by P. D. James
Treeves said, T regard that as coming close to an accusation of murder.”
Harkness handed the paper to Dalgliesh. He said, “But without evidence, with no motive alleged and no suspect named, isn’t it as likely to be the work of some prankster, perhaps someone who wants to make trouble for the college?”
Dalgliesh handed the paper back to Treeves, but it was waved away impatiently.
Treeves said, “Obviously it’s a possibility, among others. I imagine you won’t rule that out. Personally I take a more serious view. Produced on a computer, of course, so no chance of that usual little “e” out of alignment which always crops up in crime fiction. You needn’t trouble to test for fingerprints, I’ve had that done. Confidentially, of course. No result, but I didn’t expect one. And the writer is educated, I’d say. He or she has got the punctuation right. In this under-educated age I’d suggest that means someone middle-aged rather than young.”
Dalgliesh said, “And written in a way likely to spur you into action.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re here, sir, aren’t you?”
Harkness asked, “You said that your son was adopted. What was his background ?”
“He had none. His mother was fourteen when he was born, his father a year older. He was conceived against a concrete pillar in the Westway underpass. He was white, healthy and new-born a desirable commodity in the adoption market. To put it bluntly, we were lucky to get him. Why the question?”
“You said that you were taking this as an accusation of murder. I was wondering who, if anyone, would benefit from his death.”
“Every death benefits someone. The only beneficiary here is my second son, Marcus, whose trust fund when he reaches thirty will now be augmented and his eventual inheritance greater than it might otherwise have been. As he was at school at the relevant time, we can exclude him.”
“Ronald hadn’t written or spoken to you about being depressed or unhappy?”
“Not to me, but then I’m probably the last person he would have confided in. But I don’t think we’re understanding each other. I’m not here to be interrogated or to take part in your investigation. I’ve told you the little I know. Now I want you to take it over.”
Harkness glanced at Dalgliesh. He said, “It’s a matter, of course, for the Suffolk Police. They’re an efficient force.”
“I’ve no doubt they are. Presumably they get inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and certified as efficient. But they were part of the original inquiry. I want you to take it over. Specifically, I want Commander Dalgliesh to take it over.”
The Assistant Commissioner looked at Dalgliesh and seemed about to protest, then thought better of it.
Dalgliesh said, “I’m due to take some leave next week and I plan to be in Suffolk for about a week. I know St. Anselm’s. I could have a word with the local police and with people at the college and see if there is a prima facie case for taking the matter further. But with the inquest verdict and your son’s body cremated it’s highly unlikely that anything new will come to light now.”
Harkness found his voice.
“It’s unorthodox.”
Treeves got to his feet.
“It may be unorthodox, but it seems to me perfectly sensible. I want discretion, that’s why I don’t intend to go back to the local people. There was enough fuss in the local papers when the news of his death broke. I don’t want headlines in the tabloids suggesting that there was something mysterious about the death.”
Harkness said, “But you think there was?”
“Of course there was. Ronald’s death was either an accident, suicide or murder. The first is improbable, the second inexplicable, which leaves the third. You’ll get in touch with me, of course, when you have reached a conclusion.”
He was rising from his chair when Harkness asked, “Were you happy, Sir Abed, about your son’s choice of career?” He paused, then added, “Job, vocation, whatever.”
Something in his tone, an uneasy compromise between tact and interrogation, made it apparent that he hadn’t expected his question to be well-received, and it wasn’t. Sir Alred’s voice was quiet, but held an unmistakable warning.
“What precisely is that supposed to mean?”
Having started, Harkness had no intention of being intimidated.
“I was wondering whether your son had anything on his mind, a particular cause of worry.”
Sir Aired deliberately glanced at his wrist-watch. He said, “You’re suggesting suicide. I thought I’d made my position clear. That’s out. Out. Why the hell should he kill himself? He’d got what he wanted.”
Dalgliesh said quietly, “But if it wasn’t what you wanted ?”
