The Black Tower

by P. D. James

  “But I hate the thought of her lying mangled on an autopsy slab.” Wilfred was beginning to sound like an obstinate child. Dalgliesh said coolly:

  “Mangled isn’t exactly the word. A postmortem is an organized and perfectly tidy procedure. And now if you will excuse me I’ll get back to my breakfast.”

  Suddenly Wilfred made an almost physical effort to pull himself together. He straightened up, and crossed his hands into the wide sleeves of his habit and stood for a moment in silent meditation. Eric Hewson looked at him, puzzled, then glanced from Dalgliesh to Julius as if seeking guidance. Then Wilfred spoke:

  “Eric, you had better ring the coroner’s officer now. Normally Dot would lay out the body but that had better wait until we get instructions. After you have telephoned, please let everyone know that I want to talk to all the family immediately after breakfast. Helen and Dennis are with them at present. Millicent, perhaps you could find Dot and see that she is all right. And now I should like to speak to you Julius, and to Adam Dalgliesh.”

  He stood for a moment, eyes closed, at the foot of Grace’s bed. Dalgliesh wondered whether he were praying. Then he led the way out. As they followed, Julius whispered with hardly a movement of his lips:

  “Unpleasantly reminiscent of those summonses to the headmaster’s study. We should have fortified ourselves with breakfast.”

  In the business room Wilfred wasted no time.

  “Grace’s death means that I have to make my decision sooner than I’d hoped. We can’t carry on with only four patients. On the other hand, I can hardly start admitting from the waiting list if the Grange isn’t going to continue. I shall hold a family council on the afternoon Grace is buried. I think it would be right to wait until then. If there are no complications, that should be in less than a week’s time. I should like you both to take part and help us to our decision.”

  Julius said quickly:

  “That’s impossible, Wilfred. I’ve absolutely no interest; interest, I mean in the legal or insurance sense. It just isn’t my business.”

  “You live here. I’ve always thought of you as one of the family.”

  “Sweet of you, and I’m honoured. But it isn’t true. I’m not one of the family and I have absolutely no right to vote on a decision that can’t really affect me one way or the other. If you decide to sell out, and I wouldn’t blame you, I probably shall too. I don’t fancy living on Toynton Head once it’s a caravan site. But it won’t matter to me. I’ll get a good price from some bright young executive from the Midlands who won’t give a damn about peace and quiet but who will build a natty cocktail bar in the sitting room and run up a flagpole on the patio. I shall probably look for my next cottage in the Dordogne after careful enquiries about any bargains which the owner may have made with God or the devil. Sorry, but it’s a definite no.”

  “And you, Adam?”

  “I’ve even less right to an opinion than Court. This place is home to the patients. Why on earth should their future be decided, at least in part, by the vote of a casual visitor?”

  “Because I greatly trust your judgement.”

  “There’s no reason why you should. In this matter, better trust your accountant.”

  Julius asked:

  “Are you inviting Millicent to the family council?”

  “Of course. She may not have always given me the support I hoped for from her, but she is one of the family.”

  “And Maggie Hewson?”

  Wilfred said curtly:

  “No.”

  “She’s not going to like that. And isn’t it a little hurtful to Eric?”

  Wilfred said magisterially:

  “As you have just made it plain that you don’t consider yourself in any way concerned, why not leave me to decide what’s hurtful to Eric. And now, if you will both excuse me, I shall join the family for breakfast.”

  VII

  As they left Wilfred’s room, Julius said roughly and as if on impulse:

  “Come up to the cottage and have breakfast. Have a drink anyway. Or if it’s too early for alcohol, have coffee. Anyway, please come. I’ve started the day in a mood of self-disgust and I’m bad company for myself.”

  It was too close to an appeal to be easily disregarded. Dalgliesh said:

  “If you can give me about five minutes. There’s someone I want to see. I’ll meet you in the hall.”

  He remembered from his first conducted tour of the Grange which was Jennie Pegram’s room. There might, he thought, be a better time for this encounter but he couldn’t wait for it. He knocked and heard the note of surprise in her answering “come in.” She was sitting in her wheelchair in front of her dressing table, her yellow hair flowing over her shoulders. Taking the poison pen letter from his wallet he walked up behind her and laid it in front of her. In the mirror their eyes met.

  “Did you type that?”

  She let her glance travel over it without picking it up. Her eyes flickered; a red stain began to travel like a wave over her neck. He heard the hiss of indrawn breath, but her voice was calm.

  “Why should I?”

  “I can suggest reasons. But did you?”

  “Of course not! I’ve never seen it before.”

  She glanced at it again dismissively, contemptuously.

  “It’s … it’s stupid, childish.”

  “Yes, a poor effort. Done in a hurry, I imagine. I thought you might take rather a poor view of it. Not quite as exciting or imaginative as the others.”

  “What others?”

  “Come now, let’s start with the one to Grace Willison. That did you credit. An imaginative effort, cleverly composed to spoil her pleasure in the only real friend she had made here, and nasty enough to ensure that she would be ashamed to show it to anyone. Except, of course, to a policeman. Even Miss Willison didn’t mind showing it to a policeman. Where obscenity is concerned, we enjoy an almost medical dispensation.”

