‘I see they use a ball point pen.’
‘We keep one marking the page in the book.’
‘M’m. Useful things,’ he said: ‘except that one never has a refill when one wants one. I see in this case they’ve changed to blue. Up to a week ago, it was black.’
So that was it! In the dim light, last night, she had not been able to see what in daylight was perfectly evident: that the two, rather smudgy, grey-blue colours in fact were different. Figures, on pages chosen at random, two months back, three months, six months back—standing out clearly as having been altered in a different coloured ink….
She began to talk rapidly and feverishly. ‘Do you mean that there’s been an alteration in the figures?’
‘What gives you that idea?’ he said.
‘Well, I mean… You’re suggesting that they’ve been altered in the new blue ink. But….Well, that shows,’ she said, desperately, ‘that my husband wouldn’t have done such a thing, none of us would: I mean, we’d know about the change of colour, wouldn’t we? So it must have been the girl. She must have taken the dose from the poison cupboard and altered the figures in the book—’
‘Why?’ said Inspector Cockrill.
‘Why? Why alter the figures, you mean? Well, she wouldn’t want to get my husband into trouble, I suppose. She was in love with him, after all.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe she was in love with him?’
‘Well, I seem to have been wrong, don’t I? Because, after all, we didn’t think she would really commit suicide, but she has, hasn’t she? I mean, a nurse would know—poison cupboards aren’t really all that inaccessible, Inspector, not in everyday life. It’s only the patients who’d have a job knowing where to find the little key—’
‘You don’t give your husband a reassuring reputation, Mrs. Harrison. Would the book be close to the cupboard?’
‘Yes, and with the pen marking the place. At least that’s where it was—’
‘Last night?’ said the Inspector.
‘That’s where it would have been last night; because you see obviously the girl noticed it, and just picked up the book and altered the figures, far back where they wouldn’t be noticed—’
‘How do you know it was far back?’
‘Well, you were looking far back,’ she said, desperately. But the cotton-wool was clearing away a little. ‘I only mean that the girl had common sense; and she was nursing this phoney romance about my husband, her mind would work in this way. And she’d said, she’d left a note saying, she was going to take morphia—’
‘The note said that she had taken morphia.’
‘But we know that she can’t have, or they’d have seen the symptoms. And there was none missing from the hospital so she must have taken it from the surgery.’
‘Under your very nose, Mrs. Harrison?’ She was silent, defeated. He insisted: ‘You did tell me earlier, didn’t you, that you’d never left her alone in there for a moment.’
‘I mean… I meant… Not alone in that sense; of course I was in and out….’
But Ricky would let her down. Ricky would blurt out, in that idiotic honesty of his, that she had assured him, when he closely questioned her, that the girl could not possibly have taken the stuff… She thought with dark anger of the harm he had already done: of the dangerous corners, skilfully turned, only to be blocked by his exasperating, innocent candour. And, damn it all, whose fault was all this in the first place? It was his book, after all, his poisons cupboard, his diagnosis, his love affair.
His love affair.
For in fact who knew, who could be so certain, that Ricky was so exquisitely innocent? No smoke without fire? Surely he must have given the bitch some encouragement, to make her so hot after him? And if so—if so, didn’t he deserve everything that was coming to him?—for deceiving her like this, deceiving her with this cheap little, grubby little tart….And if Ricky were out of the way….The memory of Frederick’s arms around her rose up like an incense, hot and heady. He loves me, she thought. All this time, he’s been loving me too and both of us just too—well, just too good, that’s all, to let Ricky down. She remembered the hard, strong arms, his voice when he had called her marvellous….What had he said about her ‘lovely blue eyes….’? He was horrified to see me caught up in this sordid little drama, seeing me humbled by this dreadful girl—and all through Ricky, all because Ricky can’t keep his hands off the nurses, never caring how much he lets me down….