P James - Shroud for a Nightingale

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.

It was shortly after nine o’clock when the call came through to him, and Dalgliesh walked out of the Yard and across Victoria Street through an early morning haze, a sure harbinger of yet another hot August day. He found the address without difficulty. It was a large red brick building between Victoria Street and Horseferry Road, not particularly sordid but depressingly dull, a functional oblong with the front punctuated with meanly proportioned windows. There was no lift and he walked unchallenged up the three linoleum-covered flights of stairs to the top floor.

The landing smelt of sour sweat. Outside the flat a grossly fat middle-aged woman in a flowered apron was expostulating to the police constable on duty in an adenoidal whine. As Dalgliesh approached she turned on him, spieling forth a flood of protest and recrimination. What was Mr. Goldstein going to say? She wasn’t really allowed to sub-let a room. She had only done it to oblige the lady. And now this. People had no consideration.

He passed her without speaking and went into the room. It was a square box, stuffy, and smelling of furniture polish, and over-furnished with the heavy prestige symbols of an earlier decade. The window was open and the lace curtains drawn back but there was little air. The police surgeon and the attendant constable, both large men, seemed to have used all there was.

One corpse more to be viewed; only this one wasn’t his responsibility. He need only glance, as if verifying a memory, at the stiffening body on the bed, noting with detached interest that the left arm hung loosely over the side, long fingers curled, and that the hypodermic syringe was still attached to the underarm, a metallic insect with its fang deep embedded in the soft flesh. Death hadn’t robbed her of individuality, not yet anyway. That would come soon enough with all the grotesque indignities of decay.

The police surgeon, shirt-sleeved and sweating, was apologetic as if concerned that he might have done the wrong thing. As he turned from the bed Dalgliesh was aware that he was speaking:

“And as New Scotland Yard is so close and the second note was addressed personally to you”… he paused uncertainly.

“She injected herself with evipan. The first note is quite explicit. It’s a clear case of suicide. That’s why the constable didn’t want to ring you. He thought it wasn’t worth your trouble to come. There’s really nothing here of interest.”

Dalgliesh said: “I’m glad you did ring. And it isn’t any trouble.”

There were two white envelopes, one sealed and addressed to himself; the other unsealed and bearing the words, “To anyone whom it may concern.” He wondered if she had smiled when she wrote that phrase. Watched by the police surgeon and the constable, Dalgliesh opened the letter. The writing was perfectly firm, black and spiky. He realized with a kind of shock that it was the first time he had seen her handwriting.

“They wouldn’t believe you but you were right I killed Ethel Brumfett. It was the first time I had ever killed; it seems important that you should know that. I injected her with evipan, just as I shall shortly do myself. She thought I was giving her a sedative. Poor trusting Brumfett! She would have easily taken nicotine from my hand and it would have been as appropriate.

“I thought it might be possible for me to make some kind of a useful life. It hasn’t been, and I haven’t the temperament to five with failure. I don’t regret what I did. It was best for the hospital, best for her, best for me. I wasn’t likely to be deterred because Adam Dalgliesh sees his job as the embodiment of the moral law.”

She was wrong, he thought. They hadn’t disbelieved him, they had just demanded, reasonably enough, that he find some proof. He had found none, either at the time or later, although he had pursued the case as if it were a personal vendetta, hating himself and her. And she had admitted nothing; not for one moment had she been in any danger of panicking.

There had been very little left unexplained at the resumed inquest on Heather Pearce and the inquest on Josephine Fallon and Ethel Brumfett Perhaps the Coroner felt that there had been enough rumors and speculation. He bad sat with a jury and had made no attempt to inhibit their questions to witnesses, or even to control the proceedings. The story of Irmgard Grobel and the Steinhoff Institution had come out, and Sir Marcus Cohen had sat with Dalgliesh at the back of the Court and listened with a face rigid with pain. After the inquest Mary Taylor walked across the room to him, handed him her letter of resignation, and turned away without a word. She had left the hospital the same day. And that, for the John Carpendar, had been the end. Nothing else had come out Mary Taylor had gone free; free to find this room, this death.

Dalgliesh walked over to the fireplace. The small grate, tiled in bilious green, was filled with a dusty fan and a jam jar of dried leaves. Carefully he moved them out of the way. He was aware of the police surgeon and the uniformed constable watching him expressionlessly. What did they think he was doing? Destroying evidence? Why should they worry? They had their piece of paper ready to be docketed, produced as evidence, filed away for oblivion. This concerned only him.