“Len, what is it? You’re hurt! You never told me! I thought it was your ulcer. You never said anything about hurting your head!”
“It was my ulcer. But this didn’t help it”
He spoke directly to Dalgliesh:
“You must be Chief Superintendent Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard. Miss Gearing told me that you wanted to see me. I’m on my way to my general practitioner’s surgery but I’m at your disposal for half an hour.”
But Sister Gearing was not to be diverted from her concern.
“But you never said anything about an accident! How did it happen? Why didn’t you tell me about it when I rang?”
“Because we had other things to discuss and because I didn’t want you to fuss.”
He shook off her detaining arm and sat himself down in a wicker chair. The two women and Dalgliesh moved in close to him. There was a silence. Dalgliesh revised his unreasonably preconceived notions of Miss Gearing’s lover. He should have looked ridiculous, sitting there in his cheap raincoat with his patched eye and bruised face and speaking in that grating sarcastic voice. But he was curiously impressive. Sister Rolfe had somehow conveyed the impression of a little man, nervous, ineffectual and easily intimidated. This man had force. It might be only the manifestation of pent-up nervous energy; it might be the obsessive resentment born of failure or unpopularity. But his was certainly not a comfortable or negligible personality.
Dalgliesh asked: “When did you learn that Josephine Fallon was dead?”
“When I rang my pharmacy office just after nine thirty this morning to say that I wouldn’t be in. My assistant told me. I suppose the news was all over the hospital by then.”
“How did you react to the news?”
“React? I didn’t react. I hardly knew the girl. I was surprised, I suppose. Two deaths in the same house and so close together in time; well, it’s unusual to say the least of it It’s shocking really. You could say I was shocked.”
He spoke like a successful politician condescending to express an attributable opinion to a cub reporter.
“But you didn’t connect the two deaths?”
“Not at the time. My assistant just said that another Nightingale-we call the students Nightingales when they are in block-that another Nightingale student, Jo Fallon, had been found dead. I asked how and he said something about a heart attack following influenza. I thought it was a natural death. I suppose that’s what everyone thought at first”
“When did you think otherwise?”
“I suppose when Miss Gearing rang me about an hour later to say that you were here.”
So Sister Gearing had telephoned Morris at his home. She must have wanted to reach him urgently to have risked that Was it perhaps to warn him, to agree their story? While Dalgliesh was wondering what excuse, if any, she had given to Mrs. Morris, the pharmacist answered the unspoken question.
“Miss Gearing doesn’t usually ring me at home. She knows that I like to keep my professional and my private life absolutely separate. But she was naturally anxious about my health when she rang the laboratory after breakfast and was told that I wasn’t in. I suffer from a duodenal ulcer.”
“Your wife, no doubt was able to reassure her.”
He replied calmly but with a sharp glance at Sister Rolf e, who had moved to the periphery of the group:
“My wife takes the children to her mother’s all day on Fridays.”
As Mavis Gearing would no doubt have known. So they had, after all, had a chance to consult each other, to decide on their story. But if they were concocting an alibi, why fix it for midnight? Because they knew for the best or worse of reasons that Fallon had died at that hour? Or because, knowing her habits, they judged that midnight was the most likely time? Only the killer, and perhaps not even he, could know precisely when Fallon had died. It could have been before midnight. It could have been as late as two thirty. Even Miles Honeyman with his thirty years’ experience couldn’t time the death precisely from clinical signs alone. The only certain thing was that Fallon was dead and that she had died almost immediately after drinking her whisky. But when exactly had that been? It was her usual habit to prepare her late night drink as soon as she went upstairs to bed. But no one admitted to having seen her after she left the nurses’ sitting-room. Fallon could, just possibly, have been alive when Sister Brumfett and the Burt twins saw her light shining through the keyhole just after two a.m. And if she had been alive then what had she been doing between midnight and two o’clock? Dalgliesh had been concentrating on those people who had access to the school. But suppose Fallon had left Nightingale House that night, perhaps to keep an assignation. Or suppose she had deferred making her nightly drink of whisky and lemon because she was expecting a visitor. The front and back doors of Nightingale House had been found bolted in the morning, but Fallon could have let her visitor out any time during the night and bolted the door behind him.
But Mavis Gearing was still preoccupied with her lover’s damaged head and bruised face.
“What happened to you, Len? You’ve got to tell me. Did you come off your bicycle?”
Sister Rolfe laughed unkindly. Leonard Morris bestowed on her a measured glance of intimidating contempt, then turned to Sister Gearing.
“If you must know Mavis, yes I did. It happened after I left you last night There was one of the big elms down across the path and I cycled right into it.” Sister Rolfe spoke for the first time. “Surely you could see it in the light of your bicycle lamp?” “My bicycle lamp, Sister, not unreasonably, is fixed to shine on the road. I saw the tree trunk. What I didn’t see in time was one of the high jutting boughs. I was lucky not to lose an eye.” Sister Gearing, predictably, gave an anguished yelp. Dalgliesh asked: “What time did this happen?” “I’ve just told you. Last night after I had left Nightingale House. Oh, I see! You’re asking what time precisely? As it happens I can answer that I came off my bicycle under the impact and was afraid that my watch had been broken. Fortunately it hadn’t The hands stood at twelve seventeen a.m. precisely.”
“Wasn’t there some warning-a white scarf-tied to the branch?”
“Of course not, Superintendent. If there had been I should hardly have ridden straight into it.”
“If it were tied high up on a bough you might not have noticed it”
“It wasn’t there to notice. After I’d picked up my bicycle and recovered a little from the shock I inspected the tree carefully. My first thought was that I might be able to shift it at least slightly and leave part of the road clear. That was obviously impossible. The job was going to need a tractor and tackle. But there was no scarf on any part of that tree at twelve seventeen a.m.”
“Mr. Morris,”‘ said Dalgliesh, “I think it’s time you and I had a little talk.”
But Sister Brumfett was waiting for him outside the interview room. Before Dalgliesh could speak she said accusingly:
“I was summoned to see you in this room. I came promptly at some inconvenience to my ward. When I arrive I’m told that you’re not in your room and will I please go down to the conservatory. I don’t propose to chase around Nightingale House for you. If you want to see me I can spare you half an hour now.”
“Miss Brumfett,” said Dalgliesh, “you seem determined by your behavior to give me the impression that you killed these girls. It’s possible you did. I shall come to a conclusion about that as soon as I reasonably can. In the meantime, please curb your enthusiasm for antagonizing the police and wait until I can see you. That will be when I’ve finished talking to Mr. Morris. You can wait here outside the office or go to your own room, whichever suits you. But I shall want you in about thirty minutes and I, too, have no intention of chasing over the house to find you.”