Shroud for a Nightingale (19 page)

But the extent of Miss Taylor’s influence over the Chairman and thus over the Hospital Management Committee was beyond speculation. It was known to be particularly irritating to Mr. Courtney-Briggs since it considerably diminished his own. But in the matter of the consultants’ dining-room it has been exercised in his favor and had proved decisive.

But if the rest of the staff had been forced into proximity they had not been forced into intimacy. The hierarchy was still apparent. The immense dining-room had been divided into smaller dining areas separated from each other by screens of lattice work and troughs of plants, and in each of these alcoves the atmosphere of a private dining-room was recreated.

Sister Rolfe helped herself to plaice and chips, carried her tray to the table which, for the past eight years, she had shared with Sister Brumfett and Sister Gearing, and looked around at the denizens of this strange world. In the alcove nearest the door were the laboratory technicians in their stained overalls, noisily animated. Next to them was old Fleming, the outpatient pharmacist, rolling bread pellets like pills in his nicotine-stained fingers. At the next table were four of the medical stenographers in their blue working overalls. Miss Wright, the senior secretary, who had been at the John Carpendar for twenty years, was eating with furtive speed as she always did, avid to get back to her typewriter. Behind the adjacent screen was a little clutch of the lay professional staff —Miss Bunyon the head radiographer, Mrs. Nethern, the head medical social worker and two of the physiotherapists, carefully preserving their status by an air of calm unhurried efficiency, an apparent total disinterest in the food they were eating and the choice of a table as far removed as possible from that of the junior clerical staff.

And what were they all thinking about? Fallon probably. There couldn’t be anyone in the hospital from the consultants to the ward maids who didn’t know by now that a second Nightingale student had died in mysterious circumstances and that Scotland Yard had been called in. Fallon’s death was probably the subject of gossip at most of the tables this morning. But it didn’t prevent people from eating their lunch or from getting on with their job. There was so much to do; there were so many other pressing concerns; there was even so much fresh gossip. It wasn’t just that life had to go on; in hospital that cliche had particular relevance. Life did go on, carried forward by the imperative momentum of birth and death. New booked admissions came in; ambulances daily disgorged the emergencies; operation lists were posted; the dead were laid out and the healed discharged. Death, even sudden and unexpected death, was more familiar to these young fresh-faced students than it was to even the most experienced senior detective. And there was a limit to its power to shock. You either came to terms with death in your first year, or you gave up being a nurse. But murder? That was different Even in this violent world, murder still held its macabre and primitive power to shock. But how many people in Nightingale House really believed that Pearce and Fallon had been murdered? It would take more than the presence of the Yard’s wonder boy and his retinue to give credence to such an extraordinary idea. There were too many other possible explanations, all of them simpler and more believable than murder. Dalgliesh might believe as he chose; proving it would be another matter.

Sister Rolfe bent her head and began unenthusiastically to dissect her plaice. She felt no particular hunger. The strong smell of food was heavy on the air, stifling appetite. The noise of the cafeteria beat against her ears. It was ceaseless and inescapable, a confused continuum of discord in which individual sounds were scarcely distinguishable.

Next to her, her cloak folded neatly at the back of her chair and the shapeless tapestry bag which accompanied her everywhere dumped at her feet, Sister Brumfett was eating steamed cod and parsley sauce with belligerent intensity as if she resented the need to eat and was venting her irritation on the food. Sister Brumfett invariably chose steamed fish; and Sister Rolfe felt suddenly that she couldn’t face another lunch hour of watching Brumfett eat cod.

She reminded herself that there was no reason why she should. There was nothing to prevent her sitting someplace else, nothing except this petrification of the will which made the simple act of carrying her tray three feet to a different table seem impossibly cataclysmic and irrevocable. On her left, Sister Gearing toyed with her braised beef, and chopped her wedge of cabbage into neat squares. When she actually began to eat she would shove the feed in avidly like a greedy schoolgirl. But always there were these finicky and salivatory preliminaries. Sister Rolfe wondered how many times she had resisted the urge to say, “For God’s sake Gearing, stop messing about and eat it!” One day, no doubt, she would say it And another middle-aged and unlikeable Sister would be pronounced “getting very difficult It’s probably her age”.

