Dover was never one to get his priorities wrong. He grabbed Dr Moreton yet again by the lapels and shook him vigorously. ‘If you call me constable again, laddie, I’ll ram your teeth down your throat! I’m a bloody Detective Chief Inspector and if you know which side your bread’s buttered on you’ll remember it!’ He released his hold on Dr Moreton’s jacket in such a way that his head struck the wall with quite a loud thwack. Dr Moreton accepted the assault without protest. After what he’d gone through, who cared about the odd bump? ‘Now,’ thundered Dover, ‘for the last time, what’s going on in this mad house?’
‘It’s my fool of a secretary,’ explained Dr Moreton, rubbing the back of his head. ‘She was in the office just now—about half an hour ago—and she answered the telephone. As far as I was able to tell it was a perfectly ordinary sort of call— something about somebody wanting to come and see me. Anyhow, ordinary sort of call or not, as soon as she put the phone down she went berserk.’ Dr Moreton pondered over his choice of words. ‘Yes, I think that’s an accurate description: she went berserk. My laboratory is in a sort of wooden hut thing out at the back of the hospital,’ he went on. ‘We’ve been promised new buildings—the working conditions are quite deplorable, you know—but I’ll believe that when I see them. Well, she shot out of the laboratory building and raced across here to the main building. I saw her from the office window. No hat, no coat, nothing. It was tippling down, too, absolutely tippling. Well, I didn’t know what to do. I suppose I should have run after her but . . . ’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You never know what to do with women when they fly off the handle like that, do you? Well, I just stood there at the window for about five minutes or so, thinking she might just—well— sort of run back again and there’d be some perfectly reasonable explanation and that would be that. Then I saw the nurses starting to come across to the hospital from their quarters. They change shifts at half past two, you know. Well, I was still standing there watching them, you know how it is, when I saw one or two of them start looking up at the top floor of the hospital-where we are now, as a matter of fact. Then they started pointing and before you could say Florence Nightingale there was a whole crowd of them, squawking away like a farmyard full of hens. Oh, I knew then what it was—what it must be.’ He chewed his thumbnail in anguish. T had a premonition, you see. Well, I left my office and went outside to see what all the fuss was about. Of course as soon as they saw me they all came twittering round like a flock of blooming sparrows and it was ages before I could get to the bottom of it. Then I found one young lady who could speak reasonable English —and that was a piece of luck—and I looked where she was pointing and, damn me, there she was!’
‘There who was?’ asked Dover.
‘Mildred, my secretary. Who else? She’d climbed out on to the roof of the hospital, right up on top, you understand. Made my flesh creep just to see her. Well, the next thing we saw was a lot of heads poking out of the windows. It looked as though the entire staff of the hospital, to say nothing of the patients, had got wind of what had happened and . . . ’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Dover interrupted him. ‘Can’t you cut it short a bit?’ The Chief Inspector didn’t go much on standing around in draughty corridors.
Dr Moreton looked annoyed. In certain medical circles he had quite a reputation as a raconteur. ‘She’s still out there,’ he said, jerking his head sulkily, ‘standing on a piece of decaying guttering, midway between two windows and out of reach of both of them. In answer to inquiries she says she is going to kill herself and she threatens that if anybody tries to get out on the roof with her she’ll jump.’
Dover slumped against the wall and brooded over what he had been told. Down the corridor the comings and goings, the chirruping, the excited girlish giggles continued unabated. Who was looking after the patients, for God’s sake? Suddenly his face brightened. That just showed you how run down he must be, didn’t it? All this had damn-all to do with him! He was investigating a murder case.
‘Well,’ he observed cheerfully, ‘it’s all very interesting but it’s not my affair, thank God! Now, do you think we could go back to your office because I’ve got a few questions to ask you and it’s not very convenient here, is it?’ He scowled at the pack of nurses. ‘Too much blooming noise.’
Dr Moreton didn’t understand. Dover, getting brusque, explained.
‘But I can’t just clear off and leave her out there on the roof!’ protested Dr Moreton, showing considerable horror at the mere suggestion. ‘She is my secretary, after all.’
‘I don’t give a hoot if she’s your grandmother!’ snapped Dover. ‘If she wants to jump, let her! I haven’t got time to waste hanging around while a nutcase like that makes her blooming mind up.’
‘You don’t mean that, I’m sure,’ said Dr Moreton with a fatuous smile. ‘I’m certain that if a kindly, fatherly sort of man like you were to have a few words with her she’d soon come back to her senses. I’ll bet you’ve talked potential suicides round dozens of times in your career. It just needs somebody with the knack, that’s all.’
‘You’, said Dover with unpardonable bluntness, ‘must be as stupid as you look. I’ve got more important things to do than spend my time chatting up dizzy birds on roofs.’ He chuckled.
