Copyright

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Collins Crime Club 2018

Copyright © Stella Duffy and the Estate of Ngaio Marsh 2018

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photograph © Hayden Verry/Arcangel Images

Stella Duffy and Ngaio Marsh assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008207106

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008207120

Version: 2018-02-01

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Cast of Characters

Map

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Acknowledgements and Author’s Note

About the Authors

The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries

Also by Stella Duffy

About the Publisher

Map

Mount Seager Hospital and the surrounding area

CHAPTER ONE

At about eight o’clock on a disarmingly still midsummer evening, Mr Glossop telephoned from the Transport Office at Mount Seager Hospital to his headquarters twenty miles away across the plains. He made angry jabs with his blunt forefinger at the dial—and to its faint responsive tinkling an invisible curtain rose upon a series of events that were to be confined within the dark hours of that short summer night, bounded between dusk and dawn. So closely did these events follow the arbitrary design of a play that the temptation to represent Mr Glossop as an overture cannot be withstood.

The hospital, now almost settling down for the night, had assumed an air of enclosed and hushed activity. Lights appeared behind open windows and from the yard that ran between the hospital offices and the wards one could see the figures of nurses on night duty moving quietly about their business. Mingled with the click of the telephone dial was the sound of distant tranquil voices and, from the far end of the yard, the very occasional strains of music from a radio in the new army buildings.

The window of the Records Office stood open. Through it one looked across the yard to Wards 2 and 3, now renamed Civilian 2 and Civilian 3 since the military had taken over Wards 4–6 and remade them as Military 1, 2, and 3. Those in Military 3 were still very ill, those in Military 1, their quarantine and spirits up, were well into the restlessly bored stage of their recuperation. Each ward had a covered porch, and a short verandah at the rear linking it to the next ward. Before each verandah stood a rich barrier of climbing roses. The brief New Zealand twilight was not quite at an end but already the spendthrift fragrance of the roses approached its nightly zenith. The setting, in spite of itself, was romantic. Mr Glossop, however, was not conscious of romance. He was cross and anxious and when he spoke into the telephone his voice held overtones of resentment.

‘Glossop speaking,’ he said. ‘I’m still at Mount Seager Hospital. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times, they ought to do something about that van.’ He paused. A Lilliputian voice reaching him from a small town twenty miles away quacked industriously in the receiver. ‘I know, I know,’ said Mr Glossop resentfully, ‘and it’s my digestion that’s had to take it. Here I am with the pay-box till Gawd knows when and I don’t like it. I said I don’t like it. It’s OK, go and tell him. Go and tell the whole bloody Board. I want to know what I’m meant to do now.’

A footfall, firm and crisp, sounded on the asphalt yard. In a moment the stream of light from the office door was intercepted. The old wooden steps gave the slightest creak and in the doorway stood a short compact woman dressed in white with a veil on her head and a scarlet cape about her shoulders. Mr Glossop made restless movements with his legs and changed the colour of his voice. He smiled in a deprecating manner at the newcomer and he addressed himself to the telephone. ‘That’s right,’ he said with false heartiness. ‘Still we mustn’t grumble. Er—Matron suggests I get a tow down with the morning bus … Transport Driver … No, it’s—it’s,’ Mr Glossop swallowed, ‘it’s a lady,’ he said. The Lilliputian voice spoke at some length. ‘Well, we hope so,’ said Mr Glossop with a nervous laugh.

‘You will be quite safe, Mr Glossop,’ the woman in the doorway said. ‘Miss Warne is an experienced driver.’

Mr Glossop nodded and smirked. ‘An experienced driver,’ he echoed, ‘Matron says, an experienced driver.’

The telephone uttered a metallic enquiry. ‘How about the pay-box?’ it asked sharply.

Mr Glossop lowered his voice. ‘I’ve paid out, here,’ he said cautiously. ‘Nowhere else. I should have been at the end of the rounds by now. Tonight, I’ll watch it,’ he added fretfully.

‘Tell him,’ the Matron said tranquilly, ‘that I shall lock it in my safe.’ She came into the office and sat at one of the two desks. She was a stocky woman with watchful eyes and a compassionate mouth.

Mr Glossop finished his conversation in a hurry, hung up the receiver and got to his feet. His tremendous circumference rose above the edge of the table and was rotated to face the Matron. He passed his hand over his face, glanced at it and pulled out a handkerchief. ‘Warm,’ he said.

‘Very,’ said the Matron. ‘Nurse!’

‘Yes, Matron?’ A very small figure in a blue uniform and white cap rose from behind the second desk where she had been studiously avoiding overhearing Mr Glossop’s telephone call.

‘Hasn’t Miss Farquharson got back yet?’

