The Nursing Home Murder

With eager, clumsy fingers she undid the wrapping and disclosed a round green box decorated with the picture of a naked gentleman, standing in front of something that looked like an electric shock.

‘There are six powders altogether,’ she told them excitedly, ‘but after the first, you feel a marked improvement. “Fulvitavolts”. Hundreds of letters, Derry, from physicians, surgeons, politicians—lots of politicians, Derry. They all swear by it. Their symptoms were precisely the same as yours. Honestly.’

She looked pathetically eager. She was so awkward and vehement with her thick hands, her watery eyes, and her enormous nose.

‘You don’t know what my symptoms are, Ruth.’

‘Indeed I do. Violent abdominal seizures. Cicely—do read it all.’

Lady O’Callaghan took the box and looked at one of the folded cachets.

‘I’ll give him one tonight, Ruth,’ she promised, exactly as though she was humouring an excitable child.

‘That’s topping!’ Ruth had a peculiar trick of using unreal slang. ‘I’m most awfully bucked. And in the morning all those horrid pains will have flown away.’ She made a sort of blundering, ineffectual gesture. She beamed at them.

‘And now, old girl, I’m afraid you’ll have to fly away yourself,’ said O’Callaghan with a desperate effort to answer roguishness with brotherly playfulness. ‘I think I hear Phillips arriving.’

‘Come along, Ruth,’ said his wife. ‘We must make ourselves scarce. Good night again, Derek.’

Ruth laid a gnarled finger on her lips and tiptoed elaborately to the door. There she turned and blew him a kiss.

He heard them greet Sir John Phillips briefly and go upstairs. In his relief at being rid of his sister, O’Callaghan felt a wave of good-fellowship for John Phillips. Phillips was an old friend. It would be a relief to tell him how ill he felt—to learn how ill he really was. Perhaps Phillips would give him something that would help him along for the time being. He already felt a little better. Very likely it was a trifling thing after all. Phillips would know. He turned to the door with an air of pleased expectancy. Nash opened the door and came in.

‘Sir John Phillips, sir.’

Phillips entered the room.

He was an extremely tall man with an habitual stoop. His eyes, full-lidded and of a peculiarly light grey, were piercingly bright. No one ever saw him without his single eye-glass and there was a rumour that he wore it ribbonless while he operated. His nose was a beak and his under lip jutted out aggressively. He was unmarried, and unmoved, so it was said, by the general tendency among his women patients to fall extravagantly in love with him. Perhaps next to actors medical men profit most by the possession of that curious quality that people call ‘personality’. Sir John Phillips was, very definitely, a personage. His rudeness was more glamorously famous than his brilliant ability.

O’Callaghan moved towards him, his hand extended.

‘Phillips!’ he said, ‘I’m delighted to see you.’

Phillips ignored the hand and stood stockstill until the door had closed behind Nash. Then he spoke.

‘You will be less delighted when you hear my business,’ he said.

‘Why—what on earth’s the matter with you?’

‘I can scarcely trust myself to speak to you.’

‘What the devil do you mean?’

‘Precisely what I say. I’ve discovered your are a blackguard and I’ve come to tell you so.’

O’Callaghan stared at him in silence.

‘Apparently you are serious,’ he said at last. ‘May I ask if you intend merely to call me names and then walk out? Or am I to be given an explanation?’

‘I’ll give you your explanation. In two words. Jane Harden.’

There was a long silence. The two men stared at each other. At last O’Callaghan turned away. A kind of mulish huffiness in his expression made him look ridiculous and unlikeable.

‘What about Jane Harden?’ he said at last.

‘Only this. She’s a nurse at my hospital. For a very long time her happiness has been an important thing for me. I have asked her to marry me. She has refused, over and over again. Today she told me why. It seems you made capital out of a friendship with her father and out of her present poverty. You played the “old family friend” combined with the distinguished philanderer.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Don’t lie, O’Callaghan!’

‘Look here—’

‘I know the facts.’

‘What sort of tale have you listened to?’

‘One that brought me here tonight angrier than I ever remember myself before. I know the precise history of your—your friendship with her. You amused yourself, evidently. I dislike overstatement but I believe it would be no overstatement if I said, as I do say, that you’ve ruined Jane’s life for her.’

‘Damn’ sentimental twaddle!’ said O’Callaghan breathlessly. ‘She’s a modern young woman and she knows how to enjoy herself.’

