A Sudden, Fearful Death

by Anne Perry

  “Perhaps if anybody’s attentions had been welcome, she’d have let him know it,” Evan suggested, ignoring the last question and keeping his eyes wide open, his expression innocent.

  Runcorn was thrown off balance. He had never known exactly what to make of Evan. He looked so mild and inoffensive with his long nose and hazel eyes, but seemed always to be on the brink of amusement, and Runcorn was never comfortable with it, because he did not know what was funny.

  “Do you know something, Sergeant, that you haven’t told us?” he said tartly.

  “No sir!” Evan replied, standing even more upright.

  Jeavis shifted his weight to the other foot. “She did have a visitor that morning, sir, a Mr. Taunton.”

  “Did she?” Runcorn’s eyebrows rose and he jerked forward in his chair. “Well, man! What do we know about this Mr. Taunton? Why didn’t you tell me about this in the first place, Jeavis?”

  “Because he is a very respectable gentleman,” Jeavis defended himself, keeping his temper with difficulty. “And he came and went again inside ten minutes or so, an’ at least one of the other nurses thinks she saw Barrymore alive after Mr. Taunton left.”

  “Oh.” Runcorn’s face fell. “Well, make sure of it. He might have come back again. Hospitals are big places. You can get in and out of them easy enough. Just walk in off the street, seems to me,” he said, contradicting his earlier statement. Then his expression sharpened. “Haven’t you got anything, Jeavis? What’ve you been doing with your time? There’s two of you. You must have learned something!”

  Jeavis was aggrieved. “We have learned something, sir,” he said coldly. “Barrymore was a very bossy, ambitious sort of a person, always giving orders to other people, but very good at her job. Even them that liked her least gave her that. Seems she used to work a lot with Dr. Beck—that’s the foreign doctor—then she switched to working mostly with Sir Herbert Stanhope. He’s the head of the place and a very fine doctor. Has a spotless reputation both as a surgeon and as a man.”

  Runcorn’s face twitched. “Of course he has. I’ve heard of him. What about this Beck fellow? She worked with him, you say?”

  “Yes sir,” Jeavis replied, his smooth features taking on a satisfied look. “He is a different matter altogether. Mrs. Flaherty—she’s the matron, a superior sort of person, I judged—she overheard Beck and Barrymore quarreling only a few days ago.”

  “Did she indeed?” Runcorn looked better pleased. “Can’t you be more exact, Jeavis? What do you mean a ‘few days’?”

  “She wasn’t sure, or I’d ’ave said,” Jeavis responded sourly. “Two or three. Seems days and nights all melt into one another in a hospital.”

  “So what did they quarrel about?”

  Evan was growing more and more uncomfortable, but he could think of no reasonable protest to make, nothing they would listen to.

  “Not certain,” Jeavis replied. “But she said it was definitely a powerful difference.” He hurried on, seeing Runcorn’s impatience growing. “Beck said ‘It won’t get you anywhere,’ or something to that effect. And she said that if there was no other course open to her she’d have to go to the authorities. And he said ‘Please don’t do that! I am quite sure it will gain you nothing, in fact it will harm you if anything.’ ” He ignored the smile on Evan’s face at the “he said” and “she said,” but his neck grew pinker. “And she said again as she was determined, and nothing would put her off, and he begged her again, and then got angry and said she was a foolish and destructive woman, that she risked ruining a fine medical career through her waywardness, but she just shouted something at him and stormed out, slamming the door.” Jeavis finished his account and looked squarely at Runcorn, waiting to see the effect his revelation had had upon him. He totally ignored Evan, who was keeping sober-faced with an effort.

  He should have been well pleased. Runcorn sat bolt upright, his face glowing.

  “Now there you have something, Jeavis,” he said enthusiastically. “Get on with it, man! Go and see this Beck. Pin him down. I expect an arrest within days, with all the evidence we need for a conviction. Just don’t spoil it by acting precipitately.”

  A flicker of uncertainty crossed Jeavis’s black eyes. “No sir. It would be precipitate, sir.” Evan felt a twinge of sympathy for Jeavis. He was almost certain he did not know the meaning of the word. “We have no idea what the quarrel was about—” Jeavis went on.

  “Blackmail,” Runcorn said sharply. “It’s obvious, man. She knew something about him which could ruin his career, and if he didn’t cough up, she was going to tell the authorities. Nasty piece of work, all right.” He snorted. “Can’t say I grieve much when a blackmailer gets killed. All the same, can’t let it happen and get away with it, not here in London! You go and find out what the blackmail was about.” His finger jabbed the desk once more. “Look to the man’s history, his patients, his qualifications, anything you can. See if he owes money, plays fast and loose with women.” His long nose wrinkled. “Or boys—or whatever. I want to know more about the man than he knows himself, do you understand?”

  “Yes sir,” Evan said grimly.

  “Yes sir,” Jeavis agreed.

  “Well, get on with it then.” Runcorn leaned back in his chair, smiling. “Get to work!”

  “Now then, Dr. Beck.” Jeavis rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. “A few questions, if you please.”

  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.”

  Berenice tossed her head in laughter, a rich gurgling sound. “You are naive, my dear! But by all means think what you will.” She moved a little closer to Callandra, as if to impart a confidence, and Callandra caught a breath of rich musky perfume. “Have you seen that fearful little policeman? What an oily creature, like a beetle. Have you noticed he has hardly any eyebrows, and those black eyes like stones.” She shuddered. “I swear they look just like the prune stones I used to count to know my future. You know, tinker, tailor, and so on. I am quite sure he thinks Dr. Beck did it.”

  Callandra tried to speak and had to swallow an obstruction in her throat.