She had considered living out of the hospital. It was permissible and she could afford it The purchase of a flat or a small house would be the best investment for her retirement But Julia Pardoe had disposed of that idea in a few half-interested, destructive comments dropped like cold pebbles into the deep pool of her hopes and plans. Sister Rolfe could still hear that high, childish voice.

“Live out Why should you want to do that? We shouldn’t see so much of each other.”

“But we should, Julia. And in much greater privacy and without all this risk and deceit It would be a comfortable and agreeable little house. You’d like it.”

“It wouldn’t be as easy as slipping upstairs to see you when I feel like it.”

When she felt like it? Felt like what? Sister Rolfe had desperately fought off the question she never dared to let herself ask.

She knew the nature of her dilemma. It wasn’t, after all, peculiar to herself. In any relationship there was one who loved and one who permitted himself or herself to be loved. This was merely to state the brutal economics of desire; from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. But was it selfish or presumptuous to hope that the one who took knew the value of the gift; that she wasn’t wasting love on a promiscuous and perfidious little cheat who took her pleasure wherever she chose to find it? She had said:

“You could probably come twice or three times a week, perhaps more often. I wouldn’t move far.”

“Oh, I don’t see how I could manage that. I don’t see why you want the work and bother of a house. You’re all right here.”

Sister Rolfe thought: “But I’m not all right here. This place is souring me. It isn’t only the long-stay patients who become institutionalized. It’s happening to me. I dislike and despise most of the people I’m required to work with. Even the job is losing its hold. The students get more stupid and worse educated with every intake. I’m not even sure any more of the value of what I’m supposed to be doing.”

There was a crash near the counter. One of the maids had dropped a tray of used crockery. Looking instinctively across, Sister Rolfe saw that the detective had just come in and taken up his tray at the end of the line. She watched the tall figure, disregarded by the chattering queue of nurses, as he began to move slowly down the line between a white-coated houseman and a pupil midwife, helping himself to roll and butter, waiting for the girl to hand out his choice of main course. She was surprised to see him there. It had never occurred to her that he would eat in the hospital dining-hall or that he would be on his own. Her eyes followed him as he reached the end of the line, handed over his meal ticket and turned to look for a vacant seat He seemed utterly at ease and almost oblivious of the alien world around him. She thought that he was probably a man who could never imagine himself at a disadvantage in any company since he was secure in his private world, possessed of that core of inner self-esteem which is the basis of happiness. She wondered what kind of a world his was, then bent her head to her plate irritated at this unusual interest he aroused in her. Probably he would be thought handsome by most women, with that lean bony face, at once arrogant and sensitive. It was probably one of his professional assets, and being a man he would make the most of it. No doubt it was one of the reasons why he had been given this case. If dull Bill Bailey could make nothing of it, let the Yard’s wonder boy take over. With a house full of women and three middle-aged spinsters as his chief suspects, no doubt he fancied his chances. Well, good luck to him!

But she was not the only one at the table to notice his arrival. She felt rather than saw Sister Gearing stiffen and a second later heard her say:

“Well, well. The handsome sleuth! He’d better feed with us or he may find himself in a gaggle of students. Someone should have told the poor man how the system works.”

And now, thought Sister Rolfe, she’ll give him one of her street corner come-hither looks and we shall be burdened with him for the rest of the meal. The look was given and the invitation not refused. Dalgliesh, carrying his tray nonchalantly and apparently completely at ease, threaded his way across the room and came up to their table. Sister Gearing said:

“What have you done with that handsome sergeant of yours? I thought policemen went about in pairs like nuns.”

“My handsome sergeant is studying reports and lunching on sandwiches and beer in the office while I enjoy the fruits of seniority with you. Is this chair taken?”

Sister Gearing moved her own chair closer to Sister Brumfett and smiled up at him:

“It is now.”

II

Dalgliesh sat down, well aware that Sister Gearing wanted him, that Sister Rolfe didn’t, and that Sister Brumfett, who had acknowledged his arrival with a brief nod, didn’t care whether he joined them or not Sister Rolf e looked across at him unsmilingly and said to Sister Gearing:

“Don’t imagine Mr. Dalgliesh is sharing our table for the sake of your
beaux yeux.
The Superintendent plans to take in information with his braised beef.”

