Authors: P. D. James
“It was rather an important point to establish, wasn’t it? I hope that my husband will be able to help with it. Well, as I was saying, I decided that the best move was to visit the clinic. I went up to London last Friday morning on an early train. I had to see my chiropodist and there were one or two things Matthew needed in hospital. I decided to shop first. I should have gone direct to the clinic, of course. That was another mistake. It was cowardice, really. I wasn’t looking forward to it and I tried to behave as if it were nothing so very special, just a casual visit I could fit in between the shopping and the chiropodist. In the end I didn’t go at all. I telephoned instead. You see, I told you I wasn’t very intelligent.”
Dalgliesh asked what had led to the change of plan. “It was Oxford Street. I know that sounds silly, but it happened that way. I hadn’t been up to London alone for a very long time and I had forgotten how dreadful it is now. I used to love it when I was a girl. It seemed a gracious city then. Now the skyline has changed and the streets seem full of freaks and foreigners. One shouldn’t resent them, I know—the foreigners, I mean. It’s just that I felt so alien. And then there were the cars. I tried to cross Oxford Street and was stranded among them on one of the islands. Of course, they weren’t killing anyone or knocking anyone down. They couldn’t. They couldn’t even move. But they smelt so horrible that I had to hold my handkerchief to my nose and I felt so faint and ill. When I reached the pavement, I went into one of the stores to find the women’s restroom. It was on the fifth floor and it took me a long time to get to the right lift. The crowds were dreadful and we were all squashed in together. When I got to the restroom, all the chairs were taken. I was standing against the wall wondering whether I could summon enough energy to queue for my lunch when I saw the row of telephone boxes. Suddenly I realized that I could
telephone the clinic and save myself the journey and the ordeal of telling my story face to face. It was stupid of me, I see that now, but at the time it seemed a very good idea. It would be easier to conceal my identity on the telephone and I felt that I should be able to explain more fully. I also gained a great deal of comfort from the thought that if the conversation became too difficult, I could always ring off. You see, I was being very cowardly and my only excuse is that I was very tired, far more tired than I imagined possible. I expect you will say that I ought to have gone straight to the police, to Scotland Yard. But Scotland Yard is a place I associate with detective stories and murders. It hardly seems possible that it actually exists and you can call there and tell your story. Besides, I was still very anxious to avoid publicity. I didn’t think the police would welcome someone who wanted help, but wasn’t prepared to co-operate by telling the whole story or being willing to prosecute. All I wanted, you see, was to stop the blackmailer. It wasn’t very public-spirited of me, was it?”
“It was very understandable,” replied Dalgliesh. “I thought it very possible that Miss Bolam got the warning by telephone. Can you remember what you said to her?”
“Not very clearly. I’m afraid. When I had found the four pennies for the call and looked up the number in the directory, I spent a few minutes deciding what I would say. A man’s voice answered and I asked to speak to the administrative secretary. Then there was a woman’s voice which said, ‘Administrative officer speaking.’ I hadn’t expected to hear a woman and I suddenly got it into my mind that I was speaking to the blackmailer. After all, why not? So I said that someone from the clinic, and probably she, had been blackmailing my husband and that I was telephoning to say that she wouldn’t get another penny from now on and that if we received any more telephone calls,
we should go straight to the police. It all came out in a rush. I was shaking rather badly and had to lean against the wall of the telephone box for support. I must have sounded a little hysterical. When she could get a word in, she asked me whether I was a patient and who was treating me and said something about asking one of the doctors to have a word with me. I suppose she thought I was out of my mind. I replied that I had never attended the clinic and that if ever I needed treatment, which God forbid, I should know better than to go to a place where a patient’s indiscretions and unhappiness were made an opportunity for blackmail. I think I ended up by saying that there was a woman involved, that she must have been at the clinic for nearly ten years and that if the administrative officer wasn’t the person concerned, I hoped that she would make it her duty to discover who was. She tried to get me to leave my name or to come to see her but I rang off.”
“Did you give her any details about how the blackmail was organized?”
