P James - Shroud for a Nightingale

When Dalgliesh asked whether Sister Gearing and Sister Brumfett had appeared their usual selves at breakfast she replied drily that they exhibited no signs of impending homicidal mania if that was what he meant. Gearing had read the Daily Mirror and Brumfett the Nursing Times, if that were of any significance, and the conversation had been minimal. She regretted she could offer no witnesses to her own movements before or after the meal but that was surely understandable; for some years now she had preferred to wash and go to the lavatory in private. Apart from that, she valued the free time before the day’s work and preferred to spend it alone.

Dalgliesh asked: “Were you surprised to find Mr. Courtney-Briggs in your office when you went there after breakfast?”

“Not particularly. I took it for granted that he had spent the night in the medical officers’ quarters and had come over early to Nightingale House to meet the G.N.C. Inspector. He probably wanted somewhere to write a letter. Mr. Courtney-Briggs assumes the right to use any room in the John Carpendar as his private office if the fancy takes him.”

Dalgliesh asked her about her movements the previous night. She repeated that she had been to the cinema alone but added this time that she had met Julia Pardoe on the way out and that they had walked back to the hospital together. They had come in through the Winchester Road gate to which she had a key and had got back to Nightingale House shortly after eleven. She had gone immediately to her room and had seen no one. Nurse Pardoe, she assumed, had either gone straight to bed or had joined the rest of the set in the student nurses’ sitting-room.

“So you have nothing to tell me, Sister? Nothing that can help?”

“Nothing.”‘

“Not even why, unnecessary surely, you lied about going to the cinema alone?”

“Nothing. And I shouldn’t have thought my private affairs were any concern of yours.”

Dalgliesh said calmly: “Miss Rolfe, two of your students are dead. I’m here to find out how and why they died. If you don’t want to co-operate, say so. You don’t have to answer my questions. But don’t try to tell me what questions I am to ask. I’m in charge of this investigation. I do it my way.”

“I see. You make up the rules as you go along. All we can do is say when we don’t want to play. Yours is a dangerous game, Mr. Dalgliesh.”

“Tell me something about these students. You’re the Principal Nurse Tutor; you must have a good many girls through your hands. I think you’re a good judge of character. We’ll start with Nurse Goodale.”

If she felt surprise or relief at his choice she concealed it.

“Madeleine Goodale is confidently expected to take the Gold Medal as the best nurse of her year. She is less intelligent than Fallon-than Fallon was-but she’s hard working and extremely conscientious. She’s a local girl. Her father is well known in the town, an extremely successful estate agent who inherited a long established family business. He’s a member of the Town Council and was on the Hospital Management Committee for a number of years. Madeleine went to the local grammar school and then came to us. I don’t think she ever considered any other nurse training school. The whole family has a strong local loyalty. She is engaged to the young vicar of Holy Trinity and I understand they plan to marry as soon as she completes her training. Another good career lost to the profession, but she knows her own priorities I suppose.”

“The Burt twins?”

“Good sensible kindly girls, with more imagination and sensitivity than they are usually credited with. Their people are farmers near Gloucester. I’m not sure why they chose this hospital. I have an idea a cousin trained here and was happy enough. They are the kind of girls who would chose a training school on that kind of family basis. They aren’t particularly intelligent but they aren’t stupid. We don’t have to take stupid girls here, thank God. Each of them as a steady boy friend and Maureen is engaged. I don’t think either of them looks on nursing as a permanent job.”

Dalgliesh said: “You’re going to have trouble finding leaders for the profession if this automatic resignation on marriage becomes the rule.”

She said drily: “We’re having trouble now. Who else are you interested in?” “Nurse Dakers.”

“Poor kid! Another local girl, but with a very different background from Goodale. Father was a minor local government officer who died of cancer when she was twelve. Mother has been struggling on ever since with a small pension. The girl was educated at the same school as Goodale but they were never friendly as far as I know. Dakers is a conscientious hardworking student with a great deal of ambition. Shell do all right but she won’t do better than all right She tires easily, isn’t really robust People think of her as timid and highly strung, whatever that euphemism means. But Dakers is tough enough. She’s a third-year student remember. A girl doesn’t get this far with her training if she’s fundamentally weak, physically or mentally.” “Julia Pardoe?”

Sister Rolfe had herself well under control now and there was no change in her voice as she went on.

“The only child of divorced parents. Mother is one of those pretty but selfish women who find it impossible to stay long with one husband. She’s on her third now, I believe. I’m not sure that the girl really knows which is her father. She hasn’t been often at home. Mother sent her off to prep, school when she was five. She had a stormy school career and came here straight from the sixth form of one of those independent girls’ boarding-schools, where the girls are taught nothing but manage to learn a great deal. She first applied to one of the London teaching hospitals. She didn’t quite measure up to their standard of acceptance either socially or academically but the Matron referred her here. Schools like ours have this kind of arrangement with the teaching hospitals. They get a dozen applications for every place. It’s mostly snobbery and the hope of catching a husband. We’re quite happy to take a number of their rejects; I suspect that they often make better nurses than the girls they accept Pardoe was one of them. An intelligent but untrained mind. A gentle and considerate nurse.”

“You know a great deal about your students.”

“I make it my business to. But I take it I’m not expected to give an opinion of my colleagues.”

“Sister Gearing and Sister Brumfett? No. But I’d be glad of your opinion of Nurse Fallon and Nurse Pearce.”

“I can’t tell you much about Fallon. She was a reserved, almost a secretive girl. Intelligent, of course, and more mature than the majority of students. I think I only had one personal conversation with her. That was at the end of her first year when I called her for an interview and asked her for her impressions of nursing. I was interested to know how our methods here struck a girl who was so different from the ordinary run of the straight-from-school student She said that it wasn’t fair to judge while one was still an apprentice and treated as if one were a sub-normal kitchen maid but that she still thought nursing was her job. I asked her what had attracted her to the profession and she said that she wanted to acquire a skill which would make her independent anywhere in the world, a qualification which would always be in demand. I don’t think she had any particular ambition to get on in the profession.

Her training was just a means to an end. But I could be wrong. As I said, I never really knew her.“

“So you can’t say whether she had enemies?”

“I can’t say why anyone should want to kill her, if that’s what you mean. I should have thought that Pearce was a much more likely victim.”