A Mind to Murder (22 page)

The church was nearly empty, but it held for him an atmosphere of intense and silent activity which he sensed but could not share. As he walked to the door he recognized a woman, red-coated and with a dark green scarf over her head, who was pausing to dip her fingers in the water stoup. It was Fredrica Saxon, senior psychologist of the Steen Clinic. They reached the outer door together and he forced it open for her against the sudden swirl of an autumn wind. She smiled at him, friendly and unembarrassed.

“Hullo. I haven’t seen you here before.”

“I only come once a year,” Dalgliesh replied. He gave no explanation and she asked no questions. Instead she said:

“I wanted to see you. There’s something I think you ought to know. Are you off duty? If you aren’t could you be unorthodox and talk to a suspect in a coffee bar? I’d rather not come to your office and it isn’t easy to ask for an interview at the clinic. I need some coffee anyway. I’m cold.”

“There used to be a place round the corner,” said Dalgliesh. “The coffee is tolerable and it’s pretty quiet.”

The coffee bar had changed, in a year. Dalgliesh remembered it as a clean but dull café with a row of deal tables covered with plastic cloths and a long service counter embellished with a tea urn and layers of substantial sandwiches under glass domes. It had risen in the world. The walls had been panelled with imitation old oak against which hung a formidable assortment of rapiers, ancient pistols and cutlasses of uncertain authenticity. The waitresses looked like
avant-garde
débutantes earning their pin money and the lighting was so discreet as to be positively sinister. She led the way to a table in the far corner.

“Just coffee?” asked Dalgliesh.

“Just coffee, please.”

She waited until the order had been given and then said:

“It’s about Dr. Baguley.”

“I thought it might be.”

“You were bound to hear something, I suppose. I’d rather tell you about it now than wait to be asked and I’d rather you heard it from me than from Amy Shorthouse.”

She spoke without rancour or embarrassment. Dalgliesh replied:

“I haven’t asked about it because it doesn’t seem relevant, but if you like to tell me it may be helpful.”

“I don’t want you to get a wrong idea about it, that’s all. It would be so easy for you to imagine that we had a grudge against Miss Bolam. We didn’t, you know. At one time we even felt grateful to her.”

Dalgliesh had no need to ask who she meant by that “we”.

The waitress, uninterested, came with their coffee, pale foam served in small transparent cups. Miss Saxon slipped her coat from her shoulders and unknotted her head scarf. Both of them wrapped their fingers round the hot cups. She heaped the sugar into her coffee then pushed the plastic bowl across the table to Dalgliesh. There was no tension about her, no awkwardness. She had the directness of a schoolchild drinking coffee with a friend. He found her curiously peaceful to be with, perhaps because he did not find her physically attractive. But he liked her. It was difficult to believe that this was only their second meeting and that the matter that had brought them together was murder. She skimmed the froth from her coffee and said, without looking up:

“James Baguley and I fell in love nearly three years ago. There wasn’t any great moral struggle about it. We didn’t invite love but we certainly didn’t fight against it. After all, you don’t voluntarily give up happiness unless you’re a masochist or a saint, and we aren’t either. I knew that James had a neurotic wife in the way one does get to know these things, but he didn’t talk much about her. We both accepted that she needed him and that a divorce was out of the question. We convinced ourselves that we weren’t doing her any harm and that she need never know. James used to say that loving me made his marriage happier for both of them. Of course, it is easier to be kind and patient when one is happy, so he may have been right. I don’t know. It’s a rationalization that thousands of lovers must use.

“We couldn’t see each other very often, but I had my flat and we usually managed to have two evenings a week together. Once Helen—that’s his wife—went to stay with her sister and we had a whole night together. We had to be careful at the clinic, of course, but we don’t really see very much of each other there.”

“How did Miss Bolam find out about it?” asked Dalgliesh.

“It was silly, really. We were at the theatre seeing Anouilh and she was sitting alone in the row behind. Who would suppose that Bolam would want to see Anouilh, anyway? I suppose she was sent a free ticket. It was our second anniversary and we held hands all through the play. We may have been a little drunk. Afterwards we left the theatre still hand in hand. Anyone from the clinic, anyone we knew, could have seen us. We were getting careless and someone was bound to see us sooner or later. It was just chance that it happened to be Bolam. Other people would probably have minded their own business.”