  “Dr. Beck?” She should not have been surprised. It was only her fear spoken aloud. “Why? Why on earth should Dr. Beck have—have—killed her?”

  Berenice shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps he pursued her and she rejected him, and he was furious and lost his temper and strangled her?”

  “Pursued her?” Callandra stared, turmoil in her mind and a hot, sick feeling of horror rippling through her body.

  “For Heaven’s sake, Callandra, stop repeating everything I say as if you were half-witted!” Berenice said tartly. “Why not? He is a man in the prime of life, and married to a woman who at best is quite indifferent to him, and at worst, if I were unkind, refuses to fulfill her conjugal duties….”

  Callandra cringed inside. It was inexpressibly offensive to hear Berenice speaking in such terms of Kristian and his most personal life. It hurt more than she could have foreseen.

  Berenice continued, apparently with total unawareness of the horror she was causing.

  “And Prudence Barrymore was quite a handsome woman, in her own fashion, one has to grant that. Not really a demure face, or traditionally pretty, but I imagine some men may have found it interesting, and poor Dr. Beck may have been in a desperate state. Working side by side can prove peculiarly powerful.” She shrugged her elegant shoulders. “Still, it is hardly anything we can affect, and I have too much to do to spend more time on it. I have to find the chaplain, then I am invited to take tea with Lady Washbourne. Do you know her?”

  “No,” Callandra replied abruptly. “But I know someone probably more interesting, whom I must see. Good day to you.” And with that she walked off smartly before Berenice could be the one to depart first.

  She had had Monk in mind when she spoke, but actually the next person she saw was Kristian Beck himself. He came out of one of the wards into the corridor just as she was passing. He looked preoccupied and anxious, but he smiled when he recognized her and the candor of it sent a warmth through her, which only sharpened her fear. She was forced to admit she cared for him more profoundly than anyone else she could recall. She had loved her husband, but it was a friendship, a companionship of long familiarity and a number of shared ideals over the years, not the sharp, strange vulnerability she felt over Kristian Beck, and not the swift elation and the painful excitement, the inner sweetness, in spite of the pain.

  He was smiling and she had no idea what he had said. She blushed at her stupidity.

  “I beg your pardon?” she stammered.

  He was surprised. “I said ‘Good morning,’ ” he repeated. “Are you well?” He looked at her more closely. “Has that wretched policeman been bothering you?”

  “No.” She smiled in sudden relief. It was ridiculous. She could have dealt with Jeavis without a hesitation in her stride. Good heavens, she was a match for Monk, let alone one of Runcorn’s junior minions appointed in his stead. “No,” she said again. “Not at all. But I am concerned about his efficiency. I fear he may not be as capable of the skill as this unhappy case requires.”

  Kristian gave a twisted smile. “He is certainly diligent enough. He has already questioned me three times, and to judge from his expression, believed nothing I said.” He gave a sad little laugh. “I think he suspects me.”

  She caught the edge of fear in his voice, and pretended she had not, then changed her mind and met his eyes. She longed to be able to touch him, but she did not know how much he felt, or knew. And this was hardly the time.

  “He will be eager to prove himself by solving the case as quickly and satisfactorily as possible,” she said with an effort at composure. “And he has a superior with social ambitions and a keen sense of what is politically judicious.” She saw his face tighten as he appreciated exactly what she meant, and the consequent danger to himself as a foreigner and a man with no social connections in England. “But I have a friend, a private inquiry agent,” she went on hastily, aching to reassure him. “I have engaged him to look into the case. He is quite brilliant. He will find the truth.”

  “You say that with great confidence,” he observed quietly, halfway between amusement and a desperate need to believe her.

  “I have known him for some time and seen him solve cases the police could not.” She searched his face,
the anxiety in his eyes, the smile on his lips belying it. “He is a hard man, ruthless, and sometimes arrogant,” she went on intently. “But he has imagination and brilliance, and he has absolute integrity. If anyone can find the truth, it will be Monk.” She thought of the past cases through which she had known him and felt a surge of hope. She made herself smile and saw an answering flicker in Kristian’s eyes.

  “If he has your confidence to that degree, then I must rest my trust in him also,” he replied.

  She wanted to say something further, but nothing came to her mind that was not forced. Rather than appear foolish, she excused herself and walked away to look for Mrs. Flaherty, to discuss some charitable business.

  Hester found returning to hospital duty after private nursing a severe strain on her temper. She had grown accustomed to being her own mistress since her dismissal roughly a year ago. The restrictions of English medical practice were almost beyond bearing after the urgency and freedom of the Crimea, where there had frequently been so few army surgeons that nurses such as herself had had to take matters into their own hands, and there had been little complaint. Back at home again it seemed that every pettifogging little rule was invoked, more to safeguard dignity than to ease pain or preserve life, and that reputation was more precious than discovery.

  She had known Prudence Barrymore and she felt a sharply personal sense of both anger and loss at her death. She was determined to give Monk any assistance she could in learning who had killed her. Therefore she would govern her temper, however difficult that might prove; refrain from expressing her opinions, no matter how severely tempted; and not at any time exercise her own medical judgment.

  So far she had succeeded, but Mrs. Flaherty tried her sorely. The woman was set in her ways. She refused to listen to anyone’s instructions about opening windows, even on the warmest, mildest days. Twice she had told the nurses to put a cloth over buckets of slops as they were carrying them out, but when they had forgotten on all subsequent occasions she had said nothing further. Hester, as a disciple of Florence Nightingale, was passionately keen on fresh air to cleanse the atmosphere and carry away harmful effluvia and unpleasant odor. Mrs. Flaherty was terrified of chills and preferred to rely on fumigation. It was with the greatest of difficulty that Hester kept her own counsel.