by P. D. James
Dr. Baguley was kneeling by the body. He said quietly: “Tippett isn’t here this evening.”
“But he’s always here on Fridays! That’s his fetish! That’s the weapon!” Dr. Steiner wailed against such obtuseness.
Dr. Baguley gently lifted Miss Bolam’s left eyelid with his thumb. Without looking up he said: “We had a phone call from St Luke’s this morning. Tippett’s been admitted with pneumonia. Last Monday, I think. Anyway, he wasn’t here this evening.” Suddenly he gave an exclamation. The two women bent closer to the body. Dr. Steiner, who could not bring himself to watch the examination, heard him say: “She’s been stabbed, too. Through the heart, by the look of it, and with a black-handled chisel. Isn’t this one of Nagle’s, Sister?”
There was a pause and Dr. Steiner heard Sister’s voice: “It looks very like it, Doctor. All his tools have black handles. He keeps them in the porters’ restroom.” She added defensively. “Anyone could get at them.”
“It looks as if someone has.” There was the sound of Dr. Baguley getting to his feet. Still keeping his eyes on the body he said: “Phone Cully on the door, will you, Sister. Don’t alarm him, but tell him that no one is to be admitted or to leave the building. That includes the patients. Then get Dr. Etherege and ask him to come down. He’ll be in his consulting room, I imagine.”
“Oughtn’t we to phone the police?” Dr. Ingram spoke nervously and her pink face, so ridiculously like that of an angora rabbit, flushed pinker. It was not only in moments of high drama that one was apt to overlook the presence of Dr. Ingram and Dr. Baguley stared blankly at her as if he had momentarily forgotten her existence.
“We’ll wait for the medical director,” he said. Sister Ambrose disappeared with a rustle of starched linen. The nearest telephone was just outside the record-room door but, insulated by tiers of paper from every outside noise, Dr. Steiner strained his ears in vain to hear the lift of the receiver or the murmur of Sister’s voice. He forced himself to look once more at Miss Bolam’s body. In life he had thought of her as graceless and unattractive and death had lent her no dignity. She lay on her back, her knees raised and parted so that there was an expanse of pink woollen knicker clearly visible, looking far more indecent than naked flesh. Her round, heavy face was quite peaceful. The two thick plaits which she wore wound above her forehead were undisturbed. But then, nothing had ever been known to disturb Miss Bolam’s archaic hairstyle. Dr. Steiner was reminded of his private fantasy that the thick, lifeless plaits exuded their own mysterious secretion and were fixed for ever, immutably, about that placid brow. Looking at her in the defenceless indignity of death, Dr. Steiner tried to feel pity and knew that he felt fear. But he was fully conscious only of repugnance. It was impossible to feel tenderly towards something so ridiculous, so shocking, so obscene. The ugly word spun unbidden to the surface of thought. Obscene! He felt a ridiculous urge to pull down her skirt, to cover that puffy, pathetic face, to replace the spectacles which had slipped from her nose and hung, askew, from her left ear. Her eyes were half closed, her small mouth pursed as if in disapproval of so undignified and unmerited an end. Dr. Steiner was not unfamiliar with that look: he had seen it on her face in life. He thought, “She looks as if she’s just confronting me with my travelling expense form.”
Suddenly he was seized with an intolerable need to giggle. Laughter welled up uncontrollably. He recognized that this horrible urge was the result of nervousness and shock but understanding did not bring control. Helplessly, he turned his back on his colleagues and fought for composure, grasping the edge of a filing rack and pressing his forehead for support against the cold metal, his mouth and nostrils choked with the musty smell of old records.
He was not aware of Sister Ambrose’s return but, suddenly, he heard her speaking.
“Dr. Etherege is on his way down. Cully is on the door and I’ve told him that no one is to leave. Your patient is making rather a fuss, Dr. Steiner.”
“Perhaps I’d better go up to him.” Faced with the need for decision, Dr. Steiner regained control. He felt that it was somehow important that he should stay with the others and be there when the medical director arrived; that it would be wise to ensure that nothing important was said or done out of his hearing. On the other hand he was not anxious to stay with the body. The record room, brightly lit as an operating theatre, claustrophobic and overheated, made him feel like a trapped animal. The heavy, close-packed shelves seemed to press upon him, compelling his eyes again and again to that lumpen figure on its paper bier.
