by P. D. James
But he had still kept his head. It had been a clever move to take Lorrimer’s keys and lock the Laboratory. The police investigation would inevitably concentrate on the four sets of keys and the limited number of people who had access to them. And he knew the one way he could get out and had the skill and nerve to do it. He had put on Middlemass’s jacket to protect his clothes; he knew how fatal a torn thread of cloth could be. But there had been no tear. And in the early hours of the morning a light rain had washed away any evidence on walls or windows which could have betrayed him.
He had reached home safely and made an excuse to call in on Miss Willard, establishing his alibi more firmly. No one had telephoned for him; no one had called. And he knew that, next day, he would be among the first to examine the body. Howarth had said that he had stood by the door while Kerrison made his examination. It must have been then that he had slipped the key into Lorrimer’s pocket. But that had been one of his mistakes. Lorrimer carried his keys in a leather pouch, not loose in his pocket.
There was the crunch of tyres on the gravel of the drive. He looked out of the window and saw the police car with Detective Sergeant Reynolds and two women police constables in the back. The case had broken; except that it was never the case that broke, only the people. And now he and Massingham were free for the last interview, the most difficult of all.
At the edge of the clunch field a boy was flying a red kite. Tugged by the freshening wind it soared and dipped, weaving its convoluted tail against an azure sky as clear and bright as on a summer day. The clunch field was alive with voices and laughter. Even the discarded beer cans glinted like bright toys and the waste paper bowled along merrily in the wind. The air was keen and smelt of the sea. It was possible to believe that the Saturday shoppers trailing with their children across the scrubland were carrying their picnics to the beach, that the clunch field led on to dunes and marram grass, to the child-loud fringes of the sea. Even the screen, which the police were fighting to erect against the wind, looked no more frightening than a Punch-and-Judy stand with a little group of curious people standing patiently at a distance, waiting for the show to begin.
It was Superintendent Mercer who came first up the slope of the clunch pit towards them. He said: “It’s a messy business; the husband of the girl who was found here on Wednesday. He’s a butcher’s assistant. Yesterday he took home one of the knives and came here last night to cut his throat. He left a note confessing to her murder, poor devil. It wouldn’t have happened if we’d been able to arrest him yesterday. But Lorrimer’s death and Doyle’s suspension held us up. We only got the blood result late last night. Who is it you want to see?”
Mercer looked at Dalgliesh keenly, but he said only: “Dr. Kerrison.”
“He’s finished here now. I’ll let him know.”
Three minutes later Kerrison’s figure appeared over the rim of the clunch pit and he walked towards them. He said: “It was Nell, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t ask how or when. He listened intently as Dalgliesh spoke the words of the caution, as if he hadn’t heard them before and wanted to commit them to memory. Then he said, looking at Dalgliesh: “I’d rather not go to Guy’s Marsh Police Station, not yet. I want to tell you about it now, just you, no one else. There won’t be any difficulty. I’ll make a full confession. Whatever happens, I don’t want Nell to have to give evidence. Can you promise me that?”
“You must know that I can’t. But there’s no reason why the Crown should call her if you intend to plead guilty.”
Dalgliesh opened the door of the car, but Kerrison shook his head. He said without a trace of self-pity: “I’d rather stay outside. There’ll be so many years of sitting when I shan’t be able to walk under the sky. Perhaps for the rest of my life. If it were only Lorrimer’s death, I might have hoped for a verdict of manslaughter. His killing wasn’t premeditated. But the other was murder.”
Massingham stayed by the car while Dalgliesh and Kerrison walked together round the clunch pit. Kerrison said: “It started here, at this very spot, only four days ago. It feels like an eternity. Another life, another time. We’d both been called to the clunch pit murder, and afterwards he drew me to one side and told me to meet him that evening at eight-thirty at the Laboratory. Not asked; told. And he told me, too, what he wanted to talk about. Domenica.”
Dalgliesh asked: “Did you know that he was her lover before you?”
“Not until I met him that night. She had never talked about him to me, never once mentioned his name. But when he poured out his stream of hate and envy and jealousy, then, of course, I knew. I didn’t ask him how he’d found out about me. I think he was mad. Perhaps we were both mad.”
