by P. D. James
“Of course. In the meantime we will get on with our inquiries.”
Father Presteign walked down the nave with them. When they reached the door he turned to Dalgliesh. “There may be a way in which I can help. Before she left the church, Mrs. Carpenter said that she would write me a letter. After I’d read it I could make what use of it I thought right, including showing it to the police. She may have changed her mind: no letter may exist. But if she did write it, and if as she promised that letter gives me the authority to pass on to you whatever it contains, then I shall consider doing so.”
Dalgliesh said: “She did post a letter yesterday evening. To be accurate, she was seen leaving the house with an envelope in her hand.”
“Then perhaps that is the letter she promised to write. If she sent it by first-class post, it may arrive tomorrow morning, although one can never be sure. It’s rather strange that, being so close, she didn’t put it through the church door, but perhaps she thought the post would be safer. The letters are usually delivered shortly after nine o’clock. I shall be here by eight-thirty to say an early Mass. The church will be open, if you care to come back then.”
They thanked him and shook hands. There was, thought Kate, nothing more to be said.
10
It was six o’clock of the same day. In his room in Chambers, Hubert Langton stood at the window looking out over the gas-lit court.
He said to Laud: “I was standing here—remember?—two days before Venetia died and we talked of her becoming Head of Chambers. It seems an eternity away and yet it’s only eight days. And now this second murder. Horror heaped on horror. It may have been Venetia’s world, but it isn’t mine.”
Laud said: “It’s nothing to do with Chambers.”
“Inspector Tarrant seemed to think that it was.”
“He also seemed to think—although we had difficulty prising it out of him—that Janet Carpenter died between seven and eight. If so most of us here have got the best of alibis—Adam Dalgliesh in person. It’s over now, Hubert. At least the worst is.”
“Is it?”
“Of course. Janet Carpenter killed Venetia.”
“The police don’t seem to think so.”
“It may not suit them to think so, but they’ll never prove otherwise. They’ve got their motive now. Tarrant more or less admitted that when he told us who Mrs. Carpenter was. I can picture exactly how it happened. Mrs. Watson was unexpectedly absent. Mrs. Carpenter found herself alone in Chambers with only Venetia still working. She couldn’t resist the opportunity of confronting her, accusing her of being indirectly responsible for the death of her granddaughter. I can imagine how Venetia would have responded. She had been opening letters. The paper-knife was there on the desk. Carpenter seized it and drove it in. She may not have meant to kill, but kill she did. She would almost certainly have got away with manslaughter if it had ever come to trial.”
“And this second murder?”
“Can you see anyone in Chambers cutting a woman’s throat? Leave Janet Carpenter’s death to the police, Hubert. Solving murder is their job, not ours.”
Langton didn’t answer at once. Then he said: “How is Simon taking it?”
“Simon? Relieved, I imagine, as we all are. It was uncomfortable knowing oneself to be a suspect. The experience had its initial interest, if only as a novelty, but it became tedious when prolonged. Incidentally, Simon seems to have taken against Dalgliesh. I can’t think why, the man was perfectly civil.”
He was silent for a moment, looking across at Langton, then said more gently: “Hadn’t we better settle the agenda for the 31st? Are you happy with the main items and with the order? Rupert and Catherine are offered the two places in Chambers. Harry gets a year’s extension with the possibility of a second. Valerie is confirmed as Chambers secretary and we advertise for a permanent second girl to help her out. Harry tells me she’s been too pressed recently. You announce your retirement at the end of the year and it’s agreed that I take over. And I suggest that for the benefit of the Salisbury contingent you begin with a brief statement about Venetia’s death. As the police don’t exactly confide in us there’s not much to tell, but Chambers will expect a statement. Don’t let it get out of hand. We don’t want questions, conjecture. Keep it short and factual. And are you sure you want to announce your retirement at the end of the meeting, not the beginning?”
“At the end. We don’t want to waste time on formal expressions of regret, however insincere.”
