Miss Sharpe sniffed. She found it impossible to believe that the Almighty would ever counsel leaving cash away from the family. Miss Bolam was either an ineffectual petitioner or had wilfully misinterpreted the divine instructions. Miss Sharpe was not even sure that she approved of the praying. There are some things, surely, which one ought to be able to decide on one’s own. But she saw her friend’s difficulty.
“It would look bad if it came out,” she admitted. “No doubt about that.”
“I think I know Bolam pretty well, Bea, and that child wouldn’t lay hands on a fly. The idea of her murdering anyone is ridiculous. You know what I think about young nurses generally. Well, I wouldn’t mind Bolam taking over when I retire next year and that’s saying something. I’d trust her completely.”
“Maybe, but the police wouldn’t. Why should they? She’s probably their first suspect already. She was on the spot; she hasn’t an alibi; she has medical knowledge and would know where the skull is most vulnerable; and where to put that chisel in. She was told that Tippett wouldn’t be in the clinic. And now this!”
“And it’s not as if it’s a small sum.” Sister Ambrose leaned forward and dropped her voice. “I thought I heard Miss Bolam mention thirty thousand pounds. Thirty thousand, Bea! It would be like winning the pools!”
Miss Sharpe was impressed despite herself, but remarked merely that people who went on working when they had thirty thousand wanted their brains examined.
“What would you do, Bea? Do you think I ought to say anything?” Sister Ambrose, sturdily independent and used to settling her own affairs, recognized that this decision was beyond her and threw half the burden on her friend. Both of them knew that the moment was unique. Never had two friends made fewer demands on each other.
Miss Sharpe sat in silence for a moment or two, then said: “No. Not yet, anyway. After all she is your colleague and you trust her. It wasn’t your fault that you overheard the conversation but it was only overhearing. It was only chance that you happened to be in the loo. I should try to forget it. The police will find out how Bolam has left her money anyway and whether the will has been changed. Either way Nurse Bolam will be suspected. And if it should come to a trial—I’m only saying ‘if,’ remember—well, you don’t want to get involved unnecessarily. Remember those nurses in the Eastbourne case, the hours they spent in the box. You wouldn’t want that kind of publicity.”
Indeed she wouldn’t, thought Sister Ambrose. Her imagination set the scene only too vividly. Sir Somebody or Other would be prosecuting, tall, beak-nosed, bending his terrifying gaze on her, thumbs hooked in the bands of his gown.
“And now, Sister Ambrose, perhaps you will tell his Lordship and the jury what you were doing when you overheard this conversation between the accused and her cousin.”
Titters in court. The judge, terrifying in scarlet and white wig, leans down from his seat.
“If there is any more of this laughter I shall clear the court.” Silence. Sir Somebody on the ball again.
“Well, Sister Ambrose …?”
No, she certainly wouldn’t want that kind of publicity. “I think you’re right, Bea,” she said. “After all, it’s not as if the superintendent actually asked me whether I’d ever overheard them quarrelling.” Certainly he hadn’t and, with luck, he never would.
Miss Sharpe felt that it was time to change the subject. “How did Dr. Steiner take it?” she asked. “You always said that he was working to get Bolam moved to another unit.”
“That’s another extraordinary thing! He was terribly upset. You know I told you that he was with us when we first saw the body? D’you know he could hardly control himself? He had to turn his back on us and I could see his shoulders shaking. He was actually crying, I think. I’ve never seen him so upset. Aren’t people extraordinary, Bea?”
It was a vehement cry of resentment and protest. People were extraordinary! You thought you knew them. You worked with them, sometimes for years. You spent more time with them than you would with family or close friends. You knew every line of their faces. And all the time they were private. As private as Dr. Steiner who cried over the dead body of a woman he had never liked. As private as Dr. Baguley who had been having a love affair with Fredrica Saxon for years with no one knowing until Miss Bolam found out and told his wife. As private as Miss Bolam who had taken God knows what secrets to the grave. Miss Bolam, dull, ordinary, unremarkable Enid Bolam, who had inspired so much hate in someone that she had ended with a chisel in her heart. As private as that unknown member of the staff who would be at the clinic on Monday morning, dressed as usual, looking the same as usual, speaking and smiling as usual and who was a murderer.
“Damned smiling villain!” said Sister Ambrose suddenly. She thought that the phrase was a quotation from some play or other. Shakespeare probably. Most quotations were. But its terse malevolence suited her mood.
“What you need is food,” said Miss Sharpe positively. “Something light and nourishing. Suppose we leave the casserole until tomorrow night and just have boiled eggs on a tray?”
She was waiting for him at the entrance to St James’s Park just as he had expected her to be. As he crossed the mall and saw the slight figure drooping a little disconsolately by the war memorial, Nagle could almost feel sorry for her. It was the hell of a raw night to be standing about. But her first words killed any impulse to pity.
“We should have met somewhere else. This is all right for you, of course. You’re on the way home.” She sounded as peevish as a neglected wife.
“Come back to the flat, then,” he taunted her softly. “We can get a bus down.”
“No. Not the flat. Not tonight.” He smiled into the darkness and they moved together into the black shadow of the trees. They walked a little way apart and she made no move towards him. He glanced down at the calm, uplifted profile cleansed now of all traces of crying. She looked desperately tired.
Suddenly she said: “That superintendent is very good-looking, isn’t he? Do you think he suspects us?”
So here it was, the grasping at reassurance, the childish need to be protected. And yet she had sounded almost uncaring. He said roughly: “For God’s sake why should he? I was out of the clinic when she died. You know that as well as I do.”
“But I wasn’t. I was there.”
“No one’s going to suspect you for long. The doctors will see to that. We’ve had all this out before. Nothing can go wrong if you keep your head and listen to me. Now this is what I want you to do.”
She listened as meekly as a child but, watching that tired, expressionless face, he felt that he was in the company of a stranger. He wondered idly whether they would ever get free of each other again. And suddenly he felt that it was not she who was the victim.
As they came to the lake, she stopped and gazed out over the water. Out of the darkness came the subdued cry and shuffle of ducks. He could smell the evening breeze, salty as a sea wind, and shivered. Turning to study her face, ravaged now with fatigue, he saw, in his mind’s eye, another picture: a broad brow under a white nurse’s cap, a swathe of yellow hair, immense grey eyes which gave nothing away. Tentatively he pondered a new idea. It might come to nothing, of course. It might easily come to nothing. But the picture would soon be finished and he could get rid of Jenny. In a month he would be in Paris but Paris was only an hour’s flight away and he would be coming back often. And with Jenny out of the way and a new life in his grasp, it would be worth trying. There were worse fates than marrying the heiress to thirty thousand pounds.