Shroud for a Nightingale

by P. D. James

  The door opened wider.

  “You’d better come in.” No sign of fear but perhaps a certain wariness in the grey eyes.

  It was an extraordinary room, a small attic with a sloping roof and a dormer window, furnished almost entirely with crude and unpainted wooden boxes, some still stencilled with the name of the original grocer or wine merchant. They had been ingeniously fitted together so that the walls were honeycombed from floor to ceiling with pale wooden cells, irregular in size and shape and containing all the impedimenta of daily living. Some were stacked close with hard-backed books; others with orange paperbacks. Another framed a small two-bar electric fire, perfectly adequate to heat so small a room. In another box was a neat pile of clean but unironed clothes. Another held blue-banded mugs and other crockery, and yet another displayed a group of objets trouvés, seashells, a Staffordshire dog, a small jam jar of bird feathers. The single bed, blanket-covered, was under the window. Another upturned box served as a table and desk. The only two chairs were the folding canvas type sold for picnicking. Dalgliesh was reminded of an article once seen in a Sunday colour supplement on how to furnish your bed-sitting-room for under £50. Arnold Dowson had probably done it for half the price. But the room was not unpleasing. Everything was functional and simple. It was perhaps too claustrophobic for some tastes and there was something obsessional in the meticulous tidiness and the way in which every inch of space had been used to the full which prevented it from being restful. It was the room of a self - sufficient, well-organized man who, as he had told Dalgliesh, plainly had everything he wanted.

  The tenant suited the room. He looked almost excessively tidy. He was a young man, probably not much over twenty, Dalgliesh thought. His fawn polo-neck sweater was clean, with each cuff neatly turned back to match its fellow, and the collar of a very white shirt visible at the neck. His blue jeans were faded but unstained and had been carefully washed and ironed. There was a crease down the centre of each leg and the ends had been turned up and stitched carefully into place. It gave an oddly incongruous effect to such an informal outfit. He wore leather sandals of the buckled style normally seen on children, and no socks. His hair was very fair and was brushed into a helmet which framed his face in the manner of a medieval page. The face beneath the sleek fringe was bony and sensitive, the nose crooked and too large, the mouth small and well shaped with a hint of petulance. But his most remarkable features were his ears. They were the smallest Dalgliesh had ever seen on a man, and were without colour even at the tips. They looked as if they were made of wax. Sitting on an upturned orange box with his hands held loosely between his knees and his watchful eyes on Dalgliesh, he looked like the centrepiece of a surrealist painting; singular and precise against the multi-cellular background.

  Dalgliesh pulled out one of the boxes and seated himself opposite the boy. He said: “You knew that she was dead, of course?”

  “Yes. I read about it in this morning’s papers.”

  “Did you know that she was pregnant?”

  This at least produced emotion. The boy’s tight face whitened. His head jerked up and he stared at Dalgliesh silently for a moment before replying.

  “No. I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me.”

  “She was nearly three months’ pregnant. Could it have been your child?”

  Dowson looked down at his hands. “It could have been, I suppose. I didn’t take any precautions, if that’s what you mean. She told me not to worry, that she’d see to that. After all, she was a nurse. I thought she knew how to take care of herself.”

  “That was something I suspect she never did know. Hadn’t you better tell me about it?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No. You don’t have to say anything. You can demand to see a solicitor and make any amount of fuss and trouble and cause a great deal of delay. But is there any point? No one is accusing you of murdering her. But someone did. You knew her and presumably you liked her. For some of the time, anyway. If you want to help you can best do it by telling me everything you knew about her.”

  Dowson got slowly to his feet. He seemed as slow-moving and clumsy as an old man. He looked round as if disoriented. Then he said: “I’ll make some tea.”

