A Certain Justice

by P. D. James

  Kate asked: “So you can be absolutely certain that both of them were in the flat the whole of the time from quarter to eight, when you made the call, until you went up to bed at about ten-thirty?”

  “Oh absolutely sure. I was constantly in and out of their sitting-room, serving or clearing the plates. Both of them were under my eyes, so to speak, the whole evening. It wasn’t very pleasant. I think Octavia was trying to show off in front of the young man. I didn’t go downstairs again after I’d left them and come up here. I thought that Miss Aldridge would come up if she wanted to discuss anything that evening. I sat in my dressing-gown until after eleven in case she wanted me, and then I went to bed. In the morning I went in with her tea and found that the bed hadn’t been slept in. That’s when I rang Chambers again.”

  Dalgliesh said: “We need to know as much about her as possible. What about dinner parties? Did her friends come here often?”

  “Not very often. She really lived a very private life. Mr. Laud came about once every month or six weeks. They liked to go to exhibitions or the theatre together. I usually cooked them a light meal before they went and he brought her home, but I don’t think he stayed for more than a drink. And sometimes they went out to dinner together.”

  “And was there anyone else, anyone perhaps who stayed for more than a drink?”

  She flushed and seemed reluctant to reply. Then she said: “Miss Aldridge is dead. It seems terrible even to discuss her, and more terrible to gossip about her life. We ought to protect the dead.”

  Dalgliesh said gently: “In a murder investigation to protect the dead can often mean endangering the living. I’m not here to judge her, I’ve no right. But I do need to know about her. I do need the facts.”

  There was a little silence, then Mrs. Buckley said: “There was another visitor. He didn’t come very often but I think he did occasionally stay the night. It was Mr. Rawlstone, Mr. Mark Rawlstone. He’s an MP.”

  Dalgliesh asked her when she had last seen him.

  “It must be two or three months ago, perhaps more. Time passes so quickly, doesn’t it? I can’t really remember. But of course he may have come more recently, perhaps one night after I’d gone to my room. He was always gone early in the morning.”

  Before they left Dalgliesh asked: “What are you thinking of doing now, Mrs. Buckley? Staying on here?”

  “Mr. Farnham, that very pleasant solicitor, suggested that I should take my time. His firm and Miss Aldridge’s bank are the executors, so I suppose they’ll be paying me for the time being. I don’t think Octavia will want me to stay on—in fact, I’m sure she won’t. But someone ought to be in the house with her and I suppose I’m better than nobody. She’s spoken to her father but she doesn’t want to see him. I don’t think I can leave her even if she does resent me. But it’s all so dreadful at the moment that I can’t really think clearly.”

  Dalgliesh said: “Of course not. It’s been an appalling shock for you. You’ve been very helpful, Mrs. Buckley. If there is anything else that comes to mind, please get in touch. This is the number. And if you find the media intrusive, let me know and I’ll arrange some protection for you. I’m afraid you may be under siege when the news breaks.”

  She sat for a moment in silence. Then she said: “I hope you won’t mind my asking. I hope you won’t think it’s vulgar curiosity. But can you tell me how Miss Aldridge died? I don’t mean the details. I would just like to know that it was quick and that she didn’t suffer.”

  Dalgliesh said gently: “It was quick and she didn’t suffer.”

  “And there wasn’t a lot of blood? I know it’s silly but I keep on seeing blood.”

  “No,” said Dalgliesh. “There wasn’t any blood.”

  She thanked them quietly and saw them to the door, then stood at the top of the steps watching as they got into the car. Then, as they drove off, she raised her hand in a pathetic gesture of farewell, as if she were waving away a friend.

  9

  Just after one o’clock Valerie Caldwell was told by the police that they had finished questioning her for the present, and Mr. Langton suggested that she should go home. A message would be put on the answerphone to say that Chambers were closed for the day. She was glad of the chance to get away from a place in which everything familiar and comfortable now seemed strange, threatening and subtly different. It seemed to her that the people she worked with, liked and thought liked her, were suddenly suspicious strangers. Perhaps, she thought, they all felt the same. Perhaps this was what murder did, even to the innocent.