  “She wouldn’t dare! And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Wouldn’t she? It’s a pity you can’t ask her. You know that she’s dead?”

  “That’s nothing to do with me.”

  “Luckily for you, I don’t think it is. She wasn’t the suicidal type. I wonder if you were as lucky—or unlucky—with your other victims, with Victor Holroyd for example.”

  There was no mistaking her terror now. The thin hands were twisting the handle of her hairbrush in a desperate pantomime.

  “That wasn’t my fault! I never wrote to Victor! I never wrote to anyone.”

  “You aren’t as clever as you think are you. You forget about fingerprints. Perhaps you didn’t realize that forensic laboratories can detect them on writing paper. And then there’s the timing. All the letters have been received since you arrived at Toynton Grange. The first was received before Ursula Hollis was admitted and I think we can rule out Henry Carwardine. I know that they’ve stopped since Mr. Holroyd’s death. Was that because you realized just how far you’d gone? Or did you hope that Mr. Holroyd would be held responsible? But the police will know that those letters weren’t written by a man. And then there’s the saliva test. All except fifteen per cent of the population excrete their blood group in their saliva. It’s a pity you didn’t know that before you licked the envelope flaps.”

  “The envelopes … but they weren’t …”

  She gasped at Dalgliesh. Her eyes widened with terror. The flush receded leaving her very pale.

  “No, there weren’t any envelopes. The notes were folded and placed in the victim’s library book. But no one knows that except the recipients and you.”

  She said, not looking at him:

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  And he didn’t know. He felt a mixture, strange to him, of embarrassment, anger and some shame. It had been so easy to trick her, so easy and so contemptible. He saw himself as clearly as if he were an onlooker, healthy and able, sitting magisterially in judgement on her weakness
, delivering the customary admonition from the bench, deferring sentence. The picture was distasteful. She had caused Grace Willison pain. But at least she could claim some psychological excuse. How much of his own anger and disgust had its roots in guilt? What had he done to make Grace Willison’s last days happier? Yet something would have to be done about her. She was unlikely at present to make more mischief at Toynton Grange, but what of the future? And Henry Carwardine presumably had a right to know. So, one could argue, had Wilfred and the Ridgewell Trustees if they took over. Some people, too, would argue that she needed help. They would produce the orthodox contemporary solution, referral to a psychiatrist. He just didn’t know. It wasn’t a remedy in which he had much confidence. It would gratify her vanity, perhaps, and minister to her urge for self-importance to be taken seriously. But if the victims had resolved to keep silent, if only to protect Wilfred from worry, what right had he to deride their motive or break their confidence? He had been used in his job to working to rules. Even when he had taken an unorthodox decision, which wasn’t seldom, the moral issues—if one could use that word and he never had—had been clear and unambiguous. His illness must have sapped his will and judgement as well as his physical strength for this paltry problem to defeat him. Ought he to leave a sealed note for Anstey or his successor to open in case of further trouble? Really it was ridiculous to be driven to such a weak and histrionic expedient. For God’s sake, why couldn’t he make a straight decision? He wished that Father Baddeley were alive, knowing on whose frail shoulders he could safely have lain this particular burden.

  He said:

  “I shall leave it to you to tell the victims, all of them, that you were responsible and that it won’t happen again. You had better see that it doesn’t. I leave it to your ingenuity to think out an excuse. I know that you must miss all the fuss and attention you had at your last hospital. But why compensate by making other people unhappy?”

  “They hate me.”

  “Of course they don’t. You hate yourself. Did you write these notes to anyone else except Miss Willison and Mr. Carwardine?”

  She looked up at him slyly from under her eyelids.

  “No. Only those two.”

  It was probably a lie, he thought wearily. Ursula Hollis had probably had a letter. Would it do more harm or less if he asked her?

  He heard Jennie Pegram’s voice, stronger now, more confident. She lifted her left hand and began stroking her hair, drawing the strands across her face. She said:

  “No one here cares about me. They all despise me. They never wanted me to come here. I didn’t want it either. You could help me but you don’t really care. You don’t even want to listen.”

  “Get Dr. Hewson to refer you to a psychiatrist and confide in him. He’s paid to listen to neurotics talking about themselves. I’m not.”

  He regretted the unkindness as soon as the door was closed. He knew what had prompted it; the sudden remembrance of Grace Willison’s shrunken, ugly body in its cheap nightdress. It was well, he thought, in a mood of self-disgust, that he was giving up his job if pity and anger could so destroy his detachment. Or was it Toynton Grange? This place, he thought, is getting on my nerves.

  As he walked quickly down the passage the door next to Grace Willison’s room opened and he saw Ursula Hollis. She beckoned him in, swivelling her wheelchair to clear the doorway.

  “They’ve told us to wait in our rooms. Grace is dead.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “What is it? What happened?”

  “No one really knows yet. Dr. Hewson is arranging for a postmortem.”

  “She didn’t kill herself—or anything.”

  “I’m sure not. It looked as if she died quietly in her sleep.”

