And what were they all thinking about? Fallon probably. There couldn’t be anyone in the hospital from the consultants to the ward maids who didn’t know by now that a second Nightingale student had died in mysterious circumstances and that Scotland Yard had been called in. Fallon’s death was probably the subject of gossip at most of the tables this morning. But it didn’t prevent people from eating their lunch or from getting on with their job. There was so much to do; there were so many other pressing concerns; there was even so much fresh gossip. It wasn’t just that life had to go on; in hospital that cliche had particular relevance. Life did go on, carried forward by the imperative momentum of birth and death. New booked admissions came in; ambulances daily disgorged the emergencies; operation lists were posted; the dead were laid out and the healed discharged. Death, even sudden and unexpected death, was more familiar to these young fresh-faced students than it was to even the most experienced senior detective. And there was a limit to its power to shock. You either came to terms with death in your first year, or you gave up being a nurse. But murder? That was different Even in this violent world, murder still held its macabre and primitive power to shock. But how many people in Nightingale House really believed that Pearce and Fallon had been murdered? It would take more than the presence of the Yard’s wonder boy and his retinue to give credence to such an extraordinary idea. There were too many other possible explanations, all of them simpler and more believable than murder. Dalgliesh might believe as he chose; proving it would be another matter.
Sister Rolfe bent her head and began unenthusiastically to dissect her plaice. She felt no particular hunger. The strong smell of food was heavy on the air, stifling appetite. The noise of the cafeteria beat against her ears. It was ceaseless and inescapable, a confused continuum of discord in which individual sounds were scarcely distinguishable.
Next to her, her cloak folded neatly at the back of her chair and the shapeless tapestry bag which accompanied her everywhere dumped at her feet, Sister Brumfett was eating steamed cod and parsley sauce with belligerent intensity as if she resented the need to eat and was venting her irritation on the food. Sister Brumfett invariably chose steamed fish; and Sister Rolfe felt suddenly that she couldn’t face another lunch hour of watching Brumfett eat cod.
She reminded herself that there was no reason why she should. There was nothing to prevent her sitting someplace else, nothing except this petrification of the will which made the simple act of carrying her tray three feet to a different table seem impossibly cataclysmic and irrevocable. On her left, Sister Gearing toyed with her braised beef, and chopped her wedge of cabbage into neat squares. When she actually began to eat she would shove the feed in avidly like a greedy schoolgirl. But always there were these finicky and salivatory preliminaries. Sister Rolfe wondered how many times she had resisted the urge to say, “For God’s sake Gearing, stop messing about and eat it!” One day, no doubt, she would say it And another middle-aged and unlikeable Sister would be pronounced “getting very difficult It’s probably her age”.
She had considered living out of the hospital. It was permissible and she could afford it The purchase of a flat or a small house would be the best investment for her retirement But Julia Pardoe had disposed of that idea in a few half-interested, destructive comments dropped like cold pebbles into the deep pool of her hopes and plans. Sister Rolfe could still hear that high, childish voice.
“Live out Why should you want to do that? We shouldn’t see so much of each other.”
“But we should, Julia. And in much greater privacy and without all this risk and deceit It would be a comfortable and agreeable little house. You’d like it.”
“It wouldn’t be as easy as slipping upstairs to see you when I feel like it.”
When she felt like it? Felt like what? Sister Rolfe had desperately fought off the question she never dared to let herself ask.
She knew the nature of her dilemma. It wasn’t, after all, peculiar to herself. In any relationship there was one who loved and one who permitted himself or herself to be loved. This was merely to state the brutal economics of desire; from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. But was it selfish or presumptuous to hope that the one who took knew the value of the gift; that she wasn’t wasting love on a promiscuous and perfidious little cheat who took her pleasure wherever she chose to find it? She had said:
“You could probably come twice or three times a week, perhaps more often. I wouldn’t move far.”
“Oh, I don’t see how I could manage that. I don’t see why you want the work and bother of a house. You’re all right here.”
Sister Rolfe thought: “But I’m not all right here. This place is souring me. It isn’t only the long-stay patients who become institutionalized. It’s happening to me. I dislike and despise most of the people I’m required to work with. Even the job is losing its hold. The students get more stupid and worse educated with every intake. I’m not even sure any more of the value of what I’m supposed to be doing.”
There was a crash near the counter. One of the maids had dropped a tray of used crockery. Looking instinctively across, Sister Rolfe saw that the detective had just come in and taken up his tray at the end of the line. She watched the tall figure, disregarded by the chattering queue of nurses, as he began to move slowly down the line between a white-coated houseman and a pupil midwife, helping himself to roll and butter, waiting for the girl to hand out his choice of main course. She was surprised to see him there. It had never occurred to her that he would eat in the hospital dining-hall or that he would be on his own. Her eyes followed him as he reached the end of the line, handed over his meal ticket and turned to look for a vacant seat He seemed utterly at ease and almost oblivious of the alien world around him. She thought that he was probably a man who could never imagine himself at a disadvantage in any company since he was secure in his private world, possessed of that core of inner self-esteem which is the basis of happiness. She wondered what kind of a world his was, then bent her head to her plate irritated at this unusual interest he aroused in her. Probably he would be thought handsome by most women, with that lean bony face, at once arrogant and sensitive. It was probably one of his professional assets, and being a man he would make the most of it. No doubt it was one of the reasons why he had been given this case. If dull Bill Bailey could make nothing of it, let the Yard’s wonder boy take over. With a house full of women and three middle-aged spinsters as his chief suspects, no doubt he fancied his chances. Well, good luck to him!
But she was not the only one at the table to notice his arrival. She felt rather than saw Sister Gearing stiffen and a second later heard her say:
“Well, well. The handsome sleuth! He’d better feed with us or he may find himself in a gaggle of students. Someone should have told the poor man how the system works.”
And now, thought Sister Rolfe, she’ll give him one of her street corner come-hither looks and we shall be burdened with him for the rest of the meal. The look was given and the invitation not refused. Dalgliesh, carrying his tray nonchalantly and apparently completely at ease, threaded his way across the room and came up to their table. Sister Gearing said:
“What have you done with that handsome sergeant of yours? I thought policemen went about in pairs like nuns.”