by P. D. James
Yelland arrived promptly. He was wearing stout walking shoes, jeans and a denim jacket and was carrying a rucksack. Dalgliesh made no apology for disturbing his morning, since none was necessary or justified. He left the cottage door open, letting in a shaft of sunlight. Yelland dumped his rucksack on the table but didn’t sit.
Without preamble Dalgliesh said, “Someone burnt the proofs of Oliver’s new novel sometime on Saturday morning. I have to ask if it was you.”
Yelland took the question easily. “No, it wasn’t. I’m capable of anger, resentment, vengefulness and no doubt most other human iniquities, but I’m not childish and I’m not stupid. Burning the proofs couldn’t prevent the novel being published. It probably wouldn’t even cause more than the minimum inconvenience or delay.”
Dalgliesh said, “Dennis Tremlett says that Oliver made important changes to the galleys. Those have now been lost.”
“That’s unfortunate for literature and for his devotees, but I doubt whether it’s of earth-shattering importance. Burning the galleys was obviously an act of personal spite, but not on my part. I was in Murrelet Cottage on Saturday until I left for a walk at about eight-thirty. I had other things on my mind than Oliver or his novel. I didn’t know that he had the proofs with him, but I suppose you could say that that would be a natural assumption.”
“And there’s nothing else that happened since you arrived on Combe, however small and apparently unimportant, which you feel I should know?”
“I’ve told you about the altercation at dinner on Friday. But as you’re interested in details, I did see someone visiting Emily Holcombe on Thursday night, shortly after ten. I was coming back from walking round the island. It was dark, of course, and I only saw his figure when Roughtwood opened the door. It wasn’t one of the permanent residents, so I assume it was Dr. Speidel. I can’t think that it has any relevance to your inquiry but it’s the only other incident I can recall. I’ve been told that Dr. Speidel is now in the sickroom, but I expect he’ll be well enough to confirm what I said. Is that all?”
Dalgliesh said that it was, adding a customary “for the present.”
At the door Yelland paused. “I didn’t kill Nathan Oliver. I can’t be expected to feel grief at his death. I find we truly grieve for very few people. And for me he certainly isn’t one. But I do regret his death. I hope you find out who strung him up. You know where I am if there’s anything else you want to say.”
And he was gone.
The telephone rang as Kate and Benton arrived. Dalgliesh lifted the receiver and heard Rupert Maycroft’s voice.
“I’m afraid it won’t be possible for you to speak again to Dr. Speidel, and probably not for some time. His temperature rose alarmingly during the night, and Guy is having him transferred to a hospital in Plymouth. We have no facilities here for nursing the seriously ill. We’re expecting the helicopter any minute now.”
Dalgliesh put down the receiver. Even as he did so he heard the distant rattle. Walking out again into the air, he saw Kate and Benton gazing up, and the helicopter, like a noisome black beetle against the delicate blue of the morning sky.
Kate said, “I thought that helicopter was only for emergencies. We haven’t asked for reinforcements.”
Dalgliesh said, “It is an emergency. Dr. Speidel is worse. Dr. Staveley thinks he needs more care than he can be given here. It’s unfortunate for us, but worse, one assumes, for him.”
Speidel must have been brought out with surprising speed, and it seemed only minutes after the helicopter had landed when they were watching in silence as it rose and wheeled low above them.
“There,” said Kate, “goes one of our suspects.”
Dalgliesh thought, Hardly the prime suspect, but certainly the one whose evidence about the time of death is vital. The one, too, who hasn’t told me all he knows. They turned back to the cottage as the noise died away.