  “You mean like Father Baddeley?”

  “Yes, just like Father Baddeley.”

  They paused, staring at each other. Dalgliesh asked:

  “You didn’t hear anything last night?”

  “Oh, no! Nothing! I slept very well, that is, after Helen had been in to me.”

  “Would you have heard if she called out or if anyone went in to her?”

  “Oh yes, if I wasn’t asleep. Sometimes she kept me awake with her snoring. But I didn’t hear her call out, and she went to sleep before I did. My light was out before twelve-thirty and I thought then how quiet she was.”

  He moved towards the door and then paused, feeling that she was reluctant to see him go. He asked:

  “Is anything worrying you?”

  “Oh, no! Nothing. It was just the uncertainty about Grace, not knowing, everyone being so mysterious. But if they’re going to do a postmortem … I mean the postmortem will tell us how she died.”

  “Yes,” he said without conviction, as if reassuring himself as well as her, “the postmortem will tell us.”

  VIII

  Julius was waiting alone in the front hall and they left the Grange together walking through the bright morning air, abstracted, a little apart, their eyes fixed on the path. Neither spoke. As if yoked by an invisible cord, they paced, carefully distanced, towards the sea. Dalgliesh was glad of his companion’s silence. He was thinking about Grace Willison, trying to understand and analyse the root of his concern and unrest, emotions which seemed to him illogical to the point of perversity. There had been no visible marks on the body; no lividity; no petechiae on face or forehead; no sign of disturbance in her room; nothing unusual except an unlatched window. She had lain there stiffening in the quietus of natural death. Why then this irrational suspicion? He was a professional policeman, not a clairvoyant. He worked by evidence not by intuition. How many postmortems were carried out in a year? Over 170,000 wasn’t it? 170,000 deaths which required at least some preliminary investigation. Most of them could provide an obvious motive, at least for one person. Only the pathetic derelicts of society had nothing to leave, however meagre, however uncoveted to sophisticated eyes. Every death benefited someone, enfranchised someone, lifted a burden from someone’s shoulders, whether of responsibility, the pain of vicarious suffering or the tyranny of love. Every death was a suspicious death if one looked only at motive, just as every death, at the last, was a natural death. Old Dr. Blessington, one of the first and greatest of the forensic pathologists, had taught him that. It had, he remembered, been Blessington’s last postmortem, the young Detective Constable Dalgliesh’s first. The hands of both had been shaking, but for very different reasons, although the old man had been as steady as a surgeon once the first incision was made. The body of a forty-two-year-old, red-haired prostitute was on the slab. The postmortem assistant had with two strokes of his gloved hand wiped from her face the blood, the dirt, the pancake of paint and matted powder, leaving it pale, vulnerable, anonymous. His strong living hand, not death, had erased from it all personality. Old Blessington had demonstrated the cunning of his craft.

  “You see, lad, the first blow, warded off by her hand, slipped down the neck and throat towards the right shoulder. A lot of blood, a lot of mess, but no great harm done. With the second, directed upwards and across, he severed the trachea. She died of shock, blood loss and asphyxia, probably in that order from the look of the thymus. When we get them on the slab, lad, there’s no such thing as unnatural death.”

  Natural or unnatural, he was through with it now. It was irritating that with a will so strong, his mind apparently needed this constant reassurance, that it was so obstinately reluctant to leave the problems alone. What possible justification, anyway, had he for going to the local police with a complaint that death was becoming a little too common at Toynton? An old priest dying of heart disease, without enemies, without possessions, except a modest fortune unexceptionally willed for charitable purposes to the man who had befriended him, a notable philanthropist whose character and reputation were beyond reproach. And Victor Holroyd? What could the police do about that death other than they had already most competently done. The facts had been investigated, the inquest jury had pronounced their finding. Holroyd ha
d been buried, Father Baddeley cremated. All that remained was a coffin of broken bones and decaying flesh and a fistful of grey, gritty dust in Toynton churchyard; two more secrets added to the store of secrets buried in that consecrated earth. All of them were beyond human solving now.

  And now this third death, the one for which everyone at Toynton Grange had probably been superstitiously waiting, in thrall to the theurgy that death comes in threes. They could all relax now. He could relax. The coroner would order a postmortem, and Dalgliesh had little doubt of the result. If Michael and Grace Willison had both been murdered, their killer was too clever to leave signs. And why should he? With a frail, sick, disease-ridden woman, it would have been only too easy, as simple and quick as a firm hand placed over nose and mouth. And there would be nothing to justify his interference. He couldn’t say: I, Adam Dalgliesh, have had one of my famous hunches—I disagree with the coroner, with the pathologist, with the local police, with all the facts. I demand in the light of this new death that Father Baddeley’s incinerated bones be resurrected and forced to yield up their secret.

  They had reached Toynton Cottage. Dalgliesh followed Julius round to the seaward porch which led directly from the stone patio into the sitting-room. Julius had left the door unlocked. He pushed it open and stood a little aside so that Dalgliesh could go in first. Then they both stood stock still, stricken into immobility. Someone had been there before them. The marble bust of the smiling child had been smashed to pieces.