systems. He actually had no idea just how far he could safely let her temperature drop, but when it came to shamming death he knew that a body lacking any vestige of human warmth would do the job far more efficiently than one still flushed with heat. He hoped that his instinct would tell him if matters were becoming critical.
He sat patiently beside her as she chilled down, from time to time dripping more chloroform on the gauze mask. He took her pulse regularly. She was already pale from the cordite she had eaten, and the penetrating cold began to make her look quite bloodless as all colour drained from her face and her lips. Her hands felt stiff and lifeless, her flesh seemed to take on the consistency of clay. When her temperature had fallen several degrees below normal and the chill and pallor about her were unignorably worrying he lifted her out of her ice bed and wheeled her back through to the theatre. He laid her on the table and placed a cane blanket cradle over her midriff before draping it with one of the operating cloths in such a way that none of the material touched her chest. There was absolutely no visible movement of her shallow breathing. He dosed her once more with chloroform and then scattered blood-soaked swabs on the floor below the operating table and in receptacles on the instrument trays. He set the steam sterilisers going and switched on the arc lights above the table. He smeared blood from a bottle on his gown and dripped a few strategic drops on his hands and forearms. In the blazing lights she lay completely inert, her face blanched almost to blue. He removed the gauze mask and tilted her head so that her mouth was slackly open. He tucked two chips of ice into her cheeks. Then he covered her face with the end of the operating cloth. Glancing round the theatre he saw it bore all the signs of a hasty and emergency operation. Only one further detail was missing. He returned to the morgue and raised the heavy lid on another coffer. Digging into the ice chips he removed the tiny body of the five-month-old foetus and took it through to the theatre. He laid it on a wheeled trolley next to the table and washed it with blood before covering it with a cloth. It was not much bigger than his two cupped hands. Its tiny clenched pug face was frozen in what looked like a rictus of terrible rage. This was his last resort.
It was clear that Sieverance expected the worst even in his fuddled, drugged state. He saw the blood smears on Carriscant's gown and the awful severity of his expression. Carriscant could see the man's gorge rise and how his hand went to his throat as he swallowed desperately.
'I'm so sorry,' Carriscant said. 'There was nothing we could do.'
Sieverance tried to be brave – he was a soldier after all, Carriscant reasoned, accustomed to sudden death – but his eyes were moist with tears and there was a tremolo in his voice as he asked if he could see her. As they walked through to the theatre he took great shuddering breaths of air, one hand persistently massaging his face.
Bowed before the shrouded body on the table with its grim detritus – the swabs, the blood, the brilliant knives, the smell – he swayed as if he might fall. Carriscant steadied him and pulled back the corner of the sheet.
He gave a low moan and stumbled. Carriscant caught him and gripped his arm. She does indeed look dead, he thought, a moment's worry overtaking him, so white, so still. Sieverance leant over her, muttering her name. He kissed her forehead and recoiled as if he had been burned. His fingers touched his lips.
'Jesus God,' he said, shocked. 'God help me… ' He looked emptily at Carriscant. 'She's so cold… already… ' He turned away. 'The baby?'
'A girl.'
'Is she here?'
Carriscant showed him the covered foetus in the tray. Sieverance paused before the tiny lump, no bigger than a bread roll beneath a napkin. He lifted the cloth and flinched violently, his whole body bucked. He let the cloth drop and gave a throaty, agonised cry, half moan, half retch. He slowly began to sink to his knees, at which point Carriscant moved forward and caught him by the shoulders, lifting him up, saying, 'Here, come now, come away now, don't torment yourself, come with me.'
He went quietly, without a backward glance. As they slowly crossed the courtyard towards the entrance gate Carriscant – his arm around his shoulders – asked him if there was anyone at his house.
'The servants are there,' he said. 'The place is all packed up, but they're still there.'
'Will you be all right?'
'I… Yes, I think so.'
'Try and sleep,' Carriscant said. 'I'll make sure everything is sorted out here.'
