“No,” said Dr. Baguley curtly. The description had been unexpectedly vivid. To change the image he said: “It would be interesting to know who was last in the medical-record room. Before the murder, I mean. I can’t remember when I last used the place.”
“Oh, can’t you! How strange! It’s such a dusty, claustrophobic room that I can always remember when I have to go down there. I was there at a quarter to six this evening.”
Dr. Baguley nearly stopped the car in his surprise. “At five-forty-five this evening? But that was only thirty-five minutes before the time of death!”
“Yes, it must have been, mustn’t it, if she died at about six-twenty? The superintendent didn’t tell me that. But he was interested to hear that I’d been in the basement. I fetched one of the old Worriker records. It must have been about five-forty-five when I went down and I didn’t stay; I knew just where the record was.”
“And the room was as usual? The records weren’t chucked on the floor?”
“Oh, no, everything was perfectly tidy. The room was locked, of course, so I got the key from the porters’ restroom and locked the room again when I’d finished. I put the key back on the board.”
“And you didn’t see anyone?”
“No, I don’t think so. I could hear your LSD patient, though. She seemed very noisy, I thought. Almost as if she were alone.”
“She wasn’t alone. She never is. As a matter of fact I was with her myself up to about five-forty. If you’d been a few minutes earlier, we should have seen each other.”
“Only if we’d happened to pass on the basement stairs or if you’d come into the record room. But I don’t think I saw anyone. The superintendent kept asking me. I wonder if he’s a capable man. He seemed very puzzled by the whole thing, I thought.”
They did not speak again about the murder although, to Dr. Baguley, the air of the car was heavy with unspoken questions. Twenty minutes later he drew up outside Miss Kettle’s flat off Richmond Green and leaned over to open the car door for her with a sense of relief. As soon as she had disappeared from view, he got out of the car and, in defiance of the chilly dampness, opened the roof. The next few miles fled in a gold thread of winking cat’s eyes marking the crown of the road, a rush of cold autumnal air. Outside Stalling he turned from the main road to where the dark, uninviting little pub was set well back among its surrounding elms. The bright boys of Stalling Coombe had never discovered it or had rejected it in favour of the smart pubs edging the green belt; their Jaguars were never seen parked against its black brick walls. The saloon bar was empty as usual but there was a murmur of voices across the wooden partition which separated it from the public bar. He took his seat by the fire which burned summer and winter, evidently stocked with malodorous chunks of the publican’s old furniture. It was not a welcoming room. The chimney smoked in an east wind, the stone floor was bare and the wooden benches lining the walls were too hard and narrow for comfort. But the beer was cold and good, the glasses clean, and there was a kind of peace about the place bred out of its bareness and the solitude.
George brought over his pint. “You’re late this evening, Doctor.”
George had called him that since his second visit. Dr. Baguley neither knew nor cared how George had discovered what his job was.
“Yes,” he replied. “I was kept late at the clinic.” He said no more and the man went back to his bar. Then he wondered whether he had been wise. It would be in all the papers tomorrow. They would probably be talking about it in the public bar. It would be natural for George to say: “The doctor was in as usual on Friday. He didn’t say anything about the murder … Looked upset, though.”
Was it suspicious to say nothing? Wasn’t it more natural for an innocent man to want to talk about a murder case in which he was involved? Suddenly the little room became unbearably stuffy, the peace dissolved in an uprush of anxiety and pain. He had got to tell Helen somehow and the sooner she knew, the better.
But although he drove fast, it was well after ten before he reached home and saw through the tall beech hedge the light in Helen’s bedroom. So she had gone up without waiting for him; that was always a bad sign. Garaging the car he braced himself for whatever lay ahead. Stalling Coombe was very quiet. It was a small, private estate of architect-designed houses, built in the traditional manner and set each in a spacious garden. It had little contact with the neighbouring village of Stalling and was, indeed, an oasis of prosperous suburbia whose inhabitants, bound by ties of common prejudices and snobberies, lived like exiles determinedly preserving the decencies of civilization in the midst of an alien culture. Baguley had bought his house fifteen years ago, soon after his marriage. He had disliked the place then and the past years had taught him the folly of disregarding first impressions. But Helen had liked it; and Helen had been pregnant then so that there was an additional reason for trying to make her happy. To Helen, the house, spacious mock Tudor, had promised much. There was the huge oak in the front lawn (“just the place for the pram on hot days”), the wide entrance hall (“the children will love it for parties later on”), the quiet of the estate (“so peaceful for you, darling, after London and all those dreadful patients”).
But the pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage and there had never again been the hope of children. Would it have made any difference if there had? Would the house have been any less an expensive repository of lost hopes? Sitting quietly in the car and watching that ominous square of lighted window, Dr. Baguley reflected that all unhappy marriages were fundamentally alike. He and Helen were no different from the Worrikers. They stayed together because they expected to be less miserable together than apart. If the strain and miseries of marriage became greater than the expense, the inconvenience and the trauma of a legal separation, then they would part. No sane person continued to endure the intolerable. For him there had been only one valid and overriding need for a divorce, his hope of marrying Fredrica Saxon. Now that the hope was over forever, he might as well continue to endure a marriage which, for all its strain, at least gave him the comfortable illusion of being needed. He despised his private image, the stock predicament of the psychiatrist unable to manage his own personal relationships. But at least something remained from the marriage; a fugitive surge of tenderness and pity which for most of the time enabled him to be kind.
He locked the garage gates and crossed the wide lawn to the front door. The garden was looking unkempt. It was expensive to maintain and Helen took little interest in it. It would be better in every way if they sold and bought a smaller place. But Helen wouldn’t talk of selling. She was as happy at Stalling Coombe as she could hope to be anywhere. Its narrow and undemanding social life gave her at least a semblance of security. This cocktail-and-canapé existence, the bright chatter of its smart, lean, acquisitive women, the gossip over the iniquities of foreign maids and au pair girls, the lamentations over school fees and school reports and the boorish ingratitude of the young, were preoccupations which she could sympathize with or share. Baguley had long known with pain that it was in her relationship with him that she was least at home.
He wondered how he could best break the news of Miss Bolam’s murder. Helen had only met her once, that Wednesday at the clinic, and he had never learned what they had said to each other. But that brief, catalytic encounter had established some kind of intimacy between them. Or was it perhaps an offensive alliance directed against himself? But not on Bolam’s part, surely? Her attitude to him had never altered. He could even believe that she approved of him more than of most psychiatrists. He had always found her co-operative, helpful and correct. It was without malice, without vindictiveness, without even disliking him particularly, that she had called Helen into her office that Wednesday afternoon and, in half an hour’s conversation, destroyed the greatest happiness he had ever known. It was then that Helen appeared at the top of the stairs.