‘And I reckon,’ said Burden, ‘Mr Wexford is stuck in it.’
‘My God, you don’t mean it, sir?’
‘Give me that phone. D’you realise he’s been in there nearly two hours? Give me that phone.’
It was afternoon visiting at Stowerton Infirmary. It was also consultants’ day. That meant an exodus of hundreds of cars which the woman on traffic patrol usually controlled efficiently. Today, however, a huge bluish- green car with battered fins, parked half across the drive, blocked the exit. It was locked, keyless, immovable, and behind it a traffic jam stretched nose to tail from the car park.
In vain four ambulance men had tried to lift it and hump it against the gate of the porter’s lodge. Presently Vigo, the orthodentist, got out of his own car to lend a hand. He was bigger and more powerful than any of the ambulance men, but all their combined efforts couldn’t shift it.
‘Probably belongs to someone visiting a private patient,’ said Vigo to the consultant gynaecologist whose car had come to a standstill behind his.
‘Better get a porter to ring the private wing.’
‘And fast,’ said Vigo. ‘These people ought to be shot. I’ve got an appointment at four.’
And it was five to when Nurse Rose knocked on Mrs Fanshawe’s door. ‘Excuse me, Mr Jameson, but your car’s blocking the drive. Could you move it please? It’s not just visitors that want to get out.’ Her voice took on an awed tone. Outrage had been committed. ‘Personal request of Mr Vigo and Mr Delauney. So if you wouldn’t mind…’
Michael Jameson got up languidly. ‘I don’t know these guys.’ He gave Nurse Rose a long appraising look. ‘But I wouldn’t want you to get in bad with them, sweetheart. I’ll shift it.’
Nora Fanshawe touched his sleeve. ‘You’ll come back for me, Michael?’
‘Sure, don’t fuss.’ Nurse Rose opened the door for him and he walked out ahead of her. ‘Dead bore, this hospital visiting,’ the women in the room heard him say.
Mrs Fanshawe had painted her face for the first time since regaining consciousness. Now she touched up her thin lips with scarlet and rubbed at the eyeshadow which had settled in greasy streaks into the folds of her lids. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well what, Mother?’
‘I take it you’re going to marry that waster?’
‘I am and you’ll have to get used to it.’
‘Your father would never have allowed it if he were alive,’ said Mrs Fanshawe, twisting her rings.
‘If my father were alive, Michael wouldn’t want to marry me. I wouldn’t have any money you see. I’m being quite frank with you. I thought that’s what parents wanted, frankness from their children.’ She shrugged and flicked a fair hair from the shoulder of her blue suit. Her voice was ugly, stripped bald of convention and pretence. ‘I wrote to him and told him my father was dead.’ She laughed. ‘He came down here like a shot. I’ve bought him,’ she said. ‘I tried the product and liked it and now I’m going to keep it. The principle is that of the mail order catalogue.’
Mrs Fanshawe wasn’t shocked. She hadn’t taken her eyes from her daughter’s face and she hadn’t flinched. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I can’t stop you. I won’t quarrel with you, Nora.’ Her voice didn’t waver. ‘You’re all I’ve got, all I’ve ever had.’
‘Then there is no reason why we shouldn’t be a happy little family, is there?’
‘A happy family! Frank you may be, but you’re deceiving yourself. He’s got his eye on that nurse already.’
‘I know.’
‘And you think you’ve bought him!’ All Mrs Fanshawe’s self-control couldn’t stop the bitterness breaking through. ‘Buying people! You know where you get it from, don’t you? Your father. You’re your father all over again, Nora. God knows, I tried to keep you innocent, but he taught you, he taught you people could be bought.’
‘Oh, no, Mother,’ said Nora Fanshawe equably. ‘You taught me. Shall we have some more tea?’ And she rang the bell.
At four-fifteen the lift slid down to the ground floor. The door began to slide and Burden felt sick, his bowels turned to water. He couldn’t look. The two engineers came down the stairs, running.
