A Taste for Death Page 7
“It must have happened that way, I suppose. Harry could already have been here in the porch. He usually dosses down fairly early. And it was unexpectedly cold last night for September. But it’s very odd. There must have been something about Sir Paul that gave him confidence. He wouldn’t have done it for most people. Even the warden at the refuge, so experienced with the city’s derelicts, couldn’t persuade Harry to spend the night there. But they only have the dormitory, of course. It was sleeping or eating with other people Harry couldn’t stand.”
And here, thought Dalgliesh, he had had the larger vestry to himself. It could have been the assurance of that privacy and, perhaps, the promise of food which had persuaded him in from the cold. He asked:
“When were you last here in the church, Father? I’m talking about yesterday.”
“From four thirty till about quarter past five, when I read Evensong in the Lady Chapel.”
“And when you locked up after you, how certain could you be that there was no one here, perhaps hidden? Obviously you didn’t search the church. Why should you? But If someone were hiding here, would you have been likely to see him?”
“I think so. You see how it is. We’ve no high pews, only the chairs. There’s nowhere he could have hidden.”
Dalgliesh said:
“Perhaps under the altar, the high altar or in the Lady Chapel? Or in the pulpit?”
“Under the altar? It’s a horrible thought, sacrilege. But how could he have got in? I found the church locked when I arrived at four thirty.”
“And no one had collected the keys during the day, not even the churchwardens?”
“No one.”
And Miss Wharton had assured the police that her key hadn’t left her handbag. He said:
“Could anyone have got in during Evensong? Perhaps while you were praying? Were you alone in the Lady Chapel?”
“Yes. I came in by the south door as usual and locked both it and the door in the grille after me. Then I unlocked the main door. That would be the natural way in for any stranger wanting to attend a service. My people know that I always unlock the main door for Evensong and it’s very heavy. It squeaks dreadfully. We’re always meaning to oil it. I don’t think anyone could have entered without my hearing.”
“Did you tell any other person that Sir Paul was spending the night here yesterday?”
“Oh no. There wasn’t anyone to tell. And I wouldn’t have said anything. He didn’t ask for secrecy; he didn’t ask for anything. But I don’t think he would have liked another person to know. No one else knew anything about him, not until this morning.”
Dalgliesh went on to question him about the blotter and the spent match. Father Barnes said that the Little Vestry had last been used two days ago, on Monday the sixteenth, when the Parochial Church Council had met as usual at five thirty, immediately after Evensong. He had presided, sitting at the desk, but hadn’t used the blotter. He always wrote with a Biro. He hadn’t been aware of any recent marks, but then, he wasn’t very clever at noticing that kind of detail. He was sure that the match couldn’t have been left there by anyone in the PCC. Only George Capstick smoked and he used a pipe, which he lit with a lighter. But he hadn’t been at the PCC because of recovering, still, from the flu. People had remarked how pleasant it was not to be enveloped in smoke.
Dalgliesh said:
“These are small details and probably of no importance. But I would be grateful if you would keep them to yourself. And I’d like you to have a look at the blotter and see whether you can remember what it looked like on Monday. And we’ve found a rather dirty enamel mug. It would be helpful to know if that belonged to Harry.”
Seeing Father Barnes’s face, he added:
“You won’t need to go back into the Little Vestry. When the photographer has finished we’ll bring out the items to you. And then I expect you’ll be glad to get back to the vicarage. We shall need a statement later, but that can wait.”
They sat for a minute in silence as if what had passed between them needed to be assimilated in peace. So here, thought Dalgliesh, lay the secret of Berowne’s quixotic decision to give up his job. It had been something more profound, less explicable, than disillusionment, midlife restlessness, the fear of a threatened scandal. Whatever had happened to him on that first night in St. Matthew’s vestry had led him, the next day, to change the whole direction of his life. Had it also led him to his death?
