by P. D. James
She paused: “Isn’t that supposed to be true also of murderers?”
“Of one type of murderer. You must remember that murder is a highly individual crime.”
“Is it? I should have thought that the motives and the means would be monotonously familiar to you. But you, of course, are the expert.”
Dalgliesh said: “You have little respect for men apparently, Sister?”
“A great deal of respect. I just don’t happen to like them. But you have to respect a sex that has brought selfishness to such an art. That’s what gives you your strength, this ability to devote yourselves entirely to your own interest.”
Dalgliesh said, a little maliciously, that he was surprised that Miss Rolfe, since she obviously resented the subservience of her job, hadn’t chosen a more masculine occupation. Medicine perhaps? She laughed bitterly.
“I wanted to do medicine but I had a father who didn’t believe in educating women. I’m forty-six, remember. When I was at school we didn’t have universal free grammar school education. Father earned too much for me to get a free place, so he had to pay. He stopped paying as soon as he decently could, when I was sixteen.”
Dalgliesh found nothing appropriate to say. The confidence surprised him. She was hardly the woman, he would have thought, to expose a personal grievance to a stranger and he didn’t flatter himself that she found him sympathetic. She would find no man sympathetic. The outburst was probably a spontaneous release of pent-up bitterness, but whether against her father, men in general or the limitations and subservience of her job it was hard to say.
They had left the hospital now and were passing along the narrow path which led to Nightingale House. Neither of them spoke another word until the house was reached. Sister Rolfe wrapped her long cloak tightly around her and pulled up her hood as if it could protect her from more than the bite of the wind. Dalgliesh was immersed in his private thoughts. And thus, with the width of the path between them, they paced together in silence under the trees.
4
In the office Detective Sergeant Masterson was typing a report.
Dalgliesh said: “Immediately before she came into the school, Nurse Pearce was working on the private ward under Sister Brumfett. I want to know if anything significant happened there. And I want a detailed account of her last week’s duty and an hour-by-hour account of what she did on her last day. Find out who the other nursing staff were, what her duties were, when she was off duty, how she appeared to the other staff. I want the names of the patients who were on the ward while she was nursing there and what happened to them. Your best plan is to talk to the other nurses and to work from the nursing reports. They’re bound to keep a book which is written up daily.”
“Shall I get it from Matron?”
“No. Ask Sister Brumfett for it. We deal directly with her, and for God’s sake be tactful. Have you those reports ready yet?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve been typed. Do you want to read them now?”
“No. Tell me if there’s anything I ought to know. I’ll look at them tonight. I suppose it’s too much to expect that any of our suspects has a police record?”
“If they have, sir, it isn’t noted on the personal dossiers. There’s remarkably little information in most of them. Julia Pardoe was expelled from school, though. She seems to be the only delinquent among them.”
“Good God! What for?”
“Her dossier doesn’t say. Apparently it was something to do with a visiting maths master. Her headmistress felt it right to mention it when she sent Matron a reference before the girl started here. It isn’t very specific. She writes that Julia was more sinned against than sinning and that she hoped the hospital would give her the chance of training for the only career she has ever shown any interest in, or signs of being suited for.”
“A nice double-edged comment. So that’s why the London teaching hospitals wouldn’t take her. I thought Sister Rolfe was being a little disingenuous about the reasons. Anything about the others? Any previous connections between them?”
“Matron and Sister Brumfett trained together in the north at Nethercastle Royal Infirmary, did their midwifery training at the Municipal Maternity Hospital there and came here fifteen years ago, both as ward sisters. Mr. Courtney-Briggs was in Cairo during 1946 and so was Sister Gearing. He was a major in the R.A.M.C. and she was a nursing sister in the Q.A.R.N.S. There’s no suggestion that they knew each other there.”
“If they did, you’d hardly expect to find the fact recorded on their personal records. But they probably did. Cairo in ′46 was a chummy place, so my army friends tell me. I wonder if Miss Taylor served in the Q.A.R.N.S. That’s an army nursing service cap which she wears.”
