by P. D. James
Now that Dr. Glenister had officially confirmed that the case was murder, it was time to phone Geoffrey Harkness at the Yard. He didn’t expect the Assistant Commissioner to be pleased with the verdict, and nor was he.
Harkness said, “You’re going to need technical back-up now, SOCOs and the fingerprint experts. The reasonable course would be to hand the case over to Devon and Cornwall, but that won’t be popular with certain people in London, and of course there’s a case for your carrying on now you’re there. What’s the possibility that you’ll get a result, say, within the next two days?”
“That’s impossible to say.”
“But you’ve no doubt that your man is on the island?”
“I think we can be reasonably sure of that.”
“Then the job shouldn’t take long with a restricted number of suspects. As I’ve said, the feeling in London will be that you ought to carry on, but I’ll let you know as soon as we have a decision. In the meantime, good luck.”
3
* * *
Mrs. Burbridge’s office was a small room on the first floor of the west wing, but her private apartment was one floor above. Since the lift served only the tower, it was reached either by the stairs from the ground-floor rear entrance or by the lift outside Maycroft’s office and then by way of the library. The shining white-painted door had a brass nameplate and bell push affirming the housekeeper’s status and acknowledging her right to privacy. Dalgliesh had made an appointment, and Mrs. Burbridge came promptly to his almost inaudible buzz and greeted Kate and himself as if they were expected guests, but not ones whom she was particularly anxious to see. But she was not ungracious. The demands of hospitality must be met.
The hall into which she ushered them was unexpectedly wide, and even before the door was closed behind them Dalgliesh felt he had entered a more personal domain than any he had expected to find on Combe. In coming to the island, Mrs. Burbridge had brought with her the accumulated relics of generations: family mementoes of transitory or more lasting enthusiasms, carefully preserved furniture typical of its age, retained less because it fitted her new home than through family piety. A bow-fronted mahogany desk held a collection of Staffordshire figures discordant in size and subject. John Wesley exhorted from his pulpit next to a large portrait of Shakespeare, legs elegantly crossed, one hand supporting an impressive brow, the other resting on a pile of bound volumes. Dick Turpin’s legs dangled from a diminutive horse towered over by a two-foot-high Queen Victoria in the regalia of Empress of India. Beyond, a row of chairs—two elegant, the others monstrous in size and shape—were ranged in an uninviting row. Above them the faded wallpaper was almost obliterated with pictures: undistinguished watercolours, small oils in pretentious frames, a few sepia photographs, prints of Victorian rural life which none of the villagers of that age would have recognised, a pair of delicate oils of prancing nymphs in gilt oval frames.
Despite this superfluity, Dalgliesh had no sense of entering an antique shop, perhaps because the objects were set out with no regard to either intrinsic attractiveness or seductive commercial advantage. In the few seconds negotiating the hall behind Mrs. Burbridge and Kate, he thought, Our parents’ generation carried the past memorialised in paint, porcelain and wood; we cast it off. Even our national history is taught or remembered in terms of the worst we did, not the best. His mind went to his own sparsely furnished flat high above the Thames with something too close to irrational guilt to be comfortable. The family pictures and furniture he had selected to keep and use were the ones he personally liked and wished to rest his eyes on. The family silver was in a bank vault; he neither needed it nor had time to polish it. His mother’s pictures and his father’s theological library had been given to their friends. And what, he wondered, would those friends’ children eventually do with their unwanted legacy? To the young the past was always an encumbrance. What, if anything, would Emma want to bring to their life together? And then the same insidious doubt intruded. Would they have a life together?
Mrs. Burbridge was saying, “I was just finishing some tidying up in my sewing room. Perhaps you won’t mind joining me there for a few minutes, then we could go into my sitting room, which you’ll find more comfortable.”