  There was a problem about leaving so early. Her mother, who suffered from agoraphobia, complicated by depression since Kenny’s imprisonment, would be worried if she arrived home in the afternoon without prior explanation. She would be worried still more on hearing the reason for it; even so, it was better to telephone in advance. To her relief it was her grandmother who answered. There was no knowing how Gran would take the news, but at least she’d be calm about it. Gran could break it to her mother, Valerie hoped tactfully, before she got home.

  She said: “Tell Mummy I’ll be home early. Someone broke into Chambers last night and killed Miss Aldridge. Stabbed to death. Yes, I’m all right, Gran. It’s nothing to do with the rest of Chambers but we’re closing for the day.”

  There was a brief silence while Gran took in the news, then she said: “Murdered, was she? Oh well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Always mixed up with criminals, getting them off. I expect one she didn’t get off has come out of prison and done for her. Your ma won’t like it. She’ll want you to leave that place, get a job locally.”

  “Gran, don’t let her start all that again. Just tell her I’m all right and I’ll be back early.”

  As usual she had brought sandwiches for her lunch, but she didn’t want to eat them at her desk. Even to be seen with food was a desecration. So she walked down Middle Temple Lane, turned west and into Embankment Gardens and sat on a seat facing the river. She wasn’t hungry, but there were sparrows who were. She watched their jerky peckings and sudden aggressive flurries, dropping an occasional crumb to the smaller, less assertive birds who were always too late for the pickings. But her mind was elsewhere.

  She had told them too much, she realized that now. It had been the good-looking young detective and the woman officer who had interviewed her, and she had sensed that they were quietly sympathetic. But that of course had been deliberate. They had set out to get her confidence, and they had succeeded. And it had been a relief to talk to someone unconnected with Chambers about what had happened to Kenny, even if they were police officers. She had poured it all out.

  Her brother had been arrested for selling drugs. But he hadn’t been dealing, not like real drug barons, not like the people one read about in the papers. He hadn’t got a job at present, but he shared a house with friends in North London and they smoked pot at their parties. Kenny said that everyone did. But it was Kenny who brought the drug, enough for the whole evening. And then the others paid him for their share. That was what everyone did. It was the cheapest way to get pot. But he had been caught and, desperate, she had asked Miss Aldridge for help. Perhaps she had asked at a bad time. She knew now that it hadn’t been wise, hadn’t even been right. Her cheeks burned as she remembered the response, the coldness in her voice, the contempt in her eyes.

  “I don’t propose to startle the North London Magistrate’s Court by turning up complete with a junior to save your brother from his folly. Get him a good solicitor.”

  And Kenny had been found guilty and sentenced to six months.

  The woman detective, Inspector Miskin, had said: “That’s unusual for a first offence. He’d done it before, hadn’t he?”

  Yes, she admitted, he had done it before. But only once and in the same way. And what use was it sending him to prison? It had only made him bitter. He wouldn’t have gone to prison if Miss Aldridge had defended him. She got people off who were far worse than Kenny—murderers, rapists, people accused of major
fraud. Nothing happened to them. Kenny hadn’t hurt anyone, hadn’t cheated anyone. He was kind and gentle. He couldn’t even stamp on an insect. Now he was in prison and her mother couldn’t visit because of the agoraphobia, and Gran mustn’t be told because Gran always criticized her mum about how she’d brought up her children.

  The two detectives hadn’t argued with her, hadn’t criticized any more than they had been openly sympathetic. But somehow she had told them other things, things that weren’t her business which they didn’t need to know. She had confided about the gossip in Chambers over Mr. Langton’s successor, about the rumour that Miss Aldridge was interested, the changes she might make.

  Inspector Miskin had asked, “How do you know this?”

