantly. ‘She was apt to be careless about the little things and I had warned her before to keep her mind on her work. And then she was absent from the main building when Madge Lee died.’
‘That wasn’t her fault,’ Ceri Williams said quickly. ‘There was a scribbled note on the desk asking her to go across to the children’s unit. When she got there she couldn’t find anyone who’d sent for her. I was alone on the ward and I should’ve looked in on Mrs Lee but it’s impossible to be in two places at once.’
‘And then she was on the desk in the children’s unit when Amy Foster vanished,’ Sister Warren said.
‘I think it preyed on her mind.’ Sister Meecham twisted her fingers together in her lap. ‘She was a sensitive girl. Quiet and sensitive.’
‘You may be right.’ Detective Sergeant Mill looked at them in turn. ‘Can you think of anything else, Sister Joan?’
‘I wondered why Sister Collet put too much sugar in the cocoa,’ Sister Joan said.
‘What?’ Somewhat nonplussed, he stared at her.
‘Someone mentioned that among other absent-minded things she did, Sister Collet put too much sugar in the cocoa. Whose cocoa?’
‘I believe I can explain that,’ Sister Meecham said. ‘About three months back an old tramp was brought in. We thought at first he was drunk but Dr Meredith recognized the man as a diabetic. He’d known him slightly for years. A notice to that effect was being put up over his bed and I was in the office typing it out. Meanwhile Sister Collet came on duty and seeing that he was waking up she made him a cup of cocoa and put in two large spoonfuls of sugar. By the time I came down with the notice he’d slipped into a fatal coma. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but Sister Collet was very upset about it.’
‘Do you have the tramp’s name?’ Detective Sergeant Mill prepared to make a note.
‘Nobody knew it,’ Sister Meecham said. ‘He was buried as a John Doe.’
‘Cremated, Sister Meecham,’ Sister Warren said.
‘He was a derelict, no known relatives or friends, no fixed abode,’ Ceri Williams said. Her eyes had brimmed with tears again. ‘Sister Collet and I were so sorry for him, and we all told her not to blame herself. He might’ve died anyway.’
‘Well, that seems to be it then.’ Detective Sergeant Mill closed his notebook. ‘There will be an inquest in due course when the results of the autopsy are known.’
‘There’s to be an autopsy?’ Sister Meecham stood up very slowly.
‘On Sister Collet, yes of course. Our police surgeon is conducting it at this moment.’
‘But surely there’s no need!’ Her voice had risen. ‘She killed herself. Dr Geeson said it was obviously an overdose of sleeping tablets. You’ve heard that she was worried about the mistakes she’d been making. Why have an autopsy?’
‘Because it’s the law,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said flatly. ‘There seems to be a rooted objection to carrying out the correct procedures in this establishment. I must warn you that an enquiry may well be ordered by the coroner. That’s all for now.’
Sister Joan, glancing back as she followed him into the corridor, saw that Sister Meecham had never ceased to twist her fingers, making ugly little cracking noises.
‘You didn’t mention the red wig,’ she said, when they were in the open again.
‘I’m saving that for the right moment,’ he told her. ‘What d’ye think, Sister? Something very nasty in the woodpile, don’t you believe?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded soberly as they paced across the forecourt. ‘Sister Collet seems to have made more than her fair share of mistakes recently. Maybe she was sick or on the edge of a breakdown or something?’
‘The wig would definitely have been too big for her. I checked that.’
‘She might’ve found it,’ Sister Joan said doubtfully. ‘Or someone else might have hung it on the wardrobe door to tie her in with the drugs?’
‘I incline to the second theory though I’m damned if I can fit the whole thing together,’ he said irritably.
‘An old tramp whom Dr Meredith knew slightly and recognized to be a diabetic is taken into casualty and while Sister Meecham is typing out his medical details Sister Collet gives him a cup of sweet cocoa and sends him into a diabetic coma. A couple of months later Louisa Cummings dies of a heart attack while Sister Collet is on duty. A few days ago Madge Lee gets hold of or is given a bottle of brandy, drinks most of it and dies. Again Sister Collet is on duty. And Sister Collet was on duty when Amy Foster vanished from the garden. Could there have been something besides brandy in that bottle?’
‘Anything’s possible but as we’ve had three cremations the chances of finding out are pretty slim.’
‘Nothing does fit together,’ Sister Joan said. ‘There aren’t any motives for these deaths, and all of them could have been natural.’
‘Do you believe that?’ He looked at her sharply.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said decidedly. ‘Somewhere there’s a link. We haven’t found it yet, that’s all.’
‘I’m going down to the mortuary,’ he said abruptly. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘No, but I’ll wait outside while you find out how the autopsy’s going.’
‘You’d never make a detective on the Force,’ he said, turning towards a side door.
‘I hope not!’ she said thankfully.
‘I won’t be long.’ He pushed open the door and went down a flight of stone steps.
Death wasn’t a beautiful thing, Sister Joan thought. Life was beautiful and what came after death was, please God, beautiful too, but the act of dying, the ritual that often surrounded an unexpected demise struck her as obscene. Tracy Collet had been a young attractive woman with a gentle manner and now she was blood and bone and flesh, being cut and probed by a man who had no personal interest in her at all.
