The Black Tower

by P. D. James

  Julius had been right; this was the quickest way. But they had to do it on foot. Even had he been willing to drive over this rough, rock-strewn ground it wouldn’t have been possible. The headland was crossed with fragmented stone walls, low enough to leap over and with plenty of gaps, but none wide enough for a vehicle. The ground was deceptive. At one minute the tower seemed almost to recede, separated from them by interminable barriers of tumbling stone. Then it was upon them.

  The smoke, acrid as a damp bonfire, was rolling strongly from the half-open door. Dalgliesh kicked it wide and leapt to one side as the gusts billowed out. There was an immediate roar and the tongue of flame fanged out at him. With the crook he began raking out the burning debris, some still identifiable—long dried grass and hay, rope ends, what looked like the remains of an old chair—the years of accumulated rubbish since the headland had been public land and the black tower, unlocked, used as a shepherd’s shelter or a night lodging for tramps. As he raked out the burning, malodorous clumps he could hear Julius behind him frantically beating them out. Little fires started and crawled like red tongues among the grasses.

  As soon as the doorway was clear Julius rushed in stamping down the smouldering remnants of grass and hay with the two sacks. Dalgliesh could see his smoke-shrouded figure coughing and reeling. He dragged him unceremoniously out and said:

  “Keep back until I’ve cleared it. I don’t want the two of you on my hands.”

  “But he’s there! I know he is. He must be. Oh, God! The bloody fool!”

  The last smouldering clump of grass was out now. Julius, pushing Dalgliesh aside, ran up the stone stairway which circled the walls. Dalgliesh followed. A wooden door to a middle chamber was ajar. Here there was no window, but in the smoke-filled darkness they could see the huddled sack-like figure against the far wall. He had drawn the hood of the monk’s cloak over his head and had swathed himself into its folds like a human derelict wrapped against the cold. Julius’s feverish hands got lost in its folds. Dalgliesh could hear him cursing. It took seconds before Anstey’s arms were freed and, together, they dragged him to the door and, with difficulty, supported and manoeuvred the inert body between them down the narrow stairs and into the fresh-smelling air.

  They laid him prone on the grass. Dalgliesh had dropped to his knees, ready to turn him and start artificial respiration. Then Anstey slowly stretched out both arms and lay in an attitude both theatrical and vaguely blasphemous. Dalgliesh, relieved that he wouldn’t now have to fasten his mouth over Anstey’s, got to his feet. Anstey drew up his knees and began to cough convulsively in hoarse whooping gasps. He turned his face to one side, his cheek resting on the headland. The moist mouth coughing out saliva and bile, seemed to be sucking at the grass as if avid for nourishment. Dalgliesh and Court knelt and raised him between them. He said weakly:

  “I’m all right. I’m all right.”

  Dalgliesh asked:

  “We’ve got the car on the coast road. Can you walk?”

  “Yes. I’m all right, I tell you. I’m all right.”

  “There’s no hurry. Better rest for a few minutes before we start.”

  They lowered him against one of the large boulders and he sat there a little apart from them, still coughing spasmodically, and looking out to sea. Julius paced the cliff edge, restlessly as if fretting at the delay. The stench of the fire was blown gently from the blackened headland like the last waves of a fading pestilence.

  After five minutes Dalgliesh called:

  “Shall we start now?”

  Together and without speaking, they raised Anstey and supported him between them across the headland and to the car.

  II

  No one spoke on the drive back to Toynton Grange. As usual, the front of the house seemed deserted, the tessellated hall was empty, unnaturally silent. But Dorothy Moxon’s sharp ears must have heard the car, perhaps from the clinical room at the front of the house. Almost immediately she appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  Julius waited until she had come swiftly down, then said quietly:

  “It’s all right. Wilfred managed to set fire to the black tower with himself inside. He isn’t hurt, just shocked. And the smoke hasn’t done his lungs any good.”

