Shroud for a Nightingale (4 page)

Miss Beale glanced at the girl, surprised. It was an odd remark to come from Nurse Goodale, a little insensitive in the circumstances, disconcertingly out of character. She noted, too, the use of the past tense. Here was one student who didn’t expect to see Nurse Pearce alive again.

Nurse Harper reiterated stoutly: “It’s daft to talk about murder. No one would want to kill Pearce.”

Nurse Pardoe shrugged: “Perhaps it wasn’t meant for Pearce. Jo Fallon was supposed to act as patient today, wasn’t she? It was Fallon’s name next on the list If she hadn’t been taken ill last night, it would have been Fallon in that bed this morning.”

They were silent Nurse Goodale turned to Miss Beale.

“She’s right. We take it in strict turn to act as patient; it wasn’t really Pearce’s turn this morning. But Josephine Fallon was taken into the sick bay last night—you’ve probably heard that we have an influenza epidemic—and Pearce was next on the list Pearce was taking Fallon’s place.”

Miss Beale was momentarily at a loss. She felt that she ought to put a stop to the conversation, that it was her responsibility to keep their minds off the accident and surely it could only have been an accident. But she didn’t know how. Besides, there was a dreadful fascination in getting at the facts. For her, there always had been. Perhaps, too, it was better that the girls should indulge this detached, investigatory interest rather than sit there making unnatural and ineffective conversation. Already she saw that shock was giving way to that half-ashamed excitement which can follow tragedy, so long, of course, as it is someone else’s tragedy.

Julia Pardoe’s composed, rather childish voice went on: “So if the victim was really meant to be Fallon, it couldn’t have been one of us, could it? We all knew that Fallon wouldn’t be acting the patient this morning.”

Madeleine Goodale said: “I should think that everyone knew. Everyone at Nightingale House anyway. There was enough talk about it at breakfast”

They were silent again, considering this new development Miss Beale noted with interest that there were no protestations that no one would want to murder Fallon. Then Maureen Burt said:

“Fallon can’t be all that sick. She was back here in Nightingale House this morning, just after eight-forty. Shirley and I saw her slipping out of the side door just before we went into the demo room after breakfast.”

Nurse Goodale asked sharply: “What was she wearing?” Maureen was unsurprised at this apparently irrelevant question.

“Slacks. Her top coat That red headscarf she wears. Why?”

Nurse Goodale, obviously shaken and surprised, made an attempt to conceal it. She said:

“She slipped those on before we took her to the sick bay last night. I suppose she came back to fetch something she wanted from her room. But she shouldn’t have left the ward. It was stupid. She had a temperature of 103.8 when she was warded. Lucky for her that Sister Brumfett didn’t see her.”

Nurse Pardoe said maliciously: “Funny though, isn’t it?” No one replied. It was indeed funny, thought Miss Beale. She recalled her long damp drive from the hospital to the nurse training school. The road was a winding one; obviously there would be a short cut through the trees. But it was a strange journey for a sick girl to make on an early January morning. There must have been some compelling reason to bring her back to Nightingale House. After all, if she did want something from her room there was nothing to prevent her asking for it Any of the students would gladly have taken it across to the sick bay. And this was the girl who should have played the patient that morning, who should, logically, be lying next door among the tangle of tubes and linen.

Nurse Pardoe said: “Well, there’s one person who knew that Fallon wouldn’t be acting patient this morning. Fallon herself.”

Nurse Goodale, white-faced, looked across at her.

“If you want to be stupid and malicious I suppose I can’t stop you. But if I were you, I would stop short of slander.”

Nurse Pardoe looked unconcerned, even a little pleased. Catching sight of her sly, gratified smile, Miss Beale decided that it was time this talking stopped. She was searching for a change of topic when Nurse Dakers said faintly from the depths of her chair: “I feel sick.”

There was immediate concern. Only Nurse Harper made no move to help. The rest gathered around the girl, glad of the chance to be doing something. Nurse Goodale said: “I’ll take her to the downstairs cloakroom.”

She supported the girl out of the room. To Miss Beale’s surprise Nurse Pardoe went with her, their recent antagonism apparently forgotten as they supported Nurse Dakers between them. Miss Beale was left with the Burt twins and Nurse Harper. Another silence fell but Miss Beale had learned her lesson. She had been unforgivably irresponsible. There was to be no more talk of death or murder. While they were here and in her charge they might as well work. She gazed sternly at Nurse Harper and invited her to describe the signs, symptoms and treatment of pulmonary collapse.

Ten minutes later the absent three returned. Nurse Dakers still looked pale but was composed. It was Nurse Goodale who looked worried. As if unable to keep it to herself, she said:

“The bottle of disinfectant is missing from the lavatory. You know the one I mean. It’s always kept there on the little shelf. Pardoe and I couldn’t find it-Nurse Harper interrupted her bored but surprisingly competent recital and said:

“You mean that bottle of milky-looking mixture? It was there after supper last night”

“That’s a long time ago. Has anyone been in that loo this morning?”

Apparently no one had. They looked at each other in silence.