“And he threatened to write to your wife and prevent your getting custody of the children unless you gave her up.”
“He was going to write anyway. He wanted her back, and I think, poor devil, that he actually believed that it might be possible. But he still wanted to punish me. I’ve only once before known such hate. He was standing there, white-faced, railing at me, taunting me, telling me that I’d lose the children, that I wasn’t fit to be a father, that I’d never see them again. And suddenly it wasn’t Lorrimer speaking. You see, I’d heard it all before from my wife. It was his voice, but her words. And I knew that I couldn’t take any more. I’d been up for most of the night; I’d had a terrible scene with Nell when I got home; and I’d spent the day worrying what Lorrimer might have to tell me.
“It was then that the telephone rang. It was his father complaining about the television. He only spoke briefly, then he put down the receiver. But when he was speaking I saw the mallet. And I knew that I had gloves in my coat pocket. The call to his father seemed to have sobered him. He told me there was nothing else he wanted to say. It was when he turned his back on me dismissively that I seized the mallet and struck. He fell without a sound. I put the mallet back on the table, and it was then I saw the open notebook with the names and addresses of three doctors. One of them was my wife’s lover. I tore out the page and crumpled it in my pocket. Then I went to the telephone and made my call. It was just nine o’clock. The rest, I think, you know.”
They had circled the clunch pit, pacing together, their eyes fixed on the bright grass. Now they turned and retraced their steps. Dalgliesh said: “I think you’d better tell me.” But there was nothing new to learn. It had happened just as Dalgliesh had reasoned. When Kerrison had finished describing the burning of the coat and the page from the notebook, Dalgliesh asked: “And Stella Mawson?”
“She rang me at the hospital and asked me to meet her in the chapel at half past seven yesterday. She gave me an idea what it was about. She said that she had a draft letter which she wanted to discuss with me, one she’d found in a certain desk. I knew what it would say.”
She must have taken it with her to the chapel, thought Dalgliesh. It hadn’t been found in her desk, neither the original nor the copy. It seemed to him extraordinary that she had actually risked letting Kerrison know that she had the letter on her. How could he be sure, when he killed her, that she hadn’t left a copy? And how could she be sure that he wouldn’t overpower her and take it?
Almost as if he knew what was going through Dalgliesh’s mind, Kerrison said: “It wasn’t what you’re thinking. She wasn’t trying to sell me the letter. She wasn’t selling anything. She told me that she’d taken it from Lorrimer’s desk almost on impluse because she didn’t want the police to find it. For some reason which she didn’t explain, she hated Lorrimer, and she bore me no ill will. What she said was: ‘He caused enough misery in his life. Why should he cause misery after his death?’ She said another extraordinary thing. ‘I was his victim once. I don’t see why you should be his victim now.’ She saw herself as on my side, someone who’d done me a service. And now she was asking me for something in return, something quite simple and ordinary. Something she knew that I’d be able to afford.”
Dalgliesh said: “The cash to b
uy Sprogg’s Cottage, security for herself and Angela Foley.”
“Not even a gift, merely a loan. She wanted four thousand pounds over five years at a rate of interest she could afford. She needed the money desperately, and she had to find it quickly. She explained to me that there was no one else she could ask. She was perfectly ready to have a legal agreement drawn up. She was the gentlest, most reasonable of blackmailers.”
And she thought that she was dealing with the gentlest, most reasonable of men. She had been totally without fear, until that last hideous moment when he had drawn the cord from his coat pocket and she had realized that she was facing, not a fellow victim, but her murderer.
Dalgliesh said: “You must have had the cord ready. When did you decide she had to die?”
“Even that, like Lorrimer’s death, was almost chance. She had got the key from Angela Foley and she arrived at the chapel first. She was sitting in the chancel, in one of the stalls. She had left the door open, and when I went into the antechapel I saw the chest. I knew the cord was inside it. I’d had plenty of time to explore the chapel when I’d been waiting for Domenica. So I took it out and put it in my pocket. Then I went through to her, and we talked. She had the letter with her, in her pocket. She took it out and showed it to me without the least fear. It wasn’t the finished letter; just a draft that he’d been working on. He must have enjoyed writing it, must have taken a lot of trouble getting it right.