“If she did, sir, it isn’t on her dossier. The earliest document is her reference from her training school when she came here as a Sister. They thought very highly of her at Nethercastle.”
“They think very highly of her here. Have you checked on Courtney-Briggs?”
“Yes, sir. The lodge porter makes a note of every car in and out after midnight. Mr. Courtney-Briggs left at twelve thirty-two a.m.”
“Later than he led us to believe. I want to check on his schedule. The precise time he finished the operation will be in the operating theatre book. The junior doctor assisting him will probably know when he left—Mr. Courtney-Briggs is the kind of man who gets escorted to his car. Then drive over the route and time him. They will have moved the tree by now but it should be possible to see where it came down. He can’t have wasted more than a few minutes at the most tying on his scarf. Find out what happened to that. He’d hardly lie about something so easily disproved, but he’s arrogant enough to think he can get away with anything, including murder.”
“Constable Greeson can do the checking, sir. He likes these reconstruction jobs.”
“Tell him to curb his urge for verisimilitude. There’s no need for him to don an operating gown and go into the theatre. Not that they’d let him. Is there any news yet from Sir Miles or the lab?”
“No, sir, but we’ve got the name and address of the man Nurse Fallon spent that week in the Isle of Wight with. He’s a G.P.O. night telephonist and lives in North Kensington. The local people got on to them almost at once. Fallon made it very easy for them. She booked in her own name and they had two single rooms.”
“She was a woman who valued her privacy. Still, she hardly got pregnant by staying in her own room. I’ll see the man tomorrow morning after I’ve visited Miss Fallon’s solicitor. Is Leonard Morris in the hospital yet, do you know?”
“Not yet, sir. I checked at the pharmacy that he telephoned this morning and said he wasn’t well. Apparently he suffers from a duodenal ulcer. They assume that it’s playing him up again.”
“It will play him up a great deal worse if he doesn’t come back soon and get the interview over. I don’t want to embarrass him by visiting his house, but we can’t wait indefinitely to get Sister Gearing’s story verified. Both these murders, if they were murders, hinge on the question of timing. We must know everyone’s movements, if possible, to the minute. Time is crucial.”
Masterson said: “That’s what surprised me about the poisoned drip. The carbolic couldn’t have been added to the milk without a great deal of care, particularly in replacing the bottle seal and making sure that the concentration was right and that the stuff had the texture and colour of milk. It couldn’t have been done in a hurry.”
“I’ve no doubt a great deal of care and time were taken. But I think I know how it was done.”
He described his theory. Sergeant Masterson, cross with himself for having missed the obvious, said: “Of course. It must have been done that way.”
“Not must, Sergeant. It was probably done that way.”
But Sergeant Masterson had seen an objection and voiced it.
Dalgliesh replied: “But that wouldn’t apply to a woman. A woman could do it easily and one woman in particular. But I admit it would be more difficult for a ma
n.”
“So the assumption is that the milk was doctored by a woman?”
“The probability is that both girls were murdered by a woman. But it’s still only a probability. Have you heard yet whether Nurse Dakers is well enough to be interviewed?
Dr. Snelling was supposed to be seeing her this morning.”
“Matron rang just before lunch to say that the girl is still asleep, but that she’ll probably be fit enough once she wakes up. She’s under sedation, so God knows when that’ll be. Shall I take a look at her while I’m in the private wing?”
“No. I’ll see her later. But you might check on this story that Fallon returned to Nightingale House on the morning of 12th January. Someone might have seen her leave. And where were her clothes while she was warded? Could anyone have got hold of them and impersonated her? It seems unlikely but it ought to be checked.”
“Inspector Bailey did check, sir. No one saw Fallon leave but they admit that she could have got out of the ward undetected. They were very busy and she had a private room. If it were found empty they would probably have assumed that she’d gone to the bathroom. Her clothes were hung in the wardrobe in her room. Anyone who had a right to be in the ward could have got at them, provided, of course, that Fallon was asleep or out of the room. But no one thinks it likely that anyone did.”