As they both got up they heard the clang of the grille door. Inspector Miskin was walking down the aisle. When she came up to them she said:
“The pathologist has arrived, sir.”
seven
Lady Ursula Berowne sat immobile in her sitting room on the third floor of 62 Campden Hill Square and gazed out over the top boughs of the plane trees as if at some far distant unseeable vista. It seemed to her that her mind was like an overfilled glass which only she could hold steady. One jerk, one shudder, one small loss of control and it would spill over into a chaos so terrible that it could end only in death. It was strange, she thought, that her physical response to shock should be the same now as it had been after Hugo was killed, so that to her present grief was added a grief for him as keen, as new as when she had first heard that he was dead. And the physical symptoms had been the same: a raging thirst, her body parched and shrivelled, her mouth dry and sour as if infected with her own breath. Mattie had brewed her pot after pot of strong coffee which she had gulped down scalding hot, black, unaware of its oversweetness. Afterwards she had said:
“I would like something to eat, something salty. Anchovy toast.” She had thought: I’m like a woman pregnant with grief, subject to odd fancies.
But that was over now. Mattie had wanted to put a shawl over her shoulders, but she had shrugged it off and demanded to be left alone. She thought: There is a world outside this body, this pain. I shall take hold of it again. I shall survive. I must survive. Seven years, ten at the most, that’s all I need. Now she waited, husbanding strength for the first of many visitors. But this was someone she herself had summoned. There were things which had to be said to him and there might not be much time.
Shortly after eleven she heard the doorbell ring, then the groaning of the lift and a soft clatter as the grille door closed. The door of her sitting room opened and Stephen Lampart came quietly in.
It seemed to her important that she should meet him standing. But she couldn’t restrain the grimace of pain as her arthritic hip took the weight, and she knew that the hand grasping the knob of her cane was trembling. Immediately he was at her side. He said:
“Oh no. Please, you mustn’t.”
With one firm hand on her arm he solicitously helped her back into the chair. She disliked casual touching, the assumption of acquaintances or strangers that her disablement entitled them to handle her, as if her body were a despised encumbrance which it was proper gently to push and pull into place. She wanted to shrug off his firm, proprietorial grasp, but managed to resist. But she couldn’t prevent the tightening of her muscles at his touch and she knew that he hadn’t missed this instinctive revulsion. When he had settled her, gently and with professional competence, he seated himself in the chair opposite. They were separated by a low table. A circle of polished rosewood established his dominance; strength against weakness, youth against age, doctor and subservient patient. Except that she wasn’t his patient. He said:
“I believe you’re waiting for a hip replacement.” It was Barbara, of course, who had told him, but he wouldn’t be the first one to mention her name.
“Yes, I’m on the list of the orthopaedic hospital.”
“Forgive me, but why not go private? Aren’t you suffering unnecessarily?”
It was, she thought, an almost indecently incongruous remark with which to begin a visit of condolence; or was this his way of confronting her grief and stoicism, by taking refuge on professional ground, the only one on which he felt confident and could speak with authority?
She said:
He smiled gently, humouring a child.
“It seems a little masochistic.”
“Possibly. But I haven’t called you here for a professional opinion.”
“Which as an obstetrician I wouldn’t, in any case, be competent to give. Lady Ursula, this news about Paul is horrifying, unbelievable. Shouldn’t you have sent for your own doctor? Or a friend? You should have someone with you. It’s wrong for you to be alone at a time like this.”
“I have Mattie if I need the usual palliatives—coffee, alcohol, warmth. At eighty-two, the few people one might wish to see are all dead. I have outlived both my sons. That is the worst thing that can happen to a human being. I have to endure it. But I don’t have to talk about it.” She could have added: “Least of all with you,” and it seemed to her that the words, unspoken, hung on the air between them.
He was for a moment silent as if considering them, accepting their justice. Then he said:
“I would, of course, have called on you later even if you hadn’t telephoned. But I wasn’t sure that you’d want to see anyone so soon. You got my letter?”
