Shroud for a Nightingale

II

Nurse Goodale was summoned by telephone.and arrived within two minutes looking unhurried and composed. Miss Taylor seemed to think that neither explanation nor reassurance was necessary to this self-possessed young woman but simply said:

“Sit down, Nurse. Superintendent Dalgliesh wants to talk to you.”

Then she took up her cloak from the chair, swung it over her shoulders, and went out without another glance at either of them. Sergeant Masterson opened his notebook. Nurse Goodale seated herself in an upright chair at the table but when Dalgliesh motioned her to an armchair before the fire, moved without demur. She sat stiffly on the very edge of the chair, her back straight, her surprisingly shapely and elegant legs planted modestly side by side. But the hands lying in her lap were perfectly relaxed and Dalgliesh, seated opposite, found himself confronting a pair of disconcertingly intelligent eyes. He said:

“You were probably closer to Miss Fallon than anyone else in the hospital. Tell me about her.”

She showed no surprise at the form of his first question, but paused for a few seconds before replying as if marshalling her thoughts. Then she said:

“I liked her. She tolerated me better than she did most of the other students but I don’t think her feeling for me was much stronger than that. She was thirty-one after all, and we must all have seemed rather immature to her. She had a rather sarcastic tongue which didn’t help, and I think some of the girls were rather afraid of her.

“She seldom spoke to me about her past but she did tell me that both her parents were killed in 1944 in a bombing raid on London. She was brought up by an elderly aunt and educated at one of those boarding-schools where they take children from an early age and keep them until they’re ready to leave. Provided the fees are paid of course, but I got the impression that there wasn’t any difficulty about that She always wanted to be a nurse but she got tuberculosis after she left school and had to spend two years in a sanatorium. I don’t know where. After that, two hospitals turned her down on grounds of health, so she took a number of temporary jobs. She told me soon after we began our training that she had once been engaged but that it didn’t work out”

“You never asked her why?”

“I never asked her anything. If she had Wanted to tell me she would have done so.”

“Did she tell you that she was pregnant?”

“Yes. She told me two days before she went sick. She must have suspected before then but the confirming report came that morning. I asked her what she intended doing about it and she said that she would get rid of the baby.”

“Did you point out that this was probably illegal?”

“No. She didn’t care about legality. I told her that it was wrong.”

“But she still intended to go ahead with the abortion?”

“Yes, she said that she knew a doctor who would do it and that there wouldn’t be any real risk. I asked her if she needed money and she said that she would be all right that money was the least of her problems. She never told me who she was going to, and I didn’t ask.”

“But you were prepared to help her with money had she needed it even though you disapproved of getting rid of the baby?”

“My disapproval wasn’t important. What was important was that it was wrong. But when I knew that she had made up her mind I had to decide whether to help her. I was afraid that she might go to some unqualified back street abortionist and risk her life and health. I know that the law has changed, that it’s easier now to get a medical recommendation, but I didn’t think she would qualify. I had to make a moral decision. If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don’t you think?”

Dalgliesh said gravely: “It’s an interesting theological point which I’m not competent to argue. Did she tell you who was the father of the child?”

“Not directly. I think it may have been a young writer she was friendly with. I don’t know his name or where you can find him but I do know that Jo spent a week with him in the Isle of Wight last October. She had seven days’ holiday due and she told me that she’d decided to walk in the island with a friend. I imagine he was the friend. It certainly wasn’t anyone from here. They went during the first week and she told me that they’d stayed in a small inn about five miles south of Ventor. That’s all she did tell me. I suppose it’s possible that she became pregnant during that week?”

Dalgliesh said: “The dates would fit And she never confided in you about the father of the child?”

“No. I asked her why she wouldn’t marry the father and she said that it would be unfair to the child to burden it with two irresponsible parents. I remember her saying: ‘He would be horrified at the idea, anyway, unless he had a sudden urge to experience fatherhood just to see what it was like. And he might like to see the baby born so that he could write a lurid account of childbirth some day. But he really isn’t committed to anyone but himself.”“

“But did she care for him?”

