Corridors of the Night (34 page)

‘I’m working for the hospital,’ Hester told him, ‘for the patients who still need someone to care for them. Oddly enough, some of the other nurses who might have done it have suddenly changed their minds.’ There was sadness in her voice, and quite definitely anger as well.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rathbone said. He meant it. The trail of pain this wretched case was leaving behind it was far wider and deeper than he had imagined when he began. Perhaps most cases were like that; he had simply forgotten that in the time he had been away. Sometimes you freed an innocent man, which meant the guilty one was still loose somewhere. If you convicted a guilty one, the story was seldom as simple as the charge made it seem.

‘I went to see her,’ Hester said suddenly. ‘Just before she was killed.’

‘Did you?’ Rathbone was startled. ‘Why?’

‘It started as duty, I suppose, because I thought she might be in danger. Not very effective, was I!’ There was bitterness in her voice now, and self-blame. ‘I didn’t like her, but I felt I might give her some kind of warning. I ended up by seeing it a great deal more from her view than I had before, and being no use at all. She was a good daughter, devoted, selfless really. Radnor made her so she thought she couldn’t live without him, even that she shouldn’t want to. People can do that to each other – suck them dry. I think he took people’s lifeblood more than just literally.’

‘Do you think Rand killed her to keep her from making any of his work public, before he was ready?’

Hester stared at him. ‘Why on earth would he do that?’

‘To protect the secrets of his formula for storing blood. At the moment he’s the only one who knows the exact proportions, unless you do?’

‘I don’t think he killed Adrienne to stop her revealing how he did it. And yes, I do know what proportions he used to stop it from clotting so it was unusable. That isn’t the secret.’

‘What is?’

‘Why some people’s blood, which looks exactly like any other, cures people, and other blood kills. Some people’s blood always works, some seems never to, and others works some of the time and not at other times.’

‘And what is the answer?’

‘I have no idea, and neither has Hamilton Rand.’ She looked at Rathbone, then at Monk. ‘He isn’t wicked; he’s just oblivious to other people’s needs. He wants to find the way to transfuse blood from one living person to another, and he doesn’t care who pays the price for it. He doesn’t particularly want wealth, or fame. He wants the cure for white blood disease. His brother Edward died of it when he was a child. I think, to Hamilton, it would be like defeating death itself. Almost as if . . . as if he could bring Edward back and undo that loss he can’t forget.’

Monk thought about it for several moments before he replied. Rathbone waited. When Monk finally spoke it was to Hester.

‘So you don’t believe he would kill Adrienne to keep his process secret?’

‘If he wanted it secret, he would kill me first,’ she replied with a tiny shrug. ‘Adrienne didn’t know enough about it to understand. She was there only to help her father! I was there because I was taken, and then I was a prisoner both literally, because the door was locked, and morally, because I wouldn’t leave the children.’

‘And you understood his passion,’ Monk added, but there was no blame in his voice.

‘I came to,’ Hester agreed.

Monk looked at her, then at Rathbone. ‘She was found in the morning, fully clothed and lying in a ditch within a quarter-mile of her home. Her clothes were crumpled but not torn. She was half hidden by the long grass and undergrowth. Her body was cold, so she died some time quite early in the night, probably before midnight.’

Hester blinked rapidly and wiped her hand across her cheek.

Rathbone noticed the gesture. She had made him laugh, infuriated him, earned from him a fierce admiration, terrified and exasperated him at times during the years he had known her, but this was the side of her he cared for the most deeply. He had once thought he would never love anyone else so much. It gave him a deep feeling of peace to know that he had been wrong about that.

‘If they try to prosecute Rand for this, I won’t take part,’ he said with conviction. ‘It doesn’t look as if anything about this is going to end well!’

‘It’s not finished yet,’ Monk said grimly. ‘We won’t let it be!’

‘GLAD TO see you back,’ Sherryl O’Neill said with a smile when Hester returned to duty at the hospital the following evening. Then she frowned. ‘You don’t look so good. Trouble is we really can’t do without you. Bad accident on one of the navy ships. Five men injured.’ She peered forward, studying Hester’s face, the tone and colour of her skin. ‘That horrible Mr Rand didn’t hurt you, did he? I mean . . .’ She stopped, not wanting to put her thought into words.