She was leading them into a room at the end of the passage so different from the over-crowded hall that Dalgliesh had difficulty in not showing his surprise. It was elegantly proportioned and very light, with two large windows looking westwards. It was obvious at first glance that Mrs. Burbridge was a highly talented embroideress. The room was given over to her craft. Apart from two wooden tables set at right angles and covered with a white cloth, one wall was lined with boxes through whose cellophane front panels could be glimpsed the sheen of reels of coloured silk thread. Against another wall a large chest held rolls of silk cloth. Next to it a notice-board was covered with small samples and patterned with coloured photographs of altar fronts and embroidered copes and stoles. There were about two dozen designs for crosses, symbols of the four evangelists and various saints, and drawings of doves descending or ascending. At the far end of the room was a tailor’s dummy on which had been draped an embroidered cope in a rich green silk, the panels embroidered with twin designs of delicate foliage and spring flowers.
Sitting at the table nearest the door, at work on a cream stole, was Millie. Dalgliesh and Kate saw a very different girl from the one they had interviewed yesterday. She was wearing a spotless white overall, her hair was tied back with a white band and with very clean hands she was delicately stabbing a fine needle into the edge of an appliquéd design in silk. She barely glanced at Dalgliesh and Kate before bending again to her task. The sharp-featured childish face was so transformed by serious intent that she looked almost beautiful as well as very young.
Mrs. Burbridge went over to her and looked down at the stitching, which to Dalgliesh’s eye was invisible. Her voice was a soft hiss of approval. “Yes, yes, Millie. That’s very good. Well done. You can leave it for now. Come back this afternoon if you feel like it.”
Millie had become truculent. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. I’ve got other things to do.”
The stole had rested on a small sheet of white cotton. Millie slid her needle into a corner, folded the sheet over her work, then divested herself of overall and headband and hung them in a wardrobe beside the door. She was ready with her parting shot.
“I don’t think the cops ought to come bothering us when we’re working.”
Mrs. Burbridge said quietly, “They’re here by my invitation, Millie.”
“Nobody asked me. I work here too. I had enough of the cops yesterday.” And Millie was gone.
Mrs. Burbridge said, “She’ll be back this afternoon. She loves sewing, and she’s become a really clever embroideress in the short time she’s been here. Her granny taught her, and I find that’s usually the way with the young. I’m trying to persuade her to take a City and Guilds course, but it’s difficult. And, of course, there would be the problem of where she’d live if she left the island.”
Dalgliesh and Kate sat at the long table while Mrs. Burbridge moved about the room, rolling up a transparent pattern for what was obviously a design for an altar frontal, placing the reels of silk in their boxes according to colour and replacing the bales of silk in the cupboard.
Watching her, Dalgliesh said, “The cope is beautiful. Do you do the design as well as the actual embroidery?”
“Yes, that’s almost the more exciting part. There have been great changes in church embroidery since the last war. You probably remember that altar frontals were usually just two bands of braid to cover the seams with a standard central motif, nothing original or new. It was in the 1950s that there was a movement to be more imaginative and to reflect the design of the mid-twentieth century. I was doing my City and Guilds exam at the time and was very excited by what I saw. But I’m only an amateur. I only embroider in silk. There are people doing far more original and complicated work. I started when the altar fr
ontal in my husband’s church began to fall apart at the seams and the vicar’s warden suggested that I might take on the job of making a new one. I mostly work for friends, although, of course, they do pay for the material and help towards the money I give to Millie. The cope is a retirement present for a bishop. Green, of course, is the liturgical colour for Epiphany and Trinity, but I thought he would prefer the spring flowers.”
Kate said, “The vestments when finished must be heavy and valuable. How do you get them to the recipients?”
“Adrian Boyde used to take them. It gave him an opportunity—rare, but I think welcome—of leaving the island. In a week I hope he’ll be able to deliver this cope. I think we can risk it.”
The last words were spoken very softly. Dalgliesh waited. Suddenly she said, “I’ve finished here now. Perhaps you’d like to come to the sitting room.”
