A Mind to Murder

by P. D. James

  “By loyal you mean, no doubt, that you tried to smooth down rather than exacerbate her difficulties with the medical staff and refrained from any overt criticism of her as an administrator?”

  The tinge of sarcasm in his voice awoke, as was intended, all her latent hostility. Behind the mask of hauteur and detachment he glimpsed the insecure schoolgirl. He knew that she would have to justify herself even against an implied criticism. She did not like him but she could not bear to be underrated or ignored.

  “Miss Bolam wasn’t really a suitable administrator for a psychiatric unit. She hadn’t any sympathy with what we’re trying to do here.”

  “In what way was she unsympathetic?”

  “Well, for one thing, she didn’t like neurotics.” Neither do I, God help me, thought Dalgliesh. Neither do I. But he said nothing and Mrs. Bostock went on: “She was difficult, for example, about paying out some of the patients’ travelling expenses. They only get them if they’re on National Assistance, but we help other cases from the Samaritan fund. We have one girl, a most intelligent person, who comes here twice a week from Surrey to work in the art therapy department. Miss Bolam thought she ought to get treatment nearer home—or go without. Actually she made it pretty plain that, in her view, the patient ought to be discharged to do a job of work, as she put it.”

  “She didn’t say this sort of thing to the patient.”

  “Oh, no! She was careful enough what she actually said. But I could see that the sensitive ones weren’t at ease with her. Then she was very critical of intensive psychotherapy. It’s a time-consuming procedure. It has to be. Miss Bolam tended to judge a psychiatrist’s worth by the number of patients he saw in a session. But that was less important than her attitude to the patients. There was a reason for it, of course. Her mother was mentally ill and in analysis for years before she died. I understand that she killed herself. Miss Bolam can’t have had an easy time. Naturally she couldn’t allow herself to hate her mother, so she projected her resentment onto the patients here.

  “She was subconsciously afraid of her own neurosis, too. That was pretty obvious.”

  Dalgliesh did not feel qualified to comment on these theories. He was prepared to believe that there was truth in them but not that Mrs. Bostock had thought them out for herself. Miss Bolam may have irritated the psychiatrists by her lack of sympathy but here, at least, they had a believer.

  “Do you know who treated Mrs. Bolam?” he asked. Mrs. Bostock uncrossed her elegant legs and settled herself more comfortably in the chair before deigning to reply.

  “I do, as a matter of fact. But I hardly see its relevance to this inquiry.”

  “Shall we leave that to me to decide? I can find out quite easily. If you don’t know or aren’t sure, it would save time if you said so.”

  “It was Dr. Etherege.”

  “And who do you think will be appointed to succeed Miss Bolam?”

  “As administrative officer? Really,” said Mrs. Bostock coolly, “I’ve no idea.”

  At last the main work of the evening was over for Dalgliesh and Martin. The body had been taken away and the record room sealed. All the clinic staff had been questioned and most of them had left for their homes. Dr. Etherege had been the last doctor to leave and had hung around uneasily for some time after Dalgliesh had said he might go. Mr. Lauder and Peter Nagle were still in the clinic and were waiting together in the hall where two uniformed policemen were on duty. The group secretary had said with quiet determination that he preferred to be on the premises while the police were still there and Nagle could not leave until the front door had been locked and the key handed over since it was his job to open the clinic at eight o’clock on Monday morning.

