Shroud for a Nightingale

by P. D. James

  “You look desperately tired and cold. Come over to the fire and sit down.”

  He walked over and leaned against the fireplace, fearing that if he once sat down he might never be able to get up again. But the mantelpiece felt unstable, the marble slippery as ice. He let himself down into the armchair, and watched while she knelt on the hearth rug and added the dry sticks of kindling to the still warm ashes of the previous evening’s fire. The sticks blazed into life. She added a few nuggets of coal, holding out her hands to the blaze. Then without getting up she reached into the pocket of her cloak and handed him a letter.

  A pale blue envelope unsealed and addressed in a round, childish but firm hand “to whom it may concern”. He took out the letter. Cheap, blue paper, perfectly ordinary, unruled, but with the lines of writing so straight that she must have used the ruled sheet as a guide.

  I killed Heather Pearce and Josephine Fallon. They had discovered something about my past, something which was no concern of theirs, and were threatening to blackmail me. When Sister Gearing rang to tell me Fallon had been taken ill and was warded I knew that Nurse Pearce would act the patient in her place. I collected the bottle of disinfectant very early that morning and filled one of the empty milk bottles from the Sisters’ utility room. I replaced the cap carefully and took the bottle with me to breakfast in my tapestry bag. All I had to do was to slip into the demonstration room after I had finished breakfast and substitute the bottle of poison for the bottle of milk on the trolley. If anyone had been in the room I should have made an excuse and tried another time and in another way. But the room was empty. I took the bottle of milk upstairs to the Sisters’ utility room and threw the empty bottle of disinfectant out of one of the bathroom windows.

  I was in the conservatory when Sister Gearing produced her tin of nicotine rose spray and I thought of it when it came to killing Fallon. I knew where the key to the conservatory was kept and I wore surgical gloves so that there would be no fingerprints. It was an easy matter to pour the poison into Fallon’s beaker of lemon and whisky while she was in the bathroom and the drink was cooling on her bedside table. Her nightly routine never varied. I intended to keep the tin, then place it on her bedside table later that night so that it would look as if she had killed herself. I knew it would be important to impress her fingerprints on the tin but that wouldn’t be difficult. I had to change my plan because Mr. Courtney-Briggs telephoned shortly before twelve to call me back to my ward. I couldn’t keep the tin in my possession since it wouldn’t be possible to have my bag always with me on the ward and I didn’t think it would be safe to leave it in my room. So I hid it in the sand bucket opposite Nurse Fallon’s room with the intention of retrieving it and placing it on her bedside table when I returned to Nightingale House. That plan, too, proved impossible. As I got to the top of the stairs the Burt twins came out of their rooms. There was a light shining through Nurse Fallon’s keyhole and they said they would take her some cocoa. I expected the body to be discovered that night. There was nothing I could do but to go upstairs to bed. I lay there waiting, expecting every minute to hear the alarm raised. I wondered if the twins had changed their plan and if Fallon had fallen asleep before drinking her whisky and lemon. But I didn’t dare to go down and see. If I had been able to place the tin of nicotine by Fallon’s bed no one would ever have suspected that she was murdered and I should have committed two perfect crimes.

  There is nothing else to say except that no one knew what I intended to do and no one helped me.

  Ethel Brumfett.

  Mary Taylor said: “It’s her handwriting, of course. I found it on her mantelshelf when I came back after I had telephoned you to check that everyone was safe. But is it true?”

