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“Well, Sir Herbert was here the day before,” the girl went on. “Naturally, but not through the night.” She looked at the ceiling, her vision inward. “He hardly ever stays all night. He’s married of course. Ever such a nice lady, his wife, so they say. And seven children. Of course he’s a real gentleman, not like Dr. Beck—he’s foreign, and that’s different isn’t it? Not that he isn’t very nice too, and always so polite. I never heard a wrong word from him. He quite often stops all night, if he’s got a really bad patient. That isn’t unusual.”
“And other doctors?”
“Dr. Chalmers wasn’t here. He usually only comes in the afternoon. He works somewhere else in the mornings. Dr. Didcot was away in Glasgow. And if you mean the students, they hardly ever come in before about nine o’clock.” She pulled a face. “If you ask them, they’ll say they were studying, or something of the sort, but I have my own ideas about that.” She let her breath out in a highly expressive little snort.
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p; “And nurses? I suppose nurses could make mistakes too,” Hester pursued it to the end. “What about Mrs. Flaherty?”
“Mrs. Flaherty?” The girl’s eyebrows shot up with a mixture of alarm and amusement. “Oh my goodness! I never thought of her. Well—she and Prudence fairly disliked each other.” She gave a convulsive little shiver. “I suppose either would have been pleased enough to catch the other out. But Mrs. Flaherty is awful little. Prudence was tall, about two or three inches taller than you, I’d say, and six inches taller than Mrs. Flaherty.”
Hester was vaguely disappointed. “Was she here?”
“Yes … she was.” Her face lit up with a kind of glee and then she was instantly ashamed of it. “I remember clearly because I was with her.”
“Where?”
“In the nurses’ dormitory. She was telling them off to a standstill.” She looked at Hester to gauge how far she dare go with her honesty. She met Hester’s eyes, and threw caution to the winds. “Over an hour she was, inspecting everything in sight. I know she had a quarrel with Prudence, because I saw Prudence walk away, and Mrs. Flaherty went to take it out on the nurses in the dormitory. I think she must have got the worst of the argument.”
“You saw Prudence that morning?” Hester tried to take the urgency out of her voice in case she precipitated the girl unwittingly into imagining rather than remembering.
“Oh yes,” she said with certainty.
“Do you know what time?”
“About half past six.”
“You must have been one of the last people to see her alive.” She saw the girl pale and a mixture of fear and sadness cross her young face. “Have the police asked you about it?”
“Well—not really. They asked me if I saw Dr. Beck and Sir Herbert.”
“Did you?”
“I saw Dr. Beck going along the corridor toward the wards. They asked me what he was doing and how he looked. He was just walking, and he looked terrible tired, like ’e’d been up all night—which I suppose he had. He didn’t look furious or frightened like he’d just murdered someone, just sad.”
“Who else did you see?”
“Lots of people,” she said quickly. “There’s lots of people around, even at that hour. The chaplain, and Mr. Plumstead—he’s the treasurer. Don’t know what he was doing here then.” She shrugged. “And a gentleman I don’t know, but dressed smart, like, with brownish hair. He didn’t seem to know his way ’round. He walked into the linen room, then a second later came right out, looking awkward, like he knew he’d made a fool of himself. I reckon he wasn’t a doctor. We don’t get visiting doctors at that time. And he looked sort of angry, as if he’d been crossed in something. Not furious, just irritated.”
She looked at Hester, her face troubled. “Do you think he could be the one? He didn’t look like a madman to me, in fact he looked rather nice. Like somebody’s brother, if you know what I mean? He probably came to visit a patient, and wasn’t allowed in. It happens sometimes, especially if people call at the wrong time.”
“That may be what he was,” Hester agreed. “Was that before or after you saw Prudence?”
“Before. But he could have waited around, couldn’t he?”
“Yes—if he even knew her.”
“Don’t seem very likely, does it,” the girl said unhappily. “I reckon it was more likely one of us here. She quarreled something fierce with Mrs. Flaherty. Only last week Mrs. Flaherty swore either Prudence would have to go or she would. I reckoned it was temper, but maybe she meant it.” She looked at Hester half hopefully.
“But you said you saw Prudence after the quarrel, then Mrs. Flaherty went to the dormitory, where she stayed for at least an hour,” Hester pointed out.
“Oh—yes, so I did. I suppose it can’t have been her.” She pulled a small face. “Not that I really thought it was, for all that she hated Prudence. Not that she was the only one.”
The patient stirred again, and they both stopped and looked at him, but after a muffled groan he sank back into sleep.
“Who else?” Hester prompted.
“Really hated? Well, I suppose Dora Parsons. But she curses at a lot of people, and she’s certainly strong enough to have broken her back, never mind strangled her. Have you seen her arms?”
