Unnatural Causes

by P. D. James

  Luker turned to Lil: “You’d better keep your mouth shut, Lil. Or, better still, get yourself a lawyer. I’ll phone Bernie.”

  “What the hell do I want Bernie for? I’ve told it all to him once when that CID chap was here. I’m telling the truth. Michael and the boys saw him call me over to his table and we sat there until nine-thirty when we left together. I was back here by ten-thirty. You saw me, Sid, and so did the whole bloody club.”

  “That’s right, Superintendent. Lil was back by half past ten.”

  “Lil should never have left the club,” said Luker smoothly. “But that’s my concern, not yours.”

  Miss Coombs appeared magnificently unconcerned at the thought of Luker’s displeasure. Like all his employees she knew exactly how far she could go. The rules were few and simple and were well understood. Leaving the club for an hour on a slack evening was venial. Murder, under certain well-understood circumstances, was probably venial too. But if someone at Monksmere hoped to pin this killing on Luker he was in for a disappointment. Luker was not the man to murder for someone else’s benefit nor did he trouble to cover up his tracks. When Luker killed he had no objection to leaving his prints on the crime.

  Dalgliesh asked Lil what had happened. There was no more mention of lawyers and no difficulty in getting her story. Dalgliesh did not miss Lil’s quick glance at her boss before she began her story. For some reason best known to himself Luker was willing to let her talk.

  “Well, he came in about eight o’clock and took the table nearest the door. I noticed him at once. He was a funny little man, small, very neat, nervous-looking. I thought he was probably a Civil Servant out for a spree. We get all types here. The regulars usually come with a party but we get the odd solitary chap. Mostly they’re looking for a girl. Well, we don’t cater for that kind of thing and it’s my business to tell them so.” Miss Coombs assumed an expression of pious severity which deceived no one and wasn’t intended to. Dalgliesh enquired what had happened next.

  “Michael took his order. He asked for fried scampi, green salad, bread and butter and a bottle of Chianti. He seemed to know exactly what he wanted. No mucking about. When Michael served him he asked if he could speak to me. Well, I went across and he asked me what I would drink. I had a gin and lime and drank it while he started picking at the scampi. Either he hadn’t an appetite or he just wanted something to push around the plate while we were talking. He got quite a bit of the meal down eventually but he didn’t look as if he was enjoying it. He drank the wine, though. Fairly put it away. Nearly the whole bottle.”

  Dalgliesh enquired what they had talked about. “Dope,” said Miss Coombs frankly. “That’s what he was interested in. Dope. Not for himself, mind you. Well, it was plain enough he wasn’t a junkie and he wouldn’t have come to me if he was. Those boys know well enough where they can get the stuff. We don’t see them in the Cortez. This chap told me he was a writer, a very well-known one, quite famous, and he was writing a book about dope-peddling. He didn’t tell me his name and I never asked. Anyway, someone had told him that I might give him some useful information if he made it worth my while. Apparently this friend had said that if you want to know anything about Soho go to the Cortez and ask for Lil. Very nice, I must say. I’ve never seen myself as an authority on the dope racket. Still, it looked as if someone was trying to do me a good turn. There was money in it and the chap wasn’t the sort to know whether he was getting genuine information. All he wanted was a bit of local colour for his book and I reckoned I could provide that. You can buy anything you want in London if you’ve got the cash and know where to go. You know that, ducky, as well as I do. I daresay I could have given him the name of a pub or two where they say the stuff is passed. But what good would that be to him? He wanted a bit of glamour and excitement and there’s no glamour about the dope racket, nor the junkies either, poor devils. So I said that I might be able to give him a bit of information and what was it worth? He said ten quid and I said OK. And don’t you go talking about false pretences. He was getting value.”

  Dalgliesh said that he was sure Miss Coombs always gave value and Miss Coombs, after a brief struggle, decided prudently to let the remark pass. Dalgliesh asked: “Did you believe this story of being a writer?”