  “Oh yes, it’s true. She killed both of them. Only the murderess could have known where the tin of nicotine was hidden. It was obvious that the second death was meant to look like suicide. Why then wasn’t the tin left on the bedside table? It could only have been because the killer was interrupted in her plan. Sister Brumfett was the only person in Nightingale House who was called out that night and who was prevented on her return from going into Fallon’s room. But she was always the first suspect. The bottle of poison must have been prepared at leisure and by someone who had access to milk bottles and to the disinfectant and who could carry the lethal bottle about with her undetected. Sister Brumfett went nowhere without that large tapestry bag. It was bad luck for her that she happened to choose a bottle with the wrong coloured cap. I wonder if she even noticed. Even if she did, there wouldn’t be time to change it. The whole plan depended on a substitution which would take merely a second. She would have to hope that no one noticed. And, in fact, no one did. And there is one way in which she was unique among the suspects. She was the only one who wasn’t present to witness either of the deaths. She couldn’t lift a hand against Fallon while the girl was her patient. That would have been impossible for her. And she preferred to watch neither murder. It takes a psychopathic killer or a professional willingly to watch their victim die.”

  She said: “We know that Heather Pearce was a potential blackmailer. I wonder what pathetic incident from poor Brumfett’s dreary past she’d raked up for her entertainment.”

  “I think you know that, just as I know. Heather Pearce had found out about Felsenheim.”

  She seemed to freeze into silence. She was curled on the edge of the armchair at his feet, her face turned away from him. After a moment she turned and looked at him.

  “She wasn’t guilty, you know. Brumfett was conforming, authoritarian, trained to think of unquestioning obedience as a nurse’s first duty. But she didn’t kill her patients. The verdict of that court at Felsenheim was just. And even if it wasn’t, it was the verdict of a properly constituted court of law. She is officially innocent.”

  Dalgliesh said: “I’m not here to question the verdict at Felsenheim.”

  As if he had not spoken she went on eagerly, as if willing him to believe.

  “She told me about it when we were both students together at Nethercastle Royal Infirmary. She lived in Germany most of her childhood but her grandmother was English. After the trial she naturally went free and later married an English sergeant, Ernest Brumfett. She had money and it was a marriage of convenience only, a way of getting out of Germany and into England. Her grandmother was dead by now and she still had some ties with this country. She went to Nethercastle as a ward orderly and was so efficient that, after eighteen months, there was no difficulty in getting the Matron to take her on as a student. It was a clever choice of hospital. They weren’t likely to delve too carefully into anyone’s past, particularly into the past of a woman who had proved her worth. The hospital is a large Victorian building, always busy, chronically understaffed. Brumfett and I finished our training together, went together to the local maternity hospital to train as midwives, came south together to the John Carpendar. I’ve known Ethel Brumfett for nearly twenty years. I’ve watched her pay over and over again for anything that happened at the Steinhoff Institution. She was a girl then. We can’t show what happened to her during those childhood years in Germany. We can only know what the grown woman did for this hospital and for her patients. The past has no relevance.”

  Dalgliesh said: “Until the thing which she must always have subconsciously dreaded happened at last. Until someone from that past recognized her.”

  She said: “Then all the years of work and striving would come to nothing. I can understand that she felt it necessary to kill Pearce. But why Fallon?”

  “For four reasons. Nurse Pearce wanted some proof of Martin Dettinger’s story before she spoke to Sister Brumfett. The obvious way to get it seemed to be to consult a record of the trial. So she asked Fallon to lend her a library ticket. She went up to the Westminster Library on the Thursday and again on the Saturday when the book was produced. She must have shown it to Sister Brumfett when she spoke to her, must have mentioned where she got the ticket. Sooner or later Fallon would want
that ticket back. It was essential that no one ever found out why Nurse Pearce had wanted it or the name of the book she had borrowed from the library. That was one of several significant facts which Sister Brumfett chose to omit from her confession. After she had substituted the bottle of poison for the one of milk, she came upstairs, took the library book from Nurse Pearce’s room, and hid it in one of the fire buckets until she had an opportunity to return it anonymously to the library. She knew only too well that Pearce would never come out of that demonstration room alive. It was typical of her to choose the same hiding place later for the tin of nicotine. Sister Brumfett wasn’t an imaginative woman.

