THE PRIVATE PATIENT: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery
P. D. James
Knopf
Mystery
ISBN: 9780307270771
THE PRIVATE PATIENT is the 14th book featuring Commander Adam Dalgleish of the Special Investigations Squad. The private patient of the title is Rhoda Gradwyn, an investigative tabloid reporter best known for her mud-slinging articles and secretiveness, perhaps the result of an old, unforgettable trauma. When she was a child, her father slashed her face with a broken liquor bottle, which left her scarred and disfigured.
As the book opens she’s “celebrating” her 47th birthday with a trip to Harley Street to keep an appointment with one of the best plastic surgeons in England. After Dr. George Chandler-Powell reassures her that he can remove the scar without leaving more damage, he asks her why she waited so long to have this work done. Her enigmatic response: “Because I no longer have need of it.” None of the players in the plot learn any more, and readers are also left to ponder her words.
Dr. Chandler-Powell offers to do the surgery at a hospital in London or at his private clinic, Cheverall Manor, in Dorset. Gradwyn values her privacy and chooses the manor house, hidden in the country. She wants to have the operation and recover in seclusion. Upon arrival, she removes herself to the bedsit that’s been reserved for her and intends to remain there. The wealthy women who come to this highly regarded facility are obsessed over maintaining their anonymity. Their needs are personal, and they expect their privacy to be the second most important advantage the facility offers. The place itself is old and not particularly welcoming but is run by a very competent staff. Beyond tending to the patients, this crew takes no particular interest in them. But over the years, they have developed love-hate relationships with each other.
Gradwyn is murdered almost immediately after her successful surgery, killed in her bed while she slept. Who committed the crime and why remains a secret almost to the end of the novel. This conundrum heightens the suspense and moves the plot along in a timely fashion. With no shortage of suspects, Dalgleish and his team --- Detective Inspector Kate Miskin and Detective Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith --- have their work cut out for them, especially since at a glance it seems that no one present has a motive. Before they can really get going, they have to determine if the murder could be an inside job or if some outsider did the deed. Once this dilemma is solved, the interviews with the presumed suspects can move on. Readers now have an opportunity to see just who these people are, how they each operate and what their place is in the clinic’s day-to-day functioning.
One of the most suspicious staff members is Sharon (Shirley Beale) Bateman, a morose standoffish young woman who does the cleaning and functions as a dogsbody. She rarely speaks to anyone and can usually be found among a Stonehenge-like rock formation on the property. Legend has it that a woman was burned at the stake against the flat rock, which Bateman/Beale obsesses over. The staff knows little or nothing about her, and she offers not a scintilla of personal information. If asked a question, she simply stares her interrogator down or turns her back and walks away. But as is true of most of the secrets hidden in the narrative of THE PRIVATE PATIENT, Bateman/Beale is about to be busted. The team discovers that she is child murderer who bashed her younger sister’s face in.
The backstory is full of coincidences and ironies. While in college, a young man rents a room from the Beale family for a year. The parents fight all the time, and the student, Stephen Collinsby, is uncomfortable being there. But he can’t leave because the younger daughter, Lucy, is a beautiful, good and loving child --- the opposite of her disagreeable sister, Shirley. Collinsby takes an interest in Lucy, they develop a lovely friendship and he loves her. Then he must leave. The next time he hears anything about Lucy, she’s dead.
Collinsby goes on to become head of Droughton Cross Comprehensive. His progressive ideas about education and how to motivate children become nationwide news. He is a husband and a father, and is happy with his life. Then one day, Dalgleish shows up and Collinsby is thrown back into the past. He’s afraid that his life will be ruined if word of his association with the Beale family turns up in the news. Nevertheless, he admits that he was near the manor the night Gradwyn was murdered. He says that Bateman/Beale traced his whereabouts and demanded that they meet. She threatened to expose him if he was not there at a certain time. Of course, even though he was guilty of nothing, he felt he had to try to keep any slander away from himself. In the car, Bateman/Beale told him that she loves him and always has, that her sister said she was bored being with him and wished he would leave her alone. The jealousy that fomented in the older girl erupted like a volcano and Lucy died. When asked why she did it, her answer was strictly in keeping with her personality: “she was too pretty.”
Another “outsider” who was on the premises when Gradwyn was killed is her friend Robin Boyton, cousin to Marcus Westhall, Chandler-Powell’s medical assistant, and his sister Candace. He was the one who recommended Cheverill Manor to Gradwyn. He’s an annoyingly immature ne’r-do-well always looking for an easy buck or handout. He has taken advantage of his Westhall cousins by renting (for a fraction of the real price) one of the cottages on the property. He suffers from claustrophobia and lives like a slob. He’s very fearful of the world and not making his way in it easily. Readers now have a second “real” suspect in addition to the various staff members lurking in the background.
Some readers may find themselves a bit disappointed with the role Dalgleish plays in THE PRIVATE PATIENT, because we don’t get enough of him. He’s on the job and we know he’ll solve two murders, but he seems absent too much of the time. Nevertheless, P. D. James weaves a narrative full of the themes she has always intertwined in her work: the setting and atmosphere, her characters are shaped in such a way that readers get to know them, she uses psychological and literary devices because ultimately it’s her characters and their motives that bring verisimilitude to her books.
THE PRIVATE PATIENT can easily be read as a “locked room” mystery that has grown up and branched out. But whatever a reader’s interpretation, this is one of P. D. James’s most complicated books and a deliciously challenging read.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
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