The Nursing Home Murder

CHAPTER XVII Reconstruction Concluded

Thursday, the eighteenth. Late afternoon.

The “theatre party” appeared to have entered heartily into the spirit of the thing. A most convincing activity was displayed in the anteroom, where Sister Marigold, Jane Harden and a very glum-faced Banks washed and clattered while Inspector Fox, his massive form wedged into a corner, looked on with an expressionless countenance and a general air of benignity. A faint bass drone from beyond the swing-door informed Alleyn of the presence in the theatre of Inspector Boys.

“All ready, matron?” asked Alleyn.

“Quite ready, inspector.”

“Well, here we all are.” He stood aside and Phillips, Thoms and Roberts walked in.

“Are you at about the same stage as you were when the doctors came in?”

“At exactly the same stage.”

“Good. What happens now?” He turned to the men. No one spoke for a moment. Roberts turned deferentially towards Phillips, who had moved across to Jane Harden. Jane and Phillips did not look at each other. Phillips appeared not to have heard Alleyn’s question. Thoms cleared his throat importantly.

“Well now, let’s see. If I’m not speaking out of my turn, I should say we got down to the job straight away. Roberts said he’d go along to the anæsthetic-room and Sir John, I believe, went into the theatre? That correct, sir?”

“Did you go into the theatre immediately, Sir John?” asked Alleyn.

“What? I? Yes, I believe so.”

“Before you washed?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, let’s start, shall we? Dr. Roberts, did you go alone to the anæsthetic-room?”

“No. Nurse — er—?” Roberts blinked at Banks. “Nurse Banks went with me. I looked at the anæsthetising apparatus and asked Nurse Banks to let Sir Derek’s nurse know when we were ready.”

“Will you go along, then? Fox, you take over with Dr. Roberts. Now, please, Sir John.”

Phillips at once went through into the theatre, followed by Alleyn. Boys broke off his subterranean humming and at a word from Alleyn took his place in the anteroom. Phillips, without speaking, crossed to the side table, which was set out as before with the three syringes in dishes of water. The surgeon took his hypodermic case from his pocket, looked at the first tube, appeared to find it empty, took out the second, and having squirted a syringeful of water into a measure-glass, dropped in a single tablet.

“That is what — what I believe I did,” he said.

“And then? You returned to the anteroom? No. What about Mr. Thoms?”

“Yes. Thoms should be here now.”

“Mr. Thoms, please!” shouted Alleyn.

The door swung open and Thoms came in.

“Hullo, hullo. Want me?”

“I understood you watched Sir John take up the hyoscine solution into the syringe.”

“Oh! Yes, b’lieve I did,” said Thoms, rather less boisterously.

“You commented on the amount of water.”

“Yes, I know, but — look here, you don’t want to go thinking— ”

“I simply want a reconstruction without comment, Mr. Thoms.”

“Oh, quite, quite.”

Phillips stood with the syringe in his hand. He looked gravely and rather abstractedly at his assistant. At a nod from Alleyn he filled the syringe.

“It is now that Thoms remarks on the quantity of water,” he said quietly. “I snub him and go back into the anæsthetic-room, where I give the injection. The patient is there with the special nurse.” He took up the syringe and walked away. Thoms moved away with a grimace at Alleyn, who said abruptly:

“Just a moment, Mr. Thoms. I think you stayed behind in the theatre for a minute or two.”

“No, I didn’t — beg your pardon, inspector. I thought I went out to the anteroom before Sir John moved.”

“Sir John thought not, and the nurses had the impression you came in a little later.”

“Maybe,” said Thoms. “I really can’t remember.”

“Have you no idea what you did during the two or three minutes?”

“None.”

“Oh. In that case I’ll leave you. Boys!”

Inspector Boys returned to the theatre and Alleyn went out. In about a minute Thoms joined him.

Sir John appeared in the anteroom and washed up, assisted by Jane Harden and the matron, who afterwards helped the surgeons to dress up.

“I feel rather an ass,” said Thoms brightly. Nobody answered him.

“It is now, said Phillips in the same grave, detached manner, “that Mr. Thoms tells me about the play at the Palladium.”

“All agreed?” Alleyn asked the others. The women murmured an assent.

“Now what happens?”

“Pardon me, but I remember Mr. Thoms went into the theatre and then called me in to him,” murmured Sister Marigold.

