Shroud for a Nightingale

V

She went with Courtney-Briggs to the front door. They didn’t linger. She was back in less than a minute, and walking briskly over to the fire, she slipped her cloak from her shoulders and laid it tidily over the back of the sofa. Then, kneeling, she took up a pair of brass tongs and began to build up the fire, coal carefully disposed on coal, each licking flame fed with its gleaming nugget Without looking up at Dalgliesh, she said:

“We were interrupted in our conversation, Superintendent You were accusing me of murder. I have faced that charge once before, but at least the court at Pelsenheim produced some evidence. What evidence have you?”

“None.”

“Nor will you ever find any.”

She spoke without anger or complacency but with an intensity, a quiet finality that had nothing to do with innocence.

Looking down at the gleaming head burnished by the firelight Dalgliesh said:

“But you haven’t denied it. You haven’t lied to me yet and I don’t suppose you’ll trouble to begin now. Why should she have killed herself in that way? She liked her comfort. Why be uncomfortable in death? Suicides seldom are unless they’re too psychotic to care. She had access to plenty of pain-killing drugs. Why not use one of them? Why trouble to creep away to a cold dark garden shed to immolate herself in lonely agony? She wasn’t ‘even fortified by the gratifications of a public show.”

There are precedents.“

“Not many in this country.”

“Perhaps she was too psychotic to care.”

“That will be said of course.”

“She may have realized that it was important not to leave an identifiable body if she wanted to convince you that she was Grobel. Faced with a written confession and a heap of charred bones, why should you bother any further? There was no point in killing herself to protect me if you could confirm her real identity without trouble.”

“A clever and far-sighted woman might argue like that. She was neither. But you are. It must have seemed just worth a try. And even if we never found out about Irmgard Grobel and Felsenheim, it had become important to get rid of Brumfett. As you’ve said, she couldn’t even kill without making a mess of it. She had already panicked once when she tried to murder me. She might easily panic again. She had been an encumbrance for years; now she had become a dangerous liability. You hadn’t asked her to kill for you. It wasn’t even a reasonable way out of the difficulty. Pearce’s threats could have been dealt with if Sister Brumfett had only kept her head and reported the matter to you. But she had to demonstrate her devotion in the most spectacular way she knew. She killed to protect you. And those two deaths bound you and she together indissolubly for life. How could you ever be free or secure while Brumfett lived?”

“Aren’t you going to tell me how I did it?”

They might, Dalgliesh thought, be two colleagues talking over a case together. Even through his weakness he knew that this bizarre conversation was dangerously unorthodox, that the woman kneeling at his feet was an enemy, that the intelligence opposed to his was inviolate. She had no hope now of saving her reputation, but she was fighting for freedom, perhaps even for her life. He said:

“I can tell you how I would have done it. It wasn’t difficult Her bedroom was the one nearest the door of your fiat I suppose she asked for that room, and nothing Sister Brumfett wanted could be denied. Because she knew about the Steinhoff Institution? Because she had a hold over you? Or merely because she had lumbered you with the weight of her devotion and you hadn’t the ruthlessness to break free? So she slept close to you.

“I don’t know how she died. It could have been a tablet, an injection, something you administered on the pretence that it would help her to sleep. She had already, at your request written the confession. I wonder how you persuaded her to do that? I don’t suppose she thought for one moment that it was going to be used. It isn’t addressed to me or to any particular person. I imagine you told her that there ought to be something in writing just in case anything happened to her or to you and it was necessary sometime in the future to have a record of what really happened, proof that would protect you. So she wrote that plain note, probably at your dictation. It has a directness and lucidity that has little, I imagine, to do with Sister Brumfett.

“And so she dies. You have only to carry her body two yards to gain the safety of your door. Even so, this is the most risky part of your plan. Suppose Sister Gearing or Sister Rolfe should appear? So you prop open Sister Brumfett’s door and the door of your flat and listen carefully to make sure that the corridor is clear. Then you hoist the body over your shoulder and move swiftly into your flat You lay the body on the bed and go back to shut her bedroom door and to shut and lock your own front door. She was a plump but short woman. You are tall and strong and have been trained to lift helpless patients. That part wasn’t so difficult.”

“But now you must move her to your car. It’s convenient having access to your garage from the downstairs hall and a private stairway. With both the outside and inside doors of the flat locked you can work without fear of interruption. The body is hoisted into the back of your car and covered with a traveling rug. Then you drive out through the grounds and reverse the car under the trees, as close as possible to the garden shed. You keep the engine running. It is important to make a quick getaway, be back in your flat before the fire is seen. This part of the plan is a little risky but the Winchester Road path is seldom used after dark. The ghost of Nancy Gorring sees to that It would be inconvenient but not catastrophic if you were seen. After all, you are the Matron, there is nothing to prevent you taking a night drive. If anyone passes, you will have to drive on and choose another place or another time. But no one does pass. The car is deep under the trees; the lights are out You carry the body to the shed. Then there is a second journey with the can of petrol. And after that there is-nothing to do but souse the body and the surrounding furniture and piles of wood and throw in a lighted match from the open doorway.

