by P. D. James
“Not to me. I never felt that I got near him. He made a formal goodbye, thanked me for what he chose to describe as my help, and left. I made the usual noises of regret. We shook hands. I was embarrassed, but not Mark. He wasn’t, I think, a young man susceptible to embarrassment.”
There was a small commotion at the door and a group of new arrivals pushed themselves noisily into the throng. Among them was a tall, dark girl in a flame-coloured frock, open almost to the waist. Cordelia felt the tutor stiffen, saw his eyes fixed on the new arrival with an intense, half-anxious, half-supplicating look, which she had seen before. Her heart sank. She would be lucky now to get any more information. Desperately trying to recapture his attention, she said: “I’m not sure that Mark did kill himself. I think it could have been murder.”
He spoke inattentively, his eyes on the newcomers. “Unlikely, surely. By whom? For what reason? He was a negligible personality. He didn’t even provoke a vague dislike except possibly from his father. But Ronald Callender couldn’t have done it if that’s what you’re hoping. He was dining in Hall at High Table on the night Mark died. It was a College Feast night. I sat next to him. His son telephoned him.”
Cordelia said eagerly, almost tugging at his sleeve: “At what time?”
“Soon after the meal started, I suppose. Benskin, he’s one of the College servants, came in and gave him the message. It must have been between eight and eight-fifteen. Callender disappeared for about ten minutes then returned and got on with his soup. The rest of us still hadn’t reached the second course.”
“Did he say what Mark wanted? Did he seem disturbed?”
“Neither. We hardly spoke through the meal. Sir Ronald doesn’t waste his conversational gifts on non-scientists. Excuse me, will you?”
He was gone, threading his way through the throng towards his prey. Cordelia put down her glass and went in search of Hugo.
“Look,” she said, “I want to talk to Benskin, a servant at your college. Would he be there tonight?”
Hugo put down the bottle he was holding.
“He may be. He’s one of the few who live in college. But I doubt whether you would winkle him out of his lair on your own. If it’s all that urgent, I’d better come with you.”
The college porter ascertained with curiosity that Benskin was in the college, and Benskin was summoned. He arrived after a wait of five minutes during which Hugo chatted to the porter and Cordelia walked outside the Lodge to amuse herself reading the college notices. Benskin arrived, unhurrying, imperturbable. He was a silver-haired, formally dressed old man, his face creased and thick skinned as an anaemic blood orange, and would, Cordelia thought, have looked like an advertisement for the ideal butler, were it not for an expression of lugubrious and sly disdain.
Cordelia gave him sight of Sir Ronald’s note of authority and plunged straight into her questions. There was nothing to be gained by subtlety and since she had enlisted Hugo’s help, she had little hope of shaking him off. She said: “Sir Ronald has asked me to enquire into the circumstances of his son’s death.”
“So I see, Miss.”
“I am told that Mr. Mark Callender telephoned his father while Sir Ronald was dining at High Table on the night his son died and that you passed the message to Sir Ronald shortly after dinner began.”
“I was under the impression at the time that it was Mr. Callender who was ringing, Miss, but I was mistaken.”
“How can you be sure of that, Mr. Benskin?”
“Sir Ronald himself told me, Miss, when I saw him in college some few days after his son’s death. I’ve known Sir Ronald since he was an undergraduate and I made bold to express my condolences. During our brief conversation I made reference to the telephone call of 26th May and Sir Ronald told me that I was mistaken, that it was not Mr. Callender who had called.”
“Did he say who it was?”
“Sir Ronald informed me that it was his laboratory assistant, Mr. Chris Lunn.”
“Did that surprise you—that you were wrong, I mean?”
“I confess that I was somewhat surprised, Miss, but the mistake was perhaps excusable. My subsequent reference to the incident was fortuitous and in the circumstances regrettable.”
“Do you really believe that you misheard the name?”
The obstinate old face did not relax. “Sir Ronald could have been in no doubt about the person who telephoned him.”
“Was it usual for Mr. Callender to ring his father while he was dining in College?”
