Shroud for a Nightingale (38 page)

“Mr. Dalgliesh? This is Mary Taylor. I’m sorry to disturb you but I thought you’d prefer me to ring. We have a fire here. Nothing dangerous; it’s only in the grounds. It seems to have started in a disused gardener’s hut about fifty yards from Nightingale House. The house itself isn’t in any danger but the fire spread very quickly among the trees.”

He was surprised how clearly he could think. His wound no longer ached. He felt literally light-headed and it was necessary to touch the rough gauze of the bandage to reassure himself that it was still there. He said:

“Morag Smith. Is she all right? She used that hut as a kind of refuge.”

“I know. She told me so this evening after she’d brought you in. I gave her a bed here for the night Morag is safe. That was the first thing I checked.”

“And the others in Nightingale House?”

There was a silence. Then she spoke, her voice sharper.

“I’ll check now. It never occurred to me…”

“Of course not Why should it? I’ll come over.”

“Is that necessary? Mr. Courtney-Briggs was insistent that you should rest. The fire brigade have things under control. At first they were afraid that Nightingale House was threatened but they’ve axed some of the nearer trees. The blaze should be out in half an hour. Couldn’t you wait till morning?”

“I’m coming over now,” he said.

Masterson was lying flat on his back, drugged with tiredness, his heavy face vacant with sleep, his mouth half-open. It took nearly a minute to rouse him. Dalgliesh would have preferred to leave him there in his stupor, but he knew that in his present weakened state, it wouldn’t be safe for him to drive. Masterson, shaken at last into wakefulness, listened to his Superintendent’s instructions without comment then pulled on his clothes in resentful silence. He was too prudent to question Dalgliesh’s decision to return to Nightingale House, but it was obvious by his sullen manner that he thought the excursion unnecessary, and the short drive to the hospital was spent in silence.

The fire was visible as a red glow on the night sky long before they came in sight of the hospital, and as they drove through the open Winchester Road gate they could hear the staccato crackle of burning trees and could smell the rich evocative scent of smoldering wood, strong and sweet on the cold air It broke Masterson’s mood of sullen resentment. He breathed it in with noisy enjoyment and said in happy candor:

“I like that smell, sir. It reminds me of boyhood, I suppose. Summer camps with the Boy Scouts. Huddled in a blanket around the camp fire with the sparks soaring off into the night Bloody marvelous when you’re thirteen and being patrol leader is more power and glory than you’re ever likely to feel again. You know, sir.”

Dalgliesh didn’t know. His solitary and lonely boyhood had been devoid of these tribal delights. But it was an interesting and curiously touching glimpse into Masterson’s character. Patrol leader in the Boy Scouts! Well, why not? Given a different heritage, a different twist of fate and he could have easily been a leader in a street gang, his essential ambition and ruthlessness channeled into less conformist paths.

Masterson drove the car under the trees at a safe distance and they walked towards the blaze. As if by unspoken consent, they halted and stood together in the shadow of the trees watching in silence. No one appeared to notice them and no one approached. The firemen were getting on with their job. There was only one appliance and they were apparently running the hose from Nightingale House. The fire was by now well under control but it was still spectacular. The shed had gone completely with nothing but a ring of black earth to show where it had once stood, and the surrounding trees were blackened gibbets, stunted and twisted as if with the agony of their burning. On the periphery a few saplings still burned fiercely, crackling and spluttering in the jets from the fire hose. A single flame, writhing and twisting in the stiff breeze, leapt from tree top to tree top and burned there with the clear incandescent light of a candle before it was scotched by one unerring jet from the hose. As they watched a tall conifer burst into instantaneous fire and exploded in a shower of golden needles. There was a soft gasp of appreciation, and Dalgliesh saw that a little group of black-cloaked students who had been watching at a distance had crept imperceptibly forward into the light of the fire. It shone momentarily on their faces and he thought he recognized Madeleine Goodale and Julia Pardoe. Then he saw the tall unmistakable figure of Matron move across to them. She spoke a few words and the little group turned and reluctantly melted into the trees. It was then that she saw Dalgliesh. For a moment she stood absolutely still. Wrapped in her long black cloak, the hood thrown back, she stood against a single sapling like a victim at the stake, the fire glow dancing behind her and the light flaming her pale skin. Then she walked slowly across to him. He saw men that her face was very white. She said:

“You were right She wasn’t in her room. She’s left me a letter.”

