Shroud for a Nightingale

by P. D. James

  “Only when I’m upset.” Her tone suggested that this was an eventuality for which any reasonable woman would make provision.

  “It’s private ’ere.” She added defensively: “It used to be private, anyway.”

  Dalgliesh felt rebuked. “I’m sorry. I won’t come here again.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind you. You can come again if you like.” The voice might be ungracious but the compliment was unmistakable. They sat for a moment in curiously companionable silence.

  The stout walls of the hut enclosed them, insulating them in an unnatural silence from the moaning of the wind. Inside, the air was cold but musty, smelling pungently of wood, paraffin and humus. Dalgliesh looked around him. The place was not uncomfortable. There was a bale of straw in the corner, a second old cane chair similar to that in which Morag was curled, and an upturned packing-case covered with oil-cloth which served as a table. On it he could just make out the shape of a primus oil stove. One of the wall shelves held a white aluminium teapot and a couple of mugs. He guessed that the gardener had once used the place as a comfortable retreat from the ardours of work as well as a potting and storage shed. In spring and summer, isolated in the quiet of the trees and surrounded by bird song, it must, Dalgliesh thought, be an agreeable hiding-place. But this was mid-winter. He said: “Forgive my asking, but wouldn’t it be more comfortable to be upset in your own room? And more private?”

  “It isn’t cosy over in Nightingale ’ouse. And it isn’t cosy in the resident staff ’ostel either. I like it ’ere. It smells like my dad’s shed on the allotment. And nobody comes after dark. They’re all afraid of the ghost.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  “I don’t believe in ’em.” It was, thought Dalgliesh, the ultimate vindication of sturdy scepticism. You didn’t believe in a thing, therefore it didn’t exist. Untortured by imagination, you could enjoy the reward of your own certainty even if it were only the undisputed possession of a garden shed when you were feeling upset. He found this admirable. He wondered whether he ought to inquire the cause of her grief, suggest perhaps that she could confide in the Matron. Had that wild crying really been caused by nothing more than Bill Bailey’s passionately resented attentions? Bailey was a good detective, but not particularly subtle with people. One couldn’t afford to be critical. Every detective, however competent, knew what it was unwittingly to antagonize a witness. Once this happened it was the devil to get anything useful out of her—and it usually was a woman—even if the antipathy were partly subconscious. Success in a murder investigation depended largely on making people want to help you, getting them to talk. Bill Bailey had singularly failed with Morag Smith. Adam Dalgliesh, too, had failed in his time.

  He remembered what Inspector Bailey, in that brief hour’s colloquy when the case had been handed over, had told him about the two maids.

  “They’re out of it. The old one, Miss Martha Collins, has been at the hospital for forty years and if she had homicidal tendencies they would have shown before now. She’s mainly concerned about the theft of the lavatory disinfectant. Seems to regard it as a personal affront. Probably takes the view that the lavatory is her responsibility and the murder isn’t. The young girl, Morag Smith, is half dotty if you ask me, and as obstinate as an army mule. She might have done it, I suppose, but I can’t for the life of me see why. Heather Pearce hadn’t done anything to upset her as far as I know. And in any case she hardly had the time. Morag was only transferred from the doctors’ residence to Nightingale House on the day before Pearce died. I gather that she wasn’t too pleased about the change, but that’s scarcely a motive to kill off the student nurses. Besides, the girl isn’t frightened. Obstinate, but not frightened. If she did it, I doubt whether you’ll ever prove it.”

  They sat on in silence. He wasn’t anxious to probe into her grief and suspected that she had been indulging an irrational need for a good cry. She had chosen her secret place for it and was entitled to emotional privacy even if her physical privacy had been invaded. He was too reticent himself to have any stomach for the emotional prying which gives so many people the comforting illusion that they care. He seldom did care. Human beings were perpetually interesting to him, and nothing about them surprised him any more. But he didn’t involve himself. He wasn’t surprised that she should like the shed, smelling as it did of home.

