The Nursing Home Murder

‘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.’

‘Nemesis, perhaps,’ said Jane Harden.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ she said drearily. ‘Only it is rather like a Greek play, don’t you think? “Fate delivers our enemy into our hands.” Mr Thoms would think the situation very far-fetched.’

Phillips washed his hands slowly in a basin of sterilized water. ‘I knew nothing of this illness,’ he said. ‘It’s the merest chance that I was here at this hour. I’d only just got in from St. Jude’s. I tried to get out of it, but his wife insisted. Evidently she has no idea we—quarrelled.’

‘She could hardly know why you quarrelled, could she?’

‘I’d give anything to be out of it—anything.’

‘And I. How do you think I feel?’

He squeezed the water off his gloves and turned towards her, holding his hands out in front of him. He looked a grotesque and somehow pathetic figure.

‘Jane,’ he whispered, ‘won’t you change your mind? I love you so much.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I loathe him. I never want to see him again, but as long as he’s alive I can’t marry you.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ he said heavily.

‘I don’t understand myself,’ answered Jane, ‘so how should you?’

‘I shall go on—I shall ask you again and again.’

‘It’s no good. I suppose I’m queer, but as long as he’s there I—I’m in pawn.’

‘It’s insane—after his treatment of you. He’s—he’s discarded you, Jane.’

She laughed harshly.

‘Oh, yes. It’s quite according to Victorian tradition. I’m a “ruined girl”, you know!’

‘Well, stick to the Victorian tradition and let me make an honest woman of you.’

‘Look here,’ said Jane suddenly. ‘I’ll try and be an honest woman with you. I mean I’ll try and explain what’s inexplicable and pretty humiliating. I told him I wanted to live my own life, experience everything, all that sort of chat. I deceived myself as well as him. In the back of my mind I knew I was simply a fool who had lost her head as well as her heart. Then, when it happened, I realized just how little it meant to him and just how much it meant to me. I knew I ought to keep up the game, shake hands and part friends, and all that. Well—I couldn’t. My pride wanted to, but—I couldn’t. It’s all too grimly commonplace. I “loved and hated” him at the same time. I wanted to keep him, knew I hadn’t a chance, and longed to hurt him. I wrote to him and told him so. It’s a nightmare and it’s still going on. There! Don’t ask me to talk about it again. Leave me alone to get over it as best I may.’

‘Couldn’t I help?’

‘No. Someone’s coming—be careful.’

Thoms and Roberts returned and washed up. Roberts went away to give the anæsthetic. Phillips stood and watched his assistant.

‘How did your play end?’ he asked suddenly.

‘What? Oh. Back to the conversation we first thought of. It ended in doubt. You were left to wonder if the patient died under the anæsthetic, or if the surgeon did him in. As a matter of fact, under the circumstances, no one could have found out. Are you thinking of trying it out on the Home Secretary, sir? I thought you were a pal of his?’

The mask over Phillips’s face creased as though he were smiling. ‘Given the circumstances,’ he said, ‘I suppose it might be a temptation.’

He heard a movement behind him and turned to see Nurse Banks regarding him fixedly from the door into the theatre. Sister Marigold appeared behind her, said: ‘If you please, Nurse,’ in a frigid voice, and came through the door.

‘Oh, Matron,’ said Phillips abruptly, ‘I have given an injection of hyoscine, as usual. If we find peritonitis, as I think we shall, I shall also inject serum.’

‘I remembered the hyoscine, of course, Sir John. The stock solution had been put out, but I saw you had prepared your own injection.’

‘Yes, we won’t need the stock solution. Always use my own tablets—like to be sure of the correct dosage. Are we all ready?’

He went into the theatre.

‘Well,’ said Sister Marigold, ‘I’m sure the stock solution is good enough for most people.’

‘You can’t be too careful, Matron,’ Thoms assured her genially. ‘Hyoscine’s a ticklish drug, you know.’