The Wench is Dead

by Colin Dexter

  ‘If that is the case …?’ repeated Morse weakly. But the young doctor made no immediate answer, and for the next few minutes prodded, squeezed, and kneaded the paunchy flesh around Morse’s abdomen.

  ‘Found anything?’ queried Morse, with a thin and forced apology for a grin.

  ‘You could well lose a couple of stone. Your liver’s enlarged.’

  ‘But I thought you just said it was the stomach!’

  ‘Oh yes, it is! You’ve had a stomach haemorrhage.’

  ‘What’s – what’s that got to do with my liver?’

  ‘Do you drink a lot, Mr Morse?’

  ‘Well, most people have a drink or two most days, don’t they?’

  ‘Do you drink a lot?’ (The same words – a semitone of exasperation lower.)

  As non-commitally as his incipient panic would permit, Morse shrugged his shoulders once more: ‘I like a glass of beer, yes.’

  ‘How many pints do you drink a week?’

  ‘A week?’ squeaked Morse, his face clouding over like that of a child who has just been given a complex problem in mental multiplication.

  ‘A day, then?’ suggested the houseman helpfully.

  Morse divided by three: ‘Two or three, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you drink spirits?’

  ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘What spirits do you drink?’

  Morse shrugged his tautened shoulders once again: ‘Scotch – sometimes I treat myself to a drop of Scotch.’

  ‘How long would a bottle of Scotch last you?’

  ‘Depends how big it was.’

  But Morse immediately saw that his attempt at humour was ill appreciated; and he swiftly multiplied by three: ‘Week – ten days – about that.’

  ‘How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?’

  ‘Eight … ten?’ replied Morse, getting the hang of things now and smoothly dividing by three.

  ‘Do you ever take any exercise – walking, jogging, cycling, squash …?’

  But before Morse could switch back to his tables, he reached for the kidney-bowl that had been left within reach. And as he vomited, this time productively, the houseman observed with some alarm the coffee-grounds admixed with the tell-tale brightly crimsoned specks of blood – blood that was de-oxygenated daily with plentiful nicotine and liberally lubricated with alcohol.

  For some while after these events, Morse’s mind was somewhat hazy. Later, however, he could recall a nurse bending over him – the same young nurse as earlier; and he could remember the beautifully manicured fingers on her left hand as she flipped the watch out again into her palm; could almost follow her thoughts as with contracted brow she squinted at the disturbing equation between his half-minute pulse-rate and the thirty-second span upon her watch …

  At this point Morse knew that the Angel of Death had fluttered its wings above his head; and he felt a sudden frisson of fear, as for the first time in his life he began to think of dying. For in his mind’s eye, though just for a second or two, he thought he almost caught sight of the laudatory obituary, the creditable paragraph.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  Do you know why we are more fair and just towards the dead? We are not obliged to them, we can take our time, we can fit in the paying of respects between a cocktail party and an affectionate mistress – in our spare time

  (Albert Camus, The Fall)

  WHEN MORSE AWOKE the following morning, he was aware of a grey dawn through the window of the small ward, to his left; and of a clock showing 4.50 a.m. on the wall above the archway to his right, through which he could see a slimly attractive nurse, sitting in a pool of light behind a desk, and writing in a large book. Was she writing, Morse wondered, about him? If so, there would be remarkably little to say; for apart from one very brief bout of vomiting in the small hours, he had felt, quite genuinely, so very much better; and had required no further attention. The tubing strapped to his right wrist, and stretching up to the saline-drip bottle hooked above his bed, was still dragging uncomfortably against his skin most of the time, as if the needle had been stuck in slightly off-centre; but he’d determined to make no mention of such a minor irritant. The awkward apparatus rendered him immobile, of course – at least until he had mastered the skills of the young man from the adjacent bed who had spent most of the previous evening wandering freely (as it seemed) all over the hospital, holding his own drip high above his head like some Ethiopian athlete brandishing the Olympic torch. Morse had felt most self-conscious when circumstances utterly beyond his control had finally induced him to beg for a ‘bottle’. Yet – thus far – he had been spared the undignified palaver of the dreaded ‘pan’; and he trusted that his lack of solid nutriment during the preceding days would be duly acknowledged with some reciprocal inactivity by his bowels. And so far so good!

