by Amy Stewart
With that, the two of us stepped into her office, uninvited, and took our seats. Mrs. Clayton didn’t like that at all. This woman is a battleship, accustomed to giving orders and hearing no guff about it. You know the type—a rather tall, stout, stern-looking woman in her forties, with the kind of broad shoulders and thick arms that come from lifting invalids for twenty years. These nurses know their business when it comes to keeping their patients alive, but that does not make them any sort of criminal investigator.
We made our case, but nothing we said made a difference. After much arguing back and forth, and poring over supply records that might exonerate Aggie, Mrs. Clayton has refused to back down. In fact, she intends to dismiss Aggie from the hospital and send her home in disgrace. Already she’s put someone else in charge of supplies and demoted Aggie to orderly duty.
Aggie is twisted in knots over it, as you can imagine. There’s no one but me to defend her or to say a word on her behalf. She’s too ashamed to tell the other nurses—although they will work it out for themselves, soon enough, when she shows up to work in an orderly’s uniform. But for the moment I’m the only one who knows, which means that I’m also the only one who can speak up for her.
Nothing more is going to happen to her immediately. It’s no simple matter to send a trained nurse back to America—reports must be written, approvals granted, travel passes secured—and that gives us some time.
As Mrs. Clayton is clearly incapable of conducting the simplest of investigations, Aggie and I will pursue other means of establishing her innocence.
As ever,
Norma
P.S. Tell Fleurette to keep sending her jars of this and that to Aggie—she needs it.
Aggie to Constance
September 14, 1918
Dear Constance,
It’s awful of me to pour all my bad news into a letter like this, but you’ve heard the beginning of it and you might as well hear the rest. I’ve been absolutely miserable this week. Another girl is running my supply closet now, while I’m reduced to changing sheets and carrying lunch trays. At first I didn’t want to tell anyone what had happened, but there was no getting around it. The nurses all demanded to know why I was out of uniform and working as an orderly, and I had to confess. The trouble is that I tend to burst into tears every time I try to tell about it, and I’m afraid that only makes me look guilty. My friends at the hospital rush to reassure me, of course, but there’s something else in their reaction—a bit of suspicion, a note of worry. If there’s a thief among us, it’s either me or it’s—well, one of them, isn’t that right?
I don’t accuse them, but an accusation hangs in the air. There’s a distance now, between me and the others. We were in this together before, and that’s what made it possible to carry on, even on the most difficult days. But now I feel like an outsider or, worse, a traitor. I know I’ve done nothing wrong, but can I blame the others for having their doubts? Wouldn’t I have done the same?
Norma has been telling me all about your days of policing and detective work, perhaps hoping that it will shore me up now that I’m in the middle of my own investigation. I’d never have the nerve to chase down a criminal and put him under arrest, but she says you did it all the time! I can only imagine how surprised the criminals were to find a female cop dragging them off to jail. However, I’m not sure I’m made of such sturdy stuff. I’m simply collapsing under the weight of this. Isn’t it strange—I could bear the war, I could bear the men with their legs half-rotted away, their faces burned beyond recognition—but to be falsely accused? It’s too much for me.
Norma, on the other hand, has strength for both of us. She must have something of the lady detective in her just like you do, for she’s already set out a course of action for me. First, she told me that I must determine the nature of the crime, and not to trust Mrs. Clayton’s account of it.
“Always know for yourself what sort of problem you’re dealing with,” she told me. “What exactly has been stolen, and when, and where, and how much?”
This has not been so easy to work out, as Mrs. Clayton refuses to say. I’m left with no choice but to go through patient records and compare what I’ve issued to the nurses against what’s been dispensed to patients (all on my own time, of course). Would you believe it—I did find some discrepancies. Typhoid vaccines in particular are disappearing in large quantities, which is to say that I dispense them as requested, but a rather sizable share of them are never given to patients. I believe we have a similar problem with antiseptics, but it is of course more difficult to judge exactly how much of an antiseptic might be used on a given patient. Other medicines are missing in much smaller quantities that might not be the result of theft but of simple errors or carelessness.
But who would want vaccines and antiseptics? Anyone who hasn’t had a vaccine will get jabbed whether they like it or not. And if someone were wounded, they’d simply come to us for treatment.
No one has a key to the supply closet but me and Mrs. Clayton. I give out supplies three times daily, more often in emergencies. For the rest of my shift, I perform my routine nursing duties and the closet remains locked.
As puzzling as it is, that’s the situation. When I explained it to Norma, here’s what she said:
“Now begin looking for guilty parties. Watch everyone and trust no one.”
I had to explain that it’s simply not in my nature to distrust everyone around me. How could anyone go through life like that?
What do you suppose Norma said? “You don’t have to distrust everyone—only the one stealing the supplies. Whoever’s done this doesn’t deserve your trust.”
Honestly, I don’t know who would steal medicine from sick patients—especially from Americans, come all this way to give their lives for a free Europe.