8
* * *
Dalgliesh’s appointment to see Emily Holcombe was for eight o’clock, and at seven-thirty he put out the lights in Seal Cottage and closed the door behind him. Brought up in a Norfolk rectory, he had never felt alien under starless skies, but he had seldom known blackness like this. There were no lights in the windows of Chapel Cottage; Adrian Boyde had probably left for dinner at the house. He saw no pinpricks from the distant cottages to reassure him that he was walking in the right direction. Pausing for a moment to orientate himself, he switched on his torch and set off into the darkness. The aching in his limbs had persisted all day, and it occurred to him that he might be infectious and, if so, wondered whether it was fair to call on Miss Holcombe. But he wasn’t either sneezing or coughing. He would keep his distance as far as possible, and, after all, if Yelland was right, she had already received Speidel in Atlantic Cottage.
Because of the rising ground which protected Atlantic Cottage on the inland side, he was almost at the door before he saw the lights in the lower windows. Roughtwood showed him into the sitting room with the condescension of a valued retainer receiving a dependant of the house come to pay his rent. The room was lit only by firelight and a single table-lamp. Miss Holcombe was sitting beside the fire, her hands resting in her lap. The firelight gleamed on the dull silk of her high-necked blouse and the black woollen skirt which fell in folds to her ankles. As Dalgliesh quietly entered, she seemed to break from a reverie and, holding out her hand, briefly touched his, then motioned him to the fireside chair opposite her own.
If Dalgliesh could imagine Emily Holcombe being solicitous, he would have detected it in her keen glance and her immediate careful thought for his comfort. The warmth of the wood-burning fire, the muted crash of the waves and the cushioned support of the high-backed armchair revived him, and he leaned back in it with relief. He was offered wine, coffee or camomile tea and accepted the last gratefully. He had drunk enough coffee for one day.
Once the camomile tea had been brought in by Roughtwood, Miss Holcombe said, “I’m sorry this is so late. Partly but not wholly it was at my convenience. I had a dental appointment which I was reluctant to cancel. Some people on this island, if they speak frankly—which they seldom do—will tell you that I am a selfish old woman. That at least I have in common with Nathan Oliver.”
“You disliked him?”
“He wasn’t a man who could tolerate being liked. I have never believed that genius excuses bad behaviour. He was an iconoclast. He arrived every three months with daughter and copy-editor, stayed for two weeks, created a disturbance and succeeded in reminding us that we permanent residents are a coterie of irrelevant escapees from reality; that, like the old lighthouse, we are merely symbols, relics of the past. He punctured our complacency. To that extent he served his purpose. You could call him a necessary evil.”
Dalgliesh said, “Wouldn’t he be escaping from reality if he moved here permanently?”
“So you’ve been told that? I don’t think he would have put it that way. In his case he would claim that he needed the solitude to fulfil his purpose as a writer. He was desperate to produce a novel as good as the one before last, despite the knowledge that his talent was fading.”
“Did he feel that?”
“Oh yes. That and a terror of death were his two great fears. And, of course, guilt. If you decide to do without a personal god it’s illogical to saddle yourself with a legacy of Judeo-Christian sin. That way you suffer the psychological inconveniences of guilt without the consolation of absolution. Oliver had plenty to feel guilty about, as indeed have we all.”
There was a pause. Putting down her glass, she gazed into the dying fire. She said, “Nathan Oliver was defined by his talent—his genius, if that’s the more appropriate word. If he lost that he would become a shell. So he feared a double death. I’ve seen it before in brilliant and highly successful men I’ve known—still know. Women seem to face the inevitable with more stoicism. You can’t miss it. I go to London for three weeks once a year to visit those of my friends who are still alive and to remi
nd myself what I’m escaping from. Oliver was frightened and insecure, but he didn’t kill himself. We’ve all been confused about his death, we still are. Whatever the evidence to the contrary, suicide still seems the only possible explanation. But I can’t believe it. And he wouldn’t have chosen that way—the ugliness, the horror, the degradation of it; a method of self-extinction which mirrors all those pathetic victims twisting from their gibbets down the centuries. Executioners using the victim’s own body to choke out life—is that why we find it so abhorrent? No, Nathan Oliver wouldn’t have throttled himself. His method would be mine: drink and drugs, a comfortable bed, an appropriately worded goodbye if the mood took him. He’d have gone gentle into that good night.”
