A sudden, fearful death (51 page)

"I need to see Miss Latterly
in a matter of urgency," he said, glaring back at her. "Someone's
life may depend on the matter." That was a lie, and he uttered it without
a flicker.

"Oh yeah? Whose? Yours?"

He wondered what her regard for Sir
Herbert Stanhope had been.

"None of your affair," he
said tartly. "I've just come from the Old Bailey, and I have business
here. Now out of my way, and fetch Miss Latterly for me."

"I don't care if yer've come
from 'Ell on a broomstick, yer not comin' in 'ere." She folded her massive
arms. "I'll go an' tell 'er as yer 'ere if yer tell me who yer are. She
can come and see yer if she feels like it."

"Monk."

"Never!" she said in
disbelief, looking him up and down.

"That's my name, not my
calling, you fool!" he snapped. "Now tell Hester I'm here."

She snorted loudly, but she obeyed,
and about three minutes later Hester herself came out of the dormitory looking
tired, very hastily dressed, and her hair over her shoulder in a long brown
braid. He had never seen it down before, and it startled him. She looked quite
different, younger and more vulnerable. He had a twinge of guilt for having
woken her on what was essentially a selfish errand. In all probability it would
make no difference at all to the fate of Sir Herbert Stanhope whether he spoke
to her this evening or not.

"What happened?" she said
immediately, still too full of exhaustion and sleep to have thought of all the
possibilities fear could suggest.

"Nothing in particular,"
he said, taking her arm to lead her away from the dormitory door. "I don't
even know if it is going well or badly. I shouldn't have come, but there was no
one else I really wished to speak to. Lovat-Smith has finished his case, and I
wouldn't care to be in Stanhope's shoes. But then Geoffrey Taunton comes out of
it badly too. He has a vile temper, and a record of violence. He was in the
hospital at the time—but it's Stanhope in the dock, and nothing so far is
strong enough to change their places."

They were in front of one of the
few windows in the corridor and the late afternoon sun shone in a haze of
dusty light over them and in a pool on the floor around their feet.

"Has Oliver any evidence to
bring, do you know?" She was too tired to pretend formality where Rathbone
was concerned.

"No I don't. I'm afraid I was
short with him. His defense so far is to make Prudence look a fool." There
was pain and anger still tight inside him.

"If she thought Sir Herbert
Stanhope would marry her, she was a fool," Hester said, but with such
sadness in her voice he could not be angry with her for it.

"He also suggested that she
exaggerated her own medical abilities," he went on. "And her stories
of having performed surgery in the field were fairy tales."

She turned and stared at him,
confusion turning to anger.

"That is not so! She had
as.good a knowledge of amputation as most of the surgeons, and she had the
courage and the speed. I'll testify. I'll swear to that, and they won't shake
me, because I know it for myself."

"You can't," he answered,
the flat feeling of defeat betrayed in his tone, even his stance.

"I damned well can!" she
retorted furiously. "And let go of my arm! I can stand up perfectly well
by myself! I'm tired, not ill."

He kept hold of her, out of
perversity.

"You can't testify, because
Lovat-Smith's case is concluded," he said through clenched teeth.
"And Rathbone certainly won't call you. That she was accurate and
realistic is not what he wants to hear. It will hang Sir Herbert."

"Maybe he should be
hanged," she said sharply, then immediately regretted it. "I don't
mean that. I mean maybe he did kill her. First I thought he did, then I didn't,
now I don't know what I think anymore."

"Rathbone still seems
convinced he didn't, and I must admit, looking at the man's face in the dock, I
find it hard to believe he did. There doesn't seem any reason—not if you think
about it intelligently. And he will be an excellent witness. Every time
Prudence's infatuation with him is mentioned, a look of total incredulity
crosses his face."

She gazed at him, meeting his eyes
with searching candor.

"You believe him, don't
you?" she concluded.

"Yes—it galls me to concede
it, but I do."

"We will still have to come up
with some better evidence as to who did it, or he is going to hang," she
argued, but now there was pity in her, and determination.

He knew it of old, and the memory
of it, once so passionately on his behalf, sent a thrill of warmth through
him.

"I know," he said grimly.
"And we will have to do it quickly. I've exhausted all I can think of with
Geoffrey Taunton. I'd better follow what I can with Dr. Beck. Haven't you
learned anything more about him?"

"No." She turned away,
her face sad and vulnerable. The light caught her cheekbones and accentuated
the tiredness around her eyes. He did not know what hurt her; she had not
shared it with him. It pained him sharply and unexpectedly that she had
excluded him. He was angry that he wanted to spare her the burden of searching
as well as her nursing duties, and angriest of all that it upset him so much.
It should not have. It was absurd—and weak.

"Well, what are you doing
here?" he demanded harshly. "In all this time surely you have done
more than fetch and carry the slops and wind bandages? For God's sake,
think!"

"Next time you haven't a case,
you try nursing," she snapped back. "See if you can do it all—and
detect at the same time. You're no earthly use to anybody except as a
detective—and what have you found out?"

"That Geoffrey Taunton has a
violent temper, that Nanette Cuthbertson was here in London and had every
reason to hate Prudence, and that her hands are strong enough to control a
horse many a man couldn't," he said instantly.

"We knew that ages ago."
She turned away. "It's helpful—but it's not enough."

"That is why I've come, you
fool. If it were enough, I wouldn't need to."

"I thought you came to
complain...."

"I am complaining. Don't you
listen at all?" He knew he was being totally unfair, and he went on anyway.
"What about the other nurses? Some of them must have hated her. She was
arrogant, arbitrary, and opinionated. Some of them look big enough to pull a
dray, never mind strangle a woman."