‘No, Matron.’

‘Then I’m afraid you must stay on duty until either she or Miss Warne returns. I wish to speak to Miss Farquharson when she comes in.’

‘Yes, Matron,’ said the small nurse in a very small voice.

‘I’m extremely annoyed with her. And now I want you to telephone Mr Brown’s grandson. Mr Sydney Brown. The number’s on the desk there. Mr Brown has asked for him again. He could come out on the next bus but it would be quicker if he used his own car, and possibly safer as there’s every chance we’ll have a storm to break this weather before the evening’s out. Tell him, as plainly as you can, that his grandfather is adamant he sees him, and time is not on his side. I really do think young Mr Brown ought to have visited before now.’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘Somebody very sick?’ asked Mr Glossop, opening his eyes wide and drawing down the corners of his mouth.

‘Possibly dying. It must be said, we have expected this for weeks and the gentleman seems to rally every time. It cannot go on though, and it’s very important to the old man that he sees his grandson,’ said the Matron crisply before turning back to the nurse and adding, ‘Father O’Sullivan is cycling over from visiting a local parishioner to sit with old Mr Brown, make sure he finds me as soon as he arrives, will you? He arranged this visit a few days ago, but I’d like to update him on the old gentleman’s condition first. Now come along with me, Mr Glossop, we’d better lock up that money of yours. Is there much?’

‘It’s all in the box,’ he said, and lifted a great japanned case from the floor. ‘Should have been empty by now, you know. Four more staffs are paid off after I leave here. As it is—’

‘Mount Seager Hospital speaking,’ said the little nurse into the telephone. ‘I have another message for Mr Sydney Brown, please.’

‘Just on a thousand,’ said Mr Glossop behind his hand.

‘God bless my soul, of course I understood you were carrying payrolls for several locations, but that is an enormous responsibility,’ rejoined the Matron.

‘Exactly what I’m always telling Central Office,’ Mr Glossop replied, glad to have the Matron’s understanding.

They went out to the steps. The little nurse’s voice followed them: ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Not long, Matron says … Yes, he’s asked for you again.’

‘Just along here,’ said the Matron.

Mr Glossop followed her down the yard that formed a wide lane, flanked on one side by offices, each with its distinguishing notice, and on the other by the wards set at intervals in sun-scorched plots, their utility gloriously interspersed by the roses which so recklessly floundered over the barb wire fences in front of the connecting verandahs. From the covered porch of each ward came a glow of diffused light. The asphalt lane was striped with warmth. The usual tang of mountain air was missing in the sultry evening and the subdued reek of hospital disinfectants seemed particularly strong to Glossop’s sensitive nose.

As they drew level with Military 1, the porch door slammed open and in a moment a heavy figure in nurses’ uniform flounced into the yard. A chorus of raucous voices yelled in unison: ‘And don’t let it occur again.’

The nurse advanced upon Mr Glossop and the Matron. Her face was in shadow, but her glasses caught a gleam of reflected light. A badge of office which she wore on the bosom of her uniform was agitated and her veil quivered. She took two or three short steps and stopped, clasping her hands behind her back. In the ward the raucous voices continued in a falsetto chorus: ‘Temperatures normal! Pulses normal! Bowels moved! Aren’t we lucky?’

‘Matron!’ said the stout nurse in an agitated whisper. ‘May I speak to you?’

‘Yes, Sister Comfort, what is it?’

‘Those men—in there—it’s disgraceful. This entire notion of allowing them leeway now that they’re recuperating—’

‘Is a well-proven method for speeding up recovery. Rest and silence, Sister Comfort, is the old-fashioned way, the men benefit tremendously when we give them something to think about that is neither their illness nor their return to the war. Distraction is a nurse’s best ally. However, I do agree there’s far too much noise,’ the Matron nodded. ‘Will you excuse us, Mr Glossop?’

Mr Glossop moved away.

‘Now, Sister,’ said Matron.

‘It’s disgraceful,’ Sister Comfort repeated in a grumbling voice. ‘I’ve never been treated like it in my life before. The impertinence!’

‘What are they up to?’

‘Temperatures normal! Pulses normal! Bowels moved! Aren’t we lucky?’

‘Just because I happened to pass the remark when I’d been round the ward,’ Sister Comfort said breathlessly. ‘They turn everything I say into ribaldry. There’s no other word. I can’t speak without them calling after me like parrots. And another thing, three of them are still out.’

‘Which three, Sister?’

‘Sanders, Pawcett and Brayling, of course. They had leave to go as far as the bench at the main gate.’ Sister Comfort’s voice trailed away on a note of nervousness. There was a brief silence broken only by the Matron.

