The Private Patient

by P. D. James

  ‘And there was another reason why she had to die. She saw me as I was leaving the Manor after I had killed Rhoda Gradwyn. And now she, who had always had a secret to keep, knew another’s secret. I could sense her triumph, her satisfaction. And she told me what she planned to do at the stones, her final tribute to Mary Keyte, a memorial and a farewell. Why wouldn’t she tell me? We had both killed, bound together by that terrible iconoclastic crime. And then in the end, after I had wound the rope round her neck and poured paraffin over her, I couldn’t strike the match. I realised in that moment what I had become.

  ‘There’s little to tell you about the death of Rhoda Gradwyn. The simple explanation is that I killed her to avenge the death of a dear friend, Annabel Skelton, but simple explanations never tell the whole truth. Did I go to her room that night with the intention of killing her? I had, after all, done all I could to dissuade Chandler-Powell from admitting her to the Manor. Afterwards I thought not, that I meant only to terrify her, to tell her the truth about herself, to let her know that she had destroyed a young life and a great talent, and that if Annabel plagiarised about four pages of dialogue and description, the rest of the novel was uniquely and beautifully hers. And when I lifted my hand from her neck and knew that there would be no communication between us ever again, I felt a release, a liberation which was as much physical as mental. It seemed by this one act I had washed away all the guilt, frustration and regret of the past years. In one exhilarating moment it had all passed away. And I still feel some remnant of that release.

  ‘I believe now that I went to her bedroom knowing that I meant to kill. Why else would I have worn those surgical gloves which I later cut up in the bathroom of one of the empty suites? It was in that suite that I had hidden myself, leaving the Manor by the front door as usual, re-entering later at the back door with my key before Chandler-Powell locked up for the night, and taking the lift up to the patients’ floor. There was no real risk of discovery. Who would think of searching a vacant room for an intruder? Afterwards I went down by the lift expecting to have to unbolt the door, but the door wasn’t bolted. Sharon had left before me.

  ‘What I said after the death of Robin Boyton was essentially true. He had devised this extraordinary idea that we had concealed my father’s time of death by freezing his body. I doubt that this was his idea. This too came from Rhoda Gradwyn and they planned to pursue it together. That’s why, after more than thirty years, she decided to have the scar removed and chose to have the operation here. That’s why Robin was here both on her first visit and when she came for the operation. The plan was, of course, ridiculous but there were facts which might make it believable. That’s why I went to Toronto to see Grace Holmes, who was with my father when he died. And I had a second reason for the visit: to pay her a lump sum in lieu of the pension I felt she deserved. I didn’t tell my brother what Gradwyn and Robin were planning. I had sufficient evidence to charge them both with blackmail, if that’s what they intended. But I decided to play along until Robin was thoroughly implicated and then enjoy the pleasure of disabusing him and taking my revenge.

  ‘I asked him to meet me in the old pantry. The lid of the freezer was shut. I asked what sort of arrangement he proposed and he said that he had a moral right to a third of the estate. If that were paid over there would be no future demand. I pointed out that he could hardly divulge that I’d falsified the date of death without himself being accused of blackmail. He admitted that we were in each other’s power. I offered one quarter of the estate with five thousand as a start. I said it was in cash in the freezer. I needed his fingerprints on the lid and I knew that he was too greedy to resist. He might have doubted but he had to look. We moved over to the freezer and when he lifted the lid I suddenly grasped him by the legs and toppled him in. I’m a swimmer with strong shoulders and arms and he wasn’t a heavy man. I closed the lid and fastened the clasp. I felt an extraordinary exhaustion and was breathing hard, but I couldn’t have been tired. It was as easy as toppling a child. I could hear the sounds from inside the freezer, shouts, banging, muffled pleading. I stood there for a few minutes leaning on the freezer, listening to his cries. Then I went next door and made a pot of tea. The sounds grew fainter and when they stopped I went into the pantry to let him out. He was dead. I meant only to terrify him but I think now, trying to be totally honest – and which of us can ever be that? – that I was glad to find that he was dead.

