A Mind to Murder

by P. D. James

  The door was opened almost before he had taken his finger from the bell. They had been waiting for him. A stockily built young man in porter’s uniform opened the door and let him in without speaking. The hall blazed with light and struck very warm after the coolness of the autumn night. To the left of the door was a glass-panelled reception kiosk with a telephone switchboard. A second, and much older, porter sat at the board in an attitude of utter misery. He looked round and glanced briefly at Dalgliesh with rheumy eyes then returned to his contemplation of the board as if the arrival of the superintendent was the last straw of an intolerable burden which, if ignored, might be lifted from him.

  In the main body of the hall the reception committee came forward, the medical director with outstretched hand as if welcoming a guest. “Superintendent Dalgliesh? We’re very glad to see you. May I introduce my colleague, Dr. James Baguley, and the secretary of the Hospital Management Committee, Mr. Lauder.”

  “You got here very promptly, sir,” said Dalgliesh to Lauder.

  The group secretary said: “I didn’t know about the murder until I arrived two minutes ago. Miss Bolam telephoned me at lunchtime today and said she wanted to see me urgently. Something was going on at the clinic and she needed advice. I came as soon as I could and found that she’d been murdered. In the circumstances, I had more reasons than one for deciding to stay around. It looks as if she needed advice more than she knew.”

  “Whatever it was, you’ve come too late, I’m afraid,” said Dr. Etherege.

  Dalgliesh saw that he was much shorter than his television appearances suggested. His large, high-domed head, with its aureole of white hair soft and fine as a baby’s, looked too weighty for the slight supporting body which seemed to have aged independently, giving him an oddly disintegrated appearance. It was difficult to guess his age but Dalgliesh thought that he must be nearer seventy than sixty-five, the normal retiring age for a consultant. He had the face of an indestructible gnome, the cheeks mottled with high colour so that they looked painted, the eyebrows springing above eyes of a piercing blue. Dalgliesh felt that those eyes and the soft, persuasive voice were not the least of the medical director’s professional assets.

  In contrast, Dr. James Baguley was six feet tall, nearly as tall as Dalgliesh, and the immediate impression he gave was of intense weariness. He was wearing a long white coat which hung loosely from his bowed shoulders. Although he was much the younger man, he had none of the medical director’s vitality. His hair was straight and turning iron-grey. From time to time he swept it out of his eyes with long, nicotine-stained fingers. His was a handsome, bony face but the skin and eyes were dulled as if with permanent tiredness.

  The medical director said: “You will, of course, want to see the body straight away. I’ll ask Peter Nagle, our second porter, to come down with us if you’ve no objection. His chisel was one of the weapons used—not that he could help that, poor fellow—and no doubt you will want to ask him questions.”

  “I shall want to question everyone here in due course,” replied Dalgliesh.

  It was apparent that the medical director had taken charge. Dr. Baguley, who had not yet spoken, seemed glad to accept that position. Lauder had apparently decided to adopt a watching brief. As they moved towards the basement stairs at the back of the hall, he caught Dalgliesh’s eye. The momentary glance was hard to analyse, but Dalgliesh thought he detected an amused gleam and a certain wry detachment.

  They stood in silence as Dalgliesh knelt by the body. He did not touch it except to part the cardigan and blouse, both of which were unbuttoned, and expose the handle of the chisel. It had been driven in up to the hilt. There was very little bruising of the tissues and no blood. The woman’s vest had been rolled up above her breasts to expose the flesh for that vicious, calculated thrust. Such deliberation suggested that the killer had a confident knowledge of anatomy. There were easier ways of killing than to pierce the heart with one thrust. But for those with the knowledge and the strength, there were few ways so sure.

  He got to his feet and turned to Peter Nagle. “Is that your chisel?”

  “Apparently. It looks like it and mine isn’t in the box.” Despite the omission of the usual “sir,” the voice, educated and unemphatic, held no trace of insolence or resentment.