‘I thought I had made it quite clear,’ Matron said, ‘that they were all to be in bed by seven. Distraction by day, rest by night, you know the rules.’

‘But, I can’t help it. They won’t obey orders,’ complained Sister Comfort.

‘They’re getting better,’ Matron said, ‘and they’re bored.’

‘But how can I keep order? Almost ninety soldiers and hardly any trained nurses. The VADs are not to be trusted. I know, Matron. I’ve seen what goes on. It’s disgusting.’

‘Nurse! Come over here and hold my hand,’ sang the patients.

‘There!’ cried Sister Comfort. ‘And the girls go and do it. I’ve seen them. And not only that—that Farquharson girl in the Records Office—’

‘Nursey, Nursey, going to get worsey.’

‘Come and hold my hand.’

‘Where is Sergeant Bix?’ asked the Matron.

‘Several of the men are due to be discharged this weekend coming and he has a huge amount of paperwork to get through before he can let them go. He’s not much use anyway, Matron, in my opinion, far too warm with the men. They’re the worst lot of patients we’ve ever had. Never in my life have I been spoken to—’

‘I’ll report you to Matron,’ said an isolated falsetto. ‘Call yourselves gentlemen? Well!’

‘Did you hear that?’ Sister Comfort demanded. ‘Did you hear it?’

‘I heard,’ said Matron grimly. The chorus was renewed. She folded her hands lightly at her waist and with an air of composure walked through the porch doors into the ward. The chorus faded away in three seconds. The isolated voice bawled a final line and died out in a note of exquisite embarrassment. Mr Glossop, who had hung off and on in the doorway to Matron’s office, approached Sister Comfort.

‘She’s knocked them,’ he said. ‘She’s a corker, isn’t she?’ He waited for a reply and getting none added with an air of roguishness: ‘It’s a wonder she hasn’t made some lucky chap very happy, isn’t it?’

With a brusque movement Sister Comfort twisted her head so that the light from Matron’s office fell across her face. Mr Glossop took a step backwards and then checked as if in surprise at himself.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Sister Comfort harshly.

‘Nothing, I’m sure,’ Mr Glossop stammered. ‘Nothing at all. You looked a little pale, that’s all.’

‘I’m tired out. The work in that ward’s enough to kill you. It’s the lack of discipline. They want military police.’

‘Matron’s fixed them for you,’ said Mr Glossop, and recovering from whatever effect he had experienced he added in his fat and unctuous voice: ‘Yes, she’s a beautiful woman, you know. Not appreciated.’

‘I appreciate her,’ said Sister Comfort loudly. ‘We’re very friendly, you know. Of course, in public we have to be formal—Matron and Sister and all that—but away from here she’s quite different. Quite different.’

‘You’re privileged,’ Mr Glossop murmured and cleared his throat.

‘Well, I think I am,’ Sister Comfort agreed, more amiably.

The Matron returned and with a brisk nod to Mr Glossop led the way into her office. After they had left her, Sister Comfort stood stock-still in the yard, her head bent down as if she listened attentively to some distant, almost inaudible sound. Presently, however, she turned into Military I but went no further than the porch; standing there in a dark corner and looking out obliquely across the yard at the Records Office. A few moments later a VAD scurried out of the ward. She experienced what she afterwards described as one hell of a jolt when she saw Sister Comfort’s long heavy-jowled face staring at her out of the shadow.

‘Doing the odd spot of snooping, that’s what she was up to, the old stinker,’ said the VAD. ‘She’s got a mind like a sink. And anyway,’ the VAD added complacently, ‘my fiancé’s in the air force.’

CHAPTER TWO

Matron took a key from her pocket and opened the safe.

Mr Glossop hesitated and she looked to him, ‘Yes?’

‘Are you quite sure you don’t have a single spare tyre out here, Matron?’

‘As I told you earlier, Mr Glossop, on both occasions that you asked, we do not. There are two spare tyres for the transport bus, that’s all. You know as well as I do that the bus is far bigger than your van, the tyres simply won’t fit. We’ve all had to make sacrifices for the war, up-to-the-minute repairs and plenty of extras in stock being just two of them.’

‘If you say so,’ he grumbled.

She looked at Glossop’s pay-box, sizing it up with a practised eye. ‘I’m afraid that great case of yours is too big,’ she said. ‘Try.’

Mr Glossop approached the japanned box to the safe. It was at least three inches too long.

‘Oh, Lord!’ he said. ‘Things have been like that with me all day.’

‘We shall have to find something else, that’s all.’

‘It’ll be all right. I won’t let it out of my sight, Matron. You bet I won’t.’

‘It’ll be out of your sight when you’re asleep, Mr Glossop.’