  But of course she knew it. Chambers was a hotbed of gossip. People spoke in front of her. Gossip permeated the very air as if by a mysterious process of osmosis. She had told them about her friendship with the Naughtons. It was Harry Naughton, the Senior Clerk, who had got her the job. She and her mother and Gran lived close to him and his family, and she went to the same church. She had been looking for a job when the vacancy came up in Chambers and he had recommended her. At first she had been only the junior typist, but when Miss Justin retired after thirty years, she had been invited to take over her job and her own had been filled by a temp. The last temp hadn’t been satisfactory, so, for the past two weeks, she had been managing on her own. She was still on trial, but she hoped her appointment as Chambers secretary would be confirmed at the next Chambers meeting.

  It was Inspector Miskin who had asked: “If Miss Aldridge had been appointed Head of Chambers, would she have suggested you as secretary?”

  “Oh no, I don’t think so. Not after what happened. And I think she wanted to replace Harry with a practice manager, and if that happened the new practice manager would probably want a say in how the staff were organized.”

  She was amazed now how much she had confided to them. But there were two things she hadn’t told them.

  At the end she had said, trying not to cry, trying to retain some shreds of dignity: “I hated her for not helping Kenny. Or perhaps it was because she was so contemptuous about it—contemptuous to me. Now I feel awful because I did hate her and she’s dead. But I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t.”

  Inspector Miskin had said: “We have reason to believe that Miss Aldridge was alive at a quarter to eight. You say you were home by seven-thirty. If your mother and grandmother confirm that, then you can’t have killed her. Don’t worry.”

  So they had never really suspected her. Then why so long in questioning? Why had they bothered? She thought she knew the answer and her cheeks burned.

  It felt strange to be going home in the early afternoon. The tube was almost empty, and when it drew up at Buckhurst Hill Station only one person was waiting on the opposite platform for the London train. The street outside was as quiet and peaceful as if it were a country road. Even the small terraced house, at 32 Linney Lane, looked unfamiliar and a little forbidding, like a house in mourning. The curtains were drawn in the front downstairs room and across one other window. She knew what this meant. Her mother was upstairs resting—if lying taut, eyes open, staring into the darkness could be described as resting. Her gran was watching television.

  She put her key in the lock and was met by a loud blare punctuated by shots. Gran loved crime films and had no inhibitions about sex and violence. As Valerie came into the sitting-room, she pressed the remote control. So it must be a video; Gran wouldn’t otherwise interrupt her viewing.

  Showing no interest in her granddaughter’s arrival, she complained: “I can’t hear what they’re saying half the time. All they do is mutter-mutter at each other. And it’s worse with those Americans.”

  “It’s the way they act now, Gran. Naturalistic, like they’d talk to each other in real life.”

  “Fat lot of use that is if you can’t hear a bloody word. And it’s no use putting up the sound, it only makes it worse. And they keep dashing into nightclubs where it’s so dark you can’t see either. Those old Hitchcocks are better. Dial M for Murder. I wouldn’t mind seeing that again. You can hear every word. They knew how to speak in those days. And why can’t they hold the camera steady? What’s the matter with the cameraman—drunk?”

  “It’s clever direction, Gran.”

  “Is that what it is? Too clever for me by half.”

  The television was Gran’s entertainment, solace and passion. She approved of almost nothing she saw, but watched incessantly. Valerie sometimes wondered whether it provided a convenient focus for Gran’s combative view of life. She could criticize the words, behaviour, appearance and diction of actors, politicians and pundits without fear of contradiction. Her granddaughter sometimes found it surprising that Gran seemed unable to see her own appearance with critical eyes. The hair, dyed an incongruous ginger above and around a seventy-five-year-old face which hardship had aged before its time into deep clefts and sagging skin, was embarrassingly grotesque, while a tight skirt an inch above the knee only emphasized the lean and mottled shanks. But Valerie admired her gran’s spirit. She knew that they were allies even though she couldn’t expect a word of appreciation or love. Together they coped with her mother’s agoraphobia and depression, with the shopping Mrs. Caldwell couldn’t do, with the cooking and housework, the paying of bills, the normal crises of everyday life. Her mother ate the food they placed in front of her but had no interest in how it had got on the plate.