  Dalgliesh asked: “Any idea how it got here?”

  “None at all. But I’d hardly be likely to say if I had, would I?”

  The medical director gave Nagle a quick frown of warning or admonition and placed his hand briefly on the porter’s shoulder. Without consulting Dalgliesh he said gently: “That will be all for the present, Nagle. Just wait outside, will you?”

  Dalgliesh made no demur as the porter quietly detached himself from the group and left without another word.

  “Poor boy! The use of his chisel has naturally shocked him. It looks unpleasantly like an attempt to implicate him. But you will find, Superintendent, that Nagle is one of the few members of the staff with a complete alibi for the presumed time of death.” Dalgliesh did not point out that this was, in itself, highly suspicious.

  “Did you make any estimate of the time of death?” he asked.

  Dr. Etherege replied: “I thought that it must have been very recent. That is Dr. Baguley’s view too. The clinic is very warm today—we’ve just started our central heating—so that the body would cool very slowly. I didn’t try for rigor. I am, of course, little more than a layman in such matters. Subsequently I knew that she must have died within the hour. Naturally we have been talking among ourselves while waiting for you and it appears that Sister Ambrose was the last person to see Miss Bolam alive. That was at twenty past six. Cully, our senior porter, tells me that Miss Bolam rang him on the internal phone at about six-fifteen to say that she was going down to the basement and that Mr. Lauder should be directed to her office if he arrived. A few minutes later, as far as she can judge, Sister came out of the ECT room on the ground floor and crossed the hall to the patients’ waiting room to let a husband know that his wife was ready to be taken home. Sister saw Miss Bolam going down the hall towards the basement stairs. No one saw her alive again after that.”

  “Except her murderer,” said Dalgliesh. Dr. Etherege looked surprised.

  “Yes, that would be so, of course. I mean that none of us saw her alive again. I have asked Sister Ambrose about the time and Sister is quite sure …”

  “I shall be seeing Sister Ambrose and the other porter.”

  “Of course. Naturally you will want to see everybody. We expect that. While waiting we telephoned our homes to say that we would be delayed tonight but gave no explanation. We had already searched the building and ascertained that the basement door and the ground-floor rear entrance were both bolted. Nothing has been touched in here naturally. I arranged for the staff to stay together in the front consulting room except for Sister and Nurse Bolam who were with the remaining patients in the waiting room. No one but Mr. Lauder and you have been allowed in.”

  “You seem to have thought of everything, Doctor,” said Dalgliesh. He got up from his knees and stood looking down at the body.

  “Who found her?” he asked.

  “One of our medical secretaries, Jennifer Priddy. Cully, the senior porter, has been complaining of stomach ache most of the day and Miss Priddy went to find Miss Bolam to ask if he could go home early. Miss Priddy is very upset but she was able to tell me …”

  “I think it would be better if I heard it from her direct. Was this door kept locked?”

  His tone was perfectly courteous but he felt their surprise. The medical director’s tone did not change as he replied: “Usually it is. The key is kept on a board with other clinic keys in the porters’ duty room here in the basement. The chisel was kept there, too.”

  “And this fetish?”

  “Taken from the basement art-therapy room across the passage. It was carved by one of our patients.”

  It was still the medical director who replied. So far Dr. Baguley hadn�
�t spoken a word. Suddenly he said: “She was knocked out with the fetish and then stabbed through the heart by someone who was either knowledgeable or damned lucky. That much is obvious. What isn’t obvious is why they had this free-for-all with the medical records. She’s lying on them so it must have happened before the murder.”

  “The result of a struggle, perhaps,” suggested Dr. Etherege.

  “It doesn’t look like it. They were pulled out of the shelves and deliberately chucked about. There must have been a reason. There wasn’t anything impulsive about this murder.”

  It was then that Peter Nagle, who had apparently been standing outside the door, came into the room.

  “There’s been a ring at the door, sir. Would that be the rest of the police?”

  Dalgliesh noted that the record room was almost soundproof. The front-door bell was strident but he had not heard it.

