George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (8 page)

‘Too complicated?’ she said, not wanting to stop the discussion. This time he seemed to flare up with anger.

‘No!’ He said it so loudly someone at an adjoining table looked over with vague interest. Corton leaned forward to speak more confidentially. ‘Not at all. I understand perfectly well what he’s doing. Dr Zacharius said I was a great help to him. That I — I had some useful ideas and insights. It’s just that — well, it’s
his
research. I shouldn’t really be talking about it.’ He looked at his watch with a rather exaggerated air of hurry. ‘I have to be on my way. I have a list at two-thirty.’ He looked rather pleased with himself suddenly. ‘Yes, a list.’ He caught her gaze and seemed to anticipate the question. ‘Only
varicose veins, worse luck. Still, they have to be done even if they’re not very exciting.’ He stood up. ‘You won’t mind if I go, then? You said you were in a hurry yourself.’

Remembering her lie for the first time she felt her face redden a little. ‘Umm,’ she said. ‘Yes. Must be on my way. Thanks for being so accommodating.’

‘Thank you for my lunch,’ he said and hesitated. ‘And — er —’ He seemed to seize up and she raised her brows at him curiously.

‘Yes?’

‘I just wanted to say that — that I really shouldn’t have said anything about Dr Zacharius and what he’s doing. I mean, I don’t know all about it, and I’m sure he wouldn’t like to think I talked about him, you know.’

‘It’s only about his work,’ she said gently, wanting to reassure him. ‘It’s not personal or anything important.’ But he shook his head vigorously.

‘But what can be more important than a person’s work? It wouldn’t be so bad to talk about him privately, if you see what I mean, but his work … that’s different.’

She found herself warming to him. ‘I guess you’re right. There are people in this place who prefer personal gossip over all other kinds — I’m not averse to a bit of it myself. But you’re right. Work is too important to gossip over. We all talk too much about others as it is.’

‘I’m sure if you ask Dr Zacharius he’ll tell you.’ He sounded eager now. ‘Do ask him.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said dryly. ‘Enjoy your varicose veins.’

He seemed to perk up. ‘Oh, I shall. I always do. Enjoy what I’m doing, I mean. It feels so — so special to be able to do it. Er — so long.’

‘So long,’ she said and let him go, amused. And then was less amused as she thought of how old he’d made her feel.

She sighed and got to her feet as she drained her tepid coffee to the dregs. She’d make a better cup when she got
back to the lab, she promised herself. There was work to be done and she really couldn’t waste any more time thinking about her own affairs like this.

She had reached the doorway and was almost through it when Zack caught up with her. ‘Sorted out your anaesthetic problem?’ he said in her ear. ‘Though quite what pathology has to do with the gasmen I’m not quite sure.’

‘I’m thinking about doing some work on blood gases,’ she snapped, grateful for yet another lie that slid so easily from her lips. It was one of her major gifts, inventing useful fibs in a hurry, and this was one of her better ones. ‘Who else should I ask but an anaesthetist?’

He fell into step beside her and she could do nothing to detach herself from him, apart from speeding up her own stride, which she did. He seemed not to notice.

‘One of the senior people who know more about what they’re doing,’ he said, amusement in his tone. ‘Like Heather Dannay. Or David Denton. Why that little mouse of a houseman? I have to hold his hand all the time.’

She looked at him briefly. ‘He said he worked with you.’ She couldn’t stop her curiosity from bubbling up. ‘How is it
you
need a gasman?’

‘I’m trying implants for various forms of neurological damage,’ he said. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

‘He mentioned it.’

‘He usually does.’ He laughed. ‘He seems rather proud of working with me. It makes a change from mucking about with epidurals in obstetrics and those eternal minor ops lists he gets lumbered with.’

‘Hmm,’ was all she said, and hurried on, but still he had no trouble in keeping up with her.

‘Are you trying to avoid me, George?’ he said rather plaintively after a moment. ‘You go and busy yourself with one of the duller junior doctors on the staff rather than share lunch with me, you’re going like the clappers now to get rid of me — why? What have I done? I thought we were friends.’

She opened her mouth to reply, not at all sure what she was going to say. But she didn’t have to. They were by now crossing the courtyard, and someone was calling her name loudly from Ward Block B, where the surgical wards, including ENT, were.