“Whereas she told Mrs. Baguley? That seems an unusually officious and cruel thing to have done.”

“It wasn’t, really. Bolam wouldn’t see it that way. She was one of those rare and fortunate people who never for one moment doubt that they know the difference between right and wrong. She wasn’t imaginative so she couldn’t enter into other people’s feelings. If she were a wife whose husband was unfaithful I’m sure that she would want to be told about it. Nothing would be worse than not knowing. She had the kind of strength that relishes a struggle. I expect she thought it was her duty to tell. Anyway, Helen came to the Steen to see her husband unexpectedly one Wednesday afternoon and Miss Bolam invited her into the A.O.’s office and told her. I often wonder what exactly she said. I imagine that she said we were ‘carrying on’. She could make practically anything sound vulgar.”

“She was taking a risk, wasn’t she?” said Dalgliesh. “She had very little evidence, certainly no proof.”

Miss Saxon laughed.

“You’re talking like a policeman. She had proof enough. Even Bolam could recognize love when she saw it. Besides, we were enjoying ourselves together without a licence and that was infidelity enough.”

The words were bitter but she did not sound resentful or sarcastic. She was sipping her coffee with evident satisfaction. Dalgliesh thought that she might have been talking about one of the clinic patients, discussing with detached and mild professional interest the vagaries of human nature. Yet he did not believe that she loved easily or that her emotions were superficial. He asked what Mrs. Baguley’s reaction had been.

“That’s the extraordinary thing, or at least it seemed so at the time. She took it wonderfully well. Looking back I wonder whether we weren’t all three mad, living in some kind of imaginary world that two minutes’ rational thought would have shown us couldn’t exist. Helen lives her life in a series of attitudes and the one she decided to adopt was the pose of the brave, understanding wife. She insisted on a divorce. It was going to be one of those friendly divorces. That kind is only possible, I imagine, when people have ceased to care for each other, perhaps never have cared or been capable of caring. But that was the kind we were going to have. There was a great deal of discussion. Everyone’s happiness was to be safeguarded. Helen was going to open a dress shop—it’s a thing she’s talked about for years. We all three got interested in it and looked for suitable premises. It was pathetic really. We actually fooled ourselves that it was all going to come right. That’s why I said that James and I felt grateful to Enid Bolam. People at the clinic got to know that there was to be a divorce and that Helen would name me—it was all part of the policy of frankness and honesty—but very little was said to us. Bolam never mentioned the divorce to anyone. She wasn’t a gossip and she wasn’t malicious, either. Somehow her part in it got about in the way these things do. I think Helen may have told someone, but Miss Bolam and I never talked about it ever.

“Then the inevitable happened. Helen began to crack. James had left her with the Surrey house and was living with me in the flat. He had to see her fairly often. He didn’t say very much at first, but I knew what was happening. She was ill, of course, and we both knew it. She had played out the role of the patient, uncomplaining wife and, according to the novels and the films, her husband should, by now, have been returning to her. And James wasn’t. He kept most of it from me, but I had some idea what it was doing to him, the scenes, the tears, the entreaties, the threats of suicide. One minute she was going through with the divorce, the next she would never give him his freedom. She couldn’t, of course. I see that now. It wasn’t hers to give. It’s degrading to talk about a husband as if he’s a dog chained up in the back yard. All the time that this was happening I was realizing more and more that I couldn’t go on. Something that had been a slow process over years came to a head. There’s no point in talking about it or trying to explain. It isn’t relevant to your inquiry, is it? Nine months ago I started to receive instruction with the hope of being received into the Catholic Church. When that happened Helen withdrew her petition and James went back to her. I think he no longer cared what happened to him or where he went. But you can see, can’t you, that he had no reason to hate Bolam. I was the enemy.”

