An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

by P. D. James

  Miss Leaming looked unemotionally at her lover’s body, then glanced round the room. Forgetting her role, she asked: “What have you done in here? What about fingerprints?”

  “Never mind. I’ve looked after that. All you have to remember is that you didn’t know I had a gun when I first came to Garforth House; you didn’t know Sir Ronald took it from me. You haven’t seen that gun until this moment. When I arrived tonight you showed me into the study and met me again when I came out two minutes later. We walked together to the car and spoke as we have just spoken. We heard the shot. We did what we have just done. Forget everything else that has happened. When they question you, don’t embroider, don’t invent, don’t be afraid to say you can’t remember. And now—ring the Cambridge Police.”

  Three minutes later they were standing together at the open door waiting for the police to arrive.

  Miss Leaming said: “We mustn’t talk together once they’re here. And, afterwards, we mustn’t meet or show any particular interest in each other. They’ll know that this can’t be murder unless we two are in it together. And why should we conspire together when we’ve only met once before, when we don’t even like each other?”

  She was right, thought Cordelia. They didn’t even like each other. She didn’t really care if Elizabeth Leaming went to prison; she did care if Mark’s mother went to prison. She cared, too, that the truth of his death should never be known. The strength of that determination struck her as irrational. It could make no difference to him now and he wasn’t a boy who had cared overmuch what people thought of him. But Ronald Callender had desecrated his body after death; had planned to make him an object, at worse of contempt, at best of pity. She had set her face against Ronald Callender. She hadn’t wanted him to die; wouldn’t have been capable herself of pressing the trigger. But he was dead and she couldn’t feel regret, nor could she be an instrument of retribution for his murderer. It was expedient, no more than that, that Miss Leaming shouldn’t be punished. Gazing out into the summer night and waiting for the sound of the police cars, Cordelia accepted once and for all the enormity and the justification of what she had done and was still planning to do. She was never afterwards to feel the least tinge of regret or of remorse.

  Miss Leaming said: “There are things you probably want to ask me, things I suppose you’ve a right to know. We can meet in King’s College Chapel after Evensong on the first Sunday after the inquest. I’ll go through the screen into the chancel, you stay in the nave. It will seem natural enough for us to meet by chance there, that is if we are both still free.”

  Cordelia was interested to see that Miss Leaming was taking charge again. She said: “We shall be. If we keep our heads this can’t go wrong.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Miss Leaming said: “They’re taking their time. Surely they should be here by now?”

  “They won’t be much longer.”

  Miss Leaming suddenly laughed and said with revealing bitterness: “What is there to be frightened of? We shall be dealing only with men.”

  So they waited quietly together. They heard the approaching cars before the headlamps swept over the drive, illuminating every pebble, picking out the small plants at the edge of the beds, bathing the blue haze of the wisteria with light, dazzling the watchers’ eyes. Then the lights were dimmed as the cars rocked gently to a stop in front of the house. Dark shapes emerged and came unhurriedly but resolutely forward. The hall was suddenly filled with large, calm men, some in plain clothes. Cordelia effaced herself against the wall and it was Miss Leaming who stepped forward, spoke to them in a low voice and led them into the study.

  Two uniformed men were left in the hall. They stood talking together, taking no notice of Cordelia. Their colleagues were taking their time. They must have used the telephone in the study because more cars and men began to arrive. First the police surgeon, identified by his bag even if he hadn’t been greeted with: “Good evening, Doc. In here please.”

  How often he must have heard that phrase! He glanced with brief curiosity at Cordelia as he trotted through the hall, a fat, dishevelled little man, his face crumpled and petulant as a child when forcibly woken from sleep. Next came a civilian photographer carrying his camera, tripod and box of equipment; a fingerprint expert; two other civilians whom Cordelia, instructed in procedure by Bernie, guessed were scene-of-crime officers. So they were treating this as a suspicious death. And why not? It was suspicious.