  “Right,” he said. “We’ll go up.” As they moved together towards the stairs, Dr. Etherege said: “I wonder, Superintendent, if you could see the patients fairly soon. We have only two still with us, a male psychotherapy patient of my colleague Dr. Steiner, and a woman who has been receiving lysergic-acid treatment down here in the basement front treatment room. Dr. Baguley will be able to explain the treatment to you—she is his patient—but you can be assured that she wasn’t capable of leaving her bed until a few minutes ago and certainly wouldn’t know anything about the murder. These patients become quite disorientated during treatment. Nurse Bolam was with her all the evening.”

  “Nurse Bolam? She is a relation of the dead woman?”

  “Her cousin,” said Dr. Baguley briefly.

  “And your disorientated patient, Doctor. Would she know if Nurse Bolam left her alone during treatment?”

  Dr. Baguley said curtly: “Nurse Bolam would not have left her.” They mounted the stairs together to meet the murmur of voices in the hall.

  That ring at the door brought into the Steen Clinic the paraphernalia and skills of an alien world. Quietly and without fuss the experts in violent death got busy. Dalgliesh disappeared into the record room with the police surgeon and photographer. The print man, small and plump-cheeked as a hamster, with tiny delicate hands, gave his attention to door handles, locks, the tool case and Tippett’s fetish. Plain clothes men, looking disconcertingly like television actors playing plain-clothes men, made their methodical search of every room and cupboard in the clinic, verifying that there was indeed no unauthorized person on the premises and that the back doors both of the ground floor and the basement were securely locked from the inside. The clinic staff, excluded from these activities and congregated in the front ground-floor consulting room, which had been hastily furnished with additional easy chairs from the patients’ waiting room, felt that their familiar ground had been taken over by strangers and that they were caught up in the inexorable machinery of justice and being ground forward to God knew what embarrassments and disasters. Only the group secretary appeared unperturbed. He had stationed himself in the hall like a watchdog and sat there patient and alone until his turn came to be interviewed.

  Dalgliesh took Miss Bolam’s office for his use. It was a small room on the ground floor situated between the large general office at the front of the building and the ECT treatment room and recovery room at the rear. Opposite it was a suite of two consulting rooms and the patients’ waiting room. The office had been formed by partitioning the end of a larger room so that it was oddly proportioned and unattractively narrow for its height. It was sparsely furnished and lacked all evidence of personal taste except for a large bowl of chrysanthemums set on one of the filing cabinets. There was an old-fashioned safe against one wall and the other was lined with green metal filing cabinets. The desk was unostentatious and held nothing but a stationery office desk calendar, a jotting pad and a small stack of manilla folders. Dalgliesh looked through them and said, “This is odd. These are staff dossiers apparently, but only of the female staff. Her own isn’t here, incidentally. I wonder why she got these out?”

  “Checking on people’s annual leave entitlement or something like that, perhaps,” suggested Sergeant Martin.

  “Could be, I suppose. But why only the women? Oh well, it’s hardly of immediate importance. Let’s have a look at that jotter.”

  Miss Bolam was apparently one of those administrators who prefer not to trust to memory. The top leaf of the jotter, headed with the date, was well filled with notes in a sloping, rather childish handwriting.

  Medical Committee-speak MD re proposed Adolescent Dept.

  Speak Nagle-broken sash cord Miss Kallinski’s room. Mrs. Shorthouse-? leave.

  These notes were at least self-explanatory but the jottings below them—written it appeared in some hurry—were less explicit.

  Woman. Here eight years. To arrive 1st Monday.

