Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 835 & 836, March/April 2011

Vanishing Act by Christine Poulson

Yorkshire-born Christine Poulson is an art historian who wrote several books on 19th century art and literature before creating her academic mysteries starring Cambridge University English lecturer Cassandra James. The most recent novel in that series is 2006’s Footfall. She currently lives with her family in a water mill in Derbyshire. Her short fiction for EQMM includes 2010’s “A Tour of the Tower,” which was short-listed for the Fish-Knife Award, offered jointly by the CWA and Fish Publishing.

“One of these men is a murderer.”

Edward looked at the grainy black-and-white photo that Edith held up. Three men smiled out at him.

“What’s this all about?” he asked. “Who are they?”

“I’ll give you a clue. One of them’s my brother — and he’s not the murderer.”

Edward gestured impatiently. “I need a better look.”

She brought her wheelchair closer to his bedside and leaned forward, bringing with her a gust of perfume, something warm and spicy.

Theirs was a new friendship and it would inevitably be a short one. The doctors were careful not to offer any predictions, but Edward knew that he didn’t have more than a week or two. He was bedridden now. The morphine took care of the pain, but what he hadn’t expected was the boredom. Strange that time should drag when there was so little of it left, but so it was. That was why Edith was such a godsend. She was in the hospice for a week’s respite care. They had taken to each other and she visited him every evening, scooting down the corridor in her wheelchair. She was an interesting woman, had spent most of her working life in Canada as a museum curator. He enjoyed her “take no prisoners” attitude without feeling it was one he could adopt himself.

“Your brother is the one in the middle,” he decided. They had the same nose: That bump on the bridge was unmistakable. “Who are the others?”

“Let’s call that one Dr. X and that one Dr. Y.” She pointed with a red-varnished fingernail.

Edward studied the photograph. Dr. Y was tall and fair with something irresolute about his mouth, the kind of man who is a little too anxious to please. Dr. X was short and dark with a widow’s peak and full, sensuous lips.

“When you say murder...?”

“This all happened a long time ago — say, twenty-five years, even thirty? A surgeon had an affair with a theatre nurse. When it turned sour, he murdered her to save his marriage — and his reputation. There was a conspiracy of silence amongst his colleagues, and he was never brought to book.”

“Then how do you know?”

“My brother told me. He was one of the doctors who kept quiet. Fred died a couple of months ago.” She gave a caw of laughter. “He’s beaten me to it. Just. He was very near the end when he let it out of the bag. It preyed on his mind. You know how it is...” She shrugged.

When you’re near the end? Yes, he did know — who better? — and counted himself lucky. On the big things, marriage, children, work, he’d done just fine. He did rather regret that he’d never got round to reading Proust, but you can’t have everything.

“Fred told me what I’ve just told you,” Edith went on. “One of these men is a murderer.”

“Did he say how...?”

“She was found dead in bed. Healthy young woman, never had a day’s illness in her life. One of those unexplained deaths. Hospital dispensaries are full of things that could bring that about. They weren’t as strict about keeping track of drugs in those days.”

Edward thought it over.

The stillness was broken only by the slap of sleet on the window. The curtains hadn’t been drawn against the November night. Streaks of rain gleamed on the glass and overlaid the smeared lights of the town in the valley below.

At last he said, “After all this time, it’s pretty academic...”

“Is it, though? What about all these breakthroughs in forensic science and what they can do with DNA? If the police reopened the case, who knows what they might find.”

There was a knock at the door.

They both started, caught each other’s eye, and laughed.

“Edith?” A nurse, a thickset man that Edward hadn’t seen before, was standing at the door. “It’s time for your injection.”

Edith swung her wheelchair round.

“Hey! You can’t just leave it at that! Which one is it?”

“You decide. Observing criminals was your job, after all.” As she headed for the door, she raised a hand in farewell. “Let’s see how good a judge of character you are.” The words rang out like a challenge.

He watched as she disappeared through the door. Helpless and exasperated, he slumped back on his pillows. That was Edith all over. Surprising that someone hadn’t murdered her before now.

She had left the door open, but it didn’t matter. He liked to see people coming and going up the corridor.

His glance strayed to the clock on the wall. Only nine o’clock. An hour until he could expect his daughter’s phone call. He sighed and picked up the photo again. Yes, he had seen many killers in his time as a court artist. But he had long ago learned that, as Shakespeare put it, “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” Appearances could indeed be deceptive.

