Death at the Jesus Hospital

Death at the Jesus Hospital by David Dickinson Page B

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Authors: David Dickinson
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expected in this landscape, but in a three-piece suit and bowler hat that looked as though they might have come from a fashionable tailor in London’s Jermyn Street. As he stared down, Powerscourt realized something stranger yet. It was if the sands were shifting under the man’s feet. For march on ashe might, he was making no progress towards the centre, no progress at all. The centre of the thistle remained as far away as ever. He was never going to reach it.
     
    Shortly after eight o’clock the next morning Powerscourt met Inspector Grime outside the main entrance to the school. Over from their left came the enormous racket of one hundred and fifty boys eating their breakfasts at the same time. In front of the buildings a severe frost had turned the playing fields almost white.
    ‘No more murders in the night anyway,’ said the Inspector morosely. ‘I suppose our man’s got clean away by now, damn his eyes. Hospital first for you, my lord. Ask for Dr Pike, as in fish, he’s expecting you. Then we’ve left the bursar’s quarters exactly as they were before he died for you, before we start taking things away. The headmaster wants his office papers and the ones in his room left where they are now. Count yourself lucky, my lord. I’ve got the three youngest classes to talk to this morning. One at a time, for God’s sake. Might as well listen to the birds on the marshes as this lot. All those maps and globes in that room get me down. I always hated geography when I was at school, the teacher used to steal our pencils when he thought we weren’t looking. Never mind. I’ll see you later this morning. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. God help us all.’
    The boys were being released from breakfast, charging down the corridors to find their books for early lessons . A tall boy of about eighteen in a striped blazer, who Powerscourt thought must be a prefect, was shouting at them. ‘How many times do I have to tell you! Walk, don’t run in the corridor!’
     
    The hospital was new, the paint still fresh, the walls not marked by the passage of too many trolleys. Dr Pike wasa young man of about thirty who told Powerscourt cheerfully that he had no idea about the marks on the chest, that death must have been almost instantaneous, and that the murderer must have had very strong arms. Death, he said, must have happened between the hours of eight and nine thirty. To Powerscourt’s surprise he inquired about Inspector Grime.
    ‘How is the good Inspector these days? Is he still as miserable and morose as ever? He came here last year to investigate some nasty thefts from the dispensary and we almost kept him in he was so gloomy. Might have cheered him up, a week or so on the mental ward with people even more disturbed than he is.’
    ‘Since you ask,’ Powerscourt replied with a smile, ‘I’d have to report that there appears to be little change in the patient’s condition. Barometer permanently set to miserable, as far as I can see. He seems a capable officer, mind you.’
    ‘Oh, he is. He cleared up our burglary very quickly. Send him my regards anyway. Tell him we often think of him up here at the hospital.’
    The late bursar’s rooms were on the top floor of the new building. He had a large sitting room and a tiny bedroom at the back. Powerscourt saw that one long wall was entirely covered with files. Bursar Gill, it appeared, had been a careful man. Looking closer, Powerscourt discovered that Gill had been one of those people who never threw anything away, the years marching across the wall to end in the year 1909. In this universe of files, 1910 had not yet begun. Not for him the annual cull of useless papers, sorted into the good and the useless between Christmas and the New Year. The earliest file went back to 1855 when Gill was seven years old. There were papers relating to his early schooling, even a report or two from a well-known prep school near Oxford, ‘very quiet in class’, ‘shows

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