Shroud for a Nightingale

by P. D. James

  Messrs. Urquhart, Wimbush and Portway were one of the most respected and successful of the City’s firms of solicitors. Dalgliesh felt that few of Mr. Urquhart’s clients could have been mixed up in a murder investigation. They might have their little difficulties from time to time with the Queen’s proctor; they might, against all advice, indulge in imprudent litigation or obstinately persist in devising unwise wills; they might require their solicitor’s services to devise technical defences to the drink and driving laws; it might indeed be necessary to extricate them from all manner of folly and imprudence. But their killing would be done legally.

  The room into which he was shown could have served as a stage set for a successful solicitor’s office. The coal fire was banked high in the grate. From above the mantelshelf the portrait of the founder gazed down in approval on his great-grandson. The desk at which the great-grandson sat was of the same period as the portrait and displayed the same qualities of durability, fitness for the task in hand, and a sturdy opulence which stopped just short of ostentation. On the other wall there was a small oil. Dalgliesh thought that it looked very like a Jan Steen. It proclaimed to the world that the firm knew a good picture when it saw one and could afford to display it on the wall.

  Mr. Urquhart, tall, ascetic, discreetly grey at the temples and with the air of a reserved dominie, was well cast for the role of successful solicitor. He was wearing an exceedingly well-cut suit, but in lovat tweed as if the more orthodox pin stripe would have verged on caricature. He received Dalgliesh without apparent curiosity or concern but the Superintendent noted with interest that Miss Fallon’s box was already on the table before him.

  Dalgliesh stated his business briefly and ended: “Can you tell me anything about her? In a murder inquiry anything we can learn about the past life and personality of the victim is helpful.”

  “And this, you are now confident, is murder?”

  “She was killed by taking nicotine in her late night beaker of whisky. As far as we know, she wasn’t aware that the tin of rose spray was in the conservatory cupboard, and if she knew and it occurred to her to use it, I doubt whether she would subsequently have hidden the tin.”

  “I see. And there is, too, the suggestion that the poison administered to the first victim—Heather Pearce, wasn’t it—was intended for my client?”

  Mr. Urquhart sat for a moment finger to finger with his head slightly bent as if consulting either his own subconscious, a higher power, or the ghost of his former client before divulging what he knew. Dalgliesh thought he could have saved the time. Urquhart was a man who knew perfectly well how far he was prepared to go, professionally or otherwise. The pantomime was unconvincing. And his story, when it came, did nothing to clothe the dry bones of Josephine Fallon’s life. The facts were there. He consulted the pages in front of him, and presented them logically, unemotionally, lucidly. The time and place of her birth; the circumstances of her parents’ death; her subsequent upbringing by an elderly aunt, who together with him had been a trustee until Miss Fallon’s majority; the date and circumstance of that aunt’s death from cancer of the uterus; the money left to Josephine Fallon and the exact way in which it had been invested; the girl’s movements after her twenty-first birthday, in so far as, he pointed out drily, she had troubled to inform him of them.

  Dalgliesh said: “She was pregnant. Did you know?”

  It could not be said that this news disconcerted the solicitor although his face creased into the vaguely pained look of a man who can never quite reconcile himself to the messiness of the world.

  “No. She didn’t tell me. But then I would not expect her to do so, unless, of course, she was thinking of applying for an affiliation order. I gather that was not in question.”

  “She told her friend, Madeleine Goodale, that she intended to have an abortion.”

  “Indeed. An expensive and to my mind, despite the recent legislation, a dubious business. I speak morally, of course, not legally. The recent legislation …”

  Dalgliesh said: “I am aware of the recent legislation. So there is nothing else you can tell me?”

  The solicitor’s tone held a tinge of reproof. “I have already told you a great deal about her background and financial position in so far as they were known to me. I am afraid I can’t supply you with any more recent or intimate information. Miss Fallon consulted me seldom. Indeed she had no reason to do so. The last time was about her will. You are, I believe, already apprised of its terms. Miss Madeleine Goodale is the sole legatee. The estate is likely to amount to approximately 20,000 pounds.”