Dalgliesh didn’t reply. His mind was so clear that it seemed to be operating outside his own volition, not so much ranging over all the clues of the crime, but seeing it as if from a great height; a landscape without shadows spread out beneath him, comprehensible, familiar, unambiguous. He knew it all now. Not just how the two girls had been murdered; not just when and why; not just by whom. He knew the essential truth of the whole crime, for it was one crime. He might never be able to prove it; but he knew.

Half an hour later the fire was out The spent hoses crept and thudded on the blackened earth as they were wound in, sending up little spurts of acrid smoke. The last of the onlookers had melted away and the cacophony of fire and wind was replaced by a gentle background hiss broken only by the orders of the fire officer and the blurred voices of his men. Even the wind had died a little and its touch on Dalgliesh’s face was gentle and warm as it passed over the steaming earth. Everywhere there hung the reek of charred wood. The headlights of the fire engine were turned on the smoking circle where the hut had stood. Dalgliesh walked over to it Masterson on his left, Mary Taylor on his right The heat struck uncomfortably through the soles of his shoes. There was little to be seen; a grotesquely twisted piece of metal which might once have been part of a stove; the charred shape of a metal teapot—one kick would disintegrate it beyond recognition. And there was something else, a shape, nothing more, which even in death’s extreme desecration, was still horribly human. They stood looking down in silence. It took them a few minutes to identify the few details; the pelvic girdle ridiculously small when denuded of its animate wrapping of muscle and flesh; the skull upturned and innocent as a chalice; the stain where the brain had burst away.

Dalgliesh said: “Get a screen around this place and see that it’s kept guarded, then ring Sir Miles Honeyman.”

Masterson said: “There’s a pretty problem of identification for him here, sir.”

“Yes,” replied Dalgliesh, “if we didn’t know already who it was.”

III

They went by tacit consent and without exchanging a word through the quiet house to the Matron’s flat No one followed them. As they entered the sitting-room the carriage clock on the mantelpiece struck half past six. It was still very dark and in contrast to the fire-warmed air of the grounds the room was bitterly cold. The curtains had been drawn back and the casement window left open. Matron went quickly across to close it, drew the curtains together with a swift defensive sweep of her arms and turned to look at Dalgliesh steadily and compassionately, as if seeing him for the first time.

“You look desperately tired and cold. Come over to the fire and sit down.”

He walked over and leaned against the fireplace, fearing that if he once sat down he might never be able to get up again. But the mantelpiece felt unstable, the marble slippery as ice. He let himself down into the armchair and watched while she knelt on the hearth rug and added the dry sticks of kindling to the still warm ashes of the previous evening’s fire. The sticks blazed into life. She added a few nuggets of coal, holding out her hands to the blaze. Then without getting up she reached into the pocket of her cloak and handed him a letter.

A pale blue envelope unsealed and addressed in a round, childish but firm hand “to whom it may concern”. He took out the letter. Cheap, blue paper, perfectly ordinary, unruled, but with the lines of writing so straight that she must have used the ruled sheet as a guide.

“I killed Heather Pearce and Josephine Fallon. They had discovered something about my past, something which was no concern of theirs, and were threatening to blackmail me.

When Sister Gearing rang to tell me Fallon had been taken ill and was warded I knew that Nurse Pearce would act the patient in her place. I collected the bottle of disinfectant very early that morning and filled one of the empty milk bottles from the Sisters’ utility room. I replaced the cap carefully and took the bottle with me to breakfast in my tapestry bag. All I had to do was to slip into the demonstration room after I bad finished breakfast and substitute the bottle of poison for the bottle of milk on the trolley. If anyone had been in the room I should have made an excuse and tried another time and in another way. But the room was empty. I took the bottle of milk upstairs to the Sisters’ utility room and threw the empty bottle of disinfectant out of one of the bathroom windows.