“I’ll stay here,” he decided. “Mr. Burge must wait like everyone else.”
They stood together without speaking. Dr. Steiner saw that Sister Ambrose, white-faced but otherwise apparently unmoved, stood stockily calm with her hands loosely clasped over her apron. So must she have stood, time without number in nearly forty years of nursing, waiting at the bedside of a patient, quietly deferential, for the doctor’s orders. Dr. Baguley pulled out his cigarettes, looked at the packet for a moment as if surprised to find it in his hand and replaced it in his pocket. Dr. Ingram seemed to be silently crying. Once, Dr. Steiner thought he heard her murmur: “Poor woman. Poor woman!”
Soon they heard footsteps and the medical director was with them followed by the senior psychologist, Fredrica Saxon. Dr. Etherege knelt down beside the body. He did not touch it but put his face close to Miss Bolam’s as if he were about to kiss her. Dr. Steiner’s sharp little eyes did not miss the glance that Miss Saxon gave Dr. Baguley, that instinctive move towards each other and the quick withdrawal.
“What happened?” she whispered. “Is she dead?”
“Yes. Murdered apparently.” Baguley’s tone was flat. Miss Saxon made a sudden gesture. For one unbelievable moment Dr. Steiner thought that she was going to cross herself.
“Who did it? Not poor old Tippett? That’s his fetish, surely.”
“Yes, but he isn’t here. He’s in St Luke’s with pneumonia.”
“Oh, my God! Then who?” This time she moved close to Dr. Baguley and they did not draw apart.
Dr. Etherege scrambled to his feet. “You’re right, of course. She’s dead. Stunned first apparently and then stabbed through the heart. I’ll go upstairs to phone the police and let the rest of the staff know. We’d better keep people together. Then we three had better search the building. Nothing must be touched of course.”
Dr. Steiner dared not meet Dr. Baguley’s eyes. Dr. Etherege in his role of the calm, authoritative administrator had always struck him as slightly ridiculous. He suspected that Baguley felt the same.
Suddenly they heard footsteps and the senior psychiatric social worker Miss Ruth Kettle appeared from behind the filing racks, peering at them short-sightedly.
“Ah, there you are, Director,” said Miss Kettle, in her fluting, breathless voice. (She was the only staff member, thought Dr. Steiner, to give Dr. Etherege that ridiculous title and God only knew why. It made the place sound like a nature-cure clinic.) “Cully told me you were down here. Not busy, I hope? I’m so distressed, I don’t want to make trouble but it really is too bad! Miss Bolam has booked me a new patient for ten on Monday. I’ve just seen the appointment in my diary, No consultation with me, of course. She knows I always see the Worrikers then. It’s quite deliberate, I’m afraid. You know, Director, someone has really got to do something about Miss Bolam.”
Dr. Baguley stood aside and said grimly: “Someone has.”
At the other end of the square, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of the Criminal Investigation Department was attending the ritual autumn sherry party given by his publishers which had coincided with the third reprint of his first book of verse. He didn’t overestimate his talent or the success of his book. The poems, which reflected his detached, ironic and fundamentally restless spirit, had happened to catch a public mood. He did not believe that more than half a dozen would live even in his own affections. Meanwhile he found himself awash on the shallows of an unfamiliar sea in which agents, royalties an
d reviews were agreeable hazards. And now there was this party. He had thought of it without enthusiasm as something to be endured, but it had proved unexpectedly enjoyable. Messrs. Hearne and Illingworth were as incapable of providing poor sherry as they were of publishing poor work; Dalgliesh estimated that his publishers’ share of his own book’s profits had been drunk in the first ten minutes. Old Sir Hubert Illingworth had made his brief appearance in the course of it, had shaken Dalgliesh sadly by the hand and had shuffled off muttering under his breath as if deploring that yet another writer on the firm’s list was exposing himself and his publisher to the doubtful gratifications of success. To him all writers were precocious children; creatures to be tolerated and encouraged but not overexcited in case they cried before bedtime.