“Don’t under-rate what you’ve done for Chambers. But there’ll be a more appropriate time to say a formal goodbye. By the way, I had a telephone call from Salisbury. They think we should begin the meeting with two minutes’ silence. I tried the suggestion out on Desmond. He said he would so far subjugate principle as to present himself suitably attired for any service we care to arrange in the Temple Church, but that there were some hypocrisies which even Chambers ought to jib at.”
Langton didn’t smile. He came over to his desk and picked up the draft agenda written in Laud’s elegant hand. He said: “We haven’t begun to think of the memorial service. Venetia isn’t even cremated yet, and next week everything she opposed will be agreed. Does nothing of us last once we are dead?”
“For the lucky ones, perhaps love. Influence, maybe. But not power. The dead are powerless. You’re the churchman, Hubert. Remember Ecclesiastes? Something about a living dog being better than a dead lion?”
Langton said quietly: “ ‘For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.’”
Laud said: “And that includes decisions in Chambers. If you’re happy, Hubert, I’ll take the agenda and get it typed and copied. I suppose some people will complain that it should have been circulated earlier, but we’ve had other things on our minds.”
He moved over to the door, then turned and looked back. Langton thought: Does he know, is he going to tell me, or is he going to ask?—and realized that Laud was thinking exactly the same of him. But nothing further was said by either of them. Laud went out and closed the door behind him.
11
It was Kate whom Dalgliesh asked to accompany him to the church next morning, leaving Piers to get on with the inquiries at the Middle Temple. It seemed to Kate that this second murder had for a time eclipsed the first, had produced in the team a sense of added urgency and more immediate danger than the death of Miss Aldridge. If the same man was responsible—and she had little doubt that the murder of Mrs. Carpenter had been the work of a man—then he was one of that dangerous breed who are prepared to kill and kill again.
Father Presteign was at the church before them and answered the side door to Kate’s ring. Leading them down the short passage and into the vestry, he asked: “Would you care for some coffee?”
“If it isn’t a trouble, Father.”
He opened a cupboard and took down a large jar of ground beans, a packet of sugar and two mugs. Filling the kettle and switching it on, he said: “The milk will be here soon. Joe Pollard brings it with him. He serves at Mass on Wednesdays. He and I will have ours later. That’ll be him now. I think I can hear his bike.”
A young man made immense by a motorcycling outfit more appropriate for a ride across Antarctica than for an English autumn day, burst into the vestry and took off his helmet.
“Morning, Father. Sorry I cut it fine. It’s my day to get the kids’ breakfast and the traffic’s hell on Ken High Street.”
Introducing him, Father Presteign said: “Joe always complains of the traffic but I’ve never known it inconvenience him when I ride pillion. We dodge and weave between the buses in the most exhilarating fashion, followed, I have to say, by imprecations.”
Joe, having shed leathers, scarves and jumpers with extraordinary speed, had buttoned hims
elf into a cassock and pulled a cotta over his head with the ease of long practice.
Father Presteign silently robed and said: “I’ll see you after Mass, Adam.”
The door closed behind them. It was a solid door of iron-bound oak and they could hear nothing beyond it. Presumably, thought Kate, a congregation of sorts had assembled. She pictured the early-morning faithfuls: a few old women, fewer men, perhaps some of the homeless finding the door open and seeking warmth. Had Mrs. Carpenter been one of them? She thought not. Hadn’t Father Presteign said she wasn’t a regular member of the congregation? So what had brought her into the church to seek his advice, to make her confession, to receive absolution? Absolution from what? Well, with luck they would know before they left the building. That was, of course, if Mrs. Carpenter had written the promised letter. Perhaps they were investing too much hope in what Father Presteign had said. She had been seen leaving the flats with a letter in her hand; it could have been to anyone.
