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 pounds 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.”