THIRTY-THREE
Mrs Gregson was only too aware that if she reported to her sister-in-charge or matron, she would be assigned duties immediately. So she avoided her old wards, which wasn’t difficult. Bailleul Hospital had once been a sprawling sanatorium housing TB sufferers from across Belgium. As well as the formidably gothic bulk of the main house, the grounds held a dozen isolation cottages and exercise and rehabilitation centres. It was to one of these latter single-storey buildings, now called the Notifications and Effects Department, that she headed.
The main N&ED operation took place in a single large room, containing rows and rows of open metal shelving, stacked high with boxes of belongings of the deceased. A team of orderlies worked at low wooden benches, packaging and sending on the deceased’s effects, either back to the regiment or the next of kin. The process generated a prodigious amount of paperwork, which was stored in the old gymnasium next door. Somewhere within the bureaucracy of those adjacent rooms was the confirmation she was looking for. That Shipobottom was not the only soldier to have died with a dreadful grin on his face.
Overseeing the N&ED was a mono-headed Cerberus of a warrant officer, Arthur Lang, who occupied a desk that all but blocked the opening where double doors once stood, barring entry to the main room.
Lang was the kind of man, Mrs Gregson knew, who thought women should be kept on a leash just long enough to enable them to shuffle from hearth to bed and back again. He had a moustache that dipped and rose again on each side, so it looked like the letter ‘w’, and beady, suspicious eyes the colour of coal tar. They had sparred in the past when he had discovered her background. He clearly read the popular press, for he remembered her nickname, the Red She-Devil. She thought all that had been forgotten with the war. Apparently not.
‘Well, Mrs Gregson,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘It’s been a while since we saw you down here. And empty-handed. Have people stopped dying on your rounds?’
VADs usually brought down the cardboard boxes of meagre belongings for cataloguing.
‘I am afraid not. Death hasn’t taken a holiday. I was simply reassigned for a few days.’
‘And you missed me, did you?’
‘Only your wit and good looks.’
He beamed. ‘Oh, there’s more to me than that.’
‘That’s not what Mrs Lang tells me.’
He sniggered at this. ‘Well, I have missed you, Mrs Gregson. For all the wrong reasons. What can I do for you?’
‘I need to check up on a case history. See the copy of the death certificate. You’ll have it on file.’
He snapped his fingers at her.
‘What is it?’
‘You’ll have a doctor’s enquiry docket?’
‘No, it’s a very simple matter—’
‘And so is a docket. Signed by a doctor. It’s a question of confidentiality.’
‘I don’t need anything confidential,’ Mrs Gregson said. ‘Surely it’s a matter of public record.’
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Everything here is confidential, Mrs Gregson. We have to allow them some dignity in death. We can’t allow any Tom, Dick or She-Devil to come rifling. Can we? How do we know you aren’t working for some gutter newspaper, looking to see what became of Lord So-and-so?’
She looked over his head. She daydreamed about breaking in at night, accessing the gymnasium, and stealing away without leaving a trace. Like something out of Angela Brazil, she concluded, and about as likely.
She made eye contact with Lang, wondering if she had the nerve to lift up the ashtray and crown him with it, then bully the others into handing over the document. But threatening them with a loaded ashtray was hardly an effective strategy.
‘Please?’ Mrs Gregson asked.
‘No.’
‘Just this once.’
‘You aren’t entitled.’
‘What about a dirty postcard then?’
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘A what?’
‘A mucky picture. About a tanner. Isn’t that the going rate? Two bob for the really filthy stuff.’
His moustache twitched and two fiery red spots appeared high on his cheeks. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘There’s an orderly on Spyon ward. Gordon is the name. Got a pocket full of them. Shall we go and ask him where he gets them from?’
He looked over his shoulder, to see if any his subordinates had heard, but they carried on with their morbid tasks, oblivious to her accusation. ‘Mrs Gregson, I assure you—’
‘Oh, come on, Mr Lang. I have done the night rounds. It’s all you men can talk about. What Fifior Trixie does or doesn’t do with your little gentleman. The special tricks that the French girls have. And the Belgians . . . well, they could show the English rose a thing or two about pricks. I’ve heard it all. Including how you can buy saucy French postcards. No questions asked about where they came from. But we know, don’t we?’
He swallowed hard.
She smiled, enjoying his discomfort. ‘I bet Mrs Lang isn’t familiar with that sort of thing.’
‘You leave Mrs Lang out of this,’ he hissed. ‘Now look,’ another glance over his shoulder, ‘it’s true that many of the deceased have, what shall we say, inappropriate material in their belongings. What would you have me do? Send pictures of your Trixie with her underwear and worse showing to his mother, sister, wife or sweetheart? With a little note saying, “Look what we found in Albert’s backpack”, eh?’
