Oxford Blood (2 page)

Jemima produced the small arrangement of strongly perfumed freesias which she had carefully commissioned beforehand at her favourite flower-shop in Notting Hill Gate. A perfectionist where flowers were concerned, Jemima knew that nothing annoyed busy nurses more than having to cope with a vast bouquet of ill-assorted blooms immured within crackling cellophane, demanding the instant production of a vase.

Nurse Elsie smiled with obvious delight. It was almost as though she had recognized the perfection of the choice as well as appreciating the nosegay - and perhaps as an ex-nurse herself she had.

'Like you.' Her voice was even fainter. 'So pretty.' Nurse Elsie put out her hand and laid it on Jemima's wrist. It was a claw.

Memento mori,
thought Jemima. The skeleton was not after all so far below this poor woman's skin; and above the perfume of freesias, mingling with the obvious hygienic smells of the sick-room, she detected for the first time some other smell, more lingering, more distressing.

Yet the rest of the scene was pretty, charming, like Nurse Elsie herself in her pink nightdress, almost cloyingly so. There were pink blankets, pale pink flowered curtains - a pattern of hollyhocks and lupins - pale green walls. The screens which stood around a bed at the far corner of the room were made of the same ruched material.

There were about six other people present in the ward, all lying down. One woman - Jemima imagined she was a woman - with a broad swollen face and very short black hair, raised her hand. Perhaps she was waving. On the off chance, Jemima waved back. The hand sank and a look of puzzlement crossed the broad face.

A large crucifix hung above the door and on the opposite wall there was a reproduction of Fra Angelico's St Francis feeding the birds. A coloured picture showed Pope John Paul II walking with the Queen in the corridor of Buckingham Palace; both parties faced the camera with smiles of almost aggressively healthy confidence in contrast to the sick women below. Some tasteful flowers - a few carnations and a great deal of greenery chosen almost too obviously to harmonize with the colour scheme of the room - stood in a large dull white case on a plinth beneath the crucifixion. Little bouquets and vases flanked most of the beds, and most of the women boasted at least two photographs on their bedside tables.

In spite of this, Jemima was quite unprepared for Nurse Elsie's own array. It might have been a shrine, the resting-place of a saint, there were so many flowers. Some of them were certainly dead, others like Nurse Elsie herself decomposing. But some were like Jemima's own little nosegay, evidently fresh.

The photographs in frames which ranged from plain perspex to silver -quite a few of those - were all of children, very young children, often babies.

The claw scratched at her palm. Nurse Elsie was smiling at her again. 'My babies,' she said.
'Your
babies—'

'My babies. All of them. I was a midwife, you know. Didn't they tell you'?

'No, I didn't realize. A nurse was all they said.'

'A midwife. A state registered midwife.
Later
a nurse. The first month. I used to look after my ladies for the first month. Longer sometimes. Eleven weeks. Those were twins.'

Nurse Elsie moved her eyes in the direction of one particular photograph. It was one of those with a silver frame.

'The Fergus twins. You've read about them I expect.' Nurse Elsie gave another gasp and closed her eyes. She panted heavily, frighteningly. Jemima wondered if she should ring for help as Sister Imelda had told her she might do in case of need.

Nurse Elsie's lips moved. She was saying something else. 'Nor - Nor -Nor—' What was it she was trying to get out?

'Naughty,' she managed at last. Her voice strengthened a little. 'Naughty. Always in the papers. Little devils. Very
naughty'
Nurse Elsie's eyes closed and there was silence. The dark woman with the broad face waved again and Jemima waved back.

The hold of the claw strengthened.

'Naughty. That's what I wanted to tell you. I've been very naughty, no,
wicked.
I want to put it all right. You've got to help me, Jemima Shore. Just as he says.'

'He?' But Jemima knew the answer.

'Father Thomas. He says I've got to put it all right before I die.' 'Never mind about Father Thomas,' said Jemima gently. 'You can tell me anything you like, you know. I won't tell anyone else,' she added. Something like a spasm crossed Nurse Elsie's face. 'No, tell, tell,' she whispered urgently. 'You've got to tell everyone. Tell 
a lawyer, anyway. That's what Father Thomas said. You must get me a lawyer. The wrong has got to be put right. Otherwise I shan't get absolution. I shan't die in peace.'