  “Was there a previous will?”

  Was it Dalgliesh’s imagination, or did he detect the slight stiffening of facial muscles, the almost imperceptible frown which greeted an unwelcome question?

  “There were two, but the second of these was never signed. The first, made soon after her majority, left everything to medical charities, including cancer research. The second she proposed to execute on the occasion of her marriage. I have the letter here.”

  He handed this across to Dalgliesh. It was addressed from a flat in Westminster and was written in a confident upright and unfeminine hand.

  Dear Mr. Urquhart, This is to let you know that I shall be married on 14th March at St. Marylebone Registry Office to Peter Courtney. He is an actor; you may have heard of him. Will you please draw up a will for me to sign on that date. I shall leave everything to my husband. His full name incidentally is Peter Albert Courtney Briggs. No hyphen. I expect you’ll need to know that to draw up the will. We shall be living at this address.

  I shall also need some money. Could you please ask Warranders to make two thousand pounds available to me by the end of the month? Thank you. I hope that you and Mr. Surtees are keeping well. Yours sincerely, Josephine Fallon.

  A cool letter, thought Dalgliesh. No explanations. No justification. No expressions of happiness or hope. And come to that, no invitation to the wedding.

  Henry Urquhart said: “Warranders were her stockbrokers. She always dealt with them through us, and we kept all her official papers. She preferred us to do so. She said she preferred to travel unencumbered.”

  He repeated the phrase, smiling complacently as if he found it in some way remarkable, and glanced at Dalgliesh as if expecting him to comment.

  He went on: “Surtees is my clerk. She always asked after Surtees.”

  He seemed to find that fact more puzzling than the terms of the letter itself.

  Dalgliesh said: “And Peter Courtney subsequently hanged himself.”

  “That is so, three days before the wedding. He left a note for the coroner. It wasn’t read out at the inquest, I’m thankful to say. It was quite explicit. Courtney wrote that he had planned to marry to extricate himself from certain financial and personal difficulties, but at the last moment had found he couldn’t face it. He was a compulsive gambler apparently. I am informed that uncontrolled gambling is, in fact, a disease akin to alcoholism. I know little of the syndrome but can appreciate that it could be tragic in its consequences, particularly for an actor whose earnings, although large, are erratic. Peter Courtney was very heavily in debt and totally unable to extricate himself from a compulsion which daily made that debt worse.”

  “And the personal difficulties? I believe he was a homosexual. There was gossip about it at the time. Do you know whether your client knew?”

  “I have no information. It seems unlikely that she should not have known since she committed herself so far as to become engaged. She may, of course, have been so sanguine or so unwise as to suppose that she could help to cure him. I should have advised her against the marriage had she consulted me, but as I have said she did not consult me.”

  And shortly afterwards, thought Dalgliesh, a matter of months only, she had begun her training at the John Carpendar and was sleeping with Peter Courtney’s brother. Why? Loneliness? Boredom? A desperate need to forget? Payment for services rendered? What service? Simple sexual attraction, if physical n
eed were ever simple, for a man who physically was a coarse edition of the fiancé she had lost? The need to reassure herself that she could attract heterosexual desire? Courtney-Briggs himself had suggested that it was she who had taken the initiative. It was certainly she who had brought the affair to an end. There had been no mistaking the surgeon’s bitter resentment of a woman who had had the temerity to reject him before he had chosen to reject her.

  As he rose to go Dalgliesh said: “Peter Courtney’s brother is a consultant surgeon at the John Carpendar Hospital. But perhaps you knew?”

  Henry Urquhart smiled his tight, unamused smile. “Oh yes, I know. Stephen Courtney-Briggs is a client of mine. Unlike his brother, he has acquired a hyphen to his name and a more permanent success.” He added with apparent irrelevance: “He was holidaying in a friend’s yacht in the Mediterranean when his brother died. He came home immediately. It was, of course, a great shock as well as being a considerable embarrassment.”