He must have written it as soon as Barbara had telephoned the news and had sent it round by one of his nurses who, in a hurry to get home after night duty, hadn’t even stopped to hand it in but had slipped it through the letter box. He had used all the obvious adjectives. He hadn’t needed a thesaurus to decide on the appropriate response. Murder, after all, was appalling, terrible, horrific, unbelievable, an outrage. But the letter, a social obligation too promptly performed, had lacked conviction. And he should have known better than to have his secretary type it. But that, she thought, was typical. Scrape away the carefully acquired patina of professional success, prestige, orthodox good manners, and the real man was there: ambitious, a little vulgar, sensitive only when sensitivity paid. But much of this, she knew, was prejudice, and prejudice was dangerous. She must be careful to betray it as little as possible if the interview was to go the way she wanted. And it was hardly fair to criticize the letter. Dictating condolences to the mother of a murdered husband whom you’ve been busily cuckolding for the last three years would take more than his limited social vocabulary.
She hadn’t seen him for nearly three months and she was struck anew by his good looks. He had been an attractive youth, tall, rather ungainly, with a thatch of black hair. But now the gangling figure had been smoothed and tailored by success, he carried his height with easy assurance and the grey eyes—which he knew so well how to use—held a basic wariness. His hair, frosted now with grey, was still thick with an unruliness that expensive cutting hadn’t completely disciplined. It added to his attractiveness, hinting at an untamed individuality which was far removed from the tedium of conventional male good looks.
He leaned forward and looked across at her intently, his grey eyes softened with sympathy. She found herself resenting his easy assumption of professional concern. But he did it very well. She almost expected him to say, “We did all we could, all that was humanly possible.” Then she told herself that the concern could be genuine. She had to resist the temptation to underrate him, to stereotype him as the handsome, experienced seducer of cheap fiction. Whatever he was, he wasn’t as uncomplicated as that. No human being could be. And he was, after all, acknowledged as a fine gynaecologist. He worked hard, he knew his job.
When Hugo was at Balliol, Stephen Lampart had been his closest friend. She had liked him in those days and some of that liking still remained, resented, only half-acknowledged, but bound up with memories of sunlit walks in Port meadow, luncheon and laughter in Hugo’s rooms, with the years of hope and promise. He had been the clever, handsome, ambitious boy from a lower-middle-class home, likeable, amusing, buying himself into the company he wanted by looks and wit, clever at concealing the itch of ambition. Hugo had been the privileged one, his mother an earl’s daughter, his father a baronet and a distinguished soldier, possessor of the Berowne name, inheritor of what remained of the Berowne money. For the first time she found herself wondering whether he had resented not only Hugo but all the family, and whether that subsequent betrayal could have had long roots in the soil of an old envy. She said:
“There are two things we have to discuss, and there may not be much time or another opportunity. Perhaps I ought to say first that I didn’t ask you here to criticize my daughter-in-law for infidelity. I’m not in a position to criticize anyone’s sexual life.”
The grey eyes grew cautious. He said:
“How wise of you. Few of us are.”
“But my son was murdered. The police will know that soon if they don’t already. And I know it now.”
He said:
“Forgive me, but can you be sure? All Barbara could tell me when she rang this morning was that the police had found Paul’s body and that of a tramp”—he paused—“with injuries to their throats.”
“Their throats were cut. Both their throats. And from the careful tact with which the news was broken, I imagine that the weapon was one of Paul’s razors. I suppose Paul could have been capable of killing himself. Most of us are, given sufficient pain. But what he wasn’t capable of was killing that tramp. My son was murdered, and that means that there are certain facts the police will make it their business to discover.”
He asked calmly:
“What facts, Lady Ursula?”
“That you and Barbara are lovers.”
The hands clasped loosely in his lap tightened, then relaxed. But he was still able to meet her eyes.
“I see. Was it Paul or Barbara who told you that?”
“Neither. But I’ve lived in the same house with my daughter-in-law for four years. I’m a woman. I may be crippled but I have the use of my eyes and my intelligence.”