'Tell me then,' said Jemima, still as gently and quietly as she could.

'And you'll bring me a lawyer?'

'If that's what you really want.'

'A lawyer tomorrow—'

'Well, I'll do my best. The day after, maybe.' Jemima spoke with the guilty knowledge that it would certainly not be tomorrow, a day already cluttered with a host of highly important meetings and leaving no time for amassing stray lawyers, let alone paying another visit to the Hospice herself.

'It's got to be tomorrow. I'm not going to last very long. I know that. I wouldn't let them give me my medicine this afternoon so I could be clear. It won't be long now.'

Nurse Elsie closed her eyes once more. But this time there was no silence. On the contrary she began to speak aloud in a rapid, low but perfectly lucid voice. It was as though she had long rehearsed in her own mind what she had to say.

'When the little baby was born dead,' began Nurse Elsie, 'the boy, the boy they'd always wanted, I thought my heart would break, my heart as well as theirs. She went into labour early, they couldn't find the doctor. But they got hold of me; I was on another case in London not far away. I did everything but the baby died. I couldn't tell her. I left it to him. And it was he who said to me, "Nurse Elsie, we have to get her a baby, another baby. I feel so guilty. A proper live healthy baby. Nurse Elsie, would you help us?'"

'And that's when it all began. The wickedness.'

2

Bedside Conference

Jemima's next discussion on the subject of Nurse Elsie also centred round a bedside. Only in this case the bed was Jemima's own and it was Jemima herself who was in the bed, or rather lying across it. Unlike Nurse Elsie however, Jemima was not wearing a primly pretty Victorian nightdress but an exotic towelling-robe, honey-coloured like her hair, and beneath that nothing at all. And unlike the ward at Pieta House with its long row of bed-ridden figures, Jemima's bedroom contained only one other occupant.

This was a lawyer called Cass Brinsley. While Jemima lay on the bed in her robe slowly stroking Midnight, her sleek black cat (who responded with a complacent raucous purr), Cass Brinsley sat fully dressed in an armchair beside the bed. One could also say that he was formally as well as fully dressed, since he wore a black jacket, striped dark trousers, a stiff white collar with a spotless white shirt, and a black silk tie with delicate white spots on it. Neither party however, the honey-coloured woman on the bed or the formally dressed man in the armchair, seemed to find anything strange about the contrast.

'What you are saying, darling, is that there was a switch in fact. A deliberate fraud was perpetrated.' Jemima noticed with amusement that where professional matters were concerned, Cass Brinsley quickly reverted to the language of the law courts. The contrast between Caspar Brinsley, the precise almost over-deliberate barrister, and Cass, the astonishingly uninhibited lover, never ceased to intrigue her. She eyed his formal clothing so clearly destined for a day in Chambers speculatively and wondered just for a moment what it would be like . . . just once
...
a
seduction . . .

Quickly and rather guiltily Jemima Shore reminded herself that Cass Brinsley, seducible under these circumstances or not (probably not), was 
also not the only one with a busy schedule. Jemima returned with determination to the topic under discussion. At the same time, Midnight, who seemed jealously to have sensed a distraction in her thoughts, gave a mew and Jemima stroked his back too with renewed concentration.

'I'm not saying there was a switch, Cass. She's saying it. Nurse Elsie. By chance the other mother she was looking after was going to give the baby for adoption anyway. I got the impression she was unmarried - a tragic case, Nurse Elsie called it. Anyway it was a cloak-and-dagger delivery. Something that wouldn't happen in these days of easy abortion to say nothing of the Pill. The other baby was also a boy. So she switched babies. She wants me to bring along a lawyer - that's the word she uses by the way, I think it's probably the word used by the batty priest Father Thomas. I suppose in fact it would have to be a solicitor?'

Cass nodded.

'A commissioner of oaths is what you would need. She'd have to make a deposition and it would have to be sworn. A solicitor can act as a commissioner of oaths - so a solicitor would do.'

'And then? Where would I go from there?'

'And then, my darling, assuming what you tell me about her health is correct, you would be left with a sworn deposition concerning events which took place over twenty years ago, made by a retired midwife, who was dying of cancer at the time. A woman in great pain and certainly under the influence of a great many drugs, if not literally sedated at the time she spoke to you. Added to which she'll almost certainly die on you the moment the deposition is made, if she lasts that long.