“I told her that my husband had sent fifteen pounds a month in an envelope addressed in green ink. That’s when she became suddenly very anxious that I should visit the clinic or at least leave my name. It was rude of me to ring off without ending the conversation but I suddenly became frightened. I don’t know why. And I had said all that I meant to say. One of the chairs in the restroom was vacant by then, so I sat down for half an hour until I felt better. Then I went straight to Charing Cross and had some coffee and sandwiches in the buffet there and waited for my train home. I read about the murder in the paper on Saturday and I’m afraid I took it for granted that one of the other victims—for there must have been others, surely—had taken that way out. I didn’t connect the crime with my telephone call, at least, not at first. Then I began to wonder whether
it might not be my duty to let the police know what had been going on at that dreadful place. Yesterday I talked to my husband about it and we decided to do nothing in a hurry. We thought it might be best to wait and see whether we received any further calls from the blackmailer. I wasn’t very happy about our silence. There haven’t been many details of the murder in the papers, so I don’t know what exactly happened. But I did realize that the blackmail might be in some way connected with the crime and that the police would wish to know about it. While I was still worrying about what to do, Dr. Etherege telephoned. You know the rest. I’m still wondering how you managed to trace me.”
“We found you in the same way as the blackmailer picked out Colonel Fenton, from the clinic diagnostic index and the medical record. You mustn’t think that they don’t look after their confidential papers at the Steen. They do. Dr. Etherege is very distressed indeed about the blackmail. But no system is completely proof against clever and deliberate wickedness.”
“You will find him, won’t you?” she asked. “You will find him?”
“Thanks to you, I think we shall,” Dalgliesh replied.
As he held out his hand to say good-bye, she suddenly asked: “What was she like, Superintendent? I mean the woman who was murdered. Tell me about Miss Bolam.”
Dalgliesh said: “She was forty-one years old. Not married. I never saw her alive but she had light-brown hair and blue-grey eyes. She was rather stout, wide browed, thin mouthed. She was an only child and both her parents were dead. She lived rather a lonely life but her church meant a great deal to her and she was a Guide captain. She liked children and flowers. She was conscientious and efficient but not very good at understanding people. She was kind when they were in trouble but they thought her rigid, humourless and censorious. I think they were probably right. She had a great sense of duty.”
“I am responsible for her death. I have to accept that.”
Dalgliesh said gently: “That’s nonsense, you know. Only one person is responsible and, thanks to you, we shall get him.”
She shook her head. “If I had come to you in the first place or even had the courage to turn up at the clinic instead of telephoning, she would be alive today.”
Dalgliesh thought that Louise Fenton deserved better than to be pacified with easy lies. And they would have brought no comfort. Instead he replied: “I suppose that could be true. There are so many ‘ifs.’ She would be alive today if her group secretary had cancelled a meeting and hurried to the clinic, if she herself had gone at once to see him, if an old porter hadn’t had stomach ache. You did what you thought right and no one can do more.”
“So did she, poor woman,” replied Mrs. Fenton. “And look where it led her.”
She patted Dalgliesh briefly on the shoulder, as if it were he who needed the comfort and reassurance.
“I didn’t mean to bore you. Please forgive me. You’ve been very patient and kind. Might I ask one more question? You said that, thanks to me, you would get this murderer. Do you know now who it is?”
“Yes,” said Dalgliesh. “I think I now know who it is.”
Back in his office at the Yard just over two hours later, Dalgliesh talked over the case with Sergeant Martin. The file lay open on the desk before him.
“You got corroboration of Mrs. Fenton’s story all right, sir?”
“Oh, yes. The colonel was quite forthcoming. Now that he’s recovered from the twin ordeals of his operation and the confession to his wife, he’s inclined to take both experiences rather lightly. He even suggested that the request for money could have been genuine and that it was reasonable to assume that it was. I had to point out that a woman has been murdered before he faced the realities of the situation. Then he gave me the full story. It agreed with what Mrs. Fenton had told me except for one interesting addition. I give you three guesses.”
“Would it be about the burglary? It was Fenton, I suppose?”
