A Mind to Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

Monday.
    Dalgliesh said: “These look like the jottings of a telephone call. It could have been a private call, of course, and nothing to do with the clinic. It could have been a doctor trying to trace a patient, or vice versa. Something, or someone, is apparently expected to arrive on the first Monday or on Monday the first. There are a dozen possible interpretations and none of them relevant to the murder. Still, someone phoned recently about a woman and Miss Bolam was obviously examining the dossiers of every woman on the staff except herself. Why? To check which of them were here eight years ago? It’s all pretty far-fetched. We’ll leave the pleasures of conjecture for the moment and get down to seeing these people. I’d like that typist in first. The girl who found the body. Etherege said she was upset. Let’s hope she’s calmed down by now or we’ll be here half the night.”
    But Jennifer Priddy was perfectly calm. She had obviously been drinking and her grief was overlaid with a barely suppressed excitement. Her face, still swollen from crying, was blotched with high colour and her eyes were unnaturally bright. But the drink had not fuddled her and she told her story well. She had been busy in the ground-floor general office for most of the evening and had last seen Miss Bolam at about five-forty-five when she had gone into the A.O’s office with a query about a patient’s appointment. Miss Bolam had seemed the same as usual to her. She had returned to the general office and had been joined by Peter Nagle at about six-ten. He was wearing his coat and had come to collect the outgoing post. Miss Priddy had registered the last few letters in the post book and handed them to him. At about quarter- or twenty-past six Mrs. Shorthouse had joined them. Mrs. Shorthouse had mentioned that she had just come from Miss Bolam’s office where she had been settling a query about her annual leave entitlement. Peter Nagle had gone out with the post and she and Mrs. Shorthouse had stayed together until his return some ten minutes later. Nagle had then gone down to the basement porters’ room to hang up his coat and feed Tigger, the office cat, and she had followed him down almost immediately. She had helped him feed Tigger and they had returned to the general office together. At about seven the senior porter, Cully, complained again about his stomach-ache which had been troubling him all day. Miss Priddy, Mrs. Bostock, the other medical secretary, and Peter Nagle had all had to take Cully’s place at the switchboard from time to time because of his stomachache, but he had refused to go home. Now he was willing to go and Miss Priddy had gone to the A.O’s office to ask Miss Bolam if he could leave early. Miss Bolam wasn’t in her office so she had looked in the nurses’ duty-room on the ground floor. Sister Ambrose told her that she had seen the A.O. passing down the hall towards the basement stairs about thirty minutes or so earlier, so Miss Priddy had looked in the basement. The record-room was usually kept locked but the key was in the lock and the door just ajar, so she had looked inside. The light was on. She had found the body—here Miss Priddy’s voice faltered—and had rushed upstairs at once to get help. No, she hadn’t touched anything. She didn’t know why the medical records were strewn around. She didn’t know how she had known that Miss Bolam was dead. It was just that Miss Bolam had looked so very dead. She didn’t know why she had been so sure it was murder. She thought she had seen a bruise on Miss Bolam’s head. And, then, there had been Tippett’s fetish laying on the body. She was afraid that Tippett was hiding among the record racks and would jump out at her. Everyone said that he wasn’t dangerous—at least everyone except Dr. Steiner—but he had been in a mental hospital and, after all, you couldn’t be really sure, could you? No, she hadn’t known that Tippett wasn’t in the clinic.