A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  Dalgliesh liked Berowne, but the summons was inconvenient. He was not expected at Bramshill until after luncheon and had planned to take his time over the journey to north Hampshire, visiting churches at Sherbourne St. John and Winchfield and lunching at a pub near Stratfield Saye before arriving at Bramshill m time for the usual courtesies with the commandant before his two-thirty lecture. It occurred to him that he had reached the age when a man looks forward to his pleasures less keenly than in youth but is disproportionately aggrieved when his plans are upset. There had been the usual time-consuming, wearying and slightly acrimonious preliminaries to the setting up of the new squad in CI, and already his mind was reaching out with relief to the solitary contemplation of alabaster effigies, sixteenth-century glass and the awesome decorations of Winchfield. But it looked as if Paul Berowne wasn’t proposing to take much time over their meeting. His plans might still be possible. He left his grip in the office, put on his tweed coat against a blustery autumnal morning and cut through St. James’s Park Station to the Department.

  As he pushed his way through the swing doors he thought again how much he had preferred the Gothic splendour of the old building in Whitehall. It must, he recognized, have been infuriating and inconvenient to work in. It had, after all, been built at a time when the rooms were heated by coal fires tended by an army of minions and when a score of carefully composed handwritten minutes by the Department’s legendary eccentrics were adequate to control events which now required three divisions and a couple of under-secretaries. This new building was no doubt excellent of its kind, but if the intention had been to express confident authority tempered by humanity, he wasn’t sure that the architect had succeeded. It looked more suitable for a multinational corporation than for a great Department of State. He particularly missed the huge oil portraits which had dignified that impressive Whitehall staircase, intrigued always by the techniques by which artists of varying talents had coped with the challenge of dignifying the ordinary and occasionally unprepossessing features of their sitters by the visual exploitation of magnificent robes and by imposing on their pudgy faces the stern consciousness of imperial power. But at least they had removed the studio photograph of a royal princess which until recently had graced the entrance hall. It had looked more suitable for a West End hairdressing salon.

  He was smilingly recognized at the reception desk, but his credentials were still carefully scrutinized and he was required to await the escorting messenger, even though he had attended enough meetings in the building to be reasonably familiar with these particular corridors of power. Few of the elderly male messengers now remained, and for some years the Department had recruited women. They shepherded their charges with a cheerful, maternal competence as if to reassure them that the place might look like a prison but was as gently beneficent as a nursing home and that they were only there for their own good.

  He was finally shown into the outer office. The House was still in recess for the summer and the room was unnaturally quiet. One of the typewriters was shrouded and a single clerk was collating papers with none of the urgency which normally powered a Minister’s private office. It would have been a different scene a few weeks earlier. He thought, not for the first time, that a system which required Ministers to run their departments, fulfill their parliamentary responsibilities and spend the weekend listening to the grievances of their constituents might have been designed to ensure that major decisions were made by men and women tired to the point of exhaustion. It certainly ensured that they were heavily dependent on their permanent officials. Strong Ministers were still their own men; the weaker degenerated into marionettes. Not that this would necessarily worry them. Departmental heads were adept at concealing from their puppets even the gentlest jerk of strings and wire. But Dalgliesh hadn’t needed his private source of department gossip to know that there was nothing of this limp subservience about Paul Berowne.

  He came forward from behind his desk and held out his hand as If this were a first meeting. His was a face stern, even a little melancholy, in repose, which was transfigured when he smiled. He smiled now. He said:

  “I’m sorry to bring you here at short notice. I’m glad we managed to catch you. It isn’t particularly important, but I think it may become so.”

  Dalgliesh could never see him without being reminded of the portrait of his ancestor, Sir Hugo Berowne, in the National Portrait Gallery. Sir Hugo had been undistinguished except for a passionate, if ineffective, allegiance to his king. His only notable recorded act had been to commission Van Dyke to paint his portrait. But it had been enough to ensure him, at least pictorially, a vicarious immortality. The manor house in Hampshire had long since passed from the family, the fortune was diminished; but Sir Hugo’s long and melancholy face framed by a collar of exquisite lace still stared with arrogant condescension at the passing crowd, the definitive seventeenth-century Royalist gentleman. The present baronet’s likeness to him was almost uncanny. Here was the same long-boned face, the high cheekbones tapering to a pointed chin, the same widely spaced eyes with the droop of the left eyelid, the same long-fingered pale hands, the same steady but slightly ironic gaze.

