Green for Danger

August, 1944 at Heron's Park Hospital in rural England. The region has routinely been bombed by the Germans. Dr. White, the chief administrator as of a month ago, has been taking measures to instill morale among the staff and faculty, such as through positive messaging, and a staff party which will be held in a couple of days. Inspector Cockrill with Scotland Yard narrates specific goings-on at the hospital as he writes a report on an investigation to his superior. He tells of one group of hospital staff, all working one evening in the operating theater together: Mr. Eden, the surgeon; Dr. "Barney" Barnes, the anesthesiologist; Marion Bates, the theater sister; and nurses "Woody" Woods, Freddie Linley, and Esther Sanson. Cockrill tells the soap opera-ish goings-on within this group, such as the personal relationship between Barnes and Linley which went on the rocks during this time despite his devotion to her, and the womanizing Eden who had once had a casual fling with Bates but has turned his sights on Linley. But Cockrill's report focuses on something he states up front: that within this collective of six, two would be dead in days, and one would be identified as a murderer. But it all begins with the death of local postman and former air warden Joseph Higgins, who had been injured by falling debris in one of those bomb attacks. It was not his injuries which killed him, but not surviving the activities in the operating room, he not making it through the administration of the anesthetic, ultimately deemed as murder. Cockrill had to determine who killed him and the method of execution, these determinations not as simple as the obvious of Barnes who administered the anesthetic. That investigation was complicated by the associated murder of the first operating room staff.