'Thank you, Doctor, thank you… I don't think I'll be capable of anything.'
'Leave it to me.'
'Will you be here in the morning?'
'Yes,' Carriscant lied. 'I'll send for you.' He helped Sieverance into his victoria. Sieverance sat back shaking his head with some vigour, whether from the effects of the chloral or the shock he was under, Carriscant could not be sure. He was not in the least surprised at the complete success of his subterfuge. It was all a matter of suggestion. Here was a hospital at night, a woman covered in blood, a grave medical crisis. All possible prognoses would be going through Sieverance's mind, especially the worst. Many women die of complications in pregnancy: Carriscant's efforts had merely reproduced the man's darkest fears. If you half expect an event to occur, you rarely question it when it does. And even more, Sieverance trusted him, as a man and as a doctor. He had placed his trust in me absolutely, Carriscant thought, in his hour of need. The fact that his most terrifying fears were realised does not reflect on me at all. With trust all duplicity becomes simple. He looked at Sieverance now and, for a moment, seeing the man in this state, he felt an icy squirm of guilt wriggle through him. There was a price to pay for this elaborate subterfuge and it was Sieverance's awful pain and misery. He watched the man sit there struggling to come to terms with this brutal reckoning life had served him. Carriscant turned away, telling himself to be strong and not think about it: there was no other way and, he reminded himself without much conviction, time was a great healer.
Sieverance's carriage pulled off and Carriscant walked as fast as he dared back to the theatre. Delphine was still unconscious and some warmth was beginning to seep back into her limbs. He lowered the big arc light so the heat of its glare would penetrate better and piled some blankets on top of her. He rubbed her hands and wrapped her feet in hot towels. As he saw her temperature steadily rise he began to clear away the evidence of the operation.
He rang for a porter and told him to bring a coffin from the hospital store. The man showed no curiosity at the news that a patient had died. But then why should he? Carriscant said to himself. Fetching a coffin or wheeling a cadaver into the morgue was doubtless a task he performed unreflectingly many times a day, especially working from Cruz's wards. So desperate was he to create an illusion of death, he was forgetting just how commonplace and unremarkable it was in a place like this.
The coffin arrived, wheeled on a trolley by two porters. As he opened the door of the theatre he allowed them a glimpse of Delphine on the table before dismissing them. Some work had to be done on the body before it went into the coffin, he said. He would call them when everything was ready. Alone again, he locked all doors that communicated with the rest of the hospital and pushed the coffin into his temporary morgue. He lifted the body of the murdered Filipino woman out of its ice-chest and laid it in the coffin. He fetched the foetus and placed it alongside its mother. Then he nailed the coffin shut and tied the necessary label and the envelope containing a copy of the death certificate to the top handle.
The coffin was waiting in the corridor outside the theatre when the porters returned to collect it. Carriscant told them to take it to the hospital morgue whence it would be taken for burial the next day.
As the coffin was duly wheeled away the thought came to Carriscant that Sieverance might not be satisfied with one of the simple, crude coffins that the hospital provided. Indeed, he might not want his wife buried in the Philippines at all and would want to ship her home, in which case the body would have to be embalmed… He suddenly felt his heart jolt with alarm. Surely, even if that was what he wanted to do, they would have a day or two's grace? Sieverance was in no state to set about ordering new coffins and searching for a responsible undertaker the next day. The death certificate was signed, the hospital administration would routinely inform the necessary authorities. It would take a man of unusual morbidity – having already been profoundly shocked by the sight of his dead wife and dead child – to order the coffin reopened so he might see them again.
But in any event, Carriscant thought, as he hurried back to proceed with the reviving of Delphine, even if he had foreseen that eventuality it would have been one beyond his powers to prevent or forestall. Whatever happened, whatever alarm was raised, he and Delphine would be far out at sea, a day or more's sailing from Manila. The trail vanished, or at any rate stone cold.
However-as he watched the colour slowly return to Delphine's cheeks, and felt the warmth of her hands