She led them into a smaller room almost as over-furnished as the hall but surprisingly welcoming and comfortable. Dalgliesh and Kate were settled beside the fire in two low Victorian chairs with velvet covers and button backs. Mrs. Burbridge drew up a stool and perched herself opposite them. She made the expected offer of coffee, which they declined with thanks. Dalgliesh was in no hurry to broach the subject of Oliver’s death, but he was confident that something useful would be learnt from Mrs. Burbridge. She was a discreet woman, but she could probably tell him more about the island and the residents than could the more recently arrived Rupert Maycroft.
She said, “Millie was brought here by Jago at the end of May. He was taking a day off from the island and visiting a friend in Pentworthy. Returning from the pub, they saw Millie begging on the sea front. She looked hungry and Jago spoke to her. He’s always been sympathetic to the young. Anyway, he and his friend took Millie to a fish-and-chip shop—she was ravenous apparently—and she poured out her story. It’s the usual one, I’m afraid. Her father walked out when she was very young and she’s never got on with her mother or her mother’s succession of boyfriends. She left Peckham and went to live with her paternal grandmother in a village outside Plymouth. That worked well, but after two years the old lady sank into Alzheimer’s and was taken off to a home, and Millie was homeless. I think she told the social services that she was going back home to Peckham, but no one checked. After all, she was no longer a juvenile, and I suppose they were too busy. There was no chance of staying in the house. The landlord had always wanted them out and she had no way of paying the rent. She lived rough for a time, until the money ran out, and that’s when she met Jago. He rang Mr. Maycroft from Pentworthy and asked if he could bring Millie here temporarily. One of the rooms in the stable block was vacant, and Mrs. Plunkett did need some help in the kitchen. It would have been difficult for Mr. Maycroft to say no. Apart from natural humanity, Jago is indispensable to Combe, and there could be no possibility of having any sexual interest in the girl.”
Suddenly she said, “But of course you’re not here to talk about Millie. You want to question me again about Oliver’s death. I’m sorry if I was a little sharp yesterday, but his exploitation of Millie was absolutely typical. He was using her, of course.”
“Can you be sure that of that?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Dalgliesh. That’s how he worked, that’s how he lived. He watched other people and made use of them. If he wanted to see someone descending into their particular hell he’d make sure he saw it. It’s all in his novels. And if he couldn’t find someone else to experiment on, he might experiment on himself. That’s how I think he died. If he wanted to write about someone who was hanged, or perhaps planning to die in that way, he would need to get as close as possible to the deed. He might even have gone as far as putting the rope round his neck and stepping over the rail. There’s about eight inches or more of space, and of course he’d have the rail to hold on to. I know it sounds foolish, but I’ve been thinking about it very carefully, we all have, and I believe that’s the explanation. It was an experiment.”
Dalgliesh could have pointed out that this would be a remarkably foolish experiment, but he didn’t need to. She went on with something like eagerness in her eyes, as if anxious to convince him. “He’d have held on firmly to the rail. It could have been a moment’s impulse climbing over, the need to feel death touching your cheek, but believing at the same time that you’re in charge. Isn’t that the satisfaction of all the really dangerous games that men play?”
The idea was not altogether fanciful. Dalgliesh could imagine the mixture of terror and exhilaration with which Oliver could have stood on that narrow strip of stone with only his hand on the rail to prevent his falling. But he hadn’t made those marks on his neck. He had been dead before he was launched into that immensity.
Mrs. Burbridge sat in silence for a moment and seemed to be making up her mind. Then she looked him full in the face and said with some passion: “No one on this island will say that they liked Nathan Oliver, no one. But most of the things he did to upset people were minor really—bad temper, ungraciousness, complaints about Dan Padgett’s inefficiency, late delivery of his food, the fact that the boat wasn’t always available when he wanted a trip round the island, that sort of thing. But one thing he did was evil. That’s a word people don’t use here, Commander, but I use it.”
Dalgliesh said, “I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Burbridge. Mrs. Staveley has spoken to me.”
“It’s easy to criticise Jo Staveley, but I never do. Adrian could have died except for her. Now he’s trying to put it behind him, and naturally we never mention it. I’m sure you won’t either. It hasn’t anything to do with Oliver’s death, but no one will forget what he did. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things I need to get on with. I’m sorry I’ve not been very helpful.”
