Shroud for a Nightingale

by P. D. James

  Dalgliesh asked: “What happened when you got back?”

  “Nothing. I went to the nurses’ sitting-room and they were all watching the telly. Well, actually they switched it off as I came in. The Burt twins came to make tea in the nurses’ kitchen and we took it into Maureen’s room to drink it. Dakers came with us. Madeleine Goodale was left with Fallon. I don’t know what time they came up. I went to bed as soon as I’d had my tea. I was asleep before twelve.”

  So she might have been. But this had been a very simple murder. There had been nothing to prevent her waiting, perhaps in one of the lavatory cubicles, until she heard Fallon running her bath. Once Fallon was in the bathroom, Nurse Pardoe would know what all the other students knew; that a beaker of whisky and lemon would be waiting on Fallon’s bedside table. How simple to slip into her room and add something to the drink. And what? It was maddening, this working in the dark with its inevitable tendency to theorize in advance of the facts. Until the autopsy was completed and the toxicology results available he couldn’t even be sure that he was investigating a murder.

  He suddenly changed tack, reverting to a previous course of questioning.

  “Are you sorry about Nurse Pearce’s death?”

  Again the wide-opened eyes, the little moue of consideration, the suggestion that it was really rather a silly question.

  “Of course.” A little pause. “She never did me any harm.”

  “Did she do anyone any harm?”

  “You’d better ask them.” Another pause. Perhaps she felt that she had been imprudently foolish and rude. “What harm could Pearce do to anyone?” It was spoken with no tinge of contempt, almost with disinterest, a mere statement of fact.

  “Someone killed her. That doesn’t suggest that she was innocuous. Someone must have hated her enough to want her out of the way.”

  “She could have killed herself. When she swallowed that tube she knew what was coming to her all right. She was terrified. Anyone watching her could see that.”

  Julia Pardoe was the first student to have mentioned Nurse Pearce’s fear. The only other person present to have noticed it had been the General Nursing Council Inspector, who, in her statement, had stressed the girl’s look of apprehension, almost of endurance. It was interesting and surprising that Nurse Pardoe should have been so perceptive.

  Dalgliesh said: “But do you really believe that she put a corrosive poison into the feed herself?”

  The blue eyes met his. She gave her little secret smile. “No. Pearce was always terrified when she had to act as patient. She hated it. She never said anything, but anyone could see what she was feeling. Swallowing that tube must have been particularly bad for her. She told me once that she couldn’t bear the thought of a throat examination or operation. She’d had her tonsils out as a child and the surgeon—or it may have been a nurse—was rough with her and hurt her badly. Anyway, it had been a horrible experience and had left her with this phobia about her throat. Of course, she could have explained to Sister Gearing and one of us would have taken her place. She didn’t have to act the patient. No one was forcing her. But I suppose Pearce thought it was her duty to go through with it. She was a great one for duty.”

  So anyone present could have seen what Pearce was feeling. But in fact, only two of them had seen. And one of them had been this apparently insensitive young woman.

  Dalgliesh was intrigued, but not particularly surprised, that Nurse Pearce should have chosen to confide in Julia Pardoe. He had met it before, this perverse attraction which the pretty and popular often held for the plain and despised. Sometimes it was even reciprocated; an odd mutual fascination which, he suspected, formed the basis of many friendships and marriages that the world found inexplicable. But if Heather Pearce had been making a pathetic bid for friendship or sympathy by a recital of childhood woes she had been unlucky. Julia Pardoe respected strength, not weakness. She would be impervious to a plea for pity. And yet—who knew?—Pearce might have got something from her. Not friendship, or sympathy, or pity even; but a modicum of understanding.

  He said on a sudden impulse: “I think you probably knew more about Nurse Pearce than anyone else here, probably understood her better. I don’t believe her death was suicide, neither do you. I want you to tell me everything about her which would help me to a motive.”