Gratefully she turned her head to see Jerry Swann running along the walkway to catch up with her. She had never before been so glad to see him and she greeted him with the widest of smiles.

‘Hi, Jerry! What’s up? Something urgent in the mortuary?’ He shook his head, looking at her portentously. She had never seen him so pregnant with news, she thought. ‘What is it, for heaven’s sake? You look as though someone pinched your winning lottery ticket!’

He shook his head. ‘My dear!’ he said dramatically. ‘I’ve just come from seeing Sheila. And the poor creature’s been as sick as a dog, chucking up like fury, and Sister there thinks it was something she got from some chocolates that you — that were sent to her from the department. I mean, poisoned chocolates, would you believe!’

George didn’t know how she reached the ENT Ward. She just found herself sitting there in Sister’s office, looking at the box of chocolate liqueurs on the desk, and trying to think clearly. Once she had seen Sheila with her own eyes, she had felt better; not that the poor woman wasn’t ill. She was. She lay in bed with an IV line up and her head turned to one side on her pillow, her eyes only partially closed — a particularly unnerving feature — but breathing with what appeared to be reasonable regularity.

‘She’s all right, doctor.’ Sister Chaplin, a tall red-headed woman in her forties with a pleasant manner that was very reassuring, had put a hand on her shoulder. ‘She’s going to do, you know.’

‘Do?’

‘Be all right. Get better. She’ll
do
.’

‘Oh. I — But I don’t understand. What happened? And how did you know it was the chocolate that was the cause?’

‘That was sheer luck,’ Sister Chaplin said and then, as Sheila stirred and opened her eyes a little more, leaned over the bed and touched the hand on the counterpane. Sheila subsided and went back to sleep. ‘She’s pretty knocked out,’ Sister said. ‘She had intravenous diazepam to deal with the convulsions she started to have and she won’t wake for a while. Stay with her, nurse, and if you’re at all worried, use
the alarm.’ She peered at the monitor that was bleeping softly beside the bed. ‘Her pulse rate has settled well, and her BP’s about right.’

‘Shouldn’t she be in Intensive Care?’ George asked and Sister Chaplin lifted her brows.

‘No beds available. And she’s fine here with us. I can handle a monitor or two, you know. Don’t you think so?’

‘I’m sorry,’ George said quickly. ‘Of course. It was just that I’m so shocked and so worried about her —’

‘It’s understandable.’ Sister led the way to the door. ‘Come to the office and we’ll talk there.’

So now she sat at Sister’s desk, looking down at the box of chocolates, feeling cold with terror. Jerry had managed to tell her, as she ran — and now she did begin to recall the headlong dash that had brought her here to the ward — that Sheila had been poisoned with what they thought was nicotine and that she had taken it in a chocolate liqueur. And here they were on the desk. She put out one finger to touch the box, but stopped before she reached it and pulled her hand back.

‘It was these chocolates, Sister?’

‘Yes.’ Sister Chaplin looked at them soberly. ‘I brought them in here at once. I — um —’ She lifted her head and looked at George very directly. ‘I was wearing a pair of rubber gloves when I picked them up.’

‘Rubber gloves?’ George said a little dully and felt colder still.

‘I assumed they were evidence,’ Sister said evenly. ‘I imagine you’d know more about that than I would.’

There was a silence and then Jerry spoke. George jumped. She’d forgotten he was there.

‘The card’s on the outside, Dr B.,’ he said. ‘Stuck on with Sellotape.’

She turned her head and stared at him. ‘What card?’

‘You’d better look.’ He was very serious now and she frowned, feeling remote from what was going on. What was happening here? She knew in an intellectual way it was something
of great importance to her personally and yet she was detached and cool as though none of it really mattered.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pen. With the tip of it she flipped over the lid of the box to see the outside. There, as Jerry had said, was a card stuck on by one corner with a piece of Sellotape. She twisted her head to read it.
To help you feel better as soon as possible
, it said in neatly typed letters.
From Dr B. and all in the lab.
And there was an inky squiggle that made George’s eyebrows contract. It looked very like her own initials that she sometimes put at the end of office memos.

‘Who sent this?’ she asked, looking at Jerry.

‘Well, we assumed you did,’ he said after a moment.

There was another silence. George sat and stared at the box, her mind quite blank.