‘I won’t—’

Matron shook her head. ‘No. I can’t take the responsibility. We’ll give you a shake-down in the anteroom to the Surgery. I don’t expect you’ll be disturbed, but we can’t have the door locked, our medicines are stored in there and I can’t guarantee something won’t be needed in the night. The money’s done up in separate lots, isn’t it?’

‘It is, yes. I’ve got it down to a system. Standardized rates of pay, you know. I could lay my hand on anybody’s pay with my eyes shut. Each lot in a separate envelope. My system.’

‘In that case,’ said Matron briskly, ‘a large canvas bag will do nicely.’

She took one, folded neatly, from the back of the safe. ‘There you are. I’ll get you to put it in that and you’d better watch me lock it up.’

With an air of sulky resignation, Mr Glossop emptied one after another of the many compartments in his japanned box, snapping rubber bands round each group of envelopes before he stowed them in the bag. The Matron watched him, controlling any impatience that may have been aroused by the slow coarse movements of his hands. In the last and largest compartment lay a wad of pound notes held down by a metal clip.

‘I haven’t made these up yet,’ Mr Glossop said. ‘Ran out of envelopes.’

‘You’d better count them, hadn’t you?’

‘There’s a hundred, Matron, and five pounds in coins.’ He wetted his thumb disagreeably and flipped the notes over.

‘Dirty things,’ said the Matron unexpectedly.

‘They look lovely to me,’ Mr Glossop rejoined and gave a stuttering laugh.

He fastened the notes, dropped them in the bag and shovelled the coins after them. Matron tied the neck of the bag with a piece of string from her desk. ‘Wait a moment,’ she said. ‘There’s a stick of sealing-wax in the top right-hand drawer. Will you give it to me?’

‘You are particular,’ sighed Mr Glossop.

‘I prefer to be business-like. Have you a match?’

He gave her his box of matches and whistled between his teeth while she melted the sealing-wax and sealed the knot. ‘There!’ she said. ‘Now put it in the safe, if you please.’

Mr Glossop with difficulty compressed himself into a squatting posture before the safe. The light from the office lamp glistened upon his tight greasy curls and along the rolls of fat at the back of his neck and the bulging surface of his shoulders and arms. As he pushed the bag into the lower half of the safe he might have been a votary of some monetary god. Grunting slightly he slammed the door. Matron, with sharp bird-like movements, locked the safe and returned the key to her pocket. Mr Glossop struggled to his feet. ‘Now we needn’t worry ourselves,’ said Matron.

As she turned to leave, the little nurse from the Records Office appeared in the doorway. ‘Yes?’ Matron said. ‘Do you want me?’

‘Father O’Sullivan has come, Matron.’

Beyond the nurse stood a priest with a nakedly pink face and combed-back silver hair. He carried a small case and appeared impatient to see the Matron.

‘Excuse me, Mr Glossop, this is quite urgent, you know. I’ll send someone to fetch you to the Surgery anteroom,’ Matron said, and folding her hands at her waist walked out into the yard leaving Mr Glossop wiping his brow at the exertion he had just endured. He heard their voices die away as they moved off in the direction of Mr Brown’s private room.

‘… not long …’

‘… Ah … such a time … Is he …?’

‘… Very. Failing rapidly, but then he does keep rallying. It can’t possibly go on, of course. I’m not one to believe in miracles, although with the storm …’

The telephone in the Records Office pealed and the little nurse hurried back to answer it. To Mr Glossop her voice sounded like an echo: ‘… Mr Brown’s condition is very low,’ she was saying. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so … failing rapidly.’

Mr Glossop gazed vacantly across the yard at Military 1. His attention was arrested by something white that shifted in the porch entrance. He moved a little closer and then, since he was of a curious disposition and extremely short-sighted, several paces closer still. He was profoundly disconcerted to find himself staring up into Sister Comfort’s rimless spectacles.

‘Beg pardon, I’m sure,’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t know—getting dark, isn’t it? My mistake!’

‘Not at all,’ said Sister Comfort. ‘I could see you quite clearly. Good night.’

She stalked off, down the steps and along the yard, no doubt to harangue yet another benighted soldier, and Mr Glossop turned away with elephantine airiness.

‘Now what the hell,’ he wondered, ‘is that old cow up to?’