“How is she, Lady Ursula?”
“I don’t know. But before you leave I suggest that you make it your business to find out. I’ve only seen my daughter-in-law for three minutes since I got the news. She is, apparently, too distressed to talk to visitors. It seems that I count as a visitor.”
“Is that quite fair? Sometimes other people’s grief is harder to bear, to face, than one’s own.”
“Particularly if one’s own isn’t acute?”
He leaned forward and said quietly:
“I don’t think we have any right to assume that. Barbara’s feelings may not be intense, but Paul was her husband. She cared for him, probably more than either of us understand. This is a horrible business for her, for all of us. Look, do we have to talk now? We’re both in shock.”
“We have to talk, and there isn’t much time. Commander Adam Dalgliesh is coming to see me as soon as they’ve finished with whatever it is they’re doing at the church. Presumably he’ll want to interview Barbara, too. In time, probably sooner than later, they’ll get round to you. I have to know what you propose to tell them.”
“This Adam Dalgliesh, isn’t he some kind of poet? An odd hobby for a policeman.”
“If he’s as good a detective as he is a poet, he’s a dangerous man. Don’t underestimate the police because of what you read in the upmarket papers.”
He said:
“I don’t underestimate the police, but I’ve no reason to fear them. I know that they combine a machismo enthusiasm for selective violence with a rigid adherence to middle-class morality, but you aren’t seriously suggesting that they’ll suspect me of cutting Paul’s throat because I go to bed with his wife? They may be out of touch with social reality but, surely, not that much out of touch.”
She thought: This is more like it, this is the real man.
She said calmly:
“I’m not saying they’ll suspect you. I’ve no doubt you’ll be able to provide a satisfactory alibi for last evening. But it will cause less trouble if neither of you lies about your relationship. I’d prefer not to have to lie about it myself. Naturally, I shan’t
volunteer the information. But it is possible that they will ask.”
“And why should they, Lady Ursula?”
“Because Commander Dalgliesh will liaise with Special Branch. My son was a Minister of the Crown, however briefly. Do you suppose there’s anything about a Minister’s private life, particularly a Minister in that department, which isn’t known to those people whose business it is to discover and document this kind of potential scandal? What sort of world do you think we’re living in?”
He got up and began slowly pacing in front of her. He said:
“I suppose I ought to have thought of that. I would have thought of it, given time. Paul’s death has been such an appalling shock. I don’t think my mind is working properly yet.”
“Then I suggest that it begin working. You and Barbara have to agree on your story. Better still, agree to tell the truth. I take it that Barbara was your mistress when you first introduced her to Hugo and that she remained your mistress after Hugo was killed and she married Paul.”
He stopped and turned to her.
“Believe me, Lady Ursula, it wasn’t intended, it wasn’t like that.”
“You mean that she and you graciously decided to abstain from your sexual liaison, at least until the honeymoon was over?”
He came and stood in front of her and looked down.
“I think there’s something I ought to say, but I’m afraid it isn’t, well, gentlemanly.” She thought but did not speak: That word is meaningless now. With you it probably always was. Before 1914, one could talk like that without sounding false or ridiculous, but not now. That word and the world it represented had gone forever, trodden into the mud of Flanders. She said:
“My son’s throat was cut. In the light of that brutality, I don’t think we need concern ourselves about gentility, spurious or otherwise. It’s about Barbara, of course.”
“Yes. There’s something you ought to understand if you don’t already. I may be her lover, but she doesn’t love me. She certainly doesn’t want to marry me. She’s as satisfied with me as she can be with any man. That’s because I understand her needs and I don’t make demands. Not many demands. We all make some. And, of course, I’m in love with her as far as I’m capable of loving anyone. That’s necessary to her. And she feels safe with me. But she wouldn’t get rid of a perfectly good husband and a title to marry me. Not by divorce. Certainly not by conniving at murder. You have to believe that if you and she are going to go on living together.”