'Jemima,' continued Cass in a tender voice, reaching forward and taking her hand, 'stop stroking the insufferably demanding Midnight and listen to me: this is really not one for you. What exactly do you hope to achieve? Especially when you think of the people involved.'

'That's exactly what Sister Imelda said - the Matron of the Hospice -the starchy one. "Think of the people involved.'" Jemima scratched Midnight's furry throat as the cat stretched luxuriously. Cass grabbed her hand again and the cat leapt suddenly and angrily off the bed.

'Darling Jemima, answer the question. What do you hope to achieve? I know you love your cat more than you love me. That has been established.' Cass's tone was the sweetly reasonable one that Jemima assumed he used in court for a difficult witness.

'Peace of mind for Nurse Elsie, I suppose,' Jemima spoke rather doubtfully.

'"Only God can give peace of mind,'" quoted Cass. 'Sister Imelda's line. I rather like it. I shall try it on my clients. Certainly justice being done doesn't always give it.'

'You're right to question my motives, Cass,' went on Jemima with still more uncertainty.
‘I
certainly don't want to cause great misery to a whole lot of people on account of something private they once did years ago. Jemima the Avenger - absolutely not. If I'm to be honest - it's curiosity as much as anything else. Can her story be true?'

'Jemima Shore Investigator!' pronounced Cass.
‘I
knew it. Your dreadful inquisitiveness.' He looked at her and thought how beautiful she always looked after making love; how beautiful in her loosely tied robe, with her famous hair, so much admired on television, now in total disarray and no make-up on her face. What Jemima Shore did not know about the cool and reserved Cass Brinsley was that he sometimes surreptitiously turned on television at night, in the middle of working on a brief, in order to watch Jemima. The sight of the dazzling poised intelligent image on the screen combined with the memories of the evenings - nights - they had spent together filled him with a mixture of possessive jealousy and frustrated lust.

Cass judged it wise to keep these feelings a secret from Jemima. Possessiveness in any form he knew to be her bane - as indeed in theory and in practice up to the present time it had been his too.

Two uncommitted people.

Besides, he had a foolish feeling that a great deal of the British nation also felt this way about Jemima Shore's image on television - without the excuse of knowing her, as it were, in the flesh.

That was another point. Cass hated to be one of a crowd. After one of these bouts of secret jealousy he generally solved the problem of the lust if not the jealousy by taking out any one of a number of attractive available girls (Cass disliked pursuing women) and vanishing temporarily from the list of Jemima's admirers. He never knew if she minded - his absences, that is.

Cass, like Jemima, withdrew his attention rather guiltily from these secret thoughts to the matter in hand.

'Tell me, darling, do you believe her story?' It was the witness box again.

'At first sight it's incredible, isn't it? People don't do such things, as Judge Brack said of poor old Hedda G. Listen to what Nurse Elsie suggests happened. That you-know-who, a highly responsible man - he's held every conceivable post in the government from Defence Secretary to the Environment - got this midwife to procure a live baby, a son, in place of his own child that died. And then calmly went ahead and made the substitution, and has lived quite blithely with the situation ever since. As has his wife. And no one has ever suspected. It's incredible.'

'So you don't believe her,' said Cass, still in his judicial voice, putting the tips of his fingers together.

'Ah, I didn't say that. I haven't been absolutely idle, you know. For one thing I have looked the family up in the peerage - no, you're quite right, Megalith didn't run to such a thing but it does now, since Cherry was quite thrilled to go and purchase one at Hatchard's. It's quite cheered her up - given her all sorts of ideas about her love life.'

'Cherry flowers again?' Cass had heard about the untoward intervention of the analyst.

'Exactly. She's heavily into peers now by the way. Her daydreams have gone up several notches in the social register. It's convenient for her that so many of the peers are quite ancient: you know Cherry's perennial yearning for the Substantial Older Man. Even handier, Debrett gives their dates of birth. Also their residences. She's found one Duke of fifty-seven, that's Cherry's ideal age, who's been married four times and is currently divorced, with two residences in the South of France. Her dreams know no bounds. No children too. Where was I?'

'Another noble family. One child.'