There were less welcome diversions than the brief appearance of Sir Hubert. Few of the guests knew that Dalgliesh was a detective and not all of them expected him to talk about his job. But there were inevitably those who thought it inappropriate that a man who caught murderers should also write verse and who said so with varying degrees of tact. Presumably they wanted murderers caught, however much they might argue about what should happen to them afterwards; but they displayed a typical ambivalence towards those who did the catching. Dalgliesh was used to this attitude and found it less offensive than the common assumption that there was a particular glamour in being a member of the murder squad. But if there had been the expected quota of furtive curiosity and the inanities common to all such parties, there had also been agreeable people saying agreeable things. No writer, however apparently detached about his talent, is immune to the subtle reassurance of disinterested praise and Dalgliesh, fighting the suspicion that few of those who admired had actually read and fewer still had bought, found that he was quietly enjoying himself and was honest enough to admit why.
The first hour had been hectic but, soon after seven o’clock, he found himself standing alone, glass in hand, beside the ornate James Wyatt chimney piece. A thin wood fire was burning, filling the room with a faint country smell. It was one of those inexplicable moments when one is suddenly completely alone in the middle of a crowd, when the noise is muted and the pressing bodies seem to recede and become remote and mysterious as actors on some distant stage. Dalgliesh leaned the back of his head against the mantelpiece, savouring this momentary privacy and noting appreciatively the elegant proportions of the room. Suddenly he saw Deborah Riscoe. She must have come into the room very quietly. He wondered how long she had been there. Immediately his diffuse sense of peace and happiness gave way to a pleasure as keen and painful as that of a boy in love for the first time. She saw him at once and, glass in hand, edged her way across the room to him.
Her appearance was wholly unexpected and he did not deceive himself that she was there on his account. After their last encounter, that would hardly be likely.
He said, “It’s very pleasant to see you here.”
“I should have come anyway,” she replied. “But actually I work here. Felix Hearne got me the job after Mummy died. I’m quite useful. I’m the general dogsbody. Shorthand and typing, too. I took a course.”
He smiled. “You make it sound like a cure.”
“Well, in a way it was.”
He did not pretend not to understand. They were both silent. Dalgliesh knew that he was morbidly sensitive to any allusion to the case which, nearly three years ago, had led to their first meeting. That sore could not stand even the gentlest of probes. He had seen the announcement of her mother’s death in the paper about six months ago, but it had seemed impossible and impertinent then to send her a message or to speak the customary words of condolence. After all, he was partly responsible for her death. It was no easier now. Instead they talked of his verse and of her job. Taking his share of this casual, undemanding small talk, he wondered what she would say if he asked her to have dinner with him. If she didn’t turn him down flat—and she probably would—it could be for him the beginning of involvement. He didn’t deceive himself that he only wanted an agreeable meal with a woman he happened to think beautiful. He had no idea what she thought of him but, ever since their last meeting, he had known himself to be on the brink of love. If she accepted—for this or for any evening—his solitary life would be threatened. He knew this with complete certainty and the knowledge frightened him. Ever since the death of his wife in childbirth he had insulated himself carefully against pain: sex little more than an exercise in skill; a love affair merely an emotional pavan, formalized, danced according to the rules, committing one to nothing. But, of course, she wouldn’t accept. He had absolutely no reason to think that she was interested in him. It was only this certainty that gave him the confidence to indulge his thoughts. But he was tempted to try his luck. As they talked he mentally rehearsed the words, wryly amused to recognize after so many years the uncertainties of adolescence.
The light tap on his shoulder took him by surprise. It was the chairman’s secretary to say that he was wanted on the telephone. “It’s the Yard, Mr. Dalgliesh,” she said, with well-controlled interest as if Hearne and Illingworth’s authors were accustomed to calls from the Yard.
He smiled his excuses at Deborah Riscoe and she gave a little resigned shrug of her shoulders.
“I won’t be a moment,” he said. But even as he threaded his way through the crush of chatterers, he knew that he wouldn’t be back.
He took the call in a small office next to the boardroom, struggling to the telephone through chairs heaped with manuscripts, rolled galley proofs and dusty files. Hearne and Illingworth fostered an air of old-fashioned leisureliness and general muddle which concealed—sometimes to their authors’ discomfiture—a formidable efficiency and attention to detail.
