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But in this case Jeavis was out of his depth, or at least Evan thought so. The medical evidence was fairly clear. Prudence Barrymore had been attacked from the front and strangled to death manually; no ligature had been used. The marks of such a thing would have been plain enough, and indeed the bruises on her throat corresponded to the fingers of a powerful person of average enough size; it could have been any of dozens of people who had access to the hospital. And it was easy enough to enter from the street. There were so many doctors, nurses, and assistants of one sort or another coming and going, an extra person would be unnoticed. For that matter, even someone drenched in blood would cause no alarm.
At first Jeavis had thought of other nurses. It had crossed Evan’s mind that he had done so because it was easier for him than approaching the doctors and surgeons, who were of a superior education and social background, and Jeavis was nervous of them. However, when a large number of the individual nurses could account for their whereabouts, in each others’ company or in the company of a patient from the time Prudence Barrymore was last seen alive until the skivvy found her in the laundry chute, he was obliged to cast his net wider. He looked to the treasurer, a pompous man with a high winged collar that seemed to be too tight for him. He constantly eased his neck and stretched his chin forward as if to be free of it. However, he had not been on the premises early enough, and could prove himself to have been still at his home, or in a hansom on his way up the Gray’s Inn Road, at the appropriate time.
Jeavis’s face had tightened. “Well, Mr. Evan, we shall have to look to the patients at the time. And if we do not find our murderer among them, then to the doctors.” His expression relaxed a little. “Or of course there is always the possibility that some outsider may have come in, perhaps someone she knew. We shall have to look more closely into her character….”
“She wasn’t a domestic servant,” Evan said tartly.
“Indeed not,” Jeavis agreed. “The reputation of nurses being what it is, I daresay most ladies that have servants wouldn’t employ them.” His face registered a very faint suggestion of a smile.
“The women who went out to nurse with Miss Nightingale were ladies!” Evan was outraged, not only for Prudence Barrymore but also for Hester and (he was surprised to find) for Florence Nightingale too. Part of his mind was worldly, experienced, and only mildly tolerant of such foibles as hero worship, but there was a surprisingly large part of him that felt an uprush of pride and fierce defense when he thought of “the lady with the lamp” and all she had meant to agonized and dying men far from home in a nightmare place. He was angry with Jeavis for his indirect slight. A flash of amusement lit him also and he knew what Monk would say, he could hear his beautiful, sarcastic voice in his head: “A true child of the vicarage, Evan. Believe any pretty story told you, and make your own angels to walk the streets. You should have taken the cloth like your father!”
“Daydreaming?” Jeavis said, cutting into his thoughts. “Why the smile, may I ask? Do you know something that I don’t?”
“No sir!” Evan pulled himself together. “What about the Board of Governors? We might find some of them were here, and knew her, one way or another.”
Jeavis’s face sharpened. “What do you mean, ‘one way or another’? Men like the governors of hospitals don’t have affairs with nurses, man!” His mouth registered his distaste for the very idea and his disapproval of Evan for having put words to it.
Evan had been going to explain himself, that he had meant either socially or professionally, but now he felt obstructive and chose to make it literal.
“By all accounts she was a handsome woman, and full of intelligence and spirit,” he argued. “And men of any sort will always be attracted to women like that.”
“Rubbish!” Jeavis treasured an image of certain classes of gentleman, just as did Runcorn. Their relationship had become a mutually agreeable one, and both were finding it increasingly to their advantage. It was one of the few things in Jeavis which truly irritated Evan more than he could brush aside.
“If Mr. Gladstone could give assistance to prostitutes off the street,” Evan said decisively, looking Jeavis straight in the eye, “I’m quite sure a hospital governor could cherish a fancy for a fine woman like Prudence Barrymore.”
Jeavis was too much of a policeman to let his social pretensions deny his professionalism.
“Possibly,” he said grudgingly, pushing out his lip and scowling. “Possibly. Now get about your job, and don’t stand around wasting time.” He poked his finger at the air. “Want to know if anyone saw strangers here that morning. Speak to everyone, mind, don’t miss a soul. And then find out where all the doctors and surgeons were—exactly. I’ll see about the governors.”
“Yes sir. And the chaplain?”
A mixture of emotions crossed Jeavis’s face: outrage at the idea a chaplain could be guilty of such an act, anger that Evan should have said it, sadness that in fact it was not impossible, and a flash of amusement and suspicion that Evan, a son of the clergy himself, was aware of all the irony of it.
“You might as well,” he said at last. “But you be sure of your facts. No ‘he said’ and ‘she said.’ I want eyewitnesses, you understand me?” He fixed Evan fiercely with his pale-lashed eyes.
“Yes sir,” Evan agreed. “I’ll get precise evidence, sir. Good enough for a jury.”
But three days later when Evan and Jeavis stood in front of Runcorn’s desk in his office, the precise evidence amounted to very little indeed.
“So what have you?” Runcorn leaned back in his chair, his long face somber and critical. “Come on, Jeavis! A nurse gets strangled in a hospital. It’s not as if anyone could walk in unnoticed. The girl must have friends, enemies, people she’d quarreled with.” He tapped his finger on the desk. “Who are they? Where were they when she was killed? Who saw her last before she was found? What about this Dr. Beck? A foreigner, you said? What’s he like?”
Jeavis stood up to attention, hands at his side.
“Quiet sort o’ chap,” he answered, his features carefully composed into lines of respect. “Smug, bit of a foreign accent, but speaks English well enough, in fact too well, if you know what I mean, sir? Seems good at his job, but Sir Herbert Stanhope, the chief surgeon, doesn’t seem to like him a lot.” He blinked. “At least that’s what I sense, although of course he didn’t exactly say so.”
“Never mind Sir Herbert.” Runcorn dismissed it with a brush of his hand. “What about the dead woman? Did she get on with this Dr. Beck?” Again his finger tapped the table. “Could there be an affair there? Was she nice-looking? What were her morals? Loose? I hear nurses are pretty easy.”
Evan opened his mouth to object and Jeavis kicked him sharply below the level of the desktop where Runcorn would not see him.
Evan gasped.
Runcorn turned to him, his eyes narrowing.
“Yes? Come on, man. Don’t just stand there!”
“No sir. No one spoke ill of Miss Barrymore’s morals, sir. On the contrary, they said she seemed uninterested in such things.”
“Not normal, eh?” Runcorn pulled his
