As she pushed the plate away he spoke. ‘I am so desperately sorry that you of all people had to be the one to find Luce. It can’t have been pretty.’

‘No, it wasn’t. But I can cope with that sort of thing. You mustn’t let it worry you.’ She smiled at him, unaware that she looked as if she waded through the depths of a private hell. ‘I must thank you for taking the blame for my decision to remove Michael from X.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, it helped didn’t it? Let the colonel cling to his stronger-sex convictions. If I had told him I was drunk and incapable where you were well in command, he would have found me far less believable.’

She pulled a face. ‘That’s true.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Sis?’

‘Yes, perfectly all right. If I feel anything, it’s rather as if I’ve been cheated.’

His brows twitched. ‘Cheated? That’s an odd word!’

‘Not to me. Did you know I had taken Michael to my quarters, or was it purely a shot in the dark?’

‘Logic. Where else would you take him? I knew last night that when it came to the morning you wouldn’t want to haul Luce up before the MOs or the MPs. So that meant you couldn’t create speculation by putting Mike in another ward, for instance.’

‘You’re very acute, Neil.’

‘I don’t think you realize how acute I actually am.’

Not being able to answer, she turned slightly away and looked out the window.

‘Here, have a cigarette,’ he said, pitying her, but bitter too, because he knew there were some things of which she would not permit him to speak.

She turned back. ‘I daren’t, Neil. Matron is bound to be along any tick of the clock. By now the colonel will have told her and the super and the MPs, and she at least will be champing at the bit. The seedier the sensation the better, as far as she’s concerned, provided she’s not an active part of the seediness. She’s going to lap this little chapter of disasters up.’

‘How about if I light a cigarette for myself, and you sneak the odd puff from it? You need something more than tea.’

‘If you dare mention whisky to me, Neil Parkinson, I’ll order you to stay in your room for a month! And I can do without the cigarette, truly. I have to salvage what respectability I can or Matron will drum me out of the corps. She’d smell the smoke on my breath.’

‘Well, at least as the donor of the grog the colonel’s well and truly hoist with his own petard.’

‘Which reminds me of two things. First, I’d be grateful if none of you mentions the whisky to a soul. Second, take this glass to the ward with you and give yourself and the others a tablespoon each. It’ll cure your hangovers.’

He grinned. ‘For that I could kiss your hands and feet!’

At which point Matron bustled through the door, nostrils quivering like a bloodhound’s. Neil disappeared with a sketchy obeisance to Matron en route, leaving Sister Langtry to face her superior officer alone.

5

Matron was the start of a different kind of wearing day. She was followed by the super, a mild little red-hat colonel who really only cared about hospitals in the abstract, and felt quite helpless when faced with patients in the flesh. As commanding officer of Base Fifteen, he bore the responsibility of determining the style of the inquiry. After a brief inspection of the bathhouse, he rang the DAPM at divisional headquarters, and requested the services of a Special Investigations sergeant. A busy man, the super had scant interest in what his eyes clearly told him was an open and shut case of suicide, albeit suicide of a particularly unpleasant kind. So he handed the physical execution of the inquiry over to Base Fifteen’s quartermaster, a tall, amiable and most intelligent young man named John Penniquick; then with mind relieved of a burden having considerable nuisance value, he went back to the complicated business of closing a whole hospital down.

Captain Penniquick was if anything even busier than the super, but he was also a very efficient and hard-working officer, so when the SI sergeant arrived from HQ he briefed him thoroughly.

‘I’ll see any of them myself whom you think I ought,’ he said, peering over his glasses at Sergeant Watkin, whom he found perceptive, sensible and likable. ‘However, it’s your pigeon entirely, unless the pigeon turns out to be a hawk, in which case, yell your head off and I’ll come running.’

After ten minutes in the bathhouse with the major who was Base Fifteen’s pathologist, Sergeant Watkin walked carefully across the distance between the bathhouse and the back steps of ward X, then skirted the ward and came in up the ramp at its front. Though Sister Langtry was not in her office, the telltale rattle of the fly-curtain alerted her, and she came speeding up the ward. A neat little thing, thought the sergeant with approval; real officer material, too. It cost him no pangs to salute her.

‘Hello, Sergeant,’ she said, smiling.

‘Sister Langtry?’ he asked, removing his hat.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m from the DAPM’s office at divisional HQ, and I’m here to look into the death of Sergeant Lucius Daggett. My name’s Watkin,’ he said, his voice slow, almost sleepy.

But he wasn’t a bit sleepy. He declined her offer of tea once they were established in her office, and got straight down to business. ‘I’ll need to see your patients, Sister, but I’d like to ask you a few questions first, if you don’t mind.’

‘Please do,’ she said tranquilly.

‘The razor. Was it his own?’

‘Yes, I’m sure it was. Several of the men use Bengals, but I fancy Luce’s was the only one with an ebony handle.’ She decided to be quite open, and thus establish the fact that she was in charge of things, too. ‘Though there’s surely no doubt in your mind as to suicide, Sergeant? I saw the way Luce was holding the razor. The fingers had spasmed on it exactly the way the living hand would have held it, and the hand and arm were caked with an enormous amount of blood, as they would be while he made incisions like those I saw. How many cuts were there?’

‘Three only, as a matter of fact. But they were two more than he needed to finish himself fast.’

‘What does the pathologist say? Have you brought in someone from outside, or are you using Major Menzies?’

He laughed. ‘How about I just take a little snooze on one of your spare beds and let you handle the inquiry?’

She looked mortified, demure, and somehow oddly girlish. ‘Oh, dear, I do sound bossy, don’t I? I’m so sorry, Sergeant! It’s just that I’m fascinated.’

‘It’s all right, Sister, ask away. You tickle me to death. Seriously, there’s very little doubt that it was suicide, and you’re quite right about the way the razor was held. Major Menzies says there’s no doubt in his mind that Sergeant Daggett inflicted the wounds on himself. I’ll just ask around among the men about the razor, and if it all tallies I reckon the whole thing can be wound up pretty quickly.’

She heaved a huge sigh of relief and smiled at him enchantingly. ‘Oh, I’m so glad! I know everyone thinks mentally unstable patients are capable of anything, but truly my men are a gentle lot. Sergeant Daggett was the only violent one.’

He looked at her curiously. ‘They’re all soldiers, aren’t they, Sister?’

‘Of course.’

‘And mostly front line, I’ll bet, or they wouldn’t be troppo. Sorry to contradict you, Sister, but your men can’t be a gentle lot.’

Which told her that the investigations he carried out would be as thorough as he felt necessary. So it all devolved upon whether he had spoken the truth when he said he believed Luce had committed suicide.

His inquiries about the razor revealed that indeed the only ebony-handled Bengal had belonged to Luce. Matt owned an ivory-handled Bengal, and Neil a set of three with mother-of-pearl handles which had been custom-made for his father before the First World War. Michael used a safety razor; so did Benedict and Nugget.