Guy Winter 05 Winter's Spy by James Philip

Author:James Philip [Philip, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-12-25T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Friday 22nd November 1940

Kingston and District Hospital, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey

Guy Winter was sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed when the bear-like frame of Superintendent Othneil Plunkett filled the door, darkening the interior of the small private room at the end of the first floor ward.

The newcomer gestured irritably for the other man to stay seated.

A second chair scraped on the tiled floor and Plunkett settled wearily, viewing the man whom until recent months he had always anticipated leapfrogging him to become head of CID at Scotland Yard. He had spent most of the last ten years brooding about the iniquity of that, now he realised how little such things actually mattered. Both men understood that he had eventually won the race as much because the Mystery Man had lost his appetite for the fight as anything else; but actually, that no longer mattered either. The world had changed, moved on while they were engaged in their own, private little war.

“They say nothing is badly broken?” Plunkett growled, his voice pitched so lowly that Guy Winter half-expected the windows to rattle.

The younger man gingerly touched his left brow.

“A hairline crack, they think,” he force a grimace, “but the old carapace is thicker than people would imagine.”

Othneil Plunkett grunted a chuckle.

Guy Winter waved at his surroundings.

“A lot of people don’t realise that this hospital is built on the site of the old Kingston Union Workhouse completed in 1839. For such a band of brigands the Victorians could be an enlightened bunch when they wanted to be. They built an infirmary here, where we are sitting presently, as long ago as 1843. Mind you, it took them over fifty years to put up lodgings for the nurses. Not to mention a few more years before they separated the infirmary from the workhouse. They called this place the Kingston Infirmary until as recently as 1920.”

Normally, Othneil Plunkett would have scoffed. Today he was just thankful that his bête noire of so many years seemed – beneath all the bandages – to be restored to something like his normal self.

“What actually happened at Latchmere House, Winter?”

“I fell over,” the detective admitted sheepishly. “The cold got into my lungs. I must have fainted. Nobody laid a finger on me. Tin Eye takes a dim view of rough stuff. As you can see, my face broke my fall.”

Plunkett nodded sternly.

Had there been any ‘rough stuff’ he would not have hesitated to arrest the Commandant of Camp 020, consequences be damned! No matter how thorny or troublesome his and the Mystery Man’s past dealings and relations; the Met in general and CID in particular, protected its own.

“Captain King warned me of your arrest,” the big man said lowly. “He told me it was a put up show. Sometimes I wonder whose side that man is really on.”

“That’s a thing many people have wondered about over the years,” Guy Winter grimaced. “He and I are going to have to have a long overdue heart to heart when I get out of here.

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