She walked a little way, shivering despite the sunshine that illuminated the sombre tones of stone and brick.
Detective Sergeant Mill reappeared, closing the heavy door behind him, his dark face unreadable.
‘They’re making steady progress,’ he said without emotion.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning they’ve found a quantity of digoxin in the stomach contents.’
‘Then she took it for herself?’
‘She certainly signed for it. Apparently digoxin slows down the heart and is valuable in cases of rapid heart palpitation. Give too much and the heart simply stops.’
‘The empty bottle in her room?’
‘Traces of digoxin in it and in the glass she drank from.’
‘Suicide then?’ Sister Joan’s blue eyes blazed. ‘No, I don’t believe it! People don’t kill themselves because they make a couple of mistakes. I know the old tramp died but Sister Collet didn’t even know he was a diabetic. I don’t believe it.’
‘She was nearly four months pregnant,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said.
‘Pregnant!’
Sister Joan stopped and stared at him, the colour ebbing and flowing in her face. ‘Dear Lord, but of course she was! I ought to have realized that.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘She was absent-minded. Pregnant women never have much on their minds except the coming baby so my sister-in-law tells me. And on the night that Louisa Cummings died Sister Collet wasn’t well. She had to visit th
e toilet more than once. And she was over emotional too! She cried bitterly when I gave her the ring. Of course she was pregnant, and trying to hide the fact from her colleagues.’
‘That might be a reason for suicide,’ he suggested.
‘Not for Tracy Collet,’ Sister Joan said.
‘She wasn’t married.’
Sister Joan looked at him and found herself smiling slightly.
‘Single mothers are two a penny these days,’ she said. ‘I’ve not yet heard of anyone killing herself because she was pregnant and unmarried. But it isn’t only that. Tracy Collet was a nurse, Alan! Whatever their level of efficiency or their personalities I’d say that every nursing sister at St Keyne’s cares about life. Tracy Collet had that life growing inside her and she would never have harmed it in any way.’
‘No signs of force,’ he pointed out.
‘Then perhaps she was tricked into drinking the concoction. She hadn’t been feeling good; she was under a strain. Someone offers to give her something that will ensure she gets a few hours uninterrupted sleep?’
‘That means it could be almost anybody who was on or off duty. Difficult!’
‘I don’t believe that the hospital has more than one murderer running round,’ Sister Joan said. ‘The same person who gave Tracy Collet that lethal cocktail had everything to do with the deaths of Mrs Cummings and Madge Lee and perhaps the old tramp too.’
‘We’re talking serial murder here,’ he said.
‘It’s not impossible,’ she argued.
‘Not impossible but rare. That’s what makes serial killers so fascinating. They seem to live by a different code of values than the rest of us. Most murders turn out to be very personal affairs for very mundane reasons — money, sex, you know.’
‘And there’s a pattern to them. I know that too. I mean that the murderer had a bad relationship with a blonde so he finds every blonde he can and kills her and he doesn’t stop because the blonde who caused the original damage is out of his reach or he hasn’t got the nerve to do anything to her. I’ve read about it.’
‘Not in the convent library surely?’
‘I was thirty years old before I entered the religious life,’ she reminded him. ‘Before that I did open the occasional book.’
‘Then we have to find the similarities between the victims. Something they had in common. Let’s assume that tramp was killed, though personally I doubt it.’
‘He was a diabetic, known but not by name to Dr Meredith, picked up after he’d collapsed in the street and taken to casualty,’ Sister Joan mused aloud. ‘Sophie Meecham went over to the office to type up his medical record and meanwhile Tracy Collet gave him a nice sweet cup of cocoa. Maybe that was just a mistake, an innocent error. Nobody had any reason to kill him.’
‘He doesn’t seem to have had much of a life anyway,’ Detective Sergeant Mill said. ‘Mrs Cummings? Mother Dorothy inherited her property.’
‘Mother Dorothy hadn’t the least idea that she was due to inherit anything and she was nowhere near St Keyne’s when her godmother died!’
‘Hold your horses, Sister!’ He sent her an amused grin. ‘I was about to eliminate her as a possible suspect. Nobody else stood to gain from Louisa Cummings’s death. Her operation had been postponed because there was a blip in the computer.’
‘Could that have been deliberate?’
He shook his head.
‘Possible but highly unlikely. The computer was only recently installed and they’re still trying to get the hang of it. Anyway the hip replacement was only postponed for a few hours. It meant an extra night on the ward for her, that’s all, and she was irritated and not upset by the delay, yet during the night she suffers a fatal heart attack.’
‘And Sister Collet doesn’t check out the patients properly because she’s in the toilet being sick. Alan, there’s a door right by the end bed that Mrs Cummings was in. It leads down to the kitchen. Someone could’ve come up that way and given Mrs Cummings a massive dose of digoxin while Sister Collet was in the toilet.’
‘Mrs Cummings was already on digoxin.’
‘On steadily decreasing doses. In her diary she mentions that the tablets are different. If someone stepped up the dose suddenly — not that we’ll ever know because she was cremated.’