  She glanced accusingly from Dalgliesh to Julius as if it were their fault, then put both her arms round Anstey in a gesture fiercely maternal and protective and began to urge him gently up the stairs, muttering encouragement and remonstration into his ear in a soft grumbling monotone which, to Dalgliesh, sounded like an endearment. Anstey, he noticed, seemed less capable of supporting himself now than he had been on the headland and they made slow progress. But when Julius came forward to help, a glance from Dorothy Moxon made him draw back. With difficulty she got Anstey into his small white-painted bedroom at the back of the house and helped him on to the narrow bed. Dalgliesh made a swift mental inventory. The room was much as he had expected. One small table and chair set under the window giving a view of the patients’ rear courtyard; a well-stocked bookcase; one rug; a crucifix over the bed; a bedside table with a simple lamp and a carafe of water. But the thick mattress bounced gently as Wilfred rolled on to it. The towel hanging beside the wash basin looked luxuriantly soft. The bedside rug, plain in design, was no strip of worn, discarded carpet. The hooded dressing gown in white towelling hanging behind the door had a look of simplicity, almost austerity; but Dalgliesh did not doubt that it was agreeably soft to the skin. This might be a cell, but it lacked none of the essential comforts.

  Wilfred opened his eyes and fixed his blue gaze on Dorothy Moxon. It was interesting, Dalgliesh thought, how he managed to combine humility with authority in one look. He held out a suppliant hand.

  “I want to talk to Julius and Adam, Dot dear. Just for a moment. Will you?”

  She opened her mouth, clamped it shut again, and stomped out without a word, closing the door firmly behind her. Wilfred closed his eyes again and appeared mentally to withdraw himself from the scene. Julius looked down at his hands. His right palm was red and swollen and a blister had already formed over the bowl of the thumb. He said with a note of surprise:

  “Funny! My hand’s burnt. I never felt it at the time. Now it’s beginning to hurt like hell.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “You should get Miss Moxon to dress it. And it might be as well to let Hewson have a look at it.”

  Julius took a folded handkerchief from his pocket, soaked it in cold water at the wash basin and wrapped it inexpertly round his hand.

  He said:

  “It can wait.”

  The realization that he was in pain appeared to have soured his temper. He stood over Wilfred and said crossly:

  “Now that a definite attack has been made on your life and damn nearly succeeded, I suppose you’ll act sensibly for once and send for the police.”

  Wilfred did not open his eyes, he said weakly:

  “I have a policeman here.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “It isn’t for me. I can’t undertake an official investigation for you. Court is right, this is a matter for the local police.”

  Wilfred shook his head.

  “There’s nothing to tell them. I went to the black tower because there were things I needed to think over in peace. It’s the only place where I can be absolutely alone. I was smoking; you know how you all complain about my smelly old pipe. I remember knocking it out against the wall as I went up. It must have been still alight. All that dried grass and straw would have gone up at once.”

  Julius said grimly:

  “It did. And the outside door? I suppose you forgot to lock it after you, despite all the fuss you make about never leaving the black tower open. You’re a careless lot at Toynton Grange aren’t you? Lerner forgets to check the wheelchair brakes and Holroyd goes over the cliff. You knock out your pipe above a floor strewn with highly combustible dry straw, leave the door open to provide a draught, and bloody nearly immol
ate yourself.”

  Anstey said:

  “That’s how I prefer to believe it happened.”

  Dalgliesh said quickly:

  “Presumably there’s a second key to the tower. Where is it kept?”

  Wilfred opened his eyes and stared into space as if patiently dissociating himself from this dual interrogation.

  “Hanging on a nail on the keyboard in the business room. It was Michael’s key, the one I brought back here after his death.”

  “And everyone knows where it’s hung?”

  “I imagine so. All the keys are kept there and the one to the tower is distinctive.”

  “How many people at Toynton Grange knew that you planned to be in the tower this afternoon?”