Hester could not help laughing at the idea. Hamilton Rand had about as much sexual passion for her as for a bucket of mud. ‘You have no cause to be concerned,’ she said, still smiling widely. ‘The very idea is the funniest thing I’ve heard in months. Please don’t be offended. I needed to laugh.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Sherryl was very direct. She was used to dealing with urgent and very personal matters. There was no room for prudishness or euphemisms in nursing.

‘Someone murdered Adrienne Radnor,’ Hester said quietly.

‘I thought you didn’t like her,’ Sherryl observed, ‘which I can heartily understand.’

‘I didn’t, at least not much. But I might have, if I’d known her better. Either way, I was sorry for her.’

Sherryl shook her head. ‘Sometimes I think you’ve got more heart than brains. But I’m glad to see you. We’ve got enough to do for six of us.’

And so it proved. Doing whatever was possible for seriously injured men, dressing their wounds and listening to their camaraderie, bad jokes and laughter laced with pain, reminded her of the Crimea and the desperate courage needed there. Hester had no time even to remember her own feelings, let alone consider them important.

At the end of a long night, when the sun was already risen, she met Magnus Rand for the first time since she had been smothered with ether and taken to the cottage. She was walking along the corridor on her way towards the entrance, having handed over her notes to the day nurses. She encountered him coming out of his office. He stopped short at seeing her.

‘Good morning, Mrs Monk,’ he said quietly. There was no mistaking the embarrassment in his face, but he did not avoid meeting her eyes.

‘Good morning, Dr Rand,’ she replied. She was too tired to be evasive. She had seen too much suffering to speak in euphemisms. ‘The patients are doing as well as men with such injuries can. We lost no one, but they are a long way from safe. All the notes will be on your desk.’

He was clearly unhappy, but he stood directly in front of her so she could not pass him without physically brushing by him. If she took even a step he could block her way.

‘It was not about the patients I wanted to speak to you.’ There was a definite flush in his cheeks. ‘I am sure you will have done all that you could. I think we may save those that are left. It is not an easy task, and I am very grateful that you came back. I would hardly have blamed you if you had not.’

‘It is not a question of what you think, Dr Rand,’ she told him calmly, no anger in her voice. ‘It is the patients’ wellbeing that is important. Those men had no part in your brother’s experiments.’

‘They might benefit from them,’ he pointed out. ‘Or other men in the future, once the technique is perfected. At least there is hope.’

She looked at his face. For a moment she wanted to agree with him, say that it had been worth it. Perhaps for those people it would be. Now she was still too raw, too bruised by fear and loss, to think of such a distant future.

‘Not until you know why the Roberts children’s blood always worked, and other people’s does sometimes and not others,’ she said. ‘The rest I already know.’ She made a move to pass him.

He still blocked her. ‘I know. I owe you a debt I can’t pay, and I am very aware of it. My brother Edward died of white blood disease.’ His voice was thick with emotion. ‘I never really knew him, but Hamilton loved him deeply. Hamilton gave up his own career to look after me, and then to see that I had the education that he had not.’

‘I understand your loyalty to him, Dr Rand,’ she said sincerely. ‘Perhaps you can then understand my family’s loyalty to me? The son I . . . I was going to say adopted, but that is not really true. I think he adopted us. The Roberts children were your patients too. I think Maggie wanted to save her brothers just as much as you wanted to save yours.’

His face was white. ‘I know all the arguments, and you are right. I don’t know why I imagined that saying anything would help. My conscience prompted me, I suppose. It was not so much anything to do with you. I don’t expect you to pardon what happened or find excuse for it. I am grateful you returned. Accept that at least.’

‘I do accept it, Dr Rand. As I said, I didn’t come back for you, I came for the patients. I suppose even more I came back for myself.’

‘For yourself?’ He was momentarily confused.

‘You must be whoever you want to be, Dr Rand. I will not let you choose who I will be. Whatever I do, it is my . . . failure . . . if I let you dictate my actions.’ She did not avert her eyes but stared straight at him.

He looked for a moment as if she had struck him, then he lifted his head a little. ‘How easily you say that – as if the choices were always so clear. Is it so easy for you, Mrs Monk? Right and wrong! No shadows you can’t escape, no debts of love or gratitude where you don’t have to weigh one against another?’