“Of course it wasn’t what I wanted! A job with no future. The C of E will be defunct in twenty years if the present decline continues. Or it’ll be an eccentric sect concerned with maintaining old superstitions and ancient churches that is if the State hasn’t taken them over as national monuments. People might want the illusion of spirituality. No doubt by and large they believe in God, and the thought that death might be extinction isn’t agreeable. But they’ve stopped believing in heaven and they’re not afraid of hell, and they won’t start going to church. Ronald had education, intelligence, opportunities. He wasn’t stupid. He could have made something of his life. He knew what I felt and the matter was closed between us. He certainly wasn’t going to stick his head under a ton of sand to disoblige me.”
He got to his feet and nodded briefly to Harkness and Dalgliesh. The interview was over. Dalgliesh went down in the lift with him and then walked with him to where the chauffeur-driven Mercedes had glided to a stop. The timing, as he had expected, was perfect.
He had turned away when he was peremptorily called back.
Thrusting his head out of the window, Sir Aired said, “It’s occurred to you, I imagine, that Ronald could have been killed elsewhere and his body moved to the beach?”
“I think you can assume, Sir Aired, that it will have occurred to the Suffolk Police.”
“I’m not sure I share your confidence. It’s a thought anyway. Worth bearing in mind.”
He made no move to order his chauffeur, sitting immobile and expressionless as a statue at the wheel, to drive off. Instead he said as if on impulse, “Now here’s a matter that intrigues me. It occurred to me in church actually. I show my face from time to time, the annual City service, you know. I thought that when I had a spare moment I’d follow it up. It’s about the Creed.”
Dalgliesh was adept at concealing surprise. He asked gravely, “Which one, Sir Aired?”
“Is there more than one?”
“Three actually.”
“Good God! Well, take any one. They’re much the same, I suppose. How did they start? I mean, who wrote them?”
Dalgliesh, intrigued, was tempted to ask whether Sir Aired had discussed his question with his son, but prudence prevailed. He said, “I think a theologian would be more useful to you than I am, Sir Aired.”
“You’re a parson’s son, aren’t you? I thought you’d know. I haven’t the time to go asking around.”
Dalgliesh’s mind spun back to his father’s study at the Norfolk rectory, to facts either learned or picked up from browsing in his father’s library, to words he seldom spoke now but which seemed to have lodged in his mind since childhood. He said, “The Nicene Creed was formulated by the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century.” The date inexplicably came to mind.
“I think it was 325. The Emperor Constantine called the Council to settle the belief of the Church and deal with the Arian Heresy.”
“Why doesn’t the Church bring it up to date? We don’t look to the fourth century for our understanding of medicine or science or the nature of the universe. I don’t look to the fourth century when I run my companies. Why look to 325 for our understanding of God?”
Dalgliesh said, “You’d prefer a Creed for the twenty-first century?” He was tem
pted to ask whether Sir Aired had it in mind to write one. Instead he said, “I doubt whether any new council in a divided Christendom would arrive at a consensus. The Church no doubt takes the view that the bishops at Nicaea were divinely inspired.”
“It was a council of men, wasn’t it? Powerful men. They brought to it their private agendas, their prejudices, their rivalries. Essentially it was about power, who gets it, who yields it. You’ve sat on enough committees, you know how they work. Ever known one that was divinely inspired ?”
Dalgliesh said, “Not Home Office working parties, admittedly.” He added, “Are you thinking of writing to the Archbishop, or perhaps the Pope?”
Sir Aired gave him a sharp suspicious look but apparently decided that, if he were being teased, he would ignore or collude in it. He said, “Too busy. Anyway it’s a bit outside my province. Still, it’s interesting. You’d think that it would have occurred to them. You’ll let me know if anything turns up at St. Anselm’s. I’ll be out of the country for the next ten days, but there’s no hurry. If the boy was murdered I shall know what to do. If he killed himself, well that’s his business, but I’d like to know that too.”
