Ngaio Marsh - Scales of Justice

“I always tied the flies. We made up a fly he nearly always fished with. I tied one this afternoon.”

Her voice trembled and trailed away and she yawned suddenly like a child.

The door opened and Mark Lacklander came in looking angry.

“Ah, there you are!” he said. He walked straight over to her and put his fingers on her wrist. “You’re going to bed at once,” he said. “I’ve asked Nurse Kettle to make a hot drink for you. She’s waiting for you now. I’ll come and see you later and give you a nembutal. I’ll have to run into Chyning for it. You don’t want me again, I imagine?” he said to Alleyn.

“I do for a few minutes, I’m afraid.”

“Oh!” Mark said, and after a pause, “Well, yes, of course, I suppose you do. Stupid of me.”

“I don’t want any dope, Mark, honestly,” Rose said.

“We’ll see about that when you’re tucked up. Go to bed now.” He glared at Alleyn. “Miss Cartarette is my patient,” he said, “and those are my instructions.”

“They sound altogether admirable,” Alleyn rejoined. “Goodnight, Miss Cartarette. We’ll try to worry you as little as possible.”

“You don’t worry me at all,” Rose said politely and gave him her hand.

“I wonder,” Alleyn said to Mark, “if we may see Nurse Kettle as soon as she is free. And you, a little later, if you please, Dr. Lacklander.”

“Certainly, sir,” Mark said stiffly and taking Rose’s arm, led her out of the room.

“And I also wonder, Br’er Fox,” Alleyn said, “apart from bloody murder, what it is that’s biting all these people.”

“I’ve got a funny sort of notion,” Fox said, “and mind, it’s only a notion so far, that the whole thing will turn out to hang on that fish.”

“And I’ve got a funny sort of notion you’re right.”

Nurse Kettle sat tidily on an armless chair with her feet crossed at the ankles and her hands at the wrists. Her apron was turned up in the regulation manner under her uniform coat, and her regulation hat was on her head. She had just given Alleyn a neat account of her finding of Colonel Cartarette’s body, and Fox, who had taken the notes, was gazing at her with an expression of the liveliest approval.

“That’s all, really,” she said, “except that I had a jolly strong feeling I was being watched. There now!”

Her statement hitherto had been so positively one of fact that they both stared at her in surprise. “And now,” she said, “you’ll think I’m a silly hysterical female because although I thought once that I heard a twig snap and fancied that when a bird flew out of the thicket it was not me who’d disturbed it, I didn’t see anything at all. Not a thing. And yet I thought I was watched. You get it on night duty in a ward. A patient lying awake and staring at you. You always know before you look. Now laugh that away if you like.”

“Who’s laughing?” Alleyn rejoined. “We’re not, are we, Fox?”

“On no account,” Fox said. “I’ve had the same sensation many a time on night beat in the old days, and it always turned out there was a party in a dark doorway having a look at you.”

“Well, fancy!” said the gratified Nurse Kettle.

“I suppose,” Alleyn said, “you know all these people pretty well, don’t you, Miss Kettle? I always think in country districts the Queen’s Nurses are rather like liaison officers.”

Nurse Kettle looked pleased. “Well now,” she said, “we do get to know people. Of course, our duties take us mostly to the ordinary folk, although with the present shortage we find ourselves doing quite a lot for the other sort. They pay the full fee and that helps the Association, so, as long as it’s not depriving the ones who can’t afford it, we take the odd upper-class case. Like me and Lady Lacklander’s toe, for instance.”

“Ah, yes,” Alleyn said, “There’s the toe.” He observed with surprise the expression of enraptured interest in his colleague’s elderly face.

“Septic,” Nurse Kettle said cosily.

“ ’T, ’t, ’t,” said Fox.

“And then again, for example,” Nurse Kettle went on, “I night-nursed the old gentleman. With him when he died, actually. Well, so was the family. And the Colonel, too, as it happens.”

“Colonel Cartarette?” Alleyn asked without laying much stress on it.

“That’s right. Or wait a minute. I’m telling stories. The Colonel didn’t come back into the room. He stayed on the landing with the papers.”

“The papers?”

“The old gentleman’s memoirs they were. The Colonel was to see about publishing them, I fancy, but I don’t really know. The old gentleman was very troubled about them. He couldn’t be content to say goodbye and give up until he’d seen the Colonel. Mind you, Sir Harold was a great man in his day, and his memoirs’ll be very important affairs, no doubt.”

“No doubt. He was a distinguished ambassador.”

“That’s right. Not many of that sort left, I always say. Everything kept up. Quite feudal.”

“Well,” Alleyn said, “there aren’t many families left who can afford to be feudal. Don’t they call them the Lucky Lacklanders?”

“That’s right. Mind, there are some who think the old gentleman overdid it.”

“Indeed?” Alleyn said, keeping his mental fingers crossed. “How?”

“Well, not leaving the grandson anything. Because of him taking up medicine instead of going into the army. Of course, it’ll all come to him in the end, but in the meantime, he has to make do with what he earns, though of course — but listen to me gossiping. Where was I now. Oh, the old gentleman and the memoirs. Well, no sooner had he handed them over than he took much worse and the Colonel gave the alarm. We all went in. I gave brandy. Doctor Mark gave an injection, but it was all over in a minute. ‘Vic,’ he said, ‘Vic, Vic,’ and that was all.” Alleyn repeated, “Vic?” and then was silent for so long that Nurse Kettle had begun to say, “Well, if that’s all I can do…” when he interrupted her.

“I was going to ask you,” he said, “who lives in the house between this one and Mr. Phinn’s?”

Nurse Kettle smiled all over her good-humoured face. “At Uplands?” she said. “Commander Syce, to be sure. He’s another of my victims,” she added and unaccountably turned rather pink. “Down with a bad go of ’bago, poor chap.”

“Out of the picture, then, from our point of view?”

“Yes, if you’re looking for… oh, my gracious,” Nurse Kettle suddenly ejaculated, “here we are at goodness knows what hour of the morning talking away as pleasant as you please and all the time you’re wondering where you’re going to find a murderer. Isn’t that frightful?”

“Don’t let it worry you,” Fox begged her.

Alleyn stared at him.

“Well, of course I’m worried. Even suppose it turns out to have been a tramp. Tramps are people just like other people,” Nurse Kettle said vigorously.

“Is Mr. Phinn one of your patients?” Alleyn asked.

“Not to say patient. I nursed a carbuncle for him years ago. I wouldn’t be getting ideas about him if I were you.”

“In our job,” Alleyn rejoined, “we have to get ideas about everybody.”

“Not about me, I hope and trust.”

Fox made a complicated soothing and scandalized noise in his throat.

Alleyn said, “Miss Kettle, you liked Colonel Cartarette, didn’t you? It was clear from your manner, I thought, that you liked him very much indeed.”

“Well, I did,” she said emphatically. “He was one of the nicest and gentlest souls: a gentleman if ever I saw one. Devoted father. Never said an unkind word about anybody.”