‘Madge Lee?’
‘No way in the world did Madge Lee get out of the bed in the side ward, go up to the office, find Sister Meecham’s bottle of brandy, open it, carry it down to the side ward and after climbing back into bed drink most of the contents and die of acute alcoholic poisoning!’
‘Then someone undid that bottle and took it to her while Sister Collet was going over to the children’s unit and Sister Williams was making a hot drink for another patient. Tracy Collet again.’
‘Nobody had anything to gain from Madge’s death.’
‘Padraic? Now don’t bridle up, Sister! I’m very well aware that Padraic can do no wrong in the eyes of your community because he regularly supplies you with excellent fish that simply leap out of private fishing streams and land at his feet begging to be taken to the convent! But Madge was a liability to him. I’m playing Devil’s advocate here.’
‘Don’t waste your time,’ Sister Joan advised. ‘Padraic went on loving his wife despite everything. She wasn’t normally violent, remember.’
‘The red-haired woman gave her an LSD tablet outside the pub. Combined with alcohol that made her unusually aggressive. So she was brought here and the next morning just as she’s recovering from her binge someone pours neat brandy down her throat.’
‘We don’t know it was neat brandy,’ Sister Joan objected. ‘There was an awful lot of digoxin missing from the drugs unit.’
‘And again Madge was cremated.’ He grimaced.
‘And now Sister Collet has died.’ Her face was troubled as she looked up at him. ‘She apparently committed suicide but I don’t believe that. I really can’t believe that. She was given that drink by somebody, probably told it was a sleeping draught. Digoxin slows the heart so she’d just have died peacefully.’
‘It was Tracy Collet who signed for the digoxin. Wouldn’t she have known?’
‘She may have signed for it but she signed the register later on so perhaps someone else took the stuff and then asked her to sign the register — you know, saying that they’d been under pressure and neglected to do so. And she wouldn’t have known that she’d been given the drug in her drink because she’d never suffered from heart trouble.’
‘And again there was no reason for anybody to kill her, and you’re pretty certain she wouldn’t have committed suicide.’
‘I’m absolutely certain,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Alan, I think I’d like to sit down by myself and look at the various members of the hospital staff. Do we have any details on them?’
‘Constable Petrie got these details from the office files. He made photocopies for you.’ He took a thin sheaf of papers from his pocket and gave them to her.
‘The first chance I get,’ she promised. ‘I have to get back now. You’ll let us know as soon as there’s any news about Amy?’
‘She remains my main concern,’ he said gravely. ‘I can do something for the living if Amy is still alive. Every hour that goes by makes it less likely.’
They had reached the van. Sister Joan unlocked the door and hoisted herself behind the wheel.
‘Thank you for the lunch,’ she said.
‘It was a pleasure, Sister.’
‘The baby.’ Fastening her seatbelt she glanced at him, a shadow in her face. ‘Was it a boy or a girl? Could they tell?’
‘It would’ve been a girl.’
‘God bless her!’ she said softly. ‘There’s another reason why Sister Collet might not have committed suicide. She’d have known the child was developed sufficiently even for its sex to be defined, so she wouldn’t have killed herself.’
‘Had it occurred to you that if Tracy Collet was our murderer she might’ve had a last-minute fit of conscience a
nd decided to make away with herself?’
‘Tracy Collet was a nice person.’
‘Many killers have been extremely nice people apart from their unfortunate propensity to commit the odd murder.’
‘You’re a cynic!’
‘And you’re a sentimentalist! Drive carefully, Sister.’
She nodded and drove off slowly, avoiding the rash of cars parked across the forecourt.
Someone was walking in through the open gates. She slowed politely but Dr Geeson didn’t pay her any attention. He was strolling with his head up and his hands deep in the pockets of his white coat, and he was whistling cheerfully as he came.
TEN
‘It was a most affecting and interesting ceremony,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘The church was almost full and Father Malone preached a most sympathetic sermon.’
She had joined the community at recreation though usually she employed the time in catching up on her paperwork.
‘He never mentioned alcoholism once,’ Sister Perpetua said.
‘No, he talked about her love for her husband and about the two children she left behind. Edith and Tabitha are growing up into very nice girls now, Sister Joan. I think you may take some of the credit for that since you taught them when we had our little local school.’
‘Thank you, Mother, but they weren’t with me for very long. Padraic deserves the credit,’ Sister Joan said.
‘He has taken the death hard though he is bearing up very well,’ Mother Dorothy said. ‘After the cremation we had lunch with Father Malone and then we drove back with him, stopping on the way home at the Romany camp to tender our condolences once again.’
‘They were having a kind of wake,’ Sister Perpetua said. ‘Bonfires blazing and all her possessions being burned along with the wood. There was some singing and a bit of dancing too. Of course, we only stayed for a moment but it looked quite jolly.’ She sounded rather wistful.
‘So how has the day gone with the rest of you?’ Mother Dorothy looked round the semicircle. ‘Sister David?’
‘I helped Sister Martha with the fruit picking,’ Sister David said earnestly. ‘It made a pleasant change from being in the library most of the day.’
A VOW OF COMPASSION an utterly gripping crime mystery Page 16