Devices and Desires

by P. D. James

  Alice Mair said: “Perhaps because the imaginings are usually worse.”

  Meg Dennison said quietly: “You must have been terrified. I know I should have been. Alone and in darkness with such horror.”

  He shifted his body towards her and spoke as if it were important that she, of all those present, should understand.

  “No, not terrified, that was the surprising part. I was frightened, of course, but only for a second or two. After all, I didn’t imagine he’d wait around. He’d had his kicks. He isn’t interested in men anyway. I found myself thinking the ordinary, commonplace thoughts: I mustn’t touch anything. I mustn’t destroy the evidence. I’ve got to get the police. Then, walking back to the car, I started rehearsing what I’d say to them, almost as if I were concocting my story. I tried to explain why it was that I went into the bushes, tried to make it sound reasonable.”

  Alex Mair said: “What was there to justify? You did what you did. It sounds reasonable enough to me. The car was a danger slewed across the road. It would have been irresponsible just to drive on.”

  “It seemed to need a lot of explaining, then and later. Perhaps because all the subsequent police sentences began with ‘why.’ You get morbidly sensitive to your own motives. It’s almost as if you have to convince yourself that you didn’t do it.”

  Hilary Robarts said impatiently: “But the body—when you first went back for the torch and saw her, you were certain she was dead?”

  “Oh yes, I knew she was dead.”

  “How could you have known? It could have been very recent. Why didn’t you at least try to resuscitate her, give her the kiss of life? It would have been worth overcoming your natural repugnance.”

  Dalgliesh heard Meg Dennison make a small sound between a gasp and a groan. Lessingham looked at Hilary and said coolly: “It would have been if there had been the slightest point in it. I knew she was dead, let’s leave it at that. But don’t worry, if I ever find you in extremis I’ll endeavour to overcome my natural repugnance.”

  Hilary relaxed and gave a little self-satisfied smile, as if gratified to have stung him into a cheap retort. Her voice was more natural as she said: “I’m surprised you weren’t treated as a suspect. After all, you were the first on the scene, and this is the second time you’ve been—well, almost—in at the death. It’s becoming a habit.”

  The last words were spoken almost under her breath, but her eyes were fixed on Lessingham’s face. He met her glance and said, with equal quietness: “But there’s a difference, isn’t there? I had to watch Toby die, remember? And this time no one will even try to pretend that it isn’t murder.”

  The fire gave a sudden crackle, and the top log rolled over and fell into the hearth. Mair, his face flushed, kicked it viciously back. Hilary Robarts, perfectly calm, turned to Dalgliesh.

  “But I’m right, aren’t I? Don’t the police usually suspect the person who finds the body?”

  He said quietly: “Not necessarily.”

  Lessingham had placed the bottle of claret on the hearth. Now he leaned down and carefully refilled his glass. He said: “They might have suspected me, I suppose, but for a number of lucky circumstances. I was obviously out on my lawful occasions. I have an alibi for at least two of the previous killings. From their point of view I was depressingly free of blood. I suppose they could see I was in a mild state of shock. And there was no sign of the ligature which strangled her, nor of the knife.”

  Hilary said sharply: “What knife? The Whistler’s a strangler. Everyone knows that’s how he kills.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mention that, did I? She was strangled all right, or I suppose she was. I didn’t keep the torchlight on her face longer than was necessary. But he marks his victims, apart from stuffing their mouths with hair. Pubic hair, incidentally. I saw that all right. There was the letter L cut into her forehead. Quite unmistakable. A detective constable who was talking to me later told me that it’s one of the Whistler’s trademarks. He thought that the L could stand for ‘Larksoken’ and that the Whistler might be making some kind of statement about nuclear power, a protest perhaps.”

  Alex Mair said sharply: “That’s nonsense.” Then added more calmly: “There’s been nothing on television or in the papers about any cut on the victim’s foreheads.”

