‘Well, I happen to have two or three kippers here. I thought perhaps you ought to have something to eat before you catch a train. Waterloo is the station,’ she said. ‘For Sutton Chancellor, I mean. You used to have to change at Market Basing. I expect you still do.’ It was a dismissal. He accepted it.
CHAPTER 13 Albert on Clues
Tuppence blinked her eyes. Vision seemed rather dim. She tried to lift her head from the pillow but winced as a sharp pain ran through it, and let it drop again on to the pillow. She closed her eyes. Presently she opened them again and blinked once more.
With a feeling of aclu’evement she recognized her surround-ings.
‘I’m in a hospital ward,’ thought Tuppence. Satisfied with her mental progress so far, she attempted no more brainy deduction. She was in a hospital ward and her head ached.
Why it ached, why she was in a hospital ward, she was not quite sure. ‘Accident?’ thought Tuppence.
There were nurses moving around beds. That seemed natural enough. She closed her eyes and tried a little cautious thought. A faint vision of an elderly figure in clerical dress, passed across a mental screen. ‘Father?’ said Tuppence doubtfully. ‘Is it Father?’ She couldn’t really remember. She supposed so.
‘But what am I doing being ill in a hospital?’ thought Tuppence. ‘I mean, I nurse in a hospital, so I ought to be in uniform. V.A.D. uniform. Oh dear,’ said Tuppence.
Presenfiy a nurse materialized near her bed.
‘Feeling better now, dear?’ said the nurse with akind of false cheerfulness. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’
Tuppence wasn’t quite sure whether it was nice. The nurse said something about a nice cup of tea.
‘I seem to be a patient,’ said Tuppence rather disapprovingly to herself. She lay still, resurrecting in her own mind various detached thoughts and words.
‘Soldiers,’ said Tuppence. ‘V.A.D.s. That’s it, of course. I’m a V.A.D.’
The nurse brought her some tea in a kind of feeding cup and supported her whilst she sipped it. The pain went through her head again.’A V.A.D., that’s what I am,’ said Tuppence aloud.
The nurse looked at her in an uncomprehending fashion.
‘My head hurts,’ said Tuppence, adding a statement of fact.
‘It’ll be better soon,’ said the nurse.
She removed the feeding cup, reporting to a sister as she passed along. ‘Number 14’s awake. She’s a bit wonky, though, Ithink.’
‘Did she say anything?’
‘Said she was a V.I.P.,’ said the nurse.
The ward sister gave a small snort indicating that that was how she felt towards unimportant patients who reported themselves to be V.I.P.s.
‘We shall see about that,’ said the sister. ‘Hurry up, Nurse, don’t be all day with that feeding cup.’
Tuppence remained half drowsy on her pillows. She had not yet got beyond the stage of allowing thoughts to flit through her mind in a rather disorganized procession.
There was somebody who ought to be here, she felt, somebody she knew quite well. There was something very strange about this hospital. It wasn’t the hospital she remem-bered.
It wasn’t the one she had nursed in. ‘All soldiers, that was,’ said Tuppence to herself. ‘The surgical ward, I was on A and B rows.’ She opened her eyelids and took another look round. She decided it was a hospital she had never seen before and that it had nothing to do with the nursing of surgical cases, military or otherwise.
‘I wonder where this is,’ said Tuppence. ‘What place?’ She tried to think of the name of some place. The only places she could think of were London and Southampton.
The ward sister now made her appearance at the bedside.
‘Feeling a little better, I hope,’ she said.
‘I’m all right,’ said Tuppence. ‘What’s the matter with me?’
‘You hurt your head. I expect you fred it rather painful, don’t you?’
‘It aches,’ said Tuppence. ‘Where am I?’
‘Market Basing Royal Hospital.’ Tuppence considered this information. It meant nothing to her at all.
‘An old clergyman,’ she said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘Nothing particular. I ‘ ‘We haven’t been able to write your name on your diet sheet yet,’ said the ward sister.