‘That’s a complete misrepresentation.’ Phillips had turned exceedingly white, but he spoke evenly. ‘If, by the phrase “a modern young woman”, you mean a “loose woman” you must know yourself it’s a lie. This is the only episode of the sort in her life. She loved you and you let her suppose she was loved in return.’

‘Nothing of the sort. She gave me no reason to suppose she attached more importance to the thing than I did myself. You say she’s in love with me. If it’s true I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s true. What does she want? It’s not—’ O’Callaghan stopped short and looked frightened. ‘It’s not that she’s going to have a child?’

‘Oh, no. She has no actual claim on you. No legal claim. Evidently you don’t recognize moral obligations.’

‘I’ve sent her £300. What more will she want?’

‘I’m so near hitting you, O’Callaghan, I think I’d better go.’

‘You can go to hell if you like. What’s the matter with you? If you don’t want to marry her there’s an alternative. It ought to be quite simple—I had no difficulty.’

‘You swine!’ shouted Phillips. ‘My God—’ He stopped short. His lips moved tremblingly. When he spoke again it was more quietly. ‘You’d do well to keep clear of me,’ he said. ‘I assure you that if the opportunity presented itself I should have no hesitation—none—in putting you out of the way.’

Something in O’Callaghan’s face made him pause. The Home Secretary was looking beyond him, towards the door.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Nash quietly. He crossed the room with a tray holding glasses and a decanter. He put the tray down noiselessly and returned to the door.

‘Is there anything further, sir?’ asked Nash.

‘Sir John Phillips is leaving. Will you show him out?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

Without another word Phillips turned on his heel and left the room.

‘Good night, Nash,’ said O’Callaghan.

‘Good night, sir,’ said Nash softly. He followed Sir John Phillips out and closed the door.

O’Callaghan gave a sharp cry of pain. He stumbled towards his chair and bent over it, leaning on the arm. For a minute or two he hung on, doubled up with pain. Then he managed to get into the chair, and in a little while poured out half a tumbler of whisky. He noticed Ruth’s patent medicine lying on the table beside him. With a tremulous hand he shook one of the powders into the glass and gulped it down with the whisky.

CHAPTER 3 Sequel to a Scene in the House

Thursday, the eleventh. Afternoon.

The Home Secretary paused and looked round the House. The sea of faces was blurred and nightmarish. They were playing that trick on him that he had noticed before. They would swim together like cells under a microscope and then one face would come out clearly and stare at him. He thought: ‘I may just manage it—only one more paragraph’, and raised the paper. The type swirled and eddied, and then settled down. He heard his own voice. He must speak up.

‘In view of the extraordinary propaganda—’

They were making too much noise.

‘Mr Speaker—’

A disgusting feeling of nausea, a kind of vapourish tightness behind his nose.

‘Mr Speaker—’

He looked up again. A mistake. The sea of faces jerked up and revolved very quickly. A tiny voice, somewhere up in the attic, was calling: ‘He’s fainted.’

He did not feel himself pitch forward across the desk. Nor did he hear a voice from the back benches that called out: ‘You’ll be worse than that before you’ve finished with your bloody Bill.’

‘Who’s his doctor—anyone know?’

‘Yes—I do. It’s bound to be Sir John Phillips—they’re old friends.’

‘Phillips? He runs that nursing-home in Brook Street, doesn’t he?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Somebody must ring Lady O’Callaghan.’

‘I will if you like. I know her.’

‘Is he coming round?’

‘Doesn’t look like it. Tillotley went to see about the ambulance.’

‘Here he is. Did you fix up for an ambulance, Tillotley?’

‘It’s coming. Where are you sending him?’

‘Cuthbert’s gone to ring up his wife.’

‘God, he looks bad!’

‘Did you hear that fellow yell out from the back benches?’

‘Yes. Who was it?’

‘I don’t know. I say, do you think there’s anything fishy about this?’

‘Oh, rot!’

‘Here’s Dr Wendover—I didn’t know he was in the House.’

They stood back from O’Callaghan. A little tubby man, Communist member for a North Country constituency, came through the group of men and knelt down.

‘Open those windows, will you?’ he said.

He loosened O’Callaghan’s clothes. The others eyed him respectfully. After a minute or two he looked round.

‘Who’s his medical man?’ he asked.

‘Cuthbert thinks it’s Sir John Phillips. He’s ringing his wife now.’