  The head of the household lay dead, but the house itself seemed to have come alive. The police talked, not in whispers, but in confident normal voices unsubdued by death. They were professionals doing their job, working easily to the prescribed routine. They had been initiated into the mysteries of violent death; its victims held no awe for them. They had seen too many bodies: bodies scraped off motorways; loaded piecemeal into ambulances; dragged by hook and net from the depths of rivers; dug putrefying from the clogging earth. Like doctors, they were kind and condescendingly gentle to the uninstructed, keeping inviolate their awful knowledge. This body, while it breathed, had been more important than others. It wasn’t important now, but it could still make trouble for them. They would be that much more meticulous, that much more tactful. But it was still only a case.

  Cordelia sat alone and waited. She was suddenly overcome with tiredness. She longed for nothing but to put down her head on the hall table and sleep. She was hardly aware of Miss Leaming passing through the hall on her way to the drawing room, of the tall officer talking to her as they passed. Neither took any notice of the small figure in its immense woollen jersey, sitting against the wall. Cordelia willed herself to stay awake. She knew what she had to say; it was all clear enough in her mind. If only they would come to question her and let her sleep.

  It wasn’t until the photographer and the print man had finished their work that one of the senior officers came out to her. She was never afterwards able to recall his face but she remembered his voice, a careful, unemphatic voice from which every tinge of emotion had been excluded. He held out the gun towards her. It was resting on his open palm, protected by a handkerchief from the contamination of his hand.

  “Do you recognize this weapon, Miss Gray?”

  Cordelia thought it odd that he should use the word weapon. Why not just say gun?

  “I think so. I think it must be mine.”

  “You aren’t sure?”

  “It must be mine, unless Sir Ronald owned one of the same make. He took it from me when I first came here four or five days ago. He promised to let me have it back when I called tomorrow morning for my pay.”

  “So this is only the second time you’ve been in this house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever met Sir Ronald Callender or Miss Leaming before?”

  “No. Not until Sir Ronald sent for me to undertake this case.”

  He went away. Cordelia rested her head back against the wall and took short snatches of sleep. Another officer came. This time he had a uniformed man with him, taking notes. There were more questions. Cordelia told her prepared story. They wrote it down without comment and went away.

  She must have dozed. She awoke to find a tall, uniformed officer standing over her. He said: “Miss Leaming is making tea in the kitchen, Miss. Perhaps you would like to give her a hand. It’s something to do, isn’t it?”

  Cordelia thought: “They’re going to take away the body.” She said: “I don’t know where the kitchen is.”

  She saw his eyes flicker.

  “Oh, don’t you, Miss? You’re a stranger here, are you? Well, it’s this way.”

  The kitchen was at the back of the house. It smelt of spice, oil and tomato sauce, bringing back memories of meals in Italy with her father. Miss Leaming was taking down cups from a vast dresser. An electric kettle was already hissing steam. The police officer stayed. So they weren’t to be left alone.

  Cordelia said: “Can I help?”

  Miss Leaming did not look at her. “There are some biscuit
s in that tin. You can put them out on a tray. The milk is in the fridge.”

  Cordelia moved like an automaton. The milk bottle was an icy column in her hands, the biscuit tin lid resisted her tired fingers and she broke a nail prising it off. She noticed the details of the kitchen—a wall calendar of St. Theresa of Avila, the saint’s face unnaturally elongated and pale so that she looked like a hallowed Miss Leaming; a china donkey with two panniers of artificial flowers, its melancholy head crowned with a miniature straw hat; an immense blue bowl of brown eggs.

  There were two trays. The police constable took the larger from Miss Leaming and led the way into the hall. Cordelia followed with the second tray, holding it high against her chest like a child, permitted as a privilege to help mother. Police officers gathered round. She took a cup herself and returned to her usual chair.

  And now there was the sound of yet another car. A middle-aged woman came in with a uniformed chauffeur at her shoulder. Through the fog of her tiredness, Cordelia heard a high, didactic voice.

  “My dear Eliza, this is appalling! You must come back to the Lodge tonight. No, I insist. Is the Chief Constable here?”

  “No, Marjorie, but these officers have been very kind.”

