Anne Perry - A Sudden, Fearful Death

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."

"Did she?" Runcorn's eyebrows rose and he jerked forward in his chair. "Well, man! What do we know about this Mr. Taunton? Why didn't you tell me about this in the first place, Jeavis?'