Kate disciplined herself to sit in patience. It was obvious that Dalgliesh didn’t intend to talk and she had learned very early to be sensitive to his moods and to be silent when he was silent. Usually it wasn’t difficult. He was one of the few people she knew who could produce by their silence not embarrassment but a sense of quiet relief. But now she would have welcomed talk, an acknowledgement that he shared her impatience and anxieties. He was sitting very still, the dark head bent over his mug of black coffee, his fingers cupped round it but not touching it. He could have been waiting for it to cool, or perhaps he had forgotten it was there.
At last she said, getting up: “We won’t hear the post from here. I think I’ll wait by the door.”
He didn’t reply. She went out into the narrow passage, which led to the side door, mug in hand. The minutes passed with infuriating slowness. But away from Dalgliesh she could at least indulge her impatience by a vigorous pacing and by constant glances at her watch. Nine o’clock. Hadn’t Father Presteign said that the post came at nine or shortly after? “Shortly after” could mean anything. They could be waiting for half an hour. Five past nine. Seven minutes past. And then it came. She heard no footsteps outside the heavy door, but the letter-box was thrust open and the post fell through with a thud: two large manila envelopes; a couple of bills, a large, bulky white envelope marked “Private” and addressed to Father Presteign, an educated hand, the hand of someone who wrote with confidence. She had seen envelopes of this size and make in Mrs. Carpenter’s flat. This was surely what they were waiting for. She took it back to Dalgliesh and said: “It’s come, sir.”
He took the letter and laid it on the table, then placed the rest of the post in a neat pile beside it.
“It looks like it, Kate.”
She tried to conceal her impatience. The letter, looking preternaturally white against the dark oak of the table, lay there like a portent.
“How long is it likely to take, sir, the Mass?”
“Low Mass with no sermon or homily, about half an hour.”
She glanced surreptitiously at her watch; just over fifteen minutes to go.
But it was a little before the half-hour that the door opened and Father Presteign and Joe reappeared. Joe disrobed, clambered into his multi-layered biking gear and became metamorphosed into a huge metallic insect.
He said: “I’ll not wait for coffee this morning, Father. Oh, I forgot now, Mary asked me to tell you that she’ll be doing the flowers for Our Lady on Sunday as Miss Pritchard is ill. You did hear that she’d had her op, Father?”
“Yes, I heard, Joe. I’ll be visiting her this afternoon if she’s well enough for visitors. Thank Mary for me, will you?”
They went out together, Joe still talking. The outer door closed with a clang. Kate had a sense that with Joe’s departure the normal world, the world she lived in and understood, had left with him, leaving her mentally isolated and physically ill at ease. The smell of incense had suddenly become oppressive, the vestry itself claustrophobic and oddly threatening. She had an irrational urge to pick up the letter and take it out into the fresh air to be read for what it was—a letter, important, perhaps even vital to their investigations, but still only a letter.
Father Presteign had returned. He took it up and said, “I’ll leave you for a moment, Adam,” and went out again into the church.
“You don’t think he’ll destroy it?” Kate wished the words unsaid as soon as they had left her mouth.
Dalgliesh replied: “No, he won’t destroy it. Whether he gives it to us will depend on what’s in it.”
They waited. It was a long wait. Kate thought: He must give it to us. It’s evidence. He can’t conceal evidence. There must be a way of compelling him to hand it over. You can’t bind a letter under the seal of the confessional. And why is he taking so long? It can’t take him over ten minutes to read a letter. What is he doing out there? Perhaps he’s in front of the altar praying to his God.
There came into her mind for no reason she could imagine snatches of another conversation she had had with Piers about his curious choice of academic subject. She wondered now at his patience under her questioning.
“What does this theology do for you? After all, you spent three years on it. Teach you how to live? Answer some of the questions?”
“What questions?”
“The big questions. The ones there’s no sense in asking. Why are we here? What happens when we die? Have we really free will? Does God exist?”
“No, it doesn’t answer questions. It’s like philosophy, it tells you what questions to ask.”