  And now there was the problem of Kenny. When he was sentenced, her mother had made her promise that Gran wouldn’t be told, and she had kept that promise. It made it difficult to visit him in prison. She had only been able to go to him twice, and had had to devise complicated stories about visiting an old school friend which had seemed unconvincing even to herself.

  Gran had said: “You’re seeing a man, I suppose. What about the shopping?”

  “I’ll call in at the supermarket on my way home. It’s open until ten on Saturdays.”

  “Well, I hope you have more luck with this one than you had with the other. I knew he’d throw you over once he got to university. It’s always happening. And you didn’t take much trouble to keep him, I must say. You need to show a bit more spirit, my girl. Men like it.”

  Gran, in her youth, had shown plenty of spirit and had known exactly what men liked.

  As expected, Gran took the news of the murder in her stride. She seldom showed interest in people she hadn’t met, and had long decided that Pawlet Court was her granddaughter’s world, too remote from her life to be of interest. Real murder, particularly of someone she had never met, paled beside those bright, violent images which energized her life and provided all the excitement she craved. Seldom did Valerie come home to interested questions about what sort of day she’d had, what people in Chambers had said or done. But the unconcern was helpful when at last her mother’s slow step was heard on the stairs and the news had to be broken.

  Mrs. Caldwell was having a bad day. Preoccupied with her own misery, she seemed hardly to take in what she was being told. The physical death of a stranger could have no power over one who was enduring a living hell. Valerie knew what would happen, the cycle was predictable. Her mother’s GP would increase the dosage of her drugs, she would break temporarily out of the depression, the reality of what had happened would break in on her, and then there would be the agitation, the worries, the reiteration that it would be so much better for everyone if Valerie could find a job locally, avoid the journey, get home earlier. But that was in the future.

  The slow hours of the afternoon dragged into evening. At seven o’clock, with Gran and her mother both in front of the television, Valerie poured carrot soup from its carton and put the foil tray of canneloni into the oven. It was only when they had finished the meal and she had washed up, then seen her mother again seated with Gran in the front room, that she realized what she needed to do. She had to see the Naughtons. Harry would be home by now. She had to
sit with him and Margaret in that warm homely kitchen where she had sat so often in childhood on her way home from Sunday school, and had been given home-made lemonade and chocolate buns. She needed the comfort and advice she had no hope of finding at home.

  They made no demur about her leaving. Gran only said, “Don’t be too late, now,” without taking her eyes from the screen. Her mother didn’t look round.

  She walked the quarter-mile; it wasn’t worth taking the car and the road was well lit. The street where the Naughtons lived was, despite its nearness, very different from Linney Lane. Harry had really done well for himself.

  Because the members of Chambers all called him Harry that was how she thought of him now. But when she spoke to him it was always Mr. Naughton.

  They could have been expecting her. Margaret Naughton opened the door and drew her into the hall, enfolding her in warm arms.

  “You poor child. Come in. What a day it’s been for you both.”

  “Is Mr. Naughton home?”

  “Yes, over two hours ago. We’re in the kitchen, just clearing up after supper.”

  In the kitchen there was a savoury casserole smell, and the uneaten part of a home-made apple tart was on the table. Harry was loading the dishwasher. He had changed from his office suit into slacks topped with a knitted jersey and she thought how different it made him look, different and older. And when he drew himself up, leaning on the dishwasher for support, she thought: But he is an old man, much older than he was yesterday, and felt a rush of pity. Afterwards they moved into the sitting-room and Margaret brought in a tray with three glasses and a bottle of medium sherry, the kind Valerie liked. Totally at home, comforted and secure, Valerie poured out her worries.