It was then that the door opened. Matron came quietly in and shut it behind her. There was a creak of starched linen as the twins slipped from the desk and stood to attention. Nurse Harper rose gracelessly from her chair. All of them turned towards Miss Taylor.

“Children,” she said, and the unexpected and gentle word told them the truth before she spoke.

“Children, Nurse Pearce died a few minutes ago. We don’t yet know how or why, but when something inexplicable like this happens we have to call the police. The Hospital Secretary is doing that now. I want you to be brave and sensible as I know you will be. Until the police arrive, I think it would be better if we don’t talk about what has happened. You will collect your textbooks and Nurse Goodale win take you to wait in my sitting-room. I shall be ordering some strong hot coffee and it will be brought up to you soon. Is that understood?”

There was a subdued murmur of, “Yes, Matron.”

Miss Taylor turned to Miss Beale.

I’m so very sorry, but it will mean your waiting here too.“

“Of course, Matron, I quite understand.”

Across the heads of the students their eyes met in bewildered speculation and wordless sympathy.

But Miss Beale was a little horrified to remember afterwards the banality and irrelevance of her first conscious thought.

“This must be the shortest inspection on record. What on earth will I say to the General Nursing Council?”

V

A few minutes earlier the four people in the demonstration room had straightened up and looked at each other, white-faced, utterly exhausted. Heather Pearce was dead. She was dead by any criteria, legal or medical. They had known it for the last five minutes but had worked on, doggedly and without speaking, as if there were still a chance that the flabby heart would pulse again into life. Mr. Courtney-Briggs had taken off his coat to work on the girl and the front of his waistcoat was heavily stained with blood. He stared at the thickening stain, brow creased, nose fastidiously wrinkled, almost as if blood were an alien substance to him. The heart massage had been messy as well as ineffectual. Surprisingly messy for Mr. Courtney-Briggs, the Matron thought. But surely the attempt had been justified? There hadn’t been time to get her over to the theatre. It was a pity that Sister Gearing had pulled out the esophageal tube. It had, perhaps, been a natural reaction but it might have cost Pearce her only chance. While the tube was in place they could at least have tried an immediate stomach wash-out. But an attempt to pass another tube by the nostril had been frustrated by the girl’s agonized spasms and, by the time these had ceased, it was too late and Mr. Courtney-Briggs had been forced to open the chest wall and try the only measure left to him. Mr. Courtney-Briggs’ heroic efforts were well known. It was only a pity that they left the body looking so pathetically mangled and the demonstration room stinking like an abattoir. These things were better conducted in an operating theatre, shrouded and dignified by the paraphernalia of ritual surgery.

He was the first to speak.

This wasn’t a natural death. There was something other than milk in that feed. Well, that’s obvious to all of us I should have thought We’d better call the police. I’ll get on to the Yard. I know someone there, as it happens. One of the Assistant Commissioners.“

He always did know someone, thought the Matron. She felt the need to oppose him. Shock had left an aftermath of irritation and, irrationally, it focused on him. She said calmly:

“The local police are the ones to call and I think that the Hospital Secretary should do it I’ll get Mr. Hudson on the house telephone now. They’ll call in the Yard if they think it necessary. I cant think why it should be. But that decision is for the Chief Constable, not for us.”

She moved over to the wall telephone, carefully walking round the crouched figure of Miss Rolfe. The Principal Tutor was still on her knees. She looked, thought the Matron, rather like a character from a Victorian melodrama with her smoldering eyes in a deathly white face, her black hair a little disheveled under the frilly cap, and those reeking hands. She was turning them over slowly and studying the red mass with a detached, speculative interest as if she, too, found it difficult to believe that the blood was real. She said:

“If there’s a suspicion of foul play ought we to move the body?” Mr. Courtney-Briggs said sharply: “I have no intention of moving the body.”

“But we can’t leave ”her here, not like this!“ Miss Gearing was almost weeping in protest The surgeon glared at her.

“My dear woman, this girl’s dead! Dead! What does it matter where we leave the body? She can’t feel. She can’t know. For God’s sake don’t start being sentimental about death. The indignity is that we die at all, not what happens to our bodies.”

He turned brusquely and went over to the window. Sister Gearing made a movement as if to follow him, and then sank into the nearest chair and began to cry softly like a snuffling animal. No one took any notice of her. Sister Rolfe got stiffly to her feet Holding her hands raised in front of her in the ritual gesture of an operating theatre nurse she walked over to a sink in the corner, nudged on the tap with her elbow, and began to wash her hands. At the wall-mounted telephone the Matron was dialing a five-digit number. They heard her calm voice.

“Is that the Hospital Secretary’s office? Is Mr. Hudson there? If’s Matron.” There was a pause. “Good morning, Mr. Hudson. I am speaking from the ground floor demonstration room in Nightingale House. Could you please come over immediately? Yes. Very urgent I’m afraid something tragic and horrible has happened and it will be necessary for you to telephone the police. No, I’d rather not tell you on the telephone. Thank you.” She replaced the receiver and said quietly: “He’s coming at once. Hell have to put the Vice-Chairman in the picture, too—it’s unfortunate that Sir Marcus is in Israel— but the first thing is to get the police. And now I had better tell the other students.”