“Nor do I. I think I know why Fallon came back to Nightingale House. Nurse Goodale told us that Fallon had received the pregnancy confirmation only two days before she went sick. It’s possible that she didn’t destroy it. If so, it’s the one possession in her room which she wouldn’t want to leave for someone else to find. It certainly isn’t among her papers. My guess is that she came back to retrieve it, tore it up, and flushed it down the lavatory.”
“Couldn’t she have telephoned Nurse Goodale and asked her to destroy it?”
“Not without exciting suspicion. She couldn’t be sure that she’d get Goodale herself when she rang and she wouldn’t want to give anyone else a message. This insistence to speak to one particular nurse and the reluctance to accept help from anyone else would look rather odd. But it’s no more than a theory. Is the search of Nightingale House completed?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve found nothing. No trace of poison and no container. Most of the rooms contain bottles of aspirin and Sister Gearing, Sister Brumfett and Miss Taylor all have a small supply of sleeping tablets. But surely Fallon didn’t die of hypnotic or soporific poisoning?”
“No. It was quicker than that. We shall just have to possess ourselves in patience until we get the laboratory report.”
5
At two thirty-four p.m. precisely, in the largest and most luxurious of the private rooms, Sister Brumfett lost a patient. She always thought of death in that way. The patient was lost; the battle was over; she, Sister Brumfett, had been personally defeated. The fact that so many of her battles were foredoomed to failure, that the enemy, even if repulsed in the present skirmish, was always assured of final victory, never mitigated her sense of failure. Patients did not come into Sister Brumfett’s ward to die; they came in to get better, and with Sister’s indomitable will to fortify them, they usually did get better, often to their own surprise and occasionally despite their own wishes.
She had hardly expected to win this particular battle but it was only when Mr. Courtney-Briggs lifted his hand to turn off the blood drip that she accepted failure. The patient had certainly fought well; a difficult patient, a demanding patient, but a good fighter. He had been a wealthy businessman whose meticulous plans for his future certainly didn’t include dying at forty-two. She recalled the look of wild surprise, almost of outrage, with which he had greeted the realization that death was something neither he nor his accountant could fix. Sister Brumfett had seen too much of his young widow on that lady’s daily visits to suppose that she would suffer much grief or inconvenience. The patient was the only one who would have been furious at the failure of Mr. Courtney-Briggs’s heroic and expensive efforts to save him, and happily for the surgeon, the patient was the one person in no position to demand either explanation or excuse.
Mr. Courtney-Briggs would see the widow and offer her his customary carefully phrased condolences, his assurance that everything humanly possible had been done. In this case, the size of the bill would be a guarantee of that and a powerful antidote, no doubt, to the inevitable guilt of bereavement. Courtney-Briggs was really very good with the widows; and to do him justice, the poor as well as the rich received the consolation of his hand on their shoulder, of the stereotyped phrases of comfort and regret.
She drew the fold of the sheet up over the suddenly vacant face. Closing the dead eyes with practised fingers, she felt the eyeballs still warm under the wrinkled lids. She was conscious neither of grief nor anger. There was only, as always, this dragging weight of failure tugging like a physical load at the tired muscles of her stomach and back.
They turned away from the bed together. Glancing at the surgeon’s face, Sister Brumfett was struck by his look of weariness. For the first time he, too, appeared threatened with failure and with age. It was, of course, unusual for a patient to die when he was there to see it happen. Still less frequently did they die on the operating table, even if the scramble from the theatre to the ward was sometimes a little undignified. But, unlike Sister Brumfett, Mr. Courtney-Briggs did not have to watch over his patients to the last gasp. All the same, she did not believe that this particular death had depressed him. It was, after all, not unexpected. He had nothing with which to reproach himself even if he had been given to self-criticism. She felt that he was stressed by some subtler worry, and she wondered whether it was something to do with Fallon’s death. He’s lost some of his bounce, thought Sister Brumfett. He looks suddenly ten years older.
