P James - Shroud for a Nightingale

He said on a sudden impulse:

“I think you probably knew more about Nurse Pearce than anyone else here, probably understood her better. I don’t believe her death was suicide, neither do you. I want you to tell me everything about her which would help me to a motive.”

There was a second’s pause. Was it his imagination or was she really making up her mind to something? Then she said in her high, unemphatic, childish voice:

“I expect she was blackmailing someone. She tried it with me once.”

“Tell me about it”

She looked up at him speculatively as if assessing his reliability or wondering whether the story was worth the trouble of telling. Then her lips curved in a little reminiscent smile. She said calmly:

“My boy friend spent a night with me about a year ago. Not here; in the main nurses’ home. I unlocked one of the fire escape doors and let him. We did it for a lark really.”

“Was he someone from the John Carpendar?”

“Urn, am. One of the surgical registrars.”

“And how did Heather Pearce find out about it?”

“It was the night before our preliminary-the first examination for State Registration. Pearce always got a stomachache before exams. I suppose she was prowling down the corridor to the loo and saw me letting Nigel in. Or she may have been on her way back to bed and listened at the door. Perhaps she heard us giggling or something. I expect she listened as long as she could. I wonder what she made of it No one has ever wanted to make love to Pearce so I suppose she got a thrill just out of listening to someone else in bed with a man. Anyway, she tackled me about it next morning and then threatened to tell Matron and have me chucked out of the nurse training school.”

She spoke without resentment, almost with a touch of amusement. It hadn’t bothered her at the time. It didn’t bother her now.

Dalgliesh asked: “And what price was she asking for her silence?”

He had no doubt that, whatever the price, it hadn’t been paid.

“She said she hadn’t made up her mind about that; she would have to think about it. It would have to be appropriate. You should have seen her face. It was all mottled and red like a disgusted turkey cock. I don’t know how I kept a straight face. I pretended to be terribly worried and contrite and asked if we should talk about it that night. That was just to give me time to get in touch with Nigel. He lived with his widowed mother just outside the town. She adores him and I knew she wouldn’t make any difficulty about swearing that he spent the night at home. She wouldn’t even mind that we’d been together. She thinks that her precious Nigel’s entitled to take just what he likes. But I didn’t want Pearce to talk before I got that fixed up. When I saw her that evening I told her that both of as would deny the story absolutely and that Nigel would back it up with an alibi. She’d forgotten about his mother. There was something else she’d forgotten too. Nigel is Mr. Courtney-Briggs’s nephew. So if she talked, all that would happen would be that Mr. Courtney-Briggs would get her chucked out, not me. Pearce was terribly stupid, really.”

“You seem to have coped with admirable efficiency and composure. So you never learned what punishment Pearce had in store for you?”

“Oh yes I did! I let her talk about that before I told her. It was more amusing that way. It wasn’t a question of punishment; it was more like blackmail. She wanted to come in with us, be one of my crowd.”

“Your crowd?”

“Well, me, Jennifer Blain and Diane Harper really. I was going with Nigel at the time and Diane and Jennifer had his friends. You haven’t met Blain; she’s one of the students who are off with me flu. Pearce wanted us to fix her up a man for her so that she could make up a fourth”

“Didn’t you find that surprising? From what I’ve heard of her, Heather-Pearce wasn’t exactly the type to be interested in sex.”

“Everyone is interested in sex, in their own way. But Pearce didn’t put it like that. She made out that the three of us weren’t to be trusted and that we ought to have someone re-liable to keep an eye on us. No prizes for guessing who! But I knew what she really wanted. She wanted Tom Mannix. He was the paediatric registrar at the time. He was spotty and rather a drip really, but Pearce fancied him. They both belonged to the hospital Christian Fellowship and Tom was going to be a missionary or something after his two years here were up. He’d have suited Pearce all right, and I daresay I could have made him go out with her once or twice if I’d pressed him. But it wouldn’t have done her any good. He didn’t want Pearce; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is.”

Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn’t love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world’s poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy? But Julia Pardoe was untouched by it If only, thought Dalgliesh, her voice had held a trace of pity, or even interest! But Pearce’s desperate need, the longing for love which had led her to this pathetic attempt at blackmail, provoked in her victim nothing, not even an amused contempt She couldn’t even be bothered to ask him to keep the story a secret And then, as if reading his thoughts, she told him why.

“I don’t mind your knowing about it now. Why should I? After all, Pearce is dead. Fallon too. I mean, with two murders in the place, Matron and the Hospital Management Committee have something more important to worry about than Nigel and me in bed together. But when I think of that night! Honestly, it was hilarious. The bed was far too narrow and it kept creaking and Nigel and I were giggling so much we could hardly… And then to think of Pearce with one eye to the keyhole!”

And men she laughed. It was a peal of spontaneous and reminiscent joy, innocent and infectious. Looking up at her, Masterson’s heavy face coruscated into a wide indulgent grin and, for one extraordinary second, he and Dalgliesh had to restrain themselves from laughing aloud with her.

Dalgliesh hadn’t summoned the members of the little group in the library in any particular order and it wasn’t with malice aforethought that he had left Sister Gearing to the last But the long wait had been unkind to her. She had obviously found time, earlier in the morning, to make up her face with lavish care; an instinctive preparation, no doubt for whatever traumatic encounters the day might bring. But the make-up had worn badly. The mascara had run and was now smudged into the eye shadow, there were beads of sweat along the forehead and a trace of lipstick in the cleft of the chin. Perhaps she had been unconsciously fiddling with her face. Certainly, she was finding it difficult now to keep her hands still. She sat twisting her handkerchief through her fingers and crossing and re-crossing her legs in fidgety discomfort. Without waiting for Dalgliesh to speak she broke into a high frenetic chatter.

“You and your sergeant are staying with the Maycrofts at the Falconer’s Arms, aren’t you? I hope they’re making you comfortable. Sheila’s a bit of a drag but Bob’s good value when you get him on his own.”

Dalgliesh had taken very good care not to get Bob on his own. He had chosen the Falconer’s Arms because it was small, convenient, quiet, and half empty; it had not taken long to understand why. Group Captain Robert Maycroft and his wife were more concerned to impress visitors with their own gentility than to minister to the comfort of their guests, and Dalgliesh fervently hoped to be out of the place by the end of the week. In the meantime he had no intention of discussing the Maycrofts with Sister Gearing and he guided her politely but firmly towards more relevant subjects.