  He shuffled over to a double gas ring, fitted to the right of the meagre and unused fireplace, lifted the kettle as if testing by weight that it held sufficient water, and lit the gas. He took down two of the jugs from one of the boxes and set them out on a further box which he dragged between himself and Dalgliesh. It held a number of neatly folded newspapers which looked as if they hadn’t been read. He spread one over the top of the box and set out the blue mugs and a bottle of milk as formally as if they were about to drink from Crown Derby. He didn’t speak again until the tea was made and poured. Then he said: “I wasn’t her only lover.”

  “Did she tell you about the others?”

  “No, but I think one of them was a doctor. Perhaps more than one. That wouldn’t be surprising in the circumstances. We were talking once about sex and she said that a man’s nature and character were always completely revealed when he made love. That if he were selfish or insensitive or brutal he couldn’t conceal it in bed whatever he might do with his clothes on. Then she said that she had once slept with a surgeon and it was only too apparent that most of the bodies he came into contact with had been anaesthetized first; that he was so busy admiring his own technique that it never occurred to him that he was in bed with a conscious woman. She laughed about it. I don’t think she minded very much. She laughed about a great many things.”

  “But you don’t think she was happy?”

  He appeared to be considering. Dalgliesh thought: And for God’s sake don’t answer, “Who is?”

  “No, not really happy. Not for most of the time. But she did know how to be happy. That was the important thing.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “I’m learning to be a writer. That’s what I want to be and I’ve never wanted to be anything else. I have to earn some money to live while I get my first novel finished and published, so I work at night as a continental telephone operator. I know enough French to make it possible. The pay isn’t bad. I don’t have many friends because there isn’t time and I never went to bed with any woman until I met Jo. Women don’t seem to like me. I met her last summer in St. James’s Park. She was there on one of her off-duty days and I was there to watch the ducks and see what the park looked like. I wanted to set one of the scenes in my book in St. James’s Park in July, and I went there to make some notes. She was lying on her back on the grass staring at the sky. She was quite alone. One of the pages of my notebook got detached and blew across into her face. I went after it and apologized, and we chased it together.”

  He was holding the mug of tea looking at it as if staring again into the summer surface of the lake.

  “It was an odd day—very hot, sunless and blustery. The wind blew in warm gusts. The lake looked heavy like oil.”

  He paused for a moment, and when Dalgliesh didn’t speak, went on: “So we met and talked, and I asked her to come back for tea. I don’t know what I expected. After tea we talked more and she made love to me. She told me weeks later that she didn’t have that in mind when she came here but I don’t know. I don’t even know why she came back. Perhaps she was bored.”

  “Did you have it in mind?”

  “I don’t know that either. Perhaps. I know that I wanted to make love to a woman. I wanted to know what it was like. That’s one experience you can’t write about until you know.”

  “And sometimes not even then. And how long did she continue to provide you with copy?”

  The boy seemed unaware of the irony. He said: “She used to come here about once a fortnight on her day off. We never went out together except to a pub occasionally. She would bring in some food and cook a meal and afterwards we would talk and go to bed.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “I suppose I did most of the talking. She didn’
t tell me much about herself, only that both her parents had been killed while she was a child and that she had been brought up in Cumberland by an elderly aunt. The aunt is dead now. I don’t think Jo had a very happy childhood. She always wanted to be a nurse but she got T.B. when she was seventeen. It wasn’t very bad and she spent eighteen months in a sanatorium in Switzerland and was cured. But the doctors advised her not to train as a nurse. So she did a number of other jobs. She was an actress for about three years, but that wasn’t much of a success. Then she was a waitress and a shop assistant for a time. Then she became engaged but nothing came of it. She broke it off.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “No, except that she found something out about the man which made it impossible to marry him.”

  “Did she say what it was or who the man was?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask. But I think he may have been some kind of sexual pervert.”

  Seeing Dalgliesh’s face he added quickly: “I don’t really know. She never told me. Most of the things I know about Jo just came up casually in conversation. She never really talked about herself for long. It’s just an idea I have. There was a kind of bitter hopelessness about the way she spoke of her engagement.”

  “And after that?”