  Dalgliesh saw that his desk top was almost clear. It was a necessary ploy for an overworked man who wanted to stay sane. You dealt with one thing at a time, gave it your whole attention, decided it, then put it aside. At this moment he managed to convey that the one thing requiring attention was comparatively unimportant, a short communication on a sheet of quarto-sized white writing paper. He handed it over. Dalgliesh read:

  “The Member for Hertfordshire North East, despite his fascist tendencies, is a notable liberal when it comes to women’s rights. But perhaps women should beware; proximity to this elegant baronet can be lethal. His first wife was killed in a car accident; he was driving. Theresa Nolan, who nursed his mother and slept in his house, killed herself after an abortion. It was he who knew where to find the body. The naked body of Diana Travers, his domestic servant, was found drowned at his wife’s Thamesside birthday party, a party at which he was expected to be present. Once is a private tragedy, twice is bad luck, three times looks like carelessness.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “Typed with an electric golf-ball machine. They’re not the easiest to identify. And the paper is from a pad of ordinary commercial bond sold in thousands. Not much help there. Have you any idea who could have sent it?”

  “None. One gets used to the usual abusive or pornographic letters. They’re part of the job.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “But this is close to an accusation of murder. If the sender is traced, I imagine your lawyer would advise that it’s actionable.”

  “Actionable, yes, I imagine so.”

  Dalgliesh thought that whoever had composed the message hadn’t been uneducated. The punctuation was careful, the prose had a certain rhythm. He or she had taken trouble over the arrangement of the facts and in getting in as much relevant information as possible. It was certainly a cut above the usual filth and drivel which dropped unsigned into a Minister’s postbag, and it was the more dangerous for that.

  He handed it back and said:

  “This isn’t the original, of course. It’s been photocopied. Are you the only person to receive it, Minister, or don’t you know?”

  “He sent it to the press, at least to one paper, the Paternoster Review. This is in today’s edition. I’ve only just seen it.”

  He opened his desk drawer, took out the journal and handed it to Dalgliesh. There was a folded marker at page eight. Dalgliesh let his eyes slide down the page. The paper had been running a series of articles on junior members of the Government and it was Berowne’s turn. The first part of the article was innocuous, factual, hardly original. It briefly reviewed Berowne’s previous career as a barrister, his first unsuccessful attempt to enter Parliament, his success at the 1979 election, his phenomenal rise to junior ministerial rank, his probable standing with the Prime Minister. It mentioned that he
lived with his mother, Lady Ursula Berowne, and his second wife in one of the few extant houses built by Sir John Soane and that he had one child by his first marriage, twenty-four-year-old Sarah Berowne, who was active in left-wing politics and who was thought to be estranged from her father. It was unpleasantly snide about the circumstances of his second marriage. His elder brother, Major Sir Hugo Berowne, had been killed in Northern Ireland and Paul Berowne had married his brother’s fiancée within five months of the car accident which had killed his wife. “It was, perhaps, appropriate that the bereaved fiancée and husband should find mutual consolation although no one who has seen the beautiful Barbara Berowne could suppose that the marriage was merely a matter of fraternal duty.” It went on to prognosticate with some insight but little charity about his political future. But much of that was little more than lobby gossip.

  The sting lay in the final paragraph and its origin was unmistakable. “He is a man who is known to like women; certainly most find him attractive. But those women closest to him have been singularly unlucky. His first wife died in a car smash while he was driving. A young nurse, Theresa Nolan, who nursed his mother, Lady Ursula Berowne, killed herself after an abortion, and it was Berowne who found the body. Four weeks ago a girl who worked for him, Diana Travers, was found drowned following a party given for his wife on her birthday, a party at which he was expected to be present. Bad luck is as lethal for a politician as halitosis. It could yet follow him into his political career. It could be the sour smell of misfortune rather than the suspicion that he doesn’t know what he really wants which could mock the prediction that here is the next Conservative Prime Minister but one.”

  Berowne said:

  “The Paternoster Review isn’t circulated in the Department. Perhaps it should be. Judging from this, we might be missing entertainment if not instruction. I read it occasionally at the club, mainly for the literary reviews. Do you know anything about the paper?”