  Dalgliesh and Martin made their last round of the premises together. Watching them at work, a casual observer might have been misled into the facile assumption that Martin was merely a foil for the younger, more successful man. Those at the Yard who knew them both judged differently. In appearance they were certainly unalike. Martin was a big man, nearly six feet and broad-shouldered, and looking, with his open ruddy face, more like a successful farmer than a detective. Dalgliesh was even taller, dark, lean and easy moving. Beside him Martin seemed ponderous. No one watching Dalgliesh at work could fail to recognize his intelligence. With Martin one was less sure. He was ten years older than his chief and it was unlikely now that he would gain further promotion. But he had qualities that made him an admirable detective. He was never tormented by doubt of his own motives. Right and wrong stood for him as immutable as the two poles. He had never wandered in that twilight country where the nuances of evil and good cast their perplexing shadows. He had great determination and infinite patience. He was kind without being sentimental and meticulous for detail without losing sight of the whole. Looking at his career, no one could have called him brilliant. But if he was incapable of high intelligence, he was equally incapable of stupidity. Most police work consists of the boring, repetitive and meticulous checking of detail. Most murders are sordid little crimes bred out of ignorance and despair. It was Martin’s job to help solve them and, patiently and uncensoriously, that is what he did. Faced with the murder at the Steen Clinic with its frightening undertones of a trained intelligence at work, he remained unimpressed. Methodical attention to detail had solved other murders and would solve this one. And murderers, intelligent or subnormal, devious or impulsive, had to be caught. He walked, as was usual, a pace or two behind Dalgliesh and said little. But when he spoke, it was usually to the point.

  They went through the building for the last time that evening, starting on the third floor. Here the eighteenth-century rooms had been divided to provide accommodation for psychiatric social workers, psychologists and lay therapists, together with two larger treatment rooms for the use of psychiatrists. There was one pleasant and unconverted room at the front of the building furnished comfortably with easy chairs and a number of small tables. This, apparently, was the rendezvous of the marital-problem group who could enjoy an agreeable view over the square in the intervals of analysing their domestic and sexual incompatibilities. Dalgliesh could understand the chagrin of the absent Mrs. Baumgarten. The room was admirably suited for the art-therapy department.

  The more important rooms were on the floor below and here there had been little alteration or adaptation so that ceilings, doors and windows could contribute their own graciousness to the atmosphere of elegance and calm. The Modigliani was out of place in the boardroom but not aggressively so. The smaller medical library next door with its antique bookcases, each bearing the name of the donor, could have been an eighteenth-century gentleman’s library until one looked at the titles on the books. There were low bowls of flowers set on the bookcases and a number of armchairs which looked right together although they had obviously come originally from half a dozen different houses.

  On this floor, too, the medical director had his consulting room and it was one of the most elegant in the clinic. The treatment couch which stood against the far wall was the same pattern as that in each of the other psychiatrists’ rooms, a low single divan covered in chintz and with a red blanket folded at its foot and one pillow. But no HMC had provided the rest of the furniture. The eighteenth-century desk was uncluttered by cardboard calendars or stationery-office diaries and held merely a leather-bound blotter, a silver inkstand and a tray for papers. There were two leather armchairs and a mahogany corner cupboard. It appeared that the medical director collected old prints and was particularly interested in mezzotints and eighteenth-century engravings. Dalgliesh inspected a collection of works by James MacArdell and Valentine Green, arranged on either side of the chimney piece, and noted that Dr. Etherege’s patients unburdened their subconscious beneath a couple of fine lithographs by Hullmandel. He reflected that the unknown clinic thief might have been a gentleman, if Cully’s opinion was to be trusted, but he was certainly no connoisseur. It was more typical of the small-time professional to neglect two Hullmandels for fifteen p
ounds in cash. It was certainly a pleasant room, proclaiming its owner as a man with taste and the money to indulge it, the room of a man who sees no reason why his working life should be spent in less agreeable surroundings than his leisure. And yet it was not wholly successful. Somewhere there was a lack. The elegance was a little too contrived, the good taste a little too orthodox. Dalgliesh felt that a patient might well be happier in the warm, untidy, oddly shaped cell upstairs where Fredrica Saxon worked in a litter of papers, pot plants and the paraphernalia of tea brewing. Despite the engravings the room lacked the nuances of personality. In that, it was somehow typical of its owner. Dalgliesh was reminded of a recent conference which he had attended on mental illness and the law at which Dr. Etherege had been one of the speakers. At the time his paper had seemed a model of felicitous wisdom; afterwards Dalgliesh was unable accurately to recall a single word.

