The rest of the inquest was not interesting and was mostly a matter of repeating things that I already knew. The coroner seemed rather addled but very determined to catch somebody in an untruth. I knew where his trouble lay; it was not that he lacked clues, it was rather that he had too many of them and they all seemed to point in different directions. I was glad that Lance O’Leary appeared to have kept his own counsel about certain matters of which I had told him, though I should have liked to see the faces of the board members if it had been brought to their attention that the morphine had very likely been stolen from our own south wing.
The bell was ringing for lunch when the coroner concluded his somewhat pointless inquiries, and after a few moments in which the room was in utter silence the decisions were given. I was not surprised to hear that Dr. Louis Letheny had come to his death at the hands of a person or persons unknown. And a little later, in a hush so tense that we could hear the dripping of rain from a gutter pipe outside the windows, the same decision was given as to the death of our patient, old Mr. Jackson.
We stirred our cramped muscles, rose slowly and straggled out of the room by twos and threes. To tell the truth I felt as if nothing but a formality had been accomplished. But as I left the room I turned for a look backward and saw Lance O’Leary’s smooth brown head bending close over the coroner’s bald spot in earnest consultation. That one glimpse convinced me that O’Leary actually, if not openly, controlled the inquest and did so to suit his own inexplicable motives. I longed to tell him of the mysterious visitor the south wing had had the previous night but had no opportunity until later in the day.
What with one thing and another troubling me I did not rest well that afternoon. By the time I had napped spasmodically, had a bath, and got into a fresh uniform and cap it was four o’clock and I wandered through the curiously hushed corridors, down the stairs and into the general office. Miss Jones was writing in the record book of incoming cases and I paused to find out who had been entered. It was something to know that even the disagreeable publicity we had been given had not affected St. Ann’s prestige.
“I’m putting him in Eighteen, in your wing,” she said as I bent over her shoulder.
“In Eighteen!”
“Why, yes. The room is available for use, isn’t it? He wants a downstairs room and that is the only one left.”
“Whose patient?”
“Dr. Balman’s, I think—yes.” She referred to the typed card.
At the moment Dr. Balman entered the room from the inner office.