  There was a second’s pause. Was it his imagination or was she really making up her mind to something? Then she said in her high, unemphatic, childish voice: “I expect she was blackmailing someone. She tried it with me once.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She looked up at him speculatively as if assessing his reliability or wondering whether the story was worth the trouble of telling. Then her lips curved in a little reminiscent smile. She said calmly: “My boyfriend spent a night with me about a year ago. Not here; in the main nurses’ home. I unlocked one of the fire escape doors and let him in. We did it for a lark really.”

  “Was he someone from the John Carpendar?”

  “Um, um. One of the surgical registrars.”

  “And how did Heather Pearce find out about it?”

  “It was the night before our preliminary—the first examination for State Registration. Pearce always got a stomachache before exams. I suppose she was prowling down the corridor to the loo and saw me letting Nigel in. Or she may have been on her way back to bed and listened at the door. Perhaps she heard us giggling or something. I expect she listened as long as she could. I wonder what she made of it. No one has ever wanted to make love to Pearce so I suppose she got a thrill just out of listening to someone else in bed with a man. Anyway, she tackled me about it next morning and then threatened to tell Matron and have me chucked out of the nurse training school.”

  She spoke without resentment, almost with a touch of amusement. It hadn’t bothered her at the time. It didn’t bother her now.

  Dalgliesh asked: “And what price was she asking for her silence?”

  He had no doubt that, whatever the price, it hadn’t been paid.

  “She said she hadn’t made up her mind about that; she would have to think about it. It would have to be appropriate. You should have seen her face. It was all mottled and red like a disgusted turkey cock. I don’t know how I kept a straight face. I pretended to be terribly worried and contrite and asked if we should talk about it that night. That was just to give me time to get in touch with Nigel. He lives with his widowed mother just outside the town. She adores him and I knew she wouldn’t make any difficulty about swearing that he spent the night at home. She wouldn’t even mind that we’d been together. She thinks that her precious Nigel’s entitled to take just what he likes. But I didn’t want Pearce to talk before I got that fixed up. When I saw her that evening I told her that both of us would deny the story absolutely and that Nigel would back it up with an alibi. She’d forgotten about his mother. There was something else she’d forgotten too. Nigel is Mr. Courtney-Briggs’s nephew. So if she talked, all that would happen would be that Mr. Courtney-Briggs would get her chucked out, not me. Pearce was terribly stupid, really.”

  “You seem to have coped with admirable efficiency and composure. So you never learned what punishment Pearce had in store for you?”

  “Oh yes I did! I let her talk about that before I told her. It was more amusing that way. It wasn’t a question of punishment; it was more like blackmail. She wanted to come in with us, be one of my crowd.”

  “Your crowd?”

  “Well, me, Jennifer Blain and Diane Harper really. I was going with Nigel at the time and Diane and Jennifer had his friends. You haven’t met Blain; she’s one of the students who are off with flu. Pearce wanted us to fix up a man for her so that she could make up a fourth.”

  “Didn’t you find that surprising? From what I’ve heard of her, Heather Pearce wasn’t exactly the type to be interested in sex.”

  “Everyone is interested in sex, in their own way. But Pearce didn’t put it like that. She made out that the three of us wer
en’t to be trusted and that we ought to have someone reliable to keep an eye on us. No prizes for guessing who! But I knew what she really wanted. She wanted Tom Mannix. He was the paediatric registrar at the time. He was spotty and rather a drip really, but Pearce fancied him. They both belonged to the hospital Christian Fellowship and Tom was going to be a missionary or something after his two years here were up. He’d have suited Pearce all right, and I daresay I could have made him go out with her once or twice if I’d pressed him. But it wouldn’t have done her any good. He didn’t want Pearce; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is.”

  Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn’t love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world’s poets and novelists do without the universal tragicomedy? But Julia Pardoe was untouched by it. If only, thought Dalgliesh, her voice had held a trace of pity, or even interest! But Pearce’s desperate need, the longing for love which had led her to this pathetic attempt at blackmail, provoked in her victim nothing, not even an amused contempt.

