A sudden, fearful death (21 page)

He nodded, not wishing to intrude
with words.

"I agree," she went on
thoughtfully. "I know nothing of her past, but I learned to trust her
integrity as we worked night after night to help the soldiers and their women,
to get food for them, blankets, and to make the authorities allow us space so
the beds were not crammed side by side." She gave an odd, choked little
laugh. "She used to get so angry. I always knew if I had a battle to fight
that Hester would be by my side. She never retreated, never pretended or flattered.
And I knew her courage." She hunched her shoulders in a gesture of
distaste. "She loathed the rats, and they were all over the place. They
climbed the walls and fell off like rotten plums dropping off a tree. I shall
never forget the sound of their bodies hitting the floor. And I watched her
pity, not useless, not maudlin, just a long slow ache inside as she knew the
pain of others and did everything within her human power to ease it. One has a
special feeling for someone with whom one has shared such times, Mr. Monk. Yes,
please remember me to her."

"I will," he promised.

He rose to his feet again, suddenly
acutely conscious of the passage of time. He knew she was fitting him in
between one meeting and another of hospital governors, architects, medical
schools, or organizations of similar nature. Since her return from the Crimea
she had never ceased to work for the reforms in design and administration in
which she believed so fervently.

"Whom will you seek
next?" She preempted his farewell. She had no need to explain to what
matter she was referring and she was not a woman for unnecessary words.

"The police," he
answered. "I still have friends there who may tell me what the medical
examiner says, and perhaps what the official testimony is of other witnesses.
Then I shall appeal to her colleagues at the hospital. If I can persuade them
to speak honestly of her and of one another, I may learn a great deal."

"I see. May God be with you,
Mr. Monk. It is more than justice you must seek. If women like Prudence
Barrymore can be murdered when they are about their work, then we are all a
great deal the poorer, not only now, but in the future as well."

"I do not give up,
ma'am," he said grimly, and he meant it, not only to match his
determination with hers, but because he had a consuming personal desire to
find the one who had destroyed such a life. "He will rue the day, I
promise you. Good afternoon, ma'am."

"Good afternoon, Mr.
Monk."

Chapter 5

John Evan was not happy with the case of Prudence
Barrymore. He hated the thought of a young woman with such passion and vitality
having been killed, and in this particular instance all the other circumstances
also confused and troubled him. He did not like the hospital. The very smell
of it caught in his throat even without his awareness of the pain and the fear
that must reside here. He saw the bloodstained clothes of the surgeons as they
hurried about the corridors, and the piles of soiled dressings and bandages,
and every now and again he both saw and smelled the buckets of waste that were
carried away by the nurses.

But deeper than all these was a
matter disturbing him more because it was personal, something about which he
not only could, but was morally bound to, do something. It was the way in which
the investigation was being conducted. He had been angry and bitter when Monk
had been maneuvered into resigning by events in the Moidore case and Runcorn's
stand on the issue. But he had grown accustomed to working with Jeavis now,
and while he did not either like or admire him, as he did Monk, he knew that
he was a competent and honorable man.

But in this case Jeavis was out of
his depth, or at least Evan thought so. The medical evidence was fairly clear.
Prudence Barrymore had been attacked from the front and strangled to death
manually; no ligature had been used. The marks of such a thing would have been
plain enough, and indeed the bruises on her throat corresponded to the fingers
of a powerful person of average enough size; it could have been any of dozens
of people who had access to the hospital. And it was easy enough to enter from
the street. There were so many doctors, nurses, and assistants of one sort or
another coming and going, an extra person would be unnoticed. For that matter,
even someone drenched in blood would cause no alarm.

At first Jeavis had thought of
other nurses. It had crossed Evan's mind that he had done so because it was
easier for him than approaching the doctors and surgeons, who were of a
superior education and social background, and Jeavis was nervous of them.
However, when a large number of the individual nurses could account for their
whereabouts, in each others' company or in the company of a patient from the
time Prudence Barrymore was last seen alive until the skivvy found her in the
laundry chute, he was obliged to cast his net wider. He looked to the
treasurer, a pompous man with a high winged collar that seemed to be too tight
for him. He constantly eased his neck and stretched his chin forward as if to
be free of it. However, he had not been on the premises early enough, and could
prove himself to have been still at his home, or in a hansom on his way up the
Gray's Inn Road, at the appropriate time.

Jeavis's face had tightened.
"Well, Mr. Evan, we shall have to look to the patients at the time. And if
we do not find our murderer among them, then to the doctors." His
expression relaxed a little. "Or of course there is always the possibility
that some outsider may have come in, perhaps someone she knew. We shall have to
look more closely into her character...."

"She wasn't a domestic
servant," Evan said tartly.

"Indeed not," Jeavis
agreed. "The reputation of nurses being what it is, I daresay most ladies
that have servants wouldn't employ them." His face registered a very faint
suggestion of a smile.

"The women who went out to
nurse with Miss Nightingale were ladies!" Evan was outraged, not only for
Prudence Barrymore but also for Hester and (he was surprised to find) for
Florence Nightingale too. Part of his mind was worldly, experienced, and only
mildly tolerant of such foibles as hero worship, but there was a surprisingly
large part of him that felt an uprush of pride and fierce defense when he
thought of "the lady with the lamp" and all she had meant to agonized
and dying men far from home in a nightmare place. He was angry with Jeavis for
his indirect slight. A flash of amusement lit him also and he knew what Monk
would say, he could hear his beautiful, sarcastic voice in his head: "A
true child of the vicarage, Evan. Believe any pretty story told you, and make
your own angels to walk the streets. You should have taken the cloth like your
father!"

"Daydreaming?" Jeavis
said, cutting into his thoughts. "Why the smile, may I ask? Do you know
something that I don't?”

