Green for Danger by Christianna Brand

even washed the dirt off of him; never give him a nice cup of tea or anything; just a nasty prick with a needle and told ’im to go to sleep. Sleep! Much sleep he could get with all them goings on to be watched through the window of that little room. And the next morning! Five o’clock they had ’im up and washed his face all over again, as if he could of got dirty, laying there in a nice clean bed; and one miserable cuppa tea, and nothing else till ’e went for ’is operation. I wish I’d of known, I’d of smuggled ’im in somethink, but of course how was I to know he’d have the operation, and it’s my belief he’d of been a lot better off without it, anyway; always cutting bits off of you, these doctors are. I don’t ‘old with it, myself. So there ’e was, ’ungry as a ’unter, pore old boy, and no bloody wonder, well, excuse my language, Inspector, but you know what I mean. I ’adn’t ’ardly settled down to have a nice chat with him, when a whole lot of men come in and starts giving him an X-ray, or some such, a nasty looking lamp affair they had with them, and I don’t know what all; then they put a lot of screens round him and started getting him ready for the operation; no sooner than I sits down again, and it’s one of the doctors comes and wants to listen to ’is chest; and ’e was just going to tell me somethink, I don’t know what, and then another one comes and there’s a lot more screens put round ’im and I’m turned out again; and two minutes later I’m told, ‘You’ll ’ave to go now, Mrs. ’Iggins!’ ‘Well, all right,’ I thought to meself, ‘I’ll go, but I won’t go far,’ and I stood in that round hall place outside the ward, and I watched them wheel him out on a stretcher thing, all covered up with blankets and ’is pore old face quite red, laying on the pillar. That young ’ussy was wheeling him, that Nurse Samson, they call her; a cruel girl she is, cruel hard to the patients, Inspector, I can tell you that. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘that’s a nice thing,’ I thought, ‘leaving my pore old man in charge of a chit like that,’ and I was just going up and say somethink about it, when another one come up to her, the night nurse, Lingley or some such name. ‘Oh,’ ’allo, Nesta,’ she says …”
    â€œEsther?” interrupted the Inspector, leaning forward with a gleam of interest. “Esther Sanson? Is she here?”
    â€œWell, Esther or Nesta, I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Mrs. Higgins, not pleased to be checked in the narration of her history. “‘Oh ’alio, Nesta,’ she says, or Esther, if you like, and she stops and says, ‘Who’s this?’ she says, ‘is it ’Iggins?’ she says, and she stoops down over him and she says, ‘Pore old ’Iggins,’ she says, ‘but don’t worry,’ she says, ‘you’re going to be all right,’ she says, quite kind like, and then she goes on and she says, ‘Oh, Nesta,’ she says, ‘I’m so tired I don’t know what to do with meself. I’ve been wandering about ever since I came off duty trying to make myself want to go to bed. It was a terrible heavy night last night,’ she says; ‘but I wanted to tell you that I’ve taken over our laundry so you don’t have to bother about it,’ or something of that sort; and then she has another word with Joe, ‘don’t you worry,’ she says, and then off she goes, and the other one wheels him away into the operation theatre and that’s the last I see of him.…”
    â€œVery sad for you,” murmured the Inspector, devoutly hoping that this was the last he would see of Mrs. Higgins.
    â€œâ€¦ and the next thing is they comes and tells me he’s dead,”