While Matron took Father O’Sullivan to minister to Mr Brown, Mr Glossop spent the next twenty minutes fidgeting and worrying in her office. He sat first in the chair opposite Matron’s desk, a lower chair than the one behind her desk, ideal for chastising foolhardy young nurses and miscreant soldiers, he assumed. He loosened his tie still further and rolled up the sleeves of his creased shirt. ‘Too damn hot by half,’ he thought, hoping Matron was right and the storm that had been threatening for days would finally make its way over the mountains tonight, clearing the air. ‘Not too wet though,’ he added to his wishes, ‘that damn bridge is worrisome enough, without the river rising as well.’ The chair creaking beneath his weight, he struggled to his feet and paced several times around Matron’s office. With effort, he bent down and tried the handle on the safe, reassuring himself that it was secure. He looked outside again, across to the row of wards and along the collection of offices hoping that Matron might be on her way back. He wanted someone to sort him out with that cot for the night, he wanted to get some sleep, and above all, he wanted to be on his way with his stack of cash, far too much money to be sitting way the hell out here, locked safe or no.

Wiping his brow and muttering dire imprecations against the weather, the Central Office, the roads and the general state of the nation in wartime, he sat down again, this time in Matron’s own chair. Her desk was covered in papers and he absent-mindedly flicked through them, misplacing the carefully-ordered typed pages of accounts and the hand-written notes.

He shook himself when he realized what he’d done, he’d hate to get in Matron’s bad books and he replaced the sheets carefully one on top of the other, grumbling to himself, ‘If I don’t get away from here at the crack of dawn there’ll be hell to pay, four more rounds to do. Four more and all of them to be paid before Christmas Day with the shops closing up soon enough and turkeys and stuffing and whatnot to cross off the lists. Hell to pay. None of it down to me, not a bit. I told them that old banger had no more in her. If I said it once, I said it a dozen times. I need a new van and hang the expense. Well, now they know the cost.’

Matron checked her watch as she returned to her office. A lovely silver watch, held on an elegant bar, it was given to her by a young man she’d known long ago. He had shyly offered it up just before he left for the last war, the one they had promised would end them all. They had been wrong and the young man had not returned. Not a day passed that she didn’t think of him, and not in a foolish way either, she admitted to herself, standing at the door to her office looking at the dozing irritant that was Mr Glossop, seated in her own chair. With a start, she noticed the papers on her desk had been moved, she crossed to the desk and, making no attempt to keep quiet for the sleeping interloper, she gathered the papers together, settling them once more with a satisfying thump.

‘Well, there we are,’ Glossop woke with a start, pretending he had only closed his eyes for a short while. ‘And how’s it with—you know, the fellow who’s—’

‘Dying?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s the—and the priest chap?’

‘Father O’Sullivan is with him now.’

‘Oh I see,’ Mr Glossop said disapprovingly, ‘All the Catholic doings, smells and bells and that carry on, is it?’

‘Not at all, Father O’Sullivan is an Anglican priest,’ Matron replied, attempting to squash his interest with the look that had her young nurses quaking and, to her chagrin, appeared to further encourage Mr Glossop.

‘Right you are, Matron, I’m sure you’ll tell me when I’m over-stepping bounds. I like a woman who knows her own business.’

Matron decided to ignore him. ‘It’s just gone eight-thirty, Mr Brown’s grandson is coming in on the nine o’clock transport. I hope he makes it in time. You’ll have to excuse me now, Mr Glossop, I’ve work to do.’

Glossop looked at the desk in front of him and realized that the papers he’d been fiddling with had been tidied out of his reach and that he himself was in Matron’s seat.

‘Yes, yes of course. You don’t want a spot of company? Someone to help you go through all those figures? Tricky stuff, numbers, and I’ve a good eye for accuracy, that’s why they gave me the job, of course. You’ve got to have a trusted man on the pay round.’

‘Thank you, but no,’ she cut him off. ‘If you head next door to the Records Office, the young nurse there will take care of you. She knows where the cots are kept and where you’re to sleep and I dare say she’ll be happy to show you to the kitchen. You’ll have to fend for yourself, mind you, our kitchen staff are daily and they left on the last transport back to town. Goodnight, Mr Glossop.’

Knowing himself dismissed, Glossop reluctantly left Matron’s office and went out into the darkening night. And it was still too damn hot by half.

CHAPTER THREE

At nine o’clock Red Cross Transport Driver Sarah Warne swung the Mount Seager bus round Gold’s Corner into the last stretch of the route, known locally as the Long Leg. From Gold’s Corner to the bridge the Long Leg ran straight for fifteen miles across the plains towards the foothills. Before the blackout she used to be able to see the hospital lights for the whole way but since Japan came in the front windows had gone blank. In the aftermath of twilight Sarah could just make out a black mass of buildings against the royal texture of the hills. Behind the hills, the main range, touched on its pinnacles with perpetual snow, awaited the night against a luminous sky. Although the sun was now below the horizon the cusp of Mount Seager was tinctured miraculously with clear rose. The windscreen of the bus framed a vast landscape quite free of human interest, unscarred by human occupation, moving because of its remoteness.

