His last port of call was the Princess Louise Clinic in New Cavendish Street and he was directed by its porter to the nurses’ home. This was a pleasant four-storey Regency house with white pillars flanking a bright blue front door liberally decorated with polished brass. A woman who called herself Home Sister came down to him and, before Loring could speak, she placed one pink finger against her lips.
‘Quiet as a mouse, please. We mustn’t forget the night staff are all getting their beauty sleep, must we?’
There was a deep silence in the hail and a sweet scent far removed from the strong antiseptic of the hospital proper. It made Loring think of young girls, bevies of girls, whose freshly bathed bodies, as they passed through this place, left behind a mingled memory of Jasmine and Russian Leather and French Fern and New Mown Hay. He tip- toed after this stout navy-blue woman, who seemed to him half wardress and half mother superior, into a little lounge where there were chintz-covered chairs and flowers and an old television set.
‘The girl who had the room next to Nurse Culross will be the best one to help you,’ said Home Sister. ‘Her name is Nurse Lewis, but of course it’s out of the question that she should be disturbed if she’s still sleeping.’ She fixed him with a fierce censorious eye. ‘Out of the question,’ she said again. ‘If you were the Home Secretary himself I wouldn’t do it.’ Apparently she was waiting for some show of defiance, and when Loring merely returned her look meekly, she lost some of her asperity and said, ‘I’ll make enquiries but I can’t promise anything. Meanwhile, perhaps you’d care to look at some books.’
By this she meant magazines. The Princess Louise Nurses’ Home was less sophisticated then Vigo’s waiting room and it offered instead of Nova and Elle the Nursing Mirror and two copies of Nursery World which Loring saw were fifteen years old. Left alone, he stared out into the street.
An annexe to the clinic was a maternity hospital, part of it but distinctly separate from the larger building. ‘While he waited, Loring saw a Bentley draw up and a young girl emerged leaning heavily on the arm of her husband. Her body was huge and unwieldy and evidently she was already in labour. Ten minutes passed and a Jaguar appeared. A similar little tableau took place, but in this case the potential mother was older and her maternity dress even more indicative of the couturiere from whom it had come. The Princess Louise Clinic was busily fulfilling its function of replenishing the upper classes.
It was nearly five o’clock before the door opened slowly and Nurse Lewis came to him. Her eyes were heavy and she looked as if she had just wakened. She wore no make-up and she looked spotlessly clean, her blouse stiff and crisp from the launderer, her pale, almost cream-fair hair damp and streaked where a coarse-toothed comb had just passed through it.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve kept you. I’m on nights you see.’
‘That’s all right,’ Loring said. ‘I work nights myself some times. I know what it’s like.’
Nurse Lewis sat down and her bare legs gleamed. Her pink toes were like a little girl’s in a little girl’s sandals.
‘What did you want to know? I talked to the police before.’ She smiled earnestly. ‘I told them all I knew about Bridie Culross, but that wasn’t much, you see. Bridie didn’t make close friends with girls, she was a man’s girl.’
‘I’d like to hear anything you can tell me, Miss Lewis.’ Just let them talk. He had learnt that from Wexford. ‘About what sort of girl she was. She had a lot of boy friends?’
‘Well, this isn’t a teaching hospital so there aren’t any medical students. She’d been here for a year since she qualified and she’s been out with all the housemen.’
Loring wrote that down.
‘The man she was most keen on – well, I never knew his name. She called him Jay.’
‘As if it were an initial, do you mean? Like short for John or James or – Jerome?’
‘I suppose so. I told the police all this before, you know. They weren’t very interested.’
‘You see, we don’t usually bother very much about missing girls.’
‘Why are you bothering now?’
‘Let’s leave that for a moment, shall we, Miss Lewis? Tell me more about this Jay.’
She crossed her long bare legs. ‘I never saw him,’ she said. ‘He was married, I’m afraid. Bridie didn’t worry much about that sort of thing. Oh, and I remember her saying his wife had been a patient here.’
Charming, Loring thought. He visits his sick wife and picks up one of the nurses on his way out.
‘I know what you’re thinking’, said Nurse Lewis, ‘and it wasn’t very nice. He’d got lots of money and a nice car and all that, Bridie…‘ She hesitated and blushed. ‘Well, Bridie lived with him actually.’
‘Lived with him? In his house?’
‘I didn’t quite mean that.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Nurses, who ought to be used to the facts of life, were astonishingly prudish, he thought. ‘Er – she went to spend a weekend with this man on Saturday, May 18th? In Brighton, wasn’t it?’
‘That’s right, with Jay.’ Nurse Lewis was still blushing at the implications of this weekend. ‘She didn’t come back. I heard Matron say she wouldn’t have her back this time if she came.’
‘She’d done it before, you mean?’
‘Well, she’d been late a good many times and sometimes she didn’t bother to come in after a late night. She said she wasn’t going to dress operations and cart bedpans around for the rest of her life. She was going to have it soft. That’s what she said. I thought she’d gone away with- Jay to live with him properly. Well, not properly, but you know what I mean.’
‘Tell me, did he give her presents? Did she have a very good black handbag with a Mappin and Webb label? This one?’
‘Oh, yes! He gave it to her for her birthday. She was twenty-two. Look…’ She frowned and leant towards him. ‘What is this? You’ve found her handbag but you haven’t found her?’
‘We’re not sure yet,’ said Loring, but he was.
Wexford would be displeased if he went back with just this and no more. Loring would have liked another day in London, but it was hardly worth facing Wexford’s rage, the necessary preliminary to granting it. He went into the main hospital building and rang the bell at the enquiry desk. While he waited he looked about him, reflecting that he had never been in a hospital like this one before. His impression was that he was the first person to enter it for a long time with less than five thousand a year and he thought of Stowerton Infirmary where the outpatients sat for hours on hard chairs, where the paint was peeling off the walls and where everyone seemed to be in a hurry.
Here, instead, was an atmosphere of lazy graciousness as in a large private house. A very faint odour of disinfectant was almost entirely masked by the scent of flowers, sweet peas in copper jugs and, on the enquiry desk, a single rose in a fluted glass. The floor was carpeted in dark red Wilton.
Loring glanced up the branched staircase and watched the receptionist descend. He asked for a list of all the patients who had entered the Princess Louise Clinic in the past year and his request was received with a look of outrage.
It took him nearly half an hour, during which he was passed from one official personage to another, before he got the permission he wanted.
The list was long and imposing. Loring had never seen Debrett but he felt that this catalogue might have been a section of it. Nearly half the names on it were preceded by a title and among the plain Misters he recognized a distinguished industrialist, a former cabinet minister and a television personality who was a household word. Among the women was a duchess, a ballet dancer, a famous model. Loring couldn’t find Dorothy Fanshawe. He searched all through the list again because he had been so certain her name would be there. It wasn’t there.
J for Jerome, but J also for John, James, Jeremy, Jonathan, Joseph. Was Bridget Culross’s lover the husband of the Hon. Mrs John Frazer-Bennet of Wilton Crescent or the husband of Lady James Fyne of The Boltons? Loring concluded and supposed Wexford would also conclude him to be the late husband of Dorothy Fanshawe.
Chapter 14
The young Pertwees were honeymooning in Jack’s father’s house. Their own flat wouldn’t be ready for a fortnight and Jack had cancelled the hotel booking. There was nowhere else for them to go and nothing much to do. Jack had taken his annual holiday, so here he was at home. Where else would he be? It was, after all, the only honeymoon he would ever get. Usually in his spare time he did a bit of painting or decorating or went to the dogs or