  “Leave them the key. They’ll lock up the house when they’ve finished. You can’t possibly stay here alone tonight.”

  There were introductions, hurried consultations with the detectives in which the newcomer’s voice was dominant. Miss Leaming went upstairs with her visitor and reappeared five minutes later with a small case, her coat over her arm. They went off together, escorted to the car by the chauffeur and one of the detectives. None of the little party glanced at Cordelia.

  Five minutes later the Inspector came up to Cordelia, key in hand. “We shall lock up the house tonight, Miss Gray. It’s time you were getting home. Are you thinking of staying at the cottage?”

  “Just for the next few days, if Major Markland will let me.”

  “You look very tired. One of my men will drive you in your own car. I should like a written statement from you tomorrow. Can you come to the station as soon as possible after breakfast? You know where it is?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  One of the police panda cars drove off first and the Mini followed. The police driver drove fast, lurching the little car around the corners. Cordelia’s head lolled against the back of the seat and, from time to time, was thrown against the driver’s arm. He was wearing shirtsleeves and she was vaguely conscious of the comfort of the warm flesh through the cotton. The car window was open and she was aware of hot night air rushing against her face, of the scudding clouds, of the first unbelievable colours of the day staining the eastern sky. The route seemed strange to her and time itself disjointed; she wondered why the car had suddenly stopped and it took a minute for her to recognize the tall hedge bending over the lane like a menacing shadow, the ramshackle gate. She was home.

  The driver said: “Is this the place, Miss?”

  “Yes, this is it. But I usually leave the Mini further down the lane on the right. There’s a copse there where you can drive it off the road.”

  “Right, Miss.”

  He got out of the car to consult the other driver. They moved on slowly for the last few yards of the journey. And now, at last, the police car had driven away and she was alone at the gate. It was an effort to push it open against the weight of the weeds and she lurched round the cottage to the back door like a drunken creature. It took some little time to fit the key into the lock, but that was the last problem. There was no longer a gun to hide; there was no longer need to check the tape sealing the windows. Lunn was dead and she was alive. Every night that she had slept at the cottage Cordelia had come home tired, but never before had she been as tired as this. She made her way upstairs as if sleepwalking and, too exhausted even to zip herself into her sleeping bag, crept underneath it and knew nothing more.

  And at last—it seemed to Cordelia after months, not days, of waiting—there was another inquest. It was as unhurried, as unostentatiously formal, as Bernie’s had been, but there was a difference. Here, instead of a handful of pathetic casuals who had sneaked into the warmth of the back benches to hear Bernie’s obsequies, were grave-faced colleagues and friends, muted voices, the whispered preliminaries of lawyers and police, an indefinable sense of occasion. Cordelia guessed that the grey-haired man escorting Miss Leaming must be her lawyer. She watched him at work, affable but not deferential to the senior police, quietly solicitous for his client, exuding a confidence that they were all engaged in a necessary if tedious formality, a ritual as unworrying as Sunday Matins.

  Miss Leaming looked very pale. She was wearing the grey suit she had worn when Cordelia first met her but with a small black hat, black gloves and a black chiffon scarf knotted at her throat. The two women did not look at each other. Cordelia found a seat at the end of a bench and sat there, unrepresented and alone. One or two of the younger policemen smiled at her with a reassuring but pitying kindness.

  Miss Leaming gave her evidence first in a low, composed voice. She affirmed instead of taking the oath, a decision which caused a brief spasm of distress to pass over her lawyer’s face. But she gave him no further cause for concern. She testified that Sir Ronald had been depressed at his son’s death and, she thought, had blamed himself for not knowing that something was worrying Mark. He had told her that he intended to call in a private detective, and it had been she who had originally interviewed Miss Gray and had brought her back to Garforth House. Miss Leaming said that she had opposed the suggestion; she had seen no useful purpose in it, and thought that this futile and fruitless enquiry would only remind Sir Ronald of the tragedy. She had not known that Miss Gray possessed a gun nor that Sir Ronald had taken it from her. She had not been present during the whole of their preliminary interview. Sir Ronald had escorted Miss Gray to view his son’s room while she, Miss Leaming, had gone in search of a photograph of Mr. Callender for which Miss Gray had asked.