  He became aware of a confused background mumbling. She had returned to a recital of her grievance.

  “Kept looking at me all the time ’e did. And asking the same old thing over and over again. Stuck up too. You could see that he fancied himself.”

  Suddenly she turned to Dalgliesh. “You feeling sexy?”

  Dalgliesh gave the question serious attention.

  “No. I’m too old to feel sexy when I’m cold and tired. At my age you need the creature comforts if you’re to perform with any pleasure to your partner or credit to yourself.”

  She gave him a look in which disbelief struggled with commiseration.

  “You’re not that old. Thanks for the ’anky anyway.” She gave one last convulsive blow before handing it back. Dalgliesh slipped it quickly into his pocket, resisting the temptation to drop it unobtrusively behind the bench. Stretching his legs ready to move, he only half heard her next words.

  “What did you say?” he asked, careful to keep his voice level, uninquisitorial.

  She answered sulkily. “I said that ’e never found out about me drinking the milk anyway, bugger ’im. I never told ’im.”

  “Was that the milk used for the demonstration feed? When did you drink it?”

  He tried to sound conversational, only mildly interested. But he was aware of the silence in the hut and the two sharp eyes staring at him. Could she really be unaware of what she was telling him?

  “It was at eight o’clock, maybe a minute before. I went into the demo room to see if I’d left my tin of polish there. And there was this bottle of milk on the trolley and I drank some of it. Just a bit off the top.”

  “Just out of the bottle?”

  “Well, there wasn’t any cup ’andy was there? I was thirsty and I saw the milk and I just fancied a bit. So I took a swig.”

  He asked the crucial question. “You just had the cream off the top?”

  “There wasn’t any cream. It wasn’t that kind of milk.”

  His heart leapt.

  “And what did you do then?”

  “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “But weren’t you afraid that Sister Tutor would notice that the bottle wasn’t full?”

  “The bottle was full. I filled it up with the water from the tap. Anyway, I only took a couple of gulps.”

  “And replaced the seal on top of the bottle?”

  “That’s right. Careful like, so they wouldn’t notice.”

  “And you never told anyone?”

  “No one asked me. That Inspector asked me if I’d been in the demo room and I said only before seven o’clock when I did a bit of cleaning. I wasn’t going to tell ’im nothing. It wasn’t ’is bloody milk anyway; ’e never paid for it.”

  “Morag, you are quite, quite sure of the time?”

  “Eight o’clock. The demo clock said eight anyway. I looked at it because I was supposed to help serve the breakfasts, the dining-room maids being off with flu. Some people think you can be in three places at once. Anyway, I went into the dining-room where the Sisters and the students had all started eating. Then Miss Collins gave me one of ’er looks. Late again, Morag! So it must ’ave been eight. The students always start breakfast at eight.”

  “And were they all there?”

  “Of course they was all there! I told yer! They was at their breakfast.”

  But he knew that they had been there. The twenty-five minutes from eight until eight twenty-five was the only time in which all the female suspects had been together, eating under the eye of Miss Collins and full in each other’s gaze. If Morag’s story were true, and he didn’t for one moment doubt it, then the scop
e of the inquiry had been dramatically narrowed. There were only six people who had no firm alibi for the whole of the period from eight o’clock until the class assembled at eight-forty. He would have to check the statements of course, but he knew what he would find. This was the sort of information he had been trained to recall at will and the names came obediently to mind. Sister Rolfe, Sister Gearing, Sister Brumfett, Nurse Goodale, Leonard Morris and Stephen Courtney-Briggs.

  He pulled the girl gently to her feet. “Come on, Morag, I’m going to see you back to the hostel. You’re a very important witness and I don’t want you to get pneumonia before I’ve had a chance to take your statement.”

  “I don’t want to write nothing down. I’m no scholar.”

  “Someone will write it down for you. You’ll only have to sign it.”

  “I don’t mind doing that. I’m not daft. I can sign my name, I ’ope.”

