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Nurse Harper rose gracelessly from her chair. All of them turned towards Miss Taylor.
    “Children,” she said, and the unexpected and gentle word told them the truth before she spoke.
    “Children, Nurse Pearce died a few minutes ago. We don’t yet know how or why, but when something inexplicable like this happens we have to call the police. The Hospital Secretary is doing that now. I want you to be brave and sensible as I know you will be. Until the police arrive, I think it would be better if we don’t talk about what has happened. You will collect your textbooks and Nurse Goodale will take you to wait in my sitting-room. I shall be ordering some strong hot coffee and it will be brought up to you soon. Is that understood?”
    There was a subdued murmur of, “Yes, Matron.”
    Miss Taylor turned to Miss Beale.
    “I’m so very sorry, but it will mean your waiting here too.”
    “Of course, Matron, I quite understand.”
    Across the heads of the students their eyes met in bewildered speculation and wordless sympathy.
    But Miss Beale was a little horrified to remember afterwards the banality and irrelevance of her first conscious thought.
    “This must be the shortest inspection on record. What on earth will I say to the General Nursing Council?”

5
    A few minutes earlier the four people in the demonstration room had straightened up and looked at each other, whitefaced, utterly exhausted. Heather Pearce was dead. She was dead by any criteria, legal or medical. They had known it for the last five minutes but had worked on, doggedly and without speaking, as if there were still a chance that the flabby heart would pulse again into life. Mr. Courtney-Briggs had taken off his coat to work on the girl and the front of his waistcoat was heavily stained with blood. He stared at the thickening stain, brow creased, nose fastidiously wrinkled, almost as if blood were an alien substance to him. The heart massage had been messy as well as ineffectual. Surprisingly messy for Mr. Courtney-Briggs, the Matron thought. But surely the attempt had been justified? There hadn’t been time to get her over to the theatre. It was a pity that Sister Gearing had pulled out the oesophageal tube. It had, perhaps, been a natural reaction but it might have cost Pearce her only chance. While the tube was in place they could at least have tried an immediate stomach wash-out. But an attempt to pass another tube by the nostril had been frustratedby the girl’s agonized spasms and, by the time these had ceased, it was too late and Mr. Courtney-Briggs had been forced to open the chest wall and try the only measure left to him. Mr. Courtney-Briggs’s heroic efforts were well known. It was only a pity that they left the body looking so pathetically mangled and the demonstration room stinking like an abattoir. These things were better conducted in an operating theatre, shrouded and dignified by the paraphernalia of ritual surgery.
    He was the first to speak. “This wasn’t a natural death. There was something other than milk in that feed. Well, that’s obvious to all of us I should have thought. We’d better call the police. I’ll get on to the Yard. I know someone there, as it happens. One of the Assistant Commissioners.”
    He always did know someone, thought the Matron. She felt the need to oppose him. Shock had left an aftermath of irritation and, irrationally, it focused on him. She said calmly: “The local police are the ones to call and I think that the Hospital Secretary should do it. I’ll get Mr. Hudson on the house telephone now. They’ll call in the Yard if they think it necessary. I can’t think why it should be. But that decision is for the Chief Constable, not for us.”
    She moved over to the wall telephone, carefully walking round the crouched figure of Miss Rolfe. The Principal Tutor was still on her knees. She looked, thought the Matron, rather like a character from a Victorian melodrama with her smouldering eyes in a deathly