Shroud for a Nightingale (30 page)

“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 no 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 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 as 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, are you 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 scope 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 died door firmly closed 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.

Chapter Seven

DANSE MACABRE

I

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 country 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 came 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 semicircle 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 esophageal 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 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 me 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?

II

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 atmosphere 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 paneled 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.”

The door was opened wider.

“You’d better come in.” No sign of fear but perhaps a certain wariness in the gray eyes.

It was an extraordinary room, a small attic with a sloping roof and a dormer window, furnished almost entirely with crude and unpainted wooden boxes, some still stenciled with the name of the original grocer or wine merchant They had been ingeniously fitted together so that the walls were honey-combed from floor to ceiling with pale wooden cells, irregular in size and shape and containing all the impedimenta of daily living. Some were stacked close with hard-backed books; others with orange paper-backs. Another framed a small two-bar electric fire, perfectly adequate to heat so small a room. In another box was a neat pile of clean but unironed clothes. Another held blue-banded mugs and other crockery, and yet another displayed a group of
objets trouvis,
sea-shells, a Staffordshire dog, a small jam jar or bird feathers. The single bed, blanket-covered, was under the window. Another up-turned box served as a table and desk. The only two chain were the folding canvas type sold for picnicking. Dalgliesh was reminded of an article once seen in a Sunday color supplement on how to furnish your bed-sitting-room for under £50. Arnold Dowson had probably done it for half the price. But the room was not unpleasing. Everything was functional and simple. It was perhaps too claustrophobic for some tastes and there was something obsessional in the meticulous tidiness and the way in which every inch of space had been used to the full which prevented it from being restful. It was the room of a self-sufficient, well-organized man who, as he had told Dalgliesh, plainly had everything he wanted.