William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

little laugh. “She used to get so angry. I always knew if I had a battle to fight that Hester would be by my side. She never retreated, never pretended or flattered. And I knew her courage.” She hunched her shoulders in a gesture of distaste. “She loathed the rats, and they were all over the place. They climbed the walls and fell off like rotten plums dropping off a tree. I shall never forget the sound of their bodies hitting the floor. And I watched her pity, not useless, not maudlin, just a long slow ache inside as she knew the pain of others and did everything within her human power to ease it. One has a special feeling for someone with whom one has shared such times, Mr. Monk. Yes, please remember me to her.”
    “I will,” he promised.
    He rose to his feet again, suddenly acutely conscious of the passage of time. He knew she was fitting him in between one meeting and another of hospital governors, architects, medical schools, or organizations of similar nature. Since her return from the Crimea she had never ceased to work for the reforms in design and administration in which she believed so fervently.
    “Whom will you seek next?” She preempted his farewell. She had no need to explain to what matter she was referring and she was not a woman for unnecessary words.
    “The police,” he answered. “I still have friends therewho may tell me what the medical examiner says, and perhaps what the official testimony is of other witnesses. Then I shall appeal to her colleagues at the hospital. If I can persuade them to speak honestly of her and of one another, I may learn a great deal.”
    “I see. May God be with you, Mr. Monk. It is more than justice you must seek. If women like Prudence Barrymore can be murdered when they are about their work, then we are all a great deal the poorer, not only now, but in the future as well.”
    “I do not give up, ma’am,” he said grimly, and he meant it, not only to match his determination with hers, but because he had a consuming personal desire to find the one who had destroyed such a life. “He will rue the day, I promise you. Good afternoon, ma’am.”
    “Good afternoon, Mr. Monk.”

5
    J
OHN E VAN
was not happy with the case of Prudence Barrymore. He hated the thought of a young woman with such passion and vitality having been killed, and in this particular instance all the other circumstances also confused and troubled him. He did not like the hospital. The very smell of it caught in his throat even without his awareness of the pain and the fear that must reside here. He saw the bloodstained clothes of the surgeons as they hurried about the corridors, and the piles of soiled dressings and bandages, and every now and again he both saw and smelled the buckets of waste that were carried away by the nurses.
    But deeper than all these was a matter disturbing him more because it was personal, something about which he not only could, but was morally bound to, do something. It was the way in which the investigation was being conducted. He had been angry and bitter when Monk had been maneuvered into resigning by events in the Moidore case and Runcorn’s stand on the issue. But he had grown accustomed to working with Jeavis now, and while he did not either like or admire him, as he did Monk, he knew that he was a competent and honorable man.
    But in this case Jeavis was out of his depth, or at leastEvan thought so. The medical evidence was fairly clear. Prudence Barrymore had been attacked from the front and strangled to death manually; no ligature had been used. The marks of such a thing would have been plain enough, and indeed the bruises on her throat corresponded to the fingers of a powerful person of average enough size; it could have been any of dozens of people who had access to the hospital. And it was easy enough to enter from the street. There were so many doctors, nurses, and assistants of one sort or another coming and going, an extra person would be unnoticed. For that matter, even someone drenched in blood would cause no alarm.
    At first Jeavis had thought of other nurses. It had crossed Evan’s mind that he had done so because it was easier for him than approaching the doctors and surgeons, who were of a superior education and social background, and Jeavis was nervous of them. However, when a large number of the individual nurses could account for their whereabouts, in each others’ company or in the company of a patient from the time Prudence