The road was unsealed and from time to time pieces of shingle flew up and banged against the floor of the bus. Sarah knew where the worst pot-holes lay but could not always avoid them. Every time they bumped across a gap or skidded in loose shingle the VADs screamed cheerfully, if a little less loudly than usual because of the young man who sat beside Sarah in the front seat. This was Mr Sydney Brown and they all knew that he was going up to the hospital because his grandfather had been asking for him for weeks and now the old man was nearing the end. Sarah spoke to him once or twice but whatever her observation his replies could be guessed before they were uttered. ‘It is, too,’ ‘I couldn’t say,’ ‘That’s right,’ he said in offended undertones. Sarah thought that perhaps, unlike her, he had not yet seen death at first hand and was sorry for him.

The mountains assumed an incredible depth of blue and the foothills turned more darkly purple. Their margins, folded together in a pattern of firm curves, were faintly haloed with light. The road ran forward into nothingness. The plains on either side of the road and stretching out behind them had taken on a bleached look, seeming to fade rather than to darken as night fell, turning the whole scene into an other-worldly monochrome. Sarah watched the road and her petrol gauge. With one layer of her mind she attended to her job, with another she saw that the landscape was quite beautiful, and with yet another she hunted for things to say to Mr Sydney Brown, or shout to the VADs. Further back, in a hinterland of half-conscious thoughts she wondered if Dr Luke Hughes would come into the Transport Office for his letters that night when she had sorted the mail she carried in addition to her passengers. This last conjecture gradually took precedence in her mind so that when unexpectedly Mr Sydney Brown spoke of his own accord, it was a second or two before she realized that he was joining in conversation with the VADs.

‘Lordly Stride,’ said Sydney Brown.

‘I beg your pardon?’ cried Sarah.

‘Lordly Stride came in and paid a record price,’ said Sydney. ‘I heard it on the air while I was waiting for the bus. Rank outsider.’

An instant babble broke out in the bus.

‘She’s done it! That’s Farquharson’s horse. That’s right, it’s her horse!’ And then the attenuated inevitable coda to most of the VADs’ dialogues: ‘Thass raht.’

‘What are you all talking about?’ Sarah demanded. She was answered immediately by each of her eight passengers. Miss Rosamund Farquharson, the Records Office clerk who usually worked days, had swapped her duty for the overnight shift, and had gone to the races down-country. She had travelled into town on the morning bus and told everybody she was going to back Lordly Stride in the last race. ‘We all said she was mad,’ the VADs explained, but the truth was Rosamund Farquharson was in a mess and needed the money, so much so that what might have felt like a steep gamble to her colleagues had seemed a genuine lifeline when she laid the bet, fingers crossed and whistling hope.

‘You are a lot of gossips,’ Sarah said mildly.

‘It’s not gossip, Transport,’ shouted one of the VADs. ‘She tells everybody about it. She’s not fussy, she doesn’t care who knows. That dress she bought for the races—well, bought! She said herself there was only one shop left where they’d give her credit.’

‘She’s mad,’ said a small nurse profoundly.

‘I’ll say.’

‘Did you hear about her and old Comfort?’ asked a solo voice.

‘Eee—yes!’ the chorus chanted.

‘No. What?’ the nurse demanded.

‘She caught Rosie kissing one of the boys when she brought the mail round.’

‘She’s mad.’

‘Comfort or Rosie?’

‘Both.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘But Roz is being a fool to herself.’

‘No need to ask which of the lads it was.’

Mr Sydney Brown cleared his throat. The voices faltered and were obliterated by the grind of tyres on shingle, body rattles from the bus, and by the not inconsiderable racket of the engine. Sarah began to wonder uneasily on the subject of their discussion. She was surprised to discover in herself a violent distaste for this gossip about Rosamund Farquharson; surprised, because their friendship was a casual affair based on a similarity of experience rather than of taste. They had met properly in the Mount Seager Records Office. Each of them had returned to New Zealand after a long absence in England but while Miss Farquharson perpetually bewailed the lost gaieties of her glorious existence in the London of art school and galleries, Sarah tried very hard to avoid such lamentations. Since the outbreak of war she too had suffered from a painful nostalgia for the old days. Where Rosamund had attended art school, Sarah had three years at Oxford and one at a dramatic school under her belt, in addition to another two years spent struggling to find small pickings in indifferent companies. While Rosamund’s memories were constantly invoked in a rose mist of past bliss, Sarah’s were solid and genuine. After exhausting months in weekly rep, in the farthest flung corners of what her parents’ generation of New Zealanders still referred to as ‘Home’, Sarah eventually fluked her way into a West End production and the most poignant of all her recollections were of London. She was called back to New Zealand for a family crisis when her younger sister became ill. The sister had been expected to recover, but her shocking and sudden death made it impossible for Sarah to leave their widowed mother alone in New Zealand. With a sensation of panic, she had stayed on, and then she was trapped by the war.