But what else can I do? Mrs. Clayton is no help. She’s certain that I’m to blame and can’t wait to send me home. I continue to insist on my innocence and demand proof if I’m to be punished. We are, for the moment, at a standstill.
Norma says I can only be cleared of wrongdoing if I apprehend the guilty party myself. “We must take matters into our own hands, you and I,” she tells me.
And so we shall. What choice do I have?
Tendrement—
Aggie
Norma to Constance (enclosed)
September 14, 1918
Dear Constance,
As Aggie has told you, we’re conducting quite the investigation here. I have insisted that Aggie make a list of any and all suspects, and cross them off only when we can definitively say that they couldn’t possibly have stolen the supplies.
Aggie took my advice rather too literally and made a list of everyone who might have the opportunity to pocket a bottle of pills, which turns out to be almost everyone who works in the hospital. I told her that a list like that only tells us who has the opportunity to steal. What we need to know is who has reason to steal. What would be their purpose in snatching medicines from a cart?
This question yielded another list. Aggie is to be commended for her list-making abilities—it speaks to the sort of orderly mind one wants in charge of the supply cabinets. Here is what she put down:
Reasons to Steal from a Hospital
To treat oneself, if one is ailing. (Although if anyone were personally in need of gallons of antiseptic, we would all know it on account of their gaping wound.)
To treat a friend or relation. (But why steal hundreds of vaccines, when one will do?)
To treat an entire village or encampment of refugees. (But if there were so many in need, why not tell the Red Cross about it? It’s what they’re here for.)
You can see, from this short list, that Aggie doesn’t know how to get inside the criminal mind. It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone would steal the supplies for money.
“You mean they’d sell them?” she asked. “But—to whom?”
I told her that there was a way to sell everything in a war: sugar, liquor, tires, and bullets. She
didn’t believe me, particularly about the bullets, so I took her over to Monsieur Paquet’s dry goods store and showed her the scale where he weighs out nails by the pound. A pound of nails makes for a parcel no larger than my fist, and costs only a franc or two. But I’ve seen Monsieur Paquet weigh a parcel of the very same size, and the same weight, but charge ten times as much for it. He’s not even subtle about it: I saw a man walk in and ask for “un petit quelque chose pour les Boches,” as if I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. What other secretive, small, heavy object would he want “for the Germans”?
To confirm my suspicions, I followed him home—the village is only a mile or so in length, so it’s never far to anyone’s house—and stood on the street outside, listening to the unmistakable sounds of a man taking apart and cleaning a rifle.
In case you’re wondering, I didn’t report it. The Germans will surely never make it this far, but if they did, I fully expect them to be defeated by an army of elderly Frenchmen with creaky rifles and pockets full of ammunition.
I told Aggie that I’ve seen no signs of a trade in medical supplies around town, but that we must both watch for it and notice small irregularities of the sort I spotted at the hardware store. Why the hospital administrators haven’t already taken up this line of inquiry is beyond my comprehension.
What I do know is that Aggie is not going home. If they dare to put her on a train, I’ll stand across the tracks myself to stop it.
As ever,
Norma
Norma to Constance
September 16, 1918
Dear Constance,
If we lose the war, it will be due to the auditors. Did you know we had such a species as an Army-decorated American auditor in our midst? What they’re doing skulking around France is anyone’s guess. This is no time for inventories and penny-pinching. We have a war to win, and what we need to accomplish that properly is everything, and then more of everything, and then still more of everything. When America comes to help, she brings her all. There should be no squabbling over it.
But an auditor, we have learned, is the direct cause of Aggie’s misery, and I won’t stand for it.
After a week or two spent dithering over these unfounded accusations, and having no idea how to go about finding the crook—if there is one—Aggie was summoned back to Mrs. Clayton’s office to discuss the plans for her removal and arrangements for sending her home. Aggie was heartbroken and utterly defeated by the prospect. She wanted to go alone to the hour of her humiliation, but you can be sure I wasn’t about to allow that.
Mrs. Clayton leapt to her feet at the sight of me and hollered for me to get out—she fancies herself quite the authority figure, as you will see—on the grounds that Aggie shouldn’t bring “a chum” to work under any circumstance, and particularly to a meeting such as the one that was about to commence.
I told her—and this took her by surprise—that we had further questions about the crimes themselves, and required answers so that we might more quickly locate the real thief.
It was entirely apparent that Mrs. Clayton believed with every fiber in her considerable being that the criminal was seated before us in the person of Aggie Bell. By suggesting otherwise, I believe I left her speechless for a moment.
After some arguing back and forth I was allowed to stay. Mrs. Clayton was, as threatened, preparing papers to send Aggie home. She thrust them across the desk at the poor girl. This sent Aggie nearly into hysterics. It was not a fit of anger, but of weeping and pleading. Mrs. Clayton was entirely unmoved and seemed to want only to tell Aggie of her decision and send her away.
Aggie started to push herself out of her chair, sniffling, but I pulled her back.
“You obviously have it within your power to send Aggie anywhere you like,” I said. “You’ve decided that she’s the guilty party. You’ve refused to say anything about the evidence against her, in the hopes that she’ll break down and confess. But she hasn’t, and she won’t. Now that you’re sending her away, you might as well tell her how this came about.”