‘Phillips is a surgeon. It’s a surgical case.’

‘What’s the trouble, Dr Wendover?’

‘Looks like an acute appendix. There’s no time to be lost. You’d better ring the Brook Street Private Hospital. Is the ambulance there? Can’t wait for his wife.’

From the doorway somebody said: ‘The men from the ambulance.’

‘Good. Here’s your patient.’

Two men came in carrying a stretcher. O’Callaghan was got on to it, covered up, and carried out. Cuthbert hurried in.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s Phillips. She wants him taken to Phillips’s nursing-home.’

‘He’s going there,’ said little Dr Wendover, and walked out after the ambulance men.

O’Callaghan climbed up, sickeningly, from nowhere into semiconsciousness. Grandiloquent images slid rapidly downwards. His wife’s face came near and then receded. Somebody groaned close to him. Somebody was in bed beside him, groaning.

‘Is the pain very bad?’ said a voice.

He himself was in pain.

‘Bad,’ he said solemnly.

‘The doctor will be here soon. He’ll give you something to take it away.’

He now knew it was he who had groaned.

Cicely’s face came close.

‘The doctor’s coming, Derek.’

He closed his eyes to show he had understood.

‘Poor old Derry, poor old boy.’

‘I’ll just leave you with him for a minute, Lady O’Callaghan. If you want me, will you ring? I think I hear Sir John.’ A door closed.

‘This pain’s very bad,’ said O’Callaghan clearly.

The two women exchanged glances. Lady O’Callaghan drew up a chair to the bed and sat down.

‘It won’t be for long, Derek,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s your appendix, you know.’

‘Oh.’

Ruth had begun to whisper.

‘What’s Ruth say?’

‘Never mind me, Derry-boy. It’s just silly old Ruthie.’ He muttered something, shut his eyes, and seemed to fall asleep.

‘Cicely darling, I know you laugh at my ideas, but listen. As soon as I heard about Derry I went and saw Harold Sage. He’s the brilliant young chemist I told you about. I explained exactly what was the matter and he gave me something that he says will relieve the pain at once and can do no harm at all. It’s an invention of his own. In a few months all the hospitals will use it.’

She began a search in her handbag.

‘Suggest it to Sir John if you like, Ruth. Of course nothing can be done without his knowledge.’

‘Doctors are so bigoted. I know, my dear. The things Harold has told me—!’

‘You seem to be very friendly with this young man.’

‘He interests me enormously, Cicely.’

‘Really?’

The nurse came back.

‘Sir John would like to see you for a moment, Lady O’Callaghan.’

‘Thank you. I’ll come.’

Left alone with her brother, Ruth dabbed at his hand. He opened his eyes.

‘Oh, God, Ruth,’ he said, ‘I’m in such pain.’

‘Just hold on for one moment, Derry. I’ll make it better.’

She had found the little package. There was a tumbler of water by the bedside.

In a few minutes Phillips came back with the nurse.

‘Sir John is going to make an examination,’ said Nurse Graham quietly to Ruth. ‘If you wouldn’t mind joining Lady O’Callaghan for a moment.’

‘I shan’t keep you long,’ said Phillips and opened the door.

Ruth, with a distracted and guilty look at her brother, gathered herself up and blundered out of the room.

O’Callaghan had relapsed into unconsciousness. Nurse Graham uncovered the abdomen and Phillips with his long inquisitive fingers pressed it there—and there—and there. His eyes were closed and his brain seemed to be in his hands.

‘That will do,’ he said suddenly. ‘It looks like peritonitis. He’s in a bad way. I’ve warned them we may need the theatre.’ The nurse covered the patient and in answer to a nod from Phillips fetched the two women. As soon as they came in, Phillips turned to Lady O’Callaghan but did not look at her. ‘The operation should be performed immediately,’ he said. ‘Will you allow me to try to get hold of Somerset Black?’

‘But you, Sir John, won’t you do it yourself?’

Phillips walked over to the window and stared out.

‘You wish me to operate?’ he said at last.

‘Of course I do. I know that sometimes surgeons dislike operating on their friends, but unless you feel—I do hope—I beg you to do it.’

‘Very well.’

He returned to the patient.

‘Nurse,’ he said, ‘tell them to get Dr Thoms. He’s in the hospital and has been warned that an operation may be necessary. Ring up Dr Grey and arrange for the anæsthetic—I’ll speak to him myself. Tell the theatre sister I’ll operate as soon as they are ready. Now, Lady O’Callaghan, if you don’t mind leaving the patient, Nurse will show you where you can wait.’