“I had never previously taken a call from him, but then answering the telephone is not part of my normal duties. It is possible that some of the other college servants may be able to help but I hardly think that an enquiry would be productive or that the news that college servants had been questioned would be gratifying to Sir Ronald.”
“Any enquiry which can help ascertain the truth is likely to be gratifying to Sir Ronald,” said Cordelia. Really, she thought, Benskin’s prose style is becoming infectious. She added more naturally: “Sir Ronald is very anxious to find out everything possible about his son’s death. Is there anything that you can tell me, any help that you can give me, Mr. Benskin?”
This was perilously close to an appeal but it met with little response. “Nothing, Miss. Mr. Callender was a quiet and pleasant young gentleman who seemed, as far as I was able to observe him, to be in good health and spirits up to the time he left us. His death has been very much felt in the college. Is there anything else, Miss?”
He stood patiently waiting to be dismissed and Cordelia let him go. As she and Hugo left college together and walked back into Trumpington Street she said bitterly: “He doesn’t care, does he?”
“Why should he? Benskin’s an old phoney but he’s been at college for seventy years and he’s seen it all before. A thousand ages in his sight are but an evening gone. I’ve only known Benskin distressed once over the suicide of an undergraduate and that was a Duke’s son. Benskin thought that there were some things that college shouldn’t permit to happen.”
“But he wasn’t mistaken about Mark’s call. You could tell that from his whole manner, at least I could. He knows what he heard. He isn’t going to admit it, of course, but he knows in his heart he wasn’t mistaken.”
Hugo said lightly: “He was being the old college servant, very correct, very proper; that’s Benskin all over. ‘The young gentlemen aren’t what they were when I first came to college.’ I should bloody well hope not! They wore side whiskers then and noblemen sported fancy gowns to distinguish them from the plebs. Benskin would bring all that back if he could. He’s an anachronism, pottering through the court hand in hand with a statelier past.”
“But he isn’t deaf. I deliberately spoke in a soft voice and he heard me perfectly. Do you really believe that he was mistaken?”
“ ‘Chris Lunn’ and ‘his son’ are very similar sounds.”
“But Lunn doesn’t announce himself that way. All the time I was with Sir Ronald and Miss Leaming they just called him Lunn.”
“Look, Cordelia, you can’t possibly suspect Ronald Callender of having a hand in his son’s death! Be logical. You accept, I suppose, that a rational murderer hopes not to be found out. You admit, no doubt, that Ronald Callender, although a disagreeable bastard, is a rational being. Mark is dead and his body cremated. No one except you has mentioned murder. Then Sir Ronald employs you to stir things up. Why should he if he’s got something to hide? He doesn’t even need to divert suspicion; there is no suspicion.”
“Of course I don’t suspect him of killing his son. He doesn’t know how Mark died and he desperately needs to know. That’s why he’s taken me on. I could tell that at our interview; I couldn’t be wrong about that. But I don’t understand why he should have lied about the telephone call.”
“If he is lying there could be half a dozen innocent explanations. If Mark did ring the college it must have been something pretty urgent, perhaps something which his father didn’t want to make public, so
mething which gives a clue to his son’s suicide.”
“Then why employ me to find out why he killed himself?”
“True, wise Cordelia; I’ll try again. Mark asked for help, perhaps an urgent visit which Dad refused. You can imagine his reaction. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mark, I’m dining at High Table with the Master. Obviously I can’t leave the cutlets and claret just because you telephone me in this hysterical way and demand to see me. Pull yourself together.’ That sort of thing wouldn’t sound so good in open court; coroners are notoriously censorious.” Hugo’s voice took on a deep magisterial tone. “ ‘It is not for me to add to Sir Ronald’s distress, but it is, perhaps, unfortunate that he chose to ignore what was obviously a cry for help. Had he left his meal immediately and gone to his son’s side this brilliant young student might have been saved.’ Cambridge suicides, so I’ve noticed, are always brilliant; I’m still waiting to read the report of an inquest where the college authorities testify that the student only just killed himself in time before they kicked him out.”