There was silence, then she said, “I was there, as you know. Not when he died, of course, but when he was cut down. Only it wasn’t a cutting down. Rupert and Guy couldn’t decide whether to lower him or pull him up. For minutes that seemed to stretch interminably, he was a human yo-yo. It was then I left. I have my share of curiosity, but I discovered in myself an atavistic repugnance to seeing a corpse mishandled. Death imposes certain conventions. You, of course, get used to it.”
Dalgliesh said, “No, Miss Holcombe, we don’t get used to it.”
“My dislike of him was more personal than general disapproval of his character defects. He wanted to get me out of this cottage. Under the Trust deed I have a right to residence here, but the deed doesn’t specify what accommodation I should be offered, whether I have a choice, whether I can bring my servant with me. To that extent I suppose it’s arguable he had a slight cause for resentment, although he always came with his own appendages. Rupert will have told you that Oliver couldn’t really be turned away, certainly not on the grounds that he was obnoxious. The Trust deed says that no one shall be refused admission if he or she was born on the island. It’s a safe enough provision. No one has been born here since the eighteenth century except Nathan Oliver, and he only qualified because his mother mistook her labour pains for indigestion and he was born two weeks prematurely and, I gather, in something of a rush. He was particularly persistent this visit. Oliver’s proposal was that I move into Puffin Cottage, making this one available to him. It sounds all very reasonable, but I had—still have—no intention of moving.”
None of this was new, and it was not for this that Dalgliesh had come to Atlantic Cottage. He sensed that she knew why he was here. She bent to put another small log on the fire, but he forestalled her and edged it gently onto the flames. Blue tongues licked the dry wood and the firelight strengthened, burnishing the polished mahogany and casting its glow over the spines of the leather books, the stone floor and the richly coloured rugs. Emily Holcombe leaned forward and held out her long, heavily ringed fingers to the flames. He saw her face in profile, the fine features etched against the flames like a cameo. She sat in silence for a minute. Dalgliesh, resting his head against the back of the chair, felt the ache in his legs and arms gently ease. He knew that soon she would have to speak and he must be ready to listen, missing nothing of the story she was at last prepared to tell. He wished that his head didn’t feel so heavy, that he could overcome this urge to shut his eyes and give himself over to the quietude and the comfort.
Then she said, “I’m ready for some more wine,” and passed over her glass. He half filled it and poured himself a second cup of tea. It tasted of nothing, but the hot liquid was comforting.
She said, “I’ve put off making this appointment to see you because there were two people I needed first to consult. Now that Raimund Speidel has been taken to hospital, I’ve decided to take his permission for granted. In doing that I’m assuming that you won’t give the story more weight than it can bear. It’s an old story and most of it known only to me. It can throw no light on Nathan Oliver’s death, but in the end it must be for you to decide.”
Dalgliesh said, “I spoke to Dr. Speidel on Saturday afternoon. He didn’t mention that he’d already spoken to you. He gave the impression of a man who was still seeking the truth rather than one who’d found it, but I don’t think he was being completely candid. Of course, he wasn’t well at the time. He may have thought it was prudent to await events.”
She said, “And now, with Dr. Speidel seriously ill and safely out of your reach, you’d like the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That must be the most futile oath anyone ever swears. I don’t know the whole truth, but I can tell you what I do know.”
She leaned back in the chair and gazed into the fire. Dalgliesh kept his eyes on her face.