The nurse opened the door and the others moved away from the bed. At the threshold they were arrested by a kind of stifled cry. They turned and looked back to the bed. Derek O’Callaghan had opened his eyes and was staring as if hypnotized at Phillips.

‘Don’t—’ he said. ‘Don’t—let—’

His lips moved convulsively. A curious whining sound came from them. For a moment or two he struggled for speech and then suddenly his head fell back.

‘Come along, Lady O’Callaghan,’ said the nurse gently. ‘He doesn’t know what he is saying, you know.’

In the anteroom of the theatre two nurses and a sister prepared for the operation.

‘Now you mustn’t forget,’ said Sister Marigold, who was also the matron of the hospital, ‘that Sir John likes his instruments left on the tray. He does not like them handed to him.’

She covered a tray of instruments and Jane Harden carried it into the theatre.

‘It’s a big responsibility,’ said the sister chattily, ‘for a surgeon, in a case of this sort. It would be a terrible catastrophe for the country if anything happened to Sir Derek O’Callaghan. The only strong man in the Government, in my opinion.’

Nurse Banks, an older woman than her superior, looked up from the sterilising apparatus.

‘The biggest tyrant of the lot,’ she remarked surprisingly.

‘Nurse! What did you say?’

‘My politics are not Sir Derek O’Callaghan’s, Matron, and I don’t care who knows it.’

Jane Harden returned from the theatre. Sister Marigold cast an indignant glance at Nurse Banks and said briefly:

‘Did you look at the hyoscine solution, Nurse, and the anti-gas ampoule?’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘Gracious, child, you look very white. Are you all right?’

‘Quite, thank you,’ answered Jane. She busied herself with tins of sterilized dressings. After another glance at her, the matron returned to the attack on Nurse Banks.

‘Of course, Nurse, we all know you are a Bolshie. Still, you can’t deny greatness when you see it. Now Sir Derek is my idea of a big—a really big man.’

‘And for that reason he’s the more devilish,’ announced Banks with remarkable venom. ‘He’s done murderous things since he’s been in office. Look at his Casual Labour Bill of last year. He’s directly responsible for every death from undernourishment that has occurred during the last ten months. He’s the enemy of the proletariat. If I had my way he’d be treated as a common murderer or else as a homicidal maniac. He ought to be certified. There is insanity in his blood. Everybody knows his father was dotty. That’s what I think of your Derek O’Callaghan with a title bought with blood-money,’ said Banks, making a great clatter with sterilized bowls.

‘Then perhaps’—Sister Marigold’s voice was ominously quiet—‘perhaps you’ll explain what you’re doing working for Sir John Phillips. Perhaps his title was bought with blood-money too.’

‘As long as this rotten system stands, we’ve got to live,’ declared Banks ambiguously, ‘but it won’t be for ever and I’ll be the first to declare myself when the time comes. O’Callaghan will have to go and all his blood-sucking bourgeois party with him. It would be a fine thing for the people if he went now. There, Matron!’

‘It would be a better thing if you went yourself, Nurse Banks, and if I had another theatre nurse free, go you would. I’m ashamed of you. You talk about a patient like that—what are you thinking of?’

‘I can’t help it if my blood boils.’

‘There’s a great deal too much blood, boiling or not, in your conversation.’

With the air of one silenced but not defeated, Banks set out a table with hypodermic appliances and wheeled it into the theatre.

‘Really, Nurse Harden,’ said Sister Marigold, ‘I’m ashamed of that woman. The vindictiveness! She ought not to be here. One might almost think she would—’ Matron paused, unable to articulate the enormity of her thought.

‘No such—thing,’ said Jane. ‘I’d be more likely to do him harm than she.’

‘And that’s an outside chance,’ declared matron more genially. ‘I must say, Nurse Harden, you’re the best theatre nurse I’ve had for a long time. A real compliment, my dear, because I’m very particular. Are we ready? Yes. And here come the doctors.’

Jane put her hands behind her back and stood to attention. Sister Marigold assumed an air of efficient repose. Nurse Banks appeared for a moment in the doorway, seemed to recollect something, and returned to the theatre.