  And he would have to be there to see that she did. He had a feeling that Sergeant Masterson would be no more successful than Inspector Bailey in dealing with Morag. It would be safer to take her statement himself even if it meant a later start than he had planned for his journey to London.

  But it would be time well spent. As he turned to pull the shed door firmly behind them—it had no lock—he felt happier than at any time since the finding of the nicotine. Now he was making progress. On the whole, it hadn’t been too bad a day.

  BOOK SEVEN

  DANSE MACABRE

  1

  It was five minutes to seven the next morning. Sergeant Masterson and Detective Constable Greeson were in the kitchen at Nightingale House with Miss Collins and Mrs. Muncie. It seemed like the middle of the night to Masterson, dark and cold. The kitchen smelt agreeably of new-baked bread, a country smell, nostalgic and comforting. But Miss Collins was no prototype of the buxom and welcoming cook. She watched, lips tight and arms akimbo, as Greeson placed a filled milk bottle in the front of the middle shelf of the refrigerator, and said: “Which one are they supposed to take?”

  “The first bottle to hand. That’s what they did before, didn’t they?”

  “So they say. I had something better to do than sit and watch them. I’ve got something better to do now.”

  “That’s okay by us. We’ll do the watching.”

  Four minutes later the Burt twins came in together. No one spoke. Shirley opened the refrigerator door and Maureen took out the first bottle to hand. Followed by Masterson and Greeson the twins made their way to the demonstration room through the silent and echoing hall. The room was empty and the curtains drawn. The two fluorescent lights blazed down on a semicircle of vacant chairs and on the high narrow bed where a grotesque demonstration doll, round mouthed, nostrils two black and gaping apertures, was propped against the pillows. The twins set about their preparations in silence. Maureen set down the bottle on the trolley, then dragged out the drip-feed apparatus and positioned it by the side of the bed. Shirley collected instruments and bowls from the various cupboards and set them out on the trolley. The two policemen watched.

  After twenty minutes Maureen said: “That’s as much as we did before breakfast. We left the room just like it is now.”

  Masterson said: “Okay. Then we’ll put forward our watches to eight-forty when you come back here. There’s no point in hanging about. We can call the rest of the students in now.”

  Obediently the twins adjusted their pocket watches while Greeson rang the library where the remaining students were waiting. They came almost immediately and in the order of their original appearance. Madeleine Goodale first, followed by Julia Pardoe and Christine Dakers who arrived together. No one made any attempt to talk and they took their places silently on the semi circle of chairs, shivering a little as if the room were cold.

  Masterson noticed that they kept their eyes averted from the grotesque doll in the bed. When they had settled themselves he said: “Right, Nurse. You can go ahead with the demonstration now. Start heating the milk.”

  Maureen looked at him, puzzled. “The milk? But no one’s had a chance to …” Her voice died away.

  Masterson said: “No one’s had a chance to poison it? Never mind. Just go ahead. I want you to do precisely what you did last time.”

  She filled a large jug with hot water from the tap then stood the unopened bottle in it for a few seconds to warm the milk. Receiving Masterson’s impatient nod to get on with it, she prised the cap off the bottle and poured the liquid into a glass measuring jug. Then she took a glass thermometer from the instrument trolley and checked the temperature of the liquid. The class watched in fascinated silence. Maureen glanced at Masterson. Receiving no sign, she took up the oesophageal tube and inserted it into the rigid mouth of the doll. Her hand was perfectly steady. Lastly she lifted a glass funnel high over her head and paused.

  Masterson said: “Go ahead, Nurse. It isn’t going to hurt the doll to get a bit damp. That’s what it’s made for. A few ounces of warm milk isn’t going to rot its guts.”

  Maureen paused. This time the fluid was visible and all their eyes were on the white curving stream. Then suddenly the girl paused, arm still poised high, and stood motionless, like a model awkwardly posed.

  “Well,” said Masterson: “Is it or isn’t it?”