  “The police are keeping it quiet, or trying to. It’s the kind of detail they can use to sort out the false confessions. There have been half a dozen of those already, apparently. There’s been nothing in the media about the hair either, but that piece of unpleasantness seems to be generally known. After all, I’m not the only one to have found a body. People do talk.”

  Hilary Robarts said: “Nothing has been written or said, as far as I know, about it being pubic hair.”

  “No, the police are keeping that quiet too, and it’s hardly the sort of detail you print in a family newspaper. Not that it’s so very surprising. He isn’t a rapist, but there was bound to be some sexual element.”

  It was one of the details which Rickards had told Dalgliesh the previous evening but one, he felt, which Lessingham could well have kept to himself, particularly at a mixed dinner party. He was a little surprised at his sudden sensitivity. Perhaps it was his glance at Meg Dennison’s ravaged face. And then his ears caught a faint sound. He looked across to the open door of the dining room and glimpsed the slim figure of Theresa Blaney standing in the shadows. He wondered how much of Lessingham’s account she had heard. However little, it would have been too much. He said, hardly aware of the severity in his voice: “Didn’t Chief Inspector Rickards ask you to keep this information confidential?”

  There was an embarrassed silence. He thought, They had forgotten for a moment that I’m a policeman. Lessingham turned to him.

  “I intend to keep it confidential. Rickards didn’t want it to become public knowledge and it won’t. No one here will pass it on.”

  But that single question, reminding them of who he was and what he represented, chilled the room and changed their mood from fascinated and horrified interest to a half-shameful unease. And when, a minute later, he got up to say his goodbyes and thank his hostess, there was an almost visible sense of relief. He knew that the embarrassment had nothing to do with the fear that he would question, criticize, move like a spy among them. It wasn’t his case and they weren’t suspects, and they must have known that he was no cheerful extrovert, flattered to be the centre of attraction while they bombarded him with questions about Chief Inspector Rickards’s likely methods, the chance of catching the Whistler, his theories about psychopathic killers, his own experience of serial murder. But merely by being there he increased their awakening fear and repugnance at this latest horror. On each of their minds was imprinted the mental image of that violated face, the half-open mouth stuffed with hair, those staring, sightless eyes, and his presence intensified the picture, brought it into sharper focus. Horror and death were his trade and, like an undertaker, he carried with him the contagion of his craft.

  He was at the front door when, on impulse, he turned back and said to Meg Dennison: “I think you mentioned that you walked from the Old Rectory, Mrs. Dennison. Could I walk home with you—that is, if it’s not too early for you?”

  Alex Mair was beginning to say that he, of course, would drive her, but Meg extricated herself clumsily from her chair and said a little too eagerly: “I’d be grateful if you would. I would like the walk and it would save Alex getting out the car.”

  Alice Mair said: “And it’s time Theresa was on her way. We should have driven her home an hour ago. I’ll give her father a ring. Where is she, by the way?”

  Meg said: “I think she was next door clearing the table a minute ago.”

  “Well, I’ll find her and Alex can drive her home.”

  The party was breaking up. Hilary Robarts had been slumped back in her chair, her eyes fixed on Lessingham. Now she got to her feet and said: “I’ll get back to my cottage. There’s no need for anyone to come with me. As Miles has said, t
he Whistler’s had his kicks for tonight.”

  Alex Mair said: “I’d rather you waited. I’ll walk with you once I’ve taken Theresa home.”

  She shrugged and, without looking at him, said: “All right, if you insist. I’ll wait.”

  She moved over to the window, staring out into the darkness. Only Lessingham stayed in his chair, reaching again to fill his glass. Dalgliesh saw that Alex Mair had silently placed another opened bottle in the hearth. He wondered whether Alice Mair would invite Lessingham to stay the night at Martyr’s Cottage or whether he would be driven home later by her or her brother. He would certainly be in no state to drive himself.

  Dalgliesh was helping Meg Dennison into her jacket when the telephone rang, sounding unnaturally strident in the quiet room. He felt her sudden shock of fear and for a moment, almost involuntarily, his hands strengthened on her shoulders. They heard Alex Mair’s voice.

