Shroud for a Nightingale (21 page)

“Oh, you’ve got on to that have you? But of course! She was entertaining him last night, I hear. Either the food or the subsequent activity seems to have been rather more than the little man could take. What thorough little scavengers the police
are! It must be a strange job, sniffing around for evil like a dog round trees.”

“Isn’t evil a strong word for Leonard Morris’s sexual preoccupations?”

“Of course. I was just being clever. But I shouldn’t let the Morris-Gearing affair worry you. It’s been hiccuping on for so long now that it’s become almost respectable. It isn’t even good for a gossip. She’s the kind of woman who must have someone in tow, and he likes someone to confide in about the awfulness of his family and the beastliness of the hospital medical staff. They don’t exactly take him at his own evaluation as an equal professional man. He’s got four children, by the way. I imagine that if his wife decided to divorce him and he and Gearing were free to marry nothing would disconcert them more. Gearing would like a husband no doubt, but I don’t think she’s cast poor little Morris for the role. It’s more likely …”

She broke off. Dalgliesh asked: “You think she has a more eligible candidate in mind?”

“Why not try asking her? She doesn’t confide in me.”

“But you are responsible for her work? The clinical instructor comes under the senior nurse tutor?”

“I’m responsible for her work not her morals.”

They had reached the far door of the casualty department and as Sister Rolfe put out her hand to push it open Mr. Courtney-Briggs swept in. He was followed by a half-dozen chattering junior staff, white-coated and with stethoscopes slung round their necks. The two on each side of him were nodding in deferential attention as the great man spoke. Dalgliesh thought that he had the conceit, the patina of vulgarity and the slightly coarse
savoir-faire
which he associated with one type of successful professional man.

As if reading his thoughts, Sister Rolfe said: “They’re not all
alike, you know. Take Mr. Molravey, our ophthalmic surgeon. He reminds me of a dormouse. Every Tuesday morning he patters in and stands for five hours in the theatre without speaking an unnecessary word, whiskers twitching and picking away with fastidious little paws at a succession of patients’ eyes. Then he thanks everyone formally down to the most junior theatre nurse, peels off his gloves and patters away again to play with his collection of butterflies.”

“A modest little man, in fact.”

She turned towards him and he detected again in her eyes that uncomfortable elliptical flicker of contempt.

“Oh no! Not modest! He gives a different performance, that’s all. Mr. Molravey is just as convinced as is Mr. Courtney-Briggs that he’s a very remarkable surgeon. They are both vain in a professional sense. Vanity, Mr. Dalgliesh, is a surgeon’s besetting sin as subservience is a nurse’s. I’ve never yet met a successful surgeon who wasn’t convinced that he ranked only one degree lower than Almighty God. They’re all infected with hubris.”

She paused: “Isn’t that supposed to be true also of murderers?”

“Of one type of murderer. You must remember that murder is a highly individual crime.”

“Is it? I should have thought that the motives and the means would be monotonously familiar to you. But you, of course, are the expert.”

Dalgliesh said: “You have little respect for men apparently, Sister?”

“A great deal of respect. I just don’t happen to like them. But you have to respect a sex that has brought selfishness to such an art. That’s what gives you your strength, this ability to devote yourselves entirely to your own interest.”

Dalgliesh said, a little maliciously, that he was surprised that Miss Rolfe, since she obviously resented the subservience of her job, hadn’t chosen a more masculine occupation. Medicine perhaps? She laughed bitterly.

“I wanted to do medicine but I had a father who didn’t believe in educating women. I’m forty-six, remember. When I was at school we didn’t have universal free grammar school education. Father earned too much for me to get a free place, so he had to pay. He stopped paying as soon as he decently could, when I was sixteen.”

Dalgliesh found nothing appropriate to say. The confidence surprised him. She was hardly the woman, he would have thought, to expose a personal grievance to a stranger and he didn’t flatter himself that she found him sympathetic. She would find no man sympathetic. The outburst was probably a spontaneous release of pent-up bitterness, but whether against her father, men in general or the limitations and subservience of her job it was hard to say.

