Shroud for a Nightingale

III

Sergeant Charles Masterson was six feet three inches tall and broad shouldered. He carried his bulk easily and all his movements were surprisingly controlled and precise for such an assertively masculine and heavy man. He was generally considered handsome, particularly by himself, and with his strong face, sensual lips and hooded eyes looked remarkably like a well-known American film actor of the guts-and-guns school. Dalgliesh occasionally suspected that the sergeant, aware, as he could hardly fail to be, of the resemblance, was helping it along by assuming a trace of an American accent.

“All right. Sergeant You’ve had a chance to look at the place, you’ve talked to some of the people. Tell me about it”

This invitation had been known to strike terror into the hearts of Dalgliesh’s subordinates. It meant that the Superintendent now expected to hear a brief, succinct, accurate, elegantly phrased but comprehensive account of the crime which would give all the salient facts so far known to someone who came to it freshly. The ability to know what you want to say and to say it in the minimum of appropriate words is as uncommon in policemen as in other members of the community. Dalgliesh’s subordinates were apt to complain that they hadn’t realized that a degree in English was the new qualification for joining the C.I.D. But Sergeant Masterson was less intimidated than most He had his weaknesses, but lack of confidence was not one of them. He was glad to be working on the case. It was well known at the Yard that Superintendent Dalgliesh couldn’t tolerate a fool and that his definition of folly was individual and precise. Masterson respected him because Dalgliesh was one of the Yard’s most successful detectives and for Masterson success was the only real criteria. He thought him very able, which is not to say that he thought Adam Dalgliesh as able as Charles Masterson. Most of the time, and for reasons which it seemed to him unprofitable to explore, he disliked him heartily. He suspected that the antipathy was mutual, but this didn’t particularly worry him. Dalgliesh wasn’t a man to prejudice a subordinate’s career because he disliked him and was known to be meticulous, if judicious, in ascribing credit where it was due. But the situation would need watching, and Masterson intended to watch it An ambitious man on his carefully planned climb to senior rank was a fool if he didn’t early recognize that it was bloody daft to antagonize a senior officer. Masterson had no intention of being that kind of a fool. But a little co-operation from the Super in this campaign of mutual goodwill wouldn’t be unwelcome. And he wasn’t sure he was going to get it He said:

“I’ll deal with the two deaths separately, sir. The first victim…”

“Why talk like a crime reporter, Sergeant? Let’s be sure we have a victim before we use the word.”

Masterson began: “The first deceased… the first girl to die was a twenty-one-year old student nurse, Heather Pearce.” He went on to recite the facts of both girls’ deaths, as far as they were known, taking care to avoid the more blatant examples of police jargon, to which he knew his Super to be morbidly sensitive, and resisting the temptation to display his recently acquired knowledge of intra-gastric feeding about which he bad taken trouble to extract from Sister Rolf e a comprehensive, if grudging, explanation. He ended: “So we have, sir, the possibilities that one or both of the deaths was suicide, that one or both was accidental, that the first was murder but that the wrong victim was killed, or that there were two murders with two intended victims. An intriguing choice, sir.”

Dalgliesh said: “Or that Fallon’s death was due to natural causes. Until we get the toxicology report we’re theorizing in advance of the facts. But for the present we treat both deaths as murder. Well, let’s go to the library and see what the Vice-Chairman of the Hospital Management Committee has to say to us.”