"No sir!" Evan pulled
himself together. "What about the Board of Governors? We might find some
of them were here, and knew her, one way or another."

Jeavis's face sharpened. "What
do you mean, 'one way or another'? Men like (he governors of hospitals don't
have affairs with nurses, man!" His mouth registered his distaste for the
very idea and his disapproval of Evan for having put words to it.

Evan had been going to explain
himself, that he had meant either socially or professionally, but now he felt
obstructive and chose to make it literal.

"By all accounts she was a
handsome woman, and full of intelligence and spirit," he argued. "And
men of any sort will always be attracted to women like that."

"Rubbish!" Jeavis
treasured an image of certain classes of gentleman, just as did Runcorn. Their
relationship had become a mutually agreeable one, and both were finding it
increasingly to their advantage. It was one of the few things in Jeavis which
truly irritated Evan more than he could brush aside.

"If Mr. Gladstone could give
assistance to prostitutes off the street," Evan said decisively, looking
Jeavis straight in the eye, "I'm quite sure a hospital governor could
cherish a fancy for a fine woman like Prudence Barrymore."

Jeavis was too much of a policeman
to let his social pretensions deny his professionalism.

"Possibly," he said
grudgingly, pushing out his lip and scowling. "Possibly. Now get about
your job, and don't stand around wasting time." He poked his finger at the
air. "Want to know if anyone saw strangers here that morning. Speak to
everyone, mind, don't miss a soul. And then find out where all the doctors and
surgeons were—exacdy. I'll see about the governors."

"Yes sir. And the
chaplain?"

A mixture of emotions crossed
Jeavis's face: outrage at the idea a chaplain could be guilty of such an act,
anger that Evan should have said it, sadness that in fact it was not impossible,
and a flash of amusement and suspicion that Evan, a son of the clergy himself,
was aware of ail the irony of it.

"You might as well," he
said at last. "But you be sure of your facts. No 'he said' and 'she said.'
I want eyewitnesses, you understand me?" He fixed Evan fiercely with his
pale-lashed eyes.

"Yes sir," Evan agreed.
"I'll get precise evidence, sir. Good enough for a jury."

* * * * *

But three days later when Evan and
Jeavis stood in front of Runcorn's desk in his'bffice, the precise evidence
amounted to very little indeed.

"So what have you?"
Runcorn leaned back in his chair, his long face somber and critical. "Come
on, Jeavis! A nurse gets strangled in a hospital. It's not as if anyone could
walk in unnoticed. The girl must have friends, enemies, people she'd quarreled
with." He tapped his finger on the desk. "Who are they? Where were
they when she was killed? Who saw her last before she was found? What about
this Dr. Beck? A foreigner, you said? What's he like?"

Jeavis stood up to attention, hands
at his side.

"Quiet sort o' chap," he
answered, his features carefully composed into lines of respect. "Smug,
bit of a foreign accent, but speaks English well enough, in fact too well, if
you know what I mean, sir? Seems good at his job, but Sir Herbert Stanhope, the
chief surgeon, doesn't seem to like him a lot." He blinked. "At least
that's what I sense, although of course he didn't exactly say so."

"Never mind Sir Herbert."
Runcorn dismissed it with a brush of his hand. "What about the dead woman?
Did she get on with this Dr. Beck?" Again his finger tapped the table.
"Could there be an affair there? Was she nice-looking? What were her
morals? Loose? I hear nurses are pretty easy."

Evan opened his mouth to object and
Jeavis kicked him sharply below the level of the desktop where Runcorn would
not see him.

Evan gasped.

Runcorn turned to him, his eyes
narrowing.

"Yes? Come on, man. Don't just
stand there!"

"No sir. No one spoke ill of
Miss Barrymore's morals, sir. On the contrary, they said she seemed
uninterested in such things."

"Not normal, eh?" Runcorn
pulled his long face into an expression of distaste. "Can't say that
surprises me a great deal. What normal woman would want to go off to a foreign
battlefield and take up such an occupation?"

It flashed into Evan's mind that if
she had shown interest in men, Runcorn would have said she was loose principled
and immoral. Monk would have pointed that out, and asked what Runcorn would
have considered right. He stared at Jeavis beside him, then across at Runcorn's
thoughtful face, his brows drawn down above his long narrow nose.

"What should we take for
normal, sir?" Evan let the words out before his better judgment prevailed,
almost as if it were someone else speaking.

Runcorn's head jerked up.
"What?"

Evan stood firm, his jaw
tightening. "I was thinking, sir, that if she didn't show any interest in
men, she was not normal, and if she did she was of loose morals. What, to your
mind, would be right—sir?"

"What is right, Evan,"
Runcorn said between his teeth, the blood rising up his cheeks, "is for a
young woman to conduct herself like a lady: seemly, modest, and gentle, not to
chase after a man, but to let him know in a subtle and genteel way that she
admires him and might not find his attentions unwelcome. That is what is
normal, Mr. Evan, and what is right. You are a vicar's son. How is it that I
should have to tell you that?"

"Perhaps if anybody's
attentions had been welcome, she'd have let him know it," Evan suggested,
ignoring the last question and keeping his eyes wide open, his expression
innocent.

Runcorn was thrown off balance. He
had never known exactly what to make of Evan. He looked so mild and inoffensive
with his long nose and hazel eyes, but seemed always to be on the brink of
amusement, and Runcorn was never comfortable with it, because he did not know
what was funny.

"Do you know something,
Sergeant, that you haven't told us?" he said tartly.

"No sir!" Evan replied,
standing even more upright.

Jeavis shifted his weight to the
other foot. "She did have a visitor that morning, sir, a Mr.
Taunton."