“Thank you, matron. Away you go, then.” Alleyn waited until the doors had swung to and then turned to where Phillips, now wearing his gown and mask, stood silently beside Jane Harden.

“So you were left alone together at this juncture?” he said, without stressing it.

“Yes,” said Phillips.

“Do you mind telling me what was said?”

“Oh, please,” whispered Jane. “Please, please!” It was the first time she had spoken.

“Can’t you let her off this?” said Phillips. There was a sort of urgency in his voice now.

“I’m sorry — I would if I could.”

“I’ll tell him, Jane. We said it was a strange situation. I again asked her to marry me. She said no — that she felt she belonged to O’Callaghan. Something to that effect. She tried to explain her point of view.”

“You’ve left something out — you’re not thinking of yourself.” She stood in front of him, for all the world as though she was prepared to keep Alleyn off. “He said then that he didn’t want to operate and that he’d give anything to be out of it. His very words. He told me he’d tried to persuade — her—his wife — to get another surgeon. He hated the idea of operating. Does that look as though he meant any harm? Does it? Does it? He never thinks of himself — he only wants to help me, and I’m not worth it. I’ve told him so a hundred times— ”

“Jane, my dear, don’t.”

There was a tap on the outer door and Roberts looked in.

“I think it’s time I came and washed up,” he said.

“Come in, Dr. Roberts.”

Roberts glanced at the others.

“Forgive me, Sir John,” he began with the deference that he always used when he spoke to Phillips, “but as I remember it, Mr. Thoms came in with me at this juncture.”

“You’re quite right, Roberts,” agreed Phillips courteously.

“Mr. Thoms, please,” called Alleyn again.

Thoms shot back into the room.

“Late again, am I?” he remarked. “Truth of the matter is I can’t for the life of me remember all the ins and outs of it. I suppose I wash up now? What?”

“If you please,” said Alleyn sedately.

At last they were ready and Roberts returned to Inspecter Fox and the anæsthetic-room. The others, accompanied by Alleyn, went to the theatre.

The cluster of lights above the table had been turned up and Alleyn again felt that sense of expectancy in the theatre. Phillips went immediately to the window end of the table and waited with his gloved hands held out in front of him. Thoms stood at the foot of the table. Sister Marigold and Jane were farther away.

There was a slight vibratory, rattling noise. The door into the anæsthetic-room opened and a trolley appeared, propelled by Banks. Dr. Roberts and Nurse Graham walked behind it. His hands were stretched out over the head of the trolley. On it was a sort of elongated bundle made of pillows and blankets. He and Banks lifted this on the table and Banks put a screen, about two feet high, across the place that represented the patient’s chest. The others drew nearer. Banks pushed the trolley away.

Now that they had all closed round the table the illusion was complete. The conical glare poured itself down between the white figures, bathing their masked faces and the fronts of their gowns in a violence of light, and leaving their backs in sharp shadow, so that between shadow and light there was a kind of shimmering border that ran round their outlines. Boys and Fox had come in from their posts and stood impassive in the doorways. Alleyn walked round the theatre to a position about two yards behind the head of the table.

Roberts wheeled forward the anæsthetising apparatus. Suddenly, entirely without warning, one of the white figures gave a sharp exclamation, something between a cry and a protest.

“It’s too horrible — really — I can’t—!”

It was the matron, the impeccable Sister Marigold. She had raised her hands in front of her face as if shutting off some shocking spectacle. Now she backed away from the table and collided with the anæsthetising apparatus. She stumbled, kicked it so that it moved, and half fell, clutching at it as she did so.

There was a moment’s silence and then a portly little figure in white suddenly screamed out an oath.

“What the bloody hell are you doing? Do you want to kill— ”

“What’s the matter?” said Alleyn sharply. His voice had an incisive edge that made all the white heads turn. “What is it, Mr. Thoms?”

Thoms was down on his knees, an absurd figure, frantically reaching out to the apparatus. Roberts, who had stooped down to the lower framework of the cruet-like stand and had rapidly inspected it, thrust the little fat man aside. He tested the nuts that held the frame together. His hands shook a little and his face, the only one unmasked, was very pale.

“It’s perfectly secure, Thoms,” he said. “None of the nuts are loose. Matron, please stand away.”

“I didn’t mean — I’m sorry,” began Sister Marigold.

“Do you realise—” said Thoms in a voice that was scarcely recognisable—“ do you realise that if one of those cylinders had fallen out and burst, we’d none of us be alive. Do you know that?”

