Shroud for a Nightingale

by P. D. James

  The conversation is, he thought, a verbal pavane. If I’m not careful I shall begin to enjoy it. I wonder when she will get down to business. Or is she expecting me to make the first move? And why not? It is I who am the suppliant, the intruder.

  As if reading his thoughts, she said suddenly: “It’s odd that they should both have been such friendless girls, both orphans. It makes my task less onerous. There aren’t any desolated parents to be comforted, thank God. Nurse Pearce only had the grandparents who brought her up. He’s a retired miner and they live in some poverty in a cottage outside Nottingham. They belong to a very puritanical religious sect and their only reaction to the child’s death was to say, ‘God’s Will be Done’. It seemed an odd response to a tragedy which was so obviously the will of man.”

  “So you think Nurse Pearce’s death was murder then?”

  “Not necessarily. But I don’t accuse God of tampering with the intra-gastric drip.”

  “And Nurse Fallon’s relatives?”

  “None, as far as I know. She was asked for her next of kin when she first became a student and told us she was an orphan with no blood relations living. There was no reason to question it. It was probably true. But her death will be in the papers tomorrow and if there are any relatives or friends no doubt we shall be hearing from them. You’ve spoken to the students, I expect?”

  “I’ve just had a preliminary talk with them as a group. I saw them in the demonstration room. It’s been useful in giving me a background to the case. They’ve all agreed to be fingerprinted and that’s being done now. I shall need the prints of everyone who was in Nightingale House last night and this morning, if only for elimination purposes. And I shall, of course, need to interview everyone separately. But I’m glad of this chance to see you first. After all, you were in Amsterdam when Nurse Fallon died. That means there’s one less suspect for me to worry about.”

  He saw with surprise her knuckles whiten around the handle of the coffee pot. Her face flushed. She closed her eyes and he thought he heard her sigh. He watched her a little dis concerted. What he had said must surely be obvious to a woman of her intelligence. He hardly knew why he had bothered to say it. If this second death were murder, then anyone with an alibi covering the whole of yesterday evening and night must be free of suspicion.

  As if sensing his surprise, she said: “I’m sorry. I must seem obtuse. I know it’s foolish to feel such relief at not being under suspicion when one knows anyway that one is innocent. Perhaps it’s because none of us is innocent in any real sense. A psychologist could explain it, I’m sure. But ought you to be so confident? Couldn’t the poison—if it were poison—have been put into Fallon’s whisky bottle any time after she bought it, or another and poisoned bottle substituted for the one she purchased? That could have been done before I left for Amsterdam on Tuesday evening.”

  “I’m afraid you must resign yourself to innocence. Miss Fallon bought this particular bottle of whisky from Scunthorpe’s wine shop in the High Street yesterday afternoon, and took her first and only drink from it on the night she died. The bottle is still almost full, the whisky remaining is perfectly good whisky as far as we know, and the only prints on the bottle are Miss Fallon’s own.”

  “You’ve worked very fast. So the poison was put either into the glass after she’d poured her hot drink or into the sugar?”

  “If she were poisoned. We can’t be sure of anything till we get the P.M. report and perhaps not even then. The sugar is being tested but that is really only a formality. Most of the students helped themselves from that bowl when they had their early morning tea and at least two of the girls drank theirs. So that leaves us with the beaker of whisky and hot lemon. Miss Fallon made it very easy for a murderer. Apparently the whole of Nightingale House knew that, if she didn’t go out in the evening, she watched the television until the programme closed down. She was a poor sleeper and never went to bed early. When the television ended she would go to her room and undress. Then in her bedroom slippers and dressing-gown she would go to the little pantry on the second floor and make her nightcap. She kept the whisky in her room but she couldn’t make the drink there because there’s no water laid on and no means of heating it. So it was her habit to take the insulated tumbler with the whisky poured out ready and add the hot lemon in the pantry. A supply of lemons was kept there in the cupboard with the cocoa, coffee, chocolate and other items with which the nurses tend to make their late night drinks. Then she would take the tumbler back to her room and leave it on the bedside locker while she had her bath. She always bathed quickly and she liked to get into bed immediately afterwards while she was still warm. I expect that’s why she made her drink before she went into the bathroom. By the time she got back to her room and into bed, the drink was at precisely the right temperature. And apparently the routine never varied.”

  The Matron said: “It’s rather frightening how much people get to know about each other’s habits in a small closed community like this. But, of course, it’s inevitable. There’s no real privacy. How can there be? I knew about the whisky, of course, but it hardly seemed my business. The girl certainly wasn’t an incipient alcoholic and she wasn’t handing it out to the younger students. At her age she was entitled to her own choice of nightcap.”

  Dalgliesh asked how the Matron had learned about the whisky.

  “Nurse Pearce told me. She asked to see me and gave me the information in a spirit of ‘I don’t want to tell tales but I think you ought to know’. Drink and the devil were one and the same to Nurse Pearce. But I don’t think Fallon made any secret of the whisky drinking. How could she? As I said, we know about each other’s little habits. But there are some things, of course, that we don’t know. Josephine Fallon was a very private person. I can’t give you any information about her life outside the hospital and I doubt whether anyone here can.”