  She couldn’t even be bothered to ask him to keep the story a secret. And then, as if reading his thoughts, she told him why.

  “I don’t mind your knowing about it now. Why should I? After all, Pearce is dead. Fallon too. I mean, with two murders in the place, Matron and the Hospital Management Committee have something more important to worry about than Nigel and me in bed together. But when I think of that night! Honestly, it was hilarious. The bed was far too narrow and it kept creaking and Nigel and I were giggling so much we could hardly … And then to think of Pearce with one eye to the keyhole!”

  And then she laughed. It was a peal of spontaneous and reminiscent joy, innocent and infectious. Looking up at her, Masterson’s heavy face coruscated into a wide indulgent grin and, for one extraordinary second, he and Dalgliesh had to restrain themselves from laughing aloud with her.

  7

  Dalgliesh hadn’t summoned the members of the little group in the library in any particular order and it wasn’t with malice aforethought that he had left Sister Gearing to the last. But the long wait had been unkind to her. She had obviously found time, earlier in the morning, to make up her face with lavish care; an instinctive preparation, no doubt, for whatever traumatic encounters the day might bring. But the make-up had worn badly. The mascara had run and was now smudged into the eye shadow, there were beads of sweat along the forehead and a trace of lipstick in the cleft of her chin. Perhaps she had been unconsciously fiddling with her face. Certainly, she was finding it difficult to keep her hands still. She sat twisting her handkerchief through her fingers and crossing and recrossing her legs in fidgety discomfort. Without waiting for Dalgliesh to speak she broke into a high frenetic chatter.

  “You and your Sergeant are staying with the Maycrofts at the Falconer’s Arms, aren’t you? I hope they’re making you comfortable. Sheila’s a bit of a drag but Bob’s good value when you get him on his own.”

  Dalgliesh had taken very good care not to get Bob on his own. He had chosen the Falconer’s Arms because it was small, convenient, quiet, and half empty; it had not taken long to understand why. Group Captain Robert Maycroft and his wife were more concerned to impress visitors with their own gentility than to minister to the comfort of their guests, and Dalgliesh fervently hoped to be out of the place by the end of the week. In the meantime he had no intention of discussing the Maycrofts with Sister Gearing and he guided her politely but firmly towards more relevant subjects.

  Unlike the other suspects she found it necessary to waste the first five minutes in expressing her horror at the deaths of the two girls. It had been all too horrible, tragic, awful, ghastly, beastly, unforgettable, inexplicable. The emotion, thought Dalgliesh, was real enough even if its expression wasn’t original. The woman was genuinely distressed. He suspected that she was also very frightened.

  He took her through the events of Monday, 12th January. She had little new of interest to say and her account tallied with that already on the file. She had woken very late, dressed in a hurry, and had only just managed to get down to the dining-room by eight o’clock. There she had joined Sister Brumfett and Sister Rolfe for breakfast and had first heard from them that Nurse Fallon had been taken ill in the night. Dalgliesh asked her if she remembered which of the Sisters had given her the news.

  “Well, I can’t say I do really. I think it was Rolfe but I can’t be sure. I was in a bit of a tizzy that morning what with one thing and another. It hadn’t helped oversleeping like that, and I was naturally a bit nervous about the General Nursing Council inspection. After all, I’m not a qualified Sister Tutor. I was only deputizing for Sister Manning. And it’s bad enough taking the first demonstration of a set without Matron and the G.N.C. Inspector, Mr. Courtney-Briggs and Sister Rolfe all sitting there with their beady eyes on every move you make. It struck me that with Fallon absent, there would only be about seven students left in the set. Well, that suited me all right; the fewer the better as far as I was concerned. I only hoped the little beasts would answer up and show some intelligence.”

  Dalgliesh asked her who had left the dining-room first.