  “But the problem of the library book wasn’t the main reason for killing Nurse Fallon. There were three others. She wanted to confuse the motives, to make it look as if Fallon were the intended victim. If Fallon died there would always be the probability that Pearce had been killed by mistake. It was Fallon who was listed to act as patient on the morning of the inspection. Fallon was a more likely victim. She was pregnant; that alone might provide a motive. Sister Brumfett had nursed her and could have known or guessed about the pregnancy. I don’t think there were many signs or symptoms that Sister Brumfett missed in her patients. Then there was the possibility that Fallon would be held responsible for Pearce’s death. After all, she had admitted returning to Nightingale House on the morning of the murder and had refused to give any explanation. She could have put the poison in the drip. Then afterwards, tormented by remorse perhaps, she killed herself. That explanation would dispose very neatly of both mysteries. It’s an attractive theory from the hospital’s point of view and quite a number of people preferred to believe it.”

  “And the last reason? You said there were four. She wanted to avoid inquiries about the library ticket; she wanted to suggest that Fallon had been the intended victim; alternatively she wanted to implicate Fallon in Pearce’s death. What was the fourth motive?”

  “She wanted to protect you. She always wanted that. It wasn’t easy with the first murder. You were in Nightingale House; you had as much opportunity as anyone to interfere with the drip-feed. But at least she could ensure that you had an alibi for the time of Fallon’s death. You were safely in Amsterdam. You couldn’t possibly have killed the second victim. Why, therefore, should you have killed the first? From the beginning of this investigation I decided that the two murders were connected. It was too much of a co incidence to postulate two killers in the same house at the same time. And that automatically excluded you from the list of suspects.”

  “But why should anyone suspect me of killing either girl?”

  “Because the motive we’ve imputed to Ethel Brumfett doesn’t make sense. Think about it. A dying man came momentarily out of unconsciousness and saw a face bending over him. He opened his eyes and through his pain and delirium he recognized a woman. Sister Brumfett? Would you recognize Ethel Brumfett’s face after twenty-five years? Plain, ordinary, inconspicuous Brumfett? There’s only one woman in a million who has a face so beautiful and so individual that it can be recognized even in a fleeting glance across twenty-five years of memory. Your face. It was you and not Sister Brumfett who was Irmgard Grobel.”

  She said quietly: “Irmgard Grobel is dead.”

  He went on as if she had not spoken.

  “It’s not surprising that Nurse Pearce never suspected for one moment that Grobel could be you. You’re the Matron, protected by a quasi-religious awe from that taint of human weakness, let alone human sin. It must have been psychologically impossible for her to think of you as a killer. And then, there were the words used by Martin Dettinger. He said it was one of the Sisters. I think I know how he made that mistake. You visit every ward in the hospital once a day, speak to nearly all the patients. The face he saw bending over him was not only clearly the face of Irmgard Grobel. He saw a woman wearing what to him was a Sister’s uniform, the short cape and wide triangular cap of the army nursing service. To his drug-muddled mind that uniform meant a Sister. It still means a Sister to anyone who has been nursed in an army hospital, and he had spent months in them.”

  She said again quietly: “Irmgard Grobel is dead.”

  “So he told Nurse Pearce much the same as he told his own mother. Mrs. Dettinger wasn’t particularly interested. Why should she be? And then she received a hospital account and thought that there might be a way of saving herself a few pounds. If Mr. Courtney-Briggs hadn’t been greedy I doubt whether she would have taken it any further. But she did, and Courtney-Briggs was given an intriguing piece of information which he thought it worth taking some time and trouble to verify. We can guess what Heather Pearce thought. She must have experienced much the same triumph and sense of power as when she saw Nurse Dakers stooping to pick up those pound notes fluttering on the path in front of her. Only this time someone a great deal more important and interesting than a fellow student would be in her power. It never occurred to her that the patient could be referring to a woman other than the Sister nursing him. But she knew she had to get proof, or at least assure herself that Dettinger, who after all was a dying man, wasn’t deluded or hallucinating. So she spent her halfday on Thursday visiting the Westminster Library and asked them for a book about the Felsenheim trial. They had to borrow it for her from another branch and she returned for it on Saturday. I think she learned enough from that book to convince herself that Martin Dettinger knew what he was talking about. I think that she spoke to Sister Brumfett on the Saturday night and that the Sister didn’t deny the charge. I wonder what price Pearce was asking? Nothing as commonplace or understandable or as reprehensible as direct payment for her silence. Pearce liked to exercise power; but even more she enjoyed indulging in moral rectitude. It must have been on Sunday morning that she wrote to the Secretary of the League for the Assistance of Fascist Victims. Sister Brumfett would be made to pay, but the money would go in regular instalments to the League. Pearce was a great one for making the punishment fit the crime.”