  It must have been, thought Dalgliesh. But Peter dead was decidedly less embarrassing than Peter living. It would no doubt have suited Stephen Courtney-Briggs to have had a well-known actor in the family, a younger brother who, without competing in his own field, would have added his lustre to the patina of success and given Courtney-Briggs an entrée to the extravagantly egotistical world of the stage. But the asset had become a liability; the hero an object of derision or, at best, of pity. It was a failure his brother would find hard to forgive.

  Five minutes later Dalgliesh shook hands with Urquhart and left. As he passed through the hall the girl at the switchboard, hearing his footsteps, glanced round, flushed, and paused in momentary confusion, plug in hand. She had been well trained, but not quite well enough. Unwilling to embarrass her further, Dalgliesh smiled and passed swiftly out of the building. He had no doubt that, on Henry Urquhart’s instructions, she was ringing Stephen Courtney-Briggs.

  4

  Saville Mansions was a block of late Victorian flats close to Marylebone Road, respectable, prosperous but neither ostentatious nor opulent. Masterson had the expected trouble in finding a vacant lot to park his car and it was after seven-thirty before he entered the building. The entrance hall was dominated by a grille-encased lift of ornate design and a reception desk presided over by a uniformed porter. Masterson, who had no intention of stating his business, nodded to him casually and ran lightly up the stairs. Number 23 was on the second floor. He pressed the bell and prepared for a brief wait.

  But the door opened immediately and he found himself almost embraced by an extraordinary apparition, painted like the caricature of a stage whore and wearing a short evening dress of flame-coloured chiffon which would have looked incongruous on a woman half her age. The bodice was so low that he could glimpse the fold between the sagging breasts bunched high into the cups of her brassière, and could see where the powder lay caked in the cracks of dry yellow skin. Her lashes were weighted with mascara; the brittle hair, dyed an improbable blonde, was dressed in lacquered swathes around the raddled face; her carmine-painted mouth hung open in incredulous dismay. Their surprise was mutual. They stared at each other as if unable to believe their eyes. The change in her face from relief to disappointment was almost comic.

  Masterson recovered first and announced himself: “You remember,” he said, “I telephoned erly this morning and made an appointment?”

  “I can’t see you now. I’m just going out. I thought you were my dancing partner. You said you’d come early in the evening.”

  A shrill nagging voice made sharper by disappointment. She looked as if she might close the door in his face. Quickly he slid one foot across the threshold.

  “I was unavoidably detained. I’m sorry.”

  Unavoidably detained. Too right, he had been. That frantic but ultimately satisfying interlude in the back of the car had occupied more of the evening than he had anticipated. It had taken longer, too, to find a sufficiently secluded spot even on a dark winter’s evening. The Guildford Road had offered few promising turnings into open country with its prospect of grass verges and unfrequented lanes. Julia Pardoe had been fussy too. Every time he slowed the car at a likely spot he had been met with her quiet, “not here”. He had first seen her as she was about to step off the pavement on to the pedestrian crossing which led to the entrance of Heatheringfield station. He had slowed the car for her but, instead of waving her on, had leaned over and opened the passenger door. She had paused for only a second before walking over to him, coat swinging above the knee-length boots, and had slipped into the seat beside him without a word or glance. He had said: “Coming up to town?”

  She had nodded and had smiled secretively, eyes fixed on the windscreen. It had been as simple as that. She had hardly spoken a dozen words throughout the drive. The tentative or more overt preliminaries which he felt the game demanded of him had met with no response. He might have been a chauffeur with whom she was driving in unwelcome proximity. In the end, pricked by anger and humiliation, he had begun to wonder whether he could have been mistaken. But there had been the reassurance of that concentrated stillness, the eyes which, for minutes at a time, had watched with blue intensity his hands stroking the wheel or busy with the gears. She had wanted it all right. She had wanted it as much as he. But you could hardly call it a quick lay. One thing, surprisingly, she had told him. She was on her way to meet Hilda Rolfe; they were going to a theatre together after an early dinner. Well, either they would have to go without dinner or miss the first act; she was apparently unconcerned either way.