They had left the hospital now and were passing along the narrow path which led to Nightingale House. Neither of them spoke another word until the house was reached. Sister Rolfe wrapped her long cloak tightly around her and pulled up her hood as if it could protect her from more than the bite of the wind. Dalgliesh was immersed in his private thoughts. And thus, with the width of the path between them, they paced together in silence under the trees.

In the office Detective Sergeant Masterson was typing a report.

Dalgliesh said: “Immediately before she came into the school, Nurse Pearce was working on the private ward under Sister Brumfett. I want to know if anything significant happened there. And I want a detailed account of her last week’s duty and an hour-by-hour account of what she did on her last day. Find out who the other nursing staff were, what her duties were, when she was off duty, how she appeared to the other staff. I want the names of the patients who were on the ward while she was nursing there and what happened to them. Your best plan is to talk to the other nurses and to work from the nursing reports. They’re bound to keep a book which is written up daily.”

“Shall I get it from Matron?”

“No. Ask Sister Brumfett for it. We deal directly with her, and for God’s sake be tactful. Have you those reports ready yet?”

“Yes, sir. They’ve been typed. Do you want to read them now?”

“No. Tell me if there’s anything I ought to know. I’ll look at them tonight. I suppose it’s too much to expect that any of our suspects has a police record?”

“If they have, sir, it isn’t noted on the personal dossiers. There’s remarkably little information in most of them. Julia Pardoe was expelled from school, though. She seems to be the only delinquent among them.”

“Good God! What for?”

“Her dossier doesn’t say. Apparently it was something to do with a visiting maths master. Her headmistress felt it right to mention it when she sent Matron a reference before the girl started here. It isn’t very specific. She writes that Julia was more sinned against than sinning and that she hoped the hospital would give her the chance of training for the only career she has ever shown any interest in, or signs of being suited for.”

“A nice double-edged comment. So that’s why the London teaching hospitals wouldn’t take her. I thought Sister Rolfe was being a little disingenuous about the reasons. Anything about the others? Any previous connections between them?”

“Matron and Sister Brumfett trained together in the north at Nethercastle Royal Infirmary, did their midwifery training at the Municipal Maternity Hospital there and came here fifteen years ago, both as ward sisters. Mr. Courtney-Briggs was in Cairo during 1946 and so was Sister Gearing. He was a major in the R.A.M.C. and she was a nursing sister in the Q.A.R.N.S. There’s no suggestion that they knew each other there.”

“If they did, you’d hardly expect to find the fact recorded on their personal records. But they probably did. Cairo in ′46 was a chummy place, so my army friends tell me. I wonder if Miss Taylor served in the Q.A.R.N.S. That’s an army nursing service cap which she wears.”

“If she did, sir, it isn’t on her dossier. The earliest document
is her reference from her training school when she came here as a Sister. They thought very highly of her at Nethercastle.”

“They think very highly of her here. Have you checked on Courtney-Briggs?”

“Yes, sir. The lodge porter makes a note of every car in and out after midnight. Mr. Courtney-Briggs left at twelve thirty-two a.m.”

“Later than he led us to believe. I want to check on his schedule. The precise time he finished the operation will be in the operating theatre book. The junior doctor assisting him will probably know when he left—Mr. Courtney-Briggs is the kind of man who gets escorted to his car. Then drive over the route and time him. They will have moved the tree by now but it should be possible to see where it came down. He can’t have wasted more than a few minutes at the most tying on his scarf. Find out what happened to that. He’d hardly lie about something so easily disproved, but he’s arrogant enough to think he can get away with anything, including murder.”

“Constable Greeson can do the checking, sir. He likes these reconstruction jobs.”

“Tell him to curb his urge for verisimilitude. There’s no need for him to don an operating gown and go into the theatre. Not that they’d let him. Is there any news yet from Sir Miles or the lab?”

“No, sir, but we’ve got the name and address of the man Nurse Fallon spent that week in the Isle of Wight with. He’s a G.P.O. night telephonist and lives in North Kensington. The local people got on to them almost at once. Fallon made it very easy for them. She booked in her own name and they had two single rooms.”

“She was a woman who valued her privacy. Still, she hardly got pregnant by staying in her own room. I’ll see the man
tomorrow morning after I’ve visited Miss Fallon’s solicitor. Is Leonard Morris in the hospital yet, do you know?”

