Original Sin

by P. D. James

  ‘It suggests a number of possibilities, spite against Maybrick, spite against the Press, spite against de Witt, or a somewhat warped sense of humour.’

  ‘Peverells didn’t report the theft to the police?’

  ‘No, Adam, they didn’t place their confidence in our wonderful boys in blue. I don’t want to be unkind but the police haven’t an impressive clear-up rate when it comes to domestic burglary. The partners took the view that they stood just as good a chance of success and would cause less upset to staff if they undertook their own inquiry.’

  ‘By whom? Were any of them free of suspicion?’

  ‘That, of course, is the difficulty. They weren’t then and they aren’t now. I imagine that Etienne adopted the Head Beak’s strategy. You know, “If the boy who’s responsible will come to my study after prep in confidence and return the documents no more will be heard of the matter.” It never worked at school. I don’t suppose it was more successful at Peverells. It was obviously an inside job, and it isn’t as if they employ a large staff, only about twenty-five people in addition to the five partners. Most of them are old faithfuls, of course, and the story is that the few who aren’t have alibis.’

  ‘So it’s still a mystery.’

  ‘And so is the second incident. The second serious incident – there have probably been minor mischiefs which they’ve managed to keep quiet about. This one concerns Stilgoe so it’s just as well that so far they’ve managed to keep it from him and it hasn’t become public property. The old boy really would have something to feed his paranoia. Apparently when the page proofs had been read and a number of alterations agreed with Stilgoe they were packaged and left overnight under the counter in the reception office where they were due to be collected next morning. Someone opened the package and tampered with them, changed a number of the names, altered punctuation, deleted a couple of sentences. Fortunately the printer who received them was intelligent and thought some of the changes odd, so he telephoned to check. The partners have managed, God knows how, to keep this contretemps secret from most of the staff at Innocent House and, of course, from Stilgoe. It would have been extremely damaging to the firm if it had got out. I understand all parcels and papers are locked up overnight now and no doubt they’ve tightened security in other ways.’

  Dalgliesh wondered whether the perpetrator had from the first intended the alterations to be discovered. They seemed to have been made with very little attempt to deceive. It surely wouldn’t have been difficult to alter the page proofs in a way which would seriously damage the book without arousing the suspicions of the printer. It was odd, too, that the poison pen hadn’t mentioned the alterations to Stilgoe’s proofs. Either he or she hadn’t known, which would absolve the five partners, or the poison pen had wanted to frighten Stilgoe but not to provide evidence which would justify him in withdrawing the book. It was an interesting little mystery but not one on which he proposed to waste the time of a senior police officer.

  Nothing more was said about the Peverell Press until they were taking their coffee in the library. Ackroyd leaned forward and asked a little anxiously, ‘Can I tell Lord Stilgoe that you’ll try to reassure his wife?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Conrad, but no. I’ll get him a note to say that the police have no cause to suspect foul play in any of the cases which concern him. I doubt whether it will do much good if his wife is superstitious, but that is her misfortune and his problem.’

  ‘And the other trouble at Innocent House?’

  ‘If Gerard Etienne believes that the law is being broken and wants the police to investigate he must get in touch with his local station.’

  ‘Just like anybody else?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be prepared to go to Innocent House and have an informal word with him?’

  ‘No, Conrad. Not even for a sight of the Wyatt ceiling.’

  5

  On the afternoon of Sonia Clements’ cremation Gabriel Dauntsey and Frances Peverell shared a taxi from the crematorium back to number 12 Innocent Walk. Frances was very silent on the journey, sitting a little apart from Dauntsey, gazing out of the window. She was hatless, the light brown hair a shining helmet which curved to touch the collar of her grey coat. Her shoes, tights and handbag were black, and there was a black chiffon scarf knotted at her neck. They were, Dauntsey remembered, the same clothes she had worn at her father’s cremation, a contemporary understated mourning, nicely holding the balance between ostentation and a decent respect. The combination of grey and black in its sombre simplicity made her look very young and emphasized what he most liked in her, a gentle old-fashioned formality which reminded him of the young women of his youth. She sat distanced and very still, but her hands were restless. He knew that the ring she wore on the third finger of her right hand had been her mother’s engagement ring and he watched while she twisted it obsessively under the black suede of her glove. He wondered for a moment whether to reach out and silently take her hand, but resisted the impulse to a gesture which he told himself might only embarrass them both. He could hardly keep holding her hand all the way back to Innocent Walk.

