by P. D. James
Amid the murmur of outraged denial, Dr. Maddox said: “There was something intimidating about her. It may have been that formidable and self-conscious rectitude. You were as affected by it as anyone, Paul.”
“Possibly. But I did try to do something about her. I spoke to Lauder.”
“I spoke to him, too,” said Etherege quietly, “and possibly with more effect. I made it clear that this committee realized that we had no control over the administrative staff but I said that Miss Bolam appeared to me, speaking as a psychiatrist and as chairman of the Medical Committee, to be temperamentally unsuitable for her job. I suggested that a transfer would be in her own interests. There could be no criticism of her efficiency and I made none. Lauder was noncommittal, of course, but he knew perfectly well that I was entitled to make the point. And I think he took it.”
Dr. Maddox said: “Allowing for his natural caution, his suspicion of psychiatrists and the usual speed of his administrative decisions, I suppose we should have been rid of Miss Bolam within the next two years. Someone has certainly speeded things up.”
Suddenly Dr. Ingram spoke. Her pink, rather stupid face flushed unbecomingly. She sat stiffly upright and her hands, clasped on the table in front of her, were shaking.
“I don’t think you ought to say things like that. It … it isn’t right. Miss Bolam is dead, brutally murdered. You sit here, all of you, and talk as if you didn’t care! I know she wasn’t very easy to get on with but she’s dead and I don’t think this is the time to be unkind about her.”
Dr. Maddox looked at Dr. Ingram with interest and a kind of wonder as if she were faced by an exceptionally dull child who had somehow succeeded in making an intelligent remark. She said: “I see that you subscribe to the superstition that one should never tell the truth about the dead. The origins of that atavistic belief have always interested me. We must have a talk about it sometime. I should like to hear your views.”
Dr. Ingram, scarlet with embarrassment and close to tears, looked as if the proposed talk were a privilege she would be happy to forgo.
Dr. Etherege said: “Unkind about her? I should be sorry to think that anyone here was being unkind. There are some things, surely, which don’t need saying. There can’t be a member of this committee who isn’t horrified at the senseless brutality of Miss Bolam’s death and who wouldn’t wish her back with us no matter what her defects as an administrator.”
The bathos was too blatant to be missed. As if conscious of their surprise and discomfiture, he looked up and said challengingly: “Well, is there? Is there?”
“Of course not,” said Dr. Steiner. He spoke soothingly, but the sharp little eyes slewed sideways to meet Baguley’s glance. There was embarrassment in that look, but Baguley recognized also the smirk of malicious amusement. The medical director wasn’t playing this too cleverly. He had allowed Albertine Maddox to get out of hand and his control over the committee was less sure than formerly. The pathetic thing about it, thought Baguley, was that Etherege was sincere. He meant every word. He had—and so had they all, come to that—a genuine horror of violence. He was a compassionate man shocked and saddened by the thought of a defenceless woman brutally done to death. But his words sounded false. He was taking refuge in formality, deliberately trying to lower the emotional tone of the meeting to one of platitudinous convention. And he only succeeded in sounding insincere.
After Dr. Ingram’s outburst the meeting seemed to lose heart. Dr. Etherege made only spasmodic attempts to control it and the conversation ranged in a tired, desultory way from one subject to another but, always and inevitably, returned to the murder. There was a feeling that the Medical Committee should express some common view. Groping from theory to theory the meeting eventually came to accept Dr. Steiner’s proposition. The killer had obviously entered the clinic earlier in the day when the system of booking people in and out was not in force. He had secreted himself in the basement, selected his weapons at leisure and called Miss Bolam down by noting the number of her extension from the card hung beside the telephone. He had made his way to the upper floors without being observed and left by one of the windows, managing to close it behind him before edging his way onto the fire escape. That this procedure argued considerable luck, coupled with unusual and remarkable agility, was not overemphasized. Under Dr. Steiner’s leadership the theory was elaborated. Miss Bolam’s telephone call to the group secretary was dismissed as irrelevant. She had undoubtedly wished to complain about some trifling misdemeanour, real or imagined, and which was quite unconnected with her subsequent death. The suggestion that the killer had swarmed up the pulley in the lift shaft was generally discounted as somewhat fanciful although, as Dr. Maddox pointed out, a man who could shut a heavy window while balancing on the outside sill, then swing himself some five feet through space to reach the fire escape, would hardly find the lift shaft an insuperable problem.