‘No, and it is very considerate of you to remove it from the effects. But you are supposed to incinerate them. Not resell them around the wards.’
‘You’re bluffing. You can’t prove a thing,’ he said with a leer. ‘And you can suck my big fat cock.’
If it was an attempt to intimidate or shock it was a very poor one,
Mrs Gregson thought. She had, after all, been both a married woman and a front-line nurse. ‘No, but I can make sure the racket is squashed once and for all, can’t I? And although that’s a very generous offer, I am in a hurry.’
He had to laugh at her insouciance in the face of his deliberate crudity. He had reduced other nurses to trembling tears with less.
‘Or I’ll go straight to Matron with a complaint about the magic postcards that keep reappearing. Like most matrons sent to the continent, Elizabeth Challenger was a force to be reckoned with.
Lang took a deep, nervous breath and came to a decision. ‘Very well. But if I do this and you drop me in it—’
‘Why would I? Even She-Devils have their standards. A promise is a promise. Now, it was a soldier who died about ten days ago. He turned blue. He had this look on his face. Of horror.’
‘That doesn’t narrow it down. Almost every man can summon up one horror or another. Anything else?’ There was a hint of impatience in his voice.
She racked her brains for more details. On an overworked ward, with men in need of constant attention, the dead were quickly dismissed. Only the strange colour and the twisted features had caused her to pause, and then just for a moment. Because she’d had to . . . yes, see the show.
‘It was the night of the Gasmaskers. You know, the entertainment.’
The Gasmaskers were an all-male troupe of singers, dancers and mime artists, many of whom specialized in dressing as fetching women. They toured hospitals and reserve lines with their sub-music-hall routines. ‘He died just before their show.’
‘Lucky man. I had to sit through it. I can look at the deaths on that date in the ward logbooks. You did log it?’
‘Sister did.’
‘As?’
She frowned again. They had wondered how to classify the death. ‘Kidney failure, I think.’
‘And which ward?’
‘I was on Nelson then.’
‘Wait here.’ He pushed back from the desk, stood and marched towards the entrance of the gymnasium.
She gave a shudder as he left. Somehow the image of what he had suggested she do to him wouldn’t be shifted. The last eighteen months had given her a thick carapace and a robust vocabulary that enabled her to spar with the worst of them. That didn’t mean she enjoyed it. Descending to their level always made her feel she needed a shower and a scrub with Lysol.
Lang returned, his face having regained its usual pallor. He placed a buff folder on the desk. ‘You have one minute.’
Mrs Gregson fixed him with a defiant stare. This, she knew, was dangerous. Lang was not a man who liked to be bettered. She suspected that somewhere down the line, he would find a way to make her pay for this small victory. But, for the moment, she had the upper hand.
Lang gave a harrumphing sound and went off to check on his clerks and sorters, while she leafed through the documents. It was him all right. Edward Hornby by name. Nineteen. Kidney failure.
My left foot, she thought, as she read the description of the symptoms. The blue colour, though, was not mentioned. Nor the claw-like hands. She had seen both of those things. Hadn’t she? Then she saw something that really did link Shipobottom and Hornby.
She closed the folder. Then she opened it again, glanced up to make sure Lang was still occupied, and ripped the top off the second sheet of paper and then the bottom of the third page. She folded the fragments and slipped them into her pocket.
‘Oy!’ Lang shouted as she picked up her coat and put it over her head, ready to face the rain.
She tried hard to stop her face burning with guilt.
‘Quite finished with that, have you?’ he asked.
‘I have, yes.’
‘And you goin’ to sneak off without a by-your-leave?’
‘Not at all. Thank you,’ she said pushing the folder back across towards him. He picked it up.
Don’t open it. Please don’t open it.
Lang glanced down at it, ran a thumb across the cover.
‘I’m sorry,’ she blurted. ‘If I was a bit of a bully. Terribly rude of me.’
He savoured the apology for a moment before replying. ‘I hope it was worth it.’
She could feel the purloined strips of paper in her pocket. They felt as heavy as a bag of steel washers. So do I.
‘You might have helped solve a crime. I’ll tell you when I have all the facts. But if we do, it will be in no small thanks to you, Arthur.’ The flattery sounded as false as a ninepence piece, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘A crime? Well, well.’ He held up Hornby’s records. ‘I better put this back safe and sound, then, eh?’
You stupid woman. That’s guaranteed he will look now. And notice the damage. She had to get away and quickly.
‘Please. And, Arthur . . . ?’
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t know anyone with a spare motor bike, do you?’