A Mind to Murder

2

It was the first chance Dalgliesh had had to observe the group secretary closely. He saw a thick-set, chubby-featured man, mild-eyed behind the heavy square spectacles, who looked, in his well-cut tweeds, more like a country doctor or small-town solicitor than a bureaucrat. He was completely at ease and bore himself like a man confident of his powers, unwilling to be hurried, keeping always something in reserve, including, Dalgliesh thought, a keener intelligence than his appearance might suggest.

He seated himself opposite Dalgliesh, drew his chair comfortably forward and, without either apology or excuse, took a pipe from one pocket and sought in the other for his tobacco pouch. Nodding towards Martin and his open notebook he said, in a slow voice with a trace of north-country accent: “Reginald Iven Lauder. Date of birth, 21st April 1905. Address, 42 Makepeace Avenue, Chigwell, Essex. Occupation, Group Secretary, East Central Hospital Management Committee. And now, Superintendent, what do you want to know?”

“A great deal, I’m afraid,” said Dalgliesh. “And firstly, have you any idea at all who could have killed Miss Bolam?” The group secretary established his pipe and, leaning his elbows on the desk, regarded its glowing head with satisfaction.

“I wish I had. I’d have been in here to tell you before now, never fear. But, no. I’ve no help of that kind for you.”

“Miss Bolam had no enemies as far as you were aware?”

“Enemies? Well now, Superintendent, that’s a strong word! She had people who didn’t much like her, the same as I have. You, too, no doubt. But we don’t go in fear of being murdered. No, I wouldn’t have said she had enemies. Mind you, I know nothing of her private life. That’s not my concern.”

“Could you tell me something about the Steen and the position she held? I know something of the clinic’s reputation, of course, but it would be helpful if I could have a clear picture of what goes on here.”

“A clear picture of what goes on?” It might have been imagination but Dalgliesh thought he saw the group secretary’s mouth twitch. “Well, the medical director could tell you more about that than I—on the medical side, that is. But I can give you a gist. The place was founded between the wars by the family of a Mr. Hyman Stein. The story goes that the old man suffered from impotence, got himself some psychotherapy and subsequently fathered five children. So far from impoverishing him they all did well and, when papa died, they put the clinic on a sound financial footing as a memorial to him. After all, they did owe the place something. The sons all changed their name to Steen—for the usual reason I suppose—and the clinic was given the anglicized name. I often wonder what old Hyman would have thought.”

“Is it well endowed?”

“It was. The state got the endowments of course on the Appointed Day following the 1946 Act. A bit has come in since, but not much. People aren’t so keen to will money to institutions run by the government. But the place was quite well off before 1948 as these places go. They did themselves well in the way of equipment and facilities. The Hospital Management Committee’s had quite a job providing for them in the way to which they’d become accustomed.”

“Is the clinic difficult to administer? I imagine there may be personality problems.”

“No more difficult than any other small unit. You get personality problems anywhere. I’d rather deal with a difficult psychiatrist than a difficult surgeon any day. They’re the real prima donnas.”

“Did you consider Miss Bolam a successful administrative officer?”

“Well … she was efficient. I hadn’t really any complaints. She was a bit rigid, I suppose. After all, Ministry circulars haven’t even the force of law, so there’s no sense in treating them as if they are personally dictated by God Almighty. I doubt whether Miss Bolam would have got much further. Mind you, she was a competent, methodical and highly conscientious officer. I don’t think she ever sent in an inaccurate return.”

Poor devil! thought Dalgliesh, stung by the bleak anonymity of that official epitaph. He asked: “Was she popular here? With the medical staff, for example?”

“Well, now, Superintendent, you’ll have to ask them. I can’t think of any reason why she shouldn’t be.”

“You were not then under any pressure from the Medical Committee to remove her from the clinic?”

The mild grey eyes grew suddenly blank. There was a momentary pause before the group secretary calmly replied: “I have had no official request of that kind made to me.”

“But unofficially?”

“There has been a feeling here from time to time, I believe, that a change of job might be helpful to Miss Bolam. Now that’s not such a bad idea, Superintendent! Any officer in a small unit, particularly a psychiatric clinic, can benefit from a change of experience. But I don’t transfer my staff at the whim of medical committees. Bless me, no! And, as I said, no official request was made. If Miss Bolam herself had asked for a transfer, that would have been a different matter. Even so, it wouldn’t have been easy. She was a general administrative officer and we haven’t many posts in that grade.”

Dalgliesh then asked again about Miss Bolam’s telephone call and Lauder confirmed that he had spoken to her at about ten to one. He remembered the time because he was just about to go for lunch. Miss Bolam had asked to speak to him personally and had been put through by his secretary. She had asked whether she could see him urgently.

“Can you remember the exact conversation?”

“More or less. She said: ‘Can I have an appointment to see you as soon as possible? I think there may be something going on here that you ought to know about. I should like your advice. Something that started well before my time here.’ I said that I couldn’t see her this afternoon as I would be in the Finance and General Purposes Committee from two-thirty onwards and had a Joint Consultative Committee immediately afterwards. I asked whether she could give me any idea what it was all about and whether it couldn’t wait until Monday. She hesitated, so, before she could reply, I said I’d drop in on my way home this evening. I knew they had a late clinic on Fridays. She said that she would arrange to be alone in her office from six-thirty onwards, thanked me and rang off. The JCC lasted longer than I expected—that Committee always does—and I got here just before seven-thirty. But you know that. I was still in committee at the time they found the body, as no doubt you’ll be checking in due course.”

“Did you take Miss Bolam’s message seriously? Was she the sort of woman who ran to you with trifles or would a request to see you really mean that something serious was wrong?”

The group secretary thought for a moment before replying: “I took it seriously. That’s why I came round tonight.”

“And you have no idea at all what it might be?”

“None, I’m afraid. It must have been something that she learned about since Wednesday. I saw Miss Bolam then at the House Committee meeting in the late afternoon and she told me afterwards that things were pretty quiet here at present. That is the last time I saw her, incidentally. She was looking rather well, I thought. Better than for some time.”

Dalgliesh asked the group secretary what, if anything, he knew of Miss Bolam’s private life.

“Very little. I believe she has no near relations and lives alone in a flat in Kensington. Nurse Bolam will be able to tell you more about her. They’re cousins and Nurse Bolam is probably the nearest living relative. I’ve got an idea that she had private means. All the official information about her career will be on her dossier. Knowing Miss Bolam, I expect her file will be as meticulously kept as any other staff dossier. It’ll be here, no doubt.”

Without moving from his chair he leaned sideways, jerked open the top drawer of the filing cabinet and inserted a chubby hand between the manilla folders.

“Here we are. Bolam, Enid Constance. I see she came to us in October 1949 as a shorthand typist. She spent eighteen months in Group Headquarters, was transferred to one of our chest clinics on 19th April 1951 on Grade B and applied for the vacant post of administrative officer here on 14th May 1957. The post was then Grade D and she was lucky to get it. We hadn’t a very strong field, I remember. All administrative and clerical jobs were regraded in 1958 following the Noel Hall report and, after some argument with the Regional Board, we managed to get this one graded as general administrative. It’s all down here. Date of birth, 12th December 1922. Address, 37a Ballantyne Mansions, SW8. Then come details about her tax code, national insurance number and incremental date. She’s only had one week off sick since she came here and that was in 1959 when she had flu. There isn’t much more here. Her original application form and letters of appointment will be on her main dossier at Group Headquarters.”

He handed the file to Dalgliesh, who looked through it and then said: “This states that her previous employers were the Botley Research Establishment. Isn’t that Sir Mark Etherege’s show? They dabble in aeronautical research. He’s Dr. Etherege’s brother, isn’t he?”

“I think Miss Bolam did mention to me when she was appointed to this post that she knew Dr. Etherege’s brother slightly. Mind you now, it can’t have been more than that. She was only a shorthand typist at Botley. It’s a bit of a coincidence, I suppose, but then she had to come from somewhere. I seem to remember it was Sir Mark who gave her a reference when she applied to us. That will be on her Group dossier, of course.”

“Would you mind telling me, Mr. Lauder, what arrangements you propose making here now that she’s dead?”

The group secretary replaced the file in the cabinet. “I don’t see why not. I shall have to consult my committee, of course, as the circumstances are unusual, but I shall recommend that the senior medical stenographer here, Mrs. Bostock, takes over in an acting capacity. If she can do the job—and I think she can—she’ll be a strong candidate for the vacancy, but the post will be advertised in the usual way.”

Dalgliesh did not comment but he was interested. Such a quick decision on Miss Bolam’s successor could only mean that Lauder had earlier given some thought to it. The approaches of the medical staff may have been unofficial, but they had probably been more effective than the group secretary cared to admit.

Dalgliesh returned to the telephone call which had brought Mr. Lauder to the clinic. He said: “The words Miss Bolam used strike me as significant. She said that there may be something very serious going on here which you ought to know about and that it started before her time. That suggests, firstly, that she wasn’t yet certain but only suspicious, and, secondly, that she wasn’t worried about a particular incident but about something of long standing. A systematic policy of thieving, for example, as opposed to one isolated theft.”

“Well now, Superintendent, it’s odd you should mention theft. We have had a theft recently, but it was an isolated incident, the first we’ve had here for years, and I can’t see how it could be connected with murder. It was just over a week ago, last Tuesday if I remember rightly. Cully and Nagle were the last to leave the clinic as usual and Cully asked Nagle to have a drink with him at the Queen’s Head. You know it, I expect. It’s the pub on the far corner of Beefsteak Street. There are one or two odd things about this story and one of the strangest is that Cully should invite Nagle for a drink. They’ve never struck me as buddies. Anyway, Nagle accepted and they were in the Queen’s Head together from about seven. At about half past, a pal of Cully’s came in and said he was surprised to see Cully there as he had just passed the clinic and there was a faint light in one of the windows—as if someone was moving around with a torch, he said. Nagle and Cully went off to investigate and found one of the back basement windows broken, or rather, cut out. Quite a clever job it was. Cully didn’t feel inclined to investigate further without reinforcements and I’m not sure that I blame him. He’s sixty-five, remember, and not strong. After some whispering together, Nagle said that he’d go in and Cully had better telephone the police from the kiosk on the corner. Your people came pretty smartly but they didn’t get the intruder. He gave Nagle the slip inside the building and, when Cully got back from telephoning, he was just in time to see the man slip out of the mews.”