"She wasn't as arrogant as you
think ..." she began.

He laughed abruptly. "Not
perhaps by your standards— but I was thinking of theirs."

"You haven't the first idea
what their standards are," she said with contempt. "You don't murder
somebody because they irritate you now and then."

"Plenty of people have been
murdered because they constantly nag, bully, insult, and generally abuse
people," he contradicted her. "It only takes one moment when the temper
snaps because someone cannot endure any more." He felt a sudden very sharp
anxiety, almost a premonition of loss. "That's why you should be careful,
Hester."

She looked at him in total
amazement, then she began to laugh. At first it was only a little giggle, then
it swelled into a delirious, hilarious surge.

For an instant his temper flared,
then he realized how much he would rather not quarrel with her. But he refused
to laugh as well. He merely waited with a look of resigned patience.

Eventually she rubbed her eyes with
the heel of her hand, most inelegantly, and stopped laughing. She sniffed.

"I shall be careful," she
promised. "Thank you for your concern."

He drew breath to say something
sharp, then changed his mind.

"We never looked very
carefully into Kristian Beck. I still don't know what Prudence was going to
tell the authorities when he begged her not to." A new thought occurred to
him, which he should have seen before. "I wonder what particular authority
she had in mind? The governors—or Sir Herbert? Rathbone could ask Sir
Herbert."

Hester said nothing. Again the look
of weariness crossed her face.

"Go back to sleep," he
said gently, instinctively putting his hand on her shoulder. "I'll go and
see Rathbone. I expect we've got a few days yet. We may find something."

She smiled doubtfully, but there
was a warmth in it, a sharing of all the understanding and the emotions that
needed no words, past experiences that had marked them with the same pains and
the same fears forThe present. She reached out and touched his face momentarily
with her fingertips, then turned and walked back into the dormitory.

He had very little hope Sir Herbert
would know anything about Kristian Beck, or he would surely have said so before
now. It was conceivable he might tell them which authority something ought to
be reported to, the chairman of the Board of Governors, perhaps? Altogether the
case looked grim. It would rest in Rathbone's skill and the jury's mood and
temper. Hester had been little help. And yet he felt a curious sense of
happiness inside, as if he had never been less alone in his life.

* * * * *

At the earliest opportunity the
following day Hester changed her duties with another nurse and went to see
Edith Sobell and Major Tiplady. They greeted her with great pleasure and some
excitement.

"We were going to send a
message to you," the major said earnestly, assisting her to a chintz-covered
chair as if she had been an elderly invalid. "We have news for you."

"I am afraid it is not going
to please you," Edith added, sitting in the chair opposite, her face
earnest. "I'm so sorry."

Hester was confused. "You
found nothing?" That was hardly news sufficient to send a message.

"We found something." Now
the major also looked confused, but his questioning look was directed at Edith.
Hester only peripherally noticed the depth of affection in it.

"I know that is what she
asked," Edith said patiently. "But she likes Dr. Beck." She
turned back to Hester. "You will not wish to know that twice in the past
he has been accused of mishandling cases of young women who died. Both times
the parents were sure there was nothing very wrong with them, and Dr. Beck
performed operations which were quite unnecessary, and so badly that they bled
to death. The fathers both sued, but neither won. The proof was not
sufficient."

Hester felt sick. "Where?
Where did this happen? Surely not since he's been with the Royal Free
Hospital?"

"No," Edith agreed, her
curious face with its aquiline nose and wry, gentle mouth full of sadness.
"The first was in the north, in Alnwick, right up near the Scottish
border; the second was in Somerset. I wish I had something better to tell
you."

"Are you sure it was he?"
It was a foolish question, but she was fighting for any rescue at all.
Callandra filled her mind.

"Can there be two surgeons
from Bohemia named Kristian Beck?" Edith said quietly.

The major was looking at Hester
with anxiety. He did not know why it hurt her so much, but he was painfully
aware that it did.

"How did you find out?"
Hester asked. It did not affect the reality of it, but even to question it
somehow put off the finality of acceptance.

"I have become friends with
the librarian at one of the newspaper offices," Edith replied. "It is
her task to care for all the back copies. She has been most helpful with checking
some of the details of events referred to in the major's memoirs, so I asked
her in this as well."

"I see." There seemed
nothing else she could pursue. That was the missing element, the thing Prudence
was going to tell the authorities—only Beck had killed her before she could.

Then another thought occurred to
her, even uglier. Was it possible Callandra already knew? Was that why she had
looked so haggard lately? She was racked with fear—and her own guilt in
concealing it.

Edith and the major were both
looking at her, their faces crumpled with concern. Her thoughts must be so
transparent. But there was nothing she could say without betraying Callandra.

"How are the memoirs
going?" she asked, forcing a smile and a look of interest which would have
been genuine at any other time.

"Ah, we are nearly
finished," Edith replied, her face filled with light again. "We have
written all his experiences in India, and such things in Africa you wouldn't dream
of. It was quite the most exciting thing I have ever heard in my life. You must
read them when we have finished...." Then something of the light drained
away as the inevitable conclusion occurred to all of them. Edith had been
unable to leave the home which stifled her, the parents who felt her early
widowhood meant that she should spend the rest of her life as if she were a
single woman, dependent upon her father's bounty financially, and socially upon
her mother's whim. She had had one chance at marriage, and that was all any
woman was entitled to. Her family had done its duty in obtaining one husband
for her; her misfortune that he had died young was one she shared with a great
many others. She should accept it gracefully. The tragedy of her brother's
death had opened up ugliness from the past which was far from healed yet, and
perhaps never would be. The thought of returning to live in Carlyon House again
was one which darkened even the brilliance of this summer day.