Luckily his mother must have warned him about the sort of women he was liable to encounter in the course of a day’s work. Or maybe he had a bad back and couldn’t risk hoisting Mrs. Malloy onto the gurney and making off with her into the sluice room. (From what she had told me sluice rooms had figured prominently in Emergency Ward 10.) At any rate he chuckled in appreciation of what he obviously took to be her little joke and escorted us a short distance to where personnel were occupied behind a desk area talking into telephones, bustling about with notepads or issuing instructions in a kind of verbal shorthand. Feeling like a lion singling out one deer from the herd to pounce upon I caught the eye of a woman in a floral cotton jacket that seemed to indicate she might be a nurse or possibly a member of the housekeeping staff. She came toward me, while Mrs. M. was still muttering in my ear.
“It’s not like I was ready to go off with a perfect stranger. His name was Joe; it was right there on his jacket pocket. And whatever you’re thinking I know he was dying for a moment alone with me so he could tell me all about his bunions. It was there in his eyes-the deep quiet knowledge of a man who has just met the woman of his dreams. But it was all ruined because you had to insist on tagging along. The very least you could have done was stay behind and pretend you was looking out the windows.”
Clearly in addition to her enthusiasm for Emergency Ward 10, Mrs. Malloy had been reading too many of those nurse doctor books. I little doubted that in next to no time Joe would be transformed into a well-built, well-heeled senior consultant-probably a titled one at that-and instead of wanting to talk about his bunions he would be casually mentioning his three ancestral homes and his silver gray Rolls Royce. I was wondering what sort of car Lady Krumley had been driving, while explaining to the woman in the floral jacket that we had received a phone message requesting we visit her ladyship.
“Let me see what I can find out for you, Mrs. Haskell.” She gave me a brisk smile before going into a huddle with the other assorted jackets and coats. After what seemed ages she came around the counter to escort me and Mrs. Malloy the length of the corridor. “You’re to be allowed ten minutes. The doctors are due back to examine her ladyship shortly. I’m sure I don’t need to caution you that our object is to keep her calm, so please restrict the conversation to general chitchat-nothing to get her the least bit worked up.” A beep sounded and with an exclamation of apology that she was needed elsewhere, the woman pointed a finger to our left and made off at a fast walk.
“Go on.” Mrs. Malloy nudged me. “I’m right behind you.”
“Okay.” I pushed open the closest door and tiptoed into a small square room with a generic landscape print on the wall. Otherwise it was all beige and gray. The figure in the hospital bed did not move. The folded hands appeared glued to the sheet. An oxygen mask covered a good part of her face, and everywhere there were tubes, hooked up to machines that flashed and beeped as if carrying on personal conversations.
“Oh, the poor duck!” Mrs. M. inched her nose over my shoulder. “Why, it don’t even look like her.”
“That’s because it isn’t.”
“What?”
“Isn’t Lady Krumley. We’re in the wrong room.”
“Now you tell me!”
We were backing out, hopefully before the machines set off the alarm and several very large men arrived to cart us away in straitjackets, when we collided with someone. Turning, we faced a man of medium height and middle years, with a receding hairline and eyes set rather too close together above a long thin nose.
“So sorry,” I said, “we’re looking for Lady Krumley’s room.” My nervousness was heightened by the fact that he was staring at us as if we were a pair of German shepherds, readying to leap at his throat if he tried to edge past us. But perhaps he was a man who always looked frightened. His voice when he spoke sounded as though it might be habitually timid.
“Pardon me for asking, Are you the social workers?”
“What’s that to you?” Mrs. Malloy barked back at him.
Had anyone been passing he would have jumped into his or her arms. “I assumed… under the circumstances… that they might be sending some up. After all, poor Aunt Maude’s rather been through it.”
“Aunt who?”
“Sorry! I’m making a real hash of explaining.” He didn’t sound as though he expected any argument on this. “I’m talking about Lady Krumley. I’m her nephew by marriage. Niles Edmonds.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting!” Mrs. Malloy gave a sigh of pure satisfaction. “I was sure you’d show up sooner or later. And here you are looking just like I pictured you. Now tell me, just for the record like, do you happen to know if your dear kind Auntie has left you a nice lot of money in her will?”
Nine
“What my colleague means to say,” I got in before Mrs. Malloy could spout off another word, “is that we hope her ladyship’s condition will not create any financial problems for you. That’s what social workers are for.” I squeezed out a laugh. “To try and sort through these potential difficulties.”
“Oh, quite!” He looked as though he yearned to fade into the paintwork.
“Good!” I brightly smiled. “Then I hope we’ll talk later, Mr. Edmonds. In the meantime we do,” I continued, latching on to Mrs. Malloy’s arm, “need to see Lady Krumley before the doctors do another round.”
“Absolutely.” He stood working his hands together. “Must put Aunt Maude first. She’s in the next room to this. Please tell her I’ve just arrived and will be in to see her as soon as is convenient. Cynthia, my wife, is with me, or will be when she finishes parking the car. I don’t drive. Regrettably I never could get the hang of it.”
“We all have our individual gifts,” responded Mrs. Malloy with a girlish giggle that was meant to go with the powder pink raincoat and the false eyelashes, one of which had come slightly askew.
“Yes, well… off we go,” I prodded her forward.
“My dearest love to Aunt Maude,” Mr. Edmonds murmured faintly in our wake. “And tell her not to upset herself over Vincent, just think of him as off on another adventure.”
“Who? What?” I turned to ask, but he was already halfway down the corridor. Life, I thought sourly, got more complicated by the minute. Here I was pretending to be a private detective pretending to be a social worker, when all I wanted was to have a make-up session with my husband. It was all getting to be rather too much. And I hadn’t even had lunch. There was one person who was primarily to blame, and if I’d had a mean bone in my body I would have said something really snippy.
“There’s no need for all that nasty breathing down my neck,” Mrs. M. complained. “Course I understand you being jealous because of how I was the one what figured out from the start there’d be a nasty nephew somewhere in the picture. But look at it this way, Mrs. H., you still get to play Milk’s partner and my boss.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I should think so, seeing that means you’re the one what gets to open that door and take a peek inside to see just how horrible her ladyship looks before giving me the okay. All them machines and tubes hooked up to that other old girl made me insides go all queer.”