The girl paused a full minute before replying. Then she said:

“I think she did. I think that may have been why she killed herself.”

“What makes you think that she did?”

“I suppose because the alternative is even more unlikely. I never thought that Jo was the type to kill herself-if there is a type. But I really didn’t know her. One never does really know another human being. Anything is possible for anyone. I’ve always believed that And it’s surely more likely that she killed herself than that someone murdered her. That seems absolutely incredible. Why should they?”

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me.”

“Well, I can’t. She hadn’t any enemies at the John Carpendar as far as I know. She wasn’t popular. She was too reserved, too solitary. But people didn’t dislike her. And even if they did, murder surely suggests something more than ordinary dislike. It seems so much more probable that she came back to duty too soon after influenza, was overcome by psychological depression, felt she couldn’t cope with getting rid of the baby, and yet couldn’t face up to having an illegitimate child and killed herself on impulse.”

“You said when I questioned you all in the demonstration room that you were probably the last person to see her alive. What exactly happened while you were together last night? Did she give you any idea that she might be thinking of suicide?”

“If she had, I should hardly have left her to go to bed alone. She said nothing. I don’t think we exchanged more than half a dozen words. I asked her how she felt and she replied that she was all right She obviously wasn’t in the mood to chat so I didn’t make myself a nuisance. After about twenty minutes I went up to bed. I never saw her again.”

“And she didn’t mention her pregnancy?”

“She mentioned nothing. She looked tired, I thought, and rather pale. But then, Jo always was rather pale. It’s distressing for me to think that she might have needed help and that I left her without speaking the words that might have saved her. But she wasn’t a woman to invite confidences. I stayed behind when the others left because I thought she might want to talk. When it was plain that she wanted to be alone, I left.”

She talked about being distressed, thought Dalgliesh, but she neither looked nor sounded it. She felt no self-reproach. Why indeed should she? He doubted whether she felt particular grief. She had been closer to Josephine Fallon than any of the students. But she had not really cared. Was there anyone in the world who had? He asked:

“And Nurse Pearce’s death?”

“I think that was essentially an accident. Someone put the poison in the feed as a joke or out of vague malice without realizing that the result would be fatal.”

“Which would be odd in a third-year student nurse whose program of lectures presumably included basic information on corrosive poisons.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that it was a nurse. I don’t know who it was. I don’t think you’ll ever find out now. But I can’t believe that it was willful murder.”

That was all very well, thought Dalgliesh, but surely it was a little disingenuous in a girl as intelligent as Nurse Goodale. It was, of course, the popular, almost the official view. It exonerated everyone from the worst crime and indicted no one of anything more than malice and carelessness. It was a comforting theory, and unless he were lucky it might never be disproved. But he didn’t believe it himself, and he couldn’t accept that Nurse Goodale did. But it was even harder to accept that here was a girl to comfort herself with false theories or deliberately to shut her eyes to unpalatable facts.

Dalgliesh then asked her about her movements on the morning of Pearce’s death. He already knew them from Inspector Bailey’s notes and her previous statement and was not surprised when Nurse Goodale confirmed them without hesitation. She had got up at 6.45 and had drunk early morning tea with the rest of the set in the utility room. She had told them about Fallon’s influenza since it was to her room that Nurse Fallon had come when she was taken ill in the night None of the students had expressed particular concern but they had wondered how the demonstration would go now that the set was so decimated and had speculated, not without malice, how Sister Gearing would acquit herself in the face of a G.N.C. inspection. Nurse Pearce had drunk her tea with the rest of the set and Nurse Goodale thought that she remembered Pearce saying:

“With Fallon ill, I suppose I shall have to act the patient.” Nurse Goodale couldn’t recall any comment or discussion about this. It was well accepted that the next student on the list substituted for anyone who was ill.