‘You’re lucky to have got away. England’s a good country to be out of now,’ the Mount Seager day porter once said, and Sarah had enormously warmed to Rosamund Farquharson when the usually cynical and smart blonde replied fiercely, ‘Do you like to keep clear when your best friends are against it? I should think not. And nor do we.’

A little self-righteously, perhaps, they had formed an alliance. They had few tastes in common. Rosamund had been given two years at the London art school by a generous English aunt. She had, it appeared, been hailed back to New Zealand by her parents upon distracted representations made by this same aunt. Her interests were focused so ruthlessly on young men that she had the air of being a sort of specialist. The leap from small town New Zealand and the humble abode of a school teacher’s family to Bloomsbury studio parties, had reacted upon her like the emotional equivalent of an overdose of thyroid gland. Rosamund had listened first with bewilderment, then with encouragement and finally with the liveliest enthusiasm to monotonous conversations about eroticism, at that time the fashionable topic among art-students. She quickly collected an amazing jargon and a smattering of semi-technical information which, like some precocious reincarnation of the Ancient Mariner, she was quite unable to keep to herself. Rosamund was given to using tediously blasphemous and indecent language, and her favourite recreation was a process she called ‘waking up the old dump’. At first Sarah had a notion that most of Rosamund’s dissipations ruled these purple patches to her telling of them; but with the appearance of Private Maurice Sanders among the recovering men of Military 1 she was obliged to change her opinion.

‘This time,’ Sarah thought with a sigh, ‘I’m afraid she is doing an odd spot of the bonnet-and-windmill business. And with Private Sanders! How she can!’

She switched on her headlamps. About two hundred yards ahead the Long Leg ended abruptly. They had reached the edge of the plains. A great river made its exit from the mountains a mile or two to the west, flowing down from the foothills. With the sheer banks of the riverbed the plains ended as sharply as if they had been sliced away by a gargantuan knife, the foothills rising steeply above and the mountains proper beyond. Sarah changed down. The Long Leg dived into a precipitous cutting and finished emphatically at the deep chasm of the river. The wheels of the bus rattled across the wooden planks of the old bridge. The headlamps found white painted rails and uneven planking, loose boards clattering ominously beneath the weight of the bus. Sarah heard one of the VADs say to another, ‘I hate this part of the trip, the bridge is far too rickety for my liking.’

‘I’ll say,’ her pal replied, ‘and that wooden rail wouldn’t stop a dog from falling in, let alone this bus.’

They giggled nervously as Sarah changed down again and in the split-second while the gears were disengaged the voice of the river could be heard, a vast cold thunder among boulders below the high bridge. As they reached the far side vague shapes of trees and a roof appeared against the steep hill to their left.

‘You can hardly see Johnson’s pub in the blackout,’ said a cheerful VAD.

‘Awkward for Private Sanders,’ said the small nurse. There followed a subdued tittering.

‘I reckon he could find it blindfold.’

‘Shut up. You’re not supposed to know.’

‘Poor old Farquharson.’

With a vicious jab, Sarah sounded the horn. The VADs screamed in unison.

‘What’s that for, Transport? Have we run over anything?’

‘A reputation,’ said Sarah.

After a final short, steep climb she pulled the bus carefully into the hospital driveway and parked with a shout to the VADs to remember that Matron expected the patients in bed and sleeping by now, and not to disturb them. She turned her attention to young Sydney Brown. With a sudden wave of sympathy she saw the hospital as he must see it, not the ramshackle collection of well-worn buildings she had come to know and value as a genuine place of sanctuary for damaged civilians and out-of-place servicemen. To Sydney Brown the scent of carbolic, the hush now that they were between the wild river and the immense reach of the mountains up ahead, this must have felt a place of foreboding, a dark and jumbled site where his grandfather lay dying. She smiled kindly at him, hoping he could see her in the reflection from the headlamps, bouncing off the back of the storeroom and the boilerhouse, the peeling paint on the old weatherboards even more obvious in the light from the headlamps than during the blistering heat of the day.

‘I’ll take you to Matron, shall I, Mr Brown? We can get you a cup of tea and then in to see your grandfather. I know Father O’Sullivan was expected, so—’

Her voice petered out. What more was there to say?

‘I don’t want tea, I’ll just see the old man.’

Sydney Brown was up and out of his seat, down the steps, and waiting.

Sarah took out her torch, turned off the headlights, and nodded, pocketing the keys. ‘Yes, of course, come along.’