“Not yet, sir. I checked at the pharmacy that he telephoned this morning and said he wasn’t well. Apparently he suffers from a duodenal ulcer. They assume that it’s playing him up again.”

“It will play him up a great deal worse if he doesn’t come back soon and get the interview over. I don’t want to embarrass him by visiting his house, but we can’t wait indefinitely to get Sister Gearing’s story verified. Both these murders, if they were murders, hinge on the question of timing. We must know everyone’s movements, if possible, to the minute. Time is crucial.”

Masterson said: “That’s what surprised me about the poisoned drip. The carbolic couldn’t have been added to the milk without a great deal of care, particularly in replacing the bottle seal and making sure that the concentration was right and that the stuff had the texture and colour of milk. It couldn’t have been done in a hurry.”

“I’ve no doubt a great deal of care and time were taken. But I think I know how it was done.”

He described his theory. Sergeant Masterson, cross with himself for having missed the obvious, said: “Of course. It must have been done that way.”

“Not must, Sergeant. It was probably done that way.”

But Sergeant Masterson had seen an objection and voiced it.

Dalgliesh replied: “But that wouldn’t apply to a woman. A woman could do it easily and one woman in particular. But I admit it would be more difficult for a man.”

“So the assumption is that the milk was doctored by a woman?”

“The probability is that both girls were murdered by a woman. But it’s still only a probability. Have you heard yet whether Nurse Dakers is well enough to be interviewed?

Dr. Snelling was supposed to be seeing her this morning.”

“Matron rang just before lunch to say that the girl is still asleep, but that she’ll probably be fit enough once she wakes up. She’s under sedation, so God knows when that’ll be. Shall I take a look at her while I’m in the private wing?”

“No. I’ll see her later. But you might check on this story that Fallon returned to Nightingale House on the morning of 12th January. Someone might have seen her leave. And where were her clothes while she was warded? Could anyone have got hold of them and impersonated her? It seems unlikely but it ought to be checked.”

“Inspector Bailey did check, sir. No one saw Fallon leave but they admit that she could have got out of the ward undetected. They were very busy and she had a private room. If it were found empty they would probably have assumed that she’d gone to the bathroom. Her clothes were hung in the wardrobe in her room. Anyone who had a right to be in the ward could have got at them, provided, of course, that Fallon was asleep or out of the room. But no one thinks it likely that anyone did.”

“Nor do I. I think I know why Fallon came back to Nightingale House. Nurse Goodale told us that Fallon had received the pregnancy confirmation only two days before she went sick. It’s possible that she didn’t destroy it. If so, it’s the one possession in her room which she wouldn’t want to leave for someone else to find. It certainly isn’t among her papers. My guess is that she came back to retrieve it, tore it up, and flushed it down the lavatory.”

“Couldn’t she have telephoned Nurse Goodale and asked her to destroy it?”

“Not without exciting suspicion. She couldn’t be sure that she’d get Goodale herself when she rang and she wouldn’t
want to give anyone else a message. This insistence to speak to one particular nurse and the reluctance to accept help from anyone else would look rather odd. But it’s no more than a theory. Is the search of Nightingale House completed?”

“Yes, sir. They’ve found nothing. No trace of poison and no container. Most of the rooms contain bottles of aspirin and Sister Gearing, Sister Brumfett and Miss Taylor all have a small supply of sleeping tablets. But surely Fallon didn’t die of hypnotic or soporific poisoning?”

“No. It was quicker than that. We shall just have to possess ourselves in patience until we get the laboratory report.”

At two thirty-four p.m. precisely, in the largest and most luxurious of the private rooms, Sister Brumfett lost a patient. She always thought of death in that way. The patient was lost; the battle was over; she, Sister Brumfett, had been personally defeated. The fact that so many of her battles were foredoomed to failure, that the enemy, even if repulsed in the present skirmish, was always assured of final victory, never mitigated her sense of failure. Patients did not come into Sister Brumfett’s ward to die; they came in to get better, and with Sister’s indomitable will to fortify them, they usually did get better, often to their own surprise and occasionally despite their own wishes.