The men were standing on the steps of a building — neo-Georgian — and now that he looked more closely he saw that one of them had a glass in his hand. Some kind of celebration? Had this been taken before the murder? If indeed there really had been a murder. The three men were much the same age, somewhere around the mid thirties. The clothes and the body language — it was surprising how much you could learn... Was Dr. X or Dr. Y wearing a wedding ring? If only he had a magnifying glass...

When the phone rang, he was surprised to see that an hour had passed.

Jennifer cocked her head. Her ear was so attuned to the night and the silence that she was alert to the smallest unusual noise. She wasn’t the nervous type — never had been — and she was used to working nights, but... what was that sound?

She put her paperwork to one side and went out into the corridor. It stretched out in both directions. It was empty, but she had the feeling that she had just missed someone. She listened again. The silence was unbroken. On a quiet night like this the hospice must be one of the most peaceful places in the world. No visitors, no phones ringing, no consultants’ rounds. And tonight she wasn’t expecting anyone to die while she was on duty.

She looked at her watch. Nearly one o’clock. She’d got into the habit of sitting with Edward for a while around now. He didn’t sleep well and enjoyed the company.

She brought him his tea and settled down for a chat. This was what nursing should be, really getting to know and care about your patients. It was a privilege, and so often you saw the best of people at times like this. People sometimes asked her, did that make it harder when they died, but strangely enough, it didn’t.

“Any news about the baby?” she asked. Edward’s only daughter, Laura, was in New Zealand waiting for her own daughter to give birth. It had been a difficult pregnancy with enforced bed rest.

He shook his head. “Laura rang earlier. She’s still fretting about not being here. I’ve told her not to be so silly. Melanie needs her mum with her. And as for me, I don’t want any harm to come to my first great-grandchild, do I? Just so long as he or she arrives before I go.”

“I’d put money on it,” Jennifer said.

She would, too. Edward would hang on for that, though afterwards it would be a different matter. The real question was whether Laura would get away in time to be with him at the end. She could guess how sorely he yearned for his daughter, but it remained unspoken between them.

“I’m not short of visitors,” he said, as if he had read her mind.

“The day staff tell me you’ve made quite a hit with Edith.”

He winked at her. “Oh, I’m not so far gone that I don’t have an eye for a good-looking woman. Kathleen popped in earlier on, too.”

Kathleen was the hospice chaplain, a Church of England vicar who came in four afternoons a week.

“I thought you Quakers didn’t have any truck with the clergy?”

He laughed. “Oh, I’m happy to chat to anyone. And anyway, we don’t talk about religion. We’ve discovered that we’re both keen on classic crime fiction. She’s promised to lend me a collection of Ellery Queen short stories.”

Jennifer nodded. She wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but her own faith was simple and secure. She was certain that the souls of her patients found safe harbour. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did know it.

They talked for a while longer. When she saw that his eyelids were drooping, she arranged his pillows for him and put the emergency buzzer within reach. She dimmed the lights and went quietly away.

As she walked back to the nurses’ station, she glanced into each room in turn. She had actually passed Edith’s room before she registered that something was wrong. She turned back and went in. What she had seen was the light reflected off Edith’s eyes. They were half open. She moved without haste to the bed and touched the pulse-point at the throat. The skin was cool under her fingers. Sometime in the last couple of hours, Edith had slipped silently away.

Jennifer closed Edith’s eyes and said a short prayer.

“You weren’t expecting it, were you?” Edward said. “I know Edith wasn’t. She thought she had awhile to go yet.”

It was the following night and Jennifer was rearranging his flowers. “Well, yes. But these things don’t always go according to a timetable.”

“I can’t believe it. She was so full of life.”

Jennifer gave him a compassionate look. He had no difficulty in interpreting it. Funny: The more his body wound down, the greater seemed to be his insight into what other people were thinking. He could almost see the thoughts flitting through her head. Poor old boy, she was thinking. It brings home the fact of death. Bound to be upsetting.

What she actually said was, “The doctor says her heart gave out — it could have happened at any time.”

“I know, I know. ‘Death in Hospice’: hardly a banner news headline, but all the same...”

Jennifer plucked out a dead carnation and dropped it into the bin. “To go without any fuss or pain, that’s not a bad thing.”

He snorted. “Maybe not. But it sure as hell wasn’t Edith’s style. I can’t imagine her ever taking the easy way out. I’ll miss her,” he added, suddenly realising he was close to tears.