“I was in the conservatory when Sister Gearing produced her tin of nicotine rose spray and I thought of it when it came to killing Fallon. I knew where the key to the conservatory was kept and I wore surgical gloves so that there would be no finger-prints. It was an easy matter to pour the poison into Fallon’s beaker of lemon and whisky while she was in the bathroom and the drink was cooling on her bedside table. Her nightly routine never varied. I intended to keep the tin, then place it on her bedside table later that night so that it would look as if she had killed herself. I knew it would be important to impress her finger-prints on the tin but that wouldn’t be difficult. I had to change my plan because Mr. Courtney-Briggs telephoned shortly before twelve to call me back to my ward. I couldn’t keep the tin in my possession since it wouldn’t be possible to have my bag always with me on the ward and I didn’t think it would be safe to leave it in my room. So I hid it in the sand bucket opposite Nurse Fallon’s room with the intention of retrieving it and placing it on her bedside table when I returned to Nightingale House. That plan, too, proved impossible. As I got to the top of the stairs the Burt twins came out of their rooms. There was a light shining through Nurse Fallon’s keyhole and they said they would take her some cocoa. I expected the body to be discovered that night. There was nothing I could do but to go upstairs to bed. I lay there waiting, expecting every minute to hear the alarm raised. I wondered if the twins had changed their plan and if Fallon had fallen asleep before drinking her whisky and lemon. But I didn’t dare to go down and see. If I had been able to place the tin of nicotine by Fallon’s bed no one would ever have suspected that she was murdered and I should have committed two perfect crimes.

“There is nothing else to say except that no one knew what I intended to do and no one helped me.   Ethel Brumfett”

Mary Taylor said: “It’s her handwriting, of course. I found it on her mantelshelf when I came back after I had telephoned you to check that everyone was safe. But is it true?”

“Oh yes, it’s true. She killed both of them. Only the murderess could have known where the tin of nicotine was hidden. It was obvious that the second death was meant to look like suicide. Why then wasn’t the tin left on the bedside table? It could only have been because the killer was interrupted in her plan. Sister Brumfett was the one person in Nightingale House who was called out that night and who was prevented on her return from going into Fallon’s room. But she was always the first suspect The bottle of poison must have been prepared at leisure and by someone who had access to milk bottles and to the disinfectant and who could carry the lethal bottle about with her undetected. Sister Brumfett went nowhere without that large tapestry bag. It was bad luck for her that she happened to choose a bottle with the wrong colored cap. I wonder if she even noticed. Even if she did, there wouldn’t be time to change it The whole plan depended on a substitution which would take merely a second. She would have to hope that no one noticed. And, in fart, no one did. And there is one way in which she was unique among the suspects. She was the only one who wasn’t present to witness either of the deaths. She couldn’t lift a hand against Fallon while the girl was her patient That would have been impossible for her. And she preferred to watch neither murder. It takes a psychopathic killer or a professional willingly to watch their victim die.”

She said: “We know that Heather Pearce was a potential blackmailer. I wonder what pathetic incident from poor Brumfett’s dreary past she’d raked up for her entertainment?”

“I think you know that just as I know. Heather Pearce had found out about Felsenheim.”

She seemed to freeze into silence. She was curled on the edge of the armchair at his feet, her face turned away from him. After a moment she turned and looked at him.

“She wasn’t guilty, you know. Brumfett was conforming, authoritarian, trained to think of unquestioning obedience as a nurse’s first duty. But she didn’t kill her patients. The verdict of that court at Felsenheim was just And even if it wasn’t, it was the verdict of a properly constituted court of law. She is officially innocent.”

Dalgliesh said: “I’m not here to question the verdict at Felsenheim.”

As if he had not spoken she went on eagerly, as if willing him to believe.

“She told me about it when we were both students together at Nethercastle General Infirmary. She lived in Germany most of her childhood but her grandmother was English. After the trial she naturally went free and eventually in 1944 married an English sergeant, Ernest Brumfett She had money and it was a marriage of convenience only, a way of getting out of Germany and into England. Her grandmother was dead by now but she still had some ties with this country. She went to Nethercastle as ward orderly and was so efficient that, after eighteen months, there was no difficulty in getting the Matron to take her on as a student. It was a clever choice of hospital. They weren’t likely to delve too carefully into anyone’s past, particularly into the past of a woman who had proved her worth. The hospital is a large Victorian building, always busy, chronically understaffed. Brumfett and I finished our training together, went together to the local maternity hospital to train as midwives, came south together to the John Carpendar. I’ve known Ethel Brumfett for nearly twenty years. I’ve watched her pay over and over again for anything that happened at the Steinhoff Institution. She was a girl then. We can’t know what happened to her during those childhood years in Germany. We can only know what the grown woman did for this hospital and for her patients. The past has no relevance.”