Shroud for a Nightingale (27 page)

He had no idea how she would take this rebuke. Her reaction was surprising. The eyes behind the thick spectacles softened and twinkled. Her face broke into a momentary grin and she gave a satisfied little nod as if she had at least succeeded in provoking a particularly docile student into showing a flash of spirit.

“I’ll wait here.” She plonked herself down on the chair outside the office door then nodded towards Morris.

“And I shouldn’t let him do all the talking or you’ll be lucky to be through in half an hour.”

But the interview took less than thirty minutes. The first couple were spent by Morris in making himself comfortable. He took off his shabby raincoat, shaking it and smoothing down the folds as if it had somehow become contaminated in Nightingale House, then folded it with fussy precision over the back of his chair. Then he seated himself opposite Dalgliesh and took the initiative.

“Please don’t fire questions at me, Super intendent. I don’t like being interrogated. I prefer to tell my story in my own way. You needn’t worry about it being accurate. I’d hardly be chief pharmacist of an important hospital if I hadn’t the head for detail and a good memory for facts.”

Dalgliesh said mildly: “Then could I have some facts please, starting perhaps with your movements last night.”

Morris continued as if he hadn’t heard this eminently reasonable request.

“Miss Gearing has given me the privilege of her friendship for the past six years. I’ve no doubt that certain people here, certain women living in Night in gale House, have placed their
own interpretation on that friendship. That is to be expected. When you get a community of middle-aged spinsters living together you’re bound to get sexual jealousy.”

“Mr. Morris,” said Dalgliesh gently. “I’m not here to investigate your relationship with Miss Gearing or hers with her colleagues. If those relationships have anything to do with the deaths of these two girls, then tell me about them. Otherwise let’s leave out the amateur psychology and get down to the material facts.”

“My relationship with Miss Gearing is germane to your inquiry in that it brought me into this house at about the time Nurse Pearce and Nurse Fallon died.”

“All right. Then tell me about those two occasions.”

“The first was the morning when Nurse Pearce died. You are, no doubt, aware of the details. Naturally I reported my visit to Inspector Bailey since he caused a notice to be appended to all the hospital notice-boards inquiring the names of people who had visited Nightingale House on the morning on which Nurse Pearce died. But I have no objection to repeating the information. I called in here on my way to the pharmacy to leave Miss Gearing a note. It was in fact a card, one of those ‘good luck’ cards which it is customary to send friends before some important event. I knew that Miss Gearing would have to take the first demonstration of the day, indeed the first demonstration of this school, as Sister Manning, who is Miss Rolfe’s assistant, is sick with flu. Miss Gearing was naturally nervous, particularly as the General Nursing Council Inspector was to be present. Unfortunately I missed the previous evening’s post. I was anxious for her to get my card before she went in to the demonstration so I decided to slip it into her cubbyhole myself. I came to work especially early, arrived at Nightingale House shortly after eight, and left almost immediately. I saw no one.
Presumably the staff and students were at breakfast. I certainly didn’t enter the demonstration room. I wasn’t particularly keen to draw attention to myself. I merely inserted the card in its envelope into Miss Gearing’s cubbyhole and withdrew. It was rather an amusing card. It showed two robins, the male bird forming the words ‘Good luck’ in worms at the feet of the female. Miss Gearing may well have kept the card; she has a fancy for such trifles. No doubt she would show it to you on request. It would corroborate my story of what I was doing in Nightingale House.”

Dalgliesh said gravely: “I have already seen the card. Did you know what the demonstration would be about?”

“I knew that it was on intra-gastric feeding but I didn’t know that Nurse Fallon had been taken ill in the night or who was to act the part of the patient.”

“Have you any idea at all how the corrosive poison got into the drip?”

“If you would just let me take my own time. I was about to tell you. I have none. The most likely explanation is that someone was playing a stupid joke and didn’t realize that the result would be fatal. That, or an accident. There are precedents. A new-born baby was killed in the maternity wing of a hospital—happily not one of ours—only three years ago when a bottle of disinfectant was mistaken for milk. I can’t explain how the accident here could have occurred or who in Nightingale House could have been so ignorant and stupid as to think that the result of putting a corrosive poison in the milk feed would entertain anyone.”

