“Going to the lavatory. Washing my hands. Smoking a cigarette. Thinking.”
“And that was absolutely all you did during the twenty-five minutes?”
“Yes—that was all, Superintendent.” Dr. Baguley was a poor liar. The hesitation was only momentary; his face did not change colour; the fingers holding his cigarette were quite steady. But his voice was a little too nonchalant, the disinterest a little too carefully controlled. And it was with a palpable effort that he made himself meet Dalgliesh’s eyes. He was too intelligent to add to his statement but his eyes held those of the detective as if willing Dalgliesh to repeat his question and bracing himself to meet it.
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Dalgliesh calmly. “That will be all for the present.”
3
And so it went on: the patient questioning, the meticulous taking of notes, the close watch of suspects’ eyes and hands for the revealing flicker of fear, the tensed reaction to an unwelcome change of emphasis. Fredrica Saxon followed Dr. Baguley. As they passed each other in the doorway, Dalgliesh saw that they were careful not to meet each other’s eyes. She was a dark, vital, casually dressed woman of twenty-nine who would do no more than give brief but straightforward answers to his questions and who seemed to take a perverse pleasure in pointing out that she had been alone scoring a psychological test in her own room from six until seven and could neither claim an alibi for herself nor give one to anyone else. He got little help or information from Fredrica Saxon but did not, on that account, assume that she had none to give.
She was followed by a very different witness. Miss Ruth Kettle had apparently decided that the murder was none of her affair and, although she was willing to answer Dalgliesh’s questions, it was with a vague lack of interest which suggested that her thoughts were on higher things. There is only a limited number of words to express horror and surprise and the clinic staff had used most of them during the evening. Miss Kettle’s reaction was less orthodox. She gave her opinion that the murder was peculiar … really very odd indeed, and sat blinking at Dalgliesh through her thick spectacles in gentle bewilderment as if she did indeed find it odd, but hardly sufficiently odd to be worth discussing at length. But at least two pieces of information which she was able to give were interesting. Dalgliesh could only hope that they were reliable.
She had been vague about her own movements during the evening, but Dalgliesh’s persistence elicited that she had been interviewing the wife of one of the ECT patients until about twenty to six when Sister had telephoned to say that the patient was ready to be taken home. Miss Kettle had walked downstairs with her client, said “good night” in the hall and had then gone straight down to the record room to fetch a file. She had found the room in perfect order and had locked it after her. Despite her gentle incertitude about most of the evening’s activities she was positive about the time. In any case, thought Dalgliesh, it could probably be verified by Sister Ambrose. The second clue was more nebulous and Miss Kettle mentioned it with apparent indifference to its importance. Some half-hour after returning to her room on the second floor she had heard the unmistakable sound of the service lift thumping to a stop.
Dalgliesh was tired now. Despite the central heating he felt spasms of cold and recognized the familiar malaise that preceded an attack of neuralgia. The right side of his face already felt stiff and heavy and the needling pain was beginning to stab spasmodically behind his eyeball. But his last witness was here.
Mrs. Bostock, the senior medical stenographer, had none of the doctors’ tolerant acceptance of a long wait. She was angry and her anger came into the room with her like a chill wind. She seated herself without speaking, crossed a pair of long and remarkably shapely legs and looked at Dalgliesh with frank dislike in her pale eyes. She had a striking and unusual head. Her long hair, golden as a guinea, was coiled in intricate folds above a pale, arrogant, sharp-nosed face. With her long neck, poised, colourful head and slightly protuberant eyes, she looked like some exotic bird. Dalgliesh had difficulty in concealing his shock when he saw her hands. They were as huge, red and raw-boned as the hands of a butcher, and looked as if they had been incongruously grafted on to the slim wrists by some malignant fate. It was almost a deformity. She made no attempt to conceal them, but her nails were short and she wore no polish. She had a beautiful figure and was well and expensively dressed, an object lesson in the art of minimizing one’s defects and emphasizing one’s advantages. She probably lived her life, thought Dalgliesh, on much the same principle.
She gave details of her movements since six o’clock that evening briefly and with no apparent reluctance. She had last seen Miss Bolam at six o’clock when, as was usual, she had taken in the post for the administrative officer to sign. There were only five letters. Most of the post consisted of medical reports and letters to general practitioners from the psychiatrists and Miss Bolam was not, of course, concerned with these. All the outgoing mail was registered in the post book by either Mrs. Bostock or Miss Priddy and was then taken across the road by Nagle to catch the six-thirty from the pillar-box. Miss Bolam had seemed her usual self at six o’clock. She had signed her own letters and Mrs. Bostock had returned to the general office, handed them with the doctors’ post to Miss Priddy and had then gone upstairs to take dictation from Dr. Etherege for the last hour of the day. It was an understood thing that she helped Dr. Etherege on Friday evenings for one hour with his research project. She and the medical director had been together except for a few short periods. Sister rang at about seven o’clock with the news of Miss Bolam’s death. As she and Dr. Etherege left the consulting room, they met Miss Saxon who was just leaving. She went down to the basement with the medical director. Mrs. Bostock, at Dr. Etherege’s request, had gone to join Cully at the front door to ensure that the instructions were followed about no one leaving the building. She had stayed with Cully until the party from the basement appeared and they had then all collected in the waiting room to await the arrival of the police, except for the two porters who remained on duty in the hall.
“You said that you were with Dr. Etherege from just after six onwards except for short periods. What were you both doing?”
“We were both working, naturally.” Mrs. Bostock managed to suggest that the question had been both stupid and a little vulgar. “Dr. Etherege is writing a paper on the treatment of twin schizophrenic women by psychoanalysis. As I said, it has been agreed that I shall assist him for one hour on Friday evenings. That is quite inadequate for his needs, but Miss Bolam took the view that the work wasn’t strictly a clinic concern and that Dr. Etherege should do it in his own consulting room with the help of his private secretary. Naturally that’s impossible. All the material, including some on tape, is here. My part of the job is varied. For some of the time I take dictation. Sometimes I work in the little office typing directly from the tape. Sometimes I look up references in the staff library.”
“And what did you do this evening?”
“I took dictation for about thirty minutes. Then I went into the adjoining office and worked from the tape. Dr. Etherege rang me to come in at about ten to seven. We were working together when the phone rang.”
“That would mean that you were with Dr. Etherege taking dictation until about six-thirty-five.”
“Presumably.”