Stella Duffy - Money in the Morgue - The New Inspector Alleyn Mystery

Mr Glossop’s slow, heavy tread had not long retreated back across the asphalt yard when Matron heard the rattle and squeak of the nine o’clock transport rolling up the driveway and into the parking area. The VADs would take a few minutes to sort themselves out from the journey. Sarah Warne was a sensible girl, one of the few she could rely upon, which meant she had a moment to gather her thoughts before she was needed to brief the night staff with Sister Comfort.

Retrieving the paperwork she had hurriedly tidied out of Mr Glossop’s reach, she looked through the papers. Surely he wouldn’t have pried into her private correspondence? She frowned, because that was exactly the kind of behaviour she’d expect of the infuriating fellow. Even so, he wouldn’t have had time to look through them thoroughly. She sat forward in her chair and spread out the papers before her. Almost twenty-five years here at Mount Seager and, while there had been difficult years, in particular during the influenza epidemic after the last war, when she was a newly appointed ward sister and they had been stretched far beyond their capacity, both to care and to cope, things had never before come to this. The bill for roof repairs to the Surgery was two months overdue. After a dreadfully wet winter, they simply hadn’t been able to risk the old corrugated iron roof any longer, it was bad enough in any other ward, but a serious health hazard in the Surgery. A third letter from the local bakery, with a curt note attached from Elsie Pocock, a woman she had known her whole life, and now Matron found herself crossing the road in town to avoid speaking to her. Two further angry demands for payment, one from the farmer who supplied sides of beef ‘ at cost! ’ as he reminded her in the letter, ‘ at cost! ’, and another from the milk factory. The extra beds, the military wards commandeered when the men were sent home with scarlet fever and polio, the more serious complications of burns and amputations for the poor lads who would be forever scarred, all of it meant added work for a dwindling staff as ever more of them left to help the war effort themselves. Every day there were extra patients to feed and laundry bills rising through the rusting roof and the men in charge up in Wellington seemed to have no idea at all how their plans affected ordinary people out in the rest of the country. Her creditors had been patient at first, everyone was having to do more on far less in wartime, but time was running out. Matron would have the respite of the Christmas break, with all but the farmers stopping work for a few days, come January however, she would need to pay up, something had to give.

Matron took up her pen and paper and began composing a letter. As she did so she continued her train of thought. If she had been as flighty as young Rosamund Farquharson, silly girl spoiling herself with Sanders, she’d have put money on one of the sure-fire bets the men in Military 1 were so keen on, but Isabelle Ashdown had never laid a bet in her life, not even as a young nurse when all of her fellow trainees put a penny each into the sweepstake on who would be the first to bag a doctor husband. She thought then that betting on men was foolish and gambling on horses even more so, and nothing in the subsequent years had proved her wrong. She frowned, until a month or so ago, she might have thought Dr Luke Hughes could be persuaded to turn on the requisite charm. She had warmed to the young man as soon as he arrived. They had enjoyed several late night conversations, and Matron found his approach to his work both modern and a welcome tonic for the hospital. A sherry party at Christmas had often resulted in a New Year windfall to the hospital donation fund, especially if a handsome young doctor could be persuaded to work his magic, but Dr Hughes had been distracted lately, even a little brusque once or twice, she didn’t trust his ability to elicit generous donations from frosty older ladies. She shuffled the papers back into a neat pile, and wished, not for the first time, that she might fold away her concerns as tightly as the hospital corners she still prided herself on, decades after her initial training, faster and sharper than any of her nurses. Her worries were interrupted by a low rumble of thunder, high up in the mountains and then another soon after, this one much closer.

Matron finished and signed her letter and waited a moment for the ink to dry. She was about to fold it into an envelope when she had another thought and added a post-script, initialling this part of the letter with a flourish, adding it to her pile to be sorted later. Then she stood, the old floorboards creaking in the heavy evening heat, and reached around the safe to pick up a rusted tin bucket. She carefully placed it beneath the worst of the gaps in the old roof that was the only protection afforded her office against the elements, so many years of being over-heated in summer and chilled to the bone in winter, so many years of tidying up others’ mess. She would have to tell the night staff to ready their pails and mops, she doubted that even that latest crack of thunder would be warning enough for them, giddy as they were about the coming Christmas festivities. Many, she knew, had been wishing for a good storm to clear the air, but Matron knew a good storm meant only that a fierce light would be shone on the deficiencies of her hospital. She felt inside her pocket, checked that the safe key was there, warm and protected. She turned off the lamp on her desk. She had her torch in her other pocket and there was no sense risking rain getting through and onto a live electrical wire. She walked out into the night, a smattering of stars were just visible through the rapidly gathering clouds. It was still unbearably hot, but finally the cicadas were silent. The storm would be upon them soon.

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