Dalgliesh said, “You have been very helpful, Mrs. Burbridge. Thank you.”
Passing through the library, Kate said, “She thinks Jo Staveley did it. Mrs. Staveley certainly feels strongly about what happened to Adrian Boyde, but she’s a nurse. Why kill in that way? She could have given Oliver a lethal injection when she took his blood. That’s ridiculous, of course. She’d be the first suspect.”
Dalgliesh said, “And wouldn’t that be against her every instinct? And we have to remember that the killing could have been impulsive rather than premeditated. But she’s certainly strong enough to heave Oliver’s body over the railings, and she could easily get to the lighthouse from Dolphin Cottage by the lower cliff. Somehow I can’t see Jo Staveley as a murderess. But, then, I don’t think we’ve ever been faced with a more unlikely set of suspects.”
4
* * *
As Mrs. Burbridge had expected, Millie returned in mid-afternoon, but not to work on the stole. Instead they spent an hour arranging the skeins of coloured silk in their boxes in a more logical order and packing the cope in a long cardboard box, folding it with anxious care in tissue paper. Most of this was carried out in silence. Then they took off their white overalls and went together into Mrs. Burbridge’s immaculate kitchen while she boiled the kettle for tea. They drank it sitting at the kitchen table.
Millie’s violent distress at Oliver’s death had subsided, and now, after her questioning by Dalgliesh, she was in a mood of sulky acquiescence. But there were things Mrs. Burbridge knew she had to say. Sitting opposite Millie, she steeled herself to say them.
“Millie, you did tell the truth to Commander Dalgliesh, didn’t you, about what happened to Dr. Speidel’s note? I’m not saying you’ve been dishonest, but sometimes we forget important details and sometimes we don’t tell everything because we’re trying to protect someone else.”
“Course I told the truth. Who’s been saying I was lying?”
“No one has, Millie. I just wanted to be sure.”
“Well, now you are sure. Why d’you all keep on nagging me about it—you or Mr. Maycroft or the police or anyone else?”
“I’m not nagging you. If you tell me you were being truthful that’s all I need to know.”
“Wel
l, I was, wasn’t I?”
Mrs. Burbridge made herself go on. “It’s just that I worry about you sometimes, Millie. We like having you here, but it isn’t really a suitable home for someone young. You have your whole life before you. You need to be with other young people, to have a proper job.”
“I’ll get a proper job when I want one. Anyway, I’ve got a proper job, I’m working for you and Mrs. Plunkett.”
“And we’re glad to have you. But there isn’t much prospect for you here, is there, Millie? I sometimes wonder if you might be staying here because you’re fond of Jago.”
“He’s all right. He’s my friend.”
“Of course he is, but he can’t be more than that, can he? I mean, he does have someone in Pentworthy he visits, doesn’t he? The friend he was with when you first met him.”
“Yeah, Jake. He’s a physio at the hospital. He’s cool.”
“So there isn’t really any hope of Jago falling in love with you, is there?”
“I dunno. There could be. He could swing both ways.”
Mrs. Burbridge nearly asked, And you’re hoping he’ll swing in your direction?, but stopped herself in time. She was regretting ever beginning this dangerous conversation. She said weakly, “It’s just that you ought to meet other people, Millie, have more of a life than you have here. Make friends.”
“I’ve got friends, haven’t I? You’re my friend. I’ve got you and you’ve got me.”
The words stabbed her with a shaft of joy so overwhelming that for a few seconds she was unable to speak. She made herself look directly at Millie. The girl’s hands were clasped round her teacup and she was looking down. And then Mrs. Burbridge saw the childish mouth stretch into a smile wholly adult in its mixture of amusement and—yes—of disdain. They were just words like most of Millie’s words: spoken in passing, holding nothing but the meaning of the moment. She dropped her own eyes and, steadying her hands around the cup, raised it carefully to her lips.
