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thought people wanted her to go she’d dig her toes in. The clinic was a kind of challenge to her.”
    It was probably the most illuminating thing she had said about Miss Bolam. As he thanked her and asked her to wait with the rest of the staff until his preliminary interviews were over, Dalgliesh pondered on the possible nuisance value of an administrator who regarded her job as a challenge, a battleground from which she would never willingly retreat. He asked next to see Peter Nagle.
    If the junior porter was worried by the killer’s choice of his chisel as a weapon he gave no sign. He answered Dalgliesh’s questions calmly and politely, but so dispassionately that they might have been discussing some minor point of clinic procedure which was only doubtfully his concern. He gave his age as twenty-seven and an address in Pimlico and confirmed that he had been employed at the clinic for just over two years and was previously at a provincial art school. His voice was level and educated, his mud-brown eyes were large, almost expressionless. Dalgliesh noticed that he had unusually long arms which, held loosely from his short and powerful body, gave an impression of simian strength. His hair was black, coiling tightly over the scalp. It was an interesting face, withdrawn but intelligent. There could scarcely have been a greater contrast with poor old Cully, long since despatched home to nurse both his stomach-ache and his grievance at being kept late.
    Nagle confirmed Miss Priddy’s story. He again identified his chisel with no more emotion than a brief moue of distaste and said that he had last seen it at eight o’clock that morning when he had arrived on duty and—for no particular reason—had made a check of his toolbox. Everything was in order then. Dalgliesh asked whether it was generally known where the box was kept. Nagle replied:
    “I’d be a fool if I said no, wouldn’t I?”
    “You’d be a fool to say anything but the truth now or later.”
    “I suppose most of the staff knew. Those who didn’t could find out easily enough. We don’t keep the porters’ room locked.”
    “Isn’t that rather unwise? What about the patients?”
    “They don’t go down to the basement on their own. The lysergic acid patients are always escorted and the art therapy people usually have someone keeping an eye on them. The department hasn’t been down there for long. The light’s bad and it isn’t really suitable. It’s a temporary department.”
    “Where used it to be, then?”
    “On the third floor. Then the clinic Medical Committee decided they wanted the large room there for the marital problems discussion groups, so Mrs. Baumgarten—she’s the art therapist—lost it. She’s been agitating to get it back, but the M.P.D. patients say it would be psychologically disturbing for them to meet in the basement.”
    “Who runs the M.P.D.?”
    “Dr. Steiner and one of the psychiatric social workers, Miss Kallinski. It’s a club where the divorced and the single tell the patients how to be happy though married. I don’t see how it can concern the murder.”
    “Nor do I. I asked about it to satisfy my curiosity as to why the art therapy department was so unsuitably housed. When did you hear that Tippett wasn’t attending today, by the way?”
    “At about nine o’clock this morning. The old boy had been worrying St. Luke’s Hospital to telephone and let us know what had happened. So they did. I told Miss Bolam and Sister.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “I think I mentioned it to Cully when he came back on the board. He’s had belly-ache for most of the day.”
    “So I’m told. What’s wrong with him?”
    “Cully? Miss Bolam made him go to hospital for an examination but nothing was found. He gets these belly-aches if anyone upsets him. They say here it’s psychosomatic.”
    “What upset him this morning?”
    “I did. He got here before me this morning and started sorting the post. That’s my job. I told him to