  “Yes, we’ve heard. Miles Lessingham is here and gave us the details. Yes, I see. Yes. Thank you for letting me know.” Then there was a longer silence, then Mair’s voice again. “Completely fortuitous, I should say, wouldn’t you? After all, we have a staff of five hundred and thirty. But naturally everyone at Larksoken will find the news deeply shocking, the women particularly. Yes, I shall be in my office tomorrow if there’s any help I can give. Her family have been told, I suppose? Yes, I see. Good night, Chief Inspector.”

  He put down the receiver and said: “That was Chief Inspector Rickards. They’ve identified the victim. Christine Baldwin. She is—she was—a typist at the station. You didn’t recognize her, then, Miles?”

  Lessingham took his time refilling his glass. He said: “The police didn’t tell me who she was. Even if they had, I wouldn’t have remembered the name. And no, Alex, I didn’t recognize her. I suppose I must have seen Christine Baldwin at Larksoken, probably in the canteen. But what I saw earlier tonight wasn’t Christine Baldwin. And I can assure you that I didn’t shine the torch on her longer than I needed to satisfy myself that she was beyond any help that I could give.”

  Without looking round from the window, Hilary Robarts said: “Christine Baldwin. Aged thirty-three. Actually, she’s only been with us for eleven months. Married last year. Just transferred to the Medical Physics Department. I can give you her typing and shorthand speeds if you’re interested.” Then she turned round and looked Alex Mair in the face. “It looks as if the Whistler’s getting closer, doesn’t it, in more ways than one.”

  3

  The final goodbyes were said and they stepped out from the smell of woodsmoke, food and wine, from a room which Dalgliesh was beginning to find uncomfortably warm into the fresh sea-scented air. It took a few minutes before his eyes had adjusted to semi-darkness and the great sweep of the headland became visible, its shapes and forms mysteriously altered under the high stars. To the north the power station was a glittering galaxy of white lights, its stark geometric bulk subsumed in the blue-black of the sky.

  They stood for a moment regarding it; then Meg Dennison said: “When I first came here from London it almost frightened me, the sheer size of it, the way it dominates the headland. But I’m getting used to it. It’s still disturbing but it does have a certain grandeur. Alex tries to de-mystify it, says its function is just to produce electricity for the National Grid efficiently and cleanly, that the main difference between this and any other power station is that you don’t have beside it a huge pyramid of polluting coal dust. But atomic power to my generation always means that mushroom cloud. And now it means Chernobyl. But if it were an ancient castle standing there against the skyline, if what we looked out at tomorrow morning were a row of turrets, we’d probably be saying how magnificent it is.”

  Dalgliesh said: “If it had a row of turrets it would be a rather different shape. But I know what you mean. I should prefer the headland without it, but it’s beginning to look as if it had a right to be there.”

  They turned simultaneously from contemplating the glittering lights and looked south to the decaying symbol of a very different power. Before them, at the edge of the cliff, crumbling against the skyline like a child’s sand castle rendered amorphous by the advancing tide, was the ruined Benedictine abbey. He could just make out the great empty arch of the east window and beyond it the shimmer of the North Sea, while above, seeming to move through and over it like a censer, swung the smudged yellow disc of the moon. Almost without conscious will they took their first steps from the track onto the rough headland towards it. Dalgliesh said: “Shall we? Can you spare the time? And what about your shoes?”

  “Reasonably sensible. Yes, I’d like to, it looks so wonderful at night. And I don’t really need to hurry. The Copleys won’t have waited up for me. Tomorrow, when I have to tell them how close the Whistler is getting, I may not like to leave them alone after dark. This may be my last free night for some time.”

  “I don’t think they’d be in any real danger as long as you lock up securely. So far all his victims have been young women and he kills out of doors.”