  The nurse was talking earnestly to a slightly built, fresh-faced young houseman, his white coat reaching almost to his ankles, a stethoscope hooked into his right-hand pocket. And soon the two of them were walking, quietly, unfussily, into the ward where Morse lay; then disappearing behind the curtains (drawn across the previous evening) of the bed diagonally opposite.

  When he’d first been wheeled into the ward, Morse had noticed the man who occupied that bed – a proud-looking man, in his late seventies, perhaps, with an Indian Army moustache, and a thin thatch of pure-white hair. At that moment of entry, for a second or two, the old warrior’s watery-pale eyes had settled on Morse’s face, seeming almost to convey some faint message of hope and comradeship. And indeed the dying old man would certainly have wished the new patient well, had he been able to articulate his intent; but the rampaging septicaemia which had sent a bright-pink suffusion to his waxen cheeks had taken from him all the power of speech.

  It was 5.20 a.m. when the houseman emerged from behind the curtains; 5.30 a.m. when the swiftly summoned porters had wheeled the dead man away. And when, exactly half an hour later, the full lights flickered on in the ward, the curtains round the bed of the late Colonel Wilfrid Deniston, OBE, MC, were standing open, in their normal way, to reveal the newly laundered sheets, with the changed blankets professionally mitred at the foot. Had Morse known how the late Colonel could not abide a chord of Wagner he would have been somewhat aggrieved; yet had he known how the Colonel had committed to memory virtually the whole poetic corpus of A. E. Housman, he would have been most gratified.

  At 6.45 a.m. Morse was aware of considerable activity in the immediate environs of the ward, although initially he could see no physical evidence of it: voices, clinking of crockery, squeaking of ill-oiled wheels – and finally Violet, a happily countenanced and considerably overweight West Indian woman hove into view pushing a tea-trolley. This was the occasion, clearly, for a predawn beverage, and how Morse welcomed it! For the first time in the past few days he was conscious of a positive appetite for food and drink; and already, and with envy, he had surveyed the jugs of water and bottles of squash that stood on the bedside tables of his fellow-patients, though for some reason not on the table of the man immediately opposite, one Walter Greenaway, above whose bed there hung a rectangular plaque bearing the sad little legend NIL BY MOUTH.

  ‘Tea or coffee, Mr Greenaway?’

  ‘I’ll just settle for a large gin-and-tonic, if that’s all right by you.’

  ‘Ice and lemon?’

  ‘No ice, thank you: it spoils the gin.’

  Violet moved away massively to the next bed, leaving Mr Greenaway sans ice, sans everything. Yet the perky sixty-odd-year-old appeared far from mortified by his exclusion from the proceedings, and winked happily across at Morse.

  ‘All right, chief?’

  ‘On the mend,’ said Morse cautiously.

  ‘Huh! That’s exactly what the old Colonel used to say: “On the mend”. Poor old boy!’

  ‘I see,’ said Morse, with some unease.

  After Greenaway’s eyes had unclouded from their appropriate respect for the departed Colo
nel, Morse continued the dialogue.

  ‘No tea for you, then?’

  Greenaway shook his head. ‘They know best, though, don’t they?’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘Wonderful – the doctors here! And the nurses!’

  Morse nodded, hoping indeed that it might be so.

  ‘Same trouble as me?’ enquired Greenaway confidentially.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Stomach, is it?’

  ‘Ulcer – so they say.’

  ‘Mine’s perforated!’ Greenaway proclaimed this fact with a certain grim pride and satisfaction, as though a combination of the worst of disorders with the best of physicians was a cause for considerable congratulation. ‘They’re operating on me at ten o’clock – that’s why I’m not allowed a drink, see?’

  ‘Oh!’ For a few seconds Morse found himself almost wishing he could put in some counter-claim for a whole gutful of mighty ulcers that were not only perforated but pierced and punctured into the bargain. A more important matter, however, was now demanding his attention, for Violet had effected a U-turn and was (at last!) beside his bed.