“I’ll check how far our people have got with the investigation,” said Dalgliesh. “But I agree that a connection between the crimes seems unlikely on the face of it. Was much taken?”

“Fifteen pounds from a drawer in the psychiatric social worker’s office. The door was locked but he wrenched it open. The money was in an envelope addressed in green ink to the administrative secretary of the clinic and had been received a week earlier. There was no letter with it, only a note to say that the money was from a grateful patient. The other contents of the drawer were torn and scattered but nothing else was stolen. Some attempt had been made to force open the cabinets of records in the general office and Miss Bolam’s desk drawers had been forced but nothing taken.”

Dalgliesh asked whether the fifteen pounds should have been placed in the wall safe.

“Well now, Superintendent, you’re right, of course. It should have been. But there was a little difficulty about using the money. Miss Bolam phoned me about its arrival and said that she thought it should be paid immediately into the clinic’s free money account to be used in due course on the authority of the House Committee. That was a very proper course of action, and so I told her. Shortly afterwards the medical director phoned me to ask if he could have authority to spend the money on some new flower vases for the patients’ waiting room. The vases were certainly needed and it seemed a correct use for non-Exchequer funds, so I rang the chairman of the House Committee and got his approval. Apparently Dr. Etherege wanted Miss Kettle to choose the vases and asked Miss Bolam to hand over the cash. I had already notified Miss Bolam of the decision so she did so, expecting that the vases would be bought at once. Something happened to change Miss Kettle’s plans and, instead of returning the cash to the AO for safe custody, she locked it in her drawer.”

“Do you know how many of the staff knew that it was there?”

“That’s what the police asked. I suppose most people knew that the vases hadn’t been bought or Miss Kettle would have shown them around. They probably guessed that, having been handed the cash, she wouldn’t be likely to return it even temporarily. I don’t know. The arrival of that fifteen pounds was mysterious. It caused nothing but trouble and its disappearance was equally mysterious. Anyway, Superintendent, no one here stole it. Cully only saw the thief for a second but he was certain that he didn’t know the man. He did say, though, that he thought the chap looked like a gentleman. Don’t ask me how he knew or what his criteria are. But that’s what he said.”

Dalgliesh thought that the whole incident was odd and would bear further investigation but he could see no apparent connection between the two crimes. It was not even certain that Miss Bolam’s call to the group secretary for advice was related to her death, but here the presumption was much stronger. It was very important to discover, if possible, what she had suspected. He asked Mr. Lauder once more whether he could help.

“I told you, Superintendent, I haven’t an idea what she meant. If I suspected that anything was wrong, I shouldn’t wait for Miss Bolam to phone me. We’re not quite so remote from the units at group offices as some people think and I usually get to know anything I ought to know. If the murder is connected with that phone message, something pretty serious must be happening here. After all, you don’t kill just to prevent the group secretary knowing that you’ve fiddled your travelling claim or overspent your annual leave. Not that anyone has, as far as I know.”

“Exactly,” said Dalgliesh. He watched the group secretary’s face very closely and said, without emphasis: “It suggests something that might ruin a man professionally. A sexual relationship with a patient perhaps—something as serious as that.” Mr. Lauder’s face did not change.

“I imagine every doctor knows the seriousness of that, particularly pyschiatrists. They must have to be pretty careful with some of the neurotic women they treat. Frankly, I don’t believe it. All the doctors here are eminent men, some of them with worldwide reputations. You don’t get that sort of reputation if you’re a fool, and men of that eminence don’t commit murder.”

“And what about the rest of the staff? They may not be eminent, but presumably you consider them honest?”

Unruffled, the group secretary replied: “Sister Ambrose has been here for nearly twenty years and Nurse Bolam for five. I would trust them both absolutely. All the clerical staff came with good references and so did the two porters, Cully and Nagle.” He added wryly: “Admittedly I didn’t check that they hadn’t committed murder but none of them strike me as homicidal maniacs. Cully drinks a bit and is a pathetic fool with only another four months’ service to complete. I doubt whether he could kill a mouse without making a hash of it. Nagle is a cut above the usual hospital porter. I understand he’s an art student and works here for pocket money. He’s only been with us a couple of years so he wasn’t here before Miss Bolam’s time. Even if he’s been seducing all the female staff, which seems unlikely, the worst that could happen to him would be the sack and that wouldn’t worry him as things are today. Admittedly she was killed with his chisel but anyone could have got their hands on that.”

“I’m afraid this was an inside job, you know,” said Dalgliesh gently. “The murderer knew where Tippett’s fetish and Nagle’s chisel were kept, knew which key opened the old record room, knew where that key was hung on the board in the porters’ duty room, probably wore one of the rubber aprons from the art therapy room as a protection, certainly had medical knowledge. Above all, of course, the murderer couldn’t have left the clinic after the crime. The basement door was bolted and so was the ground-floor back door. Cully was watching the front door.”

“Cully had a bellyache. He could have missed someone.”

“Do you really believe that’s possible?” asked Dalgliesh. And the group secretary did not reply.

At first sight Marion Bolam could be thought beautiful. She had the fair, classical good looks which, enhanced by her nurse’s uniform, gave an immediate impression of serene loveliness. Her blonde hair, parted above a broad forehead and twisted into a high roll at the back of her head, was bound by the simple white cap. It was only at second glance that the illusion faded and beauty gave way to prettiness. The features, individually analysed, were unremarkable, the nose a little too long, the lips a little too thin. In ordinary clothes, hurrying home perhaps at the end of the day, she would be undistinguished. It was the combination of the starched formal linen with that fair skin and yellow hair which dazzled the eye. Only in the broad forehead and the sharpness of the nose could Dalgliesh detect any likeness to her dead cousin. But there was nothing ordinary about the large grey eyes which met his fully for a brief second before she lowered her glance and gazed fixedly at the clasped hands in her lap.

“I understand that you are Miss Bolam’s next of kin. This must be a terrible shock for you.”

“Yes. Oh, yes, it is! Enid was my cousin.”

“You have the same name. Your fathers were brothers?”

“Yes, they were. Our mothers were sisters, too. Two brothers married two sisters so that we were doubly related.”

“Had she no other relations living?”

“Only Mummy and me.”

“I shall have to see Miss Bolam’s solicitor, I expect,” said Dalgliesh, “but it would be helpful if you would tell me as much as you know about her affairs. I’m afraid I have to ask these personal questions. Usually they have no bearing on the crime, but one must know as much as possible about everyone concerned. Had your cousin any income apart from her salary?”

“Oh, yes. Enid was quite well off. Uncle Sydney left her mother about £25,000 and it all came to Enid. I don’t know how much was left but I think she had about £1,000 a year coming in apart from her salary here. She kept on Auntie’s flat in Ballantyne Mansions and she … she was always very good to us.”

“In what way, Miss Bolam? Did she make you an allowance?”

“Oh, no! Enid wouldn’t want to do that. She gave us presents. Thirty pounds at Christmas and fifty in July for our summer holiday. Mummy has disseminated sclerosis and we couldn’t go away to an ordinary hotel.”

“And what happens to Miss Bolam’s money now?”

The grey eyes lifted to meet his with no trace of embarrassment. She answered simply: “It will come to Mummy and me. There wasn’t anyone else to leave it to, was there? Enid always said it would come to us if she died first. But, of course, it wasn’t likely that she would die first; not while Mummy was alive anyway.”

It was indeed unlikely, in the ordinary course of events, that Mrs. Bolam would ever have benefited from that £25,000 or what was left of it, thought Dalgliesh. Here was the obvious motive, so understandable, so universal, so dear to any prosecuting counsel. Every juryman understood the lure of money. Could Nurse Bolam really be unaware of the significance of the information which she was handing him with such unembarrassed candour? Could innocence be so naïve or guilt so confident?

He said suddenly: “Was your cousin popular, Miss Bolam?”

“She hadn’t many friends. I don’t think she would have called herself popular. She wouldn’t want that. She had her church activities and the Guides. She was a very quiet person, really.”

“But you know of no enemies?”

“Oh, no! None at all. Enid was very much respected.” The formal, old-fashioned epithet was almost inaudible.

Dalgliesh said: “Then it looks as if this is a motiveless, unpremeditated crime. Normally that would suggest one of the patients. But it hardly seems possible and you are all insistent that it isn’t likely.”

“Oh, no! It couldn’t be a patient! I’m quite sure none of our patients would do a thing like that. They aren’t violent.”

“Not even Mr. Tippett?”

“But it couldn’t have been Mr. Tippett. He’s in hospital.”

“So I’m told. How many people here knew that Mr. Tippett wouldn’t be coming to the clinic this Friday?”

“I don’t know. Nagle knew because he took the message and he told Enid and Sister. Sister told me. You see, I usually try to keep an eye on Tippett when I’m specialling the LSD patients on Fridays. I can’t leave my patient for more than a second, of course, but I do pop out occasionally to see if Tippett is all right. Tonight it wasn’t necessary. Poor Tippett, he does love his art therapy! Mrs. Baumgarten has been away ill for six months now, but we couldn’t stop Tippett from coming. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s wicked to suggest that Tippett could have anything to do with it. Wicked!”

