A Taste for Death Read online

  He asked her where she had spent the previous evening. She said:

  “I was here or in the kitchen. Mr. Dominic Swayne came for a meal and a bath, and afterwards we played Scrabble. He arrived shortly before seven and left before eleven. Our neighbour, Mr. Swinglehurst, was garaging his car and saw Mr. Swayne arrive.”

  “Did anyone else in the house see him while he was here?”

  “No, but he did take a telephone call at about twenty to nine. It was from Mrs. Hurrell, the wife of the last agent in the constituency. She wanted to try and contact Sir Paul. I told her that no one knew where he was.”

  “And Mr. Swayne, where did he bath?”

  “Upstairs, in the main bathroom. Lady Ursula has her own bathroom, and there is a shower room down here, but Mr. Swayne wanted a proper bath.”

  “So you were either in this room or the kitchen and Mr. Swayne was upstairs for at least part of the evening. The back door, was it locked?”

  “Locked and bolted. It always is after tea. The key is here on the keyboard in that cupboard.”

  She opened it and showed him the wall-mounted board with its rows of hooks and tagged keys. He asked:

  “Could anyone have got out without your noticing, perhaps while you were in the kitchen?”

  “No. I usually keep the door to the passage open. I should have seen or heard. No one left the house last night by that door.” She seemed to rouse herself and said with sudden vigour:

  “All these questions. What was I doing? Who was here? Who could have left without being seen? Anyone would think he was murdered.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “It is possible that Sir Paul was murdered.”

  She gazed at him, appalled, then sank down onto the chair. He saw that she was shaking. She said in a low voice:

  “Murdered. No one said anything about murder. I thought …” Kate moved over to her, glanced at Dalgliesh, then placed her hand on Miss Matlock’s shoulder. Dalgliesh asked:

  “What did you think, Miss Matlock?”

  She looked up at him and whispered so quietly that he had to bend his head to hear.

  “I thought he might have done it himself.”

  “Had you any reason to suppose that?”

  “No. No reason. Of course not. How could I? And Lady Berowne said … There was something about his razor. But murder … I don’t want to answer any more questions, not tonight. I don’t feel well. I don’t want to be badgered. He’s dead. That’s terrible enough. But murder! I can’t believe it’s murder. I want to be left alone.”

  Looking down at her, Dalgliesh thought: The shock is real enough, but part of this is acting, and not very convincing acting at that. He said coolly:

  “We’re not allowed to badger a witness, Miss Matlock, and I don’t think you really believe that we have been badgering you. You’ve been very helpful. I’m afraid we shall have to talk again, to ask you more questions, but it needn’t be now. We can see ourselves out.”

  She got out of the chair as clumsily as an old woman and said:

  “No one sees themselves out of this house. That’s my job.”

  In the Rover Dalgliesh rang the Yard. He said to Massingham:

  “We’ll see Lampart as early as we can tomorrow. It would be helpful if we could fit that in before the pm at three thirty. Is there any news of Sarah Berowne?”

  “Yes sir. She’s a professional photographer, apparently, and has had sessions all today. She’s got another booked for tomorrow afternoon, a writer who’s due to leave for the States in the evening. It’s rather important, so she hopes it won’t be necessary to cancel. I told her we’d come along in the evening at six thirty. And Press Office want an urgent word. The news will break at one o’clock and they want to set up a press conference first thing tomorrow.”

  “That’s premature. What on earth do they expect us to be able to say at this stage? Try to get it postponed, John.”