  “No, dear. Not at first, anyway. I’d heard it too often before. You’d be surprised the number of chaps who want to meet a girl ‘just to get authentic background for my new novel.’ If it’s not that then they’re doing sociological research. I’ll bet they are! He looked that type. You know, insignificant, nervous and eager at the same time. But when he suggested we should take a taxi and I could dictate the stuff to him and he type it straight away, I began to wonder. I said I couldn’t leave the club for more than an hour at most and I’d rather we went to my place. When you don’t know who you’re playing keep to the home ground, I always say. So I suggested we took a taxi to my flat. He said all right and we left just before nine-thirty. That right, Sid?”

  “That’s right, Lil. Nine-thirty it was.” Sid lifted sad eyes from his glass of milk. He had been contemplating, without enthusiasm, the puckered skin which had slowly formed on its surface. The smell of hot milk, sickly and fecund, seemed to permeate the claustrophobic office.

  Luker said: “For God’s sake drink the stuff or chuck it away, Sid. You make me nervous.”

  “Drink it up, darling,” encouraged Miss Coombs. “Think of your ulcer. You don’t want to go the way of poor Solly Goldstein.”

  “Solly died of a coronary and milk never helped that. The opposite I should think. Anyway, the stuff’s practically radioactive. Full of strontium-90. It’s dangerous, Sid.”

  Sid trotted to the washbasin and poured the milk away. Resisting the urge to throw open the window Dalgliesh asked: “How did Mr. Seton appear while you were sitting together?”

  “Nervy, dear. Excited but on edge at the same time. Michael wanted to move him to another table, it’s a bit draughty near the door, but he wouldn’t budge. He kept looking at the door while we were talking.”

  “As if he was expecting someone?”

  “No, dear. More as if he wanted to make sure it was still there. I half-expected him to do a bunk. He was an odd fish and no mistake.”

  Dalgliesh asked what had happened when they left the club.

  “The same as I told that CID chap from Suffolk. We got a taxi at the corner of Greek Street and I was going to give the cabbie my address when Mr. Seton suddenly said that he’d rather just drive around for a bit and would I mind. If you ask me he’d suddenly got cold feet. Scared of what might happen to him, poor little twerp. Anyway, that suited me and we cruised around the West End a bit and then went into Hyde Park. I strung him a bit of a yarn about the dope racket and he made notes in a little book. If you ask me he was a bit drunk. Suddenly he got hold of me and tried to kiss me. Well, I was a bit fed up with him by then and didn’t fancy being pawed about by that little twit. I got the impression that he only made a pass at me because he thought he ought to. So I said I ought to be back at the club. He asked to be put down outside Paddington Underground and said he’d take a tube. No hard feelings. He gave me two fivers and an extra pound for the taxi fare.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “No. We came up Sussex Gardens—it’s one-way only down Praed Street now, as you know—and put him down outside the District Line. But he could have crossed the road to the Bakerloo I suppose. I didn’t watch to see. I said goodbye to him at about quarter past ten outside Paddington Underground and that’s the last I saw of him. And that’s the truth.”

  Even if it weren’t, thought Dalgliesh, it was difficult to see how the story could be disproved. There was too much corroborative evidence and Lil was the last woman in London to be panicked into changing a good story. It had been a waste of time coming to the Cortez. Luker had been unnaturally, almost suspiciously, co-operative but Dalgliesh had learned nothing which Reckless couldn’t have told him in half the time.

&nbs
p; Suddenly he felt again some of the uncertainties and the inadequacies which had tormented the young Detective Constable Dalgliesh nearly twenty years ago. When he took out Bryce’s photograph of the beach party and handed it round it was with no hope of success. He felt like a doorstep salesman proferring his unwanted rubbish. They looked at it politely enough. Perhaps, like kindly householders, they were rather sorry for him. Doggedly, persevering, he asked whether any of the people shown had been seen at the Cortez Club. Lil screwed up her eyes in an agony of effort while holding the snap at arm’s length, thus effectively blurring her vision. Lil, Dalgliesh remembered, was like most women. She lied most effectively when she could convince herself that, essentially, she was telling the truth.

  “No, dear, I can’t say I recognise them. Except Maurice Seton and Digby, of course. That’s not to say they haven’t been here. Better ask them.”

  Luker and Sid, less inhibited, merely glanced at the photograph and averred that they hadn’t seen the subjects in their lives.

