Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

"And where was Miriam?" Callandra asked. Then her expression quickened. "Or did he drop Miriam wherever she wished to be and go back to Cleo Anderson? That would explain why Miriam did not know he was dead."

Hester shook her head. "Whatever the answer is, it does not help Cleo now."

They looked at each other grimly, and none could think of anything hopeful to say.

Matters only seemed worse when, an hour or so later, Hester and Callandra were summoned to the office of an extremely angry Fermin Thorpe and were ordered by him to assist Sergeant Robb in his enquiries.

Robb stood uncomfortably to the side of Thorpe’s desk, looking first at Thorpe himself, then at Callandra, lastly and unhappily at Hester.

"I’m sorry, ma’am." He seemed to be addressing both of them. "I’d rather not have had to place you in this position, but I need to know more about the medicines Mr. Thorpe here says are missing from your apothecary’s room."

"I didn’t know about it until this morning," Thorpe said furiously, his face pink. "It should have been reported to me at the very first instance. Somebody will answer for this!"

"I think first we had better see precisely what is provable, Mr. Thorpe," Callandra said coldly. "It does not do to cast accusations around freely before one is certain of the facts. It is too easy to ruin a reputation, and too difficult to mend it again when one discovers mistakes have been made." She stared at him defiantly, daring him to contradict her.

Thorpe was very conscious of his position as a governor of the hospital and of his innate general superiority. However, he also had an acute social awareness, and Callandra had a title, albeit a courtesy one because of her late father’s position. He decided upon caution, at least for the meantime.

"Of course, Lady Callandra. We do not yet know the entire situation." He looked sideways at Robb. "I assure you, Sergeant, I shall do all within my power to be of assistance. We must get the facts of the matter and put an end to all dishonesty. I shall assist you myself."

It was what Hester had feared. It would be so much easier to make light of the losses, even to mislead Robb a little, if Thorpe were not there. She had no idea what the apothecary would do, where his loyalties lay, or how frightened he would be for his own position.

Thorpe hesitated, and Hester realized with a lurch of hope that he did not know enough about the medicines to conduct the search and inventory without assistance.

"Perhaps one of us might fetch Mr. Phillips?" she offered. "And perhaps come with you to make notes … for our own needs. After all, we shall have to attend to the matter and see that it does not happen again. We need to know the truth of it even more than Sergeant Robb does."

Thorpe grasped the rescue. "Indeed, Mrs. Monk." Suddenly he found he could remember her name without the usual difficulty.

She smiled at it, but did not remark. Before he could change his mind, she glanced at Callandra, then led the way out of the office and along the wide corridor towards the apothecary’s room. She knew Callandra would fetch Mr. Phillips, and possibly even have a discreet word with him as to the effects upon all of them of whatever he might say. Presumably, he would not yet know of the charge against Cleo Anderson, far less the motive attributed to her.

She did not dare look at Sergeant Robb. He might too easily guess Callandra’s intention. It was not a great leap of foresight.

They walked briskly, one behind the other, and she stopped at the apothecary’s door. Naturally, Thorpe had a key, as he had to all doors. He opened the door and stepped in, and they followed behind, crowding into the small space. It was lined with cupboards right up to the ceiling. Each had its brass-bound keyhole, even the drawers beneath the shelf.

"I am afraid I do not have keys to these," Thorpe said reluctantly. "But as you may see, it is all kept with the utmost safety. I do not know what more we can do, except employ a second apothecary so that there is someone on duty at every moment. Obviously, we may require medicines at night as well as during the day, and no one man can be available around the clock, however diligent."

"Who has keys at night now?" Robb asked.

"When Mr. Phillips leaves he passes them to me," Thorpe replied with discomfort, "and I give them to the senior doctor who will remain here at night."

"From your wording I assume that is not always the same person," Robb concluded.

"No. We do not operate during the night. Seldom does one of the surgeons remain. Dr. Beck does, on occasion, if he has a particularly severe case. More often it will be a student doctor." He seemed about to add something, then changed his mind. Perhaps he felt the whole hospital under accusation because one of its nurses had been given the opportunity to steal, which had resulted in murder. He would have liked to distance himself from it, and it was plain in his expression.

"Who gives the medicine during the night?" Robb asked.

Thorpe was further discomfited. "The doctor on duty."

"Not a nurse?" Robb looked surprised.

"Nurses are to keep patients clean and comfortable," Thorpe said a trifle sharply. "They do not have medical training or experience, and are not given responsibilities except to do exactly as they are told." He did not look at Hester.

Robb digested that information thoughtfully and without comment. Before he could formulate any further questions the apothecary entered, closely followed by Callandra, who avoided Hester’s eye.

"Ah!" Thorpe said with relief. "Phillips. Sergeant Robb here believes that a considerable amount of medicine has gone missing from our supplies, stolen by one of our nurses, and that this fact has provided the motive and means for her to be blackmailed." He cleared his throat. "We need to ascertain if this is true, and if it is, precisely what amounts are involved, how it was taken, and by whom." He had effectively laid the fault, if not the responsibility, at Phillips’s door.

Phillips did not answer immediately. He was a large man, rather overweight, with wild dark hair and a beard severely in need of trimming. Hester had always found him to be most agreeable and to have a pleasing, if somewhat waspish, sense of humor. She hoped he was not going to get the blame for this, and she would be painfully disappointed in him if it were too easy to pass it onto Cleo.

"Have you nothing to say, man?" Thorpe demanded impatiently.

"Not without thinking about it carefully," Phillips replied. "Sir," he added, "if there’s medicine really missing, rather than just wastage or a miscount, or somebody’s error in writing what they took, then it’s a serious matter."

"Of course, it’s a serious matter! "Thorpe snapped. "There’s blackmail and murder involved."

"Murder?" Phillips said with a slight lift of surprise in his voice, but only slight. "Over our medicines? There’s been no theft that size. I know that for sure."

"Over a period of time," Thorpe corrected him. "Or so the sergeant thinks."

Phillips fished for his keys and brought out a large collection on a ring. First he opened one of the drawers and pulled out a ledger. "How far back, sir?" he asked Robb politely.

"I don’t know," Robb replied. "Try a year or so. That should be sufficient: ’

"Don’t rightly know how I can tell." Phillips obligingly opened the ledger to the same month the previous year. He scanned the page and the following one. "Everything tallies here, an’ there’s no way we can know if it was what we had then in the cupboards. Doesn’t look like anyone’s altered it. Anyway, I’d know if they had, and I’d have told Mr. Thorpe."

Thorpe stepped closer and turned the pages of the ledger himself, examining from that date to the present. There were quite obviously no alterations made to the entries. It told them nothing. The checking in of medicines was all made in the one hand, the withdrawals in several different hands of varying degrees of elegance and literacy. There were a few misspellings.