“Damn you, Martin, you might make an effort sometimes to look surprised. Yes, it was our colonel. But he didn’t take the fifteen pounds. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. The money was his, after all. He admits himself that he would have taken it back if he’d seen it, but, of course, he didn’t. He was there for
quite another purpose, to get hold of that medical record. He was a bit out of his depth in most things but he did realize that the medical record was the only real evidence of what happened when he was a patient at the Steen. He mucked up his burglary attempt, of course, despite having practised glass-cutting in his greenhouse, and made an undignified exit when he heard Nagle and Cully arriving. He got nowhere near the record he wanted. He assumed it was in one of the files in the general office and managed to prise those open. When he saw that the records were filed numerically, he knew he couldn’t succeed. He had long forgotten his clinic number. I expect he put it firmly out of his mind when he felt he was cured.”
“Well, the clinic did that for him, anyway.”
“He doesn’t admit it, I can tell you. I believe that’s not uncommon with psychiatric patients. It must be rather disheartening for psychiatrists. After all, you don’t get surgical patients claiming that they could have performed their own operation given half a chance. No, the colonel isn’t feeling particularly grateful to the Steen nor inclined to give the clinic much credit for keeping him out of trouble. I suppose he could be right. I don’t imagine that Dr. Etherege would claim that you can do a great deal for a psychiatric patient in four months which was the length of time Fenton attended. His cure—if you can call it that—probably had something to do with leaving the army. It’s difficult to judge whether he welcomed that or dreaded it. Anyway, we’d better resist the temptation to be amateur psychologists.”
“What sort of man is the colonel, sir?”
“Small. Probably looks smaller because of his illness. Sandy hair; bushy eyebrows. Rather like a small, fierce animal glaring out from its hole. A much weaker personality than his wife, I’d say, despite Mrs. Fenton’s apparent frailty. Admittedly
it’s difficult to be at one’s best lying in a hospital bed wearing a striped bed jacket and with a formidable Sister warning one to be a good boy and not talk too long. He wasn’t very helpful about the telephone voice. He says that it sounded like a woman and it never occurred to him that it mightn’t be. On the other hand he wasn’t surprised when I suggested that the voice could have been disguised. But he’s honest and, obviously, he can’t go further than that. He just doesn’t know. Still, we’ve got the motive. This is one of those rare cases in which knowing why is knowing who.”
“Are you applying for a warrant?”
“Not yet. We’re not ready. If we don’t go carefully now, the whole case could come apart in our hands.”
Again he was visited by the chilling presentiment of disaster. He found himself analysing the case as if he had already failed. Where had it gone wrong? He had shown his hand to the murderer when he had taken the clinic diagnostic index so openly into the medical director’s room. That fact would be round the clinic quickly enough. He had meant it to be. There came a time when it was useful to frighten your man. But was this killer the kind who could be frightened into betraying himself? Had it been an error of judgement to move so openly?
Suddenly Martin’s plain, honest face looked irritatingly bovine as he stood there unhelpfully waiting for instructions. Dalgliesh said: “You went to the Priddys’ place, I suppose. Well, let’s have the dirt about that. The girl is married, I suppose?”
“There’s no doubt about that, sir. I was there earlier this evening and I had a chat with the parents. Luckily Miss Priddy was out, fetching fish and chips for supper. They’re in quite poor circumstances.”
“That’s a non sequitur. However, go on.”
“There isn’t much to report. They live in one of those terrace houses leading down to the southern railway line in Balham. Everything’s very comfortable and neat but there’s no television or anything like that. I suppose their religion’s against it. Both the Priddys are over sixty, I reckon. Jennifer’s the only child and her mother must have been more than forty when she was born. It’s the usual story about the marriage. I was surprised they told me but they did. The husband’s a warehouseman; used to work with the girl at her last job. Then there was a baby on the way so they had to get married.”
“It’s almost pitiably common. You’d think that her generation, who think they know all the answers about sex, would make themselves familiar with a few basic facts. However, we’re told these little mishaps don’t worry anyone these days.”