The Celibate Mouse (3 page)

‘Oh yes, how is she?’

‘Poorly, Mrs Prescott. She’s asking for you to come and see her, if you would be so kind. She’s very agitated, so could you please make it this morning?’

She’s alive!
Thank you, thank you God.
Flushed with relief, I forget to answer.

‘Mrs Prescott, can you still hear me?’

‘Yes. Sorry, I was wool-gathering. I’ll come in as soon as I can.’

I go back to the verandah to set the alarm on my watch for five minutes time, close my eyes and take several deep breaths. ‘Better than drugs any day, my dear,’ the counsellor had chirped in the infuriatingly practical tones adopted by the truly dedicated. Stifling the urge to arrest her for something, I tried meditation with some scepticism at first, but with increasing confidence as time went on. The final session, I took her a box of chocolates, which we agreed were the best therapy of all.

‘Marli, I’ve got to go into Emsberg this morning. Want to come? You can mooch around the shops while I visit Mrs Robinson.’

She is not enthusiastic. Titch tumbles around, pulling at her clothes and licking wherever he can reach. I am anxious about leaving her here by herself, but what could possibly happen in the short time I will be away? She’s seventeen and surrounded by dogs, for God’s sake.

Emsburg boasts a 60-bed hospital situated in pretty, rose-bedded grounds on a hill overlooking the town. Warm smiles greet me on arrival at the reception desk and I am escorted to the Close Observation Ward– COW, they laughingly explain. Edna Robinson looks smaller than I remember and very frail. The well-padded frame which collapsed against the toilet door the day before appears to have diminished. Her hair is stuck to her skull in straw wisps. Luminous eyes, owl-like behind thick-lensed glasses, light up when I enter the small high dependency unit.

‘I’m so glad you came,’ she whispers breathlessly, gesturing for me to take the chair beside her bed. Instinctively leaning toward her, I whisper back–one tends to reciprocate on these occasions–and ask how she feels. Edna’s ‘I’m all right dear, thank you,’ is an aside. There are more important matters on her mind. ‘You must promise not to tell anyone this, dear. Please give me your word you’ll not repeat what I’m about to tell you?’

‘Well, I’m not sure. It depends on what your information is.’
Why tell me if you don’t want anyone to know?

Her face creases with the effort to impress me with the gravity of her message. ‘You have to promise! I need to tell someone in case I die.’ She clutches my arm so tightly that her fingernails leave half-moon indentations.

‘Why, Mrs Robinson? If–’ Her grip tightens; the wrinkles on her face crumple into a myriad of faintly blue petals.

‘Shall I call a nurse?’

‘No!’ Edna almost shouts, and then lowers her voice to a hiss, pausing for breath between rushes of words. ‘Listen to me, someone has to ... know. He had to be punished, so they beat him to... the dirty beggar ... the filthy ... beast.’ Her lips turn down in disgust. ‘He was always so careful to cover his tracks. Those things weren’t talked about in those days ... and they had to do it. We made a vow not to ... say anything ... but now–’

She releases my arm and gropes with trembling hands for the glass of water by her bed. I pick it up and assist, as the old lady takes a huge gulp, gags and starts coughing gobs of phlegm. I jump to my feet, snatch a towel from behind her locker and thrust it into her hands. She plunges her mouth into the folds and scrunches her eyes shut. I reach for the bell to call for the nurse, but she wipes her mouth and gestures me not to. ‘If anyone ever finds out I told ... they don’t know about you. But now Jack’s been killed ... that shouldn’t have happened.’

My cop training springs to life, like a hunting dog chasing quarry. ‘You know who killed Jack Harlow?’

‘We agreed not to talk, but it was only a matter of ti–’ Edna bursts into a paroxysm of coughing. A fleeting presence moves on the periphery of my vision, a shadow in the doorway. I glance across, but only the energy of someone’s presence remains.

