Author(s): P. D. James

Crime

That a man who caught murderers should be a successful poet seemed inappropriate to some people. But Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh of the Criminal Investigation Department was attending his publishers' annual sherry party when a call from Scotland Yard whipped him away to investigate a particularly brutal murder. In the elegant Steen Psychiatric Clinic, which catered strictly for upper-class neuroses, sprawled the body of Enid Bolama chisel through her heart. It had been a vicious, calculated thrust, suggesting that the killer had not only a confident knowledge of anatomy but unusual strength. But why, lying on Miss Bolam's chest, was there the grotesque wooden image which old Tippett, a chronic schizophrenic, had been carving in the art therapy department?