Shroud for a Nightingale (13 page)

“I would prefer you to see the girls somewhere else if you would. That room has very unhappy and dramatic memories for them. We’re not even using it yet for teaching demonstrations. Until the small visitors’ room on the first floor is ready I’d be happy for you to interview the students here.”

Dalgliesh thanked her. He replaced his coffee cup on the table.

She hesitated, then said: “Mr. Dalgliesh, there’s one thing I want to say. I feel—I am—
in loco parentis
to my students. If ever any question … if you should begin to suspect that any one of them is involved, I can rely on you to let me know? They would then need protection. There would surely be the question of getting a solicitor.”

She hesitated again: “Please forgive me if I’m being offensive. One has so little experience of these matters. It’s just that I shouldn’t like them …”

“To be trapped?”

“To be rushed into saying things which might quite wrongly incriminate them or other members of the staff.”

Dalgliesh found himself unreasonably irritated. “There are rules laid down, you know,” he said.

“Oh, rules! I know there are rules. But I’m sure you are both too experienced and too intelligent to let them hinder you over much. I’m just reminding you that these girls are less intelligent and in such matters not experienced at all.”

Fighting his irritation, Dalgliesh said formally: “I can only tell you that the rules are there and that it’s in our interests to keep them. Can’t you imagine what a gift to the defending counsel any infringement would be? A young unprotected girl, a student nurse, bullied by a senior police officer with years of
experience in trapping the unwary. Enough difficulties are placed in the path of the police in this country; we don’t voluntarily add to them.”

She flushed and he was interested to see the wave of colour sweep from her neck over the pale honey-glow skin making her look momentarily as if the veins ran with fire. Then, instantaneously, it passed. The change was so sudden that he couldn’t be sure that he had actually seen that tell-tale metamorphosis.

She said composedly: “We both have our responsibilities. We must hope that they don’t conflict. In the meantime you must expect me to be as concerned with mine as you are with yours. And that brings me to some information which I have to give you. It concerns Christine Dakers, the student who discovered Nurse Fallon’s body.”

She described briefly and succinctly what had happened during her visit to the private ward. Dalgliesh noted with interest that she made no comment, offered no opinion, and attempted no justification of the girl. He didn’t ask her whether she believed the story. She was a highly intelligent woman. She must know that what she had handed him was the first motive. He asked when he would be able to interview Nurse Dakers.

“She’s sleeping now. Dr. Snelling, who is in charge of the nurses’ health, is to see her later this morning. He will then report to me. If he agrees, it should be possible for you to see her this afternoon. And now I’ll send for Nurse Goodale. That is, if there is nothing more I can tell you?”

“I shall need a great deal of information about people’s ages, backgrounds and the time they’ve been at the hospital. Won’t that be on their personal records? It would be helpful if I could have those.”

The Matron thought. Dalgliesh noticed that when she did so her face fell into absolute repose. After a moment she said: “All the staff here have personal dossiers, of course. Legally these are the property of the Hospital Management Committee. The Chairman won’t be back from Israel until tomorrow evening but I’ll consult the Vice-Chairman. I imagine that he will ask me to look through the records, and if they contain nothing private which is irrelevant to your inquiry, to pass them over.”

Dalgliesh decided that it would be prudent not to press for the moment the question of who should decide what was irrelevant to his inquiry.

He said: “There are personal questions I shall have to ask, of course. But it would be a great deal more convenient and would save time if I could get the routine information from the records.”

It was strange that her voice could be so agreeable and yet so obstinate.

“I can see that it would be a great deal more convenient; it would also be a check on the truth of what you are told. But the records can only be handed over under the conditions I have just stated.”

So she was confident that the Vice-Chairman would accept and endorse her view of what was right. And undoubtedly he would. Here was a formidable woman. Faced with a tricky problem she had given the matter thought, come to a decision and had stated it firmly without apology or wavering. An admirable woman. She would be easy to deal with as long, of course, as all her decisions were as acceptable as this.