  Dalgliesh looked at the three of them. Sid had the pained, rather anxious look of an underfed little boy, hopelessly at sea in the world of wicked adults. Dalgliesh thought that Luker might be secretly laughing if the man had ever been known to laugh. Lil was looking at him with the encouraging, motherly, almost pitying look which, he thought bitterly, was usually reserved for her customers. There was nothing more to be learned from them. He thanked them for their help—he suspected that the note of cool irony wasn’t lost on Luker—and let himself out.

  3

  When Dalgliesh had left, Luker jerked his head at Sid. The little man left without a word or a backward glance. Luker waited until his footsteps had been heard going downstairs. Lil, alone with the boss, showed no particular anxiety but settled herself more comfortably in the shabby armchair on the left of the gas fire and watched him with eyes as bland and incurious as the eyes of a cat. Luker went to a wall safe. She watched his broad back as he stood there, motionless, turning the combination lock. When he turned round she saw that he held a small parcel, the size of a shoebox, covered with brown paper and loosely tied with thin white string. He laid it on his desk.

  “Have you seen this before?” he asked.

  Lil disdained to show curiosity. “It came for you by this morning’s post, didn’t it? Sid took it in. What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it. On the contrary it is an admirable parcel. I’ve undone it once, as you can see, but it was a very neat little job when it arrived. You see the address? L. J. Luker, Esq., The Cortez Club. W. 1. Neat capital letters, characterless, printed in Biro. Not very easy to identify that hand. I like the esquire. My family is not armigerous as it happens, so the writer is being a little pretentious but as he shares that failing with my income tax inspector and half the tradesmen in Soho, we can hardly consider it a clue. Then there’s the paper. Perfectly ordinary brown paper; you can buy it in sheets from any stationer. And the string. Do you see anything remarkable about the string, Lil?”

  Lil, watchful, admitted that there was nothing remarkable about the string.

  Luker went on: “What is rather strange, though, is the amount of postage he—or she—paid. At least a shilling on the generous side by my estimate. So we take it that the parcel was stamped outside a post office and then pushed over the counter at a busy time. No waiting for it to be weighed. There would be less chance of the customer being noticed that way.”

  “Where was it posted?”

  “In Ipswich on Saturday. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Only that it was posted a hell of a long way from here. Isn’t Ipswich near that place where they found Maurice Seton?”

  “The nearest large town to Monksmere. The nearest place where one could be certain of being unrecognised. You could hardly post this in Walberswick or Southwold and expect that no one would remember.”

  “For God’s sake, L. J.! What’s in it?”

  “Open it and see for yourself.”

  Lil advanced cautiously but with an assumption of unconcern. There were more layers of the brown wrapping paper than she had expected. The box itself was revealed as an ordinary white shoebox but with the labels torn away. It looked very old, the kind of box that could be found tucked away in a drawer or cupboard in almost any house. Lil’s hands hovered over the lid.

  “If there’s some bloody animal in here that jumps out at me I’ll kill you, L. J., God help me if I don’t. I hate damn silly jokes. What’s the stink, anyway?”

  “Formalin. Go on, open it.”

  He was watching her closely, the cold grey eyes interested, almost amused. He had her worried now. For a second her eyes met his. Then she stepped back from the desk and, reaching forward, flipped off the lid with one jerk of her wrist.

  The sweetly acrid smell rose like an anaesthetic. The severed hands were lying on their bed of damp cotton wool curved as if in a parody of prayer, palms touching briefly, finger tips pressed together. The puffy skin, what was left of it, was chalk white and so crumpled that it looked as if the phalanges were loosely clothed with a pair of old gloves which would peel off at a touch. Already the flesh was shrinking from the butchered wrists and the nail of the right index finger had shifted from its bed.

  The woman stared at the hands, fascinated and repelled. Then she seized the lid of the box and rammed it home. The cardboard buckled under her force.

  “It wasn’t murder, L. J. I swear it! Digby hadn’t anything to do with it. He hasn’t the nerve.”

  “That’s what I would have said. You’ve told me the truth, Lil?”