  They were fond of each other; he was, he knew, the one person at Innocent House in whom she felt she could occasionally confide; but neither was demonstrative. They lived a short staircase apart but visited each other only by invitation, each anxious not to intrude or impose on the other, or to initiate an intimacy which the other might find unwelcome or come to regret. As a result, liking each other, enjoying each other’s company, they saw less of each other than if they had lived miles apart. When they were together they spoke chiefly of books, poetry, plays they had seen, programmes on the television, seldom of people. Frances was too fastidious to gossip and he was equally reluctant to get drawn into controversy about the new regime. He had his job, his flat on the bottom two floors of number 12 Innocent Walk. Neither might be his much longer, but he was seventy-six, too old to fight. He knew that her flat above his had an attraction for him which it was prudent to resist. Sitting in the high-backed chair, with the curtains drawn against the gentle half-imagined sighing of the river, stretching out his legs before the open fire after one of their rare dinners together when she had left him to make coffee, he would hear her quietly moving about the kitchen and would feel a seductive peace and contentment stealing over him which it would be only too easy to make a regular part of his life.

  Her sitting-room stretched the whole length of the house. Everything in it was attractive; the elegant proportions of the original marble fireplace, the oil of an eighteenth-century Peverell with his wife and children above the mantelshelf, the small Queen Anne bureau, the mahogany bookcases on each side of the fire, topped with a pediment and with two fine Parian heads of a veiled bride, the Regency dining table and six chairs, the subtle colours of the rugs glowing against the gold of the polished floor. How simple, now, to establish an intimacy which would open to him this gentle feminine comfort so different from his own bleak and underfurnished rooms below. Sometimes, if she telephoned with an invitation to dinner, he would invent a prior engagement and take himself out to a local pub, filling the long hours in the smoke and clatter, anxious not to return too early since his front door in Innocent Lane lay directly under her kitchen windows.

  This evening he felt that she might welcome his company but was unwilling to ask for it. He wasn’t sorry. The cremation had been depressing enough without having to discuss its banalities; he had had enough of death for one day. When the taxi drew up in Innocent Walk and she said an almost hurried goodbye and unlocked her front door without once looking back, he felt a sense of relief. But two hours later, after he had finished his soup and the scrambled eggs and smoked salmon which was his favourite evening meal and which he prepared, as always, with care, keeping the gas low, drawing the mixture lovingly from the sides of the pan, adding a final spoonful of cream, he pictured her eating her solitary supper and regretted his selfishness. This wasn’t a good night for her to be
alone. He telephoned and said: ‘I’m wondering, Frances, whether you would care for a game of chess.’

  He could tell from the joyous rise in her voice that the suggestion had come as a relief. ‘Yes, I would, Gabriel. Do please come up. Yes, I’d love a game.’

  Her dining table was still set when he arrived. She always ate with some formality even when alone, but he could see that the meal had been as simple as his own. The cheese board and the fruit bowl were on the table and she had obviously had soup but nothing else. He could see, too, that she had been crying.

  She said, smiling, trying to make her voice cheerful: ‘I’m so glad you’ve come up. It gives me an excuse to open a bottle of wine. It’s odd how much one dislikes drinking alone. I suppose it’s all those early warnings about solitary drinking being the beginning of the slide into alcoholism.’

  She fetched a bottle of Château Margaux and he came forward to open it. They didn’t speak again until they were settled, glasses in hand, before the fire, when, looking into the flames, she said: ‘He should have been there. Gerard should have been there.’

  ‘He doesn’t like funerals.’

