Devices and Desires

by P. D. James

  “The Battersea Strangler? Is that likely, given the timing and the MO? Surely it isn’t a serious possibility?”

  “Highly unlikely but, as you know, Uncle is never happy unless every stone is explored and every avenue thoroughly upturned. I’ve put together some details and the Identikit just in case. As you know, we’ve had a couple of sightings. And I’ve let Rickards know that you’ll be on his patch. Remember Terry Rickards?”

  “I remember.”

  “Chief Inspector now, apparently. Done all right for himself in Norfolk. Better than he would have done if he’d stayed with us. And they tell me he’s married, which might have softened him a bit. Awkward cuss.”

  Dalgliesh said: “I shall be on his patch but not, thank God, on his team. And if they do lay hands on the Whistler, why should I do you out of a day in the country?”

  “I hate the country and I particularly loathe flat country. Think of the public money you’ll be saving. I’ll come down—or is it up?—if he’s worth looking at. Decent of you, Adam. Have a good leave.”

  Only Cummings would have had the cheek. But the request was not unreasonable, made, as it was, to a colleague his senior only by a matter of months, and one who had always preached co-operation and the common-sense use of resources. And it was unlikely that his holiday would be interrupted by the need to take even a cursory glance at the Whistler, Norfolk’s notorious serial killer, dead or alive. He had been at his work for fifteen months now and the latest victim—Valerie Mitchell, wasn’t it?—was his fourth. These cases were invariably difficult, time-consuming and frustrating, depending as they often did more on good luck than good detection. As he made his way down the ramp to the underground car-park he glanced at his watch. In three-quarters of an hour he would be on his way. But first there was unfulfilled business at his publisher’s.

  3

  The lift at Messrs. Herne & Illingworth in Bedford Square was almost as ancient as the house itself, a monument both to the firm’s obstinate adherence to a bygone elegance and to a slightly eccentric inefficiency behind which a more thrustful policy was taking shape. As he was borne upwards in a series of disconcerting jerks, Dalgliesh reflected that success, although admittedly more agreeable than failure, has its concomitant disadvantages. One of them, in the person of Bill Costello, Publicity Director, was waiting for him in the claustrophobic fourth-floor office above.

  The change in his own poetic fortunes had coincided with changes in the firm. Herne & Illingworth still existed insofar as their names were printed or embossed on book covers under the firm’s ancient and elegant colophon, but the house was now part of a multinational corporation which had recently added books to canned goods, sugar and textiles. Old Sebastian Herne had sold one of London’s few remaining individual publishing houses for eight and a half million and had promptly married an extremely pretty publicity assistant, who was only waiting for the deal to be concluded before, with some misgivings but a prudent regard for her future, relinquishing the status of newly acquired mistress for that of wife. Herne had died within three months, provoking much ribald comment but few regrets. Throughout his life Sebastian Herne had been a cautious, conventional man who reserved eccentricity, imagination and occasional risk-taking for his publishing. For thirty years he had lived as a faithful, if unimaginative, husband, and Dalgliesh reflected that, if a man lives for nearly seventy years in comparatively blameless conventionality, that is probably what his nature requires. Herne had died less of sexual exhaustion—assuming that to be as medically credible as puritans would like to believe—than from a fatal exposure to the contagion of fashionable sexual morality.

  The new management promoted their poets vigorously, perhaps seeing the poetry list as a valuable balance to the vulgarity and soft pornography of their bestselling novelists, whom they packaged with immense care and some distinction, as if the elegance of the jacket and the quality of the print could elevate highly commercial banality into literature. Bill Costello, appointed the previous year as Publicity Director, didn’t see why Faber and Faber should have a monopoly when it came to the imaginative publicizing of poetry, and was successful in promoting the poetry list despite the rumour that he never himself read a line of modern verse. His only known interest in verse was his presidency of the McGonagall Club, whose members met on the first Tuesday of every month at a City pub to eat the landlady’s famous steak-and-kidney pudding, put down an impressive amount of drink and recite to each other the more risible efforts of arguably Britain’s worst poet ever. A fellow poet had once given Dalgliesh his own explanation: “The poor devil has to read so much incomprehensible modern verse that you can’t wonder that he needs an occasional dose of comprehensible nonsense. It’s like a faithful husband occasionally taking therapeutic relief at the local cat-house.” Dalgliesh thought the theory ingenious but unlikely. There was no evidence that Costello read any of the verse he so assiduously promoted. He greeted his newest candidate for media fame with a mixture of dogged optimism and slight apprehension, as if knowing that he was faced with a hard nut to crack.

