by P. D. James
Dalgliesh made appropriately assenting noises and paused briefly before picking up the references to Mr. Courtney-Briggs. He asked rather näively whether many of the surgeon’s operations went so spectacularly wrong.
Sister Gearing laughed: “Lord, no! Courtney-Briggs’s operations usually go the way he wants. That’s not to say they go the way the patient would choose if he knew the whole of it. C. B. is what they call a heroic surgeon. If you ask me, most of the heroism has to be shown by the patients. But he does an extraordinary good job of work. He’s one of the last remaining great general surgeons. You know, take anything on, the more hopeless the better. I suppose a surgeon is rather like a lawyer. There’s no glory to be had in getting someone off if he’s obviously innocent. The greater the guilt the greater the glory.”
“What is Mrs. Courtney-Briggs like? I presume he’s married. Does she show herself at the hospital?”
“Not very often, although she’s supposed to be a member of the League of Friends. She gave the prizes away last year when the Princess couldn’t come at the last moment. Blonde, very smart. Younger than C. B. but beginning to wear a bit now. Why do you ask? You don’t suspect Muriel Courtney-Briggs surely? She wasn’t even in the hospital the night Fallon died. Probably tucked up in bed in their very nice little place near Selborne. And she certainly hadn’t any motive for killing poor Pearce.”
So she did have a motive for getting rid of Fallon. Mr. Courtney-Briggs’s liaison had probably been more noticed than he had realized. Dalgliesh wasn’t surprised that Sister Gearing should know about it. Her sharp nose would be adept at smelling out sexual scandal.
He said: “I wondered if she were jealous.”
Sister Gearing, unaware of what she had told, rambled happily on.
“I don’t suppose she knew. Wives don’t usually. Anyway, C. B. wasn’t going to break up his marriage to wed Fallon. Not him! Mrs. C. B. has plenty of money of her own. She’s the only child of Price of Price and Maxwell, the building firm—and what with C. B.’s earnings and Daddy’s ill-gotten gains, they’re very comfortable. I don’t think Muriel worries much what he does as long as he behaves himself properly to her and the money keeps rolling in. I know I wouldn’t. Besides, if rumour’s correct, our Muriel doesn’t exactly qualify for the League of Purity.”
“Anyone here?” asked Dalgliesh.
“Oh no, nothing like that. It’s just that she goes around with quite a smart set. She usually gets her picture in every third issue of the social glossies. And they’re in with the theatrical crowd too. C. B. had a brother who was an actor, Peter Courtney. He hanged himself about three years ago. You must have read about it.”
Dalgliesh’s job gave him few opportunities to see a play and theatre-going was one of the pleasures he missed most. He had seen Peter Courtney act only once but it had been a performance not easily forgotten. He had been a very young Macbeth, as introspective and sensitive as Hamlet, in thrall sexually to a much older wife, and whose physical courage was compounded of violence and hysteria. It had been a perverse but interesting interpretation, and it had very nearly succeeded. Thinking of the performance now, Dalgliesh imagined that he could detect a likeness between the brothers, something to do with the set of the eyes perhaps. But Peter must have been the younger by nearly twenty years. He wished he knew what the two men, so widely separated in age and talent, had made of each other.
Suddenly and irrelevantly Dalgliesh asked: “How did Pearce and Fallon get on together?”
“They didn’t. Fallon despised Pearce. I don’t mean she hated her or would have harmed her; she just despised her.”
“Was there any particular reason?”
“Pearce took it upon herself to tell Matron about Fallon’s little tipple of whisky at nights. Self-righteous little beast. Oh, I know she’s dead and I ought not to have said that. But really, Pearce could be insufferably self-righteous. Apparently what happened was that Diane Harper—she’s left the training school now—had a bad cold about a fortnight before the set came into the block, and Fallon fixed her a hot whisky and lemon. Pearce could smell the stuff half-way along the corridor and concluded that Fallon was attempting to seduce her juniors with the demon drink. So she appeared in the utility room—they were in the main nurses’ home then, of course—in her dressing-gown, sniffing the air like an avenging angel, and threatened to report Fallon to Matron unless she promised more or less on her knees never to touch the stuff again. Fallon told her where to go and what to do with herself when she got there. She had a picturesque turn of phrase when roused, had Fallon. Nurse Dakers burst into tears. Harper lost her temper and the general noise brought the House Sister on to the scene. Pearce reported it to Matron all right, but no one knows with what result, except that Fallon started keeping her whisky in her own room. But the whole thing caused a great deal of feeling in the third year. Fallon was never popular with the set, she was too reserved and sarcastic. But they liked Pearce a damn sight less.”
“And did Pearce dislike Fallon?”
“Well, it’s difficult to say. Pearce never seemed to concern herself with what other people thought of her. She was an odd girl, pretty insensitive too. For example, she might disapprove of Fallon and her whisky-drinking but that didn’t prevent her from borrowing Fallon’s library ticket.”
“When did this happen?”
