Free A Mind to Murder by P. D. James Page A

very kind. But then Dr. Steiner was kind. It was easy enough to criticize his indolence or laugh at his odd patients. But he did care about people, whereas Dr. Baguley, who worked so hard and wore himself out with his heavy clinics, didn’t really like people at all, but only wished that he did. Jenny wasn’t sure how she knew this so clearly. She hadn’t really thought about it before. Tonight, however, now that the first shock of finding the body had passed, her mind was unnaturally clear. And not only her mind. All her perceptions were sharpened. The tangible objects about her, the chintz covering on the couch, the red blanket folded at its foot, the bright varied greens and golds of the chrysanthemums on the desk, were clearer, brighter, more real to her than ever before. She saw the line of Miss Saxon’s arm as it rested on the desk curved around the book she was reading and the way in which the small hairs on her forearm were tipped with light from the desk lamp. She wondered whether Peter always saw the life around him with this wonder and clarity as if one were born into an unfamiliar world with all the first bright hues of creation fresh upon it. Perhaps this was what it felt like to be a painter.
    “I suppose it’s the brandy,” she thought, and giggled a little. She remembered hearing the muttered grumblings of Sister Ambrose half an hour earlier.
    “What’s Nagle been feeding to Priddy? That child’s half drunk.” But she wasn’t drunk and she didn’t really believe it was the brandy.
    Dr. Steiner had drawn his chair close to her and had laid his hand briefly on her shoulder. Without thinking, Miss Priddy had said:
    “She was kind to me and I didn’t like her.”
    She no longer felt sad or guilty about it. It was a statement of fact.
    “You mustn’t worry about it,” he said gently, and patted her knee. She didn’t resent the pat. Peter would have said: “Lecherous old goat! Tell him to keep his paws to himself.” But Peter would have been wrong. Jenny knew that it was a gesture of kindliness. For a moment she was tempted to put her hand over his to show that she understood. He had small and very white hands for a man, so different from Peter’s long, bony, paint-stained fingers. She saw how the hairs curled beneath his shirt cuffs, the stubble of black along the knuckles. On his little finger he wore a gold signet ring, heavy as a weapon.
    “It’s natural to feel as you do,” he said. “When people die we always wish that we had been kinder to them, had liked them better. There is nothing to be done about it. We shouldn’t pretend about our feelings. If we understand them we learn in time to accept them and to live with them.”
    But Jenny was no longer listening. For the door had opened quietly and Peter Nagle had come in.
    Bored with sitting in the reception desk and exchanging commonplace remarks with the uncommunicative policeman on duty there, Nagle sought diversion in the front consulting-room. Although his formal interview was over he wasn’t yet free to leave the clinic. The group secretary obviously expected him to stay until the building could be locked for the night and it would be his job to open it again on Monday morning. The way things were going it looked as if he would be stuck in the place for another couple of hours at least. That morning he had planned to get home early and work on the picture, but it was no use thinking of that now. It might well be after eleven o’clock before this business was settled and he was free to go home. But even if they could go to the Pimlico flat together Jenny wouldn’t pose for him tonight. One glance at her face told him that. She did not come across to him as he entered the room and he was grateful for that amount of restraint at least. But she gave him her shy, elliptical glance, half conspiratorial and half pleading. It was her way of asking him to understand, of saying sorry. Well, he was sorry, too. He had hoped to put in a