“Nonsense, Thoms,” said Roberts in an unsteady, voice. “It’s most unlikely that anything of the sort could occur. It would take more than that to burst a cylinder, I assure you.”

“I’m sure I’m very sorry, Mr. Thoms,” said matron sulkily. “Accidents will happen.”

“Accidents mustn’t happen,” barked Thoms. He squatted down and tested the nuts.

“Please leave it alone, Mr. Thoms,” said Roberts crisply. “I assure you it’s perfectly safe.”

Thoms did not answer. He got to his feet and turned back to the table.

“And now, what happens?” asked Alleyn. His deep voice sounded like a tonic note. Phillips spoke quietly.

“I made the incision and carried on with the operation. I found peritonitis and a ruptured abscess of the appendix. I proceeded in the usual way. At this stage, I think, Dr. Roberts began to be uneasy about the pulse and the general condition. Am I right, Roberts?”

“Quite right, sir. I asked for an injection of camphor.”

Without waiting to be told, Nurse Banks went to the side table, took up the ampoule of camphor, went through the pantomime of filling a syringe and returned to the patient.

“I injected it,” she said concisely. Through Alleyn’s head ran the old jingle: “A made an apple pie, B bit it, C cut it — I injected it,” he added mentally.

“And then?” he asked.

“After completing the operation I asked for the anti-gas serum.”

“I got it,” said Jane bravely.

She walked to the table.

“I stood, hesitating. I felt faint. I–I couldn’t focus things properly.”

“Did anybody notice this?”

“I looked round and saw something was wrong,” said Phillips. “She simply stood there swaying a little.”

“You notice this, Mr. Thoms?”

“Well, I’m afraid, inspector, I rather disgraced myself by kicking up a rumpus. What, nurse? Bit hard on you, what? Didn’t know how the land lay. Too bad, wasn’t it?”

“When you had finished, Nurse Harden brought the large syringe?”

“Yes.”

Jane came back with the syringe on a tray. “Thoms took it,” went the jingle in Alleyn’s head.

“I injected it,” said Thoms.

“Mr. Thoms then asked about the condition,” added Roberts. “I said it was disquieting. I remember Sir John remarked that although he knew the patient personally he had had no idea he was ill. Nurse Banks and I lifted the patient on to the trolley and he was taken away.”

They did this with the dummy.

“Then I fainted,” said Jane.

“A dramatic finish — what?” shouted Thoms, who seemed to have quite recovered his equilibrium.

“The end,” said Alleyn, “came later. The patient was then taken back to his room, where you attended him, Dr. Roberts. Was anyone with you?”

“Nurse Graham was there throughout. I left her in the room when I returned here to report on the general condition, which I considered markedly worse.”

“And in the meantime Sir John and Mr. Thoms washed up in the anteroom?”

“Yes,” said Phillips.

“What did you talk about?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Oh yes, sir, you do, surely,” said Thoms. “We talked about Nurse Harden doing a faint, and I said I could see the operation had upset you, and you—” he grinned —“you first said it hadn’t, you know, and then said it had. Very natural, really,” he explained to Alleyn, who raised one eyebrow and turned to the nurses.

“And you cleaned up the theatre, and Miss Banks gave one of her well-known talks on the Dawn of the Proletariat Day?”

“I did,” said Banks with a snap.

“Meanwhile Dr. Roberts came down and reported, and you and Mr. Thoms, Sir John, went up to the patient?”

“Yes. The matron, Sister Marigold, joined us. We found the patient’s condition markedly worse. As you know, he died about half an hour later, without regaining consciousness.”

“Thank you. That covers the ground. I am extremely grateful to all of you for helping us with this rather unpleasant business. I won’t keep you any longer.” He turned to Phillips. “You would like to get out of your uniforms, I’m sure.”

“If you’re finished,” agreed Phillips. Fox opened the swing-door and he went through, followed by Thoms, Sister Marigold, Jane Harden, and Banks. Dr. Roberts crossed to the anæsthetising apparatus.

“I’ll get this out of the way,” he said.

“Oh — do you mind leaving it while you change?” said Alleyn. “I just want to make a plan of the floor.”

“Certainly,” said Roberts.

“Would you be very kind and see if you can beat me up a sheet of paper and a pencil, Dr. Roberts? Sorry to bother you, but I hardly like to send one of my own people hunting for it.”

“Shall I ask?” suggested Roberts.

