The shrewd eyes were regarding him with watchful dislike. The whole interrogation was an outrage to her. It was hopeless to try to propitiate such a witness and he had no stomach to try. He said:
“I want to go through your movements on the morning Nurse Pearce died, and last night.”
“I’ve already told Inspector Bailey about the morning Pearce died. And I’ve sent you a note.”
“I know. Thank you for it Now I want you to tell me yourself.”
She made no further protest but recited the sequence of her movements and actions as if they were a railway timetable.
Her account of her movements on the morning of Heather Pearce’s death agreed almost exactly with the written statement she had already given to Inspector Bailey. She described only her own actions, put forward no theories, gave no opinion. After that first revealing outburst she had apparently decided to stick to facts.
She had woken at six thirty on the Monday the twelfth of January, and had then joined the Matron for early morning tea which it was their habit to drink together in Miss Taylor’s flat She bad left Matron at seven fifteen and had then bathed and dressed. She had stayed in her own room until about ten minutes to eight when she had collected her paper from the rack in the hall and had gone in to breakfast She had seen no one on the stairs or in the hall. Sister Gearing and Sister Rolfe had joined her in the dining-room and they had breakfasted together. She had finished her breakfast and had left the room first; she was unable to say precisely when but it was probably not later than twenty-past eight had returned briefly to her sitting-room on the third floor, and had then walked over to the hospital where she had arrived on her ward shortly before nine o’clock. She had known about the General Nursing Council Inspection since, obviously, Matron had talked to her about it. She had known about the demonstration since details of the nurse training program were on the hall notice-board. She had known about Josephine Fallon’s illness since Sister Rolfe had telephoned her during the night. She had not, however, known that Nurse Pearce was to take Fallon’s place. She agreed that she could have discovered this easily by a glance at the notice-board, but she had not troubled to look. There was no reason why she should be concerned. Taking an interest fat the general nurse training program was one thing, bothering to check on who was to act as the patient was quite another.
She had not known that Nurse Fallon had returned to Nightingale House that morning. Had she done so, she would have reprimanded the girl severely. By the time she had reached the ward Nurse Fallon was in her room and in bed. No one in the ward had noticed her absence. Apparently the Staff Nurse had thought she was in the bathroom or the lavatory. It was reprehensible of the Staff Norse not to have checked, but the ward was particularly busy and one did not expect patients, particularly student nurses, to behave like idiots. Nurse Fallon had probably only left the ward for about twenty minutes. Her walk through the dark morning had apparently done her no harm. She had made a quick recovery from the influenza and there had been no complications. She had not seemed particularly depressed while she was in the ward, and if there was anything worrying her, she had not confided in Sister Brumfett In Sister Brumfett’s opinion, the girl had been perfectly well enough on discharge from the ward to rejoin her set in Nightingale House.
Next she went through her movements on the previous night, in the same dull, unemphatic voice. Matron had been in Amsterdam at the International Conference so she had spent the evening alone watching television in the Sisters’ sitting-room. She had gone to bed at ten p.m. and had been awakened at about quarter to twelve by Mr. Courtney-Briggs’s telephone call. She made her way across to the hospital by a short cut through the trees and had helped the student nurse on duty to prepare the bed for the patient’s return. She had stayed with her patient until satisfied that the oxygen and drip were being satisfactorily administered and that his general condition was as good as could be expected. She had returned to Nightingale House shortly after two a.m. and on her way up to her room had seen Maureen Burt coming out of the lavatory. The other twin had appeared almost immediately and she had had a brief conversation with them. She had declined their offer to make her cocoa and had gone straight up to her room. Yes, there was a light shining through Fallon’s keyhole at ‘that time. She had not gone into Fallon’s room and had no way of knowing whether the girl was alive or dead. She had slept well and had awoken just after seven o’clock when Sister Rolfe had come rushing in with the news that Fallon’s body had been discovered. She hadn’t seen Fallon since the girl was discharged from her ward after supper on the Tuesday.
At the end of the recital there was a silence, then Dalgliesh asked: “Did you like Nurse Pearce, Sister? Or Nurse Fallon?”
“No. I didn’t dislike them either. I don’t believe in having personal relationships with the student nurses. Like and dislike don’t come into it. They’re either good nurses or they aren’t.”
“And were they good nurses?”
“Fallon was better than Pearce. She had more intelligence and more imagination. She wasn’t an easy colleague but the patients liked her. Some people thought her callous but you wouldn’t find a patient who said so. Pearce tried too hard. She went about looking like a young Florence Nightingale, or so she thought Always thinking of the impression she was making. A silly girl fundamentally. But you could rely on her. She always did what was correct Fallon did what was right That takes instinct as well as training. Wait until you’re dying, my good man. You’ll know the difference.” So Josephine Fallon had been both intelligent and imaginative. He could believe it. But these were the last two qualities he would have expected Sister Brumfett to praise. He recalled the conversation at luncheon, her insistence on the need for unquestioning obedience. He said carefully:
“I’m surprised that you should rank imagination among the virtues of a student nurse. I thought that you valued absolute obedience above all. It’s difficult to reconcile imagination, which is surely individual, even iconoclastic, with the submission to authority of the good subordinate. I’m sorry if I sound presumptuous. This conversation hasn’t much to do with my business here, I know. But I’m curious.”
It had a great deal to do with his business there; his curiosity wasn’t irrelevant. But she wasn’t to know that. She said gruffly:
“Obedience to rightful authority comes first You’re in a disciplined service; you shouldn’t need telling. If’s only when the obedience is automatic, when the discipline is accepted and even welcomed, that one learns the wisdom and courage that can safety step outside the rules when the moment comes. Imagination and intelligence are dangerous in nursing if they aren’t founded on discipline.”
So she wasn’t as simple or as obstinately conformist as she appeared, or chose to appear to her colleagues. And she, too, had imagination. Was this the Brumfett, he wondered, that Mary Taylor knew and valued. And yet, he was convinced that his first impressions hadn’t been wrong. Fundamentally, she wasn’t an intelligent woman. Was she, even now, voicing the theory, the very words perhaps, of another? The wisdom and courage to step outside the rules.“ Well, someone in Nightingale House had stepped outside them, someone hadn’t lacked the courage. They looked at each other. He was beginning to wonder if Nightingale House had put some kind of spell on him, if its threatening atmosphere had begun to affect his judgment. For behind the thick spectacles he thought he saw the eyes change, thought he detected an urgency to communicate, to be understood, even a plea for help. And then the illusion passed. He was facing again the most ordinary, the most uncompromising, the least complex of all his suspects. And the interview was at an end.