  Dalgliesh said: “These look like the jottings of a telephone call. It could have been a private call, of course, and nothing to do with the clinic. It could have been a doctor trying to trace a patient, or vice versa. Something, or someone, is apparently expected to arrive on the first Monday or on Monday the first. There are a dozen possible interpretations and none of them relevant to the murder. Still, someone phoned recently about a woman and Miss Bolam was obviously examining the dossiers of every woman on the staff except herself. Why? To check which of them were here eight years ago? It’s all pretty farfetched. We’ll leave the pleasures of conjecture for the moment and get down to seeing these people. I’d like that typist in first, the girl who found the body. Etherege said she was upset. Let’s hope she’s calmed down by now or we’ll be here half the night.”

  But Jennifer Priddy was perfectly calm. She had obviously been drinking and her grief was overlaid with a barely suppressed excitement. Her face, still swollen from crying, was blotched with high colour and her eyes were unnaturally bright. But the drink had not fuddled her and she told her story well. She had been busy in the ground-floor general office for most of the evening and had last seen Miss Bolam at about five-forty-five when she had gone into the AO’s office with a query about a patient’s appointment. Miss Bolam had seemed the same as usual to her. She had returned to the general office and had been joined by Peter Nagle at about six-ten. He was wearing his coat and had come to collect the outgoing post. Miss Priddy had registered the last few letters in the post book and handed them to him. At about quarter or twenty past six, Mrs. Shorthouse had joined them. Mrs. Shorthouse had mentioned that she had just come from Miss Bolam’s office where she had been settling a query about her annual leave entitlement. Peter Nagle had gone out with the post and she and Mrs. Shorthouse had stayed together until his return some ten minutes later. Nagle had then gone down to the basement porters’ room to hang up his coat and feed Tigger, the office cat, and she had followed him down almost immediately. She had helped him feed Tigger and they had returned to the general office together. At about seven the senior porter, Cully, complained again about his stomach ache which had been troubling him all day. Miss Priddy, Mrs. Bostock, the other medical secretary, and Peter Nagle had all had to take Cully’s place at the switchboard from time to time because of his stomach ache, but he had refused to go home. Now he was willing to go and Miss Priddy had gone to the AO’s office to ask Miss Bolam if he could leave early. Miss Bolam wasn’t in her office so she had looked in the nurses’ duty room on the ground floor. Sister Ambrose told her that she had seen the AO passing down the hall towards the basement stairs about thirty minutes or so earlier, so Miss Priddy had looked in the basement. The record room was usually kept locked but the key was in the lock and the door just ajar, so she had looked inside. The light was on. She had found the body—here Miss Priddy’s voice faltered—and had rushed upstairs at once to get help. No, she hadn’t touched anything. She didn’t know why the medical records were strewn around. She didn’t know how she had known that Miss Bolam was ead. It was just that Miss Bolam had looked so very dead. She didn’t know why she had been so sure it wa
s murder. She thought she had seen a bruise on Miss Bolam’s head. And then there had been Tippett’s fetish lying on the body. She was afraid that Tippett was hiding among the record racks and would jump out at her. Everyone said that he wasn’t dangerous—at least everyone except Dr. Steiner—but he had been in a mental hospital and, after all, you couldn’t be really sure, could you? No, she hadn’t known that Tippett wasn’t in the clinic. Peter Nagle had taken the call from the hospital and had told Miss Bolam but he hadn’t told her. She hadn’t seen the chisel in Miss Bolam’s chest but Dr. Etherege had told the staff about the stabbing when they were gathered together in the front consulting room waiting for the police. She thought that most of the staff knew where Peter Nagle kept his tools and also which key opened the door of the basement record room. It hung on hook number 12 and was shinier than the other keys but it wasn’t labelled.

  Dalgliesh said: “I want you to think very hard and very carefully. When you went downstairs to help Mr. Nagle feed the cat, was the record-room door ajar and the light on as it was when you went down later and found Miss Bolam?”

  The girl pushed back her dank blonde hair and said with sudden weariness: “I … I can’t remember. I didn’t go past that door, you see. I went straight into the porters’ room at the bottom of the stairs. Peter was there clearing up Tigger’s plate. He hadn’t eaten all of his last meal so we scraped it off his plate and washed it at the sink. We didn’t go near the record room.”