  If he could prove that Berowne had been murdered the whole investigation would take place against a background of feverish media interest. He knew that, although he didn’t welcome it, but there was no reason why it should start yet. As Kate manoeuvred the Rover out of its restricted parking place and began to move slowly down the Square he looked back at the elegant facade of the house, at the windows like dead eyes. And then, on the top floor, he saw the twitch of a curtain and knew that Lady Ursula was watching them leave.

  four

  It was six twenty before Sarah Berowne managed to reach Ivor Garrod by telephone. She had been in her flat for most of the early part of the afternoon but hadn’t dared ring from there. It was an absolute rule of his, born, she had sometimes felt, from his obsession with secrecy, that nothing important should ever be told over her own telephone. So the whole afternoon from the time her grandmother had left her had been dominated by the need to find a convenient public kiosk, to have sufficient coins ready. But he had always been unavailable and she hadn’t liked to risk leaving a message, not even her name.

  Her only appointment of the day had been to photograph a visiting writer staying with friends in Hertfordshire. She always worked with the minimum of equipment and had travelled by train. She couldn’t remember very much of the short session. She had worked like an automaton, choosing the best setting, testing the light, fitting the lenses. She supposed it had gone reasonably well, the woman had seemed satisfied, but even as she worked she had been impatient to get away to find a public telephone, to try once again to reach Ivor.

  She had jumped down from the train almost before it drew to a stop at King’s Cross and had looked round with desperate eyes for the arrows pointing to the telephones. They were open instruments banked each side of a malodorous passageway leading from the main concourse, its walls scribbled with numbers and graffiti. The rush hour was in progress and it was a couple of minutes before an instrument was free. She almost snatched it, still warm, from the relinquishing hand. And this time she was lucky; he was in his office, it was his voice that answered. She gave a small sob of relief.

  “It’s Sarah. I’ve been trying to reach you all day. Can you talk?”

  “Briefly. Where are you?”

  “At King’s Cross. You’ve heard?”

  “Only now, on the six o’clock news. It hasn’t made the evening papers.”

  “Ivor, I have to see you.” He said calmly:

  “Naturally. There are things we need to talk about, but not tonight. That isn’t possible. Have the police been in touch with you?”

  “They’ve been trying to get me, but I told them that I was tied up all today and wouldn’t be free until six thirty tomorrow.”

  “And are you?”

  What does that matter, she thought. She said:

  “I’ve got two appointments in the afternoon.”

  “Hardly being tied up all day. Never lie to the police unless you can be sure that they have no way of finding out. They only have to check with your diary.”

  “But I couldn’t let them come until we’d spoken. There are things they might ask. About Theresa Nolan, about Diana. Ivor, we have to meet.”

  “We shall. And they won’t ask about Diana. Your father killed himself, his final and most embarrassing folly. His life was a mess. The family will want it decently buried, not dragged out stinking into the daylight. How did you learn the news, by the way?”

  “Grandmama. She rang me, then came round by taxi after the police had left her. She didn’t tell me very much. I don’t think she knew all the details. She doesn’t believe that Daddy killed himself.”

  “Naturally. The Berownes are expected to put on uniform and kill other people, not themselves. But that, come to it, was apparently what he did, kill another person. I wonder how much sympathy Ursula Berowne will waste on that dead tramp.”

  A small burr of doubt caught at her mind. Could they possibly have said on the news that the second victim was a tramp? She said:

  “But it isn’t only Grandmama. The police, a Commander Dalgliesh,
he doesn’t seem to think that Daddy killed himself either.”

  The level of noise had risen. The narrow hallway was crowded with people needing to telephone before catching their trains. She felt the bodies thrusting against her. The air was a jabber of voices against the background thud of marching feet, the raucous, unintelligible litany of the Station announcer. She bent her head more closely over the mouthpiece. She said:

  “The police don’t seem to think it was suicide.”

  There was a silence. She dared to speak more loudly against the noise.

  “Ivor, the police don’t think—”

  He cut in:

  “I heard you. Look, stay where you are. I’ll come now. We can only have half an hour but you’re right, we ought to talk. And don’t worry, I’ll be with you in the flat when they arrive tomorrow. It’s important you don’t see them alone. And, Sarah …”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “We were together the whole of yesterday evening. We were together from six o’clock when I arrived from work. We stayed together all night. We ate in the flat. Get that into your mind. Start concentrating on it now. And stay where you are. I’ll be there in about forty minutes.”