Sister Gearing giggled: “My dear, it’s no use warning me! I couldn’t keep a thing to myself if a really attractive man set his mind to wangle it out of me. It would be quite useless for me to commit a murder. I haven’t the brain for it Not that I think for one moment that anyone has—committed murder I mean. Anyway, let’s leave the grisly subject during lunch. I’ve had my grilling, haven’t I, Superintendent?”

Dalgliesh disposed his cutlery around the plate of braised beef and tilting back his chair to save himself the trouble of rising, added his used tray to the stack on the nearby stand. He said:

“People here seem to be taking Nurse Fallon’s death calmly enough.”

Sister Rolfe shrugged: “Did you expect them to be wearing black arm bands, talking in whispers, and refusing their lunch? The job goes on. Anyway, only a few will have known her personally, and still fewer knew Pearce.” “Or liked her apparently,” said Dalgliesh. “No, I don’t think they did on the whole. She was too self-righteous, too religious.” “If you can call it religious,” said Sister Gearing. “It wasn’t my idea of religion.
Nil nisi
and all that but the girl was just a prig. She always seemed to be a damn sight more concerned with other people’s shortcomings than she was with her own. That’s why the other kids didn’t like her. They respect genuine religious conviction. Most people do, I find. But they didn’t like being spied on.” “Did she spy on them?” asked Dalgliesh. Sister Gearing seemed half to regret what she had said. “Perhaps that’s putting it a bit strongly. But if anything went wrong in the set you can bet Nurse Pearce knew all about it And she usually managed to bring it to the notice of authority. Always with the best motives, no doubt” Sister Rolfe said drily: “She had an unfortunate habit of interfering with other people for their own good. It doesn’t make for popularity.”

Sister Gearing pushed her plate to one side, drew a bowl of plums and custard towards her and began to extract the stones from the fruit as carefully as if it were a surgical operation. She said:

“She wasn’t a bad nurse, though. You could rely on Pearce. And the patients seemed to like her. I suppose they found that holier than thou attitude reassuring.”

Sister Brumfett looked up from her plate and spoke for the first time.

“You’re not in a position to give an opinion on whether she was a good nurse. Nor is Rolfe. You only see the girls in the training school. I see them on the wards.”

“I see them on the wards too. I’m the clinical instructor remember. It’s my job to teach them on the ward.”

Sister Brumfett was unrepentant.

“Any student teaching that’s done on my ward is done by me, as you know very well. Other ward Sisters can welcome the clinical instructor if they like. But on the private ward I do the teaching. And I prefer it that way when I see some of the extraordinary ideas you seem to put into their heads. And, by the way, I happen to know—Pearce told me, as a matter of fact—that you visited my ward when I was off duty on 7th January and conducted a teaching session. In future, please consult me before using my patients as clinical material.”

Sister Gearing flushed. She tried to laugh but her amusement sounded artificial. She glanced across at Sister Rolfe as if enlisting her aid but Sister Rolfe kept her eyes firmly on her plate. Then, belligerently and rather like a child determined to have the last word, she said with apparent irrelevance:

“Something happened to upset Pearce while she was on your ward.”

Sister Brumfett’s sharp little eyes glared up at her.

“On my ward? Nothing upset her on my ward!”

The sturdy assertion conveyed unmistakedly that no nurse worthy of the name could be upset by anything that happened on the private ward; that upsetting things just weren’t permitted when Sister Brumfett was in charge.

Sister Gearing shrugged.

“Well, something upset her. It could have been something totally unconnected with the hospital, I suppose, but one never quite believes that poor Pearce had any real life outside these walls. It was the Wednesday of the week before this block went into school. I visited the chapel just after five o’clock to do the flowers—that’s how I remember which day it was—and she was sitting there alone. Not kneeling or praying, just sitting. Well, I did what I had to do and then went out without speaking to her. After all, the chapel’s open for rest and meditation and if one of the students wants to meditate that’s all right by me. But when I went back nearly three hours later because I’d left my scissors in the sacristy she was still there, sitting perfectly still and in the same seat Well, meditation’s all very well, but four hours is a bit excessive. I don’t think that the kid could have had any supper. She looked pretty pale too, so I went up to her and asked her if she was all right, if there was anything I could do for her. She didn’t even look at me as she replied. She said: ‘No thank you, Sister. There was something troubling me which I had to think over very carefully. I did come here for help but not from you.”“