  Maureen lowered the jug to her nostrils, then without a word passed it to her twin. Shirley sniffed and looked at Masterson.

  “This isn’t milk, is it? It’s a disinfectant. You wanted to test whether we really could tell!”

  Maureen said: “Are you telling us that it was disinfectant last time; that the milk was poisoned before we took the bottle out of the fridge?”

  “No. Last time the milk was all right when you took it out of the fridge. What did you do with the bottle once the milk had been poured into the measuring jug?”

  Shirley said: “I took it over to the sink in the corner and rinsed it out. I’m sorry I forgot. I should have done that earlier.”

  “Never mind. Do it now.”

  Maureen had placed the bottle on the table by the side of the sink, its crumpled cap at its side. Shirley picked it up. Then she paused.

  Masterson said very quietly: “Well?”

  The girl turned to him, perplexed.

  “There’s something different, something wrong. It wasn’t like this.”

  “Wasn’t it? Then think. Don’t worry yourself. Relax. Just relax and think.”

  The room was preternaturally silent. Then Shirley swung round to her twin.

  “I know now, Maureen! It’s the bottle top. Last time we took one of the homogenized bottles from the fridge, the kind with the silver cap. But when we came back into the demonstration room after breakfast it was different. Don’t you remember? The cap was gold. It was Channel Island milk.”

  Nurse Goodale said quietly from her chair: “Yes. I remember too. The only cap I saw was gold.”

  Maureen looked across at Masterson in puzzled inquiry.

  “So someone must have changed the cap?”

  Before he had a chance to reply they heard Madeleine Goodale’s calm voice.

  “Not necessarily the cap. Somebody changed the whole bottle.”

  Masterson did not reply. So the old man had been right! The solution of disinfectant had been made up carefully and at leisure and the lethal bottle substituted for the one from which Morag Smith had drunk. And what had happened to the original bottle? Almost certainly it had been left in the small kitchen on the Sisters’ floor. Wasn’t it Sister Gearing who had complained to Miss Collins that the milk was watery?

  2

  Dalgliesh’s business at the Yard was quickly completed and by eleven o’clock he was in North Kensington.

  Number 49 Millington Square, W. 10, was a large dilapidated Italianate house fronted with crumbling stucco. There was nothing remarkable about it. It was typical of hundreds in this part of London. It was obviously divided into bed-sitting-rooms since every window showed a different set of curtains, or none, and it exuded that curious atmos
phere of secretive and lonely over-occupation which hung over the whole district. Dalgliesh saw that there was no bank of bell pushes in the porch and no neat list of the tenants. The front door was open. He pushed through the glass-panelled door which led to the hall and was met at once by a smell of sour cooking, floor polish and unwashed clothes. The walls of the hall had been papered with a thick encrusted paper, now painted dark brown, and glistening as if it exuded grease and perspiration. The floor and staircase were laid with a patterned linoleum, patched with a brighter newer design where the tears would have been dangerous, but otherwise torn and unmended. The paintwork was an institutional green. There was no sign of life but, even at this time of the day, he felt its presence behind the tightly closed and numbered doors as he made his way unchallenged to the upper floors.

  Number 14 was on the top floor at the back. As he approached the door he heard the sharp staccato clatter of typing. He knocked loudly and the sound stopped. There was a wait of more than a minute before the door half opened and he found himself facing a pair of suspicious and unwelcoming eyes.

  “Who are you? I’m working. My friends know not to call in the mornings.”

  “But I’m not a friend. May I come in?”

  “I suppose so. But I can’t spare you much time. And I don’t think it’ll be worth your while. I don’t want to join anything; I haven’t the time. And I don’t want to buy anything because I haven’t the money. Anyway, I’ve got everything I need.” Dalgliesh showed his card.

  “I’m not buying or selling; not even information, which is what I’m here for. It’s about Josephine Fallon. I’m a police officer and I’m investigating her death. You, I take it, are Arnold Dowson.”