Sister Ambrose said with brusque authority: “There’s nothing wrong, Nurse. Get back to your patient.” The white figure disappeared and the door was shut. Turning to Mrs. Shorthouse, Sister Ambrose went on: “And there’s nothing for you to do here, Mrs. Shorthouse. Please stay upstairs. Miss Priddy might like a cup of tea.”
Mrs. Shorthouse was heard to mutter rebelliously but beat a reluctant retreat. The three doctors, with Sister in tow, pressed on.
The medical-record room was on their right, between the porters’ restroom and the art-therapy department. The door was ajar and the light was on.
Dr. Steiner, who had become unnaturally aware of every small detail, noticed the key was in the lock. No one was about. The steel racks, with their tight-packed rows of manilla folders, ran ceiling high and at right angles to the door forming a series of narrow aisles, each lit by a fluorescent light. The four high windows were barred and dissected by the racks; it was an airless little room rarely visited and seldom dusted. The little group pushed its way down the first passage and turned left to where there was a small, windowless space clear of shelving and furnished with a table and chair where records could be sorted for filing or information copied from the notes without the need to take the file away. Here was chaos. The chair was overturned. The floor was littered with records. Some had their covers wrenched apart and their pages torn; others lay dumped in shifting layers beneath gaps on the shelves which looked too narrow to have held such a weight of paper. And in the middle of this confusion, like a plump and incongruous Ophelia afloat on a tide of paper, was the body of Enid Bolam. On her chest rested a heavy and grotesque image carved in wood, her hands folded about its base so that she looked, horribly, like a parody of motherhood with her creature ritually laid to her breast.
There could be no doubt that she was dead. Even in the midst of his fear and repugnance, Dr. Steiner could not miss that final diagnosis. Staring at the wooden figure he cried: “Tippett! That’s his fetish! That’s the carving he’s so proud of. Where is he? Baguley, he’s your patient! You’d better handle this!” He looked round nervously as if expecting Tippett to materialize, arm raised to strike, the very personification of violence.
Dr. Baguley was kneeling by the body. He said quietly: “Tippett isn’t here this evening.”
“But he’s always here on Fridays! That’s his fetish! That’s the weapon!” Dr. Steiner wailed against such obtuseness.
Dr. Baguley gently lifted Miss Bolam’s left eyelid with his thumb. Without looking up he said: “We had a phone call from St Luke’s this morning. Tippett’s been admitted with pneumonia. Last Monday, I think. Anyway, he wasn’t here this evening.” Suddenly he gave an exclamation. The two women bent closer to the body. Dr. Steiner, who could not bring himself to watch the examination, heard him say: “She’s been stabbed, too. Through the heart, by the look of it, and with a black-handled chisel. Isn’t this one of Nagle’s, Sister?”
There was a pause and Dr. Steiner heard Sister’s voice: “It looks very like it, Doctor. All his tools have black handles. He keeps them in the porters’ restroom.” She added defensively. “Anyone could get at them.”
“It looks as if someone has.” There was the sound of Dr. Baguley getting to his feet. Still keeping his eyes on the body he said: “Phone Cully on the door, will you, Sister. Don’t alarm him, but tell him that no one is to be admitted or to leave the building. That includes the patients. Then get Dr. Etherege and ask him to come down. He’ll be in his consulting room, I imagine.”
“Oughtn’t we to phone the police?” Dr. Ingram spoke nervously and her pink face, so ridiculously like that of an angora rabbit, flushed pinker. It was not only in moments of high drama that one was apt to overlook the presence of Dr. Ingram and Dr. Baguley stared blankly at her as if he had momentarily forgotten her existence.
“We’ll wait for the medical director,” he said. Sister Ambrose disappeared with a rustle of starched linen. The nearest telephone was just outside the record-room door but, insulated by tiers of paper from every outside noise, Dr. Steiner strained his ears in vain to hear the lift of the receiver or the murmur of Sister’s voice. He forced himself to look once more at Miss Bolam’s body. In life he had thought of her as graceless and unattractive and death had lent her no dignity. She lay on her back, her knees raised and parted so that there was an expanse of pink woollen knicker clearly visible, looking far more indecent than naked flesh. Her round, heavy face was quite peaceful. The two thick plaits which she wore wound above her forehead were undisturbed. But then, nothing had ever been known to disturb Miss Bolam’s archaic hairstyle. Dr. Steiner was reminded of his private fantasy that the thick, lifeless plaits exuded their own mysterious secretion and were fixed for ever, immutably, about that placid brow. Looking at her in the defenceless indignity of death, Dr. Steiner tried to feel pity and knew that he felt fear. But he was fully conscious only of repugnance. It was impossible to feel tenderly towards something so ridiculous, so shocking, so obscene. The ugly word spun unbidden to the surface of thought. Obscene! He felt a ridiculous urge to pull down her skirt, to cover that puffy, pathetic face, to replace the spectacles which had slipped from her nose and hung, askew, from her left ear. Her eyes were half closed, her small mouth pursed as if in disapproval of so undignified and unmerited an end. Dr. Steiner was not unfamiliar with that look: he had seen it on her face in life. He thought, “She looks as if she’s just confronting me with my travelling expense form.”
Suddenly he was seized with an intolerable need to giggle. Laughter welled up uncontrollably. He recognized that this horrible urge was the result of nervousness and shock but understanding did not bring control. Helplessly, he turned his back on his colleagues and fought for composure, grasping the edge of a filing rack and pressing his forehead for support against the cold metal, his mouth and nostrils choked with the musty smell of old records.
He was not aware of Sister Ambrose’s return but, suddenly, he heard her speaking.
“Dr. Etherege is on his way down. Cully is on the door and I’ve told him that no one is to leave. Your patient is making rather a fuss, Dr. Steiner.”
“Perhaps I’d better go up to him.” Faced with the need for decision, Dr. Steiner regained control. He felt that it was somehow important that he should stay with the others and be there when the medical director arrived; that it would be wise to ensure that nothing important was said or done out of his hearing. On the other hand he was not anxious to stay with the body. The record room, brightly lit as an operating theatre, claustrophobic and overheated, made him feel like a trapped animal. The heavy, close-packed shelves seemed to press upon him, compelling his eyes again and again to that lumpen figure on its paper bier.
“I’ll stay here,” he decided. “Mr. Burge must wait like everyone else.”
They stood together without speaking. Dr. Steiner saw that Sister Ambrose, white-faced but otherwise apparently unmoved, stood stockily calm with her hands loosely clasped over her apron. So must she have stood, time without number in nearly forty years of nursing, waiting at the bedside of a patient, quietly deferential, for the doctor’s orders. Dr. Baguley pulled out his cigarettes, looked at the packet for a moment as if surprised to find it in his hand and replaced it in his pocket. Dr. Ingram seemed to be silently crying. Once, Dr. Steiner thought he heard her murmur: “Poor woman. Poor woman!”
Soon they heard footsteps and the medical director was with them followed by the senior psychologist, Fredrica Saxon. Dr. Etherege knelt down beside the body. He did not touch it but put his face close to Miss Bolam’s as if he were about to kiss her. Dr. Steiner’s sharp little eyes did not miss the glance that Miss Saxon gave Dr. Baguley, that instinctive move towards each other and the quick withdrawal.