The Nursing Home Murder

At last the Prime Minister put the matter to the vote—did the Cabinet consider the introduction of the Home Secretary’s Bill advisable? It did.

‘Well,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘that is as far as we need go.’

The Home Secretary groaned slightly.

They all turned to him. His face was extremely white and he was leaning forward over the table.

‘O’Callaghan!’ exclaimed the Postmaster-General. ‘What’s the matter? You’re ill?’

‘It’s all right. Pain. Pass off in a moment.’

‘Brandy,’ said the Prime Minister and stretched out his hand to a bell.

‘Water,’ whispered Sir Derek. ‘Just water.’ When it came he drank it greedily and then mopped his face.

‘Better,’ he told them presently, ‘I’m sorry.’

They looked uncomfortable and concerned. The Lord Chancellor hovered uncertainly over him. The others eyed him with that horrified ineptitude with which we observe sudden illness in our fellow men.

‘I must apologize,’ said Sir Derek. ‘I’ve had one or two bouts like this lately. Appendix, I imagine. I’ll have to get vetted. It’s an infernal bore for myself and everyone else. I want to stave it off until after this business if I can.’ He drew himself up in his chair, paused a moment, and then got slowly to his feet.

‘Everything settled?’ he asked.

‘Yes, yes. Won’t you lie down for a little?’ suggested the Prime Minister.

‘Thank you so much, P.M.—no, I’ll go home, I think. If someone could tell my chauffeur—’ A secretary was summoned. O’Callaghan turned to the door. The Postmaster-General made as if to take his arm. Sir Derek nodded his thanks, but walked out independently. In the hall the secretary took his coat from the butler and helped him into it.

‘Shall I come out to the car, Sir Derek?’

‘No, thank you, my boy. I’m my own man again.’ With a word of farewell to the Prime Minister he went out alone.

‘He looks devilish ill,’ said the Prime Minister irritably. ‘I hope to heaven it’s not serious.’

‘It’ll be damned awkward if it is,’ said the Postmaster-General. ‘Poor old O’Callaghan,’ he added hurriedly.

In his car the Home Secretary looked out of the window drearily. They turned out of Downing Street into Whitehall. It was a cold, gusty evening. The faces of the people in the streets looked pinched and their clothes drab and uneventful. Their heads were bent to the wind. A thin rain was driving fitfully across the window-pane. He wondered if he was going to be very ill. He was overwhelmed with melancholy. Perhaps he would die of this thing that seized him with such devastating agony. That would save the anarchists and the CID a lot of trouble. It would also save him a lot of trouble. Did he really care tuppence about his Bill or about the machinations of people who wanted to revolutionize the system of British government? Did he care about anything or anybody? He was conscious only of a pallid indifference and an overwhelming inertia. He was going to be ill.

At the top of Constitution Hill his car was held up by a traffic jam. A taxi drew up close beside it. He could see that there was a fare inside, but no more than that. The driver looked several times at O’Callaghan’s chauffeur and called out something which his man answered gruffly. O’Callaghan had the feeling that the person inside the taxi stared in at his window. He was being watched. He had experienced this sensation many times lately. He thought, with a sort of amusement, of the Prime Minister’s anxiety. He pulled a cord and the inside of the car was flooded with light.

‘Give them a good view while I’m about it,’ he thought grimly.

To his surprise the windows of the taxi were lit up as if in answer. He peered across, shading the pane with his hand. The taxi’s fare was a solitary man in a dinner-jacket. He sat with his hands resting on the knob of a stick. His silk hat was worn at a slight angle, revealing a clear-cut and singularly handsome profile. It was an intelligent and well-bred face, with a straight nose, firm mouth and dark eyes. The man did not turn his head, and while Sir Derek O’Callaghan still watched him, the ranks of cars moved on and the taxi was left behind.

‘That’s someone I know,’ thought O’Callaghan with a kind of languid surprise. He tried for a moment to place this individual, but it was too much bother. He gave it up. In a few minutes his chauffeur pulled up outside his own house in Catherine Street and opened the door of the car.

The Home Secretary got out slowly and toiled up the steps. His butler let him in. While he was still in the hall his wife came downstairs. He stood and contemplated her without speaking.

‘Well, Derek,’ she said.

‘Hallo, Cicely.’

She stood at the foot of the stairs and watched him composedly.

‘You’re late,’ she observed after a moment.

‘Am I? I suppose I am. Those fellows jawed and jawed. Do you mind if I don’t change? I’m tired.’

