Shroud for a Nightingale by P. D. James Read Free Book Online

armrests polished by Pearce’s hand?
    Nurse Dakers shivered. The wall clock showed that it was already after nine-thirty. Outside the wind was rising. It was going to be a wild night. In the rare intervals of quiet from the television set she could hear the creaking and sighing of the trees and could picture the last leaves falling softly on grass and path, isolating Nightingale House in a sludge of silence and decay. She forced herself to pick up her pen. She really must get on I Soon it would be time for bed and, one by one, the students would say their good nights and disappear, leaving her to brave alone the poorly-lit staircase and the dark corridor beyond. Jo Fallon would still be here of course. She never went to bed until the television program closed for the night Then she would make her lonely way upstairs to prepare her nightly hot whisky and lemon. Everyone knew Fallon’s invariable habit. But Nurse Dakers felt that, she could not face being left alone with Fallon. Hers was the last company she would choose, even in that lonely, frightening walk from the sitting-room to bed.
    She began writing again.
    “Now please, Mummy, don’t keep on worrying about the murder.”
    The impossibility of the sentence struck her as soon as she saw the words on the paper. Somehow she must avoid the use of that emotive, blood-stained word. She tried again. “Now please, Mummy, don’t start worrying about the things you read in the papers. There really isn’t any need. I’m perfectly safe and happy and no one really believes that Pearce was deliberately killed.”
    It wasn’t true of course. Some people must think that Pearce had been deliberately killed or why would the police be here? And it was ridiculous to suppose that the poison could have got into the feed by accident or that Pearce, the god-fearing, conscientious and essentially dull Pearce, would have chosen to kill herself in that agonizing and spectacular way. She wrote on:
    “We still have the local C.I.D. here, but they don’t come in so often now. They have been very kind to us students and I don’t think they suspect anyone. Poor Pearce wasn’t very popular, but if’s ridiculous to think that anyone here would want to harm her.”
    Had the police really been kind, she wondered? They had certainly been very correct, very polite. They had produced all the usual reassuring platitudes about the importance of co-operating with them in solving this terrible tragedy, telling the truth at all times, keeping nothing back however trivial and unimportant it might seem. Not one of them had raised his voice: not one had been aggressive or intimidating. And all of them had been frightening. Their very presence in Nightingale House, masculine and confident, had been, like the locked door of the demonstration room, a constant reminder of tragedy and fear. Nurse Dakers had found Inspector Bailey the most frightening of them all. He was a huge, ruddy, moonfaced man whose encouraging and avuncular voice and manner were in unnerving contrast to his cold pig-like eyes. The questioning had gone on and on. She could still recall the interminable sessions, the effort of will necessary to meet that probing gaze.
    “Now I’m told that you were the most upset of them all when Nurse Pearce died. She was a particular friend of yours perhaps?”
    “No. Not really. Not a particular friend. I hardly knew her.”
    “Well, there’s a surprise! After nearly three years of training with her? Living and working so closely together, I should have thought that you all got to know each other pretty well.”
    She had struggled to explain.
    “In some ways we do. We know each other’s habits. But I didn’t really know what she was like; as a person, I mean.” A silly reply. How else could you know anyone except as a person? And it wasn’t true. She had known Pearce. She had known her very well.
    “But yon got on well together? There hadn’t been a quarrel or anything like that? No