He put his head round the door into the anteroom and spoke to someone on the other side.

“Inspector Alleyn would like— ”

Fox walked heavily across from the other end of the theatre.

“I can hear a telephone ringing its head off out there, sir,” he said, looking fixedly at Alleyn.

“Really? I wonder if it’s that call from the Yard? Go and see, will you, Fox? Sister Marigold won’t mind, I’m sure.”

Fox went out.

“Inspector Alleyn,” ventured Roberts, “I do hope that the reconstruction has been satisfactory— ” He broke off. Phillips’s resonant voice could be heard in the anteroom. With a glance towards it Roberts ended wistfully: “—from every point of view.”

Alleyn smiled at him, following his glance.

“From that point of view, Dr. Roberts, most satisfactory.”

“I’m extremely glad.”

Jane Harden came in with a sheet of paper and pencil, which she gave Alleyn. She went out. Roberts watched Alleyn lay the paper on the side table and take out his steel tape measure. Fox returned.

“Telephone for Dr. Roberts, I believe, sir,” he announced.

“Oh — for you, is it?” said Alleyn.

Roberts went out through the anæsthetic-room.

“Shut that door, quick,” said Alleyn urgently.

Evidently he had changed his mind about making a plan. He darted like a cat across the room and bent over the frame of the anæsthetic apparatus. His fingers were busy with the nuts.

Boys stood in front of one door, Fox by the other.

“Hell’s teeth, it’s stiff,” muttered Alleyn.

The double doors from the anteroom opened suddenly, banging Inspector Boys in the broad of his extensive back.

“Just a minute, sir, just a minute,” he rumbled.

Under his extended arm appeared the face of Mr. Thoms. His eyes were fixed on Alleyn.

“What are you doing?” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Just a minute, if you please, sir,” repeated Boys, and with an enormous but moderate paw he thrust Thoms back and closed the doors.

“Look at this!” whispered Alleyn.

Fox and Boys, for a split second, glimpsed what he held in his hand. Then he bent down again and worked feverishly.

“What'll we do?” asked Fox quietly. “Go right into it — now?”

For an instant Alleyn hesitated. Then he said:

“No — not here. Wait! Work it this way.”

He had given his instructions when Roberts returned from the telephone.

“Nobody there,” he told them. “I rang up my house, but there’s no message. Whoever it was must have been cut off.”

“Bore for you,” said Alleyn.

Sister Marigold came in, followed by Thoms. Marigold saw the Yard men still in possession, and hesitated.

“Hullo, ’ullo,” shouted Thoms, “what’s all this. Caught Roberts in the act?”

“Really, Mr. Thoms,” said Roberts in a rage and went over to his apparatus.

“All right, matron,” said Alleyn, “I’m done. You want to clear up, I expect.”

“Oh, well — yes.”

“Go ahead. We’ll make ourselves scarce. Fox, you and Boys give Dr. Roberts a hand out with that cruet-stand.”

“Thank you,” said Roberts, “I’ll manage.”

“No trouble at all, sir,” Fox assured him.

Alleyn left them there. He ran downstairs and out into Brook Street, where he hailed a taxi.

In forty minutes the same taxi put him down in Wigmore Street. This time he had two plain-clothes sergeants with him. Dr. Roberts’s little butler opened the door. His face was terribly white. He looked at Alleyn without speaking and then stood aside. Alleyn, followed by his men, walked into the drawing-room. Roberts stood in front of the fireplace. Above him the picture of the little lake and the Christmas trees shone cheerfully in the lamplight. Fox stood inside the door, and Boys near the window. The anæsthetic apparatus had been wheeled over by the desk.

When Roberts saw Alleyn he tried to speak, but at first could not. His lips moved as though he was speaking, but there were no words. Then at last they came.

“Inspector Alleyn — why — have you sent these men — after me?”

For a moment they looked at each other.

“I had to,” said Alleyn. “Dr. Roberts, I have a warrant here for your arrest. I must warn you— ”

“What do you mean?” screamed Roberts. “You’ve no grounds — no proof — you fool — what are you doing?”

Alleyn walked over to the thing like a cruet. He stooped down, unscrewed something that looked like a nut and drew it out. With it came a hypodermic syringe. The “nut” was the top of the piston.

“Grounds enough,” said Alleyn.

It took the four men to hold Roberts and they had to put handcuffs on him. The insane are sometimes physically very strong.