He turned again to the bedside locker, and the small shelf fixed above it The locker held a bedside lamp, a small alarm clock in a leather case which had long since run down, a packet of paper handkerchiefs with one crumpled tissue half-pulled through the slit, and an empty water carafe. There was also a leather-bound Bible and a writing-case. Dalgliesh opened the Bible at the flyleaf and read again the inscription in careful copper plate. “Awarded to Heather Pearce for attendance and diligence. St Mark’s Sunday School” Diligence. An unfashionable, intimidating word, but one, he felt of which Nurse Pearce would have approved.
He opened the writing-case, but with little hope of finding what he sought Nothing had changed since his first examination. Here still was the half-finished letter to her grandmother, a dull recital of the week’s doings written as impersonally as a ward report and a quarto-sized envelope, posted to her on the day of her death and obviously slipped into the writing-case by someone who, having opened it, couldn’t think of what else to do with it. It was an illustrated brochure on the work of a home in Suffolk for German war refugees apparently sent in the hope of a donation.
He turned his attention to the small collection of books on the wall shelf. He had seen them before. Then, as now, he was struck by the conventionality of her choice and by the meagerness of this personal library. A school prize for needlework. Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. Dalgliesh had never believed that any child read them and there was no evidence that Nurse Pearce had done so. There were two travel books, In the Steps of St. Paul and In the Steps of the Master. In both the girl had carefully inscribed her name. There was a well-known but out-of-date edition of a nursing textbook. The date on the flyleaf was nearly four years old. He wondered whether she had bought it in anticipation of her training, only to find that its advise on applying leeches and administering enemas had become out of date. There was a copy of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, also a school prize, but this time inappropriately for deportment This, too, showed little sign of having been read. Lastly there were three paperbacks-novels by a popular woman writer, each advertised as “The Book of the Film”-and a fictional and highly sentimental account of the wanderings across Europe of a lost dog and cat which Dalgliesh remembered had been a best-seller some five years previously. This was inscribed, “To Heather, with love from Auntie Edie, Christmas 1964.” The whole collection told him little about the dead girl, except that her reading had apparently been as restricted as her life. And nowhere he found what he was seeking.
He didn’t go again to look in Nurse Fallon’s room. The scene-of-crime officer had searched every inch of it, and he himself could have described the room in minute detail and given an accurate inventory of all its contents. Wherever the library ticket and the token were, he could be sure that they weren’t there. Instead he ran lightly up the wide staircase to the floor above where he had noticed a wall-mounted telephone when carrying Sister Gearing’s tea tray to the utility room. A card listing the internal extensions hung beside it and, after a moment’s thought, he rang the nurses’ sitting-room. Maureen Burt answered. Yes, Nurse Goodale was still there. Almost immediately Dalgliesh heard her voice and he asked her to come up to see him in Nurse Pearce’s room.
She came so promptly that he had hardly reached the door before he saw the self-assured, uniformed figure at the top of the stairs. He stood aside and she moved into the room before him and silently surveyed the stripped bed, the silent bedside clock, the closed Bible, letting her gaze rest briefly on each object with gentle uninquisitive interest Dalgliesh moved to the window and, both standing, they regarded each other wordlessly across the bed. Then he said:
“I’m told that Nurse Fallon lent a library ticket to Nurse Pearce sometime during the week before she died. You were leaving the dining-room with Sister Gearing at the time. Can you remember what happened?”
Nurse Goodale was not given to showing surprise.
“Yes, I think so. Fallon had told me earlier that day that Pearce wanted to visit one of the London libraries and had asked to borrow her reader’s ticket and the token. Fallon was a member of the Westminster library. They’ve got a number of branches in the City but you aren’t really supposed to belong unless you either live or work in Westminster. Fallon had a flat in London before she became a student here and had kept her reader’s card and token. It’s an excellent library, much better than we’ve got here, and it’s useful to be able to borrow books. I think Sister Rolfe is a member too. Fallon took her reader’s ticket and one of the tokens across to lunch and handed them to Pearce as we were leaving the dining-room.”
“Did Nurse Pearce say why she wanted them?”
“Not to me. She may have told Fallon. I don’t know. Any of us could borrow one of Fallon’s tokens if we wanted to. Fallon didn’t require an explanation.”
“What precisely are these tokens like?”
“They’re small oblongs of pale blue plastic with the City Arms stamped on them. The library usually gives four to every reader and you hand one in every time you take out a book, but Jo only had three. She may have lost the fourth. There’s also the reader’s ticket That’s the usual small piece of cardboard with the name, address and date of expiry. Sometimes the assistant asks to see the reader’s ticket and I suppose that’s why Jo handed it over with the token.”
“Do you know where the other two are?”
“Yes, in my room. I borrowed them about a fortnight ago when I went up to town with my fiance‘ to attend a special service in the Abbey. I thought we might have time to visit the Great Smith Street branch to see whether they had the new Iris Murdoch. However, we met some friends from Mark’s theological college after the service and never got to the library. I meant to return the tokens to Jo but I slipped them in my writing-case and forgot about them. She didn’t remind me. I can show them to you if it would be helpful.”
“I think it would. Did Heather Pearce use her token, do you know?”
“Well, I assume she did. I saw her waiting for the Green Line bus to town that afternoon. We were both off duty so it must have been the Thursday. I imagine that she had it in mind to visit the library.”
She looked puzzled.
“Somehow I feel quite sure that she did take out a library book but I can’t think why I should be so certain.”
“Can’t you? Think very hard.”
Nurse Goodale stood silently, her hands folded composedly as if in prayer over the white stiffness of her apron. He did not hurry her. She gazed fixedly ahead then turned her eyes to the bed and said quietly:
“I know now. I saw her reading a library book. It was the night when Jo was taken ill, the night before Pearce herself died. I went into her bedroom just after half past eleven to ask her to go and look after Jo while I fetched Sister. She was sitting up in bed with her hair in two plaits and she was reading. I remember now. It was a large book, bound in a dark color, dark blue I think, and with a reference number stamped in gold at the foot of the spine. It looked an old and rather heavy book. I don’t think it was fiction. She was holding it propped up against her knees I remember. When I appeared she closed it quickly and slipped it under her pillow. It was a strange thing to do but it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. Pearce was always oddly secretive. Besides, I was too concerned about Jo. But I remember it now.”