“No one else was in the infirmary overnight?” Jasper asked.
“No one,” the matron answered. She and Tinsdale turned a corner into a short extension off the main corridor. A uniformed constable sat in a chair, arms crossed over his chest and chin tucked. Asleep, it appeared.
“Constable,” Tinsdale barked in reprimand. The young man leapt to his feet so quickly he nearly knocked over the chair.
“Sir.” The constable’s glazed eyes rounded in further mortification as he saw the Scotland Yard detectives they’d been waiting on.
Matron Westover brought out a key from the chatelaine at her waist and unlocked the door. She stood aside, allowing them to enter first. The large open space held several beds in an orderly line along a wall of windows, some partitioned off by privacy curtains. Several paraffin lamps had been lit in preparation, allowing Jasper to see the nurse immediately; she’d come to rest on the floor between two of the beds, one of which looked to have been knocked askew. A small table at the foot of that bed had been overturned, folded linens spilled onto the floor.
She lay on her front, one arm raised by her head and the other tucked down by her hip. As he approached, he noted the pool of blood in which she lay. It was dark and viscous. It had been nearly twelve hours since she’d been discovered, and the ashen pallor of her skin reflected that.
“Why did the telegram to Scotland Yard arrive so late in the afternoon?” Jasper asked as he observed the body and the evidence of a struggle surrounding it. The pushed-aside bed, the streaks of blood upon a white blanket, apparently transferred from the dying nurse when she reached for it.
“Apologies, Inspector. I’d spent the night at my brother’s home in Putney, a few towns over from here,” Sergeant Tinsdale said. “It took some hours for my constables to reach me andadditional time for me to return and view the body. And then, the telegraph line out of the constabulary was down. It took some time to repair.”
In a small town like Twickenham, only a few police officers were typically stationed there at any one time. Jasper nodded, annoyed but understanding that they couldn’t operate as fastidiously as a larger London division could.
“Matron Westover,” Jasper said, turning. He’d thought she would be in the room with them, but instead, she lingered by the open door. She swiped at her cheeks as if to brush away tears.
“I’m sorry, Matron, but I have to ask: Who discovered Nurse Radcliff?”
“Nurse Peters,” she said, her chin trembling briefly before she took a breath and composed herself. “She resides in town and usually comes in at eight o’clock in the morning to relieve Nurse Radcliff from her shift.”
“Why wasn’t she here at eight today?” Jasper asked.
“Her son has been ill this week. Pneumonia. I’ve allowed her to come in at ten o’clock the last few days. When she arrived today” The matron didn’t finish her sentence. It wasn’t necessary. Nurse Peters had found Nurse Radcliff on the floor, dead.
Jasper crouched by the body. The back of her dress was blood-soaked, and as the blood had dried, the light gray cotton had turned dark red and brown. He counted four visible entry points—inch-long tears in the fabric—where a knife, slim by the looks of it, had been plunged into her back.
“Looks like she might have struggled with her killer,” Lewis observed from where he stood at the victim’s feet. “Knocked a few things over as they fought.”
“Was a weapon found?” Jasper asked, directing the question to either Tinsdale or Matron Westover—whoever could answer first.
“I saw none,” the matron replied, her voice quavering.
“We searched the orphanage over,” Tinsdale reported. “Nothing, sir.”
The killer must have taken it with him or her then.
Jasper straightened. “When was the last time Nurse Radcliff was seen alive, and by whom?” He directed this question specifically to the matron, who was still hovering near the door. She clearly did not wish to be any closer to the dead nurse, though he didn’t sense it was out of disgust. Her fair cheeks were damp, her large eyes shimmering with more tears.
“Miss Jones, one of our teachers, came to the infirmary at midnight for some headache powder. She said Nurse Radcliff was rocking little Vinny to sleep in the chair.” She gestured toward a rocking chair beside a baby’s crib. Vinny was the ill two-year-old witness, he presumed. “Miss Jones stayed a few minutes before returning to her room.”
He looked to Tinsdale. “You spoke to Miss Jones?”
The sergeant nodded. “She was in shambles when I did.”
Jasper wanted a look at her room and her clothes for any evidence of blood. No one could be ruled out as a suspect at this point.
“Would she have had any reason to harm Nurse Radcliff?”
Though he hadn’t asked this of Matron Westover, she stepped forward. “Of course she wouldn’t. What an awful question, Inspector. Everyone here adored Aunt Charlotte?—”
Her voice squeezed off, and she brought her hands up to cover her face as it crumpled.
Jasper exchanged a glance with Lewis, then asked the matron, “Nurse Radcliff is your aunt?”
She sniffled and nodded, again trying to compose herself. This tearful state was likely a show of too much emotion for her. As matron of an orphanage, she would be looked to as an example of strict and stern consistency.
