ANOTHER ROLLER TOWEL
Now Tish is a peculiar woman. Once she starts a thing, whether it is
house-cleaning or learning to roller skate, she keeps right on at it.
She learned to skate backwards, you may remember, although she nearly
died learning, and lay once twenty minutes insensible on the back of
her head. And as Tish acknowledged later, she had made up her mind to
find out _who_ or _what_ had hung Johnson by the neck to the chandelier.
So after Tommy had gone, she got into her roller chair and asked me to
ring for Miss Lewis.
“What time do you go to your lunch?” she asked her sharply, when she
came.
“I don’t eat lunch,” said Miss Lewis.
“Why?”
“It’s making me stout. Besides, there’s never anything fit to eat.”
“Humph!” said Tish, “I guess the meals provided in this training school
are above the average. I myself engaged the housekeeper. You’d better
have lunch to-day.”
“But--”
“At twelve o’clock,” said Tish firmly. “Any nurse who takes care of me
eats three meals a day.”
Miss Lewis stood in the doorway, with her cap over one ear, and stared
at Tish, and Tish glared back.
“I prefer not,” she said defiantly, giving her apron belt a twitch.
“At twelve o’clock!” Tish repeated, and then Miss Lewis gave it up.
“Very well,” she said unpleasantly. “Does it make any difference _what_
I eat?”
“None whatever. And now send me the Smith woman,” said Tish calmly.
“And shut the door. There’s a draught.”
Miss Lewis slammed out. And whatever reason Tish had for wanting to get
rid of her at noon, she deigned no explanation. In ten minutes Miss
Smith knocked at the door and came in. She looked tired, but cheerful.
“Do you want me, Miss Carberry?” she asked.
“If you are not busy,” said Tish in her pleasantest manner. “Sit down,
Miss Smith. Lizzie, Aggie, this is the Miss Smith I told you about. You
will pardon the curiosity of three old women, won’t you, Miss Smith,
and answer a question or two about last night?”
“Certainly.” She looked surprised, and I fancied amused.
“In the first place,” Tish asked, getting a pencil and sheet of letter
paper from the table, “has any investigation been begun?”
“I think not,” said Miss Smith. “There are always queer goings-on in a
hospital, and besides, there has been a stir-up in the management, and
things are at sixes and sevens. Two internes left last night, and the
superintendent is pretty busy this morning.”
“Indeed,” said Tish, and wrote something down. “Where is the--er--body
now?”
“It went to the anatomical board this morning. He had no relatives and
no money. If he isn’t claimed in a certain time, he’ll be sent to the
college dissecting room.”
Aggie shuddered.
“And now, Miss Smith,” said Tish, leaning back in her roller chair,
“would you mind telling me _exactly_ what happened last night?”
“Not at all!” said Miss Smith, smiling. “We have a rule here that when
a patient dies in one of the wards at night, the day nurses for that
ward go with the body to the mortuary and prepare it for burial. The
night nurse, having charge of several wards, can not easily leave. I am
in charge of K ward, and Miss Blake is my assistant.”
“She’s not in K ward to-day,” said Tish.
“No, she is relieving the hall nurse here for her off duty. Miss Blake
is not well, and this is lighter.”
“One moment,” said Tish, “what is the K ward’s night nurse’s name?”
“Miss Durand.”
“What time did Mr. Johnson die?”
“Shortly after midnight. It was marked twelve-ten on the record.”
“And you were called at once?”
“I--think not,” Miss Smith said slowly. “It was nearly one o’clock.”
“Is that customary?” Tish demanded.
“Not usually,” said Miss Smith, “but it is not extraordinary, either.
The night nurse may have been giving a fever bath, or something else
she could not leave.”
“You are very indulgent to the curiosity of three old women,” Tish said
with her pleasantest smile. “Will you be amiable a little longer, and
tell us what happened in the mortuary?”