  ‘I can’t feel sorry for either of my victims. Rhoda Gradwyn subverted a genuine talent and caused hurt and distress to vulnerable people, and Robin Boyton was a gadfly, an insignificant, mildly amusing nonentity. I doubt whether either of them will be mourned or missed.

  ‘That’s all I have to say, except to make it plain that at all times I worked entirely alone. I told no one, consulted no one, asked for no one’s help, involved no one else either in the acts or in my subsequent lies. I shall die with no regrets and with no fear. I shall leave this tape where I can be confident that it will be found. Sharon will tell her story and you already suspected the truth. I hope that all goes well with her. For myself, I have no hope and no fear.’

  Dalgliesh clicked off the tape player. The three of them leaned back and Kate found that she was breathing deeply as if recovering from some ordeal. Then, without speaking, Dalgliesh brought the cafetière to the table and, taking it, Benton filled the three cups and pushed forward the milk and sugar.

  Dalgliesh said, ‘Given what Jeremy Coxon told me last night, how much of that confession do we believe?’

  After a moment’s thought it was Kate who answered. ‘We know she killed Miss Gradwyn, one fact alone proves that. No one at the Manor was told that we had evidence that the latex gloves were cut up and flushed down the lavatory. And that death wasn’t manslaughter. You don’t go to the victim wearing gloves if your object is only to frighten. Then there’s the attack on Sharon. That wasn’t faked. She was intending to kill.’

  Dalgliesh said, ‘Was she? I wonder. She killed both Rhoda Gradwyn and Robin Boyton and she has given us her motive. The question is whether the coroner and the jury, if he chooses to sit with one, will believe it.’

  Benton spoke. ‘Does the motive matter now, sir? I mean, it would if the case came to court. Juries want a motive and so do we. But you’ve always said that physical evidence, hard facts not motive, prove the case. Motive will always remain mysterious. We can’t see into another’s mind. Candace Westhall has given us hers. It may seem inadequate, but a motive for murder always is. I don’t see how we can rebut what she says.’

  ‘I’m not proposing to, Benton, at least not officially. She has made what is essentially a deathbed confession, credible, supported by evidence. My difficulty is in believing it. The case hasn’t exactly been a triumph for us. It’s over now, or will be after the inquest. There are a number of odd things that come to mind about her account of Boyton’s death. Let’s take that part of the tape first.’

  Benton couldn’t resist the temptation to break in. ‘Why did she need to tell it all again? We already had her statement about Boyton’s suspicions and her decision to string him along.’

  Kate said, ‘It’s as if she needed to record it on the tape. And she spends more time on describing how Boyton died than she does on Rhoda Gradwyn’s murder. Is she trying to divert attention from something far more damaging than Boyton’s ridiculous suspicion about the freezer?’

  Dalgliesh said, ‘I think she is. She was determined that no one should suspect forgery. That’s why it was vital for her that the tape should be found. To leave it in the car or on a heap of clothes on the beach would have risked its loss. So she dies with it clamped in her hand.’

  Benton looked at Dalgliesh. ‘Are you going to challenge this tape, sir?’

  ‘To what point, Benton? We may have our suspicions, our own theories about motive, and they may be rational, but it’s all circumstantial evidence and none of it can be proved. You can’t interrogate or charge the dead. Perhaps it’s arrogant, th
is need to know the truth.’

  Benton said, ‘It takes courage to kill yourself with a lie on your lips, but perhaps that’s my religious education intruding. It tends to at inconvenient times.’

  Dalgliesh said, ‘I have this appointment tomorrow with Philip Kershaw. Officially, with the suicide tape, the investigation is over. You should be able to get away by tomorrow afternoon.’

  He didn’t add, and perhaps by tomorrow afternoon the investigation will be over for me. This one might well be his last. He could have wished that it had ended differently, but at least it still had a hope of ending with as much of the truth as anyone other than Candace Westhall could hope to know.