He nodded and abruptly withdrew his head. He said to the driver, “All right, Norris, back to the office.”
The car glided away. Dalgliesh stared after it for a moment. With Aired what you saw was what you got. Hadn’t that been an overconfident, even presumptuous assessment? The man was more complex than that, in his mixture of naivety and subtlety, of arrogance and that far-ranging curiosity which, alighting incongruously on a subject, invested it immediately with the dignity of his personal interest. But Dalgliesh was still puzzled. The verdict on Ronald Treeves, even if surprising, had at least been merciful. Was there some other more intriguing reason than parental concern for his insistence on a further inquiry?
He returned to the seventh floor. Harkness was staring out of the window. Without turning, he said, “An extraordinary man. Had he anything else to say?”
“He’d like to rewrite the Nicene Creed.”
“The idea’s absurd.”
“But probably less harmful to the human race than most of his other activities.”
“I meant this proposal to waste the time of a senior officer reopening the inquiry into his son’s death. Still, he’s not going to let it rest. Will you set it up with Suffolk or shall I?”
“Better keep it as low-key as possible. Peter Jackson transferred there last year as AC. I’ll have a word with him. And I know something of St. Anselm’s. I stayed there as a boy for three summers. I don’t suppose any of the same staff are there, but they’ll probably see my arrival as more or less natural in the circumstances.”
“Do you think so? They may live remote from the world but I doubt they’ll be that naive. A Commander of the Met taking an interest in the accidental death of a student? Well, we haven’t much choice. Treeves isn’t going to let this go and we can hardly send a couple of sergeants to start nosing about on someone else’s patch. But if it is a suspicious death, Suffolk will have to take over whether Treeves likes it or not, and he can give over thinking that they can mount a murder investigation in secret. There’s this to be said for murder, once it’s out in the open we all stand on equal ground. That’s one thing even Treeves can’t manipulate to suit his convenience. It’s odd, though, isn’t it ? I mean, it’s odd his bothering, making a personal matter of it. If he wants to keep it out of the press, why resurrect it? And why take the letter seriously? He must get his share of letters from lunatics. You’d expect him to chuck this away with the rest of the rubbish.”
Dalgliesh was silent. Whatever the motive of the sender, the message hadn’t struck him as the work of someone deranged. Harkness moved closer to the window and stood, shoulders hunched, peering out as if the familiar panorama of towers and spires had suddenly become interestingly strange to him.
Without turning, he said, “He didn’t show any pity for the boy, did he? And it can’t have been easy for him the kid, I mean. He gets adopted, presumably because Treeves and his wife thought they couldn’t have children, and then she gets pregnant and a proper son arrives. The genuine article, your own flesh and blood, not a kid chosen for you by the Social Services department. And it isn’t unusual. I know a case. The adopted child always feels that he’s in the family under false pretences.”
The words had been spoken with barely controlled vehemence. There was a moment’s silence, then Dalgliesh said, “That may account for it, that or guilt. He couldn’t love the boy when he was alive, can’t even grieve for him now he’s dead, but he can see that he gets justice.”
Harkness turned and said brusquely, “What use is justice to the dead? Better to concentrate on justice for the living. But you’re probably right. Anyway, do what you can. I’ll put the Commissioner in the picture.”
He and Dalgliesh had been on Christian name terms for eight years, yet he spoke as if he were dismissing a sergeant.
The file for the meeting with the Home Secretary was ready on his desk, the annexes tabbed; his PA, as always, had been efficient. As he put the papers in his briefcase and went down in the lift Dalgliesh freed his mind from the preoccupations of the day and let it range free on the windswept coast of Ballard’s Mere.