Dalgliesh leaned across and replaced his teacup on the tray. His voice was level, unconcerned. But he felt again that spring of excitement and anticipation, the intuitive sense that something important had been said. It was more than a hunch; it was, as always, a certainty. It might happen several times during a case if he were lucky, or not at all. He couldn’t will it to happen and he was afraid to examine its roots too closely since he suspected that it was a plant easily withered by logic.
“Just before she came into block, I think. It must have been the week before Pearce died. The Thursday, I think. Anyway, they hadn’t yet moved into Nightingale House. It was just after supper time in the main dining-room. Fallon and Pearce were walking out of the door together and I was just behind them with Goodale. Then Fallon turned to Pearce and said: ‘Here’s the library token I promised you. I’d better give it to you now as I don’t suppose we’ll see each other in the morning. You’d better take the reader’s ticket too, or they may not let you have the book.’ Pearce mumbled something and grabbed the token rather ungraciously I thought, and that was that. Why? It isn’t important, is it?”
“I can’t think why it should be,” said Dalgliesh.
8
He sat through the next fifteen minutes in exemplary patience. Sister Gearing couldn’t have guessed from his courteous attention to her chattering and the leisurely way in which he drank his third and last cup of tea, that every moment was now grudged. When the meal was over, he carried the tray for her into the small Sisters’ kitchen at the end of the corridor while she fretted at his heels, bleating her protests. Then he said: “Thank you,” and left.
He went at once to the cell-like bedroom which still held nearly all the possessions Nurse Pearce had owned at the John Carpendar. It took him a moment to select the correct key from the heavy bunch in his pocket. The room had been locked after her death and was still locked. He went in, switching on the light. The bed was stripped and the whole room was very tidy and clean as if it, too, had been laid out for burial. The curtains were drawn back so that, from outside, the room would look no different from any other. The window was open but the air held a faint tang of disinfectant as if someone had tried to obliterate the memory of Pearce’s death by a ritual purification.
He had no need to refresh his memory. The detritus of this particular life was pathetically meagre. But he went through her leavings again, turning them in careful hands as if the feel of cloth and leather could transmit their own clues. It didn’t take long. Nothing had been altered since his first inspection. The hospital wardrobe, identical to that in Nurse Fallon’s room, was more than adequate for the few woo
llen dresses, unexciting in colour and design, which, under his questing hand, swung from their padded hangers and gave out a faint smell of cleaning fluid and mothballs. The thick winter coat in fawn was of good quality but obviously old. He sought once more in the pockets. There was nothing except the handkerchief which had been there on his first examination, a crumpled ball of white cotton smelling of sour breath.
He moved to the chest of drawers. Here again the space provided had been more than sufficient. The two top drawers were filled with underclothes, strong sensible vests and knickers, comfortably warm no doubt for an English winter but with no concessions to glamour or fashion. The drawers were lined with newspaper. The sheets had been taken out once already, but he ran his hand under them and felt nothing but the gritty surface of bare unpolished wood. The remaining three drawers held skirts, jumpers and cardigans; a leather handbag, carefully wrapped in tissue paper; a pair of best shoes in a string bag; an embroidered handkerchief sachet with a dozen handkerchiefs carefully folded; an assortment of scarves; three pairs of identical nylon stockings still in their wrappers.
He turned again to the bedside locker and the small shelf fixed above it. The locker held a bedside lamp, a small alarm clock in a leather case which had long since run down, a packet of paper handkerchiefs with one crumpled tissue half-pulled through the slit, and an empty water carafe. There was also a leather-bound Bible and a writing-case. Dalgliesh opened the Bible at the flyleaf and read again the inscription in careful copper plate. “Awarded to Heather Pearce for attendance and diligence. St. Mark’s Sunday School.” Diligence. An unfashionable, intimidating word but one, he felt, of which Nurse Pearce would have approved.
He opened the writing-case, but with little hope of finding what he sought. Nothing had changed since his first examination. Here still was the half-finished letter to her grandmother, a dull recital of the week’s doings written as impersonally as a ward report, and a quarto-sized envelope, posted to her on the day of her death and obviously slipped into the writing-case by someone who, having opened it, couldn’t think of what else to do with it. It was an illustrated brochure on the work of a home in Suffolk for German war refugees apparently sent in the hope of a donation.
He turned his attention to the small collection of books on the wall shelf. He had seen them before. Then, as now, he was struck by the conventionality of her choice and the meagreness of this personal library. A school prize for needlework. Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare. Dalgliesh had never believed that any child read them and there was no evidence that Nurse Pearce had done so. There were two travel books, In the Steps of St. Paul and In the Steps of the Master. In both the girl had carefully inscribed her name. There was a well-known but out-of-date edition of a nursing textbook. The date on the flyleaf was nearly four years old. He wondered whether she had bought it in anticipation of her training, only to find that its advice on applying leeches and administering enemas had become out of date. There was a copy of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, also a school prize, but this time inappropriately for deportment. This, too, showed little sign of having been read. Lastly there were three paperbacks—novels by a popular woman writer, each advertised as “The Book of the Film”—and a fictional and highly sentimental account of the wanderings across Europe of a lost dog and cat which Dalgliesh remembered had been a best-seller some five years previously. This was inscribed, “To Heather, with love from Auntie Edie, Christmas 1964”. The whole collection told him little about the dead girl, except that her reading had apparently been as restricted as her life. And nowhere he found what he was seeking.