  His small, rather wistful and childish face was curiously at odds with his Billy Bunter figure. His main problem was apparently whether to wear his belt above or below his paunch. Above was said to indicate optimism, below a sign of depression. Today it was slung only just above the scrotum, proclaiming a pessimism which the subsequent conversation served only to justify.

  Eventually Dalgliesh said firmly: “No, Bill, I shall not parachute into Wembley Stadium holding the book in one hand and a microphone in the other. Nor shall I compete with the station announcer by bawling my verses at the Waterloo commuters. The poor devils are only trying to catch their trains.”

  “That’s been done. It’s old hat. And it’s nonsense about Wembley. Can’t think how you got hold of that. No, listen, this is really exciting. I’ve spoken to Colin McKay and he’s very enthusiastic. We’re hiring a red double-decker bus, touring the country. Well, as much of the country as we can in ten days. I’ll get Clare to show you the rough-out and the schedule.”

  Dalgliesh said gravely: “Like a political-campaign bus: posters, slogans, loudspeakers, balloons.”

  “No point in having it if we don’t let people know it’s coming.”

  “They’ll know that all right with Colin on board. How are you going to keep him sober?”

  “A fine poet, Adam. He’s a great admirer of yours.”

  “Which doesn’t mean he’d welcome me as a travelling companion. What are you thinking of calling it? Poets’ Progress? The Chaucer Touch? Verse on Wheels—or is that too like the WI? The Poetry Bus? That has the merit of simplicity.”

  “We’ll think of something. I rather like Poets’ Progress.”

  “Stopping where?”

  “Precincts, village halls, schools, pubs, motorway cafés, anywhere where there’s an audience. It’s an exciting prospect. We were thinking of hiring a train, but the bus has more flexibility.”

  “And it’s cheaper.”

  Costello ignored the innuendo. He said: “Poets upstairs; drinks, refreshments downstairs. Readings from the platform. National publicity, radio and TV. We start from the Embankment. There’s a chance of Channel Four and, of course, Kaleidoscope. We’re counting on you, Adam.”

  “No,” said Dalgliesh firmly. “Not even for the balloons.”

  “For God’s sake, Adam, you write the stuff. Presumably you want people to read it—well, buy it anyway. There’s tremendous public interest in you, particularly after that last case, the Berowne murder.”

  “They’re interested in a poet who catches murderers, or a policeman who writes poetry, not in the verse.”

  “What does it matter as long as they’re interested? And don’t tell me that the Commissioner wouldn’t like it. That’s an old cop-out.”

  “All right, I won’t, but he wouldn’t.”

  And there was after all nothing new to be said. He had heard the questions innumerable times and he had done his best
to answer them, with honesty if not with enthusiasm. “Why does a sensitive poet like you spend his time catching murderers?” “Which is the more important to you, the poetry or the policing?” “Does it hinder or help, being a detective?” “Why does a successful detective write poetry?” “What was your most interesting case, Commander? Do you ever feel like writing a poem about it?” “The love poems, is the woman you’ve written them to alive or dead?” Dalgliesh wondered whether Philip Larkin had been badgered about what it felt like to be both poet and librarian, or Roy Fuller on how he managed to combine poetry with law.

  He said: “All the questions are predictable. It would save everyone a great deal of trouble if I answered them on tape; then you could broadcast them from the bus.”

  “It wouldn’t be at all the same thing. It’s you personally they want to hear. Anyone would think you didn’t want to be read.”