Dr. Baguley, wearying of his part in the fabrication of this mythical killer, half-closed his eyes and gazed from under lowered lids at the bowl of roses. Their petals had been opening gently and almost visibly in the warmth of the room. Now the red, green and pink swam together in an amorphous pattern of colour which, as his gaze shifted, was reflected in the shining table.
Suddenly he opened his eyes fully and saw Dr. Etherege looking fixedly at him. There was concern in that sharp, analytic regard; Dr. Baguley thought that there was also pity. The medical director said: “Some of our members have had enough. So, I think, have I. If no one has any urgent business to bring forward, I declare, the meeting closed.”
Dr. Baguley thought that it was not altogether by chance that he and the medical director found themselves alone in the room, the last to leave. As he tested the windows to check that they were locked, Dr. Etherege said: “Well, James, have you come to a decision yet about succeeding me as medical director?”
“It’s more a question of deciding whether or not to apply for the job when it’s advertised, surely?” said Baguley. He asked: “What about Mason-Giles or McBain?”
“M. G. isn’t interested. It’s maximum sessions, of course, and he doesn’t want to give up his teaching-hospital connection. McBain is tied up with the new regional unit for adolescents.”
It was typical of the medical director’s occasional insensitivity that he didn’t try to soften the fact that he had tried others first. He’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, thought Baguley.
“And Steiner?” he asked. “He’ll be applying, I imagine?” The medical director smiled.
“Oh, I don’t think the Regional Board will appoint Dr. Steiner. This is a multidiscipline clinic. We must have someone who can hold the place together. And there may be very great changes. You know my views. If there is to be a closer integration of psychiatry with general medicine, a place like this may have to die for the greater good. We ought to have access to beds. The Steen may find its natural home in a general-hospital outpatient department. I don’t say it’s probable. But it’s possible.”
So that was the way the Board was thinking? Dr. Etherege had his ear well to the ground. A small outpatient unit with no registrars, no training function and no link with a general hospital might well become anachronistic in the eyes of the planners.
Dr. Baguley said: “I don’t mind where I see my patients as long as I get peace and quiet, a certain tolerance and not too much of the hierarchical claptrap and starched linen. These proposed psychiatric units in general hospitals are all very well so long as the hospital appreciates what we’re going to need in staff and space. I’m too tired to do battle.” He looked at the medical director. “Actually, I had more or less decided not to apply. I telephoned your room yesterday evening from the medical-staff room to ask if we could chat about it after the clinic.”
“Indeed? At what time?”
“At about six-twenty or six-twenty-five. There was no reply. Later, of course, we had other things to think about.”
The medical director said: “I must have been in the library. I’m very g
lad I was if it means that you’ve had time to reconsider your decision. And I hope that you will reconsider it, James.”
He turned out the lights and they went downstairs together. Pausing at the foot, the medical director turned to Baguley and said: “It was at about six-twenty that you telephoned? I find that very interesting, very interesting indeed.”
“Well, about then, I suppose.” Dr. Baguley realized with irritation and surprise that it was he, not the medical director, who sounded guilty and embarrassed. He was seized by an intense desire to get out of the clinic, to escape from the blue, speculative gaze which was so adept at putting him at a disadvantage. But there was something else which must be said. At the door he forced himself to pause and face Dr. Etherege. But despite his attempt at nonchalance his voice sounded forced, even belligerent: “I’m wondering whether we ought to do something about Nurse Bolam.”