After she had drunk her tea, Nurse Goodale had dressed and had then made her way to the library to revise the treatment of laryngectomy in preparation for the morning’s session. It was important that there should be a quick and lively response to questions if the seminar were to be a success. She had settled herself to work at about 7.15 and Nurse Dakers had joined her shortly afterwards, sharing a devotion to study which, thought Dalgliesh, had at least been rewarded by an alibi for most of the time before breakfast She and Dakers had said nothing of interest to each other while they had been working and had left the library at the same time and gone into breakfast together. That had been at about ten minutes to eight. She had sat with Dakers and the Burt twins, but had left the breakfast room before them. That was at 8.15. She had returned to her bedroom to make the bed, and then gone to the library to write a couple of letters. That done, she had paid a brief visit to the cloakroom and had made her way to the demonstration room just before a quarter to nine. Only Sister Gearing and the Burt twins were already there, but the rest of the set had joined them shortly afterwards; she couldn’t remember in what order. She thought that Pearce had been one of the last to arrive.

Dalgliesh asked: “How did Nurse Pearce seem?”

“I noticed nothing unusual about her, but then I wouldn’t expect to. Pearce was Pearce. She made a negligible impression.”

“Did she say anything before the demonstration began?”

“Yes, she did as a matter of fact. It’s odd that you should ask that. I haven’t mentioned it before, I suppose because Inspector Bailey didn’t ask. But she did speak. She looked round at us-the set had all assembled by then-and asked if anyone had taken anything from her bedroom.”

“Did she say what?”

“No.” She just stood there with that accusing rather belligerent look she occasionally had and said: “Has anyone been to my room this morning or taken anything from it?”

“No one replied. I think we just all shook our heads. It wasn’t a question we took particularly seriously. Pearce was apt to make a great fuss about trifles. Anyway, the Burt twins were busy with their preparations and the rest of us were chatting. Pearce didn’t get a great deal of attention paid to her question. I doubt whether half of us heard her even.”

“Did you notice how she reacted? Was she worried or angry or distressed?”

“None of those things. It was odd really. I remember now. She looked satisfied, almost triumphant, as if something she suspected had been confirmed. I don’t know why I noticed that, but I did. Sister Gearing then called us to order and the demonstration began.”

Dalgliesh did not immediately speak at the end of this recital and, after a little time, she took his silence for dismissal and rose to go. She got out of the chair with the same controlled grace as she had seated herself, smoothed her apron with a scarcely discernible gesture, gave him a last interrogatory glance and walked to the door. Then she turned as if yielding to an impulse.

“You asked me if anyone had a reason to kill Jo. I said I knew of no one. That is true. But I suppose a legal motive is something different I ought to tell you that some people might think I had a motive.”

Dalgliesh said: “Had you?”

T expect you’ll think so. I am Jo’s heir, at least I think I am. She told me about three months ago that she had made her will and that she was leaving me all she had. She gave me the name and address of her solicitor,“t can let you have the information. They haven’t yet written to me but I expect they will, that is if Jo really made her will. But I expect she did. She wasn’t a girl to make promises she didn’t fulfill. Perhaps you would prefer to get in touch with the solicitors now7 These things take time, don’t they?”

“Did she say why she was making you her legatee?”

“She said that she had to leave her money to someone and that I would probably do most good with it I didn’t take the matter very seriously and neither, I think, did she. After all she was only thirty-one. She wasn’t expecting to die. And she warned me that she’d probably change her mind long before she got old enough to make the legacy a serious prospect for me. After all she’d probably marry. But she felt she ought to make a will and I was the only person at the time who she cared to remember. I thought that it was only a formality. It never occurred to me that she might have much to leave. It was only when we had our talk about the cost of an abortion that she told me how much she was worth.”

“And was it-is it-much?”

The girl answered calmly: “About £16,000 I believe. It came from her parents’ insurances.”

She smiled a little wryly.

“Quite worth having you see, Superintendent. I should think it would rank as a perfectly respectable motive, wouldn’t you? We shall be able to put central heating in the vicarage now.

And if you saw my fiance’s vicarage-twelve rooms, nearly all of them facing north or east-you would think I had quite a motive for murder.“