So he was going back at last. Why, he wondered, hadn’t he returned before? His aunt had lived on the coast of East Anglia, at first in her cottage and then in the converted mill, and on his visits he could easily have made the journey to St. Anselm’s. Had it been an instinctive reluctance to court disappointment, the knowledge that one returns to a well-loved place always under judgement, burdened by the sad accretion of the years? And he would return as a stranger. Father Martin had been on the staff when he last visited but must have retired long ago; he would be eighty by now. He would bring to St. Anselm’s only unshared memories. And he would come uninvited and as a police officer to reopen, with little justification, a case that must have caused the staff at St. Anselm’s distress and embarrassment and which they had hoped to put behind them. But now he was returning, and he found that the prospect was suddenly pleasant.
He walked unheeding the undistinguished bureaucratic half-mile between Broadway and Parliament Square, but his mind inhabited a quieter, less frenetic scene: the sandy friable cliffs spilling onto a beach pitted with rain, the oak groynes half demolished by centuries of tides but still withstanding the sea’s onslaughts, the grit road which had once run a mile inland but was now perilously close to the cliff edge. And St. Anselm’s itself, the two crumbling Tudor towers flanking the front courtyard, the iron-bounded oak door and, to the rear of the great brick and stone Victorian mansion, the delicate cloisters enclosing the west court, the northerly one leading directly to the medieval church which serves the community as its chapel. He remembered that the students had worn cassocks when they were in college and brown worsted cloaks with hoods as a protection against the wind, never absent from that coast. He saw them, now surpliced for Evensong, filing into the church stalls, smelled the incense-scented air, saw the altar, with more candles than his Anglican father would have thought proper, and above the altar the framed painting by Rogier van der Weyden of the Holy Family. Would that still be there? And was that other possession, more secret, more mysterious and more jealously guarded, still hidden in the college, the Anselm papyrus?
He had spent only three summer holidays at the college. His father had exchanged ministries with a priest from a difficult inner city parish to give him at least a change of scene and tempo. Dalgliesh’s parents had been unwilling to immure him in an industrial city for most of the summer holiday and he had been invited to stay on at the rectory with the newcomers. But the news that The Revd Cuthbert Simpson and his wife had four children under the age of eight, including seven-year-old twins, had turned him against the idea; even at fourteen he had longed for privacy during the long holiday. So he had agreed to accept an invitation from the Warden at St. Anselm’s while being uneasily aware th
at his mother thought he would have shown a more generous spirit by offering to stay and help with the twins.
The college had been half empty with only a few overseas students choosing to remain. They and the priests had taken trouble to make his stay happy, setting up a wicket on the stretch of specially mown grass behind the church and bowling to him indefatigably. He remembered that the food had been greatly superior to school meals and, indeed, to those at the Rectory, and he had liked his guest-room even though it gave no view of the sea. But he had most enjoyed the solitary walks, south towards the mere or north towards Lowestoft, the freedom to use the library, the prevailing but never oppressive silence, the assurance that he could take possession of every new day in unquestioned liberty.
And then, during his second visit and on the third of August, there had been Sadie.
Father Martin had said, “Mrs. Millson’s granddaughter is coming to stay with her in her cottage. She’s about your age I think, Adam. It might be company for you.” Mrs. Millson had been the cook, even then in her sixties and certainly long since retired.
And Sadie had been company of a sort. She was a thin fifteen-year-old with fine corn-coloured hair which hung down each side of a narrow face, and small eyes of a remarkable grey flecked with green which on their first meeting stared at him with a resentful intensity. But she seemed happy enough to walk with him, seldom speaking, occasionally picking up a stone to hurl into the sea, or suddenly spurting ahead with fierce determination, then turning to wait for him, rather like a puppy chasing after a ball.
He remembered one day after a storm, when the sky had cleared but the wind was still high and great waves were crashing in with as much vehemence as they had during the dark hours of the night. They had sat side by side in the shelter of a groyne, passing a bottle of lemonade from mouth to mouth. He had written her a poem -more, he remembered, an exercise in trying to imitate Eliot (his most recent enthusiasm) than a tribute to genuine feeling. She had read it with furrowed brow, the small eyes almost invisible.