She spoke with sudden vehemence. Dalgliesh said mildly: “But no one is suggesting anything of the sort. If Tippett is in hospital—and I haven’t the least doubt we shall find that he is—then he couldn’t have been here.”

“But someone put his fetish on the body, didn’t they? If Tippett had been here, you would have suspected him straight away and he would have been so upset and confused. It was a wicked thing to do. Really wicked!”

Her voice broke and she was very near to tears. Dalgliesh watched the thin fingers twisting in her lap. He said gently: “I don’t think we need worry about Mr. Tippett. Now I want you to think carefully and tell me everything that you know happened in the clinic from the time you came on duty this evening. Never mind about other people, I just want to know what you did.”

Nurse Bolam remembered very clearly what she had done and, after a second’s hesitation, she gave a careful and logical account. It was her job on Friday evenings to “special” any patient undergoing treatment with lysergic acid. She explained that this was a method of releasing deep-seated inhibitions so that the patient was able to recall and recount the incidents which were being repressed in his subconscious and were responsible for his illness. As she spoke about the treatment, Nurse Bolam lost her nervousness and seemed to forget that she was talking to a layman. But Dalgliesh did not interrupt.

“It’s a remarkable drug and Dr. Baguley uses it quite a lot. Its name is lysergic acid diethylamide and I think it was discovered by a German in 1942. We administer it orally and the usual dose is 0.25 mg. It’s produced in ampoules of 1 mg and mixed with from 15 to 30 ccs of distilled water. The patients are told not to have any breakfast. The first effects are noticed after about half an hour and the more disturbing subjective experiences occur from one to one and a half hours after administration. That’s when Dr. Baguley comes down to be with the patient. The effects can last for as long as four hours and the patient is flushed and restless and quite withdrawn from reality. They’re never left alone, of course, and we use the basement room because it’s secluded and quiet and other patients aren’t distressed by the noise. We usually give LSD treatments on Friday afternoon and evening and I always ‘special’ the patient.”

“I suppose that if any noise, such as a cry, were heard on Fridays in the basement, most of the staff would assume that it was the LSD patient?”

Nurse Bolam looked doubtful. “I suppose they might. Certainly these patients can be very noisy. My patient today was more disturbed than usual which was why I stayed close to her. Usually I spend a little time in the linen room, which adjoins the treatment room, sorting the clean laundry as soon as the patient is over the worst. I keep the door open between the rooms, of course, so that I can watch the patient from time to time.”

Dalgliesh asked what exactly had happened during the evening.

“Well, the treatment began just after three-thirty and Dr. Baguley looked in shortly after four to see if all was well. I stayed with the patient until four-thirty when Mrs. Shorthouse came to tell me that tea was made. Sister came down while I went upstairs to the nurses’ duty room and drank tea. I came down again at a quarter to five and rang for Dr. Baguley at five. He was with the patient for about three-quarters of an hour. Then he left to return to his ECT clinic. I stayed with the patient and, as she was so restless, I decided to leave the laundry until later in the evening. At about twenty to seven Peter Nagle knocked on the door and asked for the laundry. I told him that it wasn’t sorted and he looked a bit surprised but didn’t say anything. A little time after that I thought I heard a scream. I didn’t take any notice at first as it didn’t seem very close and I thought it was children playing in the square. Then I thought I ought to make sure and I went to the door. I saw Dr. Baguley and Dr. Steiner coming into the basement with Sister and Dr. Ingram. Sister told me that nothing was wrong and to go back to my patient, so I did.”

“Did you leave the treatment room at all after Dr. Baguley left you at about quarter to six?”

“Oh, no! There wasn’t any need. If I’d wanted to go to the cloakroom or anything like that,” Nurse Bolam blushed faintly, “I would have phoned for Sister to come and take my place.”

“Did you make any telephone calls from the treatment room at all during the evening?”

“Only the one to the ECT room at five to call Dr. Baguley.”

“Are you quite sure you didn’t telephone Miss Bolam?”

“Enid? Oh, no! There wouldn’t be any reason to call Enid. She … that is, we, didn’t see very much of each other in the clinic. I am responsible to Sister Ambrose, you see, and Enid wasn’t concerned with the nursing staff.”

“But you saw quite a lot of her outside the clinic?”

“Oh, no! I didn’t mean that. I went to her flat once or twice, to collect the cheque at Christmas and in the summer, but it isn’t easy for me to leave Mummy. Besides, Enid had her own life to live. And then she’s quite a lot older than me. I didn’t really know her very well.”

Her voice broke and Dalgliesh saw that she was crying. Fumbling under her apron for the pocket in her nurse’s dress, she sobbed: “It’s so dreadful! Poor Enid! Putting that fetish on her body as if he was making fun of her, making it look as if she was nursing a baby!”

Dalgliesh hadn’t realized that she had seen the body and said so.

“Oh, I didn’t! Dr. Etherege and Sister wouldn’t let me go in to her. But we were all told what had happened.”

Miss Bolam had indeed looked as if she were nursing a baby. But he was surprised that someone who hadn’t seen the body should say so. The medical director must have given a graphic description of the scene.

Suddenly Nurse Bolam found her handkerchief and drew it out of her pocket. With it came a pair of thin surgical gloves.

They fell at Dalgliesh’s feet. Picking them up he asked: “I didn’t realize that you used surgical gloves here.”

Nurse Bolam seemed unsurprised by his interest. Checking her sobs with surprising control she replied: “We don’t use them very often but we keep a few pairs. The whole Group’s gone over to disposable gloves now but there are a few of the old kind about. That’s one of them. We use them for odd cleaning jobs.”

“Thank you,” said Dalgliesh. “I’ll keep this pair if I may. And I don’t think I need worry you any more at present.”

With a murmured word which could have been “thank you,” Nurse Bolam almost backed out of the room.

The minutes dragged heavily to the clinic staff waiting in the front consulting room to be interviewed. Fredrica Saxon had fetched some papers from her room on the third floor and was scoring an intelligence test. There had been some discussion about whether she ought to go upstairs alone, but Miss Saxon had stated firmly that she didn’t intend to sit there wasting time and biting her nails until the police chose to see her, that she hadn’t the murderer hidden upstairs, nor was she proposing to destroy incriminating evidence and that she had no objection to any member of the staff accompanying her to satisfy themselves on this point. This distressing frankness had provoked a murmur of protests and reassurance, but Mrs. Bostock had announced abruptly that she would like to fetch a book from the medical library and the two women had left the room and returned together. Cully had been seen early, having established his right to be classed as a patient, and had been released to cosset his stomach ache at home. The only remaining patient, Mrs. King, had been interviewed and allowed to depart with her husband in attendance. Mr. Burge had also left, protesting loudly at the interruption of his session and the trauma of the whole experience.

“Mind you, he’s enjoying himself, you can see that,” confided Mrs. Shorthouse to the assembled staff. “The superintendent had a job getting rid of him, I can tell you.”

There was a great deal which Mrs. Shorthouse seemed able to tell them. She had been given permission to make coffee and prepare sandwiches in her small ground-floor kitchen at the rear of the building, and this gave her an excuse for frequent trips up and down the hall. The sandwiches were brought in almost singly. Cups were taken individually to be washed. This coming and going gave her an opportunity of reporting the latest situation to the rest of the staff who awaited each instalment with an anxiety and eagerness which they could only imperfectly conceal. Mrs. Shorthouse was not the emissary they would have chosen but any news, however obtained and by whomever delivered, helped to lighten the weight of suspense and she was certainly unexpectedly knowledgeable about police procedure.

“There’s several of them searching the building now and they’ve got their own chap on the door. They haven’t found anyone, of course. Well, it stands to reason! We know he couldn’t have got out of the building. Or in, for that matter. I said to the sergeant: ‘This clinic has had all the cleaning from me that it’s getting today, so tell your chaps to mind where they plant their boots …’

“The police surgeon’s seen the body. The fingerprint man is still downstairs and they’re taking everyone’s prints. I’ve seen the photographer. He went through the hall with a tripod and a big case, white on top and black at the bottom …

“Here’s a funny thing now. They’re looking for prints in the basement lift. Measuring it up, too.”

Fredrica Saxon lifted her head, seemed about to say something, then went on with her work. The basement lift, which was about four feet square and operated by a rope pulley, had been used to transport food from the basement kitchen to the first-floor dining room when the clinic was a private house. It had never been taken out. Occasionally medical records from the basement record room were hoisted in it to the first and second-floor consulting rooms, but it was otherwise little used. No one commented on a possible reason why the police should test it for prints.

Mrs. Shorthouse departed with two cups to be washed. She was back within five minutes.

“Mr. Lauder’s in the general office phoning the chairman. Telling him about the murder, I suppose. This’ll give the HMC something to natter about and no mistake. Sister is going through the linen inventory with one of the police. Seems there’s a rubber apron from the art-therapy room missing. Oh, and another thing. They’re letting the boiler out. Want to rake it through, I suppose. Nice for us, I must say. This place’ll be bloody cold on Monday …

“The mortuary van’s arrived. That’s what they call it, the mortuary van. They don’t use an ambulance, you see. Not when the victim’s dead. You probably heard it arrive. I dare say if you draw the curtains back a bit, you’ll see her being took in.”

But no one cared to draw back the curtains and, as the soft, careful feet of the stretcher-bearers shuffled past the door, no one spoke. Fredrica Saxon laid down her pencil and bowed her head as if she were praying. When the front door closed, their relief was heard in the soft hiss of breath released. There was a brief silence and then the van drove off. Mrs. Shorthouse was the only one to speak.

“Poor little blighter! Mind you, I only gave her another six months here, what with one thing and another, but I never thought she’d leave feet first.”