“Well, really, _nothing_ happened to me. Doctor Grimm had seen Johnson
and pronounced him dead; he had been called from the operating room to
do it, although Johnson was a medical case. The night orderlies, Briggs
and Marshall, took the body to the mortuary and waited with it until
Miss Blake and I arrived.”
“Briggs and Marshall,” Tish put down.
“The lights were on, and Briggs was smoking. We had a few words over
that, because the orderlies are not allowed to smoke on duty, and
tobacco makes my head ache.”
Tish leaned forward in her chair and looked at Miss Smith.
“Do you often have words with the orderlies, Miss Smith?”
Miss Smith smiled cheerfully.
“Quite often,” she said. “They’re such a stupid lot.”
“You don’t think it possible that these men may have retaliated by
playing a practical joke on you?”
Miss Smith considered.
“No,” she said, “I don’t. When I found the linen closet up there
locked and went down-stairs for sheets, they were both at work in the
wards. Anyhow, they might be willing to play a ghastly trick on _me_,
but I don’t think they would try to frighten Miss Blake. She’s very
well liked.”
“And after you went for the sheets?”
“That’s all I know, Miss Carberry. The rest you heard Miss Blake tell.”
“Are you sure,” Aggie broke in suddenly, leaning forward, “are you
sure, Miss Smith, that he didn’t do it himself?”
Miss Smith stared. “Why, he was dead, Miss Pilkington,” she said. “He’d
been sick for months, and if he was alive as I am this minute, he
couldn’t hang himself by the neck, the way he was hanging, with nothing
to stand on near, or any chair kicked away. The center of the room was
clear when we found him, and the nearest thing was the foot of the bed,
a good eight feet away.”
“He was a--Spiritualist, I think?”
“Yes--yes, indeed,” Miss Smith laughed. “It would have made you creepy
to hear him, lying there carrying on whole conversations with nobody
near, and raps on his bed until the nurses balked at changing the
sheets!”
Aggie shivered. “Gracious!” she said, “I hope they don’t send him back
here for the dissecting room. I shan’t be easy until he is safely
buried.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” Miss Smith said cheerfully, getting
up to go. “We wouldn’t be likely to get _all_ of him anyhow.”
Well, as Tish said, she hadn’t learned much she hadn’t known before,
except that Johnson had been left in the ward fifty minutes after he
died, instead of ten. But although the people in the hospital seemed
disposed to let the affair alone after sending the body away, and to
get back to its business, which, as Miss Smith said, is full of curious
things anyhow, Tish, as I say, having taken hold, was not going to let
go.
Promptly at noon by the traveling clock, Miss Lewis having taken
herself off, Tish lifted herself out of her wheel chair and reached for
her cane.
“You can stay here, Aggie,” she said, “and if Lewis comes back, I’m
seeing Lizzie to the elevator.”
“She won’t believe a word of it,” Aggie objected.
“Then think up something she will believe. Lizzie is coming with me.”
I wasn’t surprised when Tish turned to the left, in the corridor, and
hobbled to the foot of a flight of stairs. She stopped there and turned.
“We’re going up to see that room in daylight, Lizzie,” she said, “but
I want you to read this first. You’re a practical woman, and if any
of your family ever grew a head of hair after they died, at least you
don’t brag about it.”
She took a page of the morning paper, folded small, from the sleeve of
her dressing-gown, and pointed to a paragraph.
“Amos Johnson, once a well-known local medium, died last night at the
Dunkirk hospital, after a long illness. Johnson was sixty-seven years
of age, and had lived in retirement and poverty since the murder of his
wife some years ago, a crime for which he was tried and exonerated. The
woman’s body was found in the parlor of the Johnson home, hanging to a
chandelier by a roller towel knotted about the neck.”
Tish was watching me.
“Well, what do you make of that, Lizzie?” she asked.
“Coincidence,” I said, with affected calmness. “Many a man’s hung his
wife to something when he got tired of her, and when you come to think
of it, a roller towel is usually handy.”
We didn’t look at each other.