  “Of course. Every word, L. J. Look, he couldn’t have done it. He was in the nick all Tuesday night.”

  “I know all about that. But if he didn’t send these, who did? He stood to make £200,000, remember.”

  Lil said suddenly: “He said that his brother would die. He told me that once.” She gazed at the box, fascinated and horrified.

  Luker said: “Of course he was going to die. Some time. He had a dicky heart, didn’t he? That’s not to say Digby put him away. It was natural causes.”

  Lil may have detected some tinge of uncertainty in his voice. She glanced at him and said quickly: “He’s always been keen to come in with you, L. J. You know that. And he’s got £200,000.”

  “Not yet. And he may never get his hands on it. I don’t want a fool in with me, capital or no capital.”

  “If he put Maurice away and made it look like natural death, he’s not all that of a fool, L. J.”

  “Maybe not. Let’s wait and see if he gets away with it.”

  “And what about … those?” asked Lil jerking her head towards the innocuous-looking box.

  “Back in the safe. Tomorrow I’ll get Sid to parcel them up and send them off to Digby. That should tell us something. It would be a rather nice touch to enclose my visiting card. It’s time Digby Seton and I had a little talk.”

  4

  Dalgliesh closed the door of the Cortez Club behind him and gulped in the Soho air as if it were as sweet as the sea wind on Monksmere Head. Luker had always had this effect of seeming to contaminate the atmosphere. He was glad to be out of that stuffy little office and free from the stare of those dead eyes. It must have rained briefly while he was in the club for the cars were hissing over a wet road and the pavement was tacky under his feet. Soho was wakening now and the narrow street was swirling its gaudy flotsam from kerb to kerb. A stiff breeze was blowing, drying the road as he watched. He wondered if it was blowing on Monksmere Head. Perhaps even now his aunt would be closing the shutters against the night.

  Walking slowly towards Shaftesbury Avenue he pondered his next move. So far this dash to London, prompted by angry impulse, had told him little that he couldn’t have learned in greater comfort by staying in Suffolk. Even Max Gurney could have told his news over the telephone although Max was, of course, notoriously cautious. Dalgliesh didn’t altogether regret his journey, but it had been a long day and he wasn’t disposed
to make it longer. It was the more irritating, therefore, to find himself harassed by the conviction that there was still something to be done.

  It was difficult to decide what. None of the possibilities was attractive. He could visit the fashionable and expensive flats where Latham lived and attempt to get something out of the hall porter but, in his present unofficial capacity, he was unlikely to succeed. Besides, Reckless or his men would have been there before him and if Latham’s alibi could be broken they would have broken it. He could try his luck at the eminently respectable Bloomsbury hotel where Eliza Marley claimed to have spent last Tuesday night. There too his reception would hardly be cordial and, there too, Reckless would have been before him. He was getting a little tired of following in the Inspector’s footsteps like a tame dog.

  He could take a look at Justin Bryce’s flat in the City; but there seemed little point in it. Since Bryce was still in Suffolk there could be no chance of seeing inside and he didn’t imagine that there was much to be learned from an examination of the building itself. He already knew it well since it was one of the pleasanter architectural conceits in the City. Bryce lived over the offices of the Monthly Critical Review in a small eighteenth-century courtyard off Fleet Street, so carefully preserved that it looked wholly artificial. Its only outlet to the street was through Pie Crust Passage, almost too narrow for a single man. Dalgliesh didn’t know where Bryce garaged his car but it certainly wasn’t in Pie Crust Court. He had a sudden fantastic vision of the little man staggering down Pie Crust Passage with Seton’s body slung over his shoulder and stowing it in the back of his car under the interested gaze of the local traffic wardens and half the City police. He wished he could believe it.

  There was, of course, another way to spend the evening. He could telephone Deborah Riscoe at her office—she would be almost due to leave—and ask her to join him at his flat. She would come, of course. Those days, sweet to the memory despite their occasional torments, when he could never be sure that she would come, were over now. Whatever else she might have planned for the evening, she would come. Then all the boredom, the irritation and the uncertainties would find at least a physical relief. And tomorrow the problem would still remain, casting its shadow between him and the first light.