He paused as if defying Dalgliesh to interrupt with another question. Meeting only a bland interrogatory gaze, he went on: “So much for Nurse Pearce’s death. I can’t help you further there. It’s rather a different matter with Nurse Fallon.”

“Something that happened last night; someone you saw?”

The irritation snapped out: “Nothing to do with last night, Superintendent, Miss Gearing has already told you about last night. We saw no one. We left her room immediately after twelve o’clock and went out down the back stairs through Miss Taylor’s flat. I retrieved my bicycle from the bushes at the rear of the house—I see no reason why my visits here should be advertised to every mean-minded female in the neighbourhood—and we walked together to the first turn in the path. Then we paused to talk and I escorted Miss Gearing back to Nightingale House and watched her in through the back door. She had left it open. I finally rode off and, as I have told you, got to the fallen elm at twelve-seventeen a.m. If anyone passed that way after me and fixed a white scarf to a branch, I can only say that I didn’t see him. If he came by car it must have been parked at the other side of Nightingale House. I saw no car.”

Another pause. Dalgliesh made no sign, but Masterson permitted himself a sigh of weary resignation as he rustled over a page of his note pad.

“Now, Superintendent, the event which I am about to relate took place last spring when this present set of students, including Nurse Fallon, were in their second-year block. As was customary, I gave them a lecture on poisons. At the end of my talk all the students except Nurse Fallon had gathered up their books and left. She came up to the desk and asked me for the name of a poison which could kill painlessly and instantaneously and which an ordinary person might be able to obtain. I thought it an unusual question but saw no reason why I should refuse to answer it. It never occurred to me for one moment that the question had any personal application and, in any case, it was information she could have obtained
from any book in the hospital library on materia medica or forensic medicine.”

Dalgliesh said: “And what exactly did you tell her, Mr. Morris?”

“I told her that one such poison was nicotine and that it could be obtained from an ordinary rose spray.”

Truth or a lie? Who could tell? Dalgliesh fancied that he could usually detect lying in a suspect; but not this suspect. And if Morris stuck to his story, how could it ever be disproved? And if it were a lie, its purpose was plain—to suggest that Josephine Fallon had killed herself. And the obvious reason why he should wish to do that was to protect Sister Gearing. He loved her. This slightly ridiculous, pedantic man; that silly, flirtatious, ageing woman—they loved each other. And why not. Love wasn’t the prerogative of the young and desirable. But it was a complication in any investigation—pitiable, tragic or ludicrous, as the case might be, but never negligible. Inspector Bailey, as he knew from the notes on the first crime, had never fully believed in the story of the greetings card. It was in his opinion a foolish and childish gesture for a grown man, and particularly out of character for Morris; therefore he distrusted it. But Dalgliesh thought differently. It was at one with Morris’s lonely, unromantic cycle rides to visit his mistress; the machine hidden ignominiously in the bushes behind Nightingale House; the slow walk together through the cold of a January midnight prolonging those last precious minutes; his clumsy but strangely dignified defence of the woman he loved. And this last statement, true or false, was inconvenient to say the least. If he stuck to it it would be a powerful argument for those who preferred to believe that Fallon had died by her own hand. And he would stick to it. He looked at Dalgliesh now with the steadfast, exalted gaze of
a prospective martyr, holding his adversary’s eyes, daring him to disbelieve.

Dalgliesh sighed: “All right,” he said. “We won’t waste time in speculation. Let’s go once again over the timing of your movements last night.”

Sister Brumfett, true to her promise, was waiting outside the door when Masterson let Leonard Morris out. But her previous mood of cheerful acquiescence had vanished and she settled herself down opposite Dalgliesh as if to do battle. Before that matriarchal glare he felt something of the inadequacy of a junior student nurse newly arrived on the private ward; and something stronger and horribly familiar. His mind traced the surprising fear unerringly to its source. Just so had the Matron of his prep school once looked at him, producing in the homesick eight-year-old the same inadequacy, the same fear. And for one second he had to force himself to meet her gaze.