He asked if he might use the telephone, recalled Sergeant Masterson from his supervision of the preparation of the small visitors’ room to serve as an office; and prepared himself for the long tedium of the individual interviews.

Nurse Goodale was summoned by telephone and arrived within two minutes looking unhurried and composed. Miss Taylor seemed to think that neither explanation nor reassurance was necessary to this self-possessed young woman but simply said: “Sit down, Nurse. Superintendent Dalgliesh wants to talk to you.”

Then she took up her cloak from the chair, swung it over her shoulders, and went out without another glance at either of them. Sergeant Masterson opened his notebook. Nurse Goodale seated herself in an upright chair at the table but, when Dalgliesh motioned her to an armchair before the fire, moved without demur. She sat stiffly on the very edge of the chair, her back straight, her surprisingly shapely and elegant legs planted modestly side by side. But the hands lying in her lap were perfectly relaxed and Dalgliesh, seated opposite, found himself confronting a pair of disconcertingly intelligent eyes. He said: “You were probably closer to Miss Fallon than anyone else in the hospital. Tell me about her.”

She showed no surprise at the form of his first question, but paused for a few seconds before replying as if marshalling her thoughts. Then she said: “I liked her. She tolerated me better than she did most of the other students but I don’t think her feeling for me was much stronger than that. She was thirty-one after all, and we must all have seemed rather immature to her. She had a rather sarcastic tongue which didn’t help, and I think some of the girls were rather afraid of her.

“She seldom spoke to me about her past but she did tell me that both her parents were killed in 1944 in a bombing raid in London. She was brought up by an elderly aunt and educated at one of those boarding-schools where they take children from an early age and keep them until they’re ready to leave. Provided the fees are paid of course, but I got the impression that there wasn’t any difficulty about that. She always wanted to be a nurse, but she got tuberculosis after she left school and had to spend two years in a sanatorium. I don’t know where. After that, two hospitals turned her down on grounds of health, so she took a number of temporary jobs. She told me soon after we began our training that she had once been engaged but that it didn’t work out.”

“You never asked her why?”

“I never asked her anything. If she had wanted to tell me she would have done so.”

“Did she tell you that she was pregnant?”

“Yes, she told me two days before she went sick. She must have suspected before then but the confirming report came that morning. I asked her what she intended doing about it and she said that she would get rid of the baby.”

“Did you point out that this was probably illegal?”

“No. She didn’t care about legality. I told her that it was wrong.”

“But she still intended to go ahead with the abortion?”

“Yes. She said that she knew a doctor who would do it and that there wouldn’t be any real risk. I asked her if she needed money and she said that she would be all right, that money was the least of her problems. She never told me who she was going to, and I didn’t ask.”

“But you were prepared to help her with money had she needed it, even though you disapproved of getting rid of the baby?”

“My disapproval wasn’t important. What was important was that it was wrong. But when I knew that she had made up her mind I had to decide whether to help her. I was afraid that she might go to some unqualified back street abortionist and risk her life and health. I know that the law has changed, that it’s easier now to get a medical recommendation, but I didn’t think she would qualify. I had to make a moral decision. If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don’t you think?”

Dalgliesh said gravely: “It’s an interesting theological point which I’m not competent to argue. Did she tell you who was the father of the child?”

“Not directly. I think it may have been a young writer she was friendly with. I don’t know his name or where you can find him but I do know that Jo spent a week with him in the Isle of Wight last October. She had seven days’ holiday due and she told me that she’d decided to walk in the island with a friend. I imagine he was the friend. It certainly wasn’t anyone from here. They went during the first week and she told me that they’d stayed in a small inn about five miles south of Ventnor. That’s all she did tell me. I suppose it’s possible she became pregnant during that week?”

Dalgliesh said: “The dates would fit. And she never confided in you about the father of the child?”

