the group secretary cared to admit. Dalgliesh returned to the telephone call which had brought Mr. Lauder to the clinic. He said:
“The words Miss Bolam used strike me as significant. She said that there may be something very serious going on here which you ought to know about and that it started before her time. That suggests, firstly that she wasn’t yet certain but only suspicious, and secondly that she wasn’t worried about a particular incident but about something of long standing. A systematic policy of thieving, for example, as opposed to one isolated theft.”
“Well now, Superintendent, its odd you should mention theft. We have had a theft recently, but it was an isolated incident, the first we’ve had here for years, and I can’t see how it could be connected with murder. It was just over a week ago last Tuesday if I remember rightly. Cully and Nagle were the last to leave the clinic as usual and Cully asked Nagle to have a drink with him at the ‘Queen’s Head’. You know it, I expect. It’s the pub on the far corner of Beefsteak Street. There are one or two odd things about this story and one of the strangest is that Cully should invite Nagle for a drink. They’ve never struck me as buddies. Anyway, Nagle accepted and they were in the ‘Queen’s Head’ together from about seven. At about half-past, a pal of Cully’s came in and said he was surprised to see Cully there as he had just passed the clinic and there was a faint light in one of the windows—as if someone was moving around with a torch, he said. Nagle and Cully went off to investigate and found one of the back basement windows broken, or rather, cut out. Quite a clever job it was. Cully didn’t feel inclined to investigate further without reinforcements and I’m not sure that I blame him. He’s sixty-five, remember, and not strong. After some whispering together, Nagle said that he’d go in and Cully had better telephone the police from the kiosk on the corner. Your people came pretty smartly but they didn’t get the intruder. He gave Nagle the slip inside the building, and when Cully got back from telephoning he was just in time to see the man slip out of the mews.”
“I’ll check how far our people have got with the investigation,” said Dalgliesh. “But I agree that a connection between the crimes seems unlikely on the face of it. Was much taken?”
“Fifteen pounds from a drawer in the psychiatric social worker’s office. The door was locked but he wrenched it open. The money was in an envelope addressed in green ink to the administrative secretary of the clinic and had been received a week earlier. There was no letter with it, only a note to say that the money was from a grateful patient. The other contents of the drawer were torn and scattered but nothing else was stolen. Some attempt had been made to force open the cabinets of records in the general office and Miss Bolam’s desk drawers had been forced but nothing taken.”
Dalgliesh asked whether the fifteen pounds should have been placed in the wall safe.
“Well now, Superintendent, you’re right, of course. It should have been. But there was a little difficulty about using the money. Miss Bolam phoned me about its arrival and said that she thought it should be paid immediately into the clinic’s free money account to be used in due course on the authority of the House Committee. That was a very proper course of action, and so I told her. Shortly afterwards the medical director phoned me to ask if he could have authority to spend the money on some new flower vases for the patients’ waiting-room. The vases were certainly needed and it seemed a correct use for non-Exchequer funds, so I rang the chairman of the House Committee and got his approval. Apparently Dr. Etherege wanted Miss Kettle to choose the vases and asked Miss Bolam to hand over the cash. I had already notified Miss Bolam of the decision so she did so, expecting that the vases would be bought at
“The words Miss Bolam used strike me as significant. She said that there may be something very serious going on here which you ought to know about and that it started before her time. That suggests, firstly that she wasn’t yet certain but only suspicious, and secondly that she wasn’t worried about a particular incident but about something of long standing. A systematic policy of thieving, for example, as opposed to one isolated theft.”
“Well now, Superintendent, its odd you should mention theft. We have had a theft recently, but it was an isolated incident, the first we’ve had here for years, and I can’t see how it could be connected with murder. It was just over a week ago last Tuesday if I remember rightly. Cully and Nagle were the last to leave the clinic as usual and Cully asked Nagle to have a drink with him at the ‘Queen’s Head’. You know it, I expect. It’s the pub on the far corner of Beefsteak Street. There are one or two odd things about this story and one of the strangest is that Cully should invite Nagle for a drink. They’ve never struck me as buddies. Anyway, Nagle accepted and they were in the ‘Queen’s Head’ together from about seven. At about half-past, a pal of Cully’s came in and said he was surprised to see Cully there as he had just passed the clinic and there was a faint light in one of the windows—as if someone was moving around with a torch, he said. Nagle and Cully went off to investigate and found one of the back basement windows broken, or rather, cut out. Quite a clever job it was. Cully didn’t feel inclined to investigate further without reinforcements and I’m not sure that I blame him. He’s sixty-five, remember, and not strong. After some whispering together, Nagle said that he’d go in and Cully had better telephone the police from the kiosk on the corner. Your people came pretty smartly but they didn’t get the intruder. He gave Nagle the slip inside the building, and when Cully got back from telephoning he was just in time to see the man slip out of the mews.”
“I’ll check how far our people have got with the investigation,” said Dalgliesh. “But I agree that a connection between the crimes seems unlikely on the face of it. Was much taken?”
“Fifteen pounds from a drawer in the psychiatric social worker’s office. The door was locked but he wrenched it open. The money was in an envelope addressed in green ink to the administrative secretary of the clinic and had been received a week earlier. There was no letter with it, only a note to say that the money was from a grateful patient. The other contents of the drawer were torn and scattered but nothing else was stolen. Some attempt had been made to force open the cabinets of records in the general office and Miss Bolam’s desk drawers had been forced but nothing taken.”
Dalgliesh asked whether the fifteen pounds should have been placed in the wall safe.
“Well now, Superintendent, you’re right, of course. It should have been. But there was a little difficulty about using the money. Miss Bolam phoned me about its arrival and said that she thought it should be paid immediately into the clinic’s free money account to be used in due course on the authority of the House Committee. That was a very proper course of action, and so I told her. Shortly afterwards the medical director phoned me to ask if he could have authority to spend the money on some new flower vases for the patients’ waiting-room. The vases were certainly needed and it seemed a correct use for non-Exchequer funds, so I rang the chairman of the House Committee and got his approval. Apparently Dr. Etherege wanted Miss Kettle to choose the vases and asked Miss Bolam to hand over the cash. I had already notified Miss Bolam of the decision so she did so, expecting that the vases would be bought at
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