A Mind to Murder

by P. D. James

  “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 u
s, 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.