Free Shroud for a Nightingale by P. D. James Page B

her distress must surely have penetrated this insubstantial partition. He was anxious to interview Nurse Christine Dakers. At present she was in the nurses’ sick bay suffering, so he was told, from shock. The shock was probably genuine enough, but even if it were not, there was nothing he could do about it. Nurse Dakers was for the moment effectively protected by her doctors from any questioning from the police.
    He explored a little further. Opposite the rows of nurses’ bedrooms was a suite of bathroom cubicles and lavatories leading out of a large square cloakroom fitted with four washbasins, each surrounded by a shower curtain. Each of the bath cubicles had a small sash window fitted with opaque glass, inconveniently placed but not difficult to open. They gave a view of the back of the house and of the two short wings,each built above a brick cloister, which were incongruously grafted on to the main building. It was as if the architect, having exhausted the possibilities of Gothic revival and baroque, had decided to introduce a more contemplative and ecclesiastical influence. The ground between the cloisters was an overgrown jungle of laurel bushes and untended trees which grew so close to the house that some of the branches seemed to scrape the downstairs windows. Dalgliesh could see dim figures searching among the bushes and could hear the faint mutter of voices. The discarded bottle of disinfectant which had killed Heather Pearce had been found among these bushes and it was possible that a second container, its contents equally lethal, might also have been hurled in the dark hours from the same window. There was a nail brush on the bath rack and, reaching for it, Dalgliesh hurled it in a wide arc through the window and into the bushes. He could neither see nor hear its fall but a cheerful face appeared among the parted leaves, a hand was waved in salute and the two searching constables moved back deeper into the undergrowth.
    He next made his way along the passage to the nurses’ utility room at the far end. Detective Sergeant Masterson was there with Sister Rolfe. Together they were surveying a motley collection of objects laid out before them on the working surface rather as if they were engaged in a private Kim’s game. There were two squeezed lemons; a bowl of granulated sugar; an assortment of mugs containing cold tea, the surface of the liquid mottled and puckered; and a delicate Worcester teapot with matching cup and saucer and milk jug. There was also a crumpled square of thin white wrapping paper bearing the words “Scunthorpe’s Wine Stores, 149, High Street, Heatheringfield” and a scribbled receipt smoothed out and held flat by a couple of tea canisters.
    “She bought the whisky yesterday morning, sir,” Masterson said. “Luckily for us, Mr. Scunthorpe is punctilious about receipts. That’s the bill and that’s the wrapping paper. So it looks as if she first opened the bottle when she went to bed yesterday.”
    Dalgliesh asked: “Where was it kept?”
    It was Sister Rolfe who replied. “Fallon always kept her whisky in her bedroom.”
    Masterson laughed. “Not surprising with the stuff costing nearly three quid a bottle.”
    Sister Rolfe looked at him with contempt. “I doubt whether that would worry Fallon. She wasn’t the type to mark the bottle.”
    “She was generous?” asked Dalgliesh.
    “No, merely unconcerned. She kept her whisky in her room because Matron asked her to.”
    But brought it in here yesterday to prepare her late night drink, thought Dalgliesh. He stirred the sugar gently with his finger.
    Sister Rolfe said: “That’s innocent. The students tell me that they all used it when they made their morning tea. And the Burt twins, at least, drank some of theirs.”
    “But we’ll send it and the lemon to the lab just the same,” said Dalgliesh.
    He lifted the lid from the little teapot and looked inside. Answering his unspoken question, Sister Rolfe said: “Apparently