Free Green for Danger by Christianna Brand Page A

“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong.”
    â€œWhat could be wrong, old boy? The tubes aren’t crossed. I looked at them several times while we were working.”
    Coloured rubber Y-tubes led from the cylinders of nitrous oxide and oxygen and the (unused) central cylinder of carbon dioxide; but there was nothing out of order at all. Barney said: “God knows what went wrong. I don’t.”
    â€œThese things happen, Barney,” said Eden. “They seem to be perfectly O.K. but they pip off for no rhyme or reason and you never know exactly why; I don’t know why we’re all getting quite so het up about it!”
    â€œSuch a bother,” said Major Moon, suddenly rather careless and offhand. “It will have to be reported to the Coroner, of course, in the ordinary way of things; and it’ll mean an inquest and all that. What a pity! These things create such a stink!” He was full of funny little schoolboy expressions, surprising in a man of his age.
    â€œStink’ll be just about the word, as far as I’m concerned,” said Barney bitterly.
    â€œYou mean because of that other case?” said Eden; and put his hand to his mouth as though he had said too much.
    â€œYes, I was thinking of that,” said Major Moon. “It’s all rubbish, of course, because you couldn’t be held responsible in either case, my dear boy; but the death took place before we’d even started operating—and people talk.”
    â€œAre you telling me?” said Barnes.
    â€œNobody outside need know anything about it,” said Eden.
    â€œMy dear fellow—with the local police bumbling round asking the regulation questions! They’ll probably all be cousins and brothers-in-law—everybody’s related to everybody in a place like this. I was thinking, Barney—if there’s an open verdict at the inquest, and there has to be any investigation, I’ll ring up Cockrill for you. He’s the high ding-a-ding at Torrington, and he’ll see that there isn’t a lot of undue fuss.”
    â€œHow can a high ding-a-ding in Devon or Cornwall or whatever it is, be the slightest good to us here?” said Eden.
    â€œTorrington in Kent, not Torrington, Devon,” said Moon.
    â€œI didn’t know there was one.”
    â€œWell, there is. It’s in the middle of the downs, and you never heard of downs in Devonshire, did you?”
    â€œNo, so I didn’t,” admitted Eden, laughing.
    â€œCockrill was on that murder case last year, at Pigeons-ford … there was a terrific fuss in the papers at the time about it; you must remember it?”
    â€œWell, for goodness’ sake, this isn’t a murder case,” said Barney, summoning up a faint smile.
    Major Moon turned away towards the washrooms, peeling off his gloves, lifting the head-lamp with a weary gesture, from his forehead. He said, looking back, raising a quizzical eyebrow: “I trust not! The circle of suspects would be rather a narrow one, wouldn’t it?”
    â€œWhat nonsense you two are both talking,” said Eden, laughing, following them out.
    2
    Detective-Inspector Cockrill, arriving at the hospital two days later, could not have been in more entire agreement. “Don’t see what all the fuss is about,” he grumbled to Moon, fishing for papers and tobacco in the pockets of his disreputable old mackintosh. “Just another anæsthetic death. You doctors slay ’em off in the thousands. However, I know young Barnes’s Papa quite well and I happened to be over this way, so I thought I’d look in myself. I suppose you can give me some lunch?”
    The Mess Secretary was with difficulty persuaded that rations for twenty might, without positive hardship to anybody concerned, be stretched to supply twenty-one. Afterwards Inspector Cockrill made a tour of the hospital, popping his head into wards and operating theatres in