That’s when Aggie and I learned, for the first time, about the auditor’s report.
The auditor came and went in July. He scampered around the hospital with his ledger-book and a fistful of pencils, putting bits of adhesive plaster on every shelf as he counted, and not bothering to remove them when he finished, which is to say that for such a meticulous man, he left a mess behind. Aggie recalled his visit but thought nothing of it, as it was a routine matter for someone to come by and inspect her records from time to time.
His findings, we’ve now learned, arrived on Mrs. Clayton’s desk just last week, after having spent most of the summer passing from one officer to another. It’s a good thing that the war isn’t being fought by stenographers and men behind desks, because we’d lose—only in triplicate, and ten years behind schedule.
The auditor found the hospital in good order. The number of beds, linens, chairs, surgical tables, and scalpels were as expected. All manner of equipment could be accounted for and tracked with a high degree of accuracy in the hospital’s inventory. The kitchen was likewise running efficiently, with its pots, spoons, serving trays, plates, and so forth carefully accounted for. The quantity of food ordered was, by his calculations, in keeping with the number of patients fed each month. (If you’re getting bored reading this brief summation, imagine what it was like to sit through Mrs. Clayton’s recitation, line by line. You asked for longer letters—“pages and pages,” you said—so here they are.)
The only discrepancy, he reported, was found in Aggie’s supply closet. The quantity of medicines ordered for the hospital, and dispensed according to Aggie’s own meticulous records, was in excess of those typically required for a hospital of this size. In particular, vaccines and antiseptics were given out at a rate much higher than that seen in other hospitals of the same size. (This, you will recall, is exactly what Aggie found when she undertook a far more painstaking examination of the records, having not been told that the auditor had already reached the same conclusion.)
The auditor finished his report by saying that he could only assume that the supplies were being stolen, and stolen regularly. His recommendation was that the nurse responsible for the supplies be removed from her duties.
When Mrs. Clayton reached the end of the report, she looked up with an air of inevitability. “There, you see? I’ve told you more than I should, but now you have the whole of it. The auditor has made his decision. I’m to bring the matter to a close and report that I’ve done it.”
Aggie was, naturally, stunned to learn all of this. Why hadn’t she been given an explanation before, and a chance to respond?
I could tell that Mrs. Clayton wouldn’t tolerate an argument from one of her staff, but I don’t work for her. There’s only one way to handle a woman who doesn’t like her authority questioned, and that’s to further prop up her authority.
“The auditor seems to think that he runs the hospital, and can hire and fire at will,” I said.
“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Clayton, just as I’d hoped she would. “This is my hospital, and I decide.”
Aggie started to plead for mercy, but I stopped her. She always wants to tug at the heart-strings, but it was obvious to me that Mrs. Clayton doesn’t run the hospital with her heart, nor should she.
“The auditor plainly knows nothing about how a hospital is run,” I said. “He fails to understand that you don’t have one person in charge of supplies, but dozens. Once dispensed, the medicines go out on trays and carts all over the hospital. He seems to think that patients are wheeled directly over to Aggie to be given their pills and injections. He’s either lazy, dim-witted, or inexperienced.”
“All three, I’d say,” pronounced Mrs. Clayton—coming around to my point of view.
“He hasn’t thought it through, and there’s no one to tell him so,” I said. “He hands out these reports and expects them to be obeyed, but what real authority has he, except to write another report?�
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Mrs. Clayton considered that, but then said, “I haven’t the time to prowl around day and night, looking for a thief. I’m expected to write my response and show that I’ve taken care of it.”
“Then put the truth in your report,” Aggie said, quite firm and stalwart, which is the only way to behave at a moment like this. A nurse needs to have some pluck, and I believe Aggie has found hers. “Tell him that you’ve found no wrongdoing on my part, and that the situation is under investigation.”
“You’ve had plenty of time to investigate,” Mrs. Clayton said.
“I’ve had no time at all!” Aggie protested. “Give me two weeks and let me see what I can do. Surely you don’t mean to take the word of an auditor over one of your own nurses!”
Mrs. Clayton sniffed—she doesn’t like to be told what to do—and said, “But when no thief is found—”
I’d had enough by then. I pulled Aggie out of her chair. “There’s nothing so difficult about catching a thief. Criminals aren’t as clever as we make them out to be. Aggie and I will take care of the crook, and you take care of your reports.”
It’s never a good idea to wait for an answer at a moment like that, so I didn’t. We’ve won Aggie a reprieve for the moment. Now to catch our thief.
As ever,
Norma
Fleurette
Chicago, Illinois
Fleurette to Helen
September 26, 1918
Oh, Helen, you just won’t believe it—
There I was, all alone in my room, repairing frayed red piping on the hems of skirts because there is no red piping of this sort to be had any more—it’s out of date and anyway there’s a war on—but Mrs. Ward insists on it, so what was I to do but get out some red thread and bring the poor things back to life.
