Shroud for a Nightingale (32 page)

Dalgliesh asked if he had kept the letter.

“No. I only keep important papers. I mean, there isn’t room here to hoard letters.”

“And did you try to get in touch with her again?”

“No. She’d asked me not to and there didn’t seem much point in it. I suppose if I’d known about the child I might have done. But I’m not sure. There’s nothing I could have done. I couldn’t have had a child here. Well, you can see that. How could I? She wouldn’t want to marry me and I never considered marrying her. I don’t want to marry anyone. But I don’t think she killed herself because of the baby. Not Jo.”

“All right. You don’t think she killed herself. Tell me why.”

“She wasn’t the type.”

“Oh, come now! You can do better than that.”

The boy said belligerently: “It’s true enough. I’ve known two people in my life who killed themselves. One was a boy in my last year at school when we were sitting for our G.C.E.s. The other was a manager of a dry-cleaning firm I worked for. I drove the delivery van. Well, in both cases, everyone said all the usual things about how dreadful and how surprising it was. But I wasn’t really surprised. I don’t mean that I was expecting it or anything like that. I just wasn’t really surprised. When I thought about both deaths I could believe that they had actually done it.”

“Your sample is too small.”

“Jo wouldn’t kill herself. Why should she?”

“I can think of reasons. She hadn’t made much success of her life so far. She hadn’t any relatives to care about her, and very few friends. She didn’t sleep easily at night, wasn’t really happy. She had at last succeeded in training to be a nurse
and was within a few months of her final examination. And then she finds herself pregnant. She knows that her lover won’t want the child, that it’s no use looking to him for comfort or support.”

Dowson cried out in vehement protest. “She never looked to anyone for comfort or support! That’s what I’m trying to tell you! She slept with me because she wanted to. I’m not responsible for her. I’m not responsible for anyone. Anyone! I’m only responsible for myself. She knew what she was doing. It wasn’t as if she were a young, inexperienced girl who needed kindness and protection.”

“If you believe that only the young and innocent need comfort and protection you’re thinking in clichés. And if you begin by thinking in clichés you end by writing them.”

The boy said sullenly: “Maybe. But that’s what I believe.”

Suddenly he got up and went over to the wall. When he came back to the centre box Dalgliesh saw that he held a large smooth stone. It fitted snugly into his curved palm, a perfect ovoid. It was a pale grey, flecked like an egg. Dowson let it slide from his hand on to the table, where it rocked gently into stillness. Then he sat down again and bent forward, his head in his hands. Together they looked at the stone. Dalgliesh did not speak.

Suddenly the boy said: “She gave it to me. We found it together on the beach at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight. We went there together last October. But of course you know. That must have been how you traced me. Lift it. It’s surprisingly heavy.”

Dalgliesh took the stone in his hands. It was satisfying to touch, smooth and cool. He took pleasure in the sea-washed perfection of its shape, in the hard unyielding roundness of it which yet fitted with such gentleness into the palm of his hand.

“I never had a holiday by the sea when I was a boy. Dad died before I was six and the old woman hadn’t the money. So I missed out on the seaside. Jo thought it would be fun to go there together. It was very warm last October. Remember? We took the ferry from Portsmouth and there were only half a dozen people on it besides ourselves. The island was empty too. We could walk from Ventnor to St. Catherine’s Lighthouse without meeting a soul. It was warm enough and deserted enough to bathe naked. Jo found this stone. She thought it would do as a paper-weight. I wasn’t going to tear my pocket carrying that weight home but she did. Then, when we got back here, she gave it to me as a keepsake. I wanted her to have it but she said that I’d forget the holiday long before she did. Don’t you see? She knew how to be happy. I’m not sure that I do. But Jo did. If you’re like that you don’t kill yourself. Not when you know how marvellous living can be. Colette knew about that. She wrote about ‘a compelling fierce and secret
rapport
with the earth and everything that gushes from its breasts’.” He looked at Dalgliesh.

“Colette was a French writer.”

“I know. And you believe that Josephine Fallon could feel that?”