Jennifer Priddy sat apart from the rest of the staff on the edge of the treatment couch. Her interview with the superintendent had been unexpectedly easy. She didn’t know quite what she had expected but certainly it wasn’t this quiet, gentle, deep-voiced man. He hadn’t bothered to commiserate with her on the shock of finding the body. He hadn’t smiled at her. He hadn’t been paternal or understanding. He gave the impression that he was interested only in finding out the truth as quickly as possible and that he expected everyone else to feel the same. She thought that it would be difficult to tell him a lie and she hadn’t tried. It had all been quite easy to remember, quite straightforward. The superintendent had questioned her closely about the ten minutes or so she had spent in the basement with Peter. That was only to be expected. Naturally he was wondering whether Peter could have killed Miss Bolam after he returned from the post and before she joined him. Well, it wasn’t possible. She had followed him downstairs almost immediately and Mrs. Shorthouse could confirm it. Probably it hadn’t taken long to kill Enid—she tried not to think about that sudden, savage, calculated violence—but however quickly it was done, Peter hadn’t had time.

She thought about Peter. Thinking about him occupied most of her few solitary hours. Tonight, however, the familiar warm imaginings were needled with anxiety. Was he going to be cross about the way she had behaved? She remembered with shame her delayed scream of terror after finding the body, the way she had thrown herself into his arms. He had been very kind and considerate, of course, but then he always was considerate when he wasn’t working and remembered she was there. She knew that he hated fuss and that any demonstration of affection irked him. She had learned to accept that their love, and she dared no longer doubt that it was love, must be taken on his terms. Since their brief time together in the nurses’ duty room after the finding of Miss Bolam, she had scarcely spoken to him. She couldn’t guess what he felt. She was only sure of one thing. She couldn’t possibly pose for him tonight. It hadn’t anything to do with shame or guilt; he had long since cut her free of those twin encumbrances. He would expect her to arrive at the studio as planned. After all, her alibi was fixed and her parents would accept that she was at her evening class. He would see no reasonable grounds for altering their arrangements and Peter was a great one for reason. But she couldn’t do it! Not tonight. It wasn’t so much the posing as what would follow. She wouldn’t be able to refuse him. She wouldn’t want to refuse him. And tonight, with Enid dead, she felt that she couldn’t bear to be touched.

When she returned from her talk with the superintendent, Dr. Steiner had come to sit beside her and had been very kind. But then Dr. Steiner was kind. It was easy enough to criticize his indolence or laugh at his odd patients. But he did care about people, whereas Dr. Baguley, who worked so hard and wore himself out with his heavy clinics, didn’t really like people at all, but only wished that he did. Jenny wasn’t sure how she knew this so clearly. She hadn’t really thought about it before. Tonight, however, now that the first shock of finding the body had passed, her mind was unnaturally clear. And not only her mind. All her perceptions were sharpened. The tangible objects about her, the chintz covering on the couch, the red blanket folded at its foot, the bright varied greens and golds of the chrysanthemums on the desk, were clearer, brighter, more real to her than ever before. She saw the line of Miss Saxon’s arm as it rested on the desk curved around the book she was reading and the way in which the small hairs on her forearm were tipped with light from the desk lamp. She wondered whether Peter always saw the life around him with this wonder and clarity as if one were born into an unfamiliar world with all the first bright hues of creation fresh upon it. Perhaps this was what it felt like to be a painter.

“I suppose it’s the brandy,” she thought, and giggled a little. She remembered hearing the muttered grumblings of Sister Ambrose half an hour earlier.

“What’s Nagle been feeding to Priddy? That child’s half drunk.” But she wasn’t drunk and she didn’t really believe it was the brandy.

Dr. Steiner had drawn his chair close to her and had laid his hand briefly on her shoulder. Without thinking, Miss Priddy had said: “She was kind to me and I didn’t like her.” She no longer felt sad or guilty about it. It was a statement of fact.

“You mustn’t worry about it,” he said gently, and patted her knee. She didn’t resent the pat. Peter would have said: “Lecherous old goat! Tell him to keep his paws to himself.” But Peter would have been wrong. Jenny knew that it was a gesture of kindliness. For a moment she was tempted to put her hand over his to show that she understood. He had small and very white hands for a man, so different from Peter’s long, bony, paint-stained fingers. She saw how the hairs curled beneath his shirt cuffs, the stubble of black along the knuckles. On his little finger he wore a gold signet ring, heavy as a weapon.

“It’s natural to feel as you do,” he said. “When people die, we always wish that we had been kinder to them, had liked them better. There is nothing to be done about it. We shouldn’t pretend about our feelings. If we understand them, we learn in time to accept them and to live with them.”

But Jenny was no longer listening. For the door had opened quietly and Peter Nagle had come in.

Bored with sitting in the reception desk and exchanging commonplace remarks with the uncommunicative policeman on duty there, Nagle sought diversion in the front consulting room. Although his formal interview was over, he wasn’t yet free to leave the clinic. The group secretary obviously expected him to stay until the building could be locked for the night and it would be his job to open it again on Monday morning. The way things were going, it looked as if he would be stuck in the place for another couple of hours at least. That morning he had planned to get home early and work on the picture but it was no use thinking of that now. It might well be after eleven o’clock before the business was settled and he was free to go home. But even if they could go to the Pimlico flat together, Jenny wouldn’t pose for him tonight. One glance at her face told him that. She did not come across to him as he entered the room and he was grateful for that amount of restraint at least. But she gave him her shy, elliptical glance, half conspiratorial and half pleading. It was her way of asking him to understand, of saying sorry. Well, he was sorry, too. He had hoped to put in a good three hours tonight and time was getting short. But if she was only trying to convey that she wasn’t in the mood for making love, well, that suited him all right. It suited him most nights if she only knew. He wished that he could take her—since she was so tiresomely insistent on being taken—as simply and quickly as he took a meal, a means of satisfying an appetite that was nothing to be ashamed of but nothing to fuss about either. But that wasn’t Jenny. He hadn’t been as clever as he thought and Jenny was in love. She was hopelessly, passionately and insecurely in love, demanding a constant reassurance, facile tenderness and time-consuming technique which left him exhausted and barely satisfied. She was terrified of becoming pregnant so that the preliminaries to lovemaking were irritatingly clinical, the aftermath, more often than not, her wild sobbing in his arms. As a painter he was obsessed by her body. He couldn’t think of changing his model now and he couldn’t afford to change. But the price of Jenny was getting too high.

He was almost untouched by Miss Bolam’s death. He suspected that she had always known just how little work he did for his money. The rest of the staff, deluded by comparing him with that poor fool, Cully, thought they had a paragon of industry and intelligence. But Bolam had been no fool. It was not that he was lazy. One could have an easy life at the Steen—and most people, including some psychiatrists, did—without risking that imputation. Everything required of him was well within his capabilities and he gave no more than was required. Enid Bolam knew that all right but it worried neither of them. If he went she could only hope to replace him by a porter who did less and did it less efficiently. And he was educated, personable and polite. That had meant a great deal to Miss Bolam. He smiled as he remembered how much it had meant. No, Bolam had never bothered him. But he was less confident about her successor.

He glanced across the room to where Mrs. Bostock sat alone, gracefully relaxed in one of the more comfortable patients’ chairs that he had brought in from the waiting room. Her head was studiously bent over a book, but Nagle had little doubt that her mind was otherwise occupied. Probably working out her incremental date as AO, he thought. This murder was a break for her all right. You couldn’t miss compulsive ambition in a woman. They burnt with it. You could almost smell it sizzling their flesh. Underneath that air of calm unflappability she was as restless and nervous as a cat on heat. He sauntered across the room to her and lounged against the wall beside her chair, his arm just brushing her shoulder.

“Nicely timed for you, isn’t it?” he said. She kept her eyes on the page but he knew that she would have to answer. She could never resist defending herself even when defence only made her more vulnerable. She’s like the rest of them, he thought. She can’t keep her bloody mouth shut.

“I don’t know what you mean, Nagle.”

“Come off it. I’ve been admiring your performance for the last six months. Yes, Doctor. No, Doctor. Just as you like, Doctor. Of course, I’d like to help, Doctor, but there are certain complications here … You bet there were! She wasn’t giving up without a struggle. And now she’s dead. Very nice for you. They won’t have to look far for their new AO.”

“Don’t be impertinent and ridiculous. And why aren’t you helping Mrs. Shorthouse with the coffee?”

“Because I don’t choose to. You’re not the AO yet, remember.”

“I’ve no doubt the police will be interested in knowing where you were this evening. After all, it was your chisel.”

“I was out with the post and fetching my evening paper. Disappointing, isn’t it? And I wonder where you were at six-twenty-two.”

“How do you know she died at six-twenty-two?”

“I don’t. But Sister saw her going down to the basement at six-twenty and there wasn’t anything in the basement to keep her as far as I know. Not unless your dear Dr. Etherege was there, of course. But surely he wouldn’t demean himself cuddling Miss Bolam. Not quite his type I’d have said. But you know his tastes in that direction better than I do, of course.”

Suddenly she was out of her chair and, swinging her right arm, she slapped his cheek with a force that momentarily rocked him. The sharp crack of the blow echoed in the room. Everyone looked at them. Nagle heard Jennifer Priddy’s gasp, saw Dr. Steiner’s worried frown as he looked from one to the other in puzzled inquiry, saw Fredrica Saxon’s contemptuous glance at them before her eyes fell again to her book. Mrs. Shorthouse, who was piling plates onto a tray at a side table, looked round a second too late. Her sharp little eyes darted from one to the other, frustrated at having missed something worth seeing. Mrs. Bostock, her colour heightened, sank back in her chair and picked up her book. Nagle, holding his hand to his cheek, gave a shout of laughter.

“Is anything the matter?” asked Dr. Steiner. “What happened?”

It was then that the door opened and a uniformed policeman put his head in and said: “The superintendent would like to see Mrs. Shorthouse now, please.”

