The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio Marsh Page B

she?”
    “She did.” Sister Marigold’s thin lips closed in a whippy line.
    “And prepared the serum?”
    “That is so.”
    “I suppose I’ll have to see her. Between you and me and the Marble Lady, matron, she rather alarms me.”
    “H’m” said Sister Marigold. “Really? Fancy!”
    “Still, it
is
my duty and I
must
. Is she on the premises?”
    “Nurse Banks is leaving us to-morrow. I believe she is in the hospital this afternoon.”
    “Leaving you, is she? Does she frighten you too, matron?”
    Sister Marigold pursed up her lips.
    “She is not a type I care to have nursing for me,” she said. “As I say, personal feelings should not interfere with a nurse’s work, much less political opinions.”
    “I
thought
she looked as if she was suffering from High Ideals,” Alleyn remarked.
    “Call them high ideals! Beastly Bolshevik nonsense,” said Sister Marigold vigorously. “She had the impertinence to tell me, in my own theatre, that she would be glad if the patient— ” She stopped short and looked extremely uncomfortable. “Not, of course, that she meant anything. Still, as I say— ”
    “Yes, quite. They’d say anything, some of these people. Of course with those views she’d loathe the very sight of O’Callaghan.”
    “How she dared!” fumed Sister Marigold.
    “Tell me about it,” said Alleyn winningly.
    After a little hesitation she did.

CHAPTER IX
Three Nurses
    Tuesday, the sixteenth. Afternoon.
    The unbosoming of Sister Marigold was almost an epic. Once the floodgates of her wrath were opened the spate of disclosure flowed turbulently. Alleyn decided that in the Marigold’s eye Banks was a murderess. Derek O’Callaghan’s nurse had told Sister Marigold of Banks’s triumph at the news of his death. The theatre scally had lost her head and told everybody. At first, prompted no doubt by her anxiety to stifle the breath of scandal in her hospital, Sister Marigold had determined to say as little as possible about the unspeakable Banks. Alleyn’s hints that Phillips, his assistants, even she herself, would come under suspicion had evidently decided her to speak. She now said that Banks was obviously an agent of Sir Derek’s political enemies. Alleyn let her talk and talk, and contrived to remain brilliantly non-committal. He discovered that she had an excellent memory and, by dint of careful questioning, he arrived at the procession of events during, and immediately before, the operation. It appeared that the only members of the party who had been alone in the theatre were Phillips, herself, Thoms, and possibly one of the nurses. Mr. Thoms, she thought, had come out of the theatre into the anteroom a few moments after Sir John had prepared his syringe. When she had told him everything two or three times over, Alleyn said that he was a brute to keep her so long and could he see the private nurse and the scally. He asked her not to mention the result of the post-mortem. The scally came first. She was alarmed and inclined to shy off his questions, but quietened down presently and stuck to her story of Banks’s indecent rejoicing. She said Banks was always dinning Soviet teaching into the other nurses. She added nervously that Banks was a good nurse and would never forget her duty to a patient. She described the impedimenta that was put out on a side table before the operation — a full bottle of hyoscine solution, an ampoule of anti-gas serum, syringes, a bowl of distilled water. She was quite sure the bottle of hyoscine solution had been full. She believed that a small amount had since been used. She hadn’t looked at it immediately after the operation. This tallied with information already given by the matron. The scally herself had put all the things away and had cleaned the outsides of all the jars carefully. Matron was so particular. “No use looking for prints on this job,” thought Alleyn with a sigh. He thanked her and let her go.
    Nurse Graham, O’Callaghan’s special,