Then Nurse Harper had dropped the two crisp new £. 5 notes almost at her feet Nurse Harper who had so much pocket money from her father that she could lose £ 10 without really worrying about it. It had happened about four weeks ago.
Nurse Harper had been walking with Nurse Pearce from the Nurses’ Home to the hospital dining-room for breakfast, and Nurse Dakers had been following a few feet behind. The two notes had fallen out of Nurse Harper’s cape pocket and had lain there fluttering gently. Her first instinct had been to call after the other two students, but something about the sight of the money had stopped her. The notes had been so unexpected, so unbelievable, so beautiful in their pristine crispness. She had just stood looking at them for a second, and then she had realized that she was really looking at Mummy’s new coat And, by then, the other two students had passed almost out of sight, the notes were folded in her hand, and it was too late.
The Matron asked: “How did Nurse Pearce know that you had the notes?”
“She said that she’d seen me. She just happened to glance round when I was bending to pick up the notes. It meant nothing to her at the time, but when Nurse Harper told everyone that she’d lost the money and that the notes must have fallen out of her cape pocket on the way over to breakfast, Nurse Pearce guessed what had happened. She and the twins went with Nurse Harper to search the path to see if they could find the money. I expect that was when she remembered about my stooping down.”
“When did she first talk to you about it?”
“A week later, Matron, a fortnight before our set came into block. I expect she couldn’t bring herself to believe it before then. She must have been trying to make up her mind to speak to me.”
So Nurse Pearce had waited. The Matron wondered why. It couldn’t have taken her a whole week to clarify her suspicions. She must have recalled seeing Dakers stoop to pick up the notes as soon as she heard that they were missing. So why hadn’t she tackled the girl at once? Had it perhaps been more satisfying to her twisted ego to wait until the money was spent and the culprit safely in her power?“
“Was she blackmailing you?” she demanded.
“Oh no, Matron!” The girl was shocked.
“She only took back five shillings a week, and that wasn’t blackmail. She sent the money every week to a society for discharged prisoners. She showed me the receipts.”
“And did she, incidentally, explain why she wasn’t re-paying it to Nurse Harper?”
“She thought it would be difficult to explain without involving me and I begged her not to do that It would have been the end of everything, Matron. I want to take a district nurse training after I’m qualified so that I can look after Mummy. If I could get a country district we could have a cottage together and perhaps even a car. Mummy will be able to give up the store. I told Nurse Pearce about that Besides, she said that Harper was so careless about money that it wouldn’t hurt her to learn a lesson. She sent the payments to the society for discharged prisoners because it seemed appropriate. After all, I might have gone to prison if she hadn’t shielded me.”
The Matron said drily: “That of course, is nonsense and you should have known it was nonsense. Nurse Pearce seems to have been a very stupid and arrogant young woman. Are you sure that she wasn’t making any other demands on you? There is more than one kind of blackmail.”
“But she wouldn’t do that Matron!” Nurse Dakers struggled to lift her head from the pillow. “Pearce was… well, she was good.” She seemed to find the word inadequate and puckered her brow as if desperately anxious to explain.
“She used to talk to me quite a lot and she gave me a card with a passage out of the Bible which I had to read every day. Once a week she used to ask me about it”
The Matron was swept by a sense of moral outrage so acute that she had to find relief in action. She got up from the stool and walked over to the window, cooling her flaring face against the pane. She could feel her heart bumping and noticed with almost clinical interest that her hands were shaking. After a moment she came back again to the bedside.
“Don’t talk about her being good. Dutiful, conscientious, and well-meaning if you like, but not good. If ever you meet real goodness you will know the difference. And I shouldn’t worry about being glad that she is dead. In the circumstances you wouldn’t be normal if you felt differently. In time you may be able to pity her and forgive her.”
“But Matron, it’s me who ought to be forgiven. I’m a thief.” Was there a suggestion of masochism in the whine of the voice, the perverse self-denigration of the born victim? Miss Taylor said briskly.
“You’re not a thief. You stole once; that’s a very different thing. Every one of us has some incident in our lives that we’re ashamed and sorry about. You’ve recently learned something about yourself, about what you’re capable of doing, which has shaken your confidence. Now you have to live wife that knowledge. We can only begin to understand and forgive other people when we have learned to understand and forgive ourselves. You won’t steal again. I know that, and so do you. But you did once. You are capable of stealing. That knowledge will save you from being too pleased with yourself, from being too self-satisfied. It can make you a much more tolerant and understanding person and a better nurse. But not if you go on indulging in guilt and remorse and bitterness. Those insidious emotions may be very enjoyable but they aren’t going to help you or anyone else.”
The girl looked up at her.
“Will the police have to know?”
That, of course, was the question. And there could be only one answer.
“Yes. And you will have to tell them, just as you’ve told me. But I shall have a word first with the Superintendent He’s a new detective, from Scotland Yard this time, and I think he’s an intelligent and understanding man.”
Was he? How could she possibly tell? That first meeting had been so brief, merely a glance and a touching of hands. Was she merely comforting herself with a fleeting impression that here was a man with authority and imagination who might be able to solve the mystery of both deaths with a minimum of harm to the innocent and guilty alike. She had felt this instinctively. But was the feeling rational? She believed Nurse Dakers’s story; but then she was disposed to believe it How would it strike a police officer faced with a multiplicity of suspects but no other discernible motive? And the motive was there all right It was Nurse Dakers’s whole future, and that of her mother. And Dakers had behaved rather oddly. True she had been most distressed of all the students when Pearce had died, but she had pulled herself together remarkably quickly. Even under intense police questioning she had kept her secret safe. What then had precipitated this disintegration into confession and remorse? Was it only the shock of finding Fallon’s body? And why should Fallon’s death be so cataclysmic if she had had no hand in it?
Miss Taylor thought again about Pearce. How little one really knew about any of the students. Pearce, if one thought about her at all, had typified the dull, conscientious, unattractive student who was probably using nursing to compensate for the lack of more orthodox satisfactions. There was usually one such in every nurse training school. It was difficult to reject them when they applied for training since they offered more than adequate educational qualifications and impeccable references. And they didn’t on the whole make bad nurses. It was just that they seldom made the best But now she began to wonder. If Pearce had possessed such a secret craving for power that she could use this child’s guilt and distress as fodder for her own ego, then she had been far from ordinary or ineffective. She had been a dangerous young woman.