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asked.
    "No, I don't think they know.
They are going to do a post-mortem on her." Fenton sensed that his
answer had failed to satisfy Ross; he turned round to face him.
    Ross said, "It was natural,
wasn't it? I mean, she wasn't murdered like Neil?"
    Fenton was shocked. "Christ, I
hadn't even considered that. I assumed it was some gynaecological
thing."
    "Me too," said Ferguson.
    "You're probably right," said
Ross. "It was just a thought."
    "What a thought," said Fenton
turning back to look out at the rain that had just started
again.
    On Saturday the lab staff
finished at one pm leaving Fenton as duty biochemist till Sunday
morning. He picked up the internal phone and gave the hospital
switchboard his name and 'bleep' number, adding that he was about
to go to lunch. He hurried up to the main hospital leaning forward
against a fiercely gusting wind and climbed the stairs to the staff
restaurant; it was half empty. He looked around for a familiar face
but failed to find one save for Moira Kincaid from the Sterile
Supply Department who was just leaving. He nodded to her as she
passed.
    Fenton paid for a cellophane
wrapped salad and took it to a table by a window where he could
watch the trees bend in the wind. It seemed to be blowing more
strongly than ever.
    'Want some company?" asked a
voice behind him.
    Fenton turned to find Jenny and
smiled.
    Jenny laid down her tray and
Fenton held the edge of it steady while she extracted her fingers.
"What a morning," she complained, "The ward's going like a
fair."
    Fenton smiled, paying scant
attention to what she was saying but thinking that Jenny Buchan was
the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time. "I
didn't hear you leave this morning," he said.
    "You were asleep. It seemed a
shame to wake you."
    Jenny joined Fenton in looking
out of the window at the rain as it lashed against the blackened
stone in wind-swept frenzy. "Do you think you will manage home
tonight?" she asked.
    Fenton shrugged his shoulders
without taking his eyes off the rain and was about to reply when
the bleeper in his jacket pocket went off. He shrugged again and
Jenny nodded as he got up to leave. Outside in the corridor he
picked up the phone and called the switchboard. "Fenton here."
    Although the biochemistry lab
was primarily concerned with the patients of the Princess Mary
Hospital, it also carried out paediatric work for other hospitals
in the city. Fenton had been informed that a blood sample was on
its way from the maternity unit at the Royal Infirmary, a sample
from a jaundiced baby for bilirubin estimation. He sat in the front
room until the clatter of a diesel engine outside told him that it
had arrived. Taking the plastic bag from the driver he signed the
man's book and took the sample upstairs for analysis.
    With the blood sample in the
first stages of assay Fenton turned on the radio and tuned it to
Radio 3. The sombre music seemed appropriate to a grey Saturday
afternoon in February. He changed the settings on the analyser for
the next stage and, with a fifteen minute wait in prospect, went
along the corridor to Neil Munro's lab to collect Munro's research
notes. He settled down to read them as, yet again, the rain began
to hammer on the windows. The sound made him appreciate of the
warmth of the lab. He wondered for a moment if the house had ever
been this comfortable when it had been home to a well-to-do
Victorian family. No trace of a fireplace could now be seen along
any wall, in fact, the only trace of the original fittings lay in
the ceiling where a plaster repair had failed to conceal the rose
from which a chandelier had once hung. Fluorescent fittings were
now bolted to the ceiling, incongruous against the cornice.
    The bilirubin result chattered
out of the printer. Fenton looked at it and compared it with the
standard graphs on the wall. "Well, young..." He checked the name
on the request form, "John Taylor, aged three days, you won't be
going home for a little while yet."