Sister Gearing was making an attempt to control herself. She blew loudly into her handkerchief, replaced it in her uniform pocket, and raised a blotched face.

“I’m sorry. It’s the shock, I suppose. It’s just that it was all so horrible. Such an appalling thing to happen. And the first time I’ve taken a class tool And everyone sitting and watching it like that The other students as well. Such a horrible accident.”

“Accident Sister?” Mr. Courtney-Briggs turned from the window. He strode over to her and bent his bull-like head close to hers. His voice was harsh, contemptuous as he almost spat the words into her face. “Accident? Are you suggesting that a corrosive poison found its way into that feed by accident? Or that a girl in her right mind would choose to kill herself in that particularly horrible way? Come, come, Sister, why not be honest for once? What we’ve just witnessed was murder!”

Chapter Two

CEASE UPON THE MIDNIGHT

I

It was late in the evening of Wednesday, 28th January, sixteen days after the death of Nurse Pearce and, in the students’ sitting-room on the first floor of Nightingale House, Nurse Dakers was writing her mid-week letter to her mother. It was usual for her to finish it in time for the Wednesday evening post but, this week, she had lacked the energy and inclination to settle down to the task. Already the waste-paper basket at her feet held the screwed-up copies of the first two rejected drafts. And now she was trying again.

She was sitting at one of the twin writing-desks in front of the window, her left elbow almost brushing the heavy curtains which shut out the dank blackness of the night, her forearm curled protectively around the writing-pad. Opposite to her, the desk lamp shone on the bent head of Madeleine Goodale, so close that Nurse Dakers could see the clean white scalp at the hair parting and smell the almost imperceptible antiseptic tang of shampoo. Two textbooks were open before Goodale and she was making notes. Nothing, thought Nurse Dakers with resentful envy, was worrying her; nothing in the room or beyond it could disturb her quiet concentration. The admirable and secure Goodale was making sure that the John Carpendar Gold Medal for top marks in the final examination would eventually be pinned on her immaculate apron.

Frightened by the strength of this sudden and shaming antagonism, which she felt must communicate itself to Goodale, Nurse Dakers slid her eyes from the bent head so disconcertingly close to hers and gazed around the room. It was so familiar to her after nearly three years of training that normally she hardly noticed the details of architecture or furnishing. But tonight she saw it with an unexpected clarity, as if it had nothing to do with her or with her life. It was too large to be cozy and was furnished as if it had acquired odd items over the years and taken them to itself. It must once have been an elegant drawing-room, but the walls had long since lost their paper and were now painted and scruffy, due—it was rumored—for redecoration when money allowed. The ornate fireplace of carved marble and surrounding oak was fitted with a large gas stove, old and ugly in design but still remarkably efficient, hissing a strong heat even into the dark corners of the room. The elegant mahogany table against the far wall with its jumble of magazines might have been bequeathed by John Carpendar himself. But it was scratched and dull now, dusted regularly but rarely polished, its surface scarred and ringed. To the left of the fireplace, in incongruous contrast, stood a large, modern television set, the gift of the Hospital League of Friends. In front of it was an immense cretonne-covered sofa with sagging springs, and a single matching armchair. The rest of the chairs were similar to those in the hospital out-patient department but were now too old and shabby to be tolerated for the use of patients. The arm-rests of pale wood were grubby; the colored vinyl seats were stretched and dented and now smelt unpleasantly in the heat from the fire. One of the chairs was empty. It was the red-seated one which Nurse Pearce had invariably used. Scorning the intimacy of the sofa, she would sit there, a little apart from the huddle of students around the television set, watching the screen with careful disinterest as if it were a pleasure she could easily forgo. Occasionally she would drop her eyes to a book in her lap as if the folly presented for her entertainment had become too much to bear. Her presence, thought Nurse Dakers, had always been a little unwelcome and oppressive. The atmosphere of the students’ sitting-room had always been lighter, more relaxed without that upright and censorious figure. But the empty chair, the dented seat, was almost worse. Nurse Dakers wished that she had the courage to walk over to it, to swing it into line with the other chairs around the television set and settle herself nonchalantly into its sagging curves, exorcizing once and for all that oppressive ghost She wondered if the other students felt the same. It was impossible to ask. Were the Burt twins, bunched together in the depths of the sofa, really as absorbed as they appeared by the old gangster film they were watching? They were each knitting one of the heavy sweaters which they invariably wore in winter, their fingers clicking away, their eyes never leaving the screen. Beside them Nurse Fallon lolled in the armchair, one trousered leg swung casually over the arm. It was her first day back in the school after her sick leave and she still looked pale and drawn. Was her mind really on the sleek-haired hero with his tall wide-ribboned and ridiculous trilby, his over-padded shoulders, whose raucous voice, punctuated with gunshots, filled the room? Or was she, too, morbidly conscious of that empty red chair, the dented seat, the rounded ends of the armrests polished by Pearce’s hand?