  She replaced the receiver and stood for a moment motionless, her head against the cold metal of the instrument. A furious female voice said: “Do you mind. Some of us have trains to catch,” and she felt herself pushed aside. She fought her way out of the hall and leaned against the wall. Small waves of faintness and nausea flowed over her, each leaving her more desolate, but there was nowhere to sit, no privacy, no peace. She could go to the coffee bar, but he might get there early. Suppose she became disorientated, lost track of time. He had said “stay where you are,” and obeying him had become a habit. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She had to obey him now, rely on his strength, rely on him to tell her what to do. She had no one else.

  He hadn’t once said he was sorry that her father was dead, but he wasn’t sorry and he didn’t expect her to be. He had always been brutally unsentimental; that was what he meant by honesty. She wondered what he would do if she said: “He was my father and he’s dead. I loved him once. I need to mourn for him, for myself. I need to be comforted. I’m lost, I’m frightened. I need to feel your arms around me. I need to be told that it wasn’t my fault.”

  The marching horde flowed past her, a phalanx of grey intent faces, eyes staring ahead. They were like a flood of refugees from a stricken city or a retreating army, still disciplined, but dangerously on the edge of panic. She closed her eyes and let the tramp of their feet engulf her. And, suddenly, she was in another station, another crowd. But then she had been six years old and the station had been Victoria. What were they doing there, she and her father? Probably meeting her grandmother, returning by overland and by boat from her house rising out of the Seine at Les Andelys. For one moment she and her father had been parted. He had paused to greet an acquaintance and she had momentarily slipped his hand and run to look at the brightly coloured poster of a seaside town. Looking round, she saw with panic that he was no longer there. She was alone, menaced by a moving forest of endless, tramping, terrifying legs. They could have been parted only for seconds, but the terror had been so dreadful that, recalling it now, eighteen years later, she felt the same loss, the same engulfing terror, the same absolute despair. But suddenly he had been there, striding towards her, his long tweed coat flapping open, smiling, her father, her safety, her god. Not crying, but shuddering with terror and relief, she had run into his outstretched arms and felt herself lifted high, had heard his voice: “It’s all right, my darling, it’s all right, it’s all right.” And she had felt the dreadful shaking dissolving in his strong clasp.

  She opened her eyes and, blinking away the smarting tears, she saw the drab blacks and greys of the marching army fudge, dissolve, then whirl into a kaleidoscope shot through with flashes of bright colour. It seemed to her that the moving feet were pounding over and through her, that she had become invisible, a brittle, empty shell. But suddenly the mass parted and he was there, still in that long tweed coat, moving towards her, smiling, so that she had to restrain herself from crying “Daddy, Daddy” and running into his arms. But the hallucination passed. This wasn’t he, this was a hurrying stranger with a briefcase who glanced with momentary curiosity at her eager face and outstretched arms, then looked through her and passed on. She shrank back, wedging herself more firmly against the wall, and began her long, patient wait for Ivor.

  five

  It was just before ten o’clock and they were thinking of locking up their papers for the night when Lady Ursula rang. Gordon Halliwell had returned and she would be grateful if the police could see him now. He himself would prefer it. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day for both of them, and she couldn’t say when they would be available. Dalgliesh knew that Massingham, if in charge, would have said firmly that they would arrive next morning, if only to demonstrate that they worked at their own convenience, not that of Lady Ursula. Dalgliesh, who was anxious to question Gordon Halliwell and who had never felt the need to bolster either his own authority or his self-esteem, said that they would arrive as soon as possible.