  “All of them. I told them my plans after prayers. I always do. People have to know where to find me in an emergency. Everyone was there except Maggie and Millicent. But what you’re suggesting is ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” asked Dalgliesh.

  Before he could move, Julius, who was nearer the door, had slipped out. They waited in silence. It was another two minutes before he returned. He said with grim satisfaction:

  “The business room is empty and the key isn’t there. That means whoever took it hasn’t yet had a chance to put it back. Incidentally, I called in on Dot on my way back. She’s lurking in her surgical hell sterilizing enough equipment for a major operation. It’s like confronting a harpy through a hiss of steam. Anyway, she claims with bad grace that she was in the business room continually from 2 p.m. until about five minutes before we got back. She can’t remember whether the tower key was on the keyboard. She didn’t notice it. I’m afraid I’ve made her suspicious, Wilfred, but it seemed important to establish some facts.”

  Dalgliesh thought that the facts could have been established without direct questioning. But it was too late now to initiate more discreet enquiries and in any case he had neither the heart nor stomach to undertake them. Certainly, he had no wish to pit the claims of orthodox detection against Julius’s enthusiastic amateurism. But he asked:

  “Did Miss Moxon say whether anyone had come into the business room while she was there? They may have made an attempt to replace the key.”

  “According to her, the place was—untypically—like a railway station. Henry wheeled himself in shortly after two, and then went out again. No explanation. Millicent dropped in about half an hour ago looking, so she said, for you, Wilfred. Dennis arrived a few minutes later to look up an unspecified telephone number. Maggie arrived just before we did. Again, no explanation. She didn’t stay, but she did ask Dot whether she’d seen Eric. The only safe deduction from all this is that Henry couldn’t have been on the headland at the material time. But then, we know he wasn’t. Whoever started that fire had the use of a pair of very sound legs.”

  His own, or someone else’s, thought Dalgliesh.

  He spoke again directly to the quiet figure on the bed.

  “Did you see anyone when you were in the tower, either before or after the fire started?”

  Wilfred paused before replying.

  “I think so.”

  Seeing Julius’s face, he went on quickly:

  “I’m sure I did, but only very briefly. When the fire started I was sitting at the southern window, the one overlooking the sea. I smelt smoke and went down into the middle chamber. I opened the door to the base of the tower and saw the hay smouldering and a sudden tongue of flame. I could have got out then, but I panicked. I’m terrified of fire. It isn’t a rational fear. It goes well beyond that. I suppose you’d call it a phobia. Anyway, I scrambled ignominiously back into the top room and began running from window to window looking hopelessly for help. It was then I saw—unless it was an hallucination—a figure in a brown habit slipping between that clump of boulders to the southwest.”

  Julius said:

  “From which he could escape unrecognized by you either to the road or down the cliffs to the beach. That’s if he were agile enough for the cliff path. What sort of figure, a man or a woman?”

  “Just a figure. I only had a glimpse. I shouted but the wind was against me and he obviously didn’t hear. I never thought of it being a woman.”

  “Well, think now. The hood was up, I suppose?”

  “Yes. Yes it was.”

  “And on a warm afternoon! Think it out for yourself, Wilfred. Incidentally, there are three brown habits hanging in the business room. I felt in the pockets for the key. That’s why I noticed. Three habits. How many have you altogether?”

  “Eight of the lightweight summer ones. They’re always kept hanging in the business room. Mine has rather different buttons, but otherwise we have them in common. We’re not really particular which one we take.”

  “You’re wearing yours; presumably Dennis and Philby are wearing theirs. That means two are missing.”

  “Eric may be wearing one, he does occasionally. And Helen sometimes slips into one if the day is chilly. I seem to remember that one is in the sewing room being mended. And I think one was missing just before Michael died, but I can’t be sure. It may have turned up again. We don’t really keep a check on them.”

  Julius said:

  “So it’s practically impossible to know whether one is missing. I suppose what we ought to be doing, Dalgliesh, is to check up on them now. If she hasn’t had a chance to replace the key, presumably she’s still got the habit.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “We’ve no proof that it was a woman. And why hang on to the habit? It could be discarded anywhere in Toynton Grange without suspicion.”