Dalgliesh thought that there could have been very little struggle. Her rosy, healthy face with the broad and slightly tip-tilted nose, the wide cheerful mouth, was ill-suited to tragedy. He recalled how Dr. Baguley had looked, seen in the light of Miss Bolam’s desk lamp. It was stupid and presumptuous to try to assess suffering by the lines on a face or the look in the eyes. Miss Saxon’s mind was probably as tough and resilient as her body. It did not mean that she felt less because she could withstand more. But he felt profoundly sorry for Baguley, rejected by his mistress at the moment of greatest trial in favour of a private happiness which he could neither share nor understand. Probably no one could fully know the magnitude of that betrayal. Dalgliesh did not pretend to understand Miss Saxon. It wasn’t hard to imagine what some people at the clinic would make of it. The facile explanations came easily to mind. But he could not believe that Fredrica Saxon had taken refuge in religion from her own sexuality or had ever refused to face reality.

He thought of some of the things she had said about Enid Bolam.

“Who would suppose that Bolam would want to see Anouilh. I suppose she was sent a free ticket… Even Bolam could recognize love when she saw it… She could make practically anything sound vulgar.” People did not automatically become kind because they had become religious. Yet there had been no real malice in her words. She spoke what she thought and would be equally detached about her own motives. She was probably the best judge of character in the clinic. Suddenly, and in defiance of orthodoxy, Dalgliesh asked:

“Who do you think killed her, Miss Saxon?”

“Judging by character and the nature of the crime and taking no account of mysterious telephone calls from the basement, creaking lifts, and apparent alibis?”

“Judging by character and the nature of the crime.”

She said without hesitation and with no apparent reluctance:

“I’d have said it was Peter Nagle.”

Dalgliesh felt a stab of disappointment. It was irrational to have thought that she might actually know.

“Why Nagle?” he asked.

“Partly because I think this was a masculine crime. The stabbing is significant. I can’t see a woman killing in just that way. Faced with an unconscious victim I think a woman would strangle. Then there’s the chisel. To use it with such expertise suggests an identification of the weapon with the killer. Why use it otherwise? He could have struck her again and again with the fetish.”

“Messy, noisy and less sure,” said Dalgliesh.

“But the chisel was only sure in the hands of a man who had confidence in his ability to use it, someone who is literally ‘good with his hands’. I can’t see Dr. Steiner killing in that way, for instance. He couldn’t even knock in a nail without breaking the hammer.”

Dalgliesh was inclined to agree that Dr. Steiner was innocent. His clumsiness with tools had been mentioned by more than one member of the clinic staff. Admittedly he had lied in denying that he knew where the chisel was kept, but Dalgliesh judged that he had acted from fear rather than guilt. And his shame-faced confession of falling asleep while awaiting Mr. Burge had the ring of truth.

Dalgliesh said:

“The identification of the chisel with Nagle is so certain that I think we were meant to suspect him. And you do?”

“Oh, no! I know he couldn’t have done it. I only answered the question as you posed it. I was judging by character and the nature of the crime.”

They had finished their coffee now and Dalgliesh thought that she would want to go. But she seemed in no hurry. After a moment’s pause, she said:

“I have one confession to make; on another person’s behalf actually. It’s Cully. Nothing important but something you ought to know and I promised I’d tell you about it. Poor old Cully is scared out of his wits and they aren’t plentiful at the best of times.”

“I knew he was lying about something,” said Dalgliesh. “He saw someone passing down the hall, I suppose.”

“Oh, no! Nothing as useful as that. It’s about the missing rubber apron from the art therapy department. I gather you thought that the murderer might have worn it. Well, Cully borrowed it from the department last Monday to wear while he emulsion-painted his kitchen. You know what a mess paint makes. He didn’t ask Miss Bolam if he could take it because he knew what the answer would be and he couldn’t ask Mrs. Baumgarden because she’s away sick. He meant to bring it back on Friday but when Sister was checking the inventory with your sergeant and they asked him if he’d seen it he lost his head and said ‘no’. He’s not very bright and he was terrified that you’d suspect him of the murder if he owned up.”

Dalgliesh asked her when Cully had told her of this.

“I knew he had the apron because it just happened that I saw him take it. I guessed that he’d be in a state about it so I went round to see him yesterday morning. His stomach gets upset when he worries and I thought someone had better keep an eye on him.”