“I know what questions to ask. It’s the answers I’m after. And what about learning how to live? Isn’t that philosophy too? What’s yours?”
The reply had come easily but, she had thought, with honesty: “To get as much happiness as I can. Not to harm others. Not to whine. In that order.”
It was as reasonable a basis for living as any she’d heard. Effectively it was her own. You didn’t need to go to Oxford to learn that. But what did it say when confronted with a tortured and murdered child, or with that body lying like a butchered animal, the throat cut to the bone? Perhaps Father Presteign thought he had the answer. If so, could it really be found in this dim, incense-laden air? Well, you had to believe in your job whether you were a priest or a policeman. You had at some point to say: This is what I choose to believe. To this I shall give my loyalty. With her it had been the police service. Father Presteign had chosen a more esoteric commitment. It would be difficult for both of them if their loyalties were to conflict.
The door opened and Father Presteign came in. He was very pale. He held out the letter to Dalgliesh. He said: “She has authorized me to give it to you. I’ll leave you to read it in peace. You’ll need to take it, I assume.”
“Yes, we shall need to take it, Father. I will, of course, give you a receipt for it.”
Father Presteign had not replaced it in the envelope.
Dalgliesh said: “It’s longer than I expected. I suppose that’s why she didn’t catch the Monday post. It must have taken her at least a day to write.”
Father Presteign said: “She was an English teacher. Written words were as companionable to her as speech. And I think she needed to write it, to set down the truth, as much for herself as for us. I’ll be back before you go.”
He went again into the church and closed the door.
Dalgliesh spread the letter out on the table. Kate drew up a chair beside him and they read it together.
12
Janet Carpenter had wasted no time on preliminaries. This was written out of a need which went beyond any promise to Father Presteign.
Dear Father,
It was almost a relief to me when Rosie killed herself. I know that’s a terrible thing to write; it was a terrible truth to have to confess. But I don’t think I could have gone on living with her grief and stayed sane. She needed me there, I couldn’t have left her. We were shackled together by grief—the grief for my son, the death of her da
ughter—but it was Emily’s death that killed her. And if she hadn’t hoarded those Distalgesic tablets, washed them down with that bottle of red wine, she would have died in the end, of grief, but more slowly. She moved about the house like the walking dead, dull-eyed, performing small household tasks as if she had been programmed to do them. Her occasional smile was like a twitch of the mouth. Her uncomplaining docile silence was almost more terrible than the outbursts of wild sobbing. When I tried to bring comfort by silently enclosing her in my arms, she didn’t resist or respond. There were no words. Neither of us had any words. Perhaps that was the trouble. I knew only that her heart was broken; and I know now that the phrase isn’t a sentimental exaggeration; everything that made her Rosie was broken. She lived every waking hour in the black horror of Emily’s murder. I’m only surprised that, so drained, so depersonalized, she found the strength and the will to end the torment and to write me that last coherent note.
I grieved with her and for her. Of course I did, I had loved Emily too. I wept for Emily, for the Emily I knew and for all dead, violated children. But for me, grief was subsumed in anger—a terrible, all-consuming anger—and from the start this anger focused on Venetia Aldridge.
If Dermot Beale hadn’t been found guilty I might have planned somehow to make him pay. But Beale was in prison with a recommended minimum sentence of twenty years. I would be dead before he got his freedom. Instead my hatred found its target, its necessary release, in the woman who had defended him at his first trial. She had defended him brilliantly; it had been for her a great forensic triumph, a masterly cross-examination of the Crown witnesses, another personal accolade. And Dermot Beale had gone free to kill again. This time it was Emily who, cycling home from the village less than a mile away with her basket piled with groceries, had heard the sound of his car wheels on that lonely road. And this time Aldridge wasn’t available for the defence. I have heard that she never represents the same client twice. Perhaps even she wouldn’t have the arrogance for that. This time he didn’t get off.