Mr Glossop’s slow, heavy tread had not long retreated back across the asphalt yard when Matron heard the rattle and squeak of the nine o’clock transport rolling up the driveway and into the parking area. The VADs would take a few minutes to sort themselves out from the journey. Sarah Warne was a sensible girl, one of the few she could rely upon, which meant she had a moment to gather her thoughts before she was needed to brief the night staff with Sister Comfort.

Retrieving the paperwork she had hurriedly tidied out of Mr Glossop’s reach, she looked through the papers. Surely he wouldn’t have pried into her private correspondence? She frowned, because that was exactly the kind of behaviour she’d expect of the infuriating fellow. Even so, he wouldn’t have had time to look through them thoroughly. She sat forward in her chair and spread out the papers before her. Almost twenty-five years here at Mount Seager and, while there had been difficult years, in particular during the influenza epidemic after the last war, when she was a newly appointed ward sister and they had been stretched far beyond their capacity, both to care and to cope, things had never before come to this. The bill for roof repairs to the Surgery was two months overdue. After a dreadfully wet winter, they simply hadn’t been able to risk the old corrugated iron roof any longer, it was bad enough in any other ward, but a serious health hazard in the Surgery. A third letter from the local bakery, with a curt note attached from Elsie Pocock, a woman she had known her whole life, and now Matron found herself crossing the road in town to avoid speaking to her. Two further angry demands for payment, one from the farmer who supplied sides of beef ‘at cost!’ as he reminded her in the letter, ‘at cost!’, and another from the milk factory. The extra beds, the military wards commandeered when the men were sent home with scarlet fever and polio, the more serious complications of burns and amputations for the poor lads who would be forever scarred, all of it meant added work for a dwindling staff as ever more of them left to help the war effort themselves. Every day there were extra patients to feed and laundry bills rising through the rusting roof and the men in charge up in Wellington seemed to have no idea at all how their plans affected ordinary people out in the rest of the country. Her creditors had been patient at first, everyone was having to do more on far less in wartime, but time was running out. Matron would have the respite of the Christmas break, with all but the farmers stopping work for a few days, come January however, she would need to pay up, something had to give.

Matron took up her pen and paper and began composing a letter. As she did so she continued her train of thought. If she had been as flighty as young Rosamund Farquharson, silly girl spoiling herself with Sanders, she’d have put money on one of the sure-fire bets the men in Military 1 were so keen on, but Isabelle Ashdown had never laid a bet in her life, not even as a young nurse when all of her fellow trainees put a penny each into the sweepstake on who would be the first to bag a doctor husband. She thought then that betting on men was foolish and gambling on horses even more so, and nothing in the subsequent years had proved her wrong. She frowned, until a month or so ago, she might have thought Dr Luke Hughes could be persuaded to turn on the requisite charm. She had warmed to the young man as soon as he arrived. They had enjoyed several late night conversations, and Matron found his approach to his work both modern and a welcome tonic for the hospital. A sherry party at Christmas had often resulted in a New Year windfall to the hospital donation fund, especially if a handsome young doctor could be persuaded to work his magic, but Dr Hughes had been distracted lately, even a little brusque once or twice, she didn’t trust his ability to elicit generous donations from frosty older ladies. She shuffled the papers back into a neat pile, and wished, not for the first time, that she might fold away her concerns as tightly as the hospital corners she still prided herself on, decades after her initial training, faster and sharper than any of her nurses. Her worries were interrupted by a low rumble of thunder, high up in the mountains and then another soon after, this one much closer.

Matron finished and signed her letter and waited a moment for the ink to dry. She was about to fold it into an envelope when she had another thought and added a post-script, initialling this part of the letter with a flourish, adding it to her pile to be sorted later. Then she stood, the old floorboards creaking in the heavy evening heat, and reached around the safe to pick up a rusted tin bucket. She carefully placed it beneath the worst of the gaps in the old roof that was the only protection afforded her office against the elements, so many years of being over-heated in summer and chilled to the bone in winter, so many years of tidying up others’ mess. She would have to tell the night staff to ready their pails and mops, she doubted that even that latest crack of thunder would be warning enough for them, giddy as they were about the coming Christmas festivities. Many, she knew, had been wishing for a good storm to clear the air, but Matron knew a good storm meant only that a fierce light would be shone on the deficiencies of her hospital. She felt inside her pocket, checked that the safe key was there, warm and protected. She turned off the lamp on her desk. She had her torch in her other pocket and there was no sense risking rain getting through and onto a live electrical wire. She walked out into the night, a smattering of stars were just visible through the rapidly gathering clouds. It was still unbearably hot, but finally the cicadas were silent. The storm would be upon them soon.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.