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

No unpleasantness?”
    An odd word, unpleasantness. She had seen again that grotesque figure, teetering forward in agony, fingers scrabbling at the ineffectual air, the thin tubing stretching the mouth like a wound. No, there had been no unpleasantness.
    “And the other students? They got on well with Nurse Pearce too? There had been no bad blood as far as you know?”
    Bad blood. A stupid expression. What was the opposite? she wondered. Good blood? There was only good blood between us. Pearce’s good blood. She had answered: “She hadn’t any enemies as far as I know. And if anyone did dislike her, they wouldn’t kill her.”
    “So you all tell me. But someone did kill her, didn’t they? Unless the poison wasn’t intended for Nurse Pearce. She only played the part of the patient by chance. Did you know that Nurse Fallon had been taken ill that night?”
    And so it had gone on. Questions about every minute of that last terrible demonstration. Questions about the lavatory disinfectant. The empty bottle, wiped clean of fingerprints, had been quickly found by the police lying among the bushes at the back of the house. Anyone could have thrown it from a bedroom window or bathroom window in the concealing darknessof that January morning. Questions about her movements from the moment of first awakening. The constant reiteration in that minatory voice that nothing should be held back, nothing concealed.
    She wondered whether the other students had been as frightened. The Burt twins had seemed merely bored and resigned, obeying the Inspector’s sporadic summons with a shrug of the shoulders and a weary, “Oh, God, not again!” Nurse Goodale had said nothing when she was called for questioning and nothing afterwards. Nurse Fallon had been equally reticent. It was known that Inspector Bailey had interviewed her in the sick bay as soon as she was well enough to be seen. No one knew what had happened at that interview. It was rumoured that Fallon had admitted returning to Nightingale House early in the morning of the crime but had refused to say why. That would be very like Fallon. And now she had returned to Nightingale House to rejoin her set. So far she hadn’t even mentioned Pearce’s death. Nurse Dakers wondered if and when she would; and, morbidly sensitive to the hidden meaning in every word, struggled on with her letter:
    We haven’t used the demonstration room since Nurse Pearce’s death but otherwise the set is continuing to work according to plan. Only one of the students, Diane Harper, has left the school. Her father came to fetch her two days after Nurse Pearce died and the police didn’t seem to mind her leaving. We all thought it was silly of her to give up so near to her finals but her father has never been keen on her training as a nurse and she is engaged to be married anyway, so I suppose she thought it didn’t matter. No one else is thinking of leaving and there really isn’t the slightest danger. So please, darling, do stop worrying about me. Now I must tell you about tomorrow’s programme
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    There was no need to go on drafting now. The rest of the letter would be easy. She read over what she had written and decided that it would do. Taking a fresh sheet of paper from the pad she began to write the final letter. With any luck she would just get it finished before the film ended and the twins put away their knitting and went to bed.
    She scribbled quickly on and, half an hour later, her letter finished, saw with relief that the film had come to the last holocaust and the final embrace. At the same moment Nurse Goodale removed her reading spectacles, looked up from her work, and closed her book. The door opened and Julia Pardoe appeared.
    “I’m back,” she announced, and yawned. “It was a lousy film. Anyone making tea?” No one answered but the twins stubbed their knitting needles into the balls of wool and joined her at the door, switching off the television on their way. Pardoe would never