Edna Robinson doubles over and slumps forward, her skin translucent, exposing tiny veins running hither and thither under her skin, like ant trails. I ring for assistance, keeping my finger on the buzzer until a nurse rushes in, takes one look at Edna and hits Code Blue on the buzzer. The room swarms with medical staff. I slip out and head down the hall, carefully keeping my eyes averted from ambulatory patients, trying not to run to the exit. Beads of perspiration trickle down my back and prickle my skin; for my own peace of mind and recovery, I cannot allow myself to become involved.

CHAPTER 3

A Moment of His Time.

Sunday evening: at the hospital: 8pm.

T
he evening visitors had left. Here and there a bedside reading light glowed. A nurse re-made a patient’s bed at the far end of the corridor. She flung the sheets across the mattress, and flicked the covers over the bed, tucking them into perfect hospital corners while the patient, sitting in a chair beside the bed, made low-voiced conversation. Her shadow flashing on the opposite wall cast an old-time lantern show.

Doctor Jason Hardgreaves gave a sigh of relief, as he hovered over Edna Robinson. ‘She’ll rest now. Take thirty minute obs, Cecily.’ They noted the tiredness in each other’s faces, the doctor from a long afternoon to evening shift, the nurse on her last night duty before her break and day shift. The staff had battled to keep Edna’s heart stable.

Now, at nightfall, it looked as though she would live. The nurse left to monitor another patient. Hargreaves carried out a final check on Edna’s vital signs, adjusted the oxygen and left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. He was cautiously congratulating himself on a job well done, when a Code Blue alert sounded at the other end of the hospital. After a frozen moment, he rushed through the doors several metres away; the nurses charged in breathless pursuit, Edna Robinson momentarily forgotten.

None of them noticed the tall man who stood in the shadows of the hallway opposite, which angled away from the light and ended in a door leading to the outside of the building. He waited a few moments in case there was more than the three staff he knew to be on duty, but when nothing happened, he twitched the hood of his coat further over his face, stepped forward and emerged into the deserted corridor.

Nothing stirred; perfect conditions. A ‘fair weather night,’ but not for Edna.

The intruder knew his presence in the hospital, if discovered, would be sanctioned even at this late hour. He slipped quietly across the corridor to the Close Observation Ward, the hood of his jacket hiding his identity from the rifle-barrel gaze of the nearby security camera mounted high on the wall. He pulled the door half-closed behind him, leaving just enough of a gap to hear if anyone was approaching the unit. This would only take a moment.

The old woman slept peacefully, under the influence of a mild sedative, her face grey and haggard beneath the oxygen mask. He leaned over the back of the monitor, located the wall connection, moved the trolley forward with a gloved hand and flicked the switch off. He braced himself, listening for running footsteps.

Silence.

He turned to the bed. Edna’s scrawny arms lay on the outside of the covers. Smiling, the visitor gently drew the sheet up to her chin and tucked the side edge under the mattress continuing along the bed on each side to “straightjacket” Edna. She stirred when the pressure registered. He lifted the mask off her face and picked up the spare pillow lying on the chair nearby. Her eyes opened, narrowing with short-sighted confusion, and then twinkling as she recognised her late-night visitor.

‘Wha–? Oh, it’s you, dear. I didn’t tell–’

‘You’re not going to,’ he hissed, as he dropped the pillow across her face and pushed down relentlessly. Edna’s lips adhered to the fabric of the pillowcase; her mouth filled with soft, suffocating wadding. Faint noises came from her throat. She tried to kick free of the sheets which confined her like a straight-jacket. Her feet drummed weakly. He held the pillow down. Beads of perspiration popped out on his brow and spurted down his nose.

Hurry, hurry. Die, damn you! Die!

Terror and rage gave strength to his arms, but her struggles went on. When they finally ceased, he rested on her body for a moment, trying to slow his breathing before tossing the pillow back onto the chair. He pushed himself upright, whipped a miniscule mirror out of his pocket and held the cold surface against her lips. The glass remained pristine. He cocked his head.