  ‘Oh Gabriel, who does? And it was awful, wasn’t it? Daddy’s cremation was bad enough but this was worse. That pathetic clergyman who did his best but who didn’t know her and didn’t know any of us, trying to sound sincere, praying to the God she didn’t believe in, talking about eternal life when she didn’t even have a life worth living here on earth.’

  He said gently: ‘We can’t know that. We can’t be the judge of another’s happiness or unhappiness.’

  ‘She wanted to die. Isn’t that evidence enough? At least Gerard came to Daddy’s funeral. He more or less had to, though, didn’t he? The crown prince saying farewell to the old king. It wouldn’t have looked good if he’d stayed away. After all, there were important people there, writers, publishers, the press, people he wanted to impress. There was no one important at today’s cremation, so he didn’t have to bother. But he ought to have come. After all, he killed her.’

  Dauntsey said more firmly: ‘Frances, you mustn’t say that. There’s absolutely no evidence that anything Gerard did or said caused Sonia’s death. You know what she wrote in the suicide note. If she had planned to kill herself because Gerard had sacked her I think she would have said so. The note was explicit. You must never say that outside this room. This kind of rumour can be deeply damaging. Promise me – it is important.’

  ‘All right, I promise. I haven’t said it to anyone except you, but I’m not the only one at Innocent House who’s thinking it, and some are saying it. Kneeling there in that awful chapel I was trying to pray, for Daddy, for her, for all of us. But it was all so meaningless, so futile. All I could think about was Gerard, Gerard who ought to have been sitting there in the front row with us, Gerard who was my lover, Gerard who isn’t my lover any more. It’s so humiliating. I know now, of course, what it was all about. Gerard thought, “Poor Frances, twenty-nine and still a virgin. I must do something about that. Give her the experience of her life, show her what she’s missing.” His good deed for the day. His good deed for three months, rather. I suppose I lasted longer than most. And the ending was so sordid, so messy. Isn’t it always? Gerard is very good at beginning a love affair, but he doesn’t know how to end it, not with any dignity. But then, nor do I. And I was deluded enough to think that I was different from his other women, that this time he was serious, in love, wanting commitment, marriage. I thought we would run Peverell Press together, live in Innocent House, bring up our children here, even change the name of the firm. I thought that would please him. Peverell and Etienne. Etienne and Peverell. I used to practise the alternatives, trying to decide which sounded better. I thought he wanted what I wanted – marriage, children, a proper home, a shared life. Is that so unreasonable? Oh God, Gabriel, I feel so stupid, so ashamed.’

  She had never before spoken so openly to him, never shown the depth of her anguish. It was almost as if she had been silently rehearsing the words, waiting for this moment of relief when, at last, she was with someone she could trust and in whom she could confide. But coming from Frances, who was always so sensitive, reticent and proud, this uncontrolled pouring forth of bitterness and self-disgust appalled him. Perhaps it was the funeral, the memory of that earlier cremation, which had released the pent-up hatred and humiliation. He wasn’t sure that he could cope with it but knew that he must try. This fluency of pain demanded more than the soft pabulum of comfort, ‘he isn’t worth it, forget him, the pain will pass with time’. But that last was true, the pain did pass with time, whether it was the pain of betrayal or the pain of bereavement. Who knew that better than he? He thought: the tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.

  He said gently: ‘The things you want – children, marriage, home, sex – are reasonable desires, some would say very proper desires. Children are our only hope of immortality. They aren’t things to be ashamed of. It is your misfortune not your shame that Etienne’s desires and yours didn’t coincide.’ He paused, then said, wondering if it were wise, whether she would find the words crudely insensitive: ‘James is in love with you.’