  “Well, apparently she decided that she might as well go back to her original idea of being a nurse. She thought she could get through the medical examination with luck. She chose the John Carpendar Hospital because she wanted to be near London but not actually in it, and thought that a small hospital would be less arduous. She didn’t want her health to break down, I suppose.”

  “Did she talk about the hospital?”

  “Not much. She seemed happy enough there. But she spared me the intimate details of the bedpan rounds.”

  “Do you know whether she had an enemy?”

  “She must have had, mustn’t she, if somebody killed her? But she never told me about it. Perhaps she didn’t know.”

  “Do these names mean anything to you?”

  He went through the names of all the people, students, sisters, surgeon, pharmacist, who had been in Nightingale House the night Josephine Fallon had died.

  “I think she mentioned Madeleine Goodale to me. I’ve a feeling they were friendly. And the Courtney-Briggs name seems familiar. But I can’t remember any details.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “About three weeks ago. She came on her night off and cooked supper.”

  “How did she seem then?”

  “She was restless and she wanted to make love rather badly. Then just before she left she said that she wouldn’t see me again. A few days later I got a letter. It merely said, ‘I meant what I said. Please don’t try to get in touch. It’s nothing you’ve done so don’t worry. Good-bye and thank you. Jo.’”

  Dalgliesh asked if he had kept the letter.

  “No. I only keep important papers. I mean, there isn’t room here to hoard letters.”

  “And did you try to get in touch with her again?”

  “No. She’d asked me not to and there didn’t seem much point in it. I suppose if I’d known about the child I might have done. But I’m not sure. There’s nothing I could have done. I couldn’t have had a child here. Well, you can see that. How could I? She wouldn’t want to marry me and I never considered marrying her. I don’t want to marry anyone. But I don’t think she killed herself because of the baby. Not Jo.”

  “All right. You don’t think she killed herself. Tell me why.”

  “She wasn’t the type.”

  “Oh, come now! You can do better than that.”

  The boy said belligerently: “It’s true enough. I’ve known two people in my life who killed themselves. One was a boy in my last year at school when we were sitting for our G.C.E.s. The other was a manager of a dry-cleaning firm I worked for. I drove the delivery van. Well, in both cases, everyone said all the usual things about how dreadful and how surprising it was. But I wasn’t really surprised. I don’t mean that I was expecting it or anything like that. I just wasn’t really surprised. When I thought about both deaths I could believe that they had actually done it.”

  “Your sample is too small.”

  “Jo wouldn’t kill herself. Why should she?”

  “I can think of reasons. She hadn’t made much success of her life so far. She hadn’t any relatives to care about her, and very few friends. She didn’t sleep easily at night, wasn’t really happy. She had at last succeeded in training to be a nurse and was within a few months of her final examination. And then she finds herself pregnant. She knows that her lover won’t want the child, that it’s no use looking to him for comfort or support.”

  Dowson cried out in vehement protest. “She never looked to anyone for comfort or support! That’s what I’m trying to tell you! She slept with me because she wanted to. I’m not responsible for her. I’m not responsible for anyone. Anyone! I’m only responsible for myself. She knew what she was doing. It wasn’t as if she were a young, inexperienced girl who needed kindness and protection.”

  “If you believe that only the young and innocent need comfort and protection you’re thinking in clichés. And if you begin by thinking in clichés you end by writing them.”

  The boy said sullenly: “Maybe. But that’s what I believe.”

  Suddenly he got up and went over to the wall. When he came back to the centre box Dalgliesh saw that he held a large smooth stone. It fitted snugly into his curved palm, a perfect ovoid. It was a pale grey, flecked like an egg. Dowson let it slide from his hand on to the table, where it rocked gently into stillness. Then he sat down again and bent forward, his head in his hands. Together they looked at the stone. Dalgliesh did not speak.

  Suddenly the boy said: “She gave it to me. We found it together on the beach at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight. We went there together last October. But of course you know. That must have been how you traced me. Lift it. It’s surprisingly heavy.”