“She was an extraordinary woman. I said that I’d lend her the money, that I’d have a proper agreement drawn up by my solicitor. There was a Prayer Book in the chapel, and she made me put my hand on it and swear that I’d never tell anyone what had happened between us. I think she was terrified that Angela Foley would get to know. It was when I realized that she, and only she, held this dangerous knowledge, that I decided that she must die.”
He stopped walking. He turned to Dalgliesh and said: “You see, I couldn’t take a chance on her. I’m not trying to justify myself. I’m not even trying to make you understand. You aren’t a father, so you never could understand. I couldn’t risk giving my wife such a weapon against me when the custody case comes before the High Court. They probably wouldn’t worry overmuch that I had a mistress; that wouldn’t make me unfit to care for my children. If it did, what chance would most parents have of getting custody? But a secret affair which I’d concealed from the police with a woman whose previous lover was murdered, a murder for which I had only a weak alibi and a strong motive. Wouldn’t that tip the balance? My wife is attractive and plausible, outwardly perfectly sane. That’s what makes it so impossible. Madness isn’t so very difficult to diagnose, neurosis is less dramatic but just as lethal if you have to live with it. She tore us apart, Nell and me. I couldn’t let her have William and Nell. When I stood in the chapel and faced Stella Mawson, I knew it was their lives against hers.
“And it was so easy. I slipped the double cord around her neck and pulled tight. She must have died at once. Then I carried her into the antechapel and strung her up on the hook. I remembered to scrape her boots on the chair seat and leave the chair overturned. I walked back across the field to where I’d left my car. I’d parked it where Domenica parks hers when we meet, in the shadow of an old barn on the edge of Guy’s Marsh Road. Even the timing was right for me. I was due at the hospital for a medical committee meeting, but I’d planned to go into my laboratory first and do some work. Even if someone at the hospital noted the time when I arrived, there was only about twenty minutes unaccounted for. And I could easily have spent an extra twenty minutes on the drive.”
They walked on in silence towards the car. Then Kerrison began speaking again: “I still don’t understand it. She’s so beautiful. And it isn’t only her beauty. She could have had any man she wanted. It was amazing that, for some extraordinary reason, she wanted me. When we were together, lying by candlelight in all the quietness of the chapel after we’d made love, all the anxieties, all the tensions, all the responsibilities were forgotten. It was easy for us, because of the dark evenings. She could park her car by the barn in safety. No one walks on Guy’s Marsh Road at night, and there are only a few cars. I knew it would be more difficult in the spring with the long evenings. But then, I didn’t expect she would want me that long. It was a miracle that she wanted me at all. I never thought beyond the next meeting, the next date on the hymn-board. She wouldn’t let me telephone her. I never saw or spoke to her except when we were alone in the chapel. I knew that she didn’t love me, but that wasn’t important. She gave what she could, and it was enough for me.”
They were back at the car now. Massingham was holding open the door. Kerrison turned to Dalgliesh and said: “It wasn’t love, but it was in its own way a kind of loving. And it was such peace. This is peace, too, knowing that there’s nothing else I need do. There’s an end of responsibility, an end of worry. A murderer sets himself aside from the whole of humanity forever. It’s a kind of death. I’m like a dying man now, the problems are still there, but I’m moving away from them into a new dimension. I forfeited so many things when I killed Stella Mawson, even the right to feel pain.”
He got into the back of the car without another word. Dalgliesh closed the door. Then his heart lurched. The blue and yellow ball came bounding across the clunch field towards him and after it, shouting with laughter, his mother calling after him, ran the child. For one dreadful second, Dalgliesh thought that it was William, William’s dark fringe of hair, William’s red wellingtons flashing in the sun.
P. D. James is the author of twenty-one books, most of which have been filmed for television. She spent thirty years in various departments of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of Great Britain’s Home Office. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. The recipient of many prizes and honours, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991 and was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2008. She lives in London and Oxford.