Nothing.

He pulled the sheet out from under the mattress, put Edna’s arms back on the outside of the bedclothes and re-settled the oxygen mask. At first glance, no one would realise she was no longer a problem to herself–
or to anyone else.

Smiling, he slipped out the door, congratulating himself on a successful mission. He arrived for a visit that very morning as the old girl was about to spill the beans to the Prescott woman. His ‘secretary,’ Gloria’s description of her was spot on, as was her impulse to ask the woman for her name and where she was staying. Was she mulling over what she’d been told? Or had she dismissed Edna’s ranting as that of a demented old bat? He couldn’t take a chance on allowing the secrets of the past to destroy the future. The Prescott woman was a liability.

He went to the door and peered into the empty corridor, before casting a pitiless glance at Edna’s corpse. ‘Everyone agreed we’d keep quiet, but after all the promises not to tell, you had to break ranks. But don’t worry; we’ll give you a good send-off.’

‘He smiled grimly. ‘Cheers, Aunty Edna.’

CHAPTER 4

A Good Place to Hide

The Doctor

Monday: 5.10am

D
octor Jason Hardgreaves lay in bed, watching dawn breaking over the trees outside his bedroom window. He shivered as he tried to force his mind away from the last nine hours. He’d only arrived home to bed at 4am. The Medical Superintendent told him to take the day off; the police would be in touch for a full statement.

He couldn’t believe his ears when he was paged, raced back to the room prepared to do battle with another heart attack and found Edna dead. He had gently touched her grey, still-warm face and slid his fingers down to the carotid artery trying, without success, to find a pulse.

Sorrow for Edna, whose granddaughter he was engaged to marry, warred with terror. Had he missed a danger sign? There would be an enquiry, no doubt about that. ‘Only half an hour ago, she was sleeping peacefully, her obs were fine ....we fought so hard to save old Edna, and then ... if only Code Blue hadn’t pulled us away from monitoring Edna, she’d still be alive,’ he heard himself wail.

Nurse Cecily Braum found the evidence which led to the ultimate horror. As she moved the chair aside, a pillow on the seat tumbled to the floor. She picked it up, inadvertently placing her hand on a patch of sticky goo.

‘Look! This pillowslip was fresh and now there’s stuff all over ...’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I put a new one on just before we left Edna. Remember, Edna coughed water all over it? Well, Jason, this is
not
water.’ Cecily’s face turned ashen, as she realised the implications of her discovery.

He reached across, took the pillow out of her hands and held it to the light. What appeared to be a pool of saliva and phlegm, was partially soaked through the cotton slip. Had Edna pushed the pillow on the chair? No. She had been sedated, and she would not have been capable of putting the pillow over her head. Something terrifying began to form in a tight ball deep in his stomach.

Understanding of what the discovery might mean closed over him like a shroud. He wanted to throw up. The top of his head felt as though it had parted company with his skull. He leaned down and examined her face. Were those tiny blood vessels the result of petaechial haemorrhaging from being smothered? Or of age in geriatric skin?

‘Hard to tell,’ he thought, but because of the muck on the pillow combined with her blue lips
–
someone must waited for Edna to be left on her own after visiting hours.

He glanced wildly around, trying to identify a place of concealment. The bathroom? Nowhere to hide. Then a flash of the dark corridor opposite Edna’s room, the one leading to the Diversional Therapy wing and boardroom, came to mind.

A good place to hide.

The flesh on his back crawled as he realised that he could have passed within centimetres of the killer, who might have been watching him run to the Code Blue emergency. But why on earth would someone want to murder gentle, inoffensive Edna?