“It takes only a moment to restart the car and to drive straight back through the garage doors. Once they are closed behind you, you are safe. Certainly you know that the fire will bum with such fierceness that it will be seen almost at once. But by then you are back in your own flat, ready to receive the telephone call which tells you that the fire engine is on its way, ready to ring me. And the suicide note which she left in your charge, perhaps never to be used, is ready to be handed over.”

She asked quietly: “And how will you prove it?” “Probably never. But I know that is how it happened.” She said: “But you will try to prove it, won’t you? After all, failure would be intolerable for Adam Dalgliesh. You will try to prove it no matter what the cost to yourself or anyone else. And after all, there is a chance. There isn’t much hope of finding tire marks under the trees of course. The effects of the fire, the wheels of the fire engine, the trampling of the men, will have obliterated any clues on the ground. But then you will examine the inside of the car surely, particularly the rug. Don’t neglect the car rug, Superintendent. There may be fibers from the clothes, even a few hairs, perhaps. But that wouldn’t be surprising. Miss Brumfett often drove with me; the car rug actually belongs to her; it’s probably covered with her hairs. But what about clues in my flat? If I carried her body down the narrow back staircase surely there will be marks on the walls where they were grazed by her shoes? Unless, of course, the woman who killed Brumfett had sufficient sense to remove her victim’s shoes and carry them separately, perhaps slung by the laces around her neck. They couldn’t be left in the flat You might check on the number of pairs that Brumfett owned. After all, someone in Nightingale House could tell you. We have so little privacy from each other. And no woman would walk through the woods barefoot to her death.

“And the other clues in the flat? If I killed her, ought there not to be a syringe, a bottle of pills, something to indicate how I did it? But her medicine cupboard and mine both contain a supply of aspirin and sleeping tablets. Suppose I gave her those? Or simply stunned or suffocated her? Any method would be as good as another provided it didn’t make a mess. How can you possibly prove how she died when all you have for the autopsy are a few charred bones? And there’s the suicide note, a note in her own handwriting and containing facts which only the killer of Pearce and Fallon could have known. Whatever you may choose to believe, Superintendent, are you going to tell me that the Coroner won’t be satisfied that Ethel Brumfett intended that note as a confession before burning herself to death?”

Dalgliesh knew that he could no longer stay upright He was fighting sickness now as well as weakness. The hand which grasped the mantelshelf for support was colder than the marble and slippery with sweat and the marble itself was soft and yielding as putty. His wound was beginning to throb painfully, and the dull headache which up to now had been little more than vague discomfort was sharpening and localizing into needles of pain behind his left eye. To drop in a faint at her feet would be unforgettably humiliating. He reached out his arm and found the back of the nearest chair. Then gently he lowered himself into it. Her voice seemed to be coming from a long way off, but at least he could hear the words and knew that his own voice was still steady.

She said: “Suppose I told you that I could manage Stephen Courtney-Briggs, that no one but the three of us need ever know about Felsenheim? Would you be willing to leave my past out of your report so that at least those girls need not have died entirely in vain? It is important for this hospital that I stay on as Matron. I’m not asking you for mercy. I’m not concerned for myself. You will never prove that I killed Ethel Brumfett Aren’t you going to make yourself look ridiculous if you try? Isn’t the most courageous and sensible course to forget that this conversation ever took place, to accept Brumfett’s confession for the truth which it is, and to close the case?”

He said: “That’s not possible. Your past is part of the evidence. I can’t suppress evidence or omit relevant facts from my report because I don’t choose to like them. If I once did that I should have to give up my job. Not just this particular case, my job. And for always.”

“And you couldn’t do that, of course. What would a man like you be without his job, this particular job? Vulnerable like the rest of us. You might even have to begin living and feeling like a human being.”

“You can’t touch me like that Why humiliate yourself trying? There are regulations, orders, and an oath. Without them no one could safely do police work. Without them Ethel Brumfett wouldn’t be safe, you wouldn’t be safe, an Irmgard Grobel wouldn’t be safe.”

“Is that why you won’t help me?”

“Not altogether. I don’t choose to.”

She said sadly: “That’s honest, anyway. And you haven’t any doubts?”

“Of course I have. I’m not as arrogant as that There are always doubts.” And so there were. But they were intellectual and philosophical doubts, untormenting and uninsistent It had been many years since they had kept him awake at night.

“But there are the regulations, aren’t there? And the orders. An oath even. They’re very convenient shields to shelter behind if the doubts become troublesome. I know. I sheltered behind them once myself. You and I are not so very different after all, Adam Dalgliesh.”

She took up her cloak from the back of the chair and threw it around her shoulders. She came over and stood in front of him smiling. Then, seeing his weakness, she held out both her hands and grasping his, helped him to his feet. They stood there facing each other. Suddenly there was the ring of her front door and almost simultaneously the harsh insistent burr of the telephone. For both of them the day had begun.