  She greeted her new charge with a cheerful grin. ‘Morning, Mr, er’ (consulting the Biro’d letters on the name-tab) ‘Mr Morse!’

  ‘Good morning!’ replied Morse. ‘I’ll have some coffee, please – two spoonfuls of sugar.’

  ‘My, my! Two – sugars!’ Violet’s eyes almost soared out of their whitened sockets towards the ceiling; then she turned to share the private joke with the grinning Greenaway. ‘Now, look you here!’ (reverting to Morse): ‘You can’t have no coffee nor no tea nor no sugar neither. Oh right?’ She wagged a brown forefinger at a point somewhere above the bed; and twisting his neck Morse could see, behind his saline apparatus, a rectangular plaque bearing the sad little legend NIL BY MOUTH.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  Flowers, writing materials, and books are always welcome gifts for patients; but if you wish to bring food or drink, do ask the Sister, and she will tell you what is advisable

  (Oxford Health Authority, Handbook for Patients and Visitors)

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT LEWIS came into the ward just after seven o’clock that Sunday evening, clutching a Sainsbury carrier-bag with the air of a slightly guilty man walking through the Customs’ shed; and at the sight of his old partner, Morse felt very glad, and just a little lachrymose.

  ‘How come you knew I was here?’

  ‘I’m a detective, sir – remember?’

  ‘They phoned you, I suppose.’

  ‘The Super. He said you sounded awful poorly when he rang yesterday morning. So he sent Dixon round, but you’d just been carried off in the ambulance. So he rang me and said I might like to see if the NHS is still up to scratch – see if you wanted anything.’

  ‘Something like a bottle of Scotch, you mean?’

  Lewis ignored the pleasantry: ‘I’d’ve come in last night, but they said you weren’t to have any visitors – only close relatives.’

  ‘I’ll have you know I’m not quite your “Orphan Annie”, Lewis. I’ve got a great-aunt up in Alnwick somewhere.’

  ‘Bit of a long way for her to come, sir.’

  ‘Especially at ninety-seven …’

  ‘Not a bad fellow, Strange, is he?’ suggested Lewis, after a slightly awkward little pause.

  ‘Not when you get to know him, I suppose,’ admitted Morse.

  ‘Would you say you’ve got to know him?’

  Morse shook his head.

  ‘Well?’ said Lewis briskly. ‘How are things? What do they say’s the trouble?’

  ‘Trouble? No trouble! It’s just a case of mistaken identity.’

  Lewis grinned. ‘Seriously, though?’

  ‘Seriously? Well they’ve put me on some great big round white pills that cost a couple of quid a time, so the nurses say. Do you realize you can get a very decent little bottle of claret for that price?’

  ‘What about the food – is that all right?’

  ‘Food? What food? Except for the pills they haven’t given me a thing.’

  ‘No drink, either?’

  ‘Are you trying to set back my medical progress, Lewis?’

  ‘Is that what – what that means?’ Lewis jerked his eyes upwards to the fateful warning above the bed.

  ‘That’s just precautionary,’ said Morse, with unconvincing nonchalance.

  Lewis’s eyes jerked, downwards this time, towards the carrier-bag.

  ‘Come on, Lewis! What have you got in there?’

  Lewis reached inside the bag and brought out a bottle of lemon-and-barley water, and was most pleasantly surprised to witness the undisguised delight on Morse’s face.

  ‘It was just that the missus thought – well, you know, you wouldn’t be allowed to drink – to drink anything else much.’

  ‘Very kind of her! You just tell her that the way things are I’d rather have a bottle of that stuff than a whole crate of whisky.’

  ‘You don’t mean that, do you, sir?’

  ‘Doesn’t stop you telling her, though, does it?’

  ‘And here’s a book,’ added Lewis, withdrawing one further item from the bag – a book entitled Scales of Injustice: A Comparative Study of Crime and its Punishment as Recorded in the County of Shropshire, 1842–1852.

  Morse took the thick volume and surveyed its inordinately lengthy title, though without any obvious enthusiasm. ‘Mm! Looks a fairly interesting work.’

  ‘You don’t mean that, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Morse.