  “Who was her friend here? She must have had someone she confided in, surely? Isn’t that necessary for any woman in this kind of closed community?”

  She looked at him a little strangely. “Yes. We all need someone. But I think Fallon needed a friend less than most. She was remarkably self-sufficient. If she confided in anyone it would be Madeleine Goodale.”

  “The plain one with the round face and large spectacles?” Dalgliesh recalled her. It was not an unattractive face, mainly because of the good skin and the intelligence of those large grey eyes behind the thick horn rims. But Nurse Goodale could never be other than plain. He thought he could picture her future: the years of training willingly endured, the success in examinations; the gradually increasing responsibility until, at last, she too was a Matron. It was not unusual for such a girl to be friendly with a more attractive woman. It was one way of gaining at least a vicarious share in a more romantic, less dedicated life.

  As if reading his thoughts, Miss Taylor said: “Nurse Goodale is one of our most efficient nurses. I was hoping that she would stay on after her training and take a post as staff nurse. But that is hardly likely. She’s engaged to our local vicar and they want to marry next Easter.”

  She glanced across at Dalgliesh a little maliciously. “He is considered a most eligible young man. You seem surprised, Superintendent.”

  Dalgliesh laughed: “After over twenty years as a policeman I should have learned not to make superficial judgements. I think I had better see Nurse Goodale first. I understand the room you’re making available isn’t ready yet. I suppose we could go on using the demonstration room. Or are you likely to be needing it?”

  “I would prefer you to see the girls somewhere else if you would. That room has very unhappy and dramatic memories for them. We’re not even using it yet for teaching demonstrations. Until the small visitors’ room on the first floor is ready I’d be happy for you to interview the students here.”

  Dalgliesh thanked her. He replaced his coffee cup on the table.

  She hesitated, then said: “Mr. Dalgliesh, there’s one thing I want to say. I feel—I am—in loco
parentis to my students. If ever any question … if you should begin to suspect that any one of them is involved, I can rely on you to let me know? They would then need protection. There would surely be the question of getting a solicitor.”

  She hesitated again: “Please forgive me if I’m being offensive. One has so little experience of these matters. It’s just that I shouldn’t like them …”

  “To be trapped?”

  “To be rushed into saying things which might quite wrongly incriminate them or other members of the staff.”

  Dalgliesh found himself unreasonably irritated. “There are rules laid down, you know,” he said.

  “Oh, rules! I know there are rules. But I’m sure you are both too experienced and too intelligent to let them hinder you over much. I’m just reminding you that these girls are less intelligent and in such matters not experienced at all.”

  Fighting his irritation, Dalgliesh said formally: “I can only tell you that the rules are there and that it’s in our interests to keep them. Can’t you imagine what a gift to the defending counsel any infringement would be? A young unprotected girl, a student nurse, bullied by a senior police officer with years of experience in trapping the unwary. Enough difficulties are placed in the path of the police in this country; we don’t voluntarily add to them.”

  She flushed and he was interested to see the wave of colour sweep from her neck over the pale honey-glow skin making her look momentarily as if the veins ran with fire. Then, instantaneously, it passed. The change was so sudden that he couldn’t be sure that he had actually seen that tell-tale metamorphosis.

  She said composedly: “We both have our responsibilities. We must hope that they don’t conflict. In the meantime you must expect me to be as concerned with mine as you are with yours. And that brings me to some information which I have to give you. It concerns Christine Dakers, the student who discovered Nurse Fallon’s body.”

  She described briefly and succinctly what had happened during her visit to the private ward. Dalgliesh noted with interest that she made no comment, offered no opinion, and attempted no justification of the girl. He didn’t ask her whether she believed the story. She was a highly intelligent woman. She must know that what she had handed him was the first motive. He asked when he would be able to interview Nurse Dakers.

  “She’s sleeping now. Dr. Snelling, who is in charge of the nurses’ health, is to see her later this morning. He will then report to me. If he agrees, it should be possible for you to see her this afternoon. And now I’ll send for Nurse Goodale. That is, if there is nothing more I can tell you?”

  “I shall need a great deal of information about people’s ages, backgrounds and the time they’ve been at the hospital. Won’t that be on their personal records? It would be helpful if I could have those.”

  The Matron thought. Dalgliesh noticed that when she did so her face fell into absolute repose. After a moment she said: “All the staff here have personal dossiers, of course. Legally these are the property of the Hospital Management Committee. The Chairman won’t be back from Israel until tomorrow evening but I’ll consult the Vice-Chairman. I imagine that he will ask me to look through the records, and if they contain nothing private which is irrelevant to your inquiry, to pass them over.”

  Dalgliesh decided that it would be prudent not to press for the moment the question of who should decide what was irrelevant to his inquiry.

  He said: “There are personal questions I shall have to ask, of course. But it would be a great deal more convenient and would save time if I could get the routine information from the records.”

  It was strange that her voice could be so agreeable and yet so obstinate.

