Sergeant Masterson, unchastened, looked slightly gratified at this speech as if it confirmed something to his satisfaction. Sister Brumfett bustled into her office, tight-lipped and ready for battle. Rather to her surprise Mr. Courtney-Briggs followed.
Sergeant Masterson said: “I wonder, Sister, if I could see the ward report book covering the period when Nurse Pearce was on this ward? I’m particularly interested in her last week here.”
Mr. Courtney-Briggs broke in roughly:
“Aren’t they confidential medical records, Sister? Surely the police will have to apply for a subpoena before they can make you produce them?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, sir.” Sergeant Masterson’s voice, quiet, almost too respectful, yet held a tinge of amusement which wasn’t lost on his hearer. “Ward nursing records surely aren’t medical documents in the proper sense. I merely want to see who was being nursed here during that period and whether anything happened which might be of interest to the Superintendent. It’s been suggested that something occurred to upset Nurse Pearce while she was nursing on your ward. She went from here straight to the school, remember.”
Sister Brumfett, mottled and shaking with an anger which left small room for fear, found her voice.
“Nothing happened on my ward. Nothing! It’s all stupid, malicious gossip. If a nurse does her job properly and obeys orders there’s no need for her to be upset. The Superintendent is here to investigate a murder not to interfere with my ward.”
Mr. Courtney-Briggs broke in blandly:
“And even if she were-upset is the word I think you used, Sergeant-I don’t see what relevance that has to her death.”
Sergeant Masterson smiled at him as if humoring a willfully obstinate child.
“Anything that happened to Nurse Pearce in the week immediately before she was killed may have relevance, sir. That’s why I’m asking to see the ward report book.”
As neither Sister Brumfett nor the surgeon made any move to comply, he added:
“It’s only a matter of confirming information we already have. I know what she was doing on the ward during that week. I’m told she was devoting all her time to nursing one particular patient. A Mr. Martin Dettinger. ”Specializing him, I think you call it. My information is that she seldom left his room while she was on duty here during the last week of her life.“
So, thought Sister Brumfett, he had been gossiping with the student nurses. But of course! That was how the police worked. It was pointless to try to keep anything private from them. Everything, even the medical secrets of her ward, the nursing care of her own patients, would be nosed out by this impertinent young man and reported to his superior officer. There was nothing in the ward report book which he couldn’t find out by more devious means; ‘discover, magnify, misinterpret and use to make mischief. Inarticulate with anger and something close to panic she heard Mr. Courtney-Briggs’s bland and reassuring voice.
Then you’d better band the book over, Sister. If the police insist on wasting their own time there’s no need for us to encourage them to waste ours.“
Without another word, Sister Brumfett went to her desk and, bending down, opened the deep right-hand drawer and took out a large, hard-backed book. Silently and without looking at him, she banded it to Sergeant Masterson. The Sergeant thanked her profusely and turned to Mr. Courtney-Briggs:
“And now, sir, if the patient’s still with you, I’d like to have a word with Mr. Dettinger.”
Mr. Courtney-Briggs made no attempt to keep the satisfaction out of his voice.
“I think that is likely to challenge even your ingenuity, Sergeant Mr. Martin Dettinger died on the day Nurse Pearce left this ward. If I remember rightly, she was with him when he died. So both of them are safely out of reach of your inquisition. And now, if you’d be good enough to excuse us, Sister and I have work to do.”
He held open the door and Sister Brumfett strutted out before him. Sergeant Masterson was left alone, holding the ward record book in his hand.
“Bloody bastard,” he said aloud.
He stood for a moment, thinking. Then he went in search of the medical record department.
VI
Ten minutes later he was back in the office. Under his arm was the ward report book and a buff-colored file, stamped with a warning in black capital letters that it was not to be handed to the patient, and bearing the name of the hospital and Martin Dettinger’s medical record number. He placed the book on the table and handed the file to Dalgliesh.
Thank you. You got it without trouble?“
“Yes, sir,” said Masterson. He saw no reason to explain that the Medical Records Officer had been out of his department and that he had half persuaded, half bullied the junior clerk on duty into handing over the file on the grounds, which he didn’t for a moment believe, that the rules about the confidentiality of medical records no longer applied when the patient was dead and that when a Superintendent of the Yard asked for a thing he was entitled to get it without fuss and without delay. They studied the file together. Dalgliesh said:
“Martin Dettinger. Aged forty-six. Gave his address as his London Club. C of E Divorced. Next-of-kin, Mrs. Louise Derringer, 23 Saville Mansions, Marylebone. Mother. You had better see the lady, Masterson. Make an appointment for tomorrow evening. I shall need you here during the day while I’m in town. And take trouble with her. She must have visited her son pretty frequently when he was in hospital. Nurse Pearce was specializing him. The two women probably saw quite a lot of each other. Something happened to upset Pearce while she was working on the private ward during the last week of her life and I want to know what it was.”
He turned back to the medical record.
“There’s a lot of paper here. The poor chap seems to have had a stormy medical history. He suffered from colitis for the past ten years, and before that there’s a record of long spells of undiagnosed ill health, perhaps a forerunner of the condition which killed him. He was in hospital for three periods during his army service, including a spell of two months in an army hospital in Cairo in 1947. He was invalided out of the army in 19S2 and emigrated to South Africa. That doesn’t seem to have done him much good. There are notes here from a hospital in Johannesburg. Courtney-Briggs wrote for them; he certainly takes trouble. His own notes are pretty copious. He took over the case a couple of years ago and seems to have been acting as a kind of general practitioner to Dettinger as well as his surgeon. The colitis became acute about a month ago, and Courtney-Briggs operated to remove a large part of the bowel on Friday, 2nd January. Dettinger survived the operation, although he was in a pretty bad state by then, and made some progress until the early morning of Monday, 5th January, when he relapsed. After that he was seldom conscious for long, and he died at five thirty p.m. on Friday, 9th January.”
Masterson said: “Nurse Pearce was with him when he died.”
“And apparently she nursed him almost single-handed for the last week of his life. I wonder what the nursing record tells us.”
But the nursing record was far less informative than the medical file. Nurse Pearce had entered in her careful schoolgirl’s hand the details of her patient’s temperature, respiration and pulse, his restlessness and brief hours of sleep, his medication and food. It could not be faulted as a meticulous record of nursing care. Beyond that it told them nothing.
Dalgliesh closed the book.
“You’d better return this to the ward and the medical folder to the proper department. We’ve learnt all we can from them. But I feel in my bones that Martin Dettinger’s death has something to do with this case.”
Masterson did not reply. like all detectives who had worked with Dalgliesh, he had a healthy respect for the old man’s hunches. Inconvenient, perverse and far-fetched they might seem, but they had been proved right too often to be safely ignored. And he had no objection to an evening trip to London. Tomorrow was Friday. The time-table on the hall notice-board showed that the students’ sessions ended early on Friday. They would be free soon after five. He wondered whether Julia Pardoe would fancy a drive to town. After all, why not? Dalgliesh wouldn’t be back by the time he was due to set out It could be arranged with care. And there were some suspects it would be a positive pleasure to interview on their own.