Sir John Phillips came in followed by Thoms, his assistant, and the anæsthetist. Thoms was fat, scarlet-faced and industriously facetious. Dr Roberts was a thin, sandy-haired man, with a deprecating manner. He took off his spectacles and polished them.

‘Ready, Matron?’ asked Phillips.

‘Quite ready, Sir John.’

‘Dr Roberts will give the anæsthetic. Dr Grey is engaged. We were lucky to get you, Roberts, at such short notice.’

‘I’m delighted to come,’ said Roberts. ‘I’ve been doing a good deal of Grey’s work lately. It is always an honour, and an interesting experience, to work under you, Sir John.’

He spoke with a curious formality as if he considered each sentence and then offered it to the person he addressed.

‘If I may I’ll just take a look at the anæsthetising-room before we begin.’

‘Certainly.’

The truculent Banks reappeared.

‘Nurse Banks,’ said the matron, ‘go with Dr Roberts to the anæsthetising-room, please.’

Dr Roberts blinked at Banks, and followed her out.

Sir John went into the theatre and crossed to a small table, enamelled white, on which were various appliances concerned with the business of giving hypodermic injections. There were three syringes, each in a little dish of sterile water. Two were of the usual size known to the layman. The third was so large as to suggest it was intended for veterinary rather than human needs. The small syringes held twenty-five minims each, the larger at least six times as much. An ampoule, a bottle, a small bowl and a measure-glass also stood on the table. The bottle was marked: “Hyoscine solution 0.25 per cent. Five minims contains 1/100 a grain.” The ampoule was marked: “Gas-Gangrene Antitoxin (concentrated).” The bowl contained sterile water.

Phillips produced from his pocket a small hypodermic case from which he took a tiny tube labelled: “Hyoscine gr. 1/100.” The tube being completely covered by its label, it was difficult to see the contents. He removed the cork, examined the inside closely, laid down the tube and took another, similarly labelled, from his case. His fingers worked uncertainly, as though his mind was on something else. At last he took one of the smaller syringes, filled it with sterile water, and squirted its contents into the measure-glass. Then he dropped in the hyoscine, stirred it with the needle of the syringe, and finally, pulling back the piston, sucked the solution into the syringe.

Thoms came into the theatre.

‘We ought to get washed up, sir,’ he said.

He glanced at the table.

‘Hallo!’ he shouted. ‘Two tubes! You’re doing him proud.’

‘One was empty.’ Phillips picked them up automatically and put them back in his case.

Thoms looked at the syringe.

‘You use a lot of water, don’t you?’ he observed.

‘I do,’ said Phillips shortly. Taking the syringe with him, he walked out of the theatre into the anæsthetic-room. Thoms, wearing that air of brisk abstraction which people assume when they are determined to ignore a snub, remained staring at the table. He joined the others a few minutes later in the anteroom. Phillips returned from the anæsthetic-room.

Jane Harden and Sister Marigold helped the two surgeons to turn themselves into pieces of sterilized machinery. In a little while the anteroom was an austere arrangement in white, steel, and rubber-brown. There is something slightly repellent as well as something beautiful in absolute white. It is the negation of colour, the expression of coldness, the emblem of death. There is less sensuous pleasure in white than in any of the colours, and more suggestion of the macabre. A surgeon in his white robe, the warmth of his hands hidden by sleek chilly rubber, the animal vigour of his hair covered by a white cap, is more like a symbol in modern sculpture than a human being. To the layman he is translated, a priest in sacramental robes, a terrifying and subtly fascinating figure.

‘Seen this new show at the Palladium?’ asked Thoms. ‘Blast this glove! Give me another, Matron.’

‘No,’ said Sir John Phillips.

‘There’s a one-act play. Anteroom to a theatre in a private hospital. Famous surgeon has to operate on a man who ruined him and seduced his wife. Problem—does he stick a knife into the patient? Grand Guignol stuff. Awful rot, I thought it.’

Phillips turned slowly and stared at him. Jane Harden uttered a little stifled cry.

‘What’s that, Nurse?’ asked Thoms. ‘Have you seen it? Here, give me the glove.’

‘No, sir,’ murmured Jane, ‘I haven’t seen it.’

‘Jolly well acted it was, and someone had put them right about technical matters, but, of course, the situation was altogether too far-fetched. I’ll just go and see—’ He walked out, still talking, into the theatre, and after a minute or two called to the matron, who followed him.

‘Jane,’ said Phillips.

‘Yes?’

‘This—this is a queer business.’