  ‘It’s a sort of family heirloom and the missus just thought—’

  ‘You tell that wonderful missus of yours that I’m very pleased with it.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll do me a favour and leave it in the hospital library when you come out.’

  Morse laughed quietly; and Lewis was strangely gratified by his chief’s reactions, and smiled to himself.

  He was still smiling when an extraordinarily pretty young nurse, with a freckled face and mahogany-highlighted hair, came to Morse’s bedside, waved an admonitory finger at him, and showed her white and beautifully regular teeth in a dumbshow of disapproval as she pointed to the lemon-and-barley bottle which Morse had placed on his locker-top. Morse, in turn, nodded his full appreciation of the situation and showed his own reasonably regular, if rather off-white, teeth as he mouthed a silent ‘OK’.

  ‘Who’s that?’ whispered Lewis, when she had passed upon her way.

  ‘That, Lewis, is the Fair Fiona. Lovely, don’t you think? I sometimes wonder how the doctors manage to keep their dirty hands off her.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t.’

  ‘I thought you’d come in here to cheer me up!’

  But for the moment good cheer seemed in short supply. The ward sister (whom Lewis had not noticed as he’d entered – merely walking straight through, like everyone else, as he’d thought) had clearly been keeping her dragon’s eye on events in general, and in particular on events around the bed where the dehydrated Chief Inspector lay. To which bed, with purposeful stride, she now took the few steps needed from the vantage point behind the main desk. Her left hand immediately grasped the offending bottle on the locker-top, while her eyes fixed unblinkingly upon the luckless Lewis.

  ‘We have our regulations in this hospital – a copy of them is posted just outside the ward. So I shall be glad if you follow those regulations and report to me or whoever’s in charge if you intend to visit again. It’s absolutely vital that we follow a routine here – try to understand that! Your friend here is quite poorly, and we’re all trying our vairy best to see that he gets well again quickly. Now we canna do that if you are going to bring in anything you think might do him good, because you’d bring in all the wrong things, OK? I’m sure you appreciate what I’m saying.’

  She had spoken in a soft Scots accent, this grimly visaged, tight-lipped sister, a silver buckle clasped around her dark-blue uniform; and Lewis, the colour ti
dally risen under his pale cheeks, looked wretchedly uncomfortable as she turned away – and was gone. Even Morse, for a few moments, appeared strangely cowed and silent.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Lewis (for the second time that evening).

  ‘You have just had an encounter with the embittered soul of our ward sister – devoted to an ideal of humourless efficiency: a sort of Calvinistic Thatcherite.’

  ‘And what she says …?’

  Morse nodded. ‘She is, Lewis, in charge, as I think you probably gathered.’

  ‘Doesn’t have to be so sharp, does she?’

  ‘Forget it, Lewis! She’s probably disappointed in her love-life or something. Not surprising with a face—’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘They call her “Nessie”.’

  ‘Was she born near the Loch?’

  ‘In it, Lewis.’

  The two men laughed just a little; yet the incident had been unpleasant and Lewis in particular found it difficult to put it behind him. For a further five minutes he quizzed Morse quietly about the other patients; and Morse told him of the dawn departure of the ex-Indian-Army man. For still another five minutes, the two men exchanged words about Police HQ at Kidlington; about the Lewis family; about the less-than-sanguine prospects of Oxford United in the current soccer campaign. But nothing could quite efface the fact that ‘that bloody sister’ (as Morse referred to her) had cast a darkling shadow over the evening visit; had certainly cast a shadow over Lewis. And Morse himself was suddenly feeling hot and sweaty, and (yes, if he were honest) just a fraction wearied of the conversation.

  ‘I’d better be off then, sir.’

  ‘What else have you got in that bag?’

  ‘Nothing—’

  ‘Lewis! My stomach may be out of order for the minute but there’s nothing wrong with my bloody ears!’

  Slowly the dark clouds began to lift for Lewis, and when, after prolonged circumspection, he decided that the Customs Officer was momentarily off her guard, he withdrew a small, flattish bottle, wrapped in soft, dark-blue tissue-paper – much the colour of Nessie’s uniform.