The familiar voice boomed in his ear. “That you, Adam? How’s the party? Good. Sorry to break it up but I’d be grateful if you’d look in over the way. The Steen Clinic, Number 31. You know the place. Upper-class neuroses catered for only. It seems that their secretary or administrative officer or what have you has got herself murdered. Bashed on the head in the basement and then stabbed expertly through the heart. The boys are on their way. I’ve sent you Martin, of course. He’ll have your gear with him.”
“Thank you, sir. When was it reported?”
“Three minutes ago. The medical director rang. He gave me a concise account of practically everyone’s alibi for the supposed time of death and explained why it couldn’t possibly be one of the patients. He was followed by a doctor called Steiner. He explained that we met about five years ago at a dinner party given by his late brother-in-law. Dr. Steiner explained why it couldn’t have been him and favoured me with his interpretation of the psychological makeup of the killer. They’ve read all the best detective fiction. No one has touched the body, they’re not letting anyone in or out of the building and they’ve all collected into one room to keep an eye on each other. You’d better hurry over, Adam, or they’ll solve the crime before you arrive.”
“Who is the medical director?” asked Dalgliesh.
“Dr. Henry Etherege. You must have seen him on television. He’s the establishment psychiatrist, dedicated to making the profession respectable. Distinguished looking, orthodox and earnest.”
“I’ve seen him in court,” said Dalgliesh.
“Of course. Remember him in the Routledge case? He practically had me weeping into my hankie and I knew Routledge better than most. Etherege is the natural choice of any defence counsel—if he can get him. You know their bleat. Find me a psychiatrist who looks respectable, speaks English and won’t shock the jury or antagonize the judge. Answer, Etherege. Ah, well, good luck!”
The AC was optimistic in supposing that his message could break up the party. It had long reached the stage when the departure of a solitary guest disconcerted no one. Dalgliesh thanked his host, waved a casual good-bye to the few people who caught his eye and passed almost unnoticed out of the building. He did not see Deborah Riscoe again and made no effort to find her. His
mind was already on the job ahead and he felt that he had been saved, at best from a snub and, at worst, from folly. It had been a brief, tantalizing, inconclusive and unsettling encounter but, already, it was in the past.
Walking across the square to the tall Georgian building that housed the Steen Clinic, Dalgliesh recalled some of the scant items of information about the place that had come his way. It was a well-known witticism that you had to be exceptionally sane to be accepted for treatment at the Steen. Certainly it had a reputation—Dalgliesh thought probably undeserved—for selecting its patients with more regard to their intelligence and social class than their mental condition, subjecting them to diagnostic procedures designed to deter all but the most enthusiastic, and then placing them on a waiting list for treatment long enough to ensure that the curative effects of time could exert their maximum influence before the patient actually attended for his first psychotherapy session. The Steen, Dalgliesh remembered, had a Modigliani. It was not a well-known painting nor did it represent the artist at his best, but it was, undeniably, a Modigliani. It hung in the first-floor boardroom, the gift of a former grateful patient, and it represented much that the clinic stood for in the public eye. Other National Health Service clinics brightened their walls with reproductions from the Red Cross picture library. The Steen staff made no secret that they preferred a second-rate original to a first-class reproduction any day. And they had a second-rate original to prove it.
The house itself was one of a Georgian terrace. It stood at the south corner of the square, comfortable, unpretentious and wholly pleasing. At the rear a narrow passage ran into Lincoln Square Mews. There was a railed basement; in front of the house the railings curved on each side of the broad steps which led to the door and supported two wrought-iron lamp standards. On the right of the door an unpretentious bronze plaque bore the name of the Hospital Management Committee which administered the unit and, underneath, the words “The Steen Clinic.” No other information was given. The Steen did not advertise its function to a vulgar world nor did it wish to invite an influx of the local psychotics seeking treatment or reassurance. There were four cars parked outside but no signs yet of the police. The house looked very quiet. The door was shut but a light shone from the elegant Adam fanlight above the door and between the folds of drawn curtains in the ground-floor rooms.