“In what way?” asked the medical director gently. Receiving no reply, he went on: “All the staff know that they can ask to see me at any time. But I’m not inviting confidences. This is a murder investigation, James, and it’s out of my hands. Out of my hands completely. I think you would be wise to take the same attitude. Good night.”
6
Early Monday morning, the anniversary of his wife’s death, Dalgliesh called in at a small Catholic church behind the Strand to light a candle. His wife had been a Catholic. He had not shared her religion and she had died before he could begin to understand what it meant to her or what importance this fundamental difference between them might have for their marriage. He had lit the first candle on the day she had died out of the need to formalize an intolerable grief and, perhaps, with a childish hope of somehow comforting her spirit. This was the fourteenth candle. He thought of this most private action in his detached and secretive life not as superstition or piety, but as a habit which he could not now break even if he wished. He dreamed of his wife only seldom, but then with absolute clarity; waking he could no longer accurately recall her face. He pushed his coin through the slot and held his candle’s wick to the dying flame of a moist stump. It caught immediately and the flame grew bright and clear. It had always been important to him that the wick should catch at once. He gazed through the flame for a moment feeling nothing, not even anger. Then he turned away.
The church was nearly empty, but it held for him an atmosphere of intense and silent activity which he sensed but could not share. As he walked to the door, he recognized a woman, red-coated and with a dark green scarf over her head, who was pausing to dip her fingers in the water stoup. It was Fredrica Saxon, senior psychologist of the Steen Clinic. They reached the outer door together and he forced it open for her against the sudden swirl of an autumn wind. She smiled at him, friendly and unembarrassed.
“Hullo. I haven’t seen you here before.”
“I only come once a year,” Dalgliesh replied. He gave no explanation and she asked no questions.
Instead she said: “I wanted to see you. There’s something I think you ought to know. Are you off duty? If you aren’t, could you be unorthodox and talk to a suspect in a coffee bar? I’d rather not come to your office and it isn’t easy to ask for an interview at the clinic. I need some coffee anyway. I’m cold.”
“There used to be a place round the corner,” said Dalgliesh. “The coffee is tolerable and it’s pretty quiet.”
The coffee bar had changed in a year. Dalgliesh remembered it as a clean but dull café with a row of deal tables covered with plastic cloths and a long service counter embellished with a tea urn and layers of substantial sandwiches under glass domes. It had risen in the world. The walls had been panelled with imitation old oak against which hung a formidable assortment of rapiers, ancient pistols and cutlasses of uncertain authenticity. The waitresses looked like avant-garde débutantes earning their pin money and the lighting was so discreet as to be positively sinister. Miss Saxon led the way to a table in the far corner.
“Just coffee?” asked Dalgliesh.
“Just coffee, please.”
She waited until the order had been given and then said: “It’s about Dr. Baguley.”
“I thought it might be.”
“You were bound to hear something, I suppose. I’d rather tell you about it now than wait to be asked and I’d rather you heard it from me than from Amy Shorthouse.”
She spoke without rancour or embarrassment. Dalgliesh replied: “I haven’t asked about it because it doesn’t seem relevant but, if you’d like to tell me, it may be helpful.”
“I don’t want you to get a wrong idea about it that’s all. It would be so easy for you to imagine that we had a grudge against Miss Bolam. We didn’t, you know. At one time we even felt grateful to her.”
Dalgliesh had no need to ask who she meant by that “we.” The waitress, uninterested, came with their coffee, pale foam served in small, transparent cups. Miss Saxon slipped her coat from her shoulders and unknotted her head scarf. Both of them wrapped their fingers round the hot cups. She heaped the sugar into her coffee then pushed the plastic bowl across the table to Dalgliesh. There was no tension about her, no awkwardness. She had the directness of a schoolchild drinking coffee with a friend. He found her curiously peaceful to be with perhaps because he did not find her physically attractive. But he liked her. It was difficult to believe that this was only their second meeting and that the matter that had brought them together was murder.