Mrs. Amy Shorthouse had seen no reason why she should stay in her working clothes while waiting to be interviewed so that, when called in to Dalgliesh, she was dressed ready to go home. The metamorphosis was striking. Comfortable working slippers had been replaced by a modish pair of high-heeled court shoes, white overall by a fur coat and head scarf by the latest idiocy in hats. The total effect was curiously old-fashioned. Mrs. Shorthouse looked like a relic of the gay twenties, an effect which was heightened by the shortness of her skirt and the careful curls of peroxided hair which lay cunningly arranged on forehead and cheeks. But there was nothing false about her voice and little, Dalgliesh suspected, about her personality. The little grey eyes were shrewd and amused. She was neither frightened nor distressed. He suspected that Amy Shorthouse craved more excitement than her life customarily afforded and was enjoying herself. She would not wish anyone violently dead but, since it had happened, one might as well make the most of it.

When the preliminaries were over and they got down to the events of the evening, Mrs. Shorthouse came out with her prize piece of information.

“No good saying I can tell you who did it, because I can’t. Not that I haven’t got my own ideas. But there’s one thing I can tell you. I was the last person to talk to her, no doubt about that. No, scrub that out! I was the last person to talk to her, face to face. Excepting the murderer, of course.”

“You mean that she subsequently spoke on the telephone? Hadn’t you better tell me about it plainly? I’ve got enough mystery here for one evening.”

“Smart, aren’t you?” said Mrs. Shorthouse without rancour. “Well, it was in this room. I came in at about ten past six to ask how much leave I’d got left on account of wanting a day off next week. Miss Bolam got out my dossier—leastwise it was already out, come to think of it—and we fixed that up and had a bit of a chat about the work. I was on my way out, really, just standing at the door for a few last words, as you might say, when the phone rang.”

“I want you to think very carefully, Mrs. Shorthouse,” said Dalgliesh. “That call may be important. I wonder if you can remember what Miss Bolam said?”

“Think someone was enticing her down to her death, do you?” said Mrs. Shorthouse with alliterative relish. “Well, could be, come to think of it.”

Dalgliesh thought that his witness was far from being a fool. He watched while she screwed up her face in a simulated agony of effort. He had no doubt that she remembered very well what had been said.

After a nicely judged pause for suspense, Mrs. Shorthouse said: “Well, the phone rang like I said. That would be about six-fifteen, I suppose. Miss Bolam picked up the receiver and said, ‘Administrative Officer speaking.’ She always answered like that. Very keen on her position she was. Peter Nagle used to say, ‘Who the hell does she think we’re expecting to hear? Khrushchev?’ Not that he said it to her. No fear! Anyway, that’s what she said. Then there was a little pause and she looked up at me and said: ‘Yes, I am.’ Meaning, I suppose, that she was alone, not counting me. Then there was a longer pause while the chap at the other end spoke. Then she said: ‘All right, stay where you are. I’ll be down.’ Then she asked me to show Mr. Lauder into her office if I was about when he arrived and I said I would and pushed off.”

“You’re quite sure about her conversation on the telephone?”

“Sure as I’m sitting here. That’s what she said all right.”

“You talked about the chap at the other end. How could you tell it was a man?”

“Never said I could. Just assumed it was a chap, I suppose. Mind you, if I’d been closer I might have known. You can sometimes get an idea who’s speaking from the crackly noise the phone makes. But I was standing against the door.”

“And you couldn’t hear the other voice at all?”

“That’s right. Suggests he was talking low.”

“What happened then, Mrs. Shorthouse?”

“I said cheerio and toddled off to do a bit in the general office. Peter Nagle was there, taking young Priddy’s mind off her work as usual, and Cully was in the reception kiosk, so it wasn’t them. Peter went out with the post as soon as I arrived. He always does at about a quarter past six.”

“Did you see Miss Bolam leaving her office?”

“No, I didn’t. I told you. I was in with Nagle and Miss Priddy. Sister saw her, though. You ask her. Sister saw her going down the hall.”

“So I understand. I have seen Sister Ambrose. I wondered whether Miss Bolam followed you out of the room.”

“No, she didn’t. Not at once anyway. Perhaps she thought it would do the chap good to be kept waiting.”

“Perhaps,” said Dalgliesh. “But she would have gone down promptly I expect if a doctor had phoned for her.”

Mrs. Shorthouse gave a shriek of laughter. “Maybe. Maybe not. You didn’t know Miss Bolam.”

“What was she like, Mrs. Shorthouse?”

“All right. We got on. She liked a good worker and I’m a good worker. Well—you can see how the place is kept.”

“I can indeed.”

“Her yea was yea and her nay, nay. I’ll say that for her. Nothing unpleasant behind your back. Mind you, quite a bit of unpleasantness in front of your face sometimes if you didn’t watch out. Still, I’d rather have it that way. She and me understood each other.”

“Had she any enemies—anyone who bore her a grudge?”

“Must have had, mustn’t she? That wasn’t no playful tap on the head. Carrying a grudge a bit far, if you ask me.” She planted her feet apart and leaned towards Dalgliesh confidentially.

“Look, ducks,” she said. “Miss B put people’s backs up. Some people do. You know how it is. They can’t make no allowances. Right was right and wrong was wrong and nothing in between. Rigid. That’s what she was. Rigid.” Mrs. Shorthouse’s tone and tightened mouth expressed the ultimate in virtuous inflexibility. “Take the little matter of the attendance book now. All the consultants are supposed to sign it so that Miss Bolam could make her monthly return to the board. All very right and proper. Well, the book used to be kept on a table in the doctors’ cloakroom and no trouble to anyone. Then Miss B gets to noticing that Dr. Steiner and Dr. McBain are coming in late so she moves the book to her office and they all have to go in there to sign. Mind you, as often as not Dr. Steiner won’t do it. ‘She knows I’m here,’ he says. ‘And I’m a consultant, not a factory hand. If she wants her stupid book signed, she can put it back in the medical cloakroom.’ The doctors have been trying to get rid of her for a year or more, I do know that.”

“How do you know, Mrs. Shorthouse?”

“Let’s just say that I know. Dr. Steiner couldn’t stand her. He goes in for psychotherapy. Intensive psychotherapy. Ever heard of it?”

Dalgliesh admitted that he had. Mrs. Shorthouse gave him a look in which disbelief fought with suspicion. Then she leaned forward conspiratorially as if about to divulge one of Dr. Steiner’s less reputable idiosyncrasies.

“He’s analytically orientated, that’s what he is. Analytically orientated. Know what that means?”

“I’ve some idea.”

“Then you know that he doesn’t see many patients. Two a session, three if you’re lucky, and a new patient once every eight weeks. That doesn’t push up the figures.”

“The figures?”

“The attendance figures. They go to the Hospital Management Committee and the Regional Board every quarter. Miss Bolam was a great one for pushing up the figures.”

“Then she must have approved thoroughly of Dr. Baguley. I understand that his ECT sessions are usually very busy.”

“She approved all right. Not about his divorce, though.”

“How could that affect the figures?” asked Dalgliesh, innocently obtuse. Mrs. Shorthouse looked at him pityingly.

“Who said anything about the figures? We were talking about the Baguleys. Getting a divorce, they were, on account of Dr. Baguley having an affair with Miss Saxon. It was in all the papers, too. Psychiatrist’s wife cites psychologist. Then suddenly Mrs. Baguley withdrew the case. Never said why. No one said why. Didn’t make any difference here, though. Dr. B and Miss Saxon went on working together easy as you please. Still do.”

“And Dr. Baguley and his wife were reconciled?”

“Who said anything about reconciled? They stayed married, that’s all I know. Miss Bolam couldn’t say a good word for Miss Saxon after that. Not that she ever talked about it; she wasn’t one for gossip, I’ll give her that. But she let Miss Saxon see what she felt. She was against that sort of thing, Miss Bolam was. No carrying on with her, I can tell you!”

Dalgliesh inquired whether anyone had tried. It was a question he usually put with the maximum of tact but he felt that subtlety would be lost on Mrs. Shorthouse. She gave a scream of laughter.

“What do you think? She wasn’t one for the men. Not as far as I know, anyway. Mind you, some of the cases they have here would put you off sex for life. Miss Bolam went to the medical director once to complain about some of the reports Miss Priddy was given to type. Said they weren’t decent. Of course, she was always a bit odd about Priddy. Tried to fuss round the kid too much, if you ask me. Priddy used to be in Miss Bolam’s Guide company or something when she was young and I suppose Bolam wanted to keep an eye on her in case she forgot what captain had taught her. You could see the kid was embarrassed by it. There wasn’t anything wrong, though. Don’t you go believing it if they hint that there was. Some of them here have dirty minds and there’s no denying it.”

Dalgliesh asked whether Miss Bolam had approved of Miss Priddy’s friendship with Nagle.

“Oh, you’re on to that, are you? Nothing to approve of, if you ask me. Nagle’s a cold fish and as mean as hell. Just try getting his tea money out of him! He and Priddy play around a bit and I dare say Tigger could tell a thing or two if cats could speak. I don’t think Bolam noticed though. She kept pretty much to her own office. Anyway, Nagle isn’t encouraged in the general office and the medical stenogs are kept pretty busy, so there isn’t much time for hanky-panky. Nagle took good care to keep in Miss B’s good books. Quite the little blue-eyed boy he was. Never absent, never late, that’s our Peter. Leastways, he got stuck in the Underground one Monday and wasn’t he in a state about it! Spoilt his record, you see. He even came in on May 1st when he had the flu because we had a visit from the Duke and, naturally, Peter Nagle had to be here to see everything was done proper. Temperature of 103 he had. Sister took it. Miss Bolam sent him home pretty soon, I can tell you. Dr. Steiner took him in his car.”