  “Brumfett did. Dead keen as usual to get back to her ward, I suppose. I left next. I took my papers through into the conservatory with a cup of coffee and sat down for ten minutes’ read. Christine Dakers, Diane Harper and Julia Pardoe were there. Harper and Pardoe were chatting together and Dakers was sitting on her own reading a magazine. I didn’t stay long and they were still there when I left. I went up to my room at about half past eight, collecting my post on the way, and then came down again and went straight into the demonstration room just before quarter to nine. The Burt twins were already there finishing their preparations and Goodale arrived almost immediately. The rest of the set came in together at about ten to nine, except Pearce, who didn’t arrive until last. There was the usual girlish chatter before we got down to work but I can’t remember any of it. The rest you know.”

  Dalgliesh did know. But although he thought it unlikely that there was anything new to learn from Sister Gearing he took her again through the events of that traumatic demonstration. But she had nothing fresh to reveal. It had all been too awful, terrible, ghastly, frightful, unbelievable. She would never forget it as long as she lived.

  Dalgliesh then turned to the death of Fallon. But here Sister Gearing had a surprise for him. She was the first suspect to produce an alibi, or what she obviously hoped was one, and she put it forward with understandable satisfaction. From eight o’clock until after midnight she had been entertaining a friend in her room. She gave Dalgliesh his name with coy reluctance. He was Leonard Morris, the chief pharmacist of the hospital. She had invited him to dinner, had produced a simple meal of spaghetti bolognaise in the Sisters’ kitchen on the third floor and had served it in her sitting-room at eight o’clock, shortly after his arrival. They had been together for the whole of the four hours except for the few minutes when she had fetched the supper dish from the kitchen, and for a couple of minutes at about midnight when he had visited the lavatory, and a similar period earlier in the evening she had left him for the same purpose. Apart from that they had never been out of each other’s sight. She added eagerly that Len—Mr. Morris that was—would be only too happy to confirm her story. Len would remember the times perfectly well. Being a pharmacist he was precise and accurate about details. The only difficulty was that he wasn’t in the hospital this morning. He had telephoned the pharmacy just before nine to say that he was sick. But he would be back at work tomorrow, she was sure of it. Len hated taking time off.

  Dalgliesh asked at what hour he had actually left Nightingale House.

  “Well, it couldn’t have been long after midnight. I remember that when my clock struck twelve Len said that it was really time he was off. We went out about five minutes later, down the back staircase, the one leadi
ng from Matron’s flat. I left the door open: Len collected his bicycle from where he’d left it and I walked with him to the first turn in the path. It wasn’t exactly a night for a stroll but we’d still one or two matters about the hospital to discuss—Len lectures in pharmacology to the second-year students—and I thought I could do with a breath of air. Len didn’t like to leave me to walk back alone so he came back as far as the door. I suppose it was about twelve-fifteen when we finally parted. I came in through Matron’s door and locked it behind me. I went straight to my room, took the supper things into the kitchen to wash them up, went to the bathroom, and was in bed by a quarter to one. I didn’t see Fallon all the evening. The next thing I knew was Sister Rolfe dashing in to wake me up with the news that Dakers had found Fallon dead in bed.”

  “So you went out and returned through Miss Taylor’s flat. Was her door left unlocked then?”

  “Oh, yes! Matron usually leaves it open when she’s away. She knows we find it convenient and more private to use her staircase. After all, we’re grown women. We’re not exactly forbidden to entertain friends in our rooms and it isn’t particularly nice to have to show them out through the main house with every little student watching with her eyes out on stalks. Matron’s awfully good like that. I think she even leaves her sitting-room unlocked when she’s not in Nightingale House. I suppose that’s so that Sister Brumfett can use it if she feels inclined. Brumfett, in case you hadn’t heard, is Matron’s spaniel. Most Matrons keep a little dog you know. Mary Taylor has Brumfett.”

  The note of bitter cynicism was so unexpected that Masterson’s head came up from his note-taking with a jerk and he looked at Sister Gearing as if she were an unpromising candidate who had suddenly revealed unexpected potentialities. But Dalgliesh let it pass. He asked: “Was Sister Brumfett using Miss Taylor’s flat last night?”