‘Of course not. There’s only Ruth dining.’

He grimaced.

‘I really can’t help it if your sister likes to see you occasionally,’ remarked Lady O’Callaghan tranquilly.

‘All right,’ said her husband wearily. ‘All right.’

He glanced at her inimically and thought how tiresomely good-looking she was. Always so perfectly groomed, so admirably gowned, so maddeningly remote. Their very embraces were masked in a chilly patina of good form. Occasionally he had the feeling that she rather disliked him, but as a rule he had no feeling about her at all. He supposed he had married her in a brief wave of enthusiasm for polar exploration. There had been no children. Just as well since there was a taint of insanity in his own family. He supposed he was all right himself. His wife would have brought out any traces of it, he reflected sardonically. Cicely was an acid test for normality.

She walked away from him towards the drawing-room. At the door she paused for a moment to ask:

‘Have you been worried at all by that pain today?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said O’Callaghan.

‘What a bore it is,’ she murmured vaguely, and went into the drawing-room.

He looked after her for a moment and then crossed the little hall and entered his own study, a companionable room with a good fireplace, a practical desk and deep square-angled chairs. Cedar logs blazed in the grate and a tray with glasses and a decanter of his particular sherry waited near his particular chair. She certainly saw to it that he was adequately looked after.

He poured himself out a glass of sherry and opened his afternoon post. It was abysmally dull. His secretary had dealt with the bulk of his letters and evidently considered that these were all personal. Most of them were so marked. One writer begged for money, another for preferment, a third for information. A typewritten envelope had already been opened by his secretary. It contained an anonymous and threatening message and was merely the latest of a long series of such communications. He picked up the last letter, glanced at the envelope, raised his eyebrows and then frowned. He finished his sherry and poured out another glass before he opened the letter and read it.

It was from Jane Harden.

From Jane. He might have known he wouldn’t hear the end of that business in a hurry. He might have known he was a fool to suppose she would let him go without making difficulties. That weekend in Cornwall—it had been pleasant enough but before it was over he’d known he was in for trouble. Damn it all, women were never fair—never. They talked about leading their own lives, said they wanted to get their experience like men, and then broke all the rules of the game. He glanced again over the letter. She reminded him that she had ‘given herself’ to him (what nonsense that was. She’d wanted it as much as he had!), that their families had been neighbours in Dorset for generations before her father went bankrupt. He flinched away from the imputation of disloyalty which, since he was a tolerably honest and conservative man, made him profoundly uncomfortable. She said he’d treated her as though she was a suburban pick-up. He wished fretfully that she had been. She wrote that she was going to a post in a private nursing-home. Would he write to her at the Nurses’ Club? Up to this point the letter had apparently been written with a certain amount of self-control, but from then onwards O’Callaghan saw, with something like horror, that Jane’s emotions had run away with her pen. She loved him but what had she left to offer him? she asked. Must they both forget? She was fighting for her soul and nothing was too desperate. There was a devil tearing at her soul and if she lost him it would get her. She added again that she loved him and that if he persisted in ignoring her she would do something terrible. With a sudden petulant gesture he crumpled up the sheet of paper and threw it on the fire.

‘Blast!’ he said. ‘Blast! Blast! Blast!’

There was a light tap on the door, which opened far enough to disclose a large nose, a vague mouth, a receding chin, and a gigantic earring.

‘Affairs of state, Derry?’ asked a coy voice. ‘Affairs of state?’

‘Oh, come in, Ruth,’ said Sir Derek O’Callaghan.

CHAPTER 2 Introduces a Patent Medicine (#ulink_efbe9d40-e129-5057-8d76-8130b77aa6fc)

Friday, the fifth. Evening.

During the following week the Home Secretary followed his usual routine. He had become more or less accustomed to the attacks of pain. If anything they occurred more often and with increasing severity. He told himself that the day after he had introduced his Bill, he would consult a doctor. Meanwhile he took three tablets of aspirin whenever the pain threatened to become unendurable, and grew more and more dispirited and wretched. The memory of Jane Harden’s letter lurked at the back of his thoughts, like a bad taste in the conscience.

His sister Ruth, an advanced hypochondriac, with the persistence of a missionary, continually pressed upon him strange boluses, pills and draughts. She made a practice of calling on him after dinner armed with chemists’ parcels and a store of maddening condolences and counsels. On Friday night he retreated to his study, begging his wife to tell Ruth, if she appeared, that he was extremely busy, and not to be interrupted. His wife looked at him for a moment.