Jennifer put her head on one side and tweaked the arrangement to conceal the gaps.

“The family didn’t expect it, either,” she admitted. “And that reminds me. According to her niece there was a bag of family photos that she’d brought in to sort out. We can’t find them. She didn’t leave them in here, did she?”

“Not a bag full, no, but she did leave one.” Edward fumbled on his bedside table for the photo of the three men.

She came over, took one look, and said, “Doctors.”

He was taken aback. “You recognise them?”

“No, no, but they have that look about them and it’s obvious what the occasion is.”

“It is?”

“Of course. They’ve just set up in practice together. Look,” she pointed to something in shadow on the left-hand side of the picture. “That’s their new nameplate. They’re drinking a toast.”

To think that he had missed that! But of course he had been concentrating on the faces. He squinted at it, trying to make out the letters. They were tantalisingly out of focus.

“Who are they?” Jennifer asked.

Edward hesitated. But what was there to lose?

He told Jennifer what Edith had told him.

She thought about it for a while. Again he could read her thoughts: Should she pooh-pooh the idea, or be honest?

She decided to be honest. “d’you know the joke about the man who dies and goes to heaven? He sees someone rushing around in a white coat and asks St. Peter who it is. St. Peter says, ‘That’s God. He thinks he’s a doctor.’ Some of those old-style consultants did pretty much think they were God.”

“Some still do,” Edward said wryly. “So you’re not going to say it couldn’t happen?”

“We both know that it could. As long as nothing was said, people could pretend they didn’t know.”

“And after a while, they’d be able to tell themselves that it really didn’t happen, and that if there were any real evidence, the police would have been onto it. But, you know, he could still have a lot to lose. What about those murders in Finland? At Lake Bodom. Someone was brought to trial over forty years later. And Edith wasn’t the kind to let sleeping dogs lie. If he felt threatened by her...”

But that was one step too far. He saw that he had lost her. He felt a stubborn determination to press on. “You think I’m letting my imagination run away with me, morphine dreams...”

He saw from the slight flush on her face that he was right.

“There’s something you’re forgetting,” she said. “Even if someone wanted to murder Edith, how would they get in here? All visitors have to sign in and this isn’t like a huge hospital. I know everyone who works here. It just wouldn’t be possible for anyone to masquerade as a doctor.”

“They wouldn’t be masquerading as a doctor, they would actually be one. I asked one of my friends from my Quaker meeting to bring in my pastels.” His sketchbook was lying on the bed. He opened it to show her. “I’ve tried to age them,” he said. “Dr. Y — that sort of fair hair tends to get thin. It’s already receding a bit in the photo. By now he’s probably bald on top. And the face — he’s the kind of man that gets gaunt with age. With that long jaw, he’ll look a bit skull-like.” He had her full attention now. She was studying the drawings, fascinated.

He went on. “Dr. X is the type that puts on weight easily. Not just his build; he likes his food and drink. He’s a bit greedy. His hair might recede a bit, but not a lot, it’ll just make the widow’s peak more prominent. He’ll have some grey in his hair by now. It’s a distinctive face — with that strong nose.”

“How old would they be now?” Jennifer asked.

“In their sixties.”

“Neither of them is on the staff.” But she was frowning, narrowing her eyes as she stared at the drawings.

“You’re not certain?”

“Yes, I am, but... no.” She shook her head. “I don’t know either of them.”

A bell rang from a nearby room and she got up to leave.

“Take them with you — the photo and the drawings — please. Something might come to you.”

She hesitated, and this time he wasn’t sure what she was thinking. A shutter had come down.

Was it just to humour him that she did what he asked?

Things got busier for Jennifer after that. Mrs. o’shea, who had been lingering for several days, took a turn for the worse. There are no set visiting hours in a hospice, and her large and devoted family were in and out all night. Not one but two priests arrived to give her the last rites. She was still hanging on when Jennifer went off duty.

At home, there was the fuss of getting the kids ready for school and then she flopped into bed. She woke up at two o’clock, put on her dressing gown, and made a strong cup of coffee. She took it back to bed. The cat followed her up and stretched himself beside her. She stroked him absent-mindedly. The idea that Edith might have been murdered almost wanted to make her snort with laughter. In the cold light of day it seemed absurd, it was absurd. Like something in one of those old-fashioned detective stories that Edward liked so much and maybe that was even where it had come from. Patients on high doses of morphine did get strange notions.