  Anstey propped himself up and said with sudden strength:

  “No, Julius, I forbid it! I won’t have people questioned and cross-examined. It was an accident.”

  Julius, who seemed to be relishing his role of chief inquisitor, said:

  “All right. It was an accident. You forgot to lock the door. You knocked out your pipe before it was dead and started the fire smouldering. The figure you saw was just someone from Toynton Grange taking an innocent stroll on the headland, somewhat overclad for the time of year and so immersed in the beauty of nature that he, or she, neither heard your shout, smelt the fire nor noticed the smoke. What happened then?”

  “You mean, after I saw the figure? Nothing. I realized of course that I couldn’t get out of the windows and I climbed down again into the middle room. I opened the door to the bottom of the tower. The last thing I remember was a great billow of choking smoke and a sheet of flame. The smoke was suffocating me. The flames seemed to be searing my eyes. I hadn’t even time to shut the door again before I was overcome. I suppose I should have kept both doors shut and sat tight. But it isn’t easy to make sensible decisions in a state of panic.”

  Dalgliesh asked:

  “How many people here knew that you are abnormally afraid of fire?”

  “Most of them suspect, I should think. They may not know just how obsessive and personal a fear it is, but they do know that fire worries me. I insist on all the patients sleeping on the ground floor. I’ve always worried about the sick room, and I was reluctant to let Henry have an upper room. But someone has to sleep in the main part of the house, and we must have the sick room close to the clinical room and the nurses’ bedrooms in case there’s an emergency at night. It’s sensible and prudent to fear fire in a place like this. But prudence has nothing to do with the terror I feel at the sight of smoke and flame.”

  He put one hand up to his eyes and they saw that he had begun to tremble. Julius looked down at the shaking figure with almost clinical interest.

  Dalgliesh said:

  “I’ll get Miss Moxon.”

  He had hardly turned to the door when Anstey shot out a protesting hand. They saw that the trembling had stopped. He said, looking at Julius:

  “You do believe that the work I’m doing here is worthwhile?”

  Dalgliesh wondered if only he had noticed a fraction of a second’s pause before Julius replied evenly:


  “Of course.”

  “You’re not just saying that to comfort me, you believe it?”

  “I wouldn’t say it otherwise.”

  “Of course not, forgive me. And you agree that the work is more important than the man?”

  “That’s more difficult. I could argue that the work is the man.”

  “Not here. This place is established now. It could go on without me if it had to.”

  “Of course it could, if it’s adequately endowed, and if the local authorities continue to send contractual patients. But it won’t have to go on without you if you act sensibly instead of like the reluctant hero of a third-rate TV drama. It doesn’t suit you, Wilfred.”

  “I’m trying to be sensible and I’m not being brave. I haven’t much physical courage you know. It’s the virtue I most regret. You two have it—no, don’t argue. I know, and I envy you for it. But I don’t really need courage for this situation. You see, I can’t believe that someone is really trying to kill me.” He turned to Dalgliesh.

  “You explain, Adam. You must see what I’m getting at.”

  Dalgliesh said carefully:

  “It could be argued that neither of the two attempts were serious. The frayed climbing rope? It’s hardly a very certain method, and most people here must know that you wouldn’t start a climb without checking your equipment and that you certainly wouldn’t climb alone. This afternoon’s little charade? You would probably have been safe enough if you’d closed both the doors and stayed in the top room; uncomfortably hot probably, but in no real danger. The fire would have burnt itself out in time. It was opening the middle door and gasping in a lungful of smoke which nearly did for you.”

  Julius said:

  “But suppose the grass had burnt fiercely and the flames had caught the wood floor of the first storey? The whole of the middle of the tower would have gone up in a matter of seconds; the fire must have reached the top room. If it had, nothing could have saved you.” He turned to Dalgliesh: