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“Now then,” he said. “You are to imagine that time has gone back seven days. It is twenty-five minutes to four on the afternoon of Thursday, February 4th. Sir Derek O’Callaghan is upstairs in his room, awaiting his operation. Matron, when you get word will you and the nurses who are to help you begin your preparations in the anteroom and the theatre? Any dialogue you remember you will please repeat. Inspector Fox will be in the anteroom and Inspector Boys in the theatre. Please treat them as pieces of sterile machinery.” He allowed himself a faint smile and turned to Phillips and Nurse Graham, the special.
“We’ll go upstairs.”
They went up to the next landing. Outside the door of the first room Alleyn turned to the others. Phillips was very white, but quite composed. Little Nurse Graham looked unhappy, but sensibly determined.
“Now, nurse, we’ll go in. If you’ll just wait a moment, sir. Actually you are just coming upstairs.”
“I see,” said Phillips.
Alleyn swung open the door and followed Nurse Graham into the bedroom.
Cicely and Ruth O’Callaghan were at the window. He got the impression that Ruth had been sitting there, perhaps crouched in that arm-chair, and had sprung up when the door opened. Cicely O’Callaghan stood erect, very grande dame and statuesque, a gloved hand resting lightly on the window-sill.
“Good evening, Inspector Alleyn,” she said. Ruth gave a loud sob and gasped “Good evening.”
Alleyn felt that his only hope of avoiding a scene was to hurry things along at a business-like canter.
“It was extremely kind of you both to come,” he said briskly. “I shan’t keep you more than a few minutes. As you know, we are to go over the events of the operation, and I thought it better to start from here.” He glanced cheerfully at Ruth.
“Certainly,” said Lady O’Callaghan.
“Now.” Alleyn turned towards the bed, immaculate with his smooth linen and tower of rounded pillows. “Now, Nurse Graham has brought you here. When you come in you sit — where? On each side of the bed? Is that how it was, nurse?”
“Yes. Lady O’Callaghan was here,” answered the special quietly.
“Then if you wouldn’t mind taking up those positions— ”
With an air of stooping to the level of a rather vulgar farce, Lady O’Callaghan sat in the chair on the right-hand side of the bed.
“Come along, Ruth,” she said tranquilly.
“But why? Inspector Alleyn — it’s so dreadful — so horribly cold-blooded — u
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I know it’s beastly. Take courage — your brother would understand, I think.”
She gazed miserably at him. With her large unlovely face blotched with tears, and her pale eyes staring doubtfully up into his, she seemed dreadfully vulnerable. Something in his ma
“What now, nurse?”
“The patient half regained consciousness soon after we came in. I heard Sir John and went out.”
“Will you do that, please?”
She went away quietly.
“And now,” Alleyn went on, “what happened? Did the patient speak?”
“I believe he said the pain was severe. Nothing else,” murmured Lady O’Callaghan.
“What did you say to each other?”
“I–I told him it was his appendix and that the doctor would soon be here — something of that sort. He seemed to lose consciousness again, I thought.”
“Did you speak to each other?”
“I don’t remember.”
Alleyn made a shot in the dark.
“Did you discuss his pain?”
“I do not think so,” she said composedly.
Ruth turned her head and gazed with a sort of damp surprise at her sister-in-law.
“You remember doing so, do you, Miss O’Callaghan?” said Alleyn.
“I think — yes — oh, Cicely!”
“What is it?” asked Alleyn gently.
“I said something — about— how I wished— oh, Cicely!”
The door opened and Nurse Graham came in again.
“I think I came back about now to say Sir John would like to see Lady O’Callaghan,” she said with a troubled glance at Ruth.
“Very well. Will you go out with her, please, Lady O’Callaghan?” They went out and Ruth and the inspector looked at each other across the smug little bed. Suddenly Ruth uttered a veritable howl and flung herself face-down among the appliqué-work on the counterpane.
“Listen,” said Alleyn, “and tell me if I’m wrong. Mr. Sage had given you a little box of powders that he said would relieve the pain. Now the others have left the room, you feel you must give your brother one of these powders. There is the water and the glass on that table by your side. You unwrap the box, drop the paper on the floor, shake out one of the powders and give it to him in a glass of water. It seems to relieve the pain and when they return he’s easier? Am I right?”
“Oh,” wailed Ruth, raising her head. “Oh, how did you know? Cicely said I’d better not say. I told her. Oh, what shall I do?”
“Have you kept the box with the other powders?”
“Yes. He — they told me not to, but — but I thought if they were poison and I’d killed him— ” Her voice rose with a shrill note of horror. “I thought I’d take them — myself. Kill myself. Lots of us do, you know. Great-Uncle Eustace did, and Cousin Olive Casbeck, and— ”
“You’re not going to do anything so cowardly. What would he have thought of you? You’re going to do the brave thing and help us to find the truth. Come along,” said Alleyn, for all the world as if she were a child, “come along. Where are these terrible powders? In that bag still, I don’t mind betting.”
“Yes,” whispered Ruth, opening her eyes very wide. “They are in that bag. You’re quite right. You’re very clever to think of that. I thought if you arrested me— ” She made a very strange gesture with her clenched hand, jerking it up across her mouth.
“Give them to me,” said Alleyn. She began obediently to scuffle in the vast bag. All sorts of things came shooting out. He was in a fever of impatience lest the others should return, and moved to the door. At last the round cardboard box appeared. He gathered up the rest of Ruth’s junk and bundled it back as the door opened. Nurse Graham stood aside to let Phillips in.
“I think it was about now,” she said.
“Right,” said Alleyn. “Now, Sir John, I believe Miss O’Callaghan left the room while you examined the patient, diagnosed the trouble, and decided on an immediate operation.”
“Yes. When Lady O’Callaghan returned I suggested that Somerset Black should operate.”
“Quite so. Lady O’Callaghan urged you to do it yourself. Everyone agree to that?”
“Yes,” said Nurse Graham quietly. Ruth merely sat and gaped. Lady O’Callaghan turned with an unusual abruptness and walked to the window.
“Then you, Sir John, went away to prepare for the operation?”
“Yes.”
“That finishes this part of the business, then.”
“No!”
Cicely O’Callaghan’s voice rang out so fiercely that they all jumped. She had faced round and stood with her eyes fixed on Phillips. She looked magnificent. It was as if a colourless façade had been flood-lit.
“No! Why do you deliberately ignore what we all heard, what I myself have told you? Ask Sir John what my husband said when he saw who it was we had brought here to help him.” She turned deliberately to Phillips. “What did Derek say to you — what did he say?”
Phillips looked at her as though he saw her for the first time. His face expressed nothing but a profound astonishment. When he answered it was with a kind of reasonableness and with no suggestion of heroics. “He was frightened,” he said.
“He cried out to us: ‘Don’t let— ’ You remember” — she appealed with assurance to Nurse Graham—“you remember what he looked like — you understood what he meant?”