Ngaio Marsh - The Nursing Home Murder

“Hullo,” said Alleyn. “Where are the star turns?”

“The nurses are getting the operating theatre ready,” Fox told him. “Sir John Phillips asked me to let him know when we are ready. The other ladies are upstairs.”

“Right. Mr. Thoms here?”

“Is that the funny gentleman, sir?” asked Boys.

“It is.”

“He’s here.”

“Then in that case we’re complete. Dr. Roberts has gone up to the theatre. Let us follow him. Fox, let Sir John know, will you?”

Fox went away and Alleyn and Boys took the lift up to the theatre landing, where they found the rest of the dramatis personæ awaited them. Mr. Thoms broke off in the middle of some anecdote with which he was apparently regaling the company.

“Hullo, ’ullo, ’ullo!” he shouted. “Here’s the Big Noise itself. Now we shan’t be long.”

“Good evening, Mr. Thoms,” said Alleyn. “Good evening, matron. I hope I haven’t kept you all waiting.”

“Not at all,” said Sister Marigold.

Fox appeared with Sir John Phillips. Alleyn spoke a word to him and then turned and surveyed the group. They eyed him uneasily and perhaps inimically. It was a little as though they drew together, moved by a common impulse of self-preservation. He thought they looked rather like sheep, bunched together, their heads turned watchfully towards their protective enemy, the sheep-dog.

“I’d better give a warning bark or two,” thought Alleyn and addressed them collectively.

“I’m quite sure,” he began, “that you all realise why we have asked you to meet us here. It is, of course, in order to enlist your help. We are faced with a difficult problem in this case and feel that a reconstruction of the operation may go far towards clearing any suspicion of guilt from innocent individuals. As you know, Sir Derek O’Callaghan died from hyoscine poisoning. He was a man with many political enemies, and from the outset the affair has been a complicated and bewildering problem. The fact that he, in the course of the operation, was given a legitimate injection of hyoscine has added to the complications. I am sure you are all as anxious as we are to clear up this aspect of the case. I ask you to look upon the reconstruction as an opportunity to free yourselves of any imputation of guilt. As a medium in detection the reconstruction has much to commend it. The chief argument against it is that sometimes innocent persons are moved, through nervousness or other motives, to defeat the whole object of the thing by changing the original circumstances. Under the shadow of tragedy it is not unusual for innocent individuals to imagine that the police suspect them. I am sure that you are not likely to do anything so foolish as this. I am sure you realise that this is an opportunity, not a trap. Let me beg you to repeat as closely as you can your actions during the operation on the deceased. If you do this, there is not the faintest cause for alarm.” He looked at his watch.

“Now then,” he said. “You are to imagine that time has gone back seven days. It is twenty-five minutes to four on the afternoon of Thursday, February 4th. Sir Derek O’Callaghan is upstairs in his room, awaiting his operation. Matron, when you get word will you and the nurses who are to help you begin your preparations in the anteroom and the theatre? Any dialogue you remember you will please repeat. Inspector Fox will be in the anteroom and Inspector Boys in the theatre. Please treat them as pieces of sterile machinery.” He allowed himself a faint smile and turned to Phillips and Nurse Graham, the special.

“We’ll go upstairs.”

They went up to the next landing. Outside the door of the first room Alleyn turned to the others. Phillips was very white, but quite composed. Little Nurse Graham looked unhappy, but sensibly determined.

“Now, nurse, we’ll go in. If you’ll just wait a moment, sir. Actually you are just coming upstairs.”

“I see,” said Phillips.

Alleyn swung open the door and followed Nurse Graham into the bedroom.

Cicely and Ruth O’Callaghan were at the window. He got the impression that Ruth had been sitting there, perhaps crouched in that arm-chair, and had sprung up when the door opened. Cicely O’Callaghan stood erect, very grande dame and statuesque, a gloved hand resting lightly on the window-sill.

“Good evening, Inspector Alleyn,” she said. Ruth gave a loud sob and gasped “Good evening.”

Alleyn felt that his only hope of avoiding a scene was to hurry things along at a business-like canter.

“It was extremely kind of you both to come,” he said briskly. “I shan’t keep you more than a few minutes. As you know, we are to go over the events of the operation, and I thought it better to start from here.” He glanced cheerfully at Ruth.

“Certainly,” said Lady O’Callaghan.

“Now.” Alleyn turned towards the bed, immaculate with his smooth linen and tower of rounded pillows. “Now, Nurse Graham has brought you here. When you come in you sit — where? On each side of the bed? Is that how it was, nurse?”

“Yes. Lady O’Callaghan was here,” answered the special quietly.

“Then if you wouldn’t mind taking up those positions— ”

With an air of stooping to the level of a rather vulgar farce, Lady O’Callaghan sat in the chair on the right-hand side of the bed.

“Come along, Ruth,” she said tranquilly.

“But why? Inspector Alleyn — it’s so dreadful — so horribly cold-blooded — unnecessary. I don’t understand… You were so kind…” She boggled over her words, turned her head towards him with a gesture of complete wretchedness. Alleyn walked quickly towards her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I know it’s beastly. Take courage — your brother would understand, I think.”

She gazed miserably at him. With her large unlovely face blotched with tears, and her pale eyes staring doubtfully up into his, she seemed dreadfully vulnerable. Something in his manner may have given her a little help. Like an obedient and unwieldly animal she got up and blundered across to the other chair.

“What now, nurse?”

“The patient half regained consciousness soon after we came in. I heard Sir John and went out.”

“Will you do that, please?”

She went away quietly.

“And now,” Alleyn went on, “what happened? Did the patient speak?”

“I believe he said the pain was severe. Nothing else,” murmured Lady O’Callaghan.

“What did you say to each other?”

“I–I told him it was his appendix and that the doctor would soon be here — something of that sort. He seemed to lose consciousness again, I thought.”

“Did you speak to each other?”

“I don’t remember.”

Alleyn made a shot in the dark.

“Did you discuss his pain?”

“I do not think so,” she said composedly.

Ruth turned her head and gazed with a sort of damp surprise at her sister-in-law.

“You remember doing so, do you, Miss O’Callaghan?” said Alleyn.

“I think — yes — oh, Cicely!”

“What is it?” asked Alleyn gently.

“I said something — about— how I wished— oh, Cicely!”

The door opened and Nurse Graham came in again.

“I think I came back about now to say Sir John would like to see Lady O’Callaghan,” she said with a troubled glance at Ruth.

“Very well. Will you go out with her, please, Lady O’Callaghan?” They went out and Ruth and the inspector looked at each other across the smug little bed. Suddenly Ruth uttered a veritable howl and flung herself face-down among the appliqué-work on the counterpane.

“Listen,” said Alleyn, “and tell me if I’m wrong. Mr. Sage had given you a little box of powders that he said would relieve the pain. Now the others have left the room, you feel you must give your brother one of these powders. There is the water and the glass on that table by your side. You unwrap the box, drop the paper on the floor, shake out one of the powders and give it to him in a glass of water. It seems to relieve the pain and when they return he’s easier? Am I right?”