‘Put that back where you found it, Cecily. Don’t handle it more than necessary and don’t touch anything else. Close this room and don’t let anybody in. I need to ring the police
–
and Mrs Eams.’ Hardgreaves’ voice came out high and squeaky. He made a determined effort to lower it. ‘I’ll have to phone her,’ he said, referring to the Director of the hospital. He handed the pillow to the nurse who took a corner and carefully placed it on the chair, trying to position it exactly as she’d found it.

They scuttled from the room, death panting at their heels.

Hardgreaves refused to turn the lights on in the corridor, fearing the patients would be alerted. Explanations were not something he considered himself equipped to go into right then. He fled in the direction of the office, leaving Cecily Braum alone in the dimly-lit corridor. She trembled, her gaze drawn inexorably to the dark reaches of the hallway opposite, as she waited outside the door to Edna’s room.
Perhaps he–or she–was still there ...

If he sat down he’d never want to get up again, so Hardgreaves wedged himself into a corner between the desk and chair, leaned against the wall and unclipped the mobile phone from his belt. Deep breaths couldn’t control the trembling which started in the very core of his being and distributed itself in cold, never-ending waves throughout his body. He dialled 000 and asked for the police. It took two attempts before he could keep his voice steady and advise a gravel-voiced officer of the situation, after which he dropped the mobile and slumped into a nearby chair.

‘Shit. Why didn’t it happen on someone else’s shift?’ Sighing, he initiated the second necessary contact. His call to the Superintendent went straight to voice mail, so he left a message, dreading the last one on his protocol list. Mrs Eams, a woman of somewhat masterful proportions, was not only the Director of the hospital, but also his fiancée’s stepmother.

‘What? Are you absolutely sure?’
she screamed. ‘You can’t be serious!
Edna?’

‘Afraid so, Mrs Eams. I’ve notified the police and locked COW. They should be here soon.’

‘I’m coming in!’ she hissed.

‘Yes, Mrs Eams.’ He clipped his phone back on his belt and went to the tiny ‘cafe’ recess. He’d never craved a hot drink so badly. Drops of boiling water splashed over his trembling hands as he manoeuvred coffee mugs into position under the urn. Somehow he got the job done without inflicting more than minor scalds on his fingers and carried the steaming drinks to the corridor outside the Close Observation Ward.

The two of them stood in the corridor outside the door as they sipped. ‘Libby and I only got engaged last weekend, so I’ve never met Edna’s side of the family,’ Hardgreaves explained.

‘I meet some family members at events around town, but I’ve never got to make close friends with any of them. I dated Peter Robinson, one of the cousins, for a few months, but he was a bit of a waste of space,’ said Cecily Braum. She took a slug of coffee. ‘They’re a pretty secretive bunch, actually. You never know what they’re thinking. Sir Arthur got the ‘sir’ years ago before the Government got rid of knighthoods, but I can’t remember what for. That idiot politician, “Slimeball” Murphy is Constance Robinson’s son. He used to be a real estate developer.’

The doctor placed his coffee mug on a trolley nearby, then stepped into a small, empty side-ward and emerged with two chairs which he plonked against the wall. Gratefully, they dropped onto them.

‘The women in the family are ‘too posh to push,’ if you get my drift? Especially Lady Ferna. Town’s already in an uproar over the other day. You know, Jack Harlow.’ The lighting in the corridor was just bright enough to reveal goosebumps rising under the pale hairs on her arms.

Hardgreaves feet and legs ached, but sitting comfortably in a chair felt disrespectful to Edna. More formality seemed to be called for. They’d forgotten their colleague working at the other end of the building.

Finally, the night buzzer squawked outside A & E. Jason rushed to open the door, unable to stop babbling as he led the police to Edna’s body. The men whom he knew so well metamorphosed into grim-faced strangers. A faint, desperate hope that what he suspected was not so, made him lapse into terrified silence.

Then Mrs Eams arrived, and it went downhill from there...

He jerked upright, sweating, and brushed his hand over his stubbled chin. He’d nodded off without realising it. Slowly, he crawled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom.

It was going to be a long,
long,
day.

