Shroud for a Nightingale (29 page)

And it was less happy than ever now, thought Dalgliesh, as he made his way back to the office. Now there were two murders to add to the history of the violence and hate.

He told Masterson that he could go off duty, then settled down for a last solitary study of the papers. Hardly had the Sergeant left when the outside telephone rang. It was the director of the forensic science laboratory to say that the tests were complete. Josephine Fallon had died of nicotine poisoning and the nicotine had come from the tin of rose spray.

VI

It was two hours before he finally locked the side door of Nightingale House behind him and set out to walk back to the Falconer’s Arms.

The path was lit by the old-fashioned type of street lamp, but the lamps were widely spaced and dim so that for most of the time he walked in darkness. He met no one and could well believe that this lonely path was unpopular with the students once night had fallen. The rain had stopped but the wind was rising, shaking down the last drops from the interlocking branches of the elms. He could feel them spitting against his face and seeping under the collar of his coat, and felt a momentary regret that he had decided that morning not to use his car. The trees grew very close to the path, separated from it by a narrow verge of sodden turf. It was a warm night despite the rising wind, and a light mist moved among the trees and coiled around the lamps. The pathway was about ten feet wide. It must have been once a main drive to Nightingale House, but it wound inconsequently among the clumps of elms and birch as if the original owner of the house had hoped to increase his self-importance by the length of his drive.

As he walked he thought about Christine Dakers. He had seen the girl at three forty-five p.m. The private ward had been very quiet at that time and, if Sister Brumfett were about, she had taken care to keep out of his way. The Staff Nurse had received him and had shown him into Nurse Dakers’s room. The girl had been sitting up against the pillows looking as flushed and triumphant as a newly-delivered mother and had welcomed him as if she expected congratulations and an offering of flowers. Someone had already supplied her with a vase of daffodils and there were two pots of chrysanthemums beside the tea tray on the overbed table, and a spatter of magazines strewn over the bed cover.

She had tried to appear unconcerned and contrite as she told her story but the acting had been unconvincing. In truth she had been radiant with happiness and relief. And why not? Matron had visited her. She had confessed and had been forgiven. She was filled now with the sweet euphoria of absolution. More to the point, he thought, the two girls who might have menaced her had gone for good. Diane Harper had left the hospital. And Heather Pearce was dead.

And to what exactly had Nurse Dakers confessed? Why this extraordinary liberation of spirit? He wished he knew. But he had come out of her room little wiser than when he went in. But at least, he thought, she had confirmed Madeleine Goodale’s evidence of their study time together in the library. Unless there was collusion, which seemed unlikely, they had given each other an alibi for the time before breakfast And, after breakfast, she had taken her final cup of coffee into the conservatory where she had sat reading the
Nursing Mirror
until it was time to join the demonstration. Nurse Par-doe and Nurse Harper had been with her. The three girls had left the conservatory at the same time, had paid a brief visit to the bathroom and lavatories on the second floor, and had then made their way straight to the demonstration room. It was very difficult to see how Christine Dakers could have poisoned the feed.

Dalgliesh had covered about fifty yards when he stopped in mid-stride, frozen into immobility by what, for one unbelievable second, he thought was the sound of a woman crying. He stood still, straining to distinguish that desperate alien voice. For a moment all was silent, even the wind seemed to have dropped. Then he heard it again, this time unmistakably. This wasn’t the night cry of an animal or the figment of a tired but over-stimulated brain. Somewhere in the cluster of trees to his left a woman was howling in misery.

He was not superstitious, but he had the imaginative man’s sensitivity to atmosphere. Standing alone in the darkness and hearing that human voice wailing in descant to the rising wind he felt a frisson of awe. The terror and helplessness of that nineteenth-century maidservant touched him briefly as if with her own cold finger. He entered for one appalling second into her misery and hopelessness. The past fused with the present then the moment passed. This was a real voice, a living woman. Pressing on his torch, he turned from the path into the utter darkness of the trees.

About twenty yards from the edge of the turf he could see a wooden but about twelve feet square, its one dimly lit window casting a square of light on the bark of the nearest elm. He strode over to it, his feet soundless on the sodden earth, and pushed open the door. The warm, rich smell of wood and of paraffin wafted out to meet him. And there was something else. The smell of human life. Sitting huddled in a broken wicker chair, with a storm lantern on the upturned box beside her, was a woman.