  7

  By midday on Friday, Benton and Kate had made their farewells. George Chandler-Powell had gathered together the household in the library and all had shaken hands and either muttered their farewells or spoken them clearly with, Kate felt, varying degrees of sincerity. She knew without resentment that the air of the Manor would feel newly cleansed once they had departed. Perhaps this group goodbye had been arranged by Mr Chandler-Powell to get a necessary politeness over with a minimum of fuss. They had had a warmer farewell from Wisteria House, where they were treated by the Shepherds as if they had been regular and welcome guests. In any investigation there were places or people which remained happily in memory and for Kate the Shepherds and Wisteria House would be one.

  Dalgliesh, she knew, would be tied up for part of the morning with his interview with the coroner’s officer, and saying his goodbyes to the Chief Constable and expressing his gratitude for the help and co-operation his force had provided, particularly DC Warren. Then he planned to drive to Bournemouth for his interview with Philip Kershaw. He had already made his formal goodbyes to Mr Chandler-Powell and the small group at the Manor, but he would be returning to the Old Police Cottage to collect his baggage. Now Kate asked Benton to stop there and wait in the car so that she could check that the Dorset police had removed all their equipment. She knew that the kitchen would need no checking to ensure that it was clean and, going upstairs, she saw that the bed had been stripped and the bedclothes neatly folded. During the years she and Dalgliesh had worked together she had always experienced this slight twinge of nostalgic regret when a case was over and the place in which they had met, sat and talked at the end of the day, however short their stay, was finally left vacant.

  Dalgliesh’s grip was downstairs, ready packed, and she knew that his murder bag would be with him in the car. The only equipment remaining to be moved was the computer, and on impulse she typed in her own password. A single e-mail came up on the screen.

  Dearest Kate. An e-mail is an inappropriate way in which to convey something important but I have to be sure that this reaches you and, if you reject it, it will be less permanent than a letter. I have been living like a monk for the last six months to prove something to myself and I know now that you were right. Life is too precious and too short to waste time on people we don’t care for, and much too precious to give up on love. There are two things I want to say which I didn’t say when you said goodbye because they would have sounded like excuses. I suppose that’s what they are, but I need you to know. The girl you saw me with was the first and last since we became lovers. You know I never lie to you.

  The beds in a monastery are very hard and lonely and the food is terrible.

  My love, Piers.

  She sat for a moment in silence which must have lasted longer than she thought because it was broken by the hooting of Benton’s car. But she didn’t need to pause for more than a second. Smiling, she tapped in her reply.

  Your message received and understood. The case here is finished, although not happily, and I shall be back in Wapping by seven. Why not say goodbye to the Abbot and come home?

  Kate.

  8

  Huntingdon Lodge, standing on a high cliff some three miles west of Bournemouth, was approached by a short drive which curved between cedar trees and rhododendron bushes to an impressively pillared front door. Its otherwise agreeable proportions were spoilt by a modern extension and a large parking lot to the left. Care had been taken not to distress visitors by displaying any notice bearing the words ‘retirement’, ‘elderly’, ‘nursing’ or ‘home’. A bronze plaque, highly polished and discreetly placed on the wall beside the iron gates, merely bore the name of the house. The doorbell was answered quickly by a manservant in a short white jacket who directed Dalgliesh to a reception desk at the end of the hall. Here a grey-haired woman, impeccably coiffed and wearing a twinset and pearls, checked his name in the book of expected visitors and smilingly told him that Mr Kershaw was expecting him and would be found in Seaview, the front room on the first floor. Would Mr Dalgliesh prefer the stairs or the lift? Charles would take him up.

  Opting for the stairs, Dalgliesh followed the young man, who had opened the door, up the wide mahogany stairs. The walls of the staircase and corridor above were hung with watercolours, prints and one or two lithographs, and on small tables placed against the wall were vases of flowers and carefully arranged china ornaments, most of a cloying sentimentality. Everything about Huntingdon Lodge in its shiny cleanliness was impersonal and, to Dalgliesh, depressing. For him any institution which segregated people from one another, however necessary or benign, evoked an unease which he could trace back to his prep-school days.