“But Mark died between seven and nine p.m. That telephone call is Sir Ronald’s alibi!”
“He wouldn’t see it like that. He doesn’t need an alibi. If you know you’re not involved and the question of foul play never arises, you don’t think in terms of alibis. It’s only the guilty who do that.”
“But how did Mark know where to find his father? In his evidence Sir Ronald said that he hadn’t spoken to his son for over two weeks.”
“I can see you have a point there. Ask Miss Leaming. Better still, ask Lunn if it was, in fact, he who rang the college. If you’re looking for a villain Lunn should suit admirably. I find him absolutely sinister.”
“I didn’t know that you knew him.”
“Oh, he’s pretty well known in Cambridge. He drives that horrid little closed van around with ferocious dedication as if he were transporting recalcitrant students to the gas chambers. Everyone knows Lunn. Seldom he smiles and smiles in such a way as if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit that could be moved to smile at anything. I should concentrate on Lunn.”
They walked on in silence through the warm scented night while the waters sang in the tunnels of Trumpington Street. Lights were shining now in college doorways and in porters’ lodges and the far gardens and interconnecting courts, glimpsed as they passed, looked remote and ethereal as in a dream. Cordelia was suddenly oppressed with loneliness and melancholy. If Bernie were alive they would be discussing the case, cosily ensconced in the furthest corner of some Cambridge pub, insulated by noise and smoke and anonymity from the curiosity of their neighbours; talking low voiced in their own particular jargon. They would be speculating on the personality of a young man who slept under that gentle and intellectual painting, yet who had bought a vulgar magazine of salacious nudes. Or had he? And if not, how had it come to be in the cottage garden? They would be discussing a father who lied about his son’s last telephone call, speculating in happy complicity about an uncleaned garden fork, a row of earth half dug, an unwashed coffee mug, a quotation from Blake meticulously typed. They would be talking about Isabelle who was terrified and Sophie who was surely honest and Hugo who certainly knew something about Mark’s death and who was clever but not as clever as he needed to be. For the first time since the case began Cordelia doubted her ability to solve it alone. If only there were someone reliable in whom she could confide, someone who would reinforce her confidence. She thought again of Sophie, but Sophie had been Mark’s mistress and was Hugo’s sister. They were both involved. She was on her own and that, when she came to think about it, was no different from how essentially it had always been. Ironically, the realization brought her comfort and a return of hope.
At the corner of Panton Street they paused and he said: “You’re coming back to the party?”
“No, thank you, Hugo; I’ve got work to do.”
“Are you staying in Cambridge?”
Cordelia wondered whether the question was prompted by more than polite interest. Suddenly cautious, she said: “Only for the next day or two. I’ve found a very dull but cheap bed-and-breakfast place near the station.”
He accepted the lie without comment and they said goodnight. She made her way back to Norwich Street. The little car was still outside number fifty-seven, but the house was dark and quiet as if to emphasize her exclusion, and the three windows were as blank as dead, rejecting eyes.
She was tired by the time she got back to the cottage and had parked the Mini on the edge of the copse. The garden gate creaked at her hand. The night was dark and she felt in her bag for her torch and followed its bright pool round the side of the cottage and to the back door. By its light she fitted the key into the lock. She turned it and, dazed with tiredness, stepped into the sitting room. The torch, still switched on, hung loosely from her hand, making erratic patterns of light on the tiled floor. Then in one involuntary movement it jerked upwards and shone full on the thing that hung from the centre hook of the ceiling. Cordelia gave a cry and clutched at the table. It was the bolster from her bed, the bolster with a cord drawn tight about one end making a grotesque and bulbous head, and the other end stuffed into a pair of Mark’s trousers. The legs hung pathetically flat and empty, one lower than the other. As she stared at it in fascinated horror, her heart hammering, a slight breeze wafted in from the open door and the figure swung slowly round as if twisted by a living hand.