  This time she was silent, sitting there with her hands folded gently in her lap and looking expressionless into some unfathomable past.

  He said gently: “It can all be checked, you know. We haven’t much of her body left but we don’t need it while we have your face. There will be records of the trial, photographs, the record of your marriage to a Sergeant Taylor.”

  She spoke so quietly that he had to bend his head to hear: “He opened his eyes very wide and looked at me. He didn’t speak. There was a wildness, a desperation about that look. I thought that he was becoming delirious, or perhaps that he was afraid. I think he knew in that moment that he was going to die. I spoke to him a little and then his eyes closed. I didn’t recognize him. Why should I?

  “I’m not the same person as that child in Steinhoff. I don’t mean I think of Steinhoff as if it happened to someone else. It did happen to someone else. I can’t even remember now what exactly happened in that court at Felsenheim; I can’t recall a single face.”

  But she had had to tell someone. That must have been part of becoming another person, of putting Steinhoff out of her thoughts. So she had told Ethel Brumfett. They had both been young student nurses at Nethercastle and Dalgliesh supposed that Brumfett represented something to her: kindness, reliability, devotion. Otherwise, why Brumfett? Why on earth choose her as a confidante?

  He must have been speaking his words aloud because she said eagerly as if it were important to make him understand: “I told her because she was so ordinary. There was a security about her ordinariness. I felt that if Brumfett could listen and believe me and still like me, then nothing that had happened was so very terrible after all. You wouldn’t understand that.”

  But he did understand. There had been a boy in his prep school like that, so ordinary, so safe, that he was a kind of talisman against death and disaster. Dalgliesh remembered the boy. Funny, but he hadn’t thought of him now for over thirty years. Sproat Minor with his round, pleasant, spectacled face, his ordinary, conventional fami
ly, his unremarkable background, his blessed normality. Sproat Minor, protected by mediocrity and insensitivity from the terrors of the world. Life could not be wholly frightening while it had a Sproat Minor. Dalgliesh wondered briefly where he was now.

  He said: “And Brumfett had stuck to you ever since. When you came here she followed. That impulse to confide, the need to have at least one friend who knew all about you, put you in her power. Brumfett, the protector, adviser, confidante. Theatres with Brumfett; morning golf with Brumfett; holidays with Brumfett; country drives with Brumfett; early morning tea and late-night drinks with Brumfett. Her devotion must have been real enough. After all, she was willing to kill for you. But it was blackmail all the same. A more orthodox blackmailer, merely demanding a regular tax-free income, would have been infinitely preferable to Brumfett’s intolerable devotion.”

  She said sadly: “It’s true. It’s all true. How can you possibly know?”

  “Because she was essentially a stupid and dull woman and you are not.”

  He could have added: “Because I know myself.”

  She cried out in vehement protest.

  “And who am I to despise stupidity and dullness? What right had I to be so particular? Oh, she wasn’t clever! She couldn’t even kill for me without making a mess of it. She wasn’t clever enough to deceive Adam Dalgliesh, but when is that to be the criteria for intelligence? Have you ever seen her doing her job? Seen her with a dying patient or a sick child? Have you ever watched this stupid and dull woman, whose devotion and company it is apparently proper for me to despise, working all night to save a life?”

  “I’ve seen the body of one of her victims and read the autopsy report on the other. I’ll take your word for her kindness to children.”