She rummaged around in her handbag and found Edward’s drawings. She stared at them again. The uneasy feeling she’d had earlier came back to her. That widow’s peak... and that bag of photographs going missing... not so odd in itself... She saw again the look of surprise on the duty doctor’s face. He really hadn’t been expecting it, though he had signed the death certificate willingly enough. And — face it — how hard would it be to get away with murder in a hospice? Just one more needle mark in someone who had been having several injections a day.

Her eye fell on the bedside clock. Oh Lord, she was going to be late collecting the kids. She threw her clothes on and was out of the house in two minutes. Then it was nonstop: supervising piano lessons and homework, simultaneously cooking the dinner and listening with half an ear to a convoluted story told by the twins. Five children under the age of nine. Whatever had they been thinking of? Then Matt was home and it was all right again just as it was every evening. He was a computer person, worked in hospital admin, nine to five, which was what made the whole thing possible. Then dinner was over, it was eight-thirty, and the kids were in bed.

This was their time. She told him everything and so she told him about Edward.

“Of course it’s all nonsense,” she said, hoping he’d agree.

“Interesting little problem, trying to identify these chaps,” Matt said, looking at the photo over the top of his glasses. “That nameplate — I could scan the photo and fiddle about with Photoshop, increase the contrast. The one who was Edith’s brother — do you know his name?”

“I don’t think she was ever married — so I expect it’s the same as hers: Johnson.”

“You can do wonders with online records and Google. Leave it with me, love.”

“Of course there can’t be anything in it. Can there?”

“Nah. But if I find out who they are and they’re both long gone, well then, you can put the poor old boy’s mind at rest, can’t you?”

Edward was restless. Kathleen had brought in the collection of Ellery Queen short stories, but they failed to hold his attention. He found himself looking at the clock every other minute. Laura always rang at ten o’clock to say goodnight to him. It was now eleven o’clock. There must be something wrong. He sent his thoughts winging off to the Bay of Plenty, held in the light his daughter and his granddaughter and the child waiting to be born.

Jennifer had popped her head round the door to say she’d do her best to pop in for a chat around one o’clock. So there was that to look forward to, but he had the feeling it was going to be a long night.

When the phone rang he was startled. He knocked a slew of things off the bedside table as he stretched out his hand.

The moment he heard Laura’s voice he knew that it was all right.

The words came tumbling out. “Dad, it’s all over! She went into labour naturally — and after all those problems — couldn’t have gone better, only a few hours — amazing for a first baby. Didn’t have a chance to ring you—”

“The baby—?”

“She’s perfect, oh Dad, she’s perfect. They’re going to call her Alice, after Mum.” He heard tears in her voice. “And Melanie’s just fine. She’ll speak to you herself tomorrow. And that’s not all. The airline rang ten minutes ago. There’s been a cancellation. I’ve got a seat on a flight leaving in three hours.”

“So soon...”

“Look, I’ve got to go. John’s waiting to take me to the airport. When he gets back, he’ll send some photos through to the hospice. Just hang on! I’ll be with you the day after tomorrow.”

The day after tomorrow. A little girl called Alice.

The happy news lit up the room and tears filled his eyes. Now that he knew Laura was coming he could let himself yearn for her. He thought of the day he had held her in his arms as a newborn baby. It was only right and fitting that her dear face should be the last he would see.

There was a far-off muffled boom. A couple of days to go until Bonfire Night, but someone was setting off early fireworks. There was a flash of light and above the town a firework unfolded like a big blue chrysanthemum. There were more distant bangs and whizzes: coloured lights blossomed and chased each other across the sky.

He had always loved fireworks. He settled back to enjoy the show.

Paperwork, paperwork. The downside of modern nursing. Jennifer sighed. One day she might actually clear her desk. She looked at her watch. Twelve-twenty. Forty minutes until her tea break and her chat with Edward. She put her head down and ploughed on.

She was puzzling over a questionnaire from the local health trust when the computer gave the little ping that meant there was incoming mail. She ignored it. It wouldn’t be anything that couldn’t wait.

When the phone rang ten minutes later, she reached for it with her eyes still on the form.

Matt’s voice brought her head up with a jerk. Something wrong with the children? She breathed a sigh of relief when he said the kids were fine.

“What are you doing still up?” she asked.