She must have stood there rooted with fear and staring wild-eyed at the bolster for seconds only, yet it seemed minutes before she found the strength to pull out a chair from the table and take the thing down. Even in the moment of repulsion and terror she remembered to look closely at the knot. The cord was attached to the hook by a simple loop and two half hitches. So, either her secret visitor had chosen not to repeat his former tactics, or he hadn’t known how the first knot had been tied. She laid the bolster on the chair and went outside for the gun. In her tiredness she had forgotten it, but now she longed for the reassurance of the hard cold metal in her hand. She stood at the back door and listened. The garden seemed suddenly full of noises, mysterious rustlings, leaves moving in the slight breeze like human sighs, furtive scurryings in the undergrowth, the bat-like squeak of an animal disconcertingly close at hand. The night seemed to be holding its breath as she crept out towards the elder bush. She waited, listening to her own heart, before she found courage to turn her back and stretch up her hand to feel for the gun. It was still there. She sighed audibly with relief and immediately felt better. The gun wasn’t loaded but that hardly seemed to matter. She hurried back to the cottage, her terror assuaged.
It was nearly an hour before she finally went to bed. She lit the lamp and, gun in hand, made a search of the whole cottage. Next she examined the window. It was obvious enough how he had got in. The window had no catch and was easy to push open from outside. Cordelia fetched a roll of Scotch tape from her scene-of-crime kit and, as Bernie had shown her, cut two very narrow strips and pasted them across the base of the pane and the wooden frame. She doubted whether the front windows could be opened but she took no chances and sealed them in the same way. It wouldn’t stop an intruder but at least she would know next morning that he had gained access. Finally, having washed in the kitchen, she went upstairs to bed. There was no lock on her door but she wedged it slightly open and balanced a saucepan lid on the top of the frame. If anyone did succeed in getting in, he wouldn’t take her by surprise. She loaded the gun and placed it on her bedside table, remembering that she was dealing with a killer. She examined the cord. It was a four-foot length of ordinary strong string, obviously not new and frayed at one end. Her heart sank at the hopelessness of trying to identify it. But she labelled it carefully, as Bernie had taught her, and packed it in her scene-of-crime kit. She did the same with the curled strap and the typed passage of Blake, transferring them from the bottom of her shoulder bag to plastic exhibit envelopes. She was so weary that even this routine chore cost her an effort of will. Then s
he placed the bolster back on the bed, resisting an impulse to sling it on the floor and sleep without it. But, by then, nothing—neither fear nor discomfort—could have kept her awake. She lay for only a few minutes listening to the ticking of her watch before tiredness overcame her and bore her unresisting down the dark tide of sleep.
4
Cordelia was awakened early next morning by the discordant chattering of the birds and the strong clear light of another fine day. She lay for several minutes stretching herself within her sleeping bag, savouring the smell of a country morning, that subtle and evocative fusion of earth, sweet wet grass and stronger farmyard smell. She washed in the kitchen as Mark had obviously done, standing in the tin bath from the shed and gasping as she poured saucepans of cold tap water over her naked body. There was something about the simple life which disposed one to these austerities. Cordelia thought it unlikely that, in any circumstances, she would willingly have bathed in cold water in London or so much relished the smell of the paraffin stove superimposed on the appetizing sizzle of frying bacon, or the flavour of her first strong mug of tea.
The cottage was filled with sunlight, a warm friendly sanctum from which she could safely venture out to whatever the day held. In the calm peace of a summer morning the little sitting room seemed untouched by the tragedy of Mark Callender’s death. The hook in the ceiling looked as innocuous as if it had never served its dreadful purpose. The horror of that moment when her torch had first picked out the dark swollen shadow of the bolster moving in the night breeze now had the unreality of a dream. Even the memory of the precautions of the night before were embarrassing viewed in the unambiguous light of day. She felt rather foolish as she unloaded the gun, secreted the ammunition among her underclothes, and hid the pistol in the elder bush, watching carefully to see that she wasn’t observed. When the washing-up was done and the one tea cloth washed through and hung out to dry, she picked a small posy of pansies, cowslips and meadowsweet from the far end of the garden and set them on the table in one of the ribbed mugs.