  Dalgliesh took the stone in his hands. It was satisfying to touch, smooth and cool. He took pleasure in the sea-washed perfection of its shape, in the hard unyielding roundness of it which yet fitted with such gentleness into the palm of his hand.

  “I never had a holiday by the sea when I was a boy. Dad died before I was six and the old woman hadn’t the money. So I missed out on the seaside. Jo thought it would be fun to go there together. It was very warm last October. Remember? We took the ferry from Portsmouth and there were only half a dozen people on it besides ourselves. The island was empty too. We could walk from Ventnor to St. Catherine’s Lighthouse without meeting a soul. It was warm enough and deserted enough to bathe naked. Jo found this stone. She thought it would do as a paper-weight. I wasn’t going to tear my pocket carrying that weight home but she did. Then, when we got back here, she gave it to me as a keepsake. I wanted her to have it but she said that I’d forget the holiday long before she did. Don’t you see? She knew how to be happy. I’m not sure that I do. But Jo did. If you’re like that you don’t kill yourself. Not when you know how marvellous living can be. Colette knew about that. She wrote about ‘a compelling fierce and secret rapport with the earth and everything that gushes from its breasts’.” He looked at Dalgliesh.

  “Colette was a French writer.”

  “I know. And you believe that Josephine Fallon could feel that?”

  “I know she could. Not for long. Not often. But when she was happy she was marvellous. If you once know that kind of happiness you don’t kill yourself. While you live there’s a hope it could happen again. So why cut yourself off from the hope of it for ever?”

  Dalgliesh said: “You cut yourself off from the misery too. That might seem more important. But I think you’re right. I don’t believe Josephine Fallon killed herself. I believe she was murdered. That’s why I’m asking if there’s anything else you can tell me.”

  “No. I was on duty at the Exchange the night she died. I had better give you the address. I suppose you’ll want to c
heck.”

  “There are reasons why it’s extremely unlikely to have been anyone who wasn’t familiar with Nightingale House. But we shall check.”

  “Here’s the address then.” He tore a corner from the newspaper covering the table and, taking a pencil from his trouser pocket, wrote down the address in a crabbed hand, his head nearly touching the paper. Then he folded it as if the message were secret, and pushed it across the table.

  “Take the stone too. I’d like you to have it. No, take it. Please take it. You think I’m heartless, that I’m not grieving for her. But I am. I want you to find out who killed her. It won’t do any good to her or to the man, but I want you to find out. And I am sorry. It’s just that I can’t let myself feel too much. I can’t let myself get involved. You understand?”

  Dalgliesh took the stone in his hand and rose to go. “Yes,” he said: “I understand.”

  3

  Mr. Henry Urquhart of Messrs. Urquhart, Wimbush and Portway was Josephine Fallon’s solicitor. Dalgliesh’s appointment with him was for twelve twenty-five p.m., a time disobligingly chosen, he felt, to intimate that every minute of the solicitor’s time was valuable and that he was prepared to spare the police no more than half an hour before lunch. Dalgliesh was admitted immediately. He doubted whether a detective sergeant would have been received so promptly. This was one of the minor advantages of his passion for doing the job himself, controlling the investigation from his office with a small army of detective constables, scenes-of-crime men, photographers, fingerprint experts and scientists ministering to his ego and effectively cutting him off from all but the main protagonists of the crime. He knew that he had a reputation for solving his cases very fast, but he never grudged time on jobs which some of his colleagues thought more appropriate to a detective constable. As a result he was sometimes given information which a less experienced interrogator would have missed. He hardly expected this happy bonus from Mr. Henry Urquhart. This interview was likely to be little more than the formal and punctilious exchange of relevant facts. But it had been necessary for him to visit London. There were matters which he had to attend to at the Yard. And it was always a pleasure to visit on foot and in the fitful sunlight of a winter morning these secluded corners of the City.