  “I can see that it would be a great deal more convenient; it would also be a check on the truth of what you are told. But the records can only be handed over under the conditions I have just stated.”

  So she was confident that the Vice-Chairman would accept and endorse her view of what was right. And undoubtedly he would. Here was a formidable woman. Faced with a tricky problem she had given the matter thought, come to a decision and had stated it firmly without apology or wavering. An admirable woman. She would be easy to deal with as long, of course, as all her decisions were as acceptable as this.

  He asked if he might use the telephone, recalled Sergeant Masterson from his supervision of the preparation of the small visitors’ room to serve as an office; and prepared himself for the long tedium of the individual interviews.

  2

  Nurse Goodale was summoned by telephone and arrived within two minutes looking unhurried and composed. Miss Taylor seemed to think that neither explanation nor reassurance was necessary to this self-possessed young woman but simply said: “Sit down, Nurse. Superintendent Dalgliesh wants to talk to you.”

  Then she took up her cloak from the chair, swung it over her shoulders, and went out without another glance at either of them. Sergeant Masterson opened his notebook. Nurse Goodale seated herself in an upright chair at the table but, when Dalgliesh motioned her to an armchair before the fire, moved without demur. She sat stiffly on the very edge of the chair, her back straight, her surprisingly shapely and elegant legs planted modestly side by side. But the hands lying in her lap were perfectly relaxed and Dalgliesh, seated opposite, found himself confronting a pair of disconcertingly intelligent eyes. He said: “You were probably closer to Miss Fallon than anyone else in the hospital. Tell me about her.”

  She showed no surprise at the form of his first question, but paused for a few seconds before replying as if marshalling her thoughts. Then she said: “I liked her. She tolerated me better than she did most of the other students but I don’t think her feeling for me was much stronger than that. She was thirty-one after all, and we must all have seemed rather immature to her. She had a rather sarcastic tongue which didn’t help, and I think some of the girls were rather afraid of her.

  “She seldom spoke to me about her past but she did tell me that both her parents were killed in 1944 in a bombing raid in London. She was brought up by an elderly aunt and educated at one of those boarding-schools where they take children from an early age and keep them until they’re ready to leave. Provided the fees are paid of course, but I got the impression that there wasn’t any difficulty about that. She always wanted to be a nurse, but she got tuberculosis after she left school and had to spend two years in a sanatorium. I don’t know where. After that, two hospitals turned her down on grounds of health, so she took a number of temporary jobs. She told me soon after we began our training that she had once been engaged but that it didn’t work out.”

  “You never asked her why?”

  “I never asked her anything. If she had wanted to tell me she would have done so.”

  “Did she tell you that she was pregnant?”

  “Yes, she told me two days before she went sick. She must have suspected before then but the confirming report came that morning. I asked her what she intended doing about it and she said that she would get rid of the baby.”

  “Did you point out that this was probably illegal?”

  “No. She didn’t care about legality. I told her that it was wrong.”

  “But she still intended to go ahead with the abortion?”

  “Yes. She said that she knew a doctor who would do it and that there wouldn’t be any real risk. I asked her if she needed money and she said that she would be all right, that money was the least of her problems. She never told me who she was going to, and I didn’t ask.”

  “But you were prepared to help her with money had she needed it, even though you disapproved of getting rid of the baby?”

  “My disapproval wasn’t important. What was important was that it was wrong. But when I knew that she had made up her mind I had to decide whether to help her. I was afraid that she might go to some unqualified back street abortionist and risk her life and health. I know that the law has changed, that it’s easier now to get a medical recommendation, but I didn’t think she would
qualify. I had to make a moral decision. If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don’t you think?”

  Dalgliesh said gravely: “It’s an interesting theological point which I’m not competent to argue. Did she tell you who was the father of the child?”

  “Not directly. I think it may have been a young writer she was friendly with. I don’t know his name or where you can find him but I do know that Jo spent a week with him in the Isle of Wight last October. She had seven days’ holiday due and she told me that she’d decided to walk in the island with a friend. I imagine he was the friend. It certainly wasn’t anyone from here. They went during the first week and she told me that they’d stayed in a small inn about five miles south of Ventnor. That’s all she did tell me. I suppose it’s possible she became pregnant during that week?”

  Dalgliesh said: “The dates would fit. And she never confided in you about the father of the child?”

  “No. I asked her why she wouldn’t marry the father and she said that it would be unfair to the child to burden it with two irresponsible parents. I remember her saying: “He would be horrified at the idea, anyway, unless he had a sudden urge to experience fatherhood just to see what it was like. And he might like to see the baby born so that he could write a lurid account of childbirth some day. But he really isn’t committed to anyone but himself.” “

  “But did she care for him?”

  The girl paused a full minute before replying. Then she said: “I think she did. I think that may have been why she killed herself.”

  “What makes you think that she did?”

  “I suppose because the alternative is even more unlikely. I never thought that Jo was the type to kill herself—if there is a type. But I really didn’t know her. One never does really know another human being. Anything is possible for anyone. I’ve always believed that. And it’s surely more likely that she killed herself than that someone murdered her. That seems absolutely incredible. Why should they?”