John Francome - Declared Dead

'Who are you?' I asked, almost in a whisper.

'I'm Agnes, your night nurse,' she replied with a definite Italian accent.

'Where's he gone? Did you catch him?'

'Who?' asked Agnes, calm and comforting.

'The man who came in here just now and attacked me.'

'There was no man. You've just been having a bad dream. You've been through a lot lately, poor thing.'

I wasn't going to stand for that. 'I'm sorry, but there really was a man. I wasn't dreaming. He grabbed my arm and did something to the drip. Look,' I said, holding up my arm for her to see. 'The bandage is loose.'

'The safety pin must have come off while you were asleep, that's all. Let me tidy it up for you.' Agnes took the bandage off and then wrapped it round my arm, fastening it again with a safety pin.

'You go back to sleep and I'll ask Dr Fox to see about taking the drip down first thing in the morning.'

She doesn't believe me, it's obvious, I thought to myself. Nobody's going to believe me. I kept on repeating it to myself until I fell asleep and dreamt I was on trial for my own murder.

Dr Fox did not inspire quite the same degree of confidence as Mr Maddox. It might just have been his youthful looks, or the blond curly hair that made him look as if he'd be more at ease on a plinth in Ancient Greece than in a hospital in Surrey. I would have bet any money he was a ladies' man who liked to start the day with a nurse for breakfast, preferably sunny side up.

'Good morning, Mrs Pryde. I hear you had rather a disturbed night.'

'That's an understatement. A man came into my room and attacked me.'

He didn't reply and concentrated his attention instead on the clip board he had just picked up from the foot of my bed.

'Some of those pain killers you're taking are very powerful, you know,' he said, flicking over the pages of the chart and deliberately avoiding my eye. 'Are you drinking all right now?'

'Yes, I am, but I did not imagine what happened last night. It's my legs that were hurt in the fall you know, not my head.'

'You're going through a very difficult time, Mrs Pryde, I do understand. I'll tell staff nurse to come and take your drip down and I'll have a word with Mr Maddox about your drugs.' He flashed me a nervous smile and shot out of the room.

Ten minutes later the staff nurse arrived to take the pipe work out of my vein.

'Can I have a look at that?' I asked politely, as she was turning to go with a half empty bag of saline and drip set.

She hesitated, her face betraying considerable doubt about the wisdom of allowing me such an inspection. Fox's diagnosis had clearly taken hold in the nurses' room.

'I suppose so,' she said, handing it over to me slowly, as if it was a loaded shotgun and I had just been declared unfit to have a firearms licence. I studied the plastic tube intently, gently bending it between finger and thumb. A few inches from the end, tiny beads of the clear saline leaked through a microscopic hole into the wall of the tubing. I held it up triumphantly for the nurse to see.

'Who's mad now?' I asked, defiantly.

I insisted on holding onto the drip and showing it to Amy when she arrived. She listened in horror as I told her about my night visitor, and went on to fill her in about Drewe's threats the previous day.

'You don't think it could have been him, do you?' she asked, when I had finished.

I shook my head. 'It's the usual story: I just didn't get a proper look at him. This is the third time I've been attacked and I'm becoming more and more terrified. Look at me: I'm helpless. But if it wasn't Drewe, how the hell did whoever it was know where to find me?'

'That was easy. The news of your fall was all over the papers yesterday and the Sportsman made it their front page lead. You're a hot property, you know, because of all this Musgrave business.'

'Am I? I'm not doing Tom any good that way. It's very kind of you to come and see me again. At times like this you really know who your friends are.'

She smiled. 'Has Freddie been told?'

'All he knows is that mummy's had a little riding accident and has to spend a few days in hospital. In fact it could be more like weeks. They won't give me a date when I can walk again and I expect I'll have to give evidence from a wheelchair or standing on crutches. Never mind. Back to business. What are we going to do with this drip? I want to have the hole looked at and if possible the contents analysed. Could you fix that? Somebody tried to kill me last night and I'm not going to blame it on the National Health Service.'

Amy laughed. 'At least you seem to be keeping your sense of humour. Do you think they'll let me take it away with me?'

'Almost certainly not, so we won't ask them. By the time they discover it's gone it'll be too late. Do you know someone who can examine it?'

'There's a forensic chap, lovely old boy, we use in criminal cases. It'll cost a bit, I'm afraid.'

Corcoran's antics had left me strapped for cash, but I had no other option now left open to me.

'Okay. I'll find it somehow. Can he do it quickly?'

'I'll send it round this afternoon and ask him to do it at once as a personal favour. It should work. What about you? Will you be all right on your own here?'

'I'll have to be, and anyway, I don't see him making a return visit. If I kick up enough fuss they may even step up the number of checks by the night nurse.'

'Good. I'm sorry I've got to get back to the grind. I'll crack on with this and come and see you after work tomorrow.' She carefully wrapped the drip in a tissue from my bedside table and slipped it into her handbag. 'Is there anything else you need?'

'I wouldn't mind some mint chocolates actually! Since I won't be riding for a few months I might as well enjoy myself.'

'That's the spirit,' she said, squeezing my left leg affectionately. They could hear the scream in the nurses' room down the corridor.

I had hoped for a peaceful day on the Friday, but it was not to be. The sight of Amy and James bursting into my room, just after breakfast, told me something was up. It was Musgrave. The police had visited James the night before to discuss the results of the pathology report on the bookmaker's body. Tests showed that he had already been dead for at least nine hours when we found him. None of us was in a position to argue with that piece of forensic evidence, although if that was the case, just who had telephoned James at nine o'clock in the morning pretending to be Musgrave, and why? The police were suspicious without giving anything away and James wasn't at all clear from their line of questioning whether they accepted his version of events or whether they were hinting at more serious goings on. They wanted to make an appointment to come and see me as well.

'You don't think they're building up to another murder case, do you?' I asked, wanting to pull the sheets up over my head.

James contrived to look extremely serious. 'That's exactly what occurred to us. Don't worry, I don't think we're going to be fingered, but if they're right and somebody did close Musgrave's account prematurely, the next question has to be who and then why?'

'Would you recognise the voice of the chap who talked to you on the phone?' asked Amy.

James shook his head. 'It was rather nondescript. I suppose, looking back, he could have had a handkerchief over the receiver to take away any distinctive features. To be honest, I was still half sozzled and in fact nearly didn't even get to the phone in time. I'd never spoken to Musgrave before so I just naturally assumed it was him.'

'Don't worry,' I said. 'Nobody can blame you for being taken in. This is all becoming pretty sinister. You don't think it could be Drewe trying to shut up everybody who has something on him?'