‘It was as well it worked out as it did.’ Sister Chaplin began to speak easily, as relaxed as though they were having a perfectly normal conversation about the weather or something equally innocuous. ‘I had gone into her little side room, after she’d had her lunch, and was chatting to her. She was getting on very well — her throat was still a bit sore from the smoke she’d inhaled in the fire, but her respirations were clearing nicely. Mr Selby had said she could go home tomorrow. The box arrived — it was wrapped in coloured paper. I have it here.’ She looked to the table on the far side of the office and indeed there was a sheet of torn bright red and blue wrapping paper. ‘I brought that in afterwards, too. I only touched the corner. Anyway, she offered me one and I said I wouldn’t as I hadn’t been to lunch yet, and she said come in after I get back and have one then. She said she loved chocolate liqueurs and that you knew that and that was probably why you’d sent them. To —’ She coughed. ‘To make amends for the way you’d been treating her.’

‘The way I —’ George began, but Sister Chaplin shook her head.

‘That was all she said and of course I didn’t ask her to say
any more. In fact I dropped the subject as I don’t like talking about the medical staff. And I know that Sheila — well, we all know Sheila.’

‘Yes.’ George looked up at her. She had a friendly look on her face, but there was, George thought, another look behind the agreeable mask; a considering stare. Is she wondering whether I wanted to poison Sheila? Ye Gods. She opened her mouth to speak but Sister Chaplin hurried on.

‘So she took one and chewed it up as I tidied her bed and she made a face and said, “My God, that tastes disgusting! It’s so bitter! Is she trying to tell me something?” And she made as though to spit it out. I thought she was feeling sick and held out a kidney dish, which was just as well, and she spat out the chocolate. But she’d swallowed some and her eyes began to water and she said, “It’s burning, oh, my God, it’s burning,” and began to retch.’

‘She looked ghastly.’ Jerry was speaking now, with a certain note of relish in his voice. ‘I’d just arrived to visit her, on my way to lunch, you see, and I was saying, “Greedy old you, let me have one,” when she started to choke and be sick. It was awful.’

‘We got the matter sorted out quickly.’ Sister Chaplin was all calmness again. ‘We put out a crash call and various people came, including Mr Selby. He says he thinks it might be nicotine from the smell.’ Sister wrinkled her nose at the memory. ‘I could only smell a rather fishy sort of odour, but he seemed to be quite certain it was nicotine. Said he’d smelled it before, so we did the fastest stomach washout we could, though she was vomiting so hard it was very difficult — and of course we wanted her to vomit, best thing for her. Then her pulse went into a very rapid mode, so Mr Selby gave her some intravenous atropine and diazepam, as I said, because she started to convulse. We set up the heart ABC monitors as there wasn’t a bed available in ITU, and they sent us a special nurse for her. It was all sorted in a matter of half an hour or so.’ There was a note of pride in her voice at
her ward’s efficiency, as indeed there was every right to be, George thought. And she said as much.

‘She was lucky you were there and saw what happened.’

‘Yes,’ Sister Chaplin said in the same even voice. ‘I think she was. If I hadn’t been there, able to act quickly, I doubt she’d have survived. It seems to me there was a lot of poison in the chocolate.’

‘But who would send her such a thing?’ George cried. She turned and stared at Jerry. ‘You can’t think I would!’

‘I did wonder,’ Jerry said candidly, after a moment. ‘I mean, she’s been driving you up the wall one way and another, hasn’t she? Sheila can be a real vixen when she gets in the mood and she’s been in it a long time now. But then I thought, and I’ve been thinking it ever since, that you’re not the sort to kill people, you just bawl at ’em. You might even throw things or hit them if you got mad enough, but you wouldn’t go in for killing. And even if you did, if you really wanted to polish someone off, you’d do it well, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t go in for something as daft as this, where you could be caught out by the first person who came along, because you’d signed the poison with your own initials. It doesn’t make sense, not with someone as clever — and as well informed — as you are. So I’m sure it’s not you.’

He stopped and looked at Sister. She gazed back at him and then he grinned at George a little shamefacedly. ‘Though I have to tell you, Dr B., there’ll be enough people around here who will believe it. You know what they’re like.’

‘Yes,’ George said. ‘I know what they’re like. But meanwhile thanks for your vote of confidence. Even if it is a bit back-handed.’