  The coroner asked her gently about the night of Sir Ronald’s death.

  Miss Leaming said that Miss Gray had arrived to give her first report shortly after half past ten. She herself had been passing through the front hall when the girl appeared. Miss Leaming had pointed out that it was late, but Miss Gray had said that she wanted to abandon the case and get back to town. She had showed Miss Gray into the study where Sir Ronald was working. They had been together, she thought, for less than two minutes. Miss Gray had then come out of the study and she had walked with her to her car; they had only talked briefly. Miss Gray said that Sir Ronald had asked her to call back in the morning for her pay. She had made no mention of a gun.

  Sir Ronald had, only half an hour before that, received a telephone call from the police to say that his laboratory assistant, Christopher Lunn, had been killed in a road accident. She had not told Miss Gray the news about Lunn before her interview with Sir Ronald; it hadn’t occurred to her to do so. The girl had gone almost immediately into the study to see Sir Ronald. Miss Leaming said that they were standing together at the car talking when they heard the shot. At first she had thought it was a car backfiring but then she had realized that it had come from the house. They had both rushed into the study and found Sir Ronald lying slumped over his desk. The gun had dropped from his hand to the floor.

  No, Sir Ronald had never given her any idea that he contemplated suicide. She thought that he was very distressed about the death of Mr. Lunn but it was difficult to tell. Sir Ronald was not a man to show emotion. He had been working very hard recently and had not seemed himself since the death of his son. But Miss Leaming had never for a moment thought that Sir Ronald was a man who might put an end to his life.

  She was followed by the police witnesses, deferential, professional, but managing to give an impression that none of this was new to them; they had seen it all before and would see it again.

  They were followed by the doctors, including the pathologist, who testified in what the
court obviously thought was unnecessary detail to the effect of firing a jacketed hollow-cavity bullet of ninety grains into the human brain.

  The coroner asked: “You have heard the police evidence that there was the print of Sir Ronald Callender’s thumb on the trigger of the gun and a palm mark smudged around the butt. What would you deduce from that?”

  The pathologist looked slightly surprised at being asked to deduce anything but said that it was apparent that Sir Ronald had held the gun with his thumb on the trigger when pointing it against his head. The pathologist thought that it was probably the most comfortable way, having regard to the position of the wound of entry.

  Lastly, Cordelia was called to the witness box and took the oath. She had given some thought to the propriety of this and had wondered whether to follow Miss Leaming’s example. There were moments, usually on a sunny Easter morning, when she wished that she could with sincerity call herself a Christian; but for the rest of the year, she knew herself to be what she was—incurably agnostic but prone to unpredictable relapses into faith. This seemed to her, however, a moment when religious scrupulosity was an indulgence which she couldn’t afford. The lies she was about to tell would not be the more heinous because they were tinged with blasphemy.

  The coroner let her tell her story without interruption. She sensed that the court was puzzled by her but not unsympathetic. For once, the carefully modulated middle-class accent, which in her six years at the convent she had unconsciously acquired, and which in other people often irritated her as much as her own voice had irritated her father, was proving an advantage. She wore her suit and had bought a black chiffon scarf to cover her head. She remembered that she must call the coroner “sir.”

  After she had briefly confirmed Miss Leaming’s story of how she had been called to the case, the coroner said: “And now, Miss Gray, will you explain to the court what happened on the night Sir Ronald Callender died?”

  “I had decided, sir, that I didn’t want to go on with the case. I hadn’t discovered anything useful and I didn’t think there was anything to discover. I had been living in the cottage where Mark Callender had spent the last weeks of his life and I had come to think that what I was doing was wrong, that I was taking money for prying into his private life. I decided on impulse to tell Sir Ronald that I wanted to finish the case. I drove to Garforth House. I got there about ten-thirty. I knew it was late but I was anxious to get back to London the next morning. I saw Miss Leaming as she was crossing the hall and she showed me straight into the study.”