He smiled his excuses at Deborah Riscoe and she gave a little resigned shrug of her shoulders.
“I won’t be a moment,” he said. But even as he threaded his way through the crush of chatterers, he knew that he wouldn’t be back.
He took the call in a small office next to the boardroom, struggling to the telephone through chairs heaped with manuscripts, rolled galley proofs and dusty files. Hearne and Illingworth fostered an air of old-fashioned leisureliness and general muddle which concealed—sometimes to their authors’ discomfiture—a formidable efficiency and attention to detail.
The familiar voice boomed in his ear. “That you, Adam? How’s the party? Good. Sorry to break it up but I’d be grateful if you’d look in over the way. The Steen Clinic, Number 31. You know the place. Upper-class neuroses catered for only. It seems that their secretary or administrative officer or what have you has got herself murdered. Bashed on the head in the basement and then stabbed expertly through the heart. The boys are on their way. I’ve sent you Martin, of course. He’ll have your gear with him.”
“Thank you, sir. When was it reported?”
“Three minutes ago. The medical director rang. He gave me a concise account of practically everyone’s alibi for the supposed time of death and explained why it couldn’t possibly be one of the patients. He was followed by a doctor called Steiner. He explained that we met about five years ago at a dinner party given by his late brother-in-law. Dr. Steiner explained why it couldn’t have been him and favoured me with his interpretation of the psychological makeup of the killer. They’ve read all the best detective fiction. No one has touched the body, they’re not letting anyone in or out of the building and they’ve all collected into one room to keep an eye on each other. You’d better hurry over, Adam, or they’ll solve the crime before you arrive.”
“Who is the medical director?” asked Dalgliesh.
“Dr. Henry Etherege. You must have seen him on television. He’s the establishment psychiatrist, dedicated to making the profession respectable. Distinguished looking, orthodox and earnest.”
“I’ve seen him in court,” said Dalgliesh.
“Of course. Remember him in the Routledge case? He practically had me weeping into my hankie and I knew Routledge better than most. Etherege is the natural choice of any defence counsel—if he can get him. You know their bleat. Find me a psychiatrist who looks respectable, speaks English and won’t shock the jury or antagonize the judge. Answer, Etherege. Ah, well, good luck!”
The AC was optimistic in supposing that his message could break up the party. It had long reached the stage when the departure of a solitary guest disconcerted no one. Dalgliesh thanked his host, waved a casual good-bye to the few people who caught his eye and passed almost unnoticed out of the building. He did not see Deborah Riscoe again and made no effort to find her. His mind was already on the job ahead and he felt that he had been saved, at best from a snub and, at worst, from folly. It had been a brief, tantalizing, inconclusive and unsettling encounter but, already, it was in the past.
Walking across the square to the tall Georgian building that housed the Steen Clinic, Dalgliesh recalled some of the scant items of information about the place that had come his way. It was a well-known witticism that you had to be exceptionally sane to be accepted for treatment at the Steen. Certainly it had a reputation—Dalgliesh thought probably undeserved—for selecting its patients with more regard to their intelligence and social class than their mental condition, subjecting them to diagnostic procedures designed to deter all but the most enthusiastic, and then placing them on a waiting list for treatment long enough to ensure that the curative effects of time could exert their maximum influence before the patient actually attended for his first psychotherapy session. The Steen, Dalgliesh remembered, had a Modigliani. It was not a well-known painting nor did it represent the artist at his best, but it was, undeniably, a Modigliani. It hung in the first-floor boardroom, the gift of a former grateful patient, and it represented much that the clinic stood for in the public eye. Other National Health Service clinics brightened their walls with reproductions from the Red Cross picture library. The Steen staff made no secret that they preferred a second-rate original to a first-class reproduction any day. And they had a second-rate original to prove it.
The house itself was one of a Georgian terrace. It stood at the south corner of the square, comfortable, unpretentious and wholly pleasing. At the rear a narrow passage ran into Lincoln Square Mews. There was a railed basement; in front of the house the railings curved on each side of the broad steps which led to the door and supported two wrought-iron lamp standards. On the right of the door an unpretentious bronze plaque bore the name of the Hospital Management Committee which administered the unit and, underneath, the words “The Steen Clinic.” No other information was given. The Steen did not advertise its function to a vulgar world nor did it wish to invite an influx of the local psychotics seeking treatment or reassurance. There were four cars parked outside but no signs yet of the police. The house looked very quiet. The door was shut but a light shone from the elegant Adam fanlight above the door and between the folds of drawn curtains in the ground-floor rooms.
The door was opened almost before he had taken his finger from the bell. They had been waiting for him. A stockily built young man in porter’s uniform opened the door and let him in without speaking. The hall blazed with light and struck very warm after the coolness of the autumn night. To the left of the door was a glass-panelled reception kiosk with a telephone switchboard. A second, and much older, porter sat at the board in an attitude of utter misery. He looked round and glanced briefly at Dalgliesh with rheumy eyes then returned to his contemplation of the board as if the arrival of the superintendent was the last straw of an intolerable burden which, if ignored, might be lifted from him.
In the main body of the hall the reception committee came forward, the medical director with outstretched hand as if welcoming a guest. “Superintendent Dalgliesh? We’re very glad to see you. May I introduce my colleague, Dr. James Baguley, and the secretary of the Hospital Management Committee, Mr. Lauder.”
“You got here very promptly, sir,” said Dalgliesh to Lauder.
The group secretary said: “I didn’t know about the murder until I arrived two minutes ago. Miss Bolam telephoned me at lunchtime today and said she wanted to see me urgently. Something was going on at the clinic and she needed advice. I came as soon as I could and found that she’d been murdered. In the circumstances, I had more reasons than one for deciding to stay around. It looks as if she needed advice more than she knew.”
“Whatever it was, you’ve come too late, I’m afraid,” said Dr. Etherege.
Dalgliesh saw that he was much shorter than his television appearances suggested. His large, high-domed head, with its aureole of white hair soft and fine as a baby’s, looked too weighty for the slight supporting body which seemed to have aged independently, giving him an oddly disintegrated appearance. It was difficult to guess his age but Dalgliesh thought that he must be nearer seventy than sixty-five, the normal retiring age for a consultant. He had the face of an indestructible gnome, the cheeks mottled with high colour so that they looked painted, the eyebrows springing above eyes of a piercing blue. Dalgliesh felt that those eyes and the soft, persuasive voice were not the least of the medical director’s professional assets.