“I know she could. Not for long. Not often. But when she was happy she was marvellous. If you once know that kind of happiness you don’t kill yourself. While you live there’s a hope it could happen again. So why cut yourself off from the hope of it for ever?”

Dalgliesh said: “You cut yourself off from the misery too. That might seem more important. But I think you’re right. I don’t believe Josephine Fallon killed herself. I believe she was murdered. That’s why I’m asking if there’s anything else you can tell me.”

“No. I was on duty at the Exchange the night she died. I had better give you the address. I suppose you’ll want to check.”

“There are reasons why it’s extremely unlikely to have been anyone who wasn’t familiar with Nightingale House. But we shall check.”

“Here’s the address then.” He tore a corner from the newspaper covering the table and, taking a pencil from his trouser pocket, wrote down the address in a crabbed hand, his head nearly touching the paper. Then he folded it as if the message were secret, and pushed it across the table.

“Take the stone too. I’d like you to have it. No, take it. Please take it. You think I’m heartless, that I’m not grieving for her. But I am. I want you to find out who killed her. It won’t do any good to her or to the man, but I want you to find out. And I am sorry. It’s just that I can’t let myself feel too much. I can’t let myself get involved. You understand?”

Dalgliesh took the stone in his hand and rose to go. “Yes,” he said: “I understand.”

Mr. Henry Urquhart of Messrs. Urquhart, Wimbush and Portway was Josephine Fallon’s solicitor. Dalgliesh’s appointment with him was for twelve twenty-five p.m., a time disobligingly chosen, he felt, to intimate that every minute of the solicitor’s time was valuable and that he was prepared to spare the police no more than half an hour before lunch. Dalgliesh was admitted immediately. He doubted whether a detective sergeant would have been received so promptly. This was one of the minor advantages of his passion for doing the job himself, controlling the investigation from his office with a small army of detective constables, scenes-of-crime men, photographers, fingerprint experts and scientists ministering to his ego and effectively cutting him off from all but the main protagonists of the crime. He knew that he had a reputation for solving his cases very fast, but he never grudged time on jobs which some of his colleagues thought more appropriate to a detective constable. As a result he was sometimes given information which a less experienced interrogator would have missed. He hardly expected this happy bonus from Mr. Henry
Urquhart. This interview was likely to be little more than the formal and punctilious exchange of relevant facts. But it had been necessary for him to visit London. There were matters which he had to attend to at the Yard. And it was always a pleasure to visit on foot and in the fitful sunlight of a winter morning these secluded corners of the City.

Messrs. Urquhart, Wimbush and Portway were one of the most respected and successful of the City’s firms of solicitors. Dalgliesh felt that few of Mr. Urquhart’s clients could have been mixed up in a murder investigation. They might have their little difficulties from time to time with the Queen’s proctor; they might, against all advice, indulge in imprudent litigation or obstinately persist in devising unwise wills; they might require their solicitor’s services to devise technical defences to the drink and driving laws; it might indeed be necessary to extricate them from all manner of folly and imprudence. But their killing would be done legally.

The room into which he was shown could have served as a stage set for a successful solicitor’s office. The coal fire was banked high in the grate. From above the mantelshelf the portrait of the founder gazed down in approval on his great-grandson. The desk at which the great-grandson sat was of the same period as the portrait and displayed the same qualities of durability, fitness for the task in hand, and a sturdy opulence which stopped just short of ostentation. On the other wall there was a small oil. Dalgliesh thought that it looked very like a Jan Steen. It proclaimed to the world that the firm knew a good picture when it saw one and could afford to display it on the wall.

Mr. Urquhart, tall, ascetic, discreetly grey at the temples and with the air of a reserved dominie, was well cast for the role of successful solicitor. He was wearing an exceedingly well-cut suit, but in lovat tweed as if the more orthodox pin
stripe would have verged on caricature. He received Dalgliesh without apparent curiosity or concern but the Superintendent noted with interest that Miss Fallon’s box was already on the table before him.

Dalgliesh stated his business briefly and ended: “Can you tell me anything about her? In a murder inquiry anything we can learn about the past life and personality of the victim is helpful.”

