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white face, her black hair a little dishevelled under the frilly cap, and those reeking hands. She was turning them over slowly and studying the red mass with a detached, speculative interest as if she, too, found it difficult to believe that the blood was real. She said: “If there’s a suspicion of foul play ought we to move the body?”
    Mr. Courtney-Briggs said sharply: “I have no intention of moving the body.”
    “But we can’t leave her here, not like this!” Miss Gearing was almost weeping in protest. The surgeon glared at her.
    “My dear woman, the girl’s dead! Dead! What does it matter where we have the body? She can’t feel. She can’t know. For God’s sake don’t start being sentimental about death. The indignity is that we die at all, not what happens to our bodies.”
    He turned brusquely and went over to the window. Sister Gearing made a movement as if to follow him, and then sank into the nearest chair and began to cry softly like a snuffling animal. No one took any notice of her. Sister Rolfe got stiffly to her feet. Holding her hands raised in front of her in the ritual gesture of an operating theatre nurse she walked over to a sink in the corner, nudged on the tap with her elbow, and began to wash her hands. At the wall-mounted telephone the Matron was dialling a five-digit number. They heard her calm voice.
    “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.”
    Sister Gearing was making an attempt to control herself. She blew loudly into her handkerchief, replaced it in her uniform pocket, and raised a blotched face.
    “I’m sorry. It’s the shock, I suppose. It’s just that it was all so horrible. Such an appalling thing to happen. And the first time I’ve taken a class too! And everyone sitting and watching it like that. The other students as well. Such a horrible accident.”
    “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!”

BOOK TWO
CEASE UPON THE MIDNIGHT

1
    It was late in the evening of Wednesday, 28th January, sixteen days after the death of Nurse Pearce and, in the students’ sitting-room on the first floor of Nightingale House, Nurse Dakers was writing her mid-week letter to her mother. It was usual for her to finish it in time for the Wednesday evening post but, this week, she had lacked the energy and inclination to settle down to the task. Already the waste-paper basket at her feet held the screwed-up copies of the first two rejected drafts. And now she was trying again.
    She was sitting at one of the twin writing-desks in front of the window, her left elbow almost brushing the heavy curtains which shut out the dank blackness of the night, her forearm curled protectively around the writing-pad. Opposite to her, the desk lamp shone on the bent head of Madeleine Goodale, so close that Nurse Dakers could see the clean white scalp at the hair parting and smell the almost imperceptible