Shroud for a Nightingale

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This new Dalgliesh series is rich, detailed, and demanding, an impeccable collaboration between lead writer Helen Edmundson ( An Inspector Calls), Stephen Greenhorn ( Doctor Who), and lead director Jill Robertson ( Trainspotting), who is joined by Andy and Ryan Tohill ( The Dig), and Lisa Clarke ( Sanditon). The accomplished cast is led by Bertie Carvel ( Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell). In other words, this team knows what it’s doing. Not rectal feeding, Sister. The rectum can't absorb sufficient nourishment. Intra-gastric feeding by the mouth or nose." It still has an antique feel, though, for a book published in 1971. It has 1950s gender sensibilities (the assumption that a woman, once married, will end her career or her studies), it has that obsession with spinsters so irresistible to British mystery writers ("she was a thin, brown-skinned woman, brittle and nobbly as a dead branch who looked as if the sap had long since dried in her bones"), and it still features the generalized misanthropy that Christie seemed to bequeath to the genre; nearly all the suspects are hateful, bitter, or piteous in some way. But here at last was the signpost. The road to the John Carpendar Hospital led upward from the High Street between a broad avenue of trees. To the left was a high stone wall which bounded the hospital grounds.

Yπάρχουν κάποια λάθη (ευτυχώς, όχι πολλά για να κάνουν περίεργη εντύπωση) στην μετάφραση και την εκτύπωση του βιβλίου... It would be," thought Miss Beale. Whenever there was a crisis in the hospital the first people to be sacrificed were the student nurses. Their training programme could always be interrupted. It was a sore point with her, but now was hardly the time to protest. She made a vaguely acquiescent noise. They started down the last staircase. Mr. Courtney-Briggs continued his monologue: She is, writes James, “ a thin, brown-skinned woman, brittle and nobbly as a dead branch, who looked as if the sap had long since dried in her bones.” When Collins arrives for the questioning, she sits down “with anticipatory malevolence” and never once smiles during the half hour.Is that the Hospital Secretary's office? Is Mr. Hudson there? It's Matron." There was a pause. "Good morning, Mr. Hudson. I am speaking from the ground floor demonstration room in Nightingale House. Could you please come over immediately? Yes. Very urgent. I'm afraid something tragic and horrible has happened and it will be necessary for you to telephone the police. No, I'd rather not tell you on the telephone. Thank you." She replaced the receiver and said quietly: "He's coming at once. He'll have to put the Vice-Chairman in the picture, too -- it's unfortunate that Sir Marcus is in Israel -- but the first thing is to get the police. And now I had better tell the other students." 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." James is a peerless creator of atmosphere. She herself has always claimed that the first thing that comes to her when embarking upon a new novel is the setting. Undoubtedly, Nightingale House, the setting for most of the events in this book, singularly inappropriate for a nursing college, is almost as vividly described as any of the characters. It is a dark, nasty house, an evil house, where crimes of abuse, neglect and death had previously taken place. The final scene, when the house is finally demolished, is a masterpiece of descriptive writing which conveys so much more than just a sense of place. Supt. Adam Dalgleish, Scotland Yard, Nightingale House, just outside London. Nursing students living in a creepy old hospital building find murder and lots of intrigue; erudite, old-fashioned closed-community/manor house style mystery but with interesting modern (~1970) twists and a bit of then-relevant British history; classic cosy police procedural.

Courtney-Briggs remains reticent and actually misleads the police, claiming he had left the building immediately after surgery and had put a white scarf on a fallen tree to warn other pedestrians. Police also find out that Sister Mavis Gearing had invited Leonard Morris, the chief pharmacist of the hospital, to dinner; they had parted ways several minutes after midnight. Morris had seen Sister Brumfett leave the building, too, but testifies that at 12:17 a.m., he injured himself after stumbling over a fallen tree in the dark. Contrary to Courtney-Briggs’s earlier claim, Morris had injured himself because the tree did not have a warning marker. A weakened pane of glass that had been blown out in the evening storm suggests an outside intruder, but the absence of other indicators turns the investigation on those who had been inside the building. This is an intricately woven story of power and the power of forgiveness - or not, as the case may be. Involving medical - and personal - politics in the late 1960s and a bit of recent British history, the main focus is upon five increasingly interesting young women and their teachers, the nursing Sisters. Each Sister is very clearly presented and followed through the story, along with most of the students as well. James has a facility for showing us the workings of people's minds and their interactions with others. Here she uses that approach in a lot of detail but it never becomes quite slow - the information given is always pertinent, always at least "curious..." if not always immediately easy to understand where it falls within the plot. Actor Bertie Carvel as Adam Dalgliesh in the Acorn TV series "Dalgliesh" (2021-). Image sourced from IMDb. 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."

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. Ten minutes later the absent three returned. Nurse Dakers still looked pale but was composed. It was Nurse Goodale who looked worried. As if unable to keep it to herself, she said: It was much better than the three previous books — Cover Her Face (1962), A Mind to Murder (1963), and Unnatural Causes (1967) — but not as good as the ones that would follow.