Shroud for a Nightingale

IV

In the office Detective Sergeant Masterson was typing a report Dalgliesh said:

“Immediately before she came into the school, Nurse Pearce was working on the private ward under Sister Brumfett. I want to know if anything significant happened there. And I want a detailed account of her last week’s duty and an hour-by-hour account of what she did on her last day. Find out who the other nursing staff were, what her duties were, when she was off duty, how she appeared to the other staff. I want the names of the patients who were on the ward while she was nursing there and what happened to them. Your best plan is to talk to the other nurses and to work from the nursing reports. They’re bound to keep a book which is written up dairy.”

“Shall I get it from Matron?”

“No. Ask Sister Brumfett for it We deal directly with her, and for God’s sake be tactful. Have you those reports ready yet?”

“Yes, sir. They’ve been typed. Do you want to read them now?”

“No. Tell me if there’s anything I ought to know. I’ll look at them tonight I suppose if’s too much to expect that any of our suspects has a police record?”

“If they have, sir, it isn’t noted on the personal dossiers. There’s remarkable little information in most of them. Julia Paridoe was expelled from school, though. She seems to be the only delinquent among them.”

“Good God! What for?”

“Her dossier doesn’t say. Apparently it was something to do with a visiting math master. Her headmistress felt it right to mention it when she sent Matron a reference before the girl started here. It isn’t very specific. She writes that Julia was more sinned against than sinning and that she hoped the hospital would give her the chance of training for the only career she has ever shown any interest in, or signs of being suited for.”

“A nice double edged comment. So that’s why the London teaching hospitals wouldn’t take her. I thought Sister Rolfe was being a little disingenuous about the reasons. Anything about the others? Any previous connections between them?”

“Matron and Sister Brumfett trained together in the north at Nethercastle Royal Infirmary, did their midwifery training at the Municipal Maternity Hospital there and came here fifteen years ago, both as ward Sisters. Mr. Courtney-Briggs was in Cairo during 1946-7 and so was Sister Gearing. He was a major in the R.A.M.C. and she was a nursing sister in the Q.A.R.N.S. There’s no suggestion that they knew each other there.”

“If they did, you’d hardly expect to find the fact recorded on their personal records. But they probably did. Cairo in ‘46 was a chummy place, so my army friends tell me. I wonder if Miss Taylor served in the Q.A.R.N.S. That’s an army nursing service cap which she wears.”

“If she did, sir, it isn’t on her dossier. The earliest document is her reference from her training school when she came here as a Sister. They thought very highly of her at Nethercastle.”

“They think very highly of her here. Have you checked on Courtney-Briggs?”

“Yes, sir. The lodge porter makes a note of every car in and out after midnight Mr. Courtney-Briggs left at twelve thirty-two a.m.”

“Later than he led us to believe. I want a check on his schedule. The precise time he finished the operation will be in the operating theatre book. The junior doctor assisting him will probably know when he left-Mr. Courtney-Briggs is the kind of man who gets escorted to his car. Then drive over the route and time him. They will have moved the tree by now but it should be possible to see where it came down. He can’t have wasted more than a few minutes at the most tying on his scarf. Find out what happened to that He’d hardly lie about something so easily disproved, but he’s arrogant enough to think he can get away with anything, including murder.”

“Constable Greeson can do the checking, sir. He likes these reconstruction jobs.”

“Tell him to curb his urge for verisimilitude. There’s no need for him to don an operating gown and go into the theatre. Not that they’d let him. Is there any news yet from Sir Miles or the lab?”

“No, sir, but we’ve got the name and address of the man Nurse Fallon spent that week in the Isle of Wight with. He’s a G.P.O. night telephonist and lives in North Kensington. The local people got on to them almost at once. Fallon made it very easy for them. She booked in her own name and they had two single rooms.”

“She was a woman who valued her privacy. Still, she hardly got pregnant by staying in her own room. I’ll see the man tomorrow morning after I’ve visited Miss Fallon’s solicitor. Is Leonard Morris in the hospital yet, do you know?”

“Not yet, sir. I checked at the pharmacy that he telephoned this morning and said he wasn’t well. Apparently he suffers from a duodenal ulcer. They assume that it’s playing him up again.”

“It will play him up a great deal worse if he doesn’t come back soon and get the interview over. I don’t want to embarrass him by visiting his house, but we can’t wait indefinitely to get Sister Gearing’s story verified. Both these murders, if they were murders, hinge on the question of timing. We must know everyone’s movements, if possible, to the minute. Time is crucial.”

Masterson said: “That’s what surprises me about the poisoned drip. The carbolic couldn’t have been added to the milk without a great deal of care, particularly in replacing the bottle seal and making sure that the concentration was right and that the stuff had the texture and color of milk. It couldn’t have been done in a hurry.”

“I’ve no doubt a great deal of care and time were taken. But I think I know how it was done.”

He described his theory. Sergeant Masterson, cross with himself for having missed the obvious, said:

“Of course. It must have been done that way.”

“Not must, Sergeant. It was probably done that way.”

But Sergeant Masterson had seen an objection and voiced it.

Dalgliesh replied: “But that wouldn’t apply to a woman. A woman could do it easily and one woman in particular. But I admit it would be more difficult for a man.”

“So the assumption is that the milk was doctored by a woman?”

“The probability is that both girls were murdered by a woman. But it’s still only a probability. Have you heard yet whether Nurse Dakers is well enough to be interviewed? Dr. Snelling was supposed to be seeing her this morning.”

“Matron rang just before lunch to say that the girl is still asleep, but that she’ll probably be fit enough once she wakes up. She’s under sedation, so God knows when that’ll be. Shall I take a look at her while I’m in the private wing?”

“No. I’ll see her later. But you might check on this story that Fallon returned to Nightingale House on the morning of 12th January. Someone might have seen her leave. And where were her clothes kept while she was warded? Could anyone have got hold of them and impersonated her? It seems unlikely but it ought to be checked.”

“Inspector Bailey did check, sir. No one saw Fallon leave but they admit that she could have got out of the ward undetected. They were very busy and she had a private room. If it were found empty they would probably have assumed that she’d gone to the bathroom. Her clothes were hung in the wardrobe in her room. Anyone who had a right to be in the ward could have got at them, provided, of course, that Fallon was asleep or out of the room. But no one thinks it likely that anyone did.”

“Nor do L I think I know why Fallon came back to Nightingale House. Nurse Goodale told us that Fallon had received the pregnancy confirmation only two days before she went sick. It’s possible that she didn’t destroy it If so, if’s the one possession in her room which she wouldn’t want to leave for someone else to find. It certainly isn’t among her papers. My guess is that she came back to retrieve it, tore it up, and flushed it down the lavatory.”

“Couldn’t she have telephoned Nurse Goodale and asked her to destroy it?”

“Not without exciting suspicion. She couldn’t be sure that she’d get Goodale herself when she rang and she wouldn’t want to give anyone else a message. This insistence to speak to one particular nurse and the reluctance to accept help from anyone else would look rather odd. But it’s no more than a theory. Is the search of Nightingale House completed?”

“Yes, sir. They’ve found nothing. No trace of poison and no container. Most of the rooms contain bottles of aspirin and Sister Gearing, Sister Brumfett and Miss Taylor all have a small supply of sleeping tablets. But surely Fallon didn’t die of hypnotic or soporific poisoning?”

“No. It was quicker than that We shall just have to possess ourselves in patience until we get the laboratory report.”