“What happened?” she whispered. “Is she dead?”
“Yes. Murdered apparently.” Baguley’s tone was flat. Miss Saxon made a sudden gesture. For one unbelievable moment Dr. Steiner thought that she was going to cross herself.
“Who did it? Not poor old Tippett? That’s his fetish, surely.”
“Yes, but he isn’t here. He’s in St Luke’s with pneumonia.”
“Oh, my God! Then who?” This time she moved close to Dr. Baguley and they did not draw apart.
Dr. Etherege scrambled to his feet. “You’re right, of course. She’s dead. Stunned first apparently and then stabbed through the heart. I’ll go upstairs to phone the police and let the rest of the staff know. We’d better keep people together. Then we three had better search the building. Nothing must be touched of course.”
Dr. Steiner dared not meet Dr. Baguley’s eyes. Dr. Etherege in his role of the calm, authoritative administrator had always struck him as slightly ridiculous. He suspected that Baguley felt the same.
Suddenly they heard footsteps and the senior psychiatric social worker Miss Ruth Kettle appeared from behind the filing racks, peering at them short-sightedly.
“Ah, there you are, Director,” said Miss Kettle, in her fluting, breathless voice. (She was the only staff member, thought Dr. Steiner, to give Dr. Etherege that ridiculous title and God only knew why. It made the place sound like a nature-cure clinic.) “Cully told me you were down here. Not busy, I hope? I’m so distressed, I don’t want to make trouble but it really is too bad! Miss Bolam has booked me a new patient for ten on Monday. I’ve just seen the appointment in my diary, No consultation with me, of course. She knows I always see the Worrikers then. It’s quite deliberate, I’m afraid. You know, Director, someone has really got to do something about Miss Bolam.”
Dr. Baguley stood aside and said grimly: “Someone has.”
At the other end of the square, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of the Criminal Investigation Department was attending the ritual autumn sherry party given by his publishers which had coincided with the third reprint of his first book of verse. He didn’t overestimate his talent or the success of his book. The poems, which reflected his detached, ironic and fundamentally restless spirit, had happened to catch a public mood. He did not believe that more than half a dozen would live even in his own affections. Meanwhile he found himself awash on the shallows of an unfamiliar sea in which agents, royalties and reviews were agreeable hazards. And now there was this party. He had thought of it without enthusiasm as something to be endured, but it had proved unexpectedly enjoyable. Messrs. Hearne and Illingworth were as incapable of providing poor sherry as they were of publishing poor work; Dalgliesh estimated that his publishers’ share of his own book’s profits had been drunk in the first ten minutes. Old Sir Hubert Illingworth had made his brief appearance in the course of it, had shaken Dalgliesh sadly by the hand and had shuffled off muttering under his breath as if deploring that yet another writer on the firm’s list was exposing himself and his publisher to the doubtful gratifications of success. To him all writers were precocious children; creatures to be tolerated and encouraged but not overexcited in case they cried before bedtime.
There were less welcome diversions than the brief appearance of Sir Hubert. Few of the guests knew that Dalgliesh was a detective and not all of them expected him to talk about his job. But there were inevitably those who thought it inappropriate that a man who caught murderers should also write verse and who said so with varying degrees of tact. Presumably they wanted murderers caught, however much they might argue about what should happen to them afterwards; but they displayed a typical ambivalence towards those who did the catching. Dalgliesh was used to this attitude and found it less offensive than the common assumption that there was a particular glamour in being a member of the murder squad. But if there had been the expected quota of furtive curiosity and the inanities common to all such parties, there had also been agreeable people saying agreeable things. No writer, however apparently detached about his talent, is immune to the subtle reassurance of disinterested praise and Dalgliesh, fighting the suspicion that few of those who admired had actually read and fewer still had bought, found that he was quietly enjoying himself and was honest enough to admit why.
The first hour had been hectic but, soon after seven o’clock, he found himself standing alone, glass in hand, beside the ornate James Wyatt chimney piece. A thin wood fire was burning, filling the room with a faint country smell. It was one of those inexplicable moments when one is suddenly completely alone in the middle of a crowd, when the noise is muted and the pressing bodies seem to recede and become remote and mysterious as actors on some distant stage. Dalgliesh leaned the back of his head against the mantelpiece, savouring this momentary privacy and noting appreciatively the elegant proportions of the room. Suddenly he saw Deborah Riscoe. She must have come into the room very quietly. He wondered how long she had been there. Immediately his diffuse sense of peace and happiness gave way to a pleasure as keen and painful as that of a boy in love for the first time. She saw him at once and, glass in hand, edged her way across the room to him.
Her appearance was wholly unexpected and he did not deceive himself that she was there on his account. After their last encounter, that would hardly be likely.
He said, “It’s very pleasant to see you here.”
“I should have come anyway,” she replied. “But actually I work here. Felix Hearne got me the job after Mummy died. I’m quite useful. I’m the general dogsbody. Shorthand and typing, too. I took a course.”
He smiled. “You make it sound like a cure.”
“Well, in a way it was.”
He did not pretend not to understand. They were both silent. Dalgliesh knew that he was morbidly sensitive to any allusion to the case which, nearly three years ago, had led to their first meeting. That sore could not stand even the gentlest of probes. He had seen the announcement of her mother’s death in the paper about six months ago, but it had seemed impossible and impertinent then to send her a message or to speak the customary words of condolence. After all, he was partly responsible for her death. It was no easier now. Instead they talked of his verse and of her job. Taking his share of this casual, undemanding small talk, he wondered what she would say if he asked her to have dinner with him. If she didn’t turn him down flat—and she probably would—it could be for him the beginning of involvement. He didn’t deceive himself that he only wanted an agreeable meal with a woman he happened to think beautiful. He had no idea what she thought of him but, ever since their last meeting, he had known himself to be on the brink of love. If she accepted—for this or for any evening—his solitary life would be threatened. He knew this with complete certainty and the knowledge frightened him. Ever since the death of his wife in childbirth he had insulated himself carefully against pain: sex little more than an exercise in skill; a love affair merely an emotional pavan, formalized, danced according to the rules, committing one to nothing. But, of course, she wouldn’t accept. He had absolutely no reason to think that she was interested in him. It was only this certainty that gave him the confidence to indulge his thoughts. But he was tempted to try his luck. As they talked he mentally rehearsed the words, wryly amused to recognize after so many years the uncertainties of adolescence.
The light tap on his shoulder took him by surprise. It was the chairman’s secretary to say that he was wanted on the telephone. “It’s the Yard, Mr. Dalgliesh,” she said, with well-controlled interest as if Hearne and Illingworth’s authors were accustomed to calls from the Yard.