Now it was she who was embarrassed. Her tiredness and her grief had made her far too quick to judge. ‘I’m sorry. Of course there are. And I have made mistakes. We can all be wiser in hindsight, as well as on behalf of others. I suppose I should be more grateful that I have the chance to come back. You need not have offered it to me. Good morning. I’m going home to sleep.’

He smiled with a warmth she had not seen in him before. ‘Good morning, Mrs Monk,’ he replied.

Hester returned to work a little early that evening and went to report to Magnus Rand before going into the ward. She wished to hear directly from him what had happened during the day, rather than read it from notes she could not question, or hear only the opinion of the nurses going off duty.

She stopped in the corridor just outside his office. The door was not quite closed, but she would not push it open without knocking first. She had her hand up and had almost touched the wood when she heard Hamilton Rand’s voice with its now highly familiar quiet sarcasm.

‘Really, Magnus, the issue has been decided. You are fighting against the tide. I accept that my methods were unconventional, but—’

‘Unconventional?’ Magnus’s voice rose in disbelief. ‘We are incredibly fortunate that Mrs Monk has not attempted to sue us for the way you treated her.’

Hamilton’s tone kept the same slightly patronising calmness. ‘Magnus, you’ve worked with the woman for weeks now. Haven’t you ever really looked at her? She understands. She may hate me, and be thoroughly sentimental about the children. I dare say she even loathes Radnor. God knows, he’s an unlikeable man. He’s selfish, greedy, and treated his daughter like a cross between a child and a servant.’

His voice rose a little, becoming smooth, more urgent. ‘But Magnus, she understands! I saw it in her face, in the way she moved her hands on the machine, the way she knew what to do for Radnor when he was failing. She’s a born nurse, whatever else she is. She knows what I’m doing, and she knows it can work. She wouldn’t deliberately sabotage it because that would be a sin against the very practice of medicine. She couldn’t do it, whatever she threatens. And what’s more, Magnus, she knows that I know it. She might hate me for that, but she won’t strike against me because it would destroy who she is as well.’

Hester froze. Her stomach was knotted and her hands were so tightly clenched they hurt. The arrogance of him was breathtaking. And the thing that made her want to curse him with every word she could think of was that he was right. Personally she loathed him, but professionally she understood what he was doing. Her vision of what it could achieve if he succeeded infinitely far outweighed any petty and self-indulgent ideas of vengeance, or whatever might be considered justified for what had caused her no more than fear, pity and a small degree of hardship. What was any of that, compared with saving countless lives?

For Maggie, Charlie and Mike it was different. But they were not dead. Whether he would have bled them until they were she did not know. He had not been put to that test. She thought he might have failed it, but she could be wrong.

‘Did you kill Adrienne Radnor, Hamilton?’ Magnus asked.

‘What? What the devil are you talking about?’ Hamilton sounded utterly confused.

Magnus was suddenly really angry. ‘I’m talking about Adrienne Radnor. Don’t pretend you didn’t know she was dead. She was murdered, strangled. Three days ago. She was found in a ditch by the side of the road, half a mile from her home.’

‘God in heaven, Magnus! Did you think I did that? Whatever for?’

Hester heard the disbelief in his voice and, much as she wished not to, she believed his amazement, even his sense of outrage. He could barely grasp what his brother thought of him.

‘Because she threatened your continued work,’ Magnus answered. ‘What did she know that could possibly have got in your way? You’re a help to all the people who matter! You’re safe now. Just—’

‘I never touched her!’ Hamilton shouted back. ‘For God’s sake, Magnus, pull yourself together. I hadn’t seen her since the case was dismissed, nor had I intended to. Now turn your attention to the present. We have work to do.’

‘You hadn’t seen Miss Radnor?’

‘No, I hadn’t. Now stop wasting time with something we can’t alter or help. I want to use Mrs Monk again. She will save time because she already knows all she needs to be of use. It will take me weeks to train someone else to take her place, even if I can find someone with her intelligence. I haven’t time or the patience to deal with a woman who’s forever asking questions about everything and then making short-sighted judgements. And another thing: Mrs Monk doesn’t need to be told what to do in an emergency. She just does it, and tells me later.’