She looked at her watch. Nearly one o’clock. She’d got into the habit of sitting with Edward for a while around now. He didn’t sleep well and enjoyed the company.
She brought him his tea and settled down for a chat. This was what nursing should be, really getting to know and care about your patients. It was a privilege, and so often you saw the best of people at times like this. People sometimes asked her, did that make it harder when they died, but strangely enough, it didn’t.
“Any news about the baby?” she asked. Edward’s only daughter, Laura, was in New Zealand waiting for her own daughter to give birth. It had been a difficult pregnancy with enforced bed rest.
He shook his head. “Laura rang earlier. She’s still fretting about not being here. I’ve told her not to be so silly. Melanie needs her mum with her. And as for me, I don’t want any harm to come to my first great-grandchild, do I? Just so long as he or she arrives before I go.”
“I’d put money on it,” Jennifer said.
She would, too. Edward would hang on for that, though afterwards it would be a different matter. The real question was whether Laura would get away in time to be with him at the end. She could guess how sorely he yearned for his daughter, but it remained unspoken between them.
“I’m not short of visitors,” he said, as if he had read her mind.
“The day staff tell me you’ve made quite a hit with Edith.”
He winked at her. “Oh, I’m not so far gone that I don’t have an eye for a good-looking woman. Kathleen popped in earlier on, too.”
Kathleen was the hospice chaplain, a Church of England vicar who came in four afternoons a week.
“I thought you Quakers didn’t have any truck with the clergy?”
He laughed. “Oh, I’m happy to chat to anyone. And anyway, we don’t talk about religion. We’ve discovered that we’re both keen on classic crime fiction. She’s promised to lend me a collection of Ellery Queen short stories.”
Jennifer nodded. She wasn’t a regular churchgoer, but her own faith was simple and secure. She was certain that the souls of her patients found safe harbour. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did know it.
They talked for a while longer. When she saw that his eyelids were drooping, she arranged his pillows for him and put the emergency buzzer within reach. She dimmed the lights and went quietly away.
As she walked back to the nurses’ station, she glanced into each room in turn. She had actually passed Edith’s room before she registered that something was wrong. She turned back and went in. What she had seen was the light reflected off Edith’s eyes. They were half open. She moved without haste to the bed and touched the pulse-point at the throat. The skin was cool under her fingers. Sometime in the last couple of hours, Edith had slipped silently away.
Jennifer closed Edith’s eyes and said a short prayer.
“You weren’t expecting it, were you?” Edward said. “I know Edith wasn’t. She thought she had awhile to go yet.”
It was the following night and Jennifer was rearranging his flowers. “Well, yes. But these things don’t always go according to a timetable.”
“I can’t believe it. She was so full of life.”
Jennifer gave him a compassionate look. He had no difficulty in interpreting it. Funny: The more his body wound down, the greater seemed to be his insight into what other people were thinking. He could almost see the thoughts flitting through her head. Poor old boy, she was thinking. It brings home the fact of death. Bound to be upsetting.
What she actually said was, “The doctor says her heart gave out — it could have happened at any time.”
“I know, I know. ‘Death in Hospice’: hardly a banner news headline, but all the same...”
Jennifer plucked out a dead carnation and dropped it into the bin. “To go without any fuss or pain, that’s not a bad thing.”
He snorted. “Maybe not. But it sure as hell wasn’t Edith’s style. I can’t imagine her ever taking the easy way out. I’ll miss her,” he added, suddenly realising he was close to tears.
Jennifer put her head on one side and tweaked the arrangement to conceal the gaps.
“The family didn’t expect it, either,” she admitted. “And that reminds me. According to her niece there was a bag of family photos that she’d brought in to sort out. We can’t find them. She didn’t leave them in here, did she?”
“Not a bag full, no, but she did leave one.” Edward fumbled on his bedside table for the photo of the three men.
She came over, took one look, and said, “Doctors.”
He was taken aback. “You recognise them?”
“No, no, but they have that look about them and it’s obvious what the occasion is.”
“It is?”
“Of course. They’ve just set up in practice together. Look,” she pointed to something in shadow on the left-hand side of the picture. “That’s their new nameplate. They’re drinking a toast.”
To think that he had missed that! But of course he had been concentrating on the faces. He squinted at it, trying to make out the letters. They were tantalisingly out of focus.
“Who are they?” Jennifer asked.
Edward hesitated. But what was there to lose?
He told Jennifer what Edith had told him.
She thought about it for a while. Again he could read her thoughts: Should she pooh-pooh the idea, or be honest?
She decided to be honest. “d’you know the joke about the man who dies and goes to heaven? He sees someone rushing around in a white coat and asks St. Peter who it is. St. Peter says, ‘That’s God. He thinks he’s a doctor.’ Some of those old-style consultants did pretty much think they were God.”
“Some still do,” Edward said wryly. “So you’re not going to say it couldn’t happen?”
“We both know that it could. As long as nothing was said, people could pretend they didn’t know.”
“And after a while, they’d be able to tell themselves that it really didn’t happen, and that if there were any real evidence, the police would have been onto it. But, you know, he could still have a lot to lose. What about those murders in Finland? At Lake Bodom. Someone was brought to trial over forty years later. And Edith wasn’t the kind to let sleeping dogs lie. If he felt threatened by her...”
But that was one step too far. He saw that he had lost her. He felt a stubborn determination to press on. “You think I’m letting my imagination run away with me, morphine dreams...”
He saw from the slight flush on her face that he was right.
“There’s something you’re forgetting,” she said. “Even if someone wanted to murder Edith, how would they get in here? All visitors have to sign in and this isn’t like a huge hospital. I know everyone who works here. It just wouldn’t be possible for anyone to masquerade as a doctor.”
“They wouldn’t be masquerading as a doctor, they would actually be one. I asked one of my friends from my Quaker meeting to bring in my pastels.” His sketchbook was lying on the bed. He opened it to show her. “I’ve tried to age them,” he said. “Dr. Y — that sort of fair hair tends to get thin. It’s already receding a bit in the photo. By now he’s probably bald on top. And the face — he’s the kind of man that gets gaunt with age. With that long jaw, he’ll look a bit skull-like.” He had her full attention now. She was studying the drawings, fascinated.
He went on. “Dr. X is the type that puts on weight easily. Not just his build; he likes his food and drink. He’s a bit greedy. His hair might recede a bit, but not a lot, it’ll just make the widow’s peak more prominent. He’ll have some grey in his hair by now. It’s a distinctive face — with that strong nose.”