“Is it generally known that Mr. Nagle keeps his tools in the porters’ duty room?”

“Of course it is! Stands to reason. People are always wanting him to mend this or that and where else would he keep his tools? A proper old woman he is about them, too. Talk about fussy. Cully isn’t allowed to touch them. Mind you, they aren’t clinic tools. They belong to Nagle. There wasn’t half a row about six weeks ago when Dr. Steiner borrowed a screwdriver to do something to his car. Being Dr. Steiner he mucked up the job and bent the screwdriver. Talk about trouble! Nagle thought it was Cully and they had one hell of a row which brought on Cully’s bellyache again, poor old blighter. Then Nagle found out that someone had seen Dr. Steiner coming out of the porters’ duty room with the tool so he complained to Miss Bolam and she spoke to Dr. Steiner and made him buy another screwdriver. We do see life here, I can tell you. Never a dull moment. Never had a murder before, though. That’s something new. Nice goings-on, I don’t think.”

“As you say. If you’ve any idea who did it, Mrs. Shorthouse, now’s the time to say so.”

Mrs. Shorthouse adjusted one of the curls on her forehead with a licked finger, wriggled more comfortably into her coat and got to her feet, thus indicating that, in her opinion, the interview was over.

“No fear! Catching murderers is your job, mate, and you’re welcome to it. I’ll say this much, though. It wasn’t one of the doctors. They haven’t the guts. These psychiatrists are a timid lot. Say what you like about this killer, the chap has nerve.”

Dalgliesh decided to question the doctors next. He was surprised and interested by their patience, by their ready acceptance of his role. He had kept them waiting because he judged it more important to his inquiry to see other people first, even such an apparently less important witness as the domestic assistant. It looked as if they appreciated that he wasn’t trying to irritate them or keep them unnecessarily in suspense. He wouldn’t have hesitated to do either if it would have served his purpose, but it was his experience that useful information could most often be obtained when a witness hadn’t been given time to think and could be betrayed by shock or fear into garrulity and indiscretion. The doctors had not kept themselves apart. They had waited in the front consulting room with the others, quietly and without protest. They gave him the credit of knowing his job and let him get on with it. He wondered whether consultant surgeons or physicians would have been so accommodating and felt with the group secretary that there were worse people to deal with than psychiatrists.

Dr. Mary Ingram was seen first by request of the medical director. She had three young children at home and it was important that she get back to them as soon as possible. She had been crying spasmodically while waiting, to the embarrassment of her colleagues who had difficulty in comforting a grief which seemed to them unreasonable and ill-timed. Nurse Bolam was bearing up well, after all, and she was a relative. Dr. Ingram’s tears added to the tension and provoked an irrational guilt in those whose emotions were less uncomplicated. There was a general feeling that she should be allowed to go home to her children without delay. There was little she could tell Dalgliesh. She attended the clinic only twice weekly to help with the ECT sessions and had hardly known Miss Bolam. She had been in the ECT room with Sister Ambrose for the whole of the crucial time from six-twenty until seven. In reply to Dalgliesh’s question she admitted that Dr. Baguley might have left them for a short time after six-fifteen but she couldn’t remember when exactly or for how long.

At the end of the interview she looked at Dalgliesh from reddened eyes and said: “You will find out who did it, won’t you? That poor, poor girl.”

“We shall find out,” replied Dalgliesh.

Dr. Etherege was interviewed next. He gave the necessary personal details without waiting to be asked and went on: “As regards my own movements this evening, I’m afraid I can’t be very helpful. I arrived at the clinic just before five and went into Miss Bolam’s office to speak to her before going upstairs. We had a little general conversation. She seemed perfectly all right to me and didn’t tell me that she had asked to see the group secretary. I rang the general office for Mrs. Bostock at about five-fifteen and she was with me taking dictation until about ten to six when she went downstairs with the post. She came back after ten minutes or so and we continued with the dictation, until some time before half past six, when she went next door to type material directly from a tape machine. Some of my treatment sessions are recorded and the material subsequently played back and a typescript made either for research purposes or for the medical record. I worked alone in my consulting room except for one brief visit to the medical library—I can’t remember when, but it was very shortly after Mrs. Bostock left me—until she returned to consult me on a point. That must have been just before seven because we were together when Sister rang to tell me about Miss Bolam. Miss Saxon came down from her room on the third floor to go home and caught us up on the stairs, so she and I went to the basement. You know what we found and the subsequent steps I took to ensure that no one left the clinic.”

“You seem to have acted with great presence of mind, Doctor,” said Dalgliesh. “As a result the field of inquiry can be considerably narrowed. It looks, doesn’t it, as if the murderer is still in this building?”

“Certainly Cully has assured me that no one got past him after five p.m. without being entered in his register. That is our system here. The implication of that locked back door is disturbing, but I’m sure you are too experienced an officer to jump to conclusions. No building is impregnable. The … the person responsible could have got in at any time, even early this morning, and lain hidden in the basement.”

“Can you suggest where such a person lay concealed or how he got out of the clinic?” The medical director did not reply. “Have you any idea who that person might be?”

Dr. Etherege slowly traced the line of his right eyebrow with his middle finger. Dalgliesh had seen him do this on television and reflected, now as then, that it served to draw attention to a fine hand and a well-shaped eyebrow, even if as an indication of serious thought the gesture seemed slightly spurious.

“I have no idea at all. The whole tragedy is incomprehensible. I’m not going to claim that Miss Bolam was an altogether easy person to get on with. She sometimes aroused resentment.” He smiled deprecatingly. “We’re not always very easy to get on with ourselves and the most successful administrator of a psychiatric unit is probably someone far more tolerant than Miss Bolam, less obsessional perhaps. But this is murder! I can’t think of anyone, patient or staff, who would want to kill her. It’s very horrible to me as medical director to think that there might be someone as disturbed as that working at the Steen and I never knew.”

“As disturbed or as wicked,” said Dalgliesh, unable to resist the temptation.

Dr. Etherege smiled again, patiently explaining a difficult point to an obtuse member of the television panel. “Wicked? I’m not competent to discuss this in theological terms.”

“Nor am I, Doctor,” replied Dalgliesh. “But this crime doesn’t look like the work of a madman. There’s an intelligence behind it.”

“Some psychopaths are highly intelligent, Superintendent. Not that I am knowledgeable about psychopathy. It’s a most interesting field but not mine. We have never claimed at the Steen to be able to treat the condition.”

Then the Steen was in good company, thought Dalgliesh. The Mental Health Act, 1959, may have defined psychopathy as a disorder requiring or susceptible to medical treatment but there appeared little enthusiasm on the part of doctors to treat it. The word seemed little more than a psychiatrist’s term of abuse and he said as much. Dr. Etherege smiled, indulgent, unprovoked.

“I have never accepted a clinical entity because it is defined in an Act of Parliament. However, psychopathy exists. I’m not convinced at present that it is susceptible to medical treatment. What I am sure is that it is not susceptible to a prison sentence. But we have no certainty that we’re looking for a psychopath.”

Dalgliesh asked Dr. Etherege whether he knew where Nagle kept his tools and which key opened the door of the record room.

“I knew about the key. If I’m working late and alone, I sometimes need one of the old files and I fetch it myself. I do a certain amount of research and, of course, lecturing and writing and it’s important to have access to the medical records. I last fetched a file about ten days ago. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the box of tools in the porters’ room but I knew that Nagle had his own set and was particular about them. I suppose if I’d wanted a chisel I should have looked in the porters’ room. The tools would hardly be kept anywhere else. Obviously, too, I should expect Tippett’s fetish to be in the art-therapy department. It was a most curious choice of weapons! What I find interesting is the apparent care taken by the murderer to fix suspicion on the clinic staff.”

“Suspicion can hardly rest elsewhere in the face of those locked doors.”

“That’s what I meant, Superintendent. If a member of the staff present this evening did kill Miss Bolam, surely he would want to divert suspicion from the relatively few people known to be in the building at the time. The easiest way to do that would be to unlock one of the doors. He’d need to wear gloves, of course, but then, I gather that he did wear them.”

“There are no prints on either of the weapons, certainly. They were wiped, but it is probable that he did wear gloves.”

“And yet, those doors were kept locked, the strongest evidence that the murderer was still in the building. Why? It would be risky to unlock the back door on the ground floor. That, as you know, is between the ECT room and the medical staff room and it leads into a well-lit road. It would be difficult to unlock it without the risk of being seen and a murderer would hardly make his exit that way. But there are the two fire-escape doors on the second and third floors and the door in the basement. Why not unlock one of those? It can only be, surely, because the murderer hadn’t the opportunity between the time of the crime and the finding of the body or that he deliberately wished to throw suspicion on the clinic staff even at the inevitable cost of increasing his own danger.”

“You talk about ‘he,’ Doctor. Do you think, as a psychiatrist, that we should be looking for a man?”

“Oh yes! I would expect this to be the work of a man.”

“Although it didn’t require great strength?” asked Dalgliesh.

“I wasn’t thinking primarily of the strength required but of the method and the choice of weapon. I can only give my opinion, of course, and I’m not a criminologist. I would expect it to be a man’s crime. But, of course, a woman could have done it. Psychologically, it’s unlikely. Physically, it’s perfectly possible.”

It was indeed, thought Dalgliesh. It required merely knowledge and nerve. He pictured for a moment an intent, pretty face bent over Miss Bolam’s body; a thin, girlish hand slipping open the sweater buttons and rolling up the fine cashmere jumper. And then, that clinical selection of exactly the right place to pierce and the grunt of effort as the blade went home. And, last of all, the sweater drawn lightly back to conceal the chisel handle, the ugly fetish placed in position on the still-twitching body in an ultimate gesture of derision and defiance.

He told the medical director about Mrs. Shorthouse’s evidence of the phone call. “No one has admitted to making that call. It looks very much as if she were tricked down to the basement.”

