A Mind to Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

today—we’ve just started our central heating—so that the body would cool very slowly. I didn’t try for rigor. I am, of course, little more than a layman in such matters. Subsequently I knew that she must have died within the hour. Naturally we have been talking among ourselves while waiting for you and it appears that Sister Ambrose was the last person to see Miss Bolam alive.That was at twenty past six. Cully, our senior porter, tells me that Miss Bolam rang him on the internal phone at about six-fifteen to say that she was going down to the basement and that Mr. Lauder should be directed to her office if he arrived. A few minutes later, as far as she can judge, Sister came out of the ECT room on the ground floor and crossed the hall to the patients’ waiting room to let a husband know that his wife was ready to be taken home. Sister saw Miss Bolam going down the hall towards the basement stairs. No one saw her alive again after that.”
    “Except her murderer,” said Dalgliesh. Dr. Etherege looked surprised.
    “Yes, that would be so, of course. I mean that none of us saw her alive again. I have asked Sister Ambrose about the time and Sister is quite sure …”
    “I shall be seeing Sister Ambrose and the other porter.”
    “Of course. Naturally you will want to see everybody. We expect that. While waiting we telephoned our homes to say that we would be delayed tonight but gave no explanation. We had already searched the building and ascertained that the basement door and the ground-floor rear entrance were both bolted. Nothing has been touched in here naturally. I arranged for the staff to stay together in the front consulting room except for Sister and Nurse Bolam who were with the remaining patients in the waiting room. No one but Mr. Lauder and you have been allowed in.”
    “You seem to have thought of everything, Doctor,” said Dalgliesh. He got up from his knees and stood looking down at the body.
    “Who found her?” he asked.
    “One of our medical secretaries, Jennifer Priddy. Cully, the senior porter, has been complaining of stomach ache most ofthe day and Miss Priddy went to find Miss Bolam to ask if he could go home early. Miss Priddy is very upset but she was able to tell me …”
    “I think it would be better if I heard it from her direct. Was this door kept locked?”
    His tone was perfectly courteous but he felt their surprise. The medical director’s tone did not change as he replied: “Usually it is. The key is kept on a board with other clinic keys in the porters’ duty room here in the basement. The chisel was kept there, too.”
    “And this fetish?”
    “Taken from the basement art-therapy room across the passage. It was carved by one of our patients.”
    It was still the medical director who replied. So far Dr. Baguley hadn’t spoken a word. Suddenly he said: “She was knocked out with the fetish and then stabbed through the heart by someone who was either knowledgeable or damned lucky. That much is obvious. What isn’t obvious is why they had this free-for-all with the medical records. She’s lying on them so it must have happened before the murder.”
    “The result of a struggle, perhaps,” suggested Dr. Etherege.
    “It doesn’t look like it. They were pulled out of the shelves and deliberately chucked about. There must have been a reason. There wasn’t anything impulsive about this murder.”
    It was then that Peter Nagle, who had apparently been standing outside the door, came into the room.
    “There’s been a ring at the door, sir. Would that be the rest of the police?”
    Dalgliesh noted that the record room was almost soundproof. The front-door bell was strident but he had not heard it.
    “Right,” he said. “We’ll go up.” As they moved together towards the stairs, Dr. Etherege said: “I wonder, Superintendent,if you could see the patients fairly soon. We have only two still with us, a male psychotherapy patient of my colleague Dr. Steiner, and a woman