It was the first opportunity he had to observe her closely and on her own. It was an unattractive and yet an ordinary face. The small shrewd eyes glared into his through steel spectacles, their bridge half embedded in the deep fleshy cleft above the mottled nose. Her iron-grey hair was cut short, framing in ribbed waves the plump marsupial cheeks and the obstinate line of the jaw. The elegant goffered cap which on Mavis Gearing looked as delicate as a meringue of
spun lace and which flattered even Hilda Rolfe’s androgynous features was bound low on Sister Brumfett’s brow like a pie frill circling a particularly unappetizing crust. Take that symbol of authority away and replace it by an undistinguished felt hat, cover the uniform with a shapeless fawn coat, and you would have the prototype of a middle-aged suburban housewife strutting through the supermarket, shapeless bag in hand, eyes shrewd for this week’s bargain. Yet here, apparently, was one of the best ward sisters John Carpendar had ever had. Here, more surprisingly, was Mary Taylor’s chosen friend.

Before he could begin to question her, she said: “Nurse Fallon committed suicide. First she killed Pearce and then herself. Fallon murdered Pearce. I happen to know that she did. So why don’t you stop worrying Matron and let the work of the hospital go on? There’s nothing you can do to help either of them now. They’re both dead.”

Spoken in that authoritative and disconcertingly evocative tone the statement had the force of a command. Dalgliesh’s reply was unreasonably sharp. Damn the woman! He wouldn’t be intimidated.

“If you know that for certain, you must have some proof. And anything you know ought to be told. I’m investigating murder, Sister, not the theft of a bedpan. You have a duty not to withhold evidence.”

She laughed; a sharp, derisive hoot like an animal coughing. “Evidence! You wouldn’t call it evidence. But I know!”

“Did Nurse Fallon speak to you when she was being nursed on your ward? Was she delirious?”

It was no more than a guess. She snorted her derision. “If she did, it wouldn’t be my duty to tell you. What a patient lets out in delirium isn’t gossip to be bandied about. Not on my
ward anyway. It isn’t evidence either. Just accept what I tell you and stop fussing. Fallon killed Pearce. Why do you think she came back to Nightingale House that morning, with a temperature of 103? Why do you think she refused to give the police a reason? Fallon killed Pearce. You men like to make things so complicated. But it’s all so simple really. Fallon killed Pearce, and there’s no doubt she had her reasons.”

“There are no valid reasons for murder. And even if Fallon did kill Pearce, I doubt whether she killed herself. I’ve no doubt your colleagues have told you about the rose spray. Remember that Fallon hadn’t been in Nightingale House since that tin of nicotine was placed in the conservatory cupboard. Her set haven’t been in Nightingale House since the spring of last year and Sister Gearing bought the rose spray in the summer. Nurse Fallon was taken ill on the night that this block began and didn’t return to Nightingale House until the evening before she died. How do you account for the fact that she knew where to find the nicotine?”

Sister Brumfett looked surprisingly undisconcerted. There was a moment’s silence and then she muttered something unintelligible. Dalgliesh waited. Then she said defensively: “I don’t know how she got hold of it. That’s for you to discover. But it’s obvious that she did.”

“Did you know where the nicotine had been put?”

“No. I don’t have anything to do with the garden or the conservatory. I like to get out of the hospital on my free days. I usually play golf with Matron or we go for a drive. We try to arrange our off-duty together.”

Her tone was smug with satisfaction. She made no attempt to hide her complacency. What was she trying to convey? he wondered. Was this reference to the Matron her way of telling him that she was teacher’s pet, to be treated with deference?

He said: “Weren’t you in the conservatory that evening last summer when Miss Gearing came in with the stuff?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I think you’d better try to remember, Sister. It shouldn’t be difficult. Other people remember perfectly well.”

“If they say I was there, I probably was.”

“Miss Gearing says that she showed you all the bottle and made a facetious remark about being able to poison the whole school with a few drops. You told her not to be childish and to make sure the tin was locked away. Do you remember now?”

“It’s the sort of silly remark Mavis Gearing would make and I daresay I did tell her to be careful. It’s a pity she didn’t take notice of me.”