“That is mere supposition, Superintendent.”

Dalgliesh pointed out mildly that it was also common sense, the basis of all sound police work. The medical director said: “There is a card hung beside the telephone outside the record room. Anyone, even a stranger to the clinic, could discover Miss Bolam’s number.”

“But what would be her reaction to an internal call from a stranger? She went downstairs without question. She must have recognized the voice.”

“Then it was someone she had no reason to fear, Superintendent. That doesn’t tie up with the suggestion that she was in possession of some dangerous knowledge and was killed to prevent her passing it on to Lauder. She went down to her death without fear or suspicion. I can only hope that she died quickly and without pain.”

Dalgliesh said that he would know more when he got the autopsy report but that death was almost certainly instantaneous. He added: “There must have been one dreadful moment when she looked up and saw her murderer with the fetish raised but it happened very quickly. She would feel nothing after she was stunned. I doubt whether she even had time to cry out. If she did, the sound would be muffled by the tiers of paper and I’m told that Mrs. King was being rather noisy during her treatment.” He paused for a moment, then said quietly: “What made you describe to the staff just how Miss Bolam died? You did tell them?”

“Of course. I called them together in the front consulting room—the patients were in the waiting room—and made a brief statement. Are you suggesting that the news could have been kept from them?”

“I am suggesting that they need not have been told the details. It would have been useful to me if you hadn’t mentioned the stabbing. The murderer might have given himself away by showing more knowledge than an innocent person could have possessed.”

The medical director smiled. “I’m a psychiatrist, not a detective. Strange as it may seem to you, my reaction to this crime was to assume that the rest of the staff would share my horror and distress, not to lay traps for them. I wanted to break the news to them myself, gently and honestly. They have always had my confidence and I saw no reason for withholding that confidence now.”

That was all very well, thought Dalgliesh, but an intelligent man must surely have seen the importance of saying as little as possible. And the medical director was a very intelligent man. As he thanked his witness and drew the interview to its close, his mind busied itself with the problem. How carefully had Dr. Etherege considered the position before he spoke to the staff? Had his disclosure of the stabbing been as thoughtless as it appeared? It would, after all, have been impossible to deceive most of the staff. Dr. Steiner, Dr. Baguley, Nagle, Dr. Ingram and Sister Ambrose had all seen the body. Miss Priddy had seen it but had apparently fled without a second look. That left Nurse Bolam, Mrs. Bostock, Mrs. Shorthouse, Miss Saxon, Miss Kettle and Cully. Possibly Etherege was satisfied that none of these was the murderer. Cully and Shorthouse both had an alibi. Had the medical director been reluctant to lay a trap for Nurse Bolam, Mrs. Bostock or Miss Saxon? Or was he so certain in his own mind that the murderer must be a man that any subterfuge to mislead the women seemed a waste of time, likely to result only in embarrassment and resentment? The medical director had certainly been almost blatant in his hints that anyone working on the second or third floor could be eliminated since they would have had the opportunity of opening one of the fire-escape doors. But, then, he himself had been in his consulting room on the second floor. In any case, the obvious door for the killer to unlock was the one in the basement and it was hard to believe that he had lacked the opportunity. It would be a second’s work only to draw back that lock and provide evidence that the murderer could have left the clinic that way. Yet the basement door had been fast bolted. Why?

Dr. Steiner came in next, short, dapper, outwardly self-composed. In the light from Miss Bolam’s desk lamp his pale, smooth skin looked slightly luminous. Despite his calmness he had been sweating heavily. The heavy smell hung about his clothes, about the well-cut, conventional black coat of a consultant. Dalgliesh was surprised when he gave his age as forty-two. He looked older. The smooth skin, the sharp, black eyes, the bouncy walk gave a superficial impression of youth but he was already thickening and his dark hair, cunningly sleeked back, could not quite conceal the tonsure-like patch on the crown of the head.

Dr. Steiner had apparently decided to treat his encounter with a policeman as a social occasion. Extending a plump, well-kept hand, he smiled a benign “how d’you do?” and inquired whether he was speaking to the writer Adam Dalgliesh.

“I have read your verse,” he announced complacently. “I congratulate you. Such a deceptive simplicity. I started at the first poem and read straight through. That is my way of experiencing verse. At the tenth page I began to think that we might have a new poet.”

Dalgliesh admitted to himself that Dr. Steiner had not only read the book but showed some critical insight. It was at the tenth page that he, too, sometimes felt they might have a new poet. Dr. Steiner inquired whether he had met Ernie Bales, the new young playwright from Nottingham. He looked so hopeful that Dalgliesh felt positively unkind as he disclaimed acquaintance with Mr. Bales and steered the conversation from literary criticism back to the purpose of the interview. Dr. Steiner at once assumed an air of shocked gravity.

“The whole affair is dreadful, quite dreadful. I was one of the first people to see the body, as you may know, and it has distressed me greatly. I have always had a horror of violence. It is an appalling business. Dr. Etherege, our medical director, is due to retire at the end of the year. This is a most unfortunate thing to happen in his last months here.”

He shook his head sadly, but Dalgliesh fancied that the little black eyes held something very like satisfaction.

Tippett’s fetish had yielded its secrets to the fingerprint expert and Dalgliesh had stood it on the desk before him. Dr. Steiner put out his hand to touch it then drew back and said: “I had better not handle it, I suppose, because of fingerprints.” He darted a quick look at Dalgliesh and, getting no response, went on: “It’s an interesting carving, isn’t it? Quite remarkable. Have you ever noticed, Superintendent, what excellent art the mentally ill can produce, even patients without previous training or experience? It raises interesting questions on the nature of artistic achievement. As they recover, their work deteriorates. The power and originality go. By the time they are well again, the stuff they produce is valueless. We’ve got several interesting examples of patients’ work in the art therapy department, but this fetish is outstanding. Tippett was very ill when he carved it and went to hospital shortly afterwards. He’s a schizophrenic. The fetish has the typical facies of the chronic disease, the frog-like eyes and spreading nostrils. Tippett looked very like that himself at one time.”

“Everyone knew where this thing was kept, I suppose?” said Dalgliesh.

“Oh, yes! It was kept on the shelf in the art therapy department. Tippett was very proud of it and Dr. Baguley often showed it to House Committee members when they made visits of inspection. Mrs. Baumgarten, the art therapist, likes to keep some of the best work on show. That’s why she had the shelves put up. She’s on sick leave at the present but you’ve been shown the department, I expect?”

Dalgliesh said that he had. “Some of my colleagues feel that the art therapy is a waste of money,” confided Dr. Steiner. “Certainly I never use Mrs. Baumgarten. But one must be tolerant. Dr. Baguley refers patients now and again and it probably does them less harm to dabble about down there than to be subjected to ECT. But to pretend that the patients’ artistic efforts can help towards a diagnosis seems very farfetched to me. Of course that claim is all part of the effort to get Mrs. Baumgarten graded as a lay psychotherapist, quite unwarrantably, I’m afraid. She has no analytical training.”

“And the chisel? Did you know where that was kept, Doctor?”

“Well, not really, Superintendent. I mean, I knew that Nagle had some tools and presumably kept them in the porters’ duty room but I didn’t know exactly where.”

“The toolbox is large and clearly labelled and is kept on the small table in the duty room. It would be difficult to miss.”

“Oh, I’m sure it would! But then, I have no reason to go into the porters’ duty room. That is true of all the doctors. We must get a key for that box now and see that it’s kept somewhere safe. Miss Bolam was very wrong to allow Nagle to keep it unlocked. After all, we do occasionally have disturbed patients and some tools can be lethal.”

“So it appears.”

“This clinic wasn’t intended to treat grossly psychotic patients, of course. It was founded to provide a centre for analytically orientated psychotherapy, particularly for middle-class and highly intelligent patients. We treat people who would never dream of entering a mental hospital—and who would be just as out of place in the ordinary psychiatric outpatient department. In addition, of course, there is a large research element in our work.”

“What were you doing between six o’clock and seven this evening, Doctor?” inquired Dalgliesh.

Dr. Steiner looked pained at this sudden intrusion of sordid curiosity into an interesting discussion but answered, meekly enough, that he had been conducting his Friday night psychotherapy session.

“I arrived at the clinic at five-thirty when my first patient was booked. Unfortunately he defaulted. His treatment has arrived at a stage when poor attendance is to be expected. Mr. Burge was booked for six-fifteen and he is usually very prompt. I waited for him in the second consulting room on the ground floor and joined him in my own room at about ten past six. Mr. Burge dislikes waiting with Dr. Baguley’s patients in the general waiting room and I really don’t blame him. You’ve heard of Burge, I expect. He wrote that interesting novel The Souls of the Righteous, a quite brilliant exposure of the sexual conflicts concealed beneath the conventionality of a respectable English suburb. But I’m forgetting. Naturally you have interviewed Mr. Burge.”

Dalgliesh had indeed. The experience had been tedious and not unenlightening. He had also heard of Mr. Burge’s book, an opus of some two hundred thousand words in which the scabrous episodes are inserted with such meticulous deliberation that it only requires an exercise in simple arithmetic to calculate on what page the next will occur. Dalgliesh did not suspect Burge of any part in the murder. A writer who could produce such a hodgepodge of sex and sadism was probably impotent and certainly timid. But he was not necessarily a liar.

Dalgliesh said: “Are you quite sure of your times, Doctor? Mr. Burge says that he arrived at six-fifteen and Cully has booked him in at that time. Burge says he went straight into your own consulting room, having checked with Cully that you weren’t seeing a patient, and that it was a full ten minutes before you joined him. He was getting impatient and was thinking of going to inquire where you were.”

Dr. Steiner did not appear either frightened or angry at his patient’s perfidy. He did, however, look embarrassed.