  And did he want to be read? Certainly he wanted some people to read him, one person in particular, and having read the poems he wanted her to approve. Humiliating but true. As for the others: well, he supposed that the truth was that he wanted people to read the poems but not be coerced into buying them, an overfastidiousness which he could hardly expect Herne & Illingworth to share. He was aware of Bill’s anxious, supplicating eyes, like those of a small boy who sees the bowl of sweets rapidly disappearing from his reach. His reluctance to co-operate seemed to him typical of much in himself that he disliked. There was a certain illogicality, surely, in wanting to be published but not caring particularly whether he was bought. The fact that he found the more public manifestations of fame distasteful didn’t mean that he was free of vanity, only that he was better at controlling it and that in him it took a more reticent form. After all, he had a job, an assured pension and now his aunt’s considerable fortune. He didn’t have to care. He saw himself as unreasonably privileged compared with Colin McKay, who probably saw him—and who could blame Colin?—as a snobbish, oversensitive dilettante.

  He was grateful when the door opened and Nora Gurney, the firm’s cookery editor, came briskly in, reminding him as she always did of an intelligent insect, an impression reinforced by the bright exophthalmic eyes behind huge round spectacles, familiar fawn jumper in circular ribbing and flat pointed shoes. She had looked exactly the same since Dalgliesh had first known her.

  Nora Gurney had become a power in British publishing by the expedient of longevity (no one could remember when she had first come to Herne & Illingworth) and a firm conviction that power was her due. It was likely that she would continue to exercise it under the new dispensation. Dalgliesh had last met her three months previously at one of the firm’s periodic parties, given for no particular reason as far as he could tell, unless to reassure the authors, by the familiarity of the wine and canapés, that they were still in business and basically the same lovable old firm. The guest list had chiefly comprised their most prestigious writers in the main categories, a ploy which had added to the general atmosphere of inadvertence and fractionized unease: the poets had drunk too much and had become lachrymose or amorous as their natures dictated; the novelists had herded together in a corner like recalcitrant dogs commanded not to bite; the academics, ignoring their hosts and fellow guests, had argued volubly among themselves; and the cooks had ostentatiously rejected their half-bitten canapés on the near est available hard surface with expressions of disgust, pained surprise or mild, speculative interest. Dalgliesh had been pinned in a corner by Nora Gurney, who had wanted to discuss the practicality of the theory she had developed: Since every set of fingerprints was unique, could not the whole country be printed, the data stored on a computer and research carried out to discover whether certain combinations of lines and whorls were indicative of criminal tendencies? That way crime could be prevented rather than cured. Dalgliesh had pointed out that, since criminal tendencies were universal, to judge from the places where his fellow guests had parked their cars, the data would be unmanageable, apart from the logistical and ethical problems of mass fingerprinting and the discouraging fact that crime, even supposing the comparison with disease to be valid, was, like disease, easier to diagnose than to cure. It had almost been a relief when a formidable female novelist, vigorously corseted in a florid cretonne two-piece which made her look like a walking sofa, had borne him off to pull out a crumple of parking tickets from her voluminous handbag and angrily demand what he was proposing to do about them.

  The Herne & Illingworth cookery list was small but was strong, its best writers having a solid reputation for reliability, originality and good writing. Miss Gurney was passionately committed to her job and her writers, seeing the novels and verse as irritating if necessary adjuncts to the main business of the house, which was to nourish and publish her darlings. It was rumoured that she herself was an indifferent cook, one more indication of the firm British conviction, not uncommon in more elevated if less useful spheres of human activity, that there is nothing so fatal to success as knowing your subject. It didn’t surprise Dalgliesh that she had seen his arrival as fortuitous and the chore of delivering Alice Mair’s proofs as a near-sacred privilege. She said: “I suppose they’ve called you in to help catch the Whistler.”

  “No, that, I’m thankful to say, is a job for the Norfolk CID. Calling in the Yard happens more often in fiction than real life.”

  “It’s convenient that you’re driving to Norfolk, whatever the reason. I wouldn’t really wish to trust these proofs to the post. But I thought your aunt lived in Suffolk? And surely someone said that Miss Dalgliesh had died.”

  “She did live in Suffolk until five years ago, when she moved to Norfolk. And, yes, my aunt has died.”

