door knocker. It fell like a lead… balloon. All too promptly the door opened. Facing me was a large nurse in a small frilly cap.
“May I help you?” She had eyes like pellets and a face which had been chiseled into shape. She breathed Detol the way Roxie breathed Attar of Roses.
Pressing both palms against the small of my back, I stepped inward, forcing her to step back. “I’m-Mrs. Heinz. You are expecting me, I hope? My doctor sent me to have a look at the place to see if I could be comfortable here during my confinement.”
The nurse stared at me. Had I blown it too soon by using a word no longer in maternity jargon? I moved my hands to place them protectively on the protrusion jutting through my gaping coat.
“We don’t
“I can see that, indeed I think the place looks most inviting.” Taking another step forward, I fixed eager eyes on the black-and-white checkerboard floor, the white walls rising to a lofty and ornately plastered ceiling. The staircase, also painted white (criminally, in my opinion), rose at the end of the hall, facing the front door; it went up steeply for a dozen steps, then divided.
“Mrs. Heinz?” The nurse jammed the door shut. “Are you having a nervous breakdown?”
“What, in my condition!” I clasped a hand to my throat. “Dear Dr. Padinsky”-if he was good enough for Magdalene, he was good enough for me-“has warned me repeatedly that trauma of any kind could be hazardous to the baby, which is why he insisted I look this place over.”
“Mrs. Heinz,” the nurse replied in a harsh, cold voice, “how will visiting a nursing home for emotionally disturbed women help you to a problem-free delivery?”
A chair, painted white, was at hand. Legs spread, back arched, I lowered myself into it. “Don’t tell me,” I bleated, “that this isn’t Chitterton Fells Maternity Home?”
“It is not.” She had the door open. “You haven’t come much off course. Turn left on the Coast Road, proceed two miles, and you can’t miss it-a modern, red brick building.” She was close to smiling at the prospect of being rid of me.
“Why silly me!” I gave a light laugh which tapered off into a most satisfactory “ooo-ooch!” Gripping my hands to my balloon stomach, I rolled my eyes and lolled my head sideways.
Nurse let go of the doorknob in a hurry. “What is it? Do you think you are in labour?” Her eyes were almost kind, but I wasn’t fooled. That was a blackbird brooch protruding from beneath the white cardigan,
“I’ve been having these twinges. Dr. Padinsky says they are warnings, that I must rest.” A small shudder. “Oh, what would he say if he knew I must get into my car and drive when feeling like this?” I addressed her nose. “Would it be possible for me to lie down somewhere quiet? These episodes usually last only half an hour…”
She glanced, furtively it seemed to me, around the antiseptic hall.
“I can’t risk hurting the baby or having Dr. Padinsky cross with us-I mean, me.” Although I had quickly changed that last word, the plural had done its job.
“No, of course not. And we do pride ourselves on our personal approach at The Peerless.” She sounded conciliatory, almost jolly, as she placed a hand on my arm. “This is Dr. Bordeaux’s afternoon off, otherwise I know he would have been only too pleased to examine you.”
“That would have been wonderful.”
The nurse’s strong fingers handcuffed my wrist as she led me under the righthand sweep of stairs into a room that in the days when this was a house and not a nursing home had probably been a parlour. French doors led into the garden, and I could see a corner of the Dower House. With a pang, I thought of Jenny, her invalid mother, and the old nanny. It was easy to say they would all be better off when removed from the doctor’s criminal clutches, but the shock of disclosure would be shattering.
“This is the visitor’s waiting room.” The nurse helped me onto a tweedy brown couch. “I will just take your pulse and blood pressure.”
“Please, I really don’t feel up to that sort of thing.”
“What if I fetch a glass of water?”
“That’s very kind, but I would prefer to be left completely alone for that half hour. I can never relax if I think someone is going to come into the room just as I am drifting off to sleep.”
“Very well.” She straightened an embroidered chair-back, which looked as though it had been an occupational therapy project, and left the room.
I forced myself to wait a full minute after the door clicked shut before tiptoeing up from the couch. The door handle, when I lowered it, made a fearsome noise, but when I pressed an eye to the thin strip of opening, the hall looked deserted. Crossing it, however, was like swimming the channel.
My dash up the stairs to the third floor felt like scaling a wall. Drying my palms on the sides of my coat, I tapped on the door immediately to my left, then, allowing a scant second for a response, depressed the handle. The door didn’t budge.
“Nurse, is that you?” wheedled a voice. “I’ll let you have my sago pudding for a week if you’ll talk Doctor out of giving me any more injections.”
“Hope you’re feeling better, Mrs. Freebrun.” I read her name off the doorplate. Was her door locked because she was an especially difficult patient, clinging obstinately to remorse? Or did she pose a danger to her doctor, should she escape and denounce him as a villain?
I tried the doors of Mary Wallace, Doris Barch, Ida Parkhurst. The same; no admittance. Would I be wasting valuable time were I to attempt a conversation through one of their keyholes? And how could I inspire instant trust?
“Ida, I am a missionary worker. Will you help me reach my daily quota of redeemed souls?”
No answer from Ida, but what was that noise? The handle slid wetly out from my grasp. There it came again, identifiable now as footsteps mounting the stairs. Caught with my neck in the rope. No escape, except by leaping the bannister railing, and I couldn’t take that route; not in my condition. Breaking into a fog of perspiration, I grabbed the next handle down the line, bracing myself for what was to come. Amazingly, this door opened. Quicker than one can say, “Nurse,” I was inside. It was a household cupboard, crammed with mops, buckets, brooms, and the reek of disinfectant.
All this I saw at a glance from the ruddy glow of a cigarette lighter.
“Hello, my love,” said the other occupant of the cupboard placidly.
She was seated on the base of a Hoover, lighting up a cigarette. She looked a nice enough woman, meaning she wasn’t dressed as a nurse, but I eyed her in horror as I pressed a finger to my lips. If the person on patrol smelled smoke or saw it creeping out from under the door, we were done for. The same applied if the fiery tip of the cigarette got any closer and I popped. I held my breath. The lighter snapped shut. The footsteps drew level with the door, then passed on. Tomorrow I would take out stock in disinfectant.
“It’s young Mrs. Haskell, isn’t it? I’ve seen you about in the village.” My companion’s voice spoke into the darkness.
“Yes, and you are…?” The smoke, the close quarters, and the possibilities of the situation were all combining to suffocate me. The lighter flared and I was looking down at a face that might have belonged to a kindly middle-aged sheep.
“Beatrix Woolpack. This is such an unexpected pleasure. Although, come to think of it, you are the second person I have bumped into in this very cupboard. The other was a man named… now what was it? Butcher? Baker?”
“Butler?”
“That’s right.” The fiery tip of her cigarette danced. “He was so interested when I told him about my late husband being a locksmith and how I had worked shoulder-to-shoulder with him all our married life. Sad, isn’t it. To think that all I got out of marriage, other than two quite nice children, was the know-how to get me out of my room here for a change of scene and a Players.”
“Very sad.”
“The same tired old tale, isn’t it, my love. A woman living for her husband by his rules, staying home to raise the children because he said a woman’s place was in the home, and then being slapped with the news that he’d found someone younger, better-looking, and with the gumption to be her own person. The wonder isn’t that I joined The Widows Club, but that more women don’t pawn their engagement rings to have their husbands killed.”
