“I’m going to see Nurse Dakers now. Afterwards the Superintendent will want to interview me and then I shall be in my main office in the hospital if you or Mr. Grout want me. I shall, of course, be available all day.”
Without a further word or look she gathered up her traveling case and handbag and went oat of the room. Mr. Courtney-Briggs perfunctorily opened the door for her, then prepared to follow. Standing in the open doorway, he said with jovial belligerence:
“Well, now that Matron’s back and the important matter of accommodation for the police has been settled, perhaps the work of the hospital can be permitted to continue. I shouldn’t be late for your interview if I were you, Dalgliesh. Miss Taylor isn’t accustomed to insubordination.”
He shut the door behind him. Alderman Kealey looked for a moment perplexed, then he said:
“He’s upset, of course. Well, naturally. Wasn’t there some kind of rumor…”
Then his eyes lit on Dalgliesh. He checked himself suddenly, and turned to Paul Hudson:
“Well, Mr. Hudson, you heard what Matron said. The police are to use the visitors’ sitting-room on this floor. Get on with it, my dear fellow. Get on with it!”
V
Miss Taylor changed into uniform before she went over to the private ward. At the time it seemed an instinctive thing to do, but, wrapping her cloak tightly around her as she walked briskly along the small footpath leading from Nightingale House to the hospital, she realized that the instinct had been prompted by reason. It was important to the hospital that Matron was back, and important that she should be seen to be back.
The quickest way to the private wing was through the outpatients hall. The department was already buzzing with activity. The circles of comfortable chairs, carefully disposed to give an illusion of informality and relaxed comfort, were filling quickly. Volunteers from the ladies’ committee of the League of Friends were already presiding at the steaming urn, serving tea to those regular patients who preferred to attend an hour before their appointments for the pleasure of sitting in the warmth, reading the magazines and chatting to their fellow habitues. As Matron passed she was aware of heads turning to watch her. There was a brief silence, followed by the customary murmur of deferential greeting. She was conscious of the white-coated junior medical staff standing briefly to one side as she passed, of the student nurses pressing themselves back against the wall.
The private ward was on the second floor of what still was called the new building, although it had been completed in 1945. Miss Taylor went up by the lift, sharing it with two radiographers and a young houseman. They murmured their formal, “Good morning, Matron,” and stood in unnatural silence until the lift stopped, then stood back while she went out before them.
The private ward consisted of a suite of twenty single rooms, opening each side of a wide central corridor. The Sister’s office, the kitchen, and the utility room were just inside the door. As Miss Taylor entered, a young first-year student nurse appeared from the kitchen. She flushed when she saw Matron and muttered something about fetching Sister.
“Where is Sister, Nurse?”
“In room 7 with Mr. Courtney-Briggs, Matron. His patient isn’t too well.”
“Don’t disturb them: just tell Sister when she appears that I’ve come to see Nurse Dakers. Where is she?”
“In room 3, Matron.” She hesitated.
“It’s all right, Nurse, I’ll find my own way. Get on with what you are doing.”
Room 3 was at the far end of the corridor, one of six single rooms, usually reserved for sick nurses. Only when these rooms were all occupied were the staff nursed in the side rooms of the wards. It was not, Miss Taylor noted, the room in which Josephine Fallon had been nursed. Room 3 was the sunniest and most pleasant of the six rooms reserved for nurses. A week ago it had been occupied by a nurse with pneumonia, a complication of influenza. Miss Taylor, who visited every ward in the hospital once a day and who received daily reports on every sick nurse, thought it unlikely that Nurse Wilkins was fit enough yet to be discharged Sister Brumfett must have moved her to make room 3 available for Nurse Dakers. Miss Taylor could guess why. The one window gave a view of the lawns and smoothly forked flower beds at the front of the hospital; from this side of the ward it was impossible to glimpse Nightingale House even through the bare tracery of the winter trees. Dear old Brumfett! So unprepossessingly rigid in her views, but so imaginative when it came to the welfare and comfort of her patients. Brumfett, who talked embarrassingly of duty, obedience, loyalty, but who knew exactly what she meant by those unpopular terms and lived by what she knew. She was one of the best ward sisters that the John Carpendar had, or ever would have. But Miss Taylor was glad that devotion to duty had kept Sister Brumfett from meeting the plane at Heathrow. It was bad enough to come home to this further tragedy without the added burden of Brumfett’s doglike devotion and concern.
She drew the stool from under the bed and seated herself beside the girl. Despite Dr. Snelling’s sedative. Nurse Dakers was not asleep. She was lying very still on her back gazing at the ceiling. Now her eyes turned to look at Matron. They were blank with misery. On the bedside locker there was a copy of a textbook, Materia Medica for Nurses. The Matron picked it up.
“This is very conscientious of you, Nurse, but just for the short time you are in here, why not have a novel from the Red Cross trolley or a frivolous magazine? Shall I bring one in for you?”
She was answered by a flood of tears. The slim figure twisted convulsively in the bed, buried her head in the pillow and clasped it with shaking hands. The bed shook with the paroxysm of grief. The Matron got up, moved over to the door and clicked across the board which covered the nurses’ peephole. She returned quickly to her seat and waited without speaking, making no move except to place her hand on the girl’s head. After a few minutes the dreadful shaking ceased and Nurse Dakers grew calmer. She began to mutter, her voice hiccupping with sobs, half muffled by the pillow:
“I’m so miserable, so ashamed.”
The Matron bent her head to catch the words. A chill of horror swept over her. Surely she couldn’t be listening to a confession of murder? She found herself praying under her breath.
“Dear God, please not. Not this child! Surely not this child?”
She waited, not daring to question. Nurse Dakers twisted herself round and gazed up at her, her eyes reddened and swollen like two amorphous moons in a face blotched and formless with misery.
“I’m wicked, Matron, wicked. I was glad when she died.”
“Nurse Fallon?”
“Oh no, not Fallon! I was sorry about Fallon. Nurse Pearce.”
The Matron placed her hands on each of the girl’s shoulders, pressing her back against the bed. She held the trembling body firmly and looked down into the drowned eyes.
“I want you to tell me the truth, Nurse. Did you kill Nurse Pearce?”
“No, Matron.”
“Or Nurse Fallon?”
“No, Matron.”
“Or have anything at all to do with their deaths?”
“No, Matron.”
Miss Taylor let out her breath. She relaxed her hold on the girl and.sat back.
“I think you’d better tell me all about it”
So, calmly now, the pathetic story came out. It hadn’t seemed like stealing at the time. It had seemed like a miracle. Mummy had so needed a warm winter coat and Nurse Dakers had been saving thirty shillings from her monthly salary check. Only the money had taken so long to save and the weather was getting colder; and Mummy, who never complained, and never asked her for anything, had to wait nearly fifteen minutes for the bus some mornings, and caught cold so easily. And if she did catch cold she couldn’t stay away from work because Miss Arkwright, the buyer in the department store, was only waiting for an opportunity to get her sacked. Serving in a store wasn’t really the right job for Mummy, but it wasn’t easy to find a job when you were over fifty and unqualified, and the young assistants in the department weren’t very kind. They kept hinting that Mummy wasn’t pulling her weight, which wasn’t true. Mummy might not be as quick as they were but she really took trouble with the customers.