“It’s interesting Mr. Burge should say that. I’m afraid he may be right. I thought he seemed a little put out when we began the session. If he says that I joined him at six-twenty-five, I have no doubt he’s telling the truth. The poor man has had a very short and interrupted session this evening. It’s very unfortunate at this particular stage in his treatment.”

“So, if you weren’t in the front consulting room when your patient arrived, where were you?” persisted Dalgliesh gently.

An astonishing change came over Dr. Steiner’s face. Suddenly he looked as shamefaced as a small boy who has been caught in the middle of mischief. He didn’t look frightened but he did look extremely guilty. The metamorphosis from consultant psychiatrist to embarrassed delinquent was almost comical.

“But I told you, Superintendent! I was in number two consulting room, the one between the front one and the patients’ waiting room.”

“Doing what, Doctor?” Really, it was almost laughable! What could Steiner have been up to to produce this degree of embarrassment? Dalgliesh’s mind toyed with bizarre possibilities. Reading pornography? Smoking hemp? Seducing Mrs. Shorthouse? It surely couldn’t be anything so conventional as planning murder.

But the doctor had obviously decided that the truth must be told. He said with a burst of shamefaced candour: “It sounds silly, I know, but … well … it was rather warm and I’d had a busy day and the couch was there.” He gave a little giggle. “In fact, Superintendent, at the time Miss Bolam is thought to have died, I was, in the vulgar parlance, having a kip!”

Once this embarrassing confession was off his chest, Dr. Steiner became happily voluble and it was difficult to get rid of him. But at last he was persuaded that he could help no more for the present and his place was taken by Dr. Baguley.

Dr. Baguley, like his colleagues, made no complaint of his long wait, but it had taken its toll. He was still wearing his white coat and he hugged it around himself as he drew the chair under him. He seemed to have difficulty in settling comfortably, twitching his lean shoulders and crossing and recrossing his legs. The clefts from nose to mouth looked deeper, his hair was dank, his eyes black pools in the light of the desk lamp. He lit a cigarette and, fumbling in his coat pocket, produced a slip of paper and passed it to Martin.

“I’ve written down my personal details. It’ll save time.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Martin stolidly.

“I may as well say now that I haven’t an alibi for the twenty minutes or so after six-fifteen. I expect you’ve heard that I left the ECT clinic a few minutes before Sister saw Miss Bolam for the last time. I went into the medical-staff cloakroom at the end of the hall and had a cigarette. The place was empty and no one came in. I didn’t hurry back to the clinic so I suppose it was about twenty to seven before I rejoined Dr. Ingram and Sister. They were together for the whole of that time, of course.”

“So Sister tells me.”

“It’s ridiculous even to consider that either of them would be involved but I’m glad they happened to stick together. The more people you can eliminate, the better, from your point of view, I suppose. I’m sorry not to be able to produce an alibi. I can’t help in any other way either, I’m afraid. I heard and saw nothing.”

Dalgliesh asked the doctor how he had spent the evening. “It was the usual pattern, until seven o’clock, that is. I arrived just before four and went into Miss Bolam’s office to sign the medical-attendance book. It used to be kept in the medical-staff cloakroom until recently when she moved it into her office. We talked for a short time—she had some queries about the servicing arrangements for my new ECT machine—and then I went to start my clinic. We were pretty busy until just after six and I also had my lysergic-acid patient to visit periodically. She was being specialled by Nurse Bolam in the basement treatment room. But I’m forgetting. You’ve seen Mrs. King.”

Mrs. King and her husband had been sitting in the patients’ waiting room on Dalgliesh’s arrival and he had taken very little time to satisfy himself that they could have had nothing to do with the murder. The woman was still weak and a little disorientated and sat holding tightly to her husband’s hand. He had not arrived at the clinic to escort her home until a few minutes after Sergeant Martin and his party. Dalgliesh had questioned the woman briefly and gently and had let her go. He had not needed the assurances of the medical director to be satisfied that this patient could not have left her bed to murder anyone. But he was equally sure that she was in no state to give an alibi to anyone else. He asked Dr. Baguley when he had last visited his patient.

“I looked in on her shortly after I arrived, before I started the shock treatment, actually. The drug had been given at three-thirty and the patient was beginning to react. I ought to say that LSD is given in an effort to make the patient more accessible to psychotherapy by releasing some of the more deep-seated inhibitions. It’s only given under close supervision and the patient is never left. I was called down again by Nurse Bolam at five and stayed for about forty minutes. I went back upstairs and gave my last shock treatment at about twenty to six. The last ECT patient actually left the clinic a few minutes after Miss Bolam was last seen. From about six-thirty I was clearing up and writing my notes.”

“Was the door of the medical-record room open when you passed it at five o’clock?”

Dr. Baguley thought for a moment or two and then said: “I think it was shut. It’s difficult to be absolutely certain, but I’m pretty sure I should have noticed if it had been open or ajar.”

“And at twenty to six when you left your patient?”

“The same.”

Dalgliesh asked again the usual, the inevitable, the obvious questions. Had Miss Bolam any enemies? Did the doctor know of any reason why someone might wish her dead? Had she seemed worried lately? Had he any idea why she might have sent for the group secretary? Could he decipher the notes on her jotting pad?

But Dr. Baguley could not help. He said: “She was a curious woman in some ways, shy, a little aggressive, not really happy with us. But she was perfectly harmless, the last person I’d have said to invite violence. One can’t go on saying how shocking it is. Words seem to lose their meaning with repetition. But I suppose we all feel the same. The whole thing is fantastic! Unbelievable!”

“You said she wasn’t happy here. Is this a difficult clinic to administer? From what I’ve heard, Miss Bolam wasn’t particularly skilled at dealing with difficult personalities.”

Dr. Baguley said easily: “Oh, you don’t want to believe all you hear. We’re individualists, but we get along with each other pretty well on the whole. Steiner and I scrap a bit but it’s all quite amiable. He wants the place to become a psychotherapy training unit with registrars and lay professional staff running around like mice and a bit of research on the side. One of those places where time and money are spent lavishly on anything but actually treating patients—especially psychotics. There’s no danger he’ll get his way. The Regional Board wouldn’t wear it for one thing.”

“And what were Miss Bolam’s views, Doctor?”

“Strictly speaking she was hardly competent to hold any but that didn’t inhibit her. She was anti-Freudian and pro-eclectic. Anti-Steiner and pro-me if you like. But that didn’t mean anything. Neither Dr. Steiner nor I were likely to knock her on the head because of our doctrinal differences. As you see, we haven’t even taken a knife to each other yet. All this is utterly irrelevant.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” said Dalgliesh. “Miss Bolam was killed with great deliberation and considerable expertise. I think the motive was a great deal more positive and important than a mere difference of opinion or clash of personality. Did you know, by the way, which key opens the record room?”

“Of course. If I want one of the old records, I usually fetch it myself. I also know, if it’s any help to you, that Nagle keeps his box of tools in the porters’ restroom. Furthermore, when I arrived this afternoon, Miss Bolam told me about Tippett. But that’s hardly relevant, is it? You can’t seriously believe that the murderer hoped to implicate Tippett.”

“Perhaps not. Tell me, Doctor. From your knowledge of Miss Bolam what would be her reaction to finding those medical records strewn about the floor?”

Dr. Baguley looked surprised for a second then gave a curt laugh.

“Bolam? That’s an easy one! She was obsessionally neat. Obviously she’d start to pick them up!”

“She wouldn’t be more likely to ring for a porter to do the work or to leave the records where they were as evidence until the culprit was discovered?”

Dr. Baguley thought for a moment and seemed to repent of his first categorical opinion.

“One can’t possibly know for certain what she’d do. It’s all conjecture. Probably you’re right and she’d ring for Nagle. She wasn’t afraid of work but she was very conscious of her position as AO. I’m sure of one thing, though. She wouldn’t have left the place in a mess like that. She couldn’t pass a rug or a picture without straightening it.”

“And her cousin? Are they alike? I understand that Nurse Bolam works for you more than for any other consultant.”

Dalgliesh noticed the quick frown of distaste that this question provoked. Dr. Baguley, however co-operative and frank about his own motives, was not disposed to comment on those of anyone else. Or was it that Nurse Bolam’s gentle defencelessness had aroused his protective instincts? Dalgliesh waited for a reply.

After a minute the doctor said curtly: “I shouldn’t have said the cousins were alike. You will have formed your own impression of Nurse Bolam. I can only say that I have complete trust in her, both as a nurse and a person.”

“She is her cousin’s heir. Or perhaps you knew that?” The inference was too plain to be missed and Dr. Baguley too tired to resist the provocation.

“No, I didn’t. But I hope for her sake that it’s a bloody great sum and that she and her mother will be allowed to enjoy it in peace. And I hope, too, that you won’t waste time suspecting innocent people. The sooner this murder is cleared up, the better. It’s a pretty intolerable position for all of us.”

So Dr. Baguley knew about Nurse Bolam’s mother. But, then, it was likely that most of the clinic staff knew. He asked his last question: “You said, Doctor, that you were alone in the medical-staff cloakroom from about six-fifteen until twenty to seven. What were you doing?”

“Going to the lavatory. Washing my hands. Smoking a cigarette. Thinking.”

“And that was absolutely all you did during the twenty-five minutes?”

“Yes—that was all, Superintendent.” Dr. Baguley was a poor liar. The hesitation was only momentary; his face did not change colour; the fingers holding his cigarette were quite steady. But his voice was a little too nonchalant, the disinterest a little too carefully controlled. And it was with a palpable effort that he made himself meet Dalgliesh’s eyes. He was too intelligent to add to his statement but his eyes held those of the detective as if willing Dalgliesh to repeat his question and bracing himself to meet it.

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Dalgliesh calmly. “That will be all for the present.”