She skimmed the froth from her coffee and said, without looking up: “James Baguley and I fell in love nearly three years ago. There wasn’t any great moral struggle about it. We didn’t invite love but we certainly didn’t fight against it. After all, you don’t voluntarily give up happiness unless you’re a masochist or a saint and we aren’t either. I knew that James had a neurotic wife in the way one does get to know these things, but he didn’t talk much about her. We both accepted that she needed him and that a divorce was out of the question. We convinced ourselves that we weren’t doing her any harm and that she need never know. James used to say that loving me made his marriage happier for both of them. Of course, it is easier to be kind and patient when one is happy, so he may have been right. I don’t know. It’s a rationalization that thousands of lovers must use.
“We couldn’t see each other very often, but I had my flat and we usually managed to have two evenings a week together. Once Helen—that’s his wife—went to stay with her sister and we had a whole night together. We had to be careful at the clinic, of course, but we don’t really see very much of each other there.”
“How did Miss Bolam find out about it?” asked Dalgliesh.
“It was silly, really. We were at the theatre seeing Anouilh and she was sitting alone in the row behind. Who would suppose that Bolam would want to see Anouilh, anyway? I suppose she was sent a free ticket. It was our second anniversary and we held hands all through the play. We may have been a little drunk. Afterwards we left the theatre still hand in hand. Anyone from the clinic, anyone we knew, could have seen us. We were getting careless and someone was bound to see us sooner or later. It was just chance that it happened to be Bolam. Other people would probably have minded their own business.”
“Whereas she told Mrs. Baguley? That seems an unusually officious and cruel thing to have done.”
“It wasn’t, really. Bolam wouldn’t see it that way. She was one of those rare and fortunate people who never for one moment doubt that they know the difference between right and wrong. She wasn’t imaginative so she couldn’t enter into other people’s feelings. If she were a wife whose husband was unfaithful, I’m sure that she would want to be told about it. Nothing would be worse than not knowing. She had the kind of strength that relishes a struggle. I expect she thought it was her duty to tell. Anyway, Helen came to the Steen to see her husband unexpectedly one Wednesday afternoon and Miss Bolam invited her into the AO’s office and told her. I often wonder what exactly she said. I imagine that she said we were ‘carrying on.’ She could make practically anything s
ound vulgar.”
“She was taking a risk, wasn’t she?” said Dalgliesh. “She had very little evidence, certainly no proof.”
Miss Saxon laughed. “You’re talking like a policeman. She had proof enough. Enid Bolam could recognize love when she saw it. Besides, we were enjoying ourselves together without a licence and that was infidelity enough.”
The words were bitter but she did not sound resentful or sarcastic. She was sipping her coffee with evident satisfaction. Dalgliesh thought that she might have been talking about one of the clinic patients, discussing with detached and mild professional interest the vagaries of human nature. Yet he did not believe that she loved easily or that her emotions were superficial. He asked what Mrs. Baguley’s reaction had been.
“That’s the extraordinary thing, or at least it seemed so at the time. She took it wonderfully well. Looking back I wonder whether we weren’t all three mad, living in some kind of imaginary world that two minutes’ rational thought would have shown us couldn’t exist. Helen lives her life in a series of attitudes and the one she decided to adopt was the pose of the brave, understanding wife. She insisted on a divorce. It was going to be one of those friendly divorces. That kind is only possible, I imagine, when people have ceased to care for each other, perhaps never have cared or been capable of caring. But that was the kind we were going to have. There was a great deal of discussion. Everyone’s happiness was to be safeguarded. Helen was going to open a dress shop—it’s a thing she’s talked about for years. We all three got interested in it and looked for suitable premises. It was pathetic really. We actually fooled ourselves that it was all going to come right. That’s why I said that James and I felt grateful to Enid Bolam. People at the clinic got to know that there was to be a divorce and that Helen would name me—it was all part of the policy of frankness and honesty—but very little was said to us. Bolam never mentioned the divorce to anyone. She wasn’t a gossip and she wasn’t malicious either. Somehow her part in it got about in the way these things do. I think Helen may have told someone, but Miss Bolam and I never talked about it ever.