  The door of number sixty-two was opened by Miss Matlock, who gazed at them for a couple of seconds with tired, resentful eyes before standing to one side to let them in. Dalgliesh could see that her skin was grey with weariness, the set of her shoulders a little too rigid to be natural. She was wearing a long dressing-gown in flowered nylon, strained across the breast, the belt doubly knotted as if she were afraid they would tear it off. She made a clumsy flutter of her hands towards it and said peevishly:

  “I’m not dressed for visitors. We were hoping to get an early bed. I wasn’t expecting you to come back tonight.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “I’m sorry to have to disturb you again. If you want to go to bed, perhaps Mr. Halliwell could let us out.”

  “It isn’t his job. He’s only the chauffeur. Locking up the house is my responsibility. Lady Ursula has asked him to take the telephone calls tomorrow, but it isn’t suitable, it isn’t right. We’ve had no peace since the six o’clock news. This will kill her if it goes on.”

  It was, thought Dalgliesh, likely to go on for a very long time, but he doubted whether it would kill Lady Ursula.

  Their footsteps rang on the marble floor as Miss Matlock led them down the passage past the octagonal study, then through the baize door to the back of the house and finally down three stairs to the outside door. The house was very quiet but portentously expectant like an empty theatre. He had the sense, as he often did in the house of the recently murdered, of a thin denuded air, a voiceless presence. She drew the locks and they found themselves in the rear courtyard. The three statues in their niches were subtly lit with concealed lighting and seemed to float, gently gleaming, in the still air. The night was surprisingly balmy for autumn, and there came from some nearby garden the transitory smell of cypress so that he felt for a moment displaced, disorientated, as if transported to Italy. It seemed to him inappropriate that the statues should be lit, the beauty of the house still celebrated when Berowne lay frozen like a carcass of meat in his plastic shroud, and he found himself instinctively putting out his hand for a switch before following Miss Matlock through a second door which led to the old mews and the garages.

  The rear of the wall with the statues was unadorned; the spoils of the eighteenth-century grand tour were not for the eyes of the footmen or coachmen who once must have inhabited the mews. The yard was cobbled and led to two large garages. The double doors on the left were open and in the glare of two long tubes of fluorescent light they saw that the entrance to the flat was by way of a wrought-iron staircase leading up the side of the garage wall. Miss Matlock merely pointed to the door at the top and said:

  “You’ll find Mr. Halliwell there.” And then, as if to justify the formal use of his name, she said: “He used to be a sergeant in the late Sir Hugo’s regiment. He’s been decorat
ed for bravery, the Distinguished Service Medal. I expect Lady Ursula told you. He isn’t the usual kind of chauffeur-handyman.”

  And what in these egalitarian, servantless days, thought Dalgliesh, did she suppose the usual kind of chauffeur-handyman to be?

  The garage was large enough comfortably to hold the black Rover with its A registration and a white Golf, both of which were neatly parked, with room for a third car. Making their way down the side of the Rover through a strong smell of petrol, they saw that the garage was obviously also used as a workshop. Under a high, long window at the rear was a wooden bench with fitted drawers, and on the wall above, a pegboard on which tools were neatly displayed. Propped against the right-hand wall was a man’s bicycle.

  They had hardly set foot on the bottom step of the staircase when the door above opened and the figure of a man stood stockily silhouetted against the light. As they came up to him Dalgliesh saw that he was both older and shorter than he had expected, surely only just the statutory height for a soldier, but broad-shouldered and giving an immediate impression of disciplined strength. He was very dark, almost swarthy, and the straight hair, longer than it would have been in his Army days, fell across his forehead almost touching eyebrows straight as black gashes above the deep-set eyes. His nose was short, with slightly flared nostrils, the mouth uncompromising above a square chin. He was wearing well-cut fawn slacks and a woollen checked shirt, open-necked, and gave no sign of tiredness, seeming as fresh as if this were a morning visit. He looked at them with keen but untroubled eyes, eyes that had seen worse things than a couple of CID officers arriving at night. Standing aside to let them in, he said in a voice which held only a trace of roughness: