“Indeed.”
“Do you have a patient named Claire Evans?”
Surprise darts across the psychiatrist’s face.
“Er…yes. If I learned my diary correctly, she was one of the first patients I took on when I was a junior consultant.”
“What kind of psychiatric problems does she suffer from?”
“I can’t tell you.” He shakes his head, his lips a resolute twist. “It’s confidential.”
“The answer is depression,” I say. “Involving two minor incidents of self-harm. The second time she slashed her wrists, she ended up here for a day. You put her on a double dose of antidepressants in April of 2013, and she’s been on them ever since.”
The psychiatrist’s eyes are as round as bullet holes.
“How…how do you know these facts?” he says. “Did she tell you herself?”
“We stumble on things.”
“So why did you come here?”
“To confirm what I already know.”
The psychiatrist blinks.
“I know, for instance, that you put a patient on twenty-five milligrams of Valium per day for four weeks. You also persuaded her not to sue you by writing her a check for twenty-five thousand pounds.”
He gasps.
“It won’t be difficult for me to write to the authorities here, pointing this little fact out,” I say in my kindliest, most reassuring manner. “The facts also say that I’ve corresponded with your bosses before.”
“What do you want, Inspector?” His eyes are narrow slits.
“I would like you to be frank with me. After all, I already know Mrs. Evans’s medical history. But your professional opinion on a few related matters would be helpful. What’s the cause of her depression?”
“I cannot answer precisely.” He shakes his head, albeit with a slight frown. “Even after years of treating her.”
“What type of depressive disorder does she have, then?”
He is still hesitating.
“Twenty-five milligrams, Dr. Jong,” I say, quietly but clearly. “That’s quite a bit of Valium, isn’t it?”
He emits a weary groan, raising his palms in acquiescence.
“I should log on to my medical notes, to be sure,” he says.
“Of course.”
The psychiatrist pulls out a palm-size electronic device and taps away before replying.
“Claire Evans isn’t a textbook depressive, although she displays symptoms of clinical depression,” he says, reading from his device. “Nor is she classically bipolar, although bipolar medication has helped. I’ve tried some tricyclic antidepressants on her in the past, but they caused side effects—”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Mind diagnosis is tricky business, Inspector. It’s still more art than science. I believe that she has a NOS-type—not otherwise specified type—of mood instability.”
“One resulting in occasional suicidal tendencies.”
“Suicidal is the wrong word, Inspector.” Jong shakes his head with considerable vigor. “I do not consider Mrs. Evans suicidal. Her two self-harming episodes are a way of coping with deeply buried emotional issues. Or a means of releasing pent-up frustrations.”
“Those caused by her personal circumstances?”
The psychiatrist remains silent.
“Like a difficult relationship with her partner? Exacerbated by the fact that she’s a Mono married to a Duo?”
His eyes widen briefly.
“You could say as much,” he says with a sigh. “She has a tendency to compare herself to her husband. Her memory limitations in particular. This has resulted in, shall we say, a chronic state of low self-esteem.”
So Sophia’s suspicions about Claire Evans may be accurate. The dead woman was more astute than I’d suspected.
“By the way, did you ever have sex with a woman named Sophia Ayling?”
Shock streaks across Jong’s face. But he pushes his shoulders back and tightens his jaw.
“How does my sex life come into this?” he shoots back, flipping his palms over into a more defensive position. “What sort of investigation are you conducting?”
“Murder.”
“But—”
“Sophia’s murder.”
“What?”
“She was found in the Cam earlier this morning.”
The psychiatrist is gaping at me.
“No.” He shakes his head, face drained of color. “This isn’t possible. Sophia can’t be dead.”
“If you could tell me more about your relationship with her, that might help us track her killer down.”
“But how could someone murder a woman as lovely as Sophia?” he says, throwing up his hands.
“Excellent question, Dr. Jong.” I give him an approving nod. “This is what I intend to find out before the end of the day.”
“How did she die?” His question ends with a tremor; he looks as though he may be in need of his own comfy couch and fluffy pillows.
“We’re still waiting for the postmortem report,” I say. “When and where did you first meet?”
He pulls out his iDiary with trembling fingers and types something in.
“I…er…the facts say that we met at an afternoon tea dance. Cambridge Guildhall, December of 2013. I took up ballroom dancing a year after my wife died. Sophia really stood out in the hall that day. She was younger than most of the women there. Twice as pretty. I was flattered when she came up to me and asked for a dance.”
So that crafty little woman waltzed her way into the psychiatrist’s bed. As her diary implies.
“The dancing developed into something more, didn’t it?” I decide to spare him my knowledge of the tools she may have employed in the process, which could well have included saucy scarlet knickers.
“It did.” The psychiatrist looks a little abashed.
“How long did it last?”
“Around three months.”
“And how did it end?”
The psychiatrist taps his diary with a frown.
“I wish these facts were otherwise,” he says, sighing. “But she phoned me in March of 2014. Just when I wanted to take her to the Chiltern Hills. A weekend in the countryside, that sort of thing. She said she ‘enjoyed the time we spent together.’ But she wished to ‘move on.’ That’s what she said.”
“You were stunned.”
“Of course. I thought that things were going well. But the age gap might have been a problem. She never told me her age. She was pretty secretive about it. But she must be…have been…at least twenty years younger than me.”
Sophia must have dumped him after she got what she wanted. As her diary suggests.
“I…I don’t blame her,” he says, eyes morphing into imploring circles. Our shrewd little psychiatrist must have realized that he’s not exempt from police suspicion, especially after admitting to being Sophia’s ex-lover.
“I only have positive facts of our time together,” he continues, waving his iDiary at me for emphasis. “Sophia is…was…a vivacious and outgoing woman. She made me a happy man. I hope I made her just as happy.”
Her novelist-lover called her “desperately unhinged.” Her neighbor found her “sweet” and “charming.” And her psychiatrist-lover has just described her as “vivacious” and “outgoing.” It’s amazing how the same dead woman can be perceived so differently.