Shroud for a Nightingale

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SfaN is not as bad as another Dalgliesh series, in which Dalgliesh went up to a sexually active bachelorette who was unconnected with the crimes, and basically blamed her promiscuity as partly responsible for what happened. Still, when one or two promiscuous people in SfaN question if Dalgliesh disapproves of their activity, he only stares at them stonily for a moment, then asks something else. I haven’t anything to offer. There isn’t any help. We are all alone, all of us from the moment of birth until we die. Our past is our present and our future. We have to live with ourselves until there isn’t any more time left. If you want salvation look to yourself. There’s nowhere else to look.” “The full enormity of the crime” It’s a typical Dalgliesh move, understated and subtle, but he remains aloof. Maybe nobody knows him. He’s recently widowed. He’s a published poet but doesn’t talk about it much (Masterson is incredulous, most of the women are intrigued), and he is a man of few words. Policing and poetry work together for him. He observes and reflects, and he’s challenging to read, although one character thinks she has him figured out. Except Dalgliesh has a core of kindness and the brutality of police work. The all-female community from the top down flutters around him, except grumpy Sister Brumfett, who tells him he is bullying everyone and disturbing the routine.

Both and much more are contained in the two images that the moment of the photographer’s flash brings — the body transformed into “a witch’s plaything, a grotesque puppet.” But Miss Beale was a little horrified to remember afterwards the banality and irrelevance of her first conscious thought. I saw Hilda Rolfe, their Principal Tutor, in the Westminster Library this week. Extraordinary woman! Intelligent, of course, and reputedly a first-class teacher, but I imagine she terrified the students." This wasn't a natural death. There was something other than milk in that feed. Well, that's obvious to all of us I should have thought. We'd better call the police. I'll get on to the Yard. I know someone there, as it happens. One of the Assistant Commissioners." Accident, Sister?" Mr. Courtney-Briggs turned from the window. He strode over to her and bent his bull-like head close to hers. His voice was harsh, contemptuous as he almost spat the words into her face. "Accident? Are you suggesting that a corrosive poison found its way into that feed by accident? Or that a girl in her right mind would choose to kill herself in that particularly horrible way? Come, come, Sister, why not be honest for once? What we've just witnessed was murder!"It’s not the first time that James’ protagonist, who was featured in 14 books from 1962-2008, has been brought to the small screen (Roy Marsden and Martin Shaw played in him the ITV and BBC adaptations and there were several British radio iterations), but it’s the first time that Carvel, an Olivier Award-winning actor, has taken the role. He proves to be a fine, workmanlike addition to the oeuvre — nothing fancy or too clever, but he gets the job done. Sometimes less is more, without distracting character tics early on. It was then that the door opened. Matron came quietly in and shut it behind her. There was a creak of starched linen as the twins slipped from the desk and stood to attention. Nurse Harper rose gracelessly from her chair. All of them turned towards Miss Taylor. The story is set in a nurses' training school and we meet an interesting set of characters who soon becomes the suspects of two murders. While telling her story, James takes us also through the characters and lives of each suspect revealing their qualities, secrets, and scandals and giving a good account of their real selves. This probing deeper into the characters of the suspects is quite interesting. It also gives weight to the story. At the same time, however, certain attitudes and the sheer insolence of some of the suspects towards Dalgliesh and his official retinue bit grated on my nerves. The setting of this book takes place in 1970 just based on things that were said. I have to say that at one point someone makes a reference about things that happened in World War II were long forgotten and that was the only false note I felt in this whole book. Britain has a lot of remembrance days about War World I and II so I can't see the citizens of the country acting like it wasn't a big deal. Especially since many of the characters in this one would have grown up during the war or in the shadow of the aftermath of War World II.

And I kept a list on this one! Glad I did! So many characters, so many names! And who did what to whom and when and why! Timing is critical as who was in the room with whom at such and such a time! Leave it to PD James to leave my head in a whirl. I kept one small card of info, but it got crammed!)The hospital had always flourished. The local community was predominantly middle-class and prosperous, with a well-developed charitable sense and too few objects on which to indulge it. Just before the Second World War a well-equipped private patients' wing had been added. Both before and after the advent of the National Health Service it had attracted wealthy patients, and consequently eminent consultants, from London and further afield. Miss Beale reflected that it was all very well for Angela to talk about the prestige of a London teaching hospital, but the John Carpendar had its own reputation. A woman might well think there were worse jobs than being Matron of a developing district general hospital, well thought of by the community it served, agreeably placed and fortified by its own local traditions. A nursing school inspection ends horribly with the death of a student during a demonstration of intra-gastric feeding tubes. This gruesome beginning is compounded with a second student death, and the local police are exchanged for the Yard’s Inspector Adam Dalgliesh whose implacable determination to get at the truth is welcomed by the nursing staff with varying degrees of coolness. But that would be attempted murder!" It was Diane Harper who spoke. She sounded incredulous. Maureen Burt laughed.

IF anyone could help me in finding the original running time of this series, I would be so appreciative. It still remains at nearly the pinnacle of AD favorites, but was originally so much more. This feels like a step-up in confidence for James's Dalgleish series: it still has its roots in the classic Christie-esque (the closed community, the poisonings, the limited circle of suspects, the secret lives beneath the surface) but the NHS setting gives it oomph. I did wonder if women in the 1970s were quite this old-fashioned (49 is impending old age, nurse's training is abandoned on marriage, a whiskey night-cap is an indicator of racy behaviour) but that's a question, not a criticism. Nurse Pearce is acting the part of our patient this morning. We have just been going through her history. She is Mrs. Stokes, the fifty-year-old mother of four children, wife of a council refuse collector. She has had a laryngectomy for the treatment of cancer." She turned to a student sitting on her right.I am hoping to find someone who taped the Series on VHS in reasonably good quality and can let me borrow a copy. (This would have been in the late 80s - early 90s time frame). At this stage they had a chance of being complete. The students...could you look after them please? There's an empty room next door. Keep them together." Someone had substituted a cream-looking disinfectant for the warm milk used in a teaching session on feeding a patient by intragastric tube. Nurse Heather Pearce, the student subject, died a painful death. Sixteen days later, Josephine Fallon, the intended target of the deadly teaching session who had been excused that day because of influenza, is poisoned in her room after a quiet evening watching television. Again, the tightknit community would like to believe her death was a suicide, not a murder. An almost-graduated nursing student is killed while playing the patient in a demonstration/instruction lecture before a visiting VIP. It might have been suicide - the girl was extremely religious, temperamental, moody, and prone to extremes of behavior - much of it rather unforgiving, and some of it perhaps illegal. As the local police work their way through the suspect list and information they've gathered, no real conclusion is reached and the case goes cold. But before too long another student is dead under suspicious circumstances, and the "coincidence" is too much for one high-powered doctor connected with the training facility to endure. He calls Scotland Yard himself, and Adam Dalgleish is assigned to the case, along with Sargent Masterson, a young, not exactly raw (but not far removed from it either) policeman with a slight tendency for bullying witnesses. He's got a lot to learn. Julia Pardoe's composed, rather childish voice went on: "So if the victim was really meant to be Fallon, it couldn't have been one of us, could it? We all knew that Fallon wouldn't be acting the patient this morning."