The Nursing Home Murder

They stood back from O’Callaghan. A little tubby man, Communist member for a North Country constituency, came through the group of men and knelt down.

“Open those windows, will you?” he said. He loosened O’Callaghan’s clothes. The others eyed him respectfully. After a minute or two he looked round.

“Who’s his medical man?” he asked. “Cuthbert thinks it’s Sir John Phillips. He’s ringing his wife now.”

“Phillips is a surgeon. It’s a surgical case.”

“What’s the trouble, Dr. Wendover?”

“Looks like an acute appendix. There’s no time to be lost. You’d better ring the Brook Street Private Hospital. Is the ambulance there? Can’t wait for his wife.”

From the doorway somebody said: “The men from the ambulance.”

“Good. Here’s your patient.”

Two men came in carrying a stretcher. O’Callaghan was got on to it, covered up, and carried out. Cuthbert hurried in.

“Yes,” he said, “It’s Phillips. She wants him taken to Phillips’s nursing-home.”

“He’s going there,” said little Dr. Wendover, and walked out after the ambulance men.

O’Callaghan climbed up, sickeningly, from nowhere into semi-consciousness. Grandiloquent images slid rapidly downwards. His wife’s face came near and then receded. Somebody groaned close to him. Somebody was in bed beside him, groaning.

“Is the pain very bad?” said a voice.

He himself was in pain.

“Bad,” he said solemnly.

“The doctor will be here soon. He’ll give you something to take it away.”

He now knew it was he who had groaned.

Cicely’s face came close.

“The doctor is coming, Derek.”

He closed his eyes to show he had understood.

“Poor old Derry, poor old boy.”

“I’ll just leave you with him for a minute, Lady O’Callaghan. If you want me, will you ring? I think I hear Sir John.” A door closed.

“This pain’s very bad,” said O’Callaghan clearly.

The two women exchanged glances. Lady O’Callaghan drew up a chair to the bed and sat down.

“It won’t be for long, Derek,” she said quietly. “It’s your appendix, you know.”

“Oh.”

Ruth had begun to whisper.

“What’s Ruth say?”

“Never mind me, Derry-boy. It’s just silly old Ruthie.”

He muttered something, shut his eyes, and seemed to fall asleep.

“Cicely darling, I know you laugh at my ideas but listen. As soon as I heard about Derry I went and saw Harold Sage. He’s the brilliant young chemist I told you about. I explained exactly what was the matter and he gave me something that he says will relieve the pain at once and can do no harm at all. It’s an invention of his own. In a few months all the hospitals will use it.”

She began a search in her handbag.

“Suggest it to Sir John if you like, Ruth. Of course nothing can be done without his knowledge.”

“Doctors are so bigoted. I know, my dear. The things Harold has told me—!”

“You seem to be very friendly with this young man.”

“He interests me enormously, Cicely.”

“Really?”

The nurse came back.

“Sir John would like to see you for a moment, Lady O’Callaghan.”

“Thank you. I’ll come.”

Left alone with her brother, Ruth dabbed at his hand. He opened his eyes.

“Oh, God, Ruth,” he said. “I’m in such pain.”

“Just hold on for one moment, Derry. I’ll make it better.”

She had found the little package. There was a tumbler of water by the bedside.

In a few minutes Phillips came back with the nurse.

“Sir John is going to make an examination,” said Nurse Graham quietly to Ruth. “If you wouldn’t mind joining Lady O’Callaghan for a moment.”

“I shan’t keep you long,” said Phillips and opened the door.

Ruth, with a distracted and guilty look at her brother, gathered herself up and blundered out of the room.

O’Callaghan had relapsed into unconsciousness.

Nurse Graham uncovered the abdomen and Phillips with his long inquisitive fingers pressed it there — and there — and there. His eyes were closed and his brain seemed to be in his hands.

“That will do,” he said suddenly. “It looks like peritonitis. He’s in a bad way. I’ve warned them we may need the theatre.” The nurse covered the patient and in answer to a nod from Phillips fetched the two women. As soon as they came in, Phillips turned to Lady O’Callaghan but did not look at her. “The operation should be performed immediately,” he said. “Will you allow me to try to get hold of Somerset Black?”

“But you, Sir John, won’t you do it yourself?”

Phillips walked over to the window and stared out.

“You wish me to operate?” he said at last.

“Of course I do. I know that sometimes surgeons dislike operating on their friends but unless you feel— I do hope — I beg you to do it.”

“Very well.”

He returned to the patient.

“Nurse,” he said, “tell them to get Dr. Thoms. He’s in the hospital and has been warned that an operation may be necessary. Ring up Dr. Grey and arrange for the anæsthetic — I’ll operate as soon as they are ready. Now, Lady O’Callaghan, if you don’t mind leaving the patient, nurse will show you where you can wait.”

The nurse opened the door and the others moved away from the bed. At the threshold they were arrested by a kind of stifled cry. They turned and looked back to the bed. Derek O’Callaghan had opened his eyes and was staring as if hypnotised at Phillips.

“Don’t— ” he said. “Don’t — let— ”

His lips moved convulsively. A curious whining sound came from them. For a moment or two he struggled for speech and then suddenly his head fell back. “Come along, Lady O’Callaghan,” said the nurse gently. “He doesn’t know what he is saying, you know.”

In the anteroom of the theatre two nurses and a sister prepared for the operation.

“Now you mustn’t forget,” said Sister Marigold, who was also the matron of the hospital, “that Sir John likes his instruments left on the tray. He does not like them handed to him.”

She covered a tray of instruments and Jane Harden carried it into the theatre.

“It’s a big responsibility,” said the sister chattily, “for a surgeon, in a case of this sort. It would be a terrible catastrophe for the country if anything happened to Sir Derek O’Callaghan. The only strong man in the Government, in my opinion.”

Nurse Banks, an older woman than her superior, looked up from the sterilising apparatus.

“The biggest tyrant of the lot,” she remarked surprisingly.

“Nurse! What did you say?”

“My politics are not Sir Derek O’Callaghan’s, matron, and I don’t care who knows it.”

Jane Harden returned from the theatre. Sister Marigold cast an indignant glance at Nurse Banks and said briefly:

“Did you look at the hyoscine solution, nurse, and the anti-gas ampoule?”

“Yes, matron.”

“Gracious, child, you look very white. Are you all right?”

“Quite, thank you,” answered Jane. She busied herself with tins of sterilised dressings. After another glance at her, the matron returned to the attack on Nurse Banks.

“Of course, nurse, we all know you are a Bolshie. Still, you can’t deny greatness when you see it. Now Sir Derek is my idea of a big — a really big man.”

“And for that reason he’s the more devilish,” a