“I’m sure you’ve been told something of the history of Combe Island. It was acquired by my family in the sixteenth century. By then it was already a place of ill repute and half-superstitious horror. In the sixteenth century it had been taken over by pirates from the Mediterranean who preyed on the coasts of southern England, captured young men and women and sold them into slavery. Thousands were taken in this way, and the island was dreaded as a place of imprisonment, rape and torture. To this day it’s unpopular with local people, and we used to have some difficulty finding temporary staff. The ones we have are all loyal and reliable, and are mostly incomers untroubled by folk history. My family were also untroubled by it during the years when we owned Combe. It was my grandfather who built the house, and I came here every year as a child, and later as an adolescent. Nathan Oliver’s father, Saul, was the boatman and general factotum. He was a fine sailor but a difficult man, given to violence fuelled by drink. After the death of his wife, he was left to bring up the boy. I used to see Nathan when he was a young boy and I in my teens. He was an odd, very self-contained child, uncommunicative but strong-willed. Strangely enough, I got on rather well with his father, although in those days anything approaching real friendship between myself and one of the servants would have been discouraged, indeed unthinkable.”
She held out her glass as he poured the wine, and took a few sips before resuming her story. “When war broke out, it was decided that the island must be evacuated. It wasn’t regarded as particularly vulnerable to attack, but there wasn’t fuel for the launch. We stayed on for the year of the phoney war, but by October 1940, after the fall of France and the death at Dunkirk of my brother, my parents decided it would be wisest to leave. We retreated to the main house, near Exmoor, and the next year I was due to go to Oxford. The evacuation of the few staff we still had was managed by the then steward and Saul Oliver. After Oliver had landed the last of the staff on the mainland, he and the boy came back, because he said he had some final tasks and was worried that the house wasn’t as secure as it could be. He proposed to stay for one extra night. He came in his own sailing boat, not the motor launch we then had.”
She paused, and Dalgliesh said, “Do you remember what date that was?”
“Tenth of October 1940. From now on I’m recounting what was told to me years later by Saul Oliver when hardly coherent and within two weeks of his death. I don’t know whether he wanted to confess or boast—perhaps both—or why he chose me. I had lost touch with him during and after the war. I cut my university career short and went to London to drive an ambulance, then returned to Oxford and only rarely came back to the West Country. Nathan had long since left Combe and embarked on his self-imposed task of making himself into a writer. I don’t think he ever saw his father again. Saul’s story wasn’t altogether new to me. There had been rumours, there always are. But I think I got as much of the truth as he was prepared to tell.
“During the night of tenth October, three Germans from the occupied Channel Islands landed on Combe. Until this week I knew the names of none of them. It was an extraordinarily risky journey, probably a venture by bored young officers either making a reconnaissance or planning some private enterprise. Either they knew that the island had been evacuated or they found it by chance. Speidel thinks they may have planned to plant the German flag on the top of the disused lighthouse. It would certainly have caused some consternation. Sometime after first light, they w
ent to the top of the lighthouse, presumably to spy out the land. While they were there, Saul Oliver discovered their boat and guessed where they were. The ground floor of the lighthouse was then used to house fodder for the animals and was packed with dry straw. He set this alight, and the flames and smoke billowed up into the top chamber. Soon the whole interior was in flames. They couldn’t escape onto the lantern. The railings had become unsafe, and the door had long since been nailed up to prevent accidents. All three Germans died, probably by suffocation. Saul waited until the fire was burnt out, discovered the bodies halfway up the tower and carried them back to their boat. He then took it out with the dinghy from the sailing boat and scuttled it in deep water.”
Dalgliesh asked, “Was there any evidence for this story?”
“Only the trophies he kept: a revolver, a pair of binoculars and a compass. As far as I know, no other boat landed during the war, and after the war no inquiries were made. The three young officers—I assume they were officers, since they were able to take the boat—were probably listed as missing, presumed drowned. The arrival of Dr. Speidel last week was the first confirmation of the truth of the story other than the souvenirs that Saul gave me before he died.”
“What did you do with them?”
“I threw them into the sea. I regarded his action as murder, and I had no wish to be reminded of something I wished I hadn’t been told. I saw no point in getting in touch with the German authorities. The men’s families—if there were families—could have received no comfort from the story. The soldiers had died horribly and to no purpose.”