  Amused and only slightly curious he had asked: “How are you going to explain your lateness to Sister Rolfe? Or won’t you bother now to turn up?”

  She had shrugged. “I shall tell her the truth. It might be good for her.” Seeing his sudden frown she had added with contempt: “Oh, don’t worry! She won’t sneak to Mr. Dalgliesh. Hilda isn’t like that.”

  Masterson hoped she was right. This was something Dalgliesh wouldn’t forgive.

  “What will she do?” he had asked.

  “If I tell? Chuck in her job I imagine; leave the John Carpendar. She’s pretty fed up with the place. She only stays on because of me.”

  Wrenching his mind from the memory of that high, merciless voice into the present, Masterson forced himself to smile at the very different woman now confronting him and said in a propitiatory tone: “The traffic you know … I had to drive from Hampshire. But I shan’t keep you long.”

  Holding out his warrant card with that slightly furtive air inseparable from the gesture, he edged himself into the flat. She didn’t try to stop him. But her eyes were blank, her mind obviously elsewhere. As she closed the door, the telephone rang. Without a murmur she left him standing in the hall and almost ran into a room to the left. He could hear her voice rising in protest. It seemed to be expostulating, then pleading. Then there was a silence. He moved quietly up the hall and strained his ears to hear. He thought he detected the clicking of the dial. Then she was speaking again. He couldn’t hear the words. This time the conversation was over in seconds. Then came another click of the dial. Another wail. In all she rang four numbers before she reappeared in the hall.

  “Is anything wrong?” he asked. “Can I help?”

  She screwed up her eyes and regarded him intently for a second like a housewife assessing the quality and price of a piece of beef. Her reply when it came was peremptory and astonishing.

  “Can you dance?”

  “I was the Met. police champion for three years running,” he lied. The Force, not surprisingly, held no dancing championships but he thought it un likely that she would know this and the lie, like most of his lies, came easily and spontaneously.

  Again that speculative, intent gaze.

  “You’ll need a dinner-jacket. I’ve still got Martin’s things here. I’m going to sell them but the man hasn’t come yet. He promised he’d come this afternoon but he didn’t. You can’t rely on anyone these days. You look about the same size. He was quite
broad before his illness.”

  Masterson resisted the temptation to laugh aloud. He said gravely: “I’d like to help you out if you’re in a difficulty. But I’m a policeman. I’m here to get information, not to spend the night dancing.”

  “It isn’t the whole night. The ball stops at eleven thirty. It’s the Delaroux Dancing Medal Ball at the Athenaeum Ballroom off the Strand. We could talk there.”

  “It would be easier to talk here.” Her sullen face set in obstinacy.

  “I don’t want to talk here.” She spoke with the peevish insistence of a whining child. Then her voice hardened for the ultimatum.

  “It’s the ball or nothing.”

  They faced one another in silence. Masterson considered. The idea was grotesque, of course, but he wasn’t going to get anything out of her tonight unless he agreed. Dalgliesh had sent him to London for information and his pride wouldn’t let him return to Nightingale House without it. But would his pride permit him to spend the rest of the evening escorting this painted hag in public? There was no difficulty about the dancing. That was one of the skills, although not the most important, that Sylvia had taught him. She had been a randy blonde, ten years older than himself, with a dull bank manager husband whom it had been a positive duty to cuckold. Sylvia had been crazy on ballroom dancing and they had progressed together through a series of bronze, silver and gold medal competitions before the husband had become inconveniently menacing, Sylvia had begun to hint about divorce, and Masterson had prudently decided that the relationship had outlasted its usefulness, not to say his capacity for indoor exercise, and that the police service offered a reasonable career for an ambitious man who was looking for an excuse for a period of comparative rectitude. Now his taste in women and dancing had changed and he had less time for either. But Sylvia had had her uses. As they told you at Detective Training School, no skill is ever wasted in police work.