  “I tell myself that. And I don’t think they’d be seriously frightened. Sometimes the very old seem to have moved beyond that kind of fear. The trivial upsets of daily living assume importance but the big tragedies they take in their stride. But their daughter is constantly ringing up to suggest they go to her in Wiltshire until he’s caught. They don’t want to, but she’s a strong-minded woman and very insistent, and if she telephones after dusk and I’m not there it will increase the pressure on them.” She paused and then said: “It was a horrible end to an interesting but rather strange dinner party. I wish Mr. Lessingham had kept the details to himself, but I suppose it helped him to talk about it, especially as he lives alone.”

  Dalgliesh said: “It would have needed superhuman control not to have talked about it. But I wish he’d omitted the more salacious details.”

  “It will make a difference to Alex, too. Already some of the women staff demand to be escorted home after the evening shifts. Alice has told me that that isn’t going to be easy for Alex to organize. They’ll only accept a male escort if he has an unbreakable alibi for one of the Whistler murders. People cease to be rational even when they’ve known and worked with someone for the last ten years.”

  Dalgliesh said: “Murder does that, particularly this kind of murder. Miles Lessingham mentioned another death: Toby. Was that the young man who killed himself at the station? I seem to remember a paragraph in one of the papers.”

  “It was an appalling tragedy. Toby Gledhill was one of Alex’s most brilliant young scientists. He broke his neck by throwing himself down on top of the reactor.”

  “So there was no mystery about it?”

  “Oh no, absolutely none, except why he did it. Mr. Lessingham saw it happen. I’m surprised you remember it. There was very little about it in the national press. Alex tried to minimize the publicity to protect his parents.”

  And to protect the power station, thought Dalgliesh. He wondered why Lessingham had described Gledhill’s death as murder, but he didn’t question his companion further. The allegation had been spoken so quietly that he doubted whether she had in fact heard it. Instead he asked: “Are you happy living on the headland?”

  The question did not appear to surprise her but it did surprise him, as did the very fact that they were walking so companionably together. She was curiously restful to be with. He liked her quiet gentleness with its suggestion of underlying strength. Her voice was pleasant, and voices were important to him. But six months ago none of this would have been enough to make him invite her company for longer than was politely necessary. He would have escorted her back to the Old Rectory and then, a minor social obligation performed, turned with relief to walk alone to the abbey, drawing his solitude around him like a cloak. That solitude was still essential to him. He couldn’t tolerate twenty-four hours in which the greater part wasn’t spent entirely alone. But some change in himself, the inexorable years, success, the return of his poetry, pe
rhaps the tentative beginning of love, seemed to be making him sociable. He wasn’t sure whether this was something to be welcomed or resisted.

  He was aware that she was giving his question careful thought.

  “Yes, I think that I am. Sometimes very happy. I came here to escape from the problems of my life in London and, without really meaning to, I came as far east as I could get.”

  “And found yourself confronting two different forms of menace, the power station and the Whistler.”

  “Both frightening because both mysterious, both rooted in a horror of the unknown. But the menace isn’t personal, isn’t directed specifically against me. But I did run away and, I suppose, all refugees carry with them a small burden of guilt. And I miss the children. Perhaps I should have stayed and fought on. But it was becoming a very public war. I’m not suited to the role of popular heroine of the more reactionary press. All I wanted was to be left alone to get on with the job I’d been trained for and loved. But every book I used, every word I spoke was scrutinized. You can’t teach in an atmosphere of rancorous suspicion. In the end I found I couldn’t even live in it.”

  She was taking it for granted that he knew who she was; but, then, anyone who had read the papers must know that.

  He said: “It’s possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it’s probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.”

  They were approaching the abbey now, and the grass of the headland was becoming more hillocky. She stumbled and he put out his hand to steady her. She said: “In the end it came down to just two letters. They insisted that the blackboard should be called the ‘chalkboard.’ Black or chalk. I didn’t believe, I still don’t believe that any sensible person, whatever his colour, objects to the word ‘blackboard.’ It’s black and it’s a board. The word ‘black’ in itself can’t be offensive. I’d called it that all my life, so why should they try to force me to change the way I speak my own language? And yet, at this moment, on this headland, under this sky, this immensity, it all seems so petty. Perhaps all I did was to elevate trivia into a principle.”