  They went down to the ground floor where the group secretary and Nagle, chatting quietly to the police constables, turned to watch but made no move to join them. The four waiting figures were standing together in a sad group like mourners after a funeral, uncertain and disorganized in the hiatus that follows grief. When they talked together, their voices sounded muted in the silence of the hall.

  The ground-floor plan was simple. Immediately inside the front door and to the left as one entered was the glasspanelled reception kiosk. Dalgliesh noted again that it commanded a good view of the whole hall, including the great curved staircase at the end. Yet Cully’s observations during the evening had been curiously selective. He was positive that everyone entering or leaving the clinic after five p.m. had been seen by him and entered in his book but many of the comings and goings in the hall had passed unnoticed. He had seen Mrs. Shorthouse come out of Miss Bolam’s office and into the front general office but had not seen the administrative officer passing down the hall to the basement stairs. He had seen Dr. Baguley coming out of the medical-staff cloakroom but not entering it. Most of the movements of patients and their relations had not escaped him and he was able to confirm the comings and goings of Mrs. Bostock. He was certain that Dr. Etherege, Miss Saxon and Miss Kettle had not passed through the hall after six p.m. If they had, he hadn’t noticed. Dalgliesh would have felt more confidence in Cully’s evidence if it were not apparent that the pathetic little man was terrified. When they arrived at the clinic, he had been merely depressed and a little surly. By the time he was allowed to go home, he was in a state of terror. At some stage of the investigation, thought Dalgliesh, he would have to find out why.

  Behind the reception kiosk and with windows facing the square was the general office, part of which had been partitioned to form a small filing room for the current medical records. Next to the general office was Miss Bolam’s room and, beyond that, the ECT suite with its treatment room, nurses’ duty room and male and female recovery bays. This suite was separated by a hallway from the medical-staff cloakroom, clerical staff lavatories and the domestic assistant’s pantry. At the end of the hallway was the locked side door, seldom used except by members of the staff who had been working late and who did not want to give Nagle the trouble of undoing the more complicated locks, bolts and chains on the front door.

  At the opposite side of the main hall were two consulting rooms and the patients’ waiting room and lavatories. The front room had been divided to form two fairly large psychotherapy rooms which were separated from the waiting room by a passage. Dr. Steiner could, therefore, move from one to the other without coming within Cully’s view. But he could hardly move down the hall to the basement stairs without risk of being seen. Had he been seen? What was Cully keeping back and why?

  Together, Dalgliesh and Martin examined the basement rooms for the last time that night. At the rear was the door which led to the area steps. Dr. Etherege had said that this door was bolted when he and Dr. Steiner had examined it after finding the body. It was still bolted. It had been tested for fingerprints but the only decipherable ones had been Peter Nagle’s. Nagle had said that he was probably the last person to touch the lock since it was his habit to check that the door was securely bolted before he locked up at night. It was rare for him or for any member of the staff to use the basement exit and the door was usually opened only when the coal or other heavy supplies were delivered. Dalgliesh shot back the bolt. There was a short flight of iron steps leading to the rear railings. Here, again, the wrought-iron door was bolted and fitted with a lock and chain. But an intruder would have no difficulty in getting into the basement area, particularly as the mews at the back was ill lit and unoccupied. The clinic itself would be less easy of access. All the basement windows, except the small lavatory window, were barred. It was through that window the clinic thief had cut his way.

  Dalgliesh bolted the door again and they went into the porters’ restroom which occupied most of the back of the building. Nothing was changed since they had first examined it. Two clothes lockers stood against one wall. The centre of the floor was occupied by a heavy square table. There was a small, old-fashioned gas cooker in one corner and, beside it, a cupboard containing cups and saucers and tins of tea, sugar and biscuits. Two shabby leather chairs were drawn up one on either side of the gas fire. To the left of the door was a key board with the hooks numbered but not named. On this board had hung, among others, the key to the basement record room. That key was now in the possession of the police.