The impression of an animal trapped in its lair was immediate and inevitable. They gazed at each other soundlessly. Despite her wild crying, cut off instantaneously at his entrance as if it had been simulated, the eyes which peered keenly into his were unclouded and bright with menace. This animal might be in distress but it was on its own ground and all its senses were alert. When she spoke she sounded gloomily belligerent but with no trace of curiosity or fear.

“Who are yer?”

“My name’s Adam Dalgliesh. What’s yours?”

“Morag Smith.”

“I’ve heard about you, Morag. You must have got back to the hospital this evening.”

“That’s right. And told by Miss Collins to report to the resident staff hostel if yer please. I asked to go back to the medical officers’ quarters if I couldn’t stay in Nightingale House. But oh no! No bloody fear! Got on too well with the doctors I did. So it’s off to the ‘ostel They bugger you about properly in this place, they do. I asked to see Matron but Sister Brumfett said she wasn’t to be worried.”

She paused in her recital of woes to fiddle with the wick of the lantern. The light increased. She screwed up her eyes at him.

“Adam Dalgliesh. Funny name. You’re new around ‘ere, aren’t yer?”

“I only arrived this morning. I expect they’ve told you about Nurse Fallon. I’m a detective. I’m here to find out how she and Nurse Pearce died.”

At first he thought that the news was going to precipitate another bout of wailing. She opened her mouth wide but then, thinking better of it, gave a little gasp and closed it sharply again. She said gruffly:

“I never killed her.”

“Nurse Pearce? Of course not Why should you?”

That’s not what the other one thought“

“What other one?”

“That Inspector, Inspector bloody Bill Bailey. I could see what ‘e was thinking. Asking all them questions, and his eyes fixed on yer all the bleeding time. What were yer doing from the moment you got up? What the ’ell did he think I was doing? Working! That’s what I was doing. Did you like Nurse Pearce? Was she ever unkind to you? I’d ‘ave like to see ’er try. Anyway, I never even knew ‘er. Well, I ’adnt been over Nightingale ‘ouse for more than a week. But I could see what ’e was after. It’s always the same. Blame the poor bloody maid.”

Dalgliesh moved into the hut and seated himself on a bench against the wall He would have to question Morag Smith and this seemed as good a time as any. He said:

“I think you’re wrong, you know. Inspector Bailey didn’t suspect you. He told me so.”

She gave a derisive snort.

“Yer don’t want to believe everything the police tell yer. Blimey, didn’t yer dad tell yer that? ”e suspected me all right Bloody Bugger Bailey. My God, my dad could tell you some things about the police.“

No doubt the police could tell a lot about dad, thought Dalgliesh, but rejected that line of conversation as unlikely to be profitable. The inspector’s name lent itself to alliterative abuse and Morag was in the mood to relish it Dalgliesh hastened to defend his colleague.

“Inspector Bailey was only doing his job. He didn’t mean to upset you. I’m a policeman too, and I shall have to ask questions. We all do. I shan’t get anywhere unless you help. If Nurse Pearce and Nurse Fallon were killed, then I’m going to find out who did it. They were young, you know. Nurse was about your age. I don’t suppose they wanted to die.”

He was not sure how Morag would react to this nicely judged appeal to justice and sentiment but he could see the sharp little eyes probing through the semi-darkness.

“‘elp yer!” Her voice was full of scorn. “Don’t kid me. I Your sort don’t need ’elp. Yer know ‘ow the milk got into! the coconut all right.”

Dalgliesh considered this startling metaphor and decided, in the absence of contrary evidence, that it was intended as a compliment. He balanced his torch upright on the bench so that it threw one bright pool of light on the roof, wriggled his thighs more firmly against the wall, and cushioned his head against a thick bundle of raffia which hung from a nail above him. He was surprisingly comfortable. He asked conversationally:

“Do you come here often?”

“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 oilcloth 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 aluminum teapot and a couple of mugs. He guessed that the gardener had once used the place as a comfortable retreat from the ardors 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 cozy over in Nightingale House. And it isn’t cozy 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 skepticism. 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 should confide in 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, hat been at the hospital for forty years and if she had homicidal tendencies would have shown them 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 for starting 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.