“And this, you are now confident, is murder?”

“She was killed by taking nicotine in her late night beaker of whisky. As far as we know, she wasn’t aware that the tin of rose spray was in the conservatory cupboard, and if she knew and it occurred to her to use it, I doubt whether she would subsequently have hidden the tin.”

“I see. And there is, too, the suggestion that the poison administered to the first victim—Heather Pearce, wasn’t it—was intended for my client?”

Mr. Urquhart sat for a moment finger to finger with his head slightly bent as if consulting either his own subconscious, a higher power, or the ghost of his former client before divulging what he knew. Dalgliesh thought he could have saved the time. Urquhart was a man who knew perfectly well how far he was prepared to go, professionally or otherwise. The pantomime was unconvincing. And his story, when it came, did nothing to clothe the dry bones of Josephine Fallon’s life. The facts were there. He consulted the pages in front of him, and presented them logically, unemotionally, lucidly. The time and place of her birth; the circumstances of her parents’ death; her subsequent upbringing by an elderly aunt, who together with him had been a trustee until Miss Fallon’s majority; the date and circumstance of that aunt’s death from cancer of the uterus; the money left to Josephine Fallon and the exact way in which it had been invested; the girl’s movements after her
twenty-first birthday, in so far as, he pointed out drily, she had troubled to inform him of them.

Dalgliesh said: “She was pregnant. Did you know?”

It could not be said that this news disconcerted the solicitor although his face creased into the vaguely pained look of a man who can never quite reconcile himself to the messiness of the world.

“No. She didn’t tell me. But then I would not expect her to do so, unless, of course, she was thinking of applying for an affiliation order. I gather that was not in question.”

“She told her friend, Madeleine Goodale, that she intended to have an abortion.”

“Indeed. An expensive and to my mind, despite the recent legislation, a dubious business. I speak morally, of course, not legally. The recent legislation …”

Dalgliesh said: “I am aware of the recent legislation. So there is nothing else you can tell me?”

The solicitor’s tone held a tinge of reproof. “I have already told you a great deal about her background and financial position in so far as they were known to me. I am afraid I can’t supply you with any more recent or intimate information. Miss Fallon consulted me seldom. Indeed she had no reason to do so. The last time was about her will. You are, I believe, already apprised of its terms. Miss Madeleine Goodale is the sole legatee. The estate is likely to amount to approximately 20,000 pounds.”

“Was there a previous will?”

Was it Dalgliesh’s imagination, or did he detect the slight stiffening of facial muscles, the almost imperceptible frown which greeted an unwelcome question?

“There were two, but the second of these was never signed. The first, made soon after her majority, left everything to medical charities, including cancer research. The second she
proposed to execute on the occasion of her marriage. I have the letter here.”

He handed this across to Dalgliesh. It was addressed from a flat in Westminster and was written in a confident upright and unfeminine hand.

Dear Mr. Urquhart, This is to let you know that I shall be married on 14th March at St. Marylebone Registry Office to Peter Courtney. He is an actor; you may have heard of him. Will you please draw up a will for me to sign on that date. I shall leave everything to my husband. His full name incidentally is Peter Albert Courtney Briggs. No hyphen. I expect you’ll need to know that to draw up the will. We shall be living at this address
.

I shall also need some money. Could you please ask Warranders to make two thousand pounds available to me by the end of the month? Thank you. I hope that you and Mr. Surtees are keeping well. Yours sincerely, Josephine Fallon
.

   A cool letter, thought Dalgliesh. No explanations. No justification. No expressions of happiness or hope. And come to that, no invitation to the wedding.

Henry Urquhart said: “Warranders were her stockbrokers. She always dealt with them through us, and we kept all her official papers. She preferred us to do so. She said she preferred to travel unencumbered.”

He repeated the phrase, smiling complacently as if he found it in some way remarkable, and glanced at Dalgliesh as if expecting him to comment.

He went on: “Surtees is my clerk. She always asked after Surtees.”

He seemed to find that fact more puzzling than the terms of the letter itself.

Dalgliesh said: “And Peter Courtney subsequently hanged himself.”