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Beck looked at him curiously. He had exceptionally fine eyes, well shaped and very dark. It was a face at once sensuous and refined, but there was something different in the shape of the bones, something indefinably foreign.
“Yes, Inspector?” he said politely.
Jeavis was full of confidence, perhaps remembering Runcorn’s satisfaction.
“You worked with the deceased Nurse Barrymore, didn’t you, Doctor.” It was more of a statement than an inquiry. He knew the answer and his knowledge sat on him like armor.
“I imagine she worked with all the doctors in the hospital,” Beck replied. “Although lately, I believe she assisted Sir Herbert most often. She was extremely capable, far more so than the average nurse.” A flicker of amusement touched with anger curled his mouth.
“Are you saying that the deceased was different from other nurses, sir?” Jeavis asked quickly.
“Of course I am.” Beck was surprised at Jeavis’s stupidity. “She was one of Miss Nightingale’s nurses from the Crimea! Most of the others are simply female employees who clean up here rather than in some domestic establishment. Frequently because to work in a domestic establishment of any quality you have to have references as to character, morals, sobriety, and honesty, which many of these women could not obtain. Miss Barrymore was a lady who chose nursing in order to serve. She probably had no need to earn her living at all.”
Jeavis was thrown off balance.
“Be that as it may,” he said dubiously. “I have a witness who overheard you quarreling with Barrymore a couple of days before she was murdered. What do you say to that, Doctor?”
Beck looked startled and his face tightened minutely.
“I say that your witness is mistaken, Inspector,” he replied levelly. “I had no quarrel with Miss Barrymore. I had a great respect for her, both personally and professionally.”
“Well you wouldn’t say different now, sir, would you, seeing as how she’s been murdered!”
“Then why did you ask me, Inspector?” Again the flash of humor crossed Beck’s face, then vanished, leaving him graver than before. “Your witness is either malicious, frightened for himself, or else overheard part of a conversation and misunderstood. I have no idea which.”
Jeavis pinched his lip doubtfully. “Well that could be the case, but it was a very reputable person, and I still want a better explanation than that, sir, because from what was overheard, it looks very like Miss Barrymore was blackmailing you and threatening to go to the hospital authorities and tell them something, and you begged wi
th her not to. Would you care to explain that, sir?”
Beck looked paler.
“I can’t explain it,” he confessed. “It’s complete nonsense.”
Jeavis grunted. “I don’t think so, sir. I don’t think so at all. But we’ll leave that for now.” He looked at Beck sharply. “Just don’t take it into your head to go for a trip back to France, or wherever it is you come from. Or I’ll have to come after you!”
“I have no desire whatever to go to France, Inspector,” Beck said dryly. “I shall be here, I assure you. Now if there is nothing further, I must return to my patients.” And without waiting to see if Jeavis agreed, he walked past the two policemen and out of the room.
“Suspicious,” Jeavis said darkly. “Mark my words, Evan, that’s our man.”
“Maybe.” Evan did not agree, not because he knew anything, or suspected anyone else, but out of contrariness. “And maybe not.”
Callandra became increasingly aware of Jeavis’s presence in the hospital, and then, with a sick fear, of his suspicion of Kristian Beck. She did not believe for an instant that he was guilty, but she had seen enough miscarriage of justice to know that innocence was not always sufficient to save one even from the gallows, let alone from the damage of suspicion, the ruin to reputation, the fear and the loss of friends and fortune.
As she walked down the wide corridor of the hospital she felt a peculiar breathlessness and something not unlike a dizziness as she turned the corner, and almost bumped into Berenice Ross Gilbert.
“Oh! Good afternoon,” she said with a gasp, regaining her balance somewhat ungracefully.
“Good afternoon, Callandra,” Berenice said with her elegant eyebrows raised. “You look a trifle flustered, my dear. Is there something wrong?”
“Of course something is wrong,” Callandra replied testily. “Nurse Barrymore has been murdered. Isn’t that as wrong as anything can be?”
“It is fearful, naturally,” Berenice answered, adjusting the drape of her fichu. “But to judge from your expression, I thought there must be something new. I’m relieved there is not.” She was dressed in a rich shade of brown with gold lace. “The whole place is at sixes and sevens. Mrs. Flaherty cannot get sense out of any of the nurses. Stupid women seem to think there is a lunatic about and they are all in danger.” Her rather long-nosed face with its ironic amusement was full of contempt as she stared at Callandra. “Which is ridiculous. It’s obviously a personal crime—some rejected lover, as like as not.”
“Rejected suitor, perhaps,” Callandra corrected. “Not lover. Prudence was not of that nature.”
“Oh really, my dear.” Berenice laughed outright, her face full of scornful amusement. “She may have been gauche, but of course she was of that nature. Do you suppose she spent all that time out in the Crimea with all those soldiers out of a religious vocation to help the sick?”
“No. I think she went out of a sense of frustration at home,” Callandra snapped back. “Adventure to travel and see other places and people, do something useful, and above all to learn about medicine, which had been her passion since she was a girl.”