  ‘I suppose so. Poor James. He hasn’t said so, but he doesn’t need to, does he? Do you know, I think I could have loved James if it hadn’t been for Gerard. And I don’t even like Gerard. I never did, even when I wanted him most. That’s what’s so terrible about sex, it can exist without love, without liking, even without respect. Oh, I tried to fool myself. When he was insensitive or selfish or crude I made excuses. I reminded myself how brilliant he was, how handsome, how amusing, what a wonderful lover. He was all those things. He is all those things. I told myself that it was unreasonable to apply to Gerard the petty standards one applied to others. And I loved him. When you love, you don’t judge. And now I hate him. I didn’t know that I could hate, really hate, another person. It’s different from hating a thing, a political creed, a philosophy, a social evil. It’s so concentrated, so physical, it makes me feel ill. My hate is the last thing I think about at night and I wake up with it every morning But it’s wrong, a sin. It has to be wrong. I feel I’m living in mortal sin and I can’t get absolution because I can’t stop the hating.’

  Dauntsey said: ‘I don’t think in those terms, sin, absolution. But hate is dangerous. It perverts justice.’

  ‘Oh justice! I’ve never expected much in the way of justice. And hate has made me so boring. I bore myself. I know I bore you, dear Gabriel, but you’re the only one I can talk to and sometimes, like tonight, I feel I have to talk or I might go mad. And you’re so wise, that’s your reputation anyway.’

  He said drily: ‘It’s easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It’s only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.’

  ‘But when you do speak you’re worth listening to. Gabriel, tell me what I must do.’

  ‘To get rid of him?’

  ‘To get rid of this pain.’

  ‘There are the usual expedients; drink, drugs, suicide. The first two lead to the third, it’s just a slower, more expensive, more humiliating route. I don’t advise it. Or you could murder him, but I don’t advise that either. Do it in fantasy as ingeniously as you like, but not in reality. Not unless you want to rot for ten years in prison.’

  She said: ‘Could you stand that?’

  ‘Not for ten years. I might manage three but not more. There are better ways of coping with pain than death, his death or yours. Tell yourself that pain is part of life, to feel pain is to be alive. I envy you. If I could feel such pain I might still be a poet. Value yourself. You’re no less a human being because one selfish, arrogant, insensitive man doesn’t find you lovable. Do you really need to value yourself by the standard of any man, let alone Gerard Etienne? Remind yourself that the only power he has over you is the power that you give him. Take that power away and you take away the hurt. Remember, Frances, you don’t have to stay with the fi
rm. And don’t say that there has always been a Peverell at the Peverell Press.’

  ‘There has since 1792, even before we moved into Innocent House. Daddy wouldn’t have wanted me to be the last.’

  ‘Someone has to be, someone will be. You owed your father a certain duty in life but it ceased with his death. We can’t be in thrall to the dead.’

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them, half expecting her to ask, ‘What about you? Aren’t you in thrall to the dead, your wife, your lost children?’ He went on quickly: ‘What would you like to do if you had a free choice?’

  ‘Work with children, I think. Perhaps train as a primary school teacher. I’ve got my degree. I suppose it would only mean another year’s training. And then I think I’d like to work in the country or in a small country town.’

  ‘Then do it. You do have a free choice. But don’t go searching for happiness. Find the right job, the right place, the right life. The happiness will come if you’re lucky. Most of us get our share of it. Some of us get more than our share even if it’s concentrated into a little space of time.’

  She said: ‘I’m surprised you don’t quote Blake, that poem about “joy and pain being woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine”. How does it go?

  “Man was made for Joy and Woe;

  And when this we rightly know,

  Thro’ the World we safely go.”

  Only you don’t believe in the soul divine, do you?’

  ‘No, that would be the ultimate self-deception.’

  ‘But you do go safely through the world. And youunderstand about hate. I think I’ve always known that you hated Gerard.’

  He said: ‘No, you’re wrong, Frances. I don’t hate him. I feel nothing for him, nothing at all. And that makes me far more dangerous to him than you can ever be. Hadn’t we better start a game?’

  He took out the heavy chessboard from the corner cupboard and she moved the table between the armchairs then helped him to set out the pieces. Holding out his clenched fist for her to choose black or white he said: ‘I think you ought to give me a pawn, the tribute of youth to age.’