A Mind to Murder (21 page)

Dr. Etherege said:

“Lauder made it plain that the H.M.C. wouldn’t favour putting in an outsider until the police have finished their investigation, even if they could find anyone willing to come. We don’t want any additional upheaval. There will be enough disturbance to cope with. And that brings me to the problem of the press. Lauder suggested, and I have agreed, that all inquiries are referred to group headquarters and that no one here makes any statements. It seems much the best plan. It’s important in the interests of the patients that we don’t have reporters running all over the clinic. Therapy is likely to suffer enough without that. Have I this Committee’s formal confirmation of the decision?”

He had. No one evinced any enthusiasm for coping with the press. Dr. Steiner did not contribute to the general murmur of consent. His thoughts were still with the problem of Miss Bolam’s successor. He said querulously:

“I can’t understand why Dr. Maddox and Dr. Baguley have this animus against Mrs. Bostock. I’ve noticed it before. It’s ridiculous to compare her adversely with Miss Bolam. There’s no doubt which of them is—was—is—the more suitable administrator. Mrs. Bostock is a highly intelligent woman, psychologically stable, efficient and with a real appreciation of the importance of the work we do here. No one could have said as much of Miss Bolam. Her attitude to the patients was sometimes most unfortunate.”

“I didn’t know that she came into contact much with the patients,” said Dr. Baguley. “Anyway, none of mine complained.”

“She made appointments occasionally and paid out travelling expenses. I can quite believe that your patients didn’t remark on her attitude. But mine are a rather different class. They’re also more sensitive to these things. Mr. Burge, for example, mentioned the matter to me.”

Dr. Maddox laughed unkindly.

“Oh, Burge! Is he still coming? I see that his new opus is promised for December. It will be interesting to see, Paul, whether your efforts have improved his prose. If so, it’s probably public money well spent.”

Dr. Steiner burst into pained expostulation. He treated a fair number of writers and artists, some of them protégés of Rosa in search of a little free psychotherapy. Although he was sensitive to the arts his usually keen critical insight failed completely where his patients were concerned. He could not bear to hear them criticized, lived in perpetual hope that their great talents would at last be recognized, and was roused to quick defensive anger on their behalf. Dr. Baguley thought that it was one of Steiner’s more endearing qualities; in many ways he was touchingly naïve. He launched now into a muddled defence both of his patient’s character and his prose style, ending:

“Mr. Burge is a most talented and sensitive man, very distressed by his inability to sustain a satisfactory sexual relationship, particularly with his wives.”

This unfortunate solecism seemed likely to provoke Dr. Maddox to further unkindness. It was certainly, thought Baguley, her night to be pro-eclectic.

Dr. Etherege said mildly:

“Could we forget our professional differences for a moment and concentrate on the matter in hand? Dr. Steiner, have you any objection to accepting Mrs. Bostock as a temporary administrative officer?

Dr. Steiner said grumpily:

“The question is purely academic. If the group secretary wishes her to be appointed she will be appointed. This farce of appearing to consult us is ridiculous. We have no authority either to approve or disapprove. That was made perfectly clear to me by Lauder when I approached him last month about getting Bolam transferred.”

“I didn’t know you had approached him,” said Dr. Etherege.

“I spoke to him after the September meeting of the House Committee. It was merely a tentative suggestion.”

“And was met with a pretty positive brush off, no doubt,” said Baguley. “You would have been wiser to keep your mouth shut.”

“Or to have brought the matter before this Committee,” said Etherege.

“And with what result?” cried Steiner. “What happened last time I complained about Bolam? Nothing! You all admitted that she was an unsuitable person to hold the post of administrative officer. You all agreed—well, most of you agreed—that Bostock—or even an outsider—would be preferable. But when it came to action not one of you was prepared to put your signature to a letter to the Hospital Management Committee. And you know very well why! You were all terrified of that woman. Yes, terrified!”

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 non-committal, 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 on to the fire-escape. That this procedure argued considerable luck, coupled with unusual and remarkable agility, was not over-emphasized. 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 multi-discipline 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 out-patient 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 out-patient 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 glad 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 Dr. 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.”

Chapter Six

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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 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.