So she did have a motive for getting rid of Fallon. Mr. Courtney-Brigg’s liaison had probably been more noticed than he bad realized. Dalgliesh wasn’t surprised that Sister Gearing should know about it Her sharp nose would be adept at smelling out sexual scandal.
He said: “I wondered if she were jealous.” Sister Gearing, unaware of what she had told, rambled happily on.
“I don’t suppose she knew. Wives don’t usually. Anyway, C.B. wasn’t going to break up his marriage to wed Fallon. Not him! Mrs. C.B. has plenty of money of her own. She’s the only child of Price of Price and Maxwell, the building firm-and what with CB.”s earnings and Daddy’s ill-gotten gains, they’re very comfortable. I don’t think Muriel worries much what he does as long as he behaves himself properly to her and the money keeps rolling in. I know I wouldn’t Besides, if rumor’s correct, our Muriel doesn’t exactly qualify for the League of Purity.“ ”Anyone here?“ asked Dalgliesh.
“Oh no, nothing like that. It’s just that she goes around with quite a smart set. She usually gets her picture in every third issue of the social glossies. And they’re in with the theatrical crowd too. C.B. had a brother who was an actor, Peter Courtney. He hanged himself about three years ago. You must have read about it.”
Dalgliesh’s job gave him few opportunities to see a play and theatre going was one of the pleasures he missed most He had seen Peter Courtney act only once but it had been a performance not easily forgotten. He had been a very young Macbeth, as introspective and sensitive as Hamlet, in thrall sexually to a much older wife, and whose physical courage was compounded of violence and hysteria. It had been a perverse but interesting interpretation, and it had very nearly succeeded. Thinking of the performance now, Dalgliesh imagined that he could detect a likeness between the brothers, something to do with the set of the eyes perhaps. But Peter must have been the younger by nearly twenty years. He wished he knew what the two men, so widely separated in age and talent, had made of each other. Suddenly and irrelevantly Dalgliesh asked: “How did Pearce and Fallon get on together?”
“They didn’t. Fallon despised Pearce. I don’t mean she hated her or would have harmed her; she just despised her.”
“Was there any particular reason?”
“Pearce took it upon herself to tell Matron about Fallon’s little tipple of whisky at nights. Self-righteous little beast. Oh, I know she’s dead and I ought not to have said that But really, Pearce could be insufferably self-righteous. Apparently what happened was that Diane Harper-she’s left the training school now-had a bad cold about a fortnight before the set came into the block, and Fallon fixed her a hot whisky and lemon. Pearce could smell the stuff half-way along the corridor and concluded that Fallon was now attempting to seduce her juniors with the demon drink. So she appeared in the utility room-they were in the main nurses’ home then, of course-in her dressing-gown, sniffing the air like an avenging angel, and threatened to report Fallon to Matron unless she promised more or less on her knees never to touch the stuff again. Fallon told her where to go and what to do with herself when she got there. She had a picturesque turn of phrase when roused, had Fallon. Nurse Dakers burst into tears, Harper lost her temper and the general noise brought the House Sister on to the scene, Pearce reported it to Matron all right, but no one knows with what result, except that Fallon started keeping her whisky in her own room. But the whole thing caused a great deal of feeling in the third year. Fallon was never popular with the set, she was too reserved and sarcastic. But they liked Pearce a damn sight less.”
“And did Pearce dislike Fallon?”
“Well, it’s difficult to say. Pearce never seemed to concern herself with what other people thought of her. She was an odd girl, pretty insensitive too. For example, she might disapprove of Fallon and her whisky-drinking but that didn’t prevent her from borrowing Fallon’s library ticket.”
“When did this happen?”
Dalgliesh leaned across and replaced his teacup on the tray. His voice was level, unconcerned. But he felt again that spring of excitement and anticipation, the intuitive sense that something important had been said. It was more than a hunch; it was, as always, a certainty. It might happen several times during a case if he were lucky, or not at all. He couldn’t will it to happen and he was afraid to examine its roots too closely since he suspected that it was a plant easily withered by logic.
“Just before she came into block, I think. It must have been the week before Pearce died. The Thursday, I think. Anyway, they hadn’t yet moved into Nightingale House. It was just after supper time in the main dining-room. Fallon and Pearce were walking out of the door together and I was just behind them with Goodale. Then‘ Fallon turned to Pearce and said: ’Here’s the library token I promised you. I’d better give it to you now as I don’t suppose well see each other in the morning. You’d better take the reader’s ticket too, or they may not let you have the book.” Pearce mumbled something and grabbed the token rather ungraciously I thought, and that was that Why? It isn’t important, is it?“ ”I can’t think why it should be,“ said Dalgliesh.
VIII
He sat through the next fifteen minutes in exemplary patience. Sister Gearing couldn’t have guessed from his courteous attention to her chattering and the leisurely way in which he drank his third and last cup of tea, that every moment was now grudged. When the meal was over, he carried the tray for her into the small Sisters’ kitchen at the end of the corridor while she fretted at his heels, bleating her protests. Then he said, “Thank you,” and left.
He went at once to the cell-like bedroom which still held nearly all the possessions Nurse Pearce had owned at the John Carpendar. It took him a moment to select the correct key from the heavy bunch in his pocket The room had been locked after her death and was still locked. He went in, switching on the light The bed was stripped and the whole room was very tidy and clean as if it too, had been laid out for burial. The curtains were drawn back so that from outside, the room would look no different from any other. The window was open but the air held a faint tang of disinfectant as if someone had tried to obliterate the memory of Pearce’s death by a ritual purification.
He had no need to refresh his memory. The detritus of this particular life was pathetically meager. But he went through her leavings again, turning them in careful hands as if the feel of cloth and leather could transmit their own dues. It didn’t take long. Nothing had altered since his first inspection. The hospital wardrobe, identical to that in Nurse Fallon’s room, was more than adequate for the few woolen dresses, unexciting in color and design, which, under his questing hands, swung from their padded hangers and gave out a faint smell of cleaning fluid and mothballs. The thick winter coat in fawn was of good quality but obviously old. He sought once more in the pockets. There was nothing except the handkerchief which had been there on his first examination, a crumpled ball of white cotton smelling of sour breath.
He moved to the chest of drawers. Here again the space provided had been more than sufficient. The two top drawers were filled with underclothes, strong sensible vests and knickers, comfortably warm no doubt for an English winter but with no concessions to glamour or fashion. The drawers were lined with newspaper. The sheets had been taken out once already, but he ran his hand under them and felt nothing but the gritty surface of bare unpolished wood. The remaining three drawers held skirts, jumpers and cardigans‘, a leather handbag, carefully wrapped in tissue paper; a pair of best shoes in a string bag; an embroidered handkerchief sachet with a dozen handkerchiefs carefully folded; an assortment of scarves; three pairs of identical nylon stockings still in their wrappers.