  His escort had no need to knock at the door of Seaview. It was already open with Philip Kershaw, balanced on a crutch, awaiting him. Charles made a discreet exit. Kershaw shook hands and, standing aside, said, ‘Please come in. You’re here, of course, to talk about Candace Westhall’s death. I haven’t been shown her confession but Marcus telephoned our office in Poole and my brother rang me. It was good of you to telephone in advance. With the approach of death one loses the taste for surprise. I usually sit in this armchair beside the fireplace. If you care to draw up a second easy chair, I think you’ll find it comfortable.’

  They seated themselves and Dalgliesh placed his briefcase on the table between them. It seemed to Dalgliesh that Philip Kershaw was prematurely aged by his illness. The sparse hair was carefully combed over a skull marked with scars, perhaps the evidence of old falls. His yellow skin was stretched across the sharp bones of his face, which might once have been handsome but was now mottled and criss-crossed as if with the hieroglyphics of age. He was as carefully dressed as an elderly bridegroom but the shrivelled neck rose from a pristine white collar which was at least a size too large. He looked both vulnerable and pitiable but his handshake, although cold, had been firm and, when he spoke, his voice was low but the sentences formed without apparent strain.

  Neither the size of the room nor the quality and variety of the discordant pieces of furniture could disguise the fact that this was a sickroom. There was a single bed set against the wall to the right of the windows and a screen which, seen from the door, didn’t completely conceal the oxygen cylinder and drugs cabinet. Close to the bed was a door which, Dalgliesh surmised, must lead to the bathroom. There was only one top window open but the air was odourless, without even the faint tinge of a sickroom, a sterility which Dalgliesh found more discomforting than the smell of disinfectant would have been. There was no fire in the grate, not surprisingly in the sickroom of an unsteady patient, but the room was warm, uncomfortably so. The central heating must be on full blast. But the empty grate was cheerless, the mantelshelf bore only the porcelain figure of a crinolined and bonneted woman incongruously holding a garden hoe, an ornament which Dalgliesh doubted was Kershaw’s choice. But there were worse rooms in which to endure house arrest, or something like it. The only item of furniture which Dalgliesh thought Kershaw had brought with him was a long oak bookcase, the volumes so tightly packed that they looked glued together.

  Glancing at the window, Dalgliesh said, ‘You have an impressive view.’

  ‘Indeed yes. As I am frequently reminded, I’m regarded as fortunate to have this room; fortunate, too, in being able to afford t
his place. Unlike some other nursing homes they graciously condescend to care for one, if necessary, until death. Perhaps you’d like to take a closer look at the view.’

  It was an unusual suggestion but Dalgliesh followed Kershaw’s painful steps to the bay window with two smaller windows flanking it, which gave a panorama of the English Channel. The morning was grey with rare and fitful sunlight, the horizon a poorly discerned line between the sea and sky. Under the windows was a stone patio with three wooden benches regularly placed. Beneath them the ground fell away some seventy feet to the sea in a tumble of entwined trees and bushes, thick with the strong glossy leaves of evergreens. Only where the bushes thinned could Dalgliesh glimpse the occasional strollers on the promenade, walking like passing shadows on silent feet.

  Kershaw said, ‘I can only see the view if I stand and that is now something of an effort. I’ve become too familiar with the seasonal changes, the sky, the sea, the trees, some of the bushes. Human life is below me, out of reach. Since I have no wish to concern myself with these almost invisible figures, why do I feel deprived of companionship which I do nothing to invite and would strongly dislike? My fellow guests – we do not refer to patients in Huntingdon Lodge – have long exhausted the few subjects which they have any interest in discussing: the food, the weather, the staff, last night’s television and each other’s irritating foibles. It’s a mistake to live until you greet each morning’s light, not with relief and certainly not with joy, but with disappointment and a regret that’s sometimes close to despair. I have not quite reached that stage, but it’s coming. As, of course, is the final darkness. I mention death, not to introduce a morbid note into our conversation or, God forbid, to invite pity. But it’s as well before we talk to know where we stand. Inevitably you and I, Mr Dalgliesh, will see things differently. But you’re not here to discuss the view. Perhaps we should get down to business.’