  A large, striped cat was curled in a basket before the unlit gas fire. When the light was switched on, it stirred and, lifting its heavy, barred head, gave the intruders a stare, blank and expressionless, from immense yellow eyes. Dalgliesh knelt beside the basket and stroked the top of its head. The cat shivered then sat immobile under his touch. Suddenly it rolled on its back and stretched out its legs, rigid as poles, to display a ridge of soft belly hair for Dalgliesh’s ministrations.

  The superintendent stroked and talked while Martin, whose preference was for dogs, looked on in tolerant patience. He said: “I’ve heard about him from Mrs. Shorthouse. It’s Tigger, Miss Bolam’s cat.”

  “We deduce that Miss Bolam read A. A. Milne as a child. Cats are nocturnal. Why isn’t he let out at night?”

  “I heard about that, too. Miss Bolam thought he’d keep the mice down if he were shut in. Nagle goes out at lunch time for a beer and a sandwich, but Cully eats his grub here and Miss B was always on to him about crumbs. The cat is shut in here every night and let out during the day. He’s got his food and his scratch tin.”

  “So I see. Furnished with cinders from the boiler.”

  “Pity he can’t talk, sir. He was in here for most of the evening waiting to be fed. He was probably here when the murderer came in for the record-room key.”

  “And for the chisel. Oh, yes, Tigger saw it, all right. But what makes you think he’d tell you the truth?”

  Sergeant Martin didn’t reply. People who went for cats in a big way were like that, of course. Childish you might call it. Unusually talkative, he said: “Miss B had him doctored at her own expense. Mrs. Shorthouse told PC Holliday that Dr. Steiner was very upset about it. He likes cats seemingly. They had words over it. Dr. Steiner told Mrs. Bostock that Miss Bolam would like everything male at the clinic doctored if she had her way. He put it rather crudely, I gather. Of course, it wasn’t meant to get back to Miss Bolam but Mrs. Bostock saw that it did.”

  “Yes,” said Dalgliesh shortly. “She would.” They continued their inspection.

  It was not an uncomfortable room. It smelled of food and leather and, just perceptibly, of gas. There were a number of pictures which looked as if they had found a home with the porters when their previous owners had seen enough of them. One was of the founder of the Steen surrounded, appropriately enough, by his five sons. It was a faded sepia photograph in a gilt frame more indicative, Dalgliesh thought, of old Hyman’s character than the more orthodox commemorative oil which hung upstairs in the hall.

  On a smaller table against the rear wall lay Nagle’s box of tools
. Dalgliesh lifted the lid. The tools, meticulously cared for, lay each in its correct place. There was only one missing and that one was unlikely ever again to find its place in Nagle’s toolbox.

  “He could have come in through that rear door if he left it unlocked,” said Martin, voicing Dalgliesh’s thought.

  “Of course. I admit to a perverse disposition to suspect the one person who was apparently not even in the building when the murder was committed. There’s little doubt, though, that Nagle was with Miss Priddy in the general office when Mrs. Shorthouse left Miss Bolam. Cully confirms that. And Miss Priddy states that she never left the general office except momentarily to fetch a file from the next room. What did you think of Shorthouse, by the way?”

  “I thought she was telling the truth, sir. I wouldn’t put her above a bit of lying when it suited her. She’s the sort who likes things to happen and isn’t averse to giving them a bit of a shove in the right direction. But she had plenty to tell us without adding any frills.”

  “She had, indeed,” agreed Dalgliesh. “There isn’t any reasonable doubt that Miss Bolam came down to the basement as a result of that call which fixes the approximate time of death for us very satisfactorily. It ties up with the police surgeon’s view, too, but we shall know more about that when we get the result of the PM. The call could have been genuine, of course. It’s possible that someone phoned from the basement, spoke to Miss Bolam somewhere down here, then left her to go back to his or her own room and is now too afraid to admit making the call. As I say, it’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely.”

  “If the call was genuine, it could have been someone calling her down to look at the mess in the record room. Those files were certainly chucked about before the murder. Some of them were under the body. It looked to me as if she was struck as she crouched to pick them up.”

  “That’s how it looked to me,” said Dalgliesh. “Well, let’s press on.”