He preceded her down the passage to her office. As they neared the ward kitchen there was the sound of voices. The door was open. A student nurse was setting a trolley with the afternoon tea trays. Sergeant Masterson was leaning against the sink and watching her with the air of a man completely at home. As the Sister and Mr. Courtney-Briggs appeared in the doorway the girl flushed, muttered a low “good afternoon, sir” and pushed the trolley past them into the corridor with clumsy haste. Sergeant Masterson gazed after her with tolerant condescension, then transferred his level gaze to the Sister. He appeared not to notice Mr. Courtney-Briggs.
“Good afternoon, Sister, could I have a word with you?”
Baulked of the initiative, Sister Brumfett said repressively: “In my office if you please, Sergeant. That is where you should have waited in the first place. People do not wander in and out of my ward just as they please, and that includes the police.”
Sergeant Masterson, unchastened, looked slightly gratified at this speech as if it confirmed something to his satisfaction. Sister Brumfett bustled into her office, tight-lipped and ready for battle. Rather to her surprise Mr. Courtney-Briggs followed.
Sergeant Masterson said: “I wonder, Sister, if I could see the ward report book covering the period when Nurse Pearce was on this ward? I’m particularly interested in her last week here.”
Mr. Courtney-Briggs broke in roughly: “Aren’t they confidential records, Sister? Surely the police will have to apply for a subpoena before they can make you produce them?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, sir.” Sergeant Masterson’s voice, quiet, almost too respectful, yet held a tinge of amusement which wasn’t lost on his hearer. “Ward nursing records surely aren’t medical in the proper sense. I merely want to see who was being nursed here during that period and whether anything happened which might be of interest to the Superintendent. It’s been suggested that something occurred to upset Nurse Pearce while she was nursing on your ward. She went from here straight to the school, remember.”
Sister Brumfett, mottled and shaking with an anger which left small room for fear, found her voice.
“Nothing happened on my ward. Nothing! It’s all stupid, malicious gossip. If a nurse does he
r job properly and obeys orders there’s no need for her to be upset. The Superintendent is here to investigate a murder, not to interfere with my ward.”
Mr. Courtney-Briggs broke in blandly: “And even if she were—upset is the word I think you used, Sergeant—I don’t see what relevance that has to her death.”
Sergeant Masterson smiled at him as if humouring a wilfully obstinate child.
“Anything that happened to Nurse Pearce in the week immediately before she was killed may have relevance, sir. That’s why I’m asking to see the ward report book.”
As neither Sister Brumfett nor the surgeon made any move to comply, he added: “It’s only a matter of confirming information we already have. I know what she was doing on the ward during that week. I’m told she was devoting all her time to nursing one particular patient. A Mr. Martin Dettinger. ‘Specializing’ him, I think you call it. My information is that she seldom left his room while she was on duty here during the last week of her life.”
So, thought Sister Brumfett, he had been gossiping with the student nurses. But of course! That was how the police worked. It was pointless to try to keep anything private from them. Everything, even the medical secrets of her ward, the nursing care of her own patients, would be nosed out by this impertinent young man and reported to his superior officer. There was nothing in the ward book which he couldn’t find out by more devious means; discover, magnify, misinterpret and use to make mischief. Inarticulate with anger and something close to panic she heard Mr. Courtney-Briggs’s bland and reassuring voice: “Then you’d better hand the book over, Sister. If the police insist on wasting their own time there’s no need for us to encourage them to waste ours.”
Without another word, Sister Brumfett went to her desk and, bending down, opened the deep right-hand drawer and took out a large, hard-backed book. Silently and without looking at him, she handed it to Sergeant Masterson. The Sergeant thanked her profusely and turned to Mr. Courtney-Briggs: “And now, sir, if the patient’s still with you, I’d like to have a word with Mr. Dettinger.”