He didn’t go again to look in Nurse Fallon’s room. The scene-of-crime officer had searched every inch of it, and he himself could have described the room in minute detail and given an accurate inventory of all its contents. Wherever the library ticket and the token were, he could be sure that they weren’t here. Instead he ran lightly up the wide staircase to the floor above where he had noticed a wall-mounted telephone when carrying Sister Gearing’s tea tray to the utility room. A card listing the internal extensions hung beside it and, after a moment’s thought, he rang the nurses’ sitting-room. Maureen Burt answered. Yes, Nurse Goodale was still there. Almost immediately Dalgliesh heard her voice and he asked her to come up to see him in Nurse Pearce’s room.
She came so promptly that he had hardly reached the door before he saw the self-assured, uniformed figure at the top of the stairs. He stood aside and she moved into the room before him and silently surveyed the stripped bed, the silent bedside clock, the closed Bible, letting her gaze rest briefly on each object with gentle, uninquisitive interest.
Dalgliesh moved to the window and, both standing, they regarded each other wordlessly across the bed. Then he said: “I’m told that Nurse Fallon lent a library ticket to Nurse Pearce sometime during the week before she died. You were leaving the dining-room with Sister Gearing at the time. Can you remember what happened?”
Nurse Goodale was not given to showing surprise.
“Yes, I think so. Fallon had told me earlier that day that Pearce wanted to visit one of the London libraries and had asked to borrow her reader’s ticket and the token. Fallon was a member of the Westminster Library. They’ve got a number of branches in the City but you aren’t really supposed to belong unless you either live or work in Westminster. Fallon had a flat in London before she became a student here and had kept her reader’s card and token. It’s an excellent library, much better than we’ve got here, and it’s useful to be able to borrow books. I think Sister Rolfe is a member too. Fallon took her reader’s ticket and one of the tokens across to lunch and handed them to Pearce as we were leaving the dining-room.”
“Did Nurse Pearce say why she wanted them?”
“Not to me. She may have told Fallon. I don’t know. Any of us could borrow one of Fallon’s tokens if we wanted to. Fallon didn’t require an explanation.”
“What precisely are those tokens like?”
“They’re small oblongs of pale blue plastic with the City Arms stamped on them. The library usually gives four to every reader and you hand one in every time you take out a book, but Jo only had three. She may have lost the fourth. There’s also the reader’s ticket. That’s the usual small piece of cardboard with her name, address and date of expiry. Sometimes the assistant asks to see the reader’s ticket and I suppose that’s why Jo handed it over with the token.”
“Do you know where the other two are?”
“Yes, in my room. I borrowed them about a fortnight ago when I went up to town with my fiancé to attend a special service in the Abbey. I thought we might have time to visit the Great Smith Street branch to see whether they had the new Iris Murdoch. However, we met some friends from Mark’s theological college after the service and never got to the library. I meant to return the tokens to Jo but I slipped them in my writing-case and forgot about them. She didn’t remind me. I can show them to you if it would be helpful.”
“I think it would. Did Heather Pearce use her token, do you know?”
“Well, I assume she did. I saw her waiting for the Green Line bus to town that afternoon. We were both off duty so it must have been the Thursday. I imagine that she had it in mind to visit the library.”
She looked puzzled.
“Somehow I feel quite sure that she did take out a library book but I can’t think why I should be so certain.”
“Can’t you? Think very hard.”
Nurse Goodale stood silently, her hands folded composedly as if in prayer over the white stiffness of her apron. He did not hurry her. She gazed fixedly ahead and then turned her eyes to the bed and said quietly: “I know now. I saw her reading a library book. It was the night when Jo was taken ill, the night before Pearce herself died. I went into her bedroom just after half past eleven to ask her to go and look after Jo while I fetched Sister. She was sitting up in bed with her hair in two plaits and she was reading. I remember now. It was a large book, bound in a dark colour, dark blue I think,
and with a reference number stamped in gold at the foot of the spine. It looked an old and rather heavy book. I don’t think it was fiction. She was holding it propped up against her knees I remember. When I appeared she closed it quickly and slipped it under her pillow. It was a strange thing to do but it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. Pearce was always oddly secretive. Besides, I was too concerned about Jo. But I remember it now.”
She stood again in silence for a few moments. Dalgliesh waited. Then she said quietly: “I know what’s worrying you. Where’s that book now? It wasn’t among her things when Sister Rolfe and I tidied her room and made a list of her belongings after her death. The police were with us and we didn’t find a book anything like it. And what happened to the ticket? It wasn’t among Fallon’s things either.”
Dalgliesh asked: “What exactly happened that night? You said you went in to Nurse Fallon shortly after eleven thirty. I thought she didn’t go to bed before midnight.”