'One child indeed. Where our noble family is concerned, there was an enormous amount at stake - purely in terms of title, if you like that sort of thing. The title has to go through the male line and the present Marquess has no brothers or sisters. His father and his uncle were both killed in the First World War, uncle very young and thus unmarried. After that you have to go way off to a remote cousin, third cousin, something like that. Brilliant Cherry, by now thoroughly over-excited, went to the British Library and checked on a Debrett of 1959, before this boy was born. Fortunately Debrett makes it easy for you by printing the name of the heir presumptive in capital letters. Otherwise even title-oriented Cherry might have had difficulty in tracking it down. So guess who the heir was in 1959?'

'The traditional New Zealand sheep farmer or Los Angeles taxi driver, who would suddenly have become the Marquess of St Ives?'

Jemima frowned. 'No, not a sheep farmer and not a taxi driver. Very much not. Lord St Ives' heir was - no, I won't even ask you to guess, because it's so incongruous. Andrew Iverstone!'

'Iverstone!'

'Yes, Iverstone. The family name is Iverstone. Lord St Ives' full name according to the industrious Cherry, is Ivo Charles Iverstone, Marquess of, etc.'

An unjudicial look of pure surprise crossed Cass' face.

'Andrew Iverstone: that fearful Fascist! I can see you might want to do him out of a title. To say nothing of his yet more dreadful wife. No, wait, that was a remark of pure prejudice, Jemima, forget it. The sheer dreadfulness of Andrew Iverstone is still absolutely no proof that Lord St Ives carried out a crime to rob him of his inheritance.'

All the same Cass thought of the austerely handsome face of the former Foreign Secretary, type-casting for the kind of elegant detached aristocrat beloved of old-style Hollywood movies, and contrasted it with the florid rabble-rousing image of Andrew Iverstone. On behalf of Lord St Ives, Cass Brinsley shuddered. 'Shall I go on?'

'Proceed, Jemima Shore Investigator. So - no children for the Marquess and Marchioness of St Ives - or rather none till this boy. St Ives must be going on seventy now. So he was fifty-odd when the child was born.'

'Correct. But there had been a child, three children in fact, two boys and a girl, all born much earlier, two listed as born and died on the same day, the first lived a little longer. Then this child. Lord St Ives was fifty at the time and more to the point Lady St Ives - she's in Debrett too, being the daughter of a lord, very convenient so I could look her up too - she was forty-six. It was definitely the last chance.'

'All this for a title? As it happens, I've always admired Lord St Ives - his stand over Africa for example. If you must have aristocrats, he's always seemed to me a good advertisement for them.'

'Nurse Elsie said it was all for her - for his wife. What she called the wickedness. I should tell you that. Very emphatic about it in so far as she had the strength to be emphatic about anything. He loved her, couldn't bear another tragedy. She's very much around, by the way, Lady St Ives. A good woman. Known to have visited the Hospice, and of course Nurse Elsie herself, quite recently.'

Cass whistled.

'So your old bird, inspired by her priest and aided by some friendly neighbourhood solicitor or whatever, provided by her favourite television star Jemima Shore, who just happens to have a tame lawyer handy—' he cocked a quizzical eyebrow at Jemima who with an innocent smile continued to stroke Midnight, returned and now sunk into some distant purrless paradise '—aided by all this, your old bird intends to bring fear and unhappiness into the lives of what is laughingly known as one of our great families. But is in fact a retired highly honourable and distinguished politician, and a lady in her sixties who according to your nurse never knew anything about it in the first place. All this to push the vast wealth and estates of the St Ives family, including historic Saffron Ivy, in the direction of that rabid racist Andrew Iverstone.'

'You're the lawyer, Cass. What
about
justice? Justice
and
peace of mind?' asked Jemima with a smile.

'I'm not a lawyer in this bedroom. Who is to say that in a sense justice hasn't been done ? After all if Lord and Lady St Ives had adopted a child -no, I'm wrong, titles can't go to adopted children. Nor entailed estates for that matter. I imagine Saffron Ivy is entailed, or in some kind of trust on the heir male. That Holbein! Andrew Iverstone to own that Holbein! I digress. What I'm trying to say is this: If Lord and Lady St Ives had been less grand, less wealthy, they could simply have adopted a baby like any other childless couple. And that is what they have, in effect, done. Twenty years ago. Leave it, Jemima darling, leave it and forget it.'

'I can't leave it. Forget it, yes. Leave it, no. You see, I promised. And it was my programme which started it.'