It was not until Stevenson had dismissed all of them, Craig, Miss Mazarin, Amundsen and the two discomposed chief residents, that he found himself alone with the embattled chief nurse.
She followed him, rustling protestingly, to his small office at the far end of the corridor. Anxious to call home, Craig found himself placed instead in the position of confidant. He did not know whether to laugh or to remain sober. He was very tired and the situation was sticky and disagreeable. Moreover, his wife would be worried about him by now. Still, to find himself being consulted instead of patronized by Miss Mazarin, was an experience he was not wholly prepared to bypass. He regarded her steadily as she began.
“Doctor.” It had the sound of an order.
“Yes, Miss Mazarin? What is it? I really should phone my wife, but if you’ll make it brief—”
“There is something you should know. About Dr. Cox, I mean.”
“Perhaps, if you think it is important, you should have told Captain Stevenson.”
She shook her head firmly. “No. No policeman for me, thank you. They don’t care what kind of reputation the hospital gets.”
And you do, he thought, with just a touch of bitterness. You care one hell of a lot. That must be why we all fall short of your ideal.
She went on, ignoring his slightly reproachful frown. “None of the patients is mixed up in this thing, Doctor. This is a personal thing.” Her lips narrowed disapprovingly. “It’s a bad thing. But I’m not going to have one of my patients taking the blame for it. Not when I know — when everybody around here knows — precisely what was going on.”
“What was going on, Miss Mazarin?”
“Doctor Cox and Miss Ballard — were behaving outrageously,” she said, her color rising. “What’s more, they had a nasty little fight, right in Halfway Mark, only this morning. You don’t have to take my word for it; you can ask Vi. She can tell you all about it. So can anybody within fifty feet of the place at the time.”
Vi, he thought. Vi worked behind the counter at Halfway, but she waited on customers only in accordance with some strict order of precedence known to herself alone. One of the high-priced consulting doctors with expensive offices up front might possibly catch her eye, and have his order immediately taken, with a deferential smile. Staff doctors were occasionally accommodated — residents very rarely. Patients were left to the less efficient care of Vi’s two assistants. The rest of the time Vi spent collecting for possible future reference the gossip and scuttlebut of the huge edifice. Craig was certain that if anybody knew anything that was “going on”, it would be Vi. He nodded, without comment.
“I don’t want to say anything about a dead man,” went on Miss Mazarin, saying it just the same. “But this thing wasn’t even decent — the way they didn’t ever try to hide it, or anything. A divorce they were talking about, Doctor, and everybody heard them. And they heard him saying that it was out of the question and that she might as well forget it. The things she said to him a moment later weren’t exactly professional, or ladylike even, if you know what I mean.”
Miss Mazarin looked at Craig and then raised her eyes to the picture over his head. “I think she was blazing mad. And I think you ought to ask her where she was when he got that knife in his back.”
“Why didn’t you give this information to the police?”
She sniffed. “I don’t think it’s any of their business, that’s why. If we’re going to have trouble in the hospital, I say it’s the hospital’s affair to straighten it out. Those police — they think my patients are all loonies.” She used the word as though it were a large rough stone that she had to swallow.
“They think all these poor sick people are just waiting for an opportunity to kill people or cause trouble. Well, they’ve got a lot to learn, Doctor. There are more so-called sane people on the outside waiting to get into trouble than you’ll ever find in here.”
He met her eye; and for the first time in his seven years at the hospital an exchange of warmth and understanding took place between them.
“I couldn’t agree more with you as to that, Miss Mazarin,” he said. “I’ll talk to Miss Ballard myself, the first thing in the morning. I don’t think there’s anything to it,” he hastened to add. “Miss Ballard has a quick temper but I don’t think she’s capable of killing a man. But I can’t believe any of the patients here did it, either.”
She almost thawed, closing the door behind her.
Nevertheless he was troubled, all that night and the next morning. Kay Ballard was quick, tempermental, and very pretty. She also had a highly trained mind and a great deal of self-discipline — putting aside affairs of the heart. She might be capable of a great many interesting things, but hardly of murder. But who...?
His mind went back effortlessly to a day six months before — a day when he had returned from his coffee break at Halfway to find his office a shambles. His name plate had been ripped off the door, seemingly by someone in a fit of violent anger. Inside his papers lay scattered across the rug, a few ripped into shreds, the rest crumpled past recovery. A photograph of his children lay on the floor, the letters on the desk had been rifled and his keys were gone. Staring at the mess, unable to comprehend it, he had finally noticed a scrawled red-crayon message on the blotter.
“This will teach you,” the message read in shaking script. “I told you I wanted another Doctor. I hate him. And I hate you too.”
And he had remembered — Margot Gillingham. She had been an outpatient at the clinic, recommended by a private-patient social agency which had been unable to cope any further with her case. As chief of the residents’ training program he had assigned her to Dr. Cox; and their difficulties had been immense and discouraging from the beginning.
Cox had conferred with him, his face grim, after nearly every session. Craig had been intrigued, however, with the particular quality of her hostility, and he had desperately wanted to get on with the case.
But Miss Gillingham finally strode into Dr. Craig’s office, and demanded another doctor, her voice quivering hysterically.
“He hates me, do you hear? He hates me and he fights me every step. I’ll do something desperate if you don’t get me another doctor. You understand, don’t you? There has to be a change.”
Craig nodded, soothingly, and tried to draw her out. But she could only go on repeating that Dr. Cox hated her. After conferring with Cox, Craig decided that they should try to work the problem out together. Refusing to do anything drastic would be better for both the doctor and the patient. She had retaliated with the vicious attack on Craig’s own office — and had never come back.
I wonder, he thought. It was my office she wrecked. But could she have been angry enough at Cox to murder him — angry still, half a year later?
He picked up the phone and called Stevenson, giving him the girl’s address and the particulars of the case. That hard-pressed official, glad to find somebody in the hundreds of potential suspects who might possibly furnish a motive, promised to get on it right away.
Craig was hanging up when Kay Ballard walked into his office.
“I didn’t do it, Bill,” she said. She lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, but her voice was firm.