“Got a bit carried away on the computer. Didn’t you get my e-mail? I’ve managed to work out who they were, the men in the photo. Charles Ballantyne — distinguished career — Southampton Hospital, big wheel in the BMA — you won’t care about all that. Thing is, he died last year. The other one, Robert Cleaver, went to Australia, returned about ten years ago, he’s an Emeritus Professor of Oncology, specialising in a rare form of cancer at—” Matt named a London teaching hospital.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw someone pass the open door. She caught a glimpse of a dark suit and a clerical collar. The footsteps went on down the corridor.

She opened Matt’s e-mail.

Matt was still talking. “There’s a photo of him on the hospital website. If you want to see what he looks like, click on the link.”

She did, and a face stared out of the screen at her. It was uncanny, how right Edward had been, except for—

Her instincts were telling her that something was wrong. The footsteps had stopped further down the corridor. Who was he visiting? Not Mrs. o’shea. She had died earlier that evening and her body was in the hospice mortuary waiting to be collected by the undertakers.

And he wasn’t visiting Edward. Edward was a Quaker.

Jennifer dropped the phone and sprang to her feet.

Edward’s eyes were heavy, but he forced himself to stay awake. He wanted to hang on until one o’clock so that he could ask Jennifer if an e-mail had arrived with photos of the baby and Melanie. He wished he could tell Edith. Funny how much he missed her. That story of hers — he couldn’t quite understand how he had let himself get so carried away by it. Perhaps he had been groping for a reason for her death, unwilling to believe that she had simply disappeared, given him the slip, pulled off the vanishing act he was so shortly to pull off himself.

Just for a moment he had the feeling that she was somewhere close by. He seemed to catch a whiff of her perfume.

When the man in the clerical collar appeared in the doorway, Edward’s first thought was that he had come to the wrong room.

His second thought, as the man closed the door behind him, was that he had done a good job of updating the photo, but he couldn’t possibly have guessed about the beard.

His third was that he wouldn’t be seeing Laura after all, because among the things he had knocked off the bedside table was the emergency buzzer.

Jennifer punched the panic button to summon help.

Nurses aren’t supposed to run, and Jennifer was a big woman, but she flew down that corridor.

She reached the room in time to see the man standing by Edward’s bed.

Light glinted on a hypodermic.

Another moment and she flung her arms round him from the back. She squeezed. He struggled, but years of manhandling toddlers at home and lifting patients at work had given her arms like steel hawsers. He didn’t stand a chance.

The hypodermic went clattering to the floor.

Then Paul, the burliest of the hospice nurses and an ex-soldier, appeared in the doorway and it was all over.

“Just a black shirt and a strip of plastic cut from a bottle of washing-up liquid,” Edward marvelled for at least the tenth time.

Jennifer nodded. “That was all it took. Dressed like that, he could walk into any hospice — or any hospital ward — claim to be visiting a parishioner and no one would bat an eyelid.”

It was nearly the end of Jennifer’s shift on the following night and she hadn’t been able to resist popping in to talk it over one more time. It was as if she needed to go over and over it again to convince herself that it really had happened.

“Only sorry I won’t be here to follow the trial,” Edward said with an effort. “But it’s clear enough what happened.”

“His bad luck that Edith had the same rare cancer that he’d made a speciality and consulted him privately.”

“Johnson’s such a common name — no wonder he didn’t make the connection.”

“But she did. I wonder if she really had anything on him. She certainly made him think she had.”

“And that she’d shared it with someone in the hospice.”

Edward closed his eyes. He claimed that the excitement had given him a new lease of life. Jennifer wasn’t so sure of that. The disease was progressing fast now. He was too weak to sit up and his face was very pale against the pillow. She wondered if he would be alive when she returned in the evening. She hoped so. She’d like to be there at the end and she wanted to meet Laura.

Her eyes strayed to the colour printout of a beaming young woman with hair plastered to her sweaty forehead. She was cradling a tiny baby with a face like a crumpled rosebud.

She patted Edward’s hand and was getting up to leave when she saw that Edward had opened his eyes. He was gazing past her into the corridor.

She turned her head and saw a handsome middle-aged woman approaching.

“Laura,” Edward murmured. “You’re here...”

“Dad! I hired a car at the airport.”

“This is Jennifer.”

The two women clasped hands as they passed in the doorway. Laura gave a smile of recognition that made her look very like her father.

Jennifer closed the door behind her and went to get a Do Not Disturb sign.

No one would be needed here for a while.

Copyright © 2011 by Christine Poulson