***

The Policeman

Monday: 5.10am

Senior Constable John Glenwood leaned against the wall in the hallway, watching the blue-overalled, masked figures of the SOCO
–
Scenes of Crime Officers
–
moving in and out of the ward where Edna Robinson’s body lay. His mind scudded back to when City Despatch called him and his partner, Constable Loy Ng, off night patrol and directed them to attend an ‘incident’ at the local hospital. He grimaced, remembering how they’d joked about what could have occurred. ‘Fighting cats had knocked over the pot plants at the front door, or maybe an ant crossed the path and set off the security alarm.’

Their first glimpse of the white-faced, agitated young doctor instantly wiped jokes out of their minds. As he and Loy gazed down at the bluish-grey face of Edna Robinson, he had been loath to consider foul play, but the reality was unthinkable. Perhaps if he went out the door and came in again, she would be alive?

The next step was to call the Criminal Investigation Branch.

The other night nurse, alerted by their voices, scurried along the corridor to join them. Cecily Braum put her in the picture, but before she could cause a scene, John bundled both women into the office, told Hardgreaves to keep everyone away from COW and called city station on his mobile.

Minutes later he had reported to the Duty Detective at CIB, then sent Loy to get a roll of checked tape out of the boot of the car. Having effectively secured the area by taping off the whole section of corridor around the crime scene, he reported to his station OIC, Senior Sergeant Harris. After he’d finished speaking, he posted the young constable back to complete the Saturday night street patrol. His final action was to commandeer a chair and a small side-table, place them beside the door and begin a crime scene log.

His mind swirled around the events of the last two days. They’d hardly begun the hunt for Jack Harlow’s killer and now this? He didn’t expect CIB would be best pleased. The two victims being related appeared significant, if indeed it proved that Edna had also been murdered, but that was for CIB to determine.

The youngest nurse approached, tip-toeing as though not to wake a reality she’d rather not confront. ‘A cup of tea, John?’

‘Yeah, that’d be good. Thanks Lynette. It’s going to be a long night. CIB and Forensics’ll be here in the morning.’

But before he could finish his drink, Beatrice Eams arrived, refused to accept the taped-off area as a crime scene and demanded to see Edna. A heated, though muted argument ensued and ended with the director charging the tape to get into COW, with John dragging her away and threatening to take her into custody. Jason Hardgreaves, emboldened by John Glenwood’s presence, escorted the shell-shocked director to the office where he plied her with tea. A decision was made to wait until morning to advise the Robinson relatives of the tragedy.

At first light, Director Eams phoned her own daughter, who ran screaming to tell her husband. By the time she’d spoken to her best friend, who telephoned
her
mother, who advised the formidable president of the Women’s Guild, the grapevine was buzzing. But no one thought to tell Edna’s granddaughter, Libby, who visited on the way to work to leave flowers. Her stereophonic reaction to the news reverberated throughout the hospital. Mrs Eams grabbed Libby and hauled her into Accident and Emergency, where she was told to pull herself together.

The team of blue-clad figures carrying cases of equipment to the crime scene paused momentarily, glanced at each other then at John Glenwood and shrugged before continuing on their cumbersome way. Day staff tried to coax hysterical patients back into the wards, waving their arms like demented sheepdogs.

John briefed the two CIB officers, before posting a junior constable to prevent anyone from coming near that end of the corridor and signed over the crime scene log. All too soon, he would be back on duty in a town already rocked by the Dog Trial Murder. He shuddered, recalling Jack’s widow, Penelope, kneeling by his body in the centre of the arena, ashen-faced, with a ring of faces gazing down like cows in a paddock. ‘I didn’t think she’d be so cut up about it,’ he thought, ‘I expect it was the shock.’

A memory flicked through his mind, something he should recall. He pulled into his garage, turned off the engine and sat for a few minutes. He knew it was very important, but if he didn’t force it, eventually he would remember.