“No. I asked her why she wouldn’t marry the father and she said that it would be unfair to the child to burden it with two irresponsible parents. I remember her saying: “He would be horrified at the idea, anyway, unless he had a sudden urge to experience fatherhood just to see what it was like. And he might like to see the baby born so that he could write a lurid account of childbirth some day. But he really isn’t committed to anyone but himself.” “

“But did she care for him?”

The girl paused a full minute before replying. Then she said: “I think she did. I think that may have been why she killed herself.”

“What makes you think that she did?”

“I suppose because the alternative is even more unlikely. I never thought that Jo was the type to kill herself—if there is a type. But I really didn’t know her. One never does really know another human being. Anything is possible for anyone. I’ve always believed that. And it’s surely more likely that she killed herself than that someone murdered her. That seems absolutely incredible. Why should they?”

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me.”

“Well, I can’t. She hadn’t any enemies at the John Carpendar as far as I know. She wasn’t popular. She was too reserved, too solitary. But people didn’t dislike her. And even if they did, murder surely suggests something more than ordinary dislike. It seems so much more probable that she came back to duty too soon after influenza, was overcome by psychological depression, felt she couldn’t cope with getting rid of the baby, and yet couldn’t face up to having an illegitimate child and killed herself on impulse.”

“You said when I questioned you all in the demonstration room that you were probably the last person to see her alive. What exactly happened when you were together last night? Did she give you any idea that she might be thinking of suicide?”

“If she had, I should hardly have left her to go to bed alone. She said nothing. I don’t think we exchanged more than half a dozen words. I asked her how she felt and she replied that she was all right. She obviously wasn’t in the mood to chat so I didn’t make myself a nuisance. After about twenty minutes I went up to bed. I never saw her again.”

“And she didn’t mention her pregnancy?”

“She mentioned nothing. She looked tired, I thought, and rather pale. But then, Jo always was rather pale. It’s distressing for me to think that she might have needed help and that I left her without speaking the words that might have saved her. But she wasn’t a woman to invite confidences. I stayed behind when the others left because I thought she might want to talk. When it was plain that she wanted to be alone, I left.”

She talked about being distressed, thought Dalgliesh, but she neither looked nor sounded it. She felt no self-reproach. Why indeed should she? He doubted whether she felt particular grief. She had been closer to Josephine Fallon than any of the students. But she had not really cared. Was there anyone in the world who had?

He asked: “And Nurse Pearce’s death?”

“I think that was essentially an accident. Someone put the poison in the feed as a joke or out of vague malice without realizing that the result would be fatal.”

“Which would be odd in a third-year student nurse whose programme of lectures presumably included basic information on corrosive poisons.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that it was a nurse. I don’t know who it was. I don’t think you’ll ever find out now. But I can’t believe that it was wilful murder.”

That was all very well, thought Dalgliesh, but surely it was a little disingenuous in a girl as intelligent as Nurse Goodale. It was, of course, the popular, almost the official view. It exonerated everyone from the worst crime and indicted no one of anything more than malice and carelessness. It was a comforting theory, and unless he were lucky it might never be disproved. But he didn’t believe it himself, and he couldn’t accept that Nurse Goodale did. But it was even harder to accept that here was a girl to comfort herself with false theories or deliberately to shut her eyes to unpalatable facts.

Dalgliesh then asked her about her movements on the morning of Pearce’s death. He already knew them from Inspector Bailey’s notes and her previous statement and was not surprised when Nurse Goodale confirmed them without hesitation. She had got up at six forty-five and had drunk early morning tea with the rest of the set in the utility room. She had told them about Fallon’s influenza since it was to her room that Nurse Fallon had come when she was taken ill in the night. None of the students had expressed particular concern but they had wondered how the demonstration would go now that the set was so decimated and had speculated, not without malice, how Sister Gearing would acquit herself in the face of a G.N.C. inspection. Nurse Pearce had drunk her tea with the rest of the set and Nurse Goodale thought that she remembered Pearce saying: “With Fallon ill, I suppose I shall have to act the patient.” Nurse Goodale couldn’t recall any comment or discussion about this. It was well accepted that the next student on the list substituted for anyone who was ill.