“I agree,” said Dr. Baguley. “Of the two I personally always preferred Bolam. But this would only be a temporary arrangement presumably. The job will have to be advertised. In the meantime someone’s got to take over and Mrs. Bostock does at least know the work.”
Dr. Etherege said: “Lauder made it plain that the HMC 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 of both 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 noncommittal, 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.