The foyer was full of people. Grinswold, the Chief Constable, Inspector Lewis and Letts, Martin, Loring, Camb and, nearest the lift, Dr Crocker.
The door was open. Burden had to look. He stepped for ward, pushing people aside.
‘Gangway!’ said the doctor.
Wexford came out, grey in the face, the doctor’s arm about his shoulders. He took two heavy steps.
‘Bricked up,’ he said, ‘like a bloody nun!’
‘God, sir. Are you all right?’
‘It’s all in the book,’ Wexford gasped. ‘I’ve got it all down in the book. Nothing…’ he said, ‘nothing like a rarefied atmosphere for making the brain work. Cheaper than going up Everest, that lift.’
And then he collapsed into the sling Crocker and Letts made with their arms.
‘I’m just going off duty,’ said Nurse Rose, ‘and the night staff are in the kitchen, so you won’t mind finding your own way, will you?’ She peered at him in the dim light of the corridor. ‘Didn’t you come visiting Mrs Fanshawe? I thought so. You’ll know where to go, then. He’s in room five, next door but one to hers.’
Burden thanked her. Turning the corner, he came face to face with Mrs Wexford and Sheila.
‘How is he?’
‘He’s fine. No after-effects. They’re only keeping him in for the night to be on the safe side.’
‘Thank God!’
‘You really care about poor old Pop, don’t you?’ When she smiled, he could have kissed her, she looked so like her father. Crazy, really, that this enchanting perfect face was the copy and the essence of the heavy wrinkled face that had been haunting him all the time he had made out his arrest and read out the charge. He didn’t want to seem sentimental and he managed a cheerful grin. ‘He’s dying to see you,’ she said. ‘We were just a stop- gap.’
Wexford lay in bed in a room that was just like Mrs Fanshawe’s. He had an old red checked dressing gown across his shoulders and a fuzz of grey hair showed between the lapels of his pyjama jacket. A grin curled the corners of his mouth and his eyes snapped.
Tip-toeing, Burden crossed to the bed. Everyone in hospital tip-toes, except the staff, so he did too, glancing nervously about him. The cooking smell and the disinfectant smell with which the corridor was redolent were drowned in here by the carnations Mrs Wexford had brought her husband.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Perfectly all right, of course,’ Wexford said impatiently. ‘All those damned flowers. Makes the place look like a chapel of rest. I’d come out now only that bloody Crocker and his henchmen keep getting at me, sapping my strength.’ He sat up with a jerk and scowled. ‘Open that beer, will you? Sheila brought those cans in for me. She’s a good girl, chip off the old block.’
Burden rinsed the glass from Wexford’s supper tray and from the washbasin took the toothglass for himself. ‘A private room, eh? Very grand.’
Wexford chuckled. ‘Not my idea, Mike. They were heading for the general ward when Crocker remembered Monkey Matthews was in, having his veins done. We came to the conclusion it might be an embarrassment for him after I did him a couple of years ago for stealing by finding. Don’t worry, I’ll take care to tell him what saving his face has cost me.’ He looked round him complacently. ‘Eight quid a day, this room. Good thing I wasn’t in that lift any longer.’ He drank his beer, wiped his mouth with a man-size Kleenex. ‘Well, have you done the deed?’
‘At five-thirty.’
‘Pity I wasn’t there.’ Suddenly he shivered. ‘The skin of my teeth…’ Then he laughed. ‘Teeth!’ he said. ‘That’s funny.’
Footsteps that didn’t tip-toe sounded outside and Crocker marched in. ‘Who gave you leave to have a booze- up?’
‘Sit down, not on the bed. Nurse Rose doesn’t like it. We were just going to have a post-mortem. Interested?’
The doctor fetched himself a chair from the empty room next door. He flopped into it. ‘I’ve heard who it is over the grapevine. By God, you could have knocked me down with a feather.’
