‘I don’t want any dope, Mark, honestly,’ Rose said.

‘We’ll see about that when you’re tucked up. Go to bed now.’ He glared at Alleyn. ‘Miss Cartarette is my patient,’ he said, ‘and those are my instructions.’

‘They sound altogether admirable,’ Alleyn rejoined.

‘Goodnight, Miss Cartarette. We’ll try to worry you as little as possible.’

‘You don’t worry me at all,’ Rose said politely, and gave him her hand.

‘I wonder,’ Alleyn said to Mark, ‘if we may see Nurse Kettle as soon as she is free. And you, a little later if you please, Doctor Lacklander.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ Mark said stiffly, and taking Rose’s arm led her out of the room.

‘And I also wonder, Brer Fox,’ Alleyn said, ‘apart from bloody murder, what it is that’s biting all these people.’

‘I’ve got a funny sort of notion,’ Fox said, ‘and mind, it’s only a notion so far, that the whole thing will turn out to hang on that fish.’

‘And I’ve got a funny sort of notion you’re right.’

6. The Willow Grove

CHAPTER 6

The Willow Grove

Nurse Kettle sat tidily on an armless chair with her feet crossed at the ankles and her hands at the wrists. Her apron was turned up in the regulation manner under her uniform coat and her regulation hat was on her head. She had just given Alleyn a neat account of her finding of Colonel Cartarette’s body and Fox, who had taken the notes, was gazing at her with an expression of the liveliest approval.

‘That’s all, really,’ she said, ‘except that I had a jolly strong feeling I was being watched. There now!’

Her statement hitherto had been so positively one of fact that they both stared at her in surprise. ‘And now,’ she said, ‘you’ll think I’m a silly hysterical female because although I thought once that I heard a twig snap and fancied that when a bird flew out of the thicket it was not me who’d disturbed it, I didn’t see anything at all. Not a thing. And yet I thought I was watched. You get it on night duty in a ward. A patient lying awake and staring at you. You always know before you look. Now laugh that away if you like.’

‘Who’s laughing?’ Alleyn rejoined. ‘We’re not, are we, Fox?’

‘On no account,’ Fox said. ‘I’ve had the same sensation many a time on night beat in the old days and it always turned out there was a party in a dark doorway having a look at you.’

‘Well, fancy!’ said the gratified Nurse Kettle.

‘I suppose,’ Alleyn said, ‘you know all these people pretty well, don’t you, Miss Kettle? I always think in country districts the Queen’s Nurses are rather like liaison officers.’