  “Oh well, Suffolk or Norfolk, there’s not a lot of difference. But I’m sorry she’s dead.” She seemed for a moment to contemplate human mortality and to compare the two counties to the disadvantage of both, then said: “If Miss Mair isn’t at home you won’t leave this at the door, will you? I know that people are extraordinarily trusting in country districts but it would be quite disastrous if these proofs were lost. If Alice isn’t at home her brother, Dr. Alex Mair, may be. He’s the Director of the nuclear-power station at Larksoken. But perhaps, on second thoughts, you’d better not hand it to him either. Men can be extremely unreliable.”

  Dalgliesh was tempted to point out that one of the country’s foremost physicists, who was responsible for an atomic-power station and, if the papers were to be believed, was strongly tipped for the new post of nuclear-power supremo, could presumably be trusted with a parcel of proofs. He said: “If she’s at home, I’ll hand it to Miss Mair personally. If she isn’t, I’ll keep it until she is.”

  “I’ve telephoned to say that it’s on its way, so she’ll be expecting you. I’ve printed the address very clearly. Martyr’s Cottage. I expect you know how to get there.”

  Costello said sourly: “He can map-read. He’s a policeman, remember.”

  Dalgliesh said that he knew Martyr’s Cottage and had briefly met Alexander Mair but not his sister. His aunt had lived very quietly, but neighbours sharing the same remote district inevitably do get to know each other and, although Alice Mair had been away from home at the time, her brother had made a formal visit of condolence to the mill after Miss Dalgliesh’s death.

  He took possession of the parcel, which was surprisingly large and heavy and crisscrossed with an intimidating pattern of Sellotape, and was slowly borne downwards to the basement, which gave access to the firm’s small car-park and his waiting Jaguar.

  4

  Once free of the knotted tentacles of the eastern suburbs, Dalgliesh made good time, and by 3.00 he was driving through Lydsett Village. Here a right turn took him off the coastal road onto what was little more than a smoothly macadamed track bordered by water-filled ditches and fringed by a golden haze of reeds, their lumbered heads straining in the wind. And now, for the first time, he thought that he could smell the North Sea, that potent but half-illusory tang evoking nostalgic memorie
s of childhood holidays, of solitary adolescent walks as he struggled with his first poems, of his aunt’s tall figure at his side, binoculars round her neck, striding towards the haunts of her beloved birds. And here, barring the road, was the familiar old farm gate still in place. Its continued presence always surprised him, since it served no purpose that he could see except symbolically to cut off the headland and to give travellers pause to consider whether they really wanted to continue. It swung open at his touch, but closing it, as always, was more difficult, and he lugged and half-lifted it into place and slipped the circle of wire over the gatepost with a familiar sensation of having turned his back on the workaday world and entered country which, no matter how frequent his visits, would always be alien territory.

  He was driving now across the open headland towards the fringe of pine trees which bordered the North Sea. The only house to his left was the old Victorian rectory, a square, red-bricked building, incongruous behind its struggling hedge of rhododendron and laurel. To his right the ground rose gently towards the southern cliffs. He could see the dark mouth of a concrete pillbox, undemolished since the war, and as seemingly indestructible as the great hulks of wave-battered concrete, remnants of the old fortifications which lay half-submerged in the sand along part of the beach. To the north the broken arches and stumps of the ruined Benedictine abbey gleamed golden in the afternoon sun against the crinkled blue of the sea. Breasting a small ridge, he glimpsed for the first time the topsail of Larksoken Mill and beyond it, against the skyline, the great grey bulk of Larksoken Nuclear Power Station. The road he was on, veering left, would lead eventually to the station but was, he knew, seldom used, since normal traffic and all heavy vehicles used the new access road to the north. The headland was empty and almost bare; the few straggling trees, distorted by the wind, struggled to keep their precarious hold in the uncompromising soil. And now he was passing a second and more dilapidated pillbox, and it struck him that the whole headland had the desolate look of an old battlefield, the corpses long since carted away but the air vibrating still with the gunfire of long-lost battles, while the power station loomed over it like a grandiose modern monument to the unknown dead.