  He could, thought Dalgliesh, have asked the Department’s own public relations people. It was interesting that apparently he hadn’t chosen to. He said:

  “I’ve known Conrad Ackroyd for some years. He owns and edits the Paternoster. His father and grandfather had it before him. In those days it was printed in Pater Noster Place in the City. Ackroyd doesn’t make money out of it. Papa left him reasonably well provided for through more orthodox investments, but I imagine it just about breaks even. He likes to print gossip occasionally, but the paper isn’t a second Private Eye. Ackroyd hasn’t the guts, for one thing. I don’t think he has ever risked being sued in the history of the paper. It makes it less audacious and less entertaining than the Eye, of course, except for the literary and dramatic reviews. They have an enjoyable perversity.” Only the Paternoster, he recalled, would have described a revival of Priestley’s An Inspector Calls as a play about a very tiresome girl who caused a great deal of trouble to a respectable family. He added: “The facts will be accurate as far as they go. This will have been checked. But it’s surprisingly vicious for the Paternoster.”

  Berowne said:

  “Oh yes, the facts are accurate.” He made the statement calmly, almost sadly, without explanation and apparently without the intention of offering any.

  Dalgliesh wanted to say “Which facts? The facts in this journal or the facts in the original communication?” But he decided against the question. This wasn’t yet a case for the police, least of all for him. For the present, anyway, the initiative must lie with Berowne. He said:

  “I remember the Theresa Nolan inquest. This Diana Travers drowning is new to me.”

  Berowne said:

  “It didn’t make the national press. There was a line or two in the local paper reporting the inquest. It made no mention of my wife. Diana Travers wasn’t a member of her birthday party, but they did dine at the same restaurant, the Black Swan on the river at Cookham. The authorities seem to have adopted that slogan of the insurance company: Why make a drama out of a crisis?”

  So there had been a cover-up, of sorts anyway, and Berowne had known it. The death by drowning of a girl who worked for a Minister of the Crown and who died after dining at the restaurant where that Minister’s wife was also dining, whether or not he himself was present, would normally have justified at least a brief paragraph in one of the national papers. Dalgliesh asked:

  “What do you want me to do, Minister?”

  Berowne smiled.

  “Do you know, I’m not exactly sure. Keep a watching brief, I suppose. I’m not expecting you to take this on personally. That would obviously be ridiculous. But if it does develop into open scandal, I suppose someone eventually will have to deal with it. At this stage I wanted to put you in the picture.”

  But that was precisely what he hadn’t done. With any other man Dalgliesh would have pointed this out and with some asperity. The fact that he felt no temptation to do so with Berowne interested him. He thought, There’ll be reports on both the inquests. I can get most of the facts from official sources. For the rest, if it does blow up into an open accusation, he’ll have to come clean. And if that happened, whether it became a matter for him personally and for the proposed new squad would depend on how great the scandal, how real the suspicion and of what precisely. He wondered what Berowne was expecting him to do, find a potential blackmailer or investigate him for double murder? But it seemed likely that a scandal of some sort would eventually break. If the communication had been sent to the Paternoster Review, it had almost certainly been sent to other papers or journals, possibly to some of the nationals. They might at present be choosing to hold their fire, but that didn’t mean they’d have thrown the communication into their wastepaper baskets. They had probably spiked it while they checked with their lawyers. In the meantime, to wait and watch was probably the wisest option. But there would be no harm in having a word with Conrad Ackroyd. Ackroyd was one of the greatest gossips in London. Half an hour spent in his wife’s elegant and comfortable drawing room was usually more productive and a great deal more entertaining than hours spent beavering through official files.

  Berowne said:

  “I’m meeting a party of constituents at the House. They want to be shown round. Perhaps if you’ve time you could walk over with me.” Again the request was a command.

  But when they left the building he turned without explanation to the left and down the steps to Birdcage Walk. So they were to walk to the House the longest way, along the fringe of St. James’s Park. Dalgliesh wondered if there were things his companion wished to confide which could more easily be said out of the office. The twenty square acres of entrancing if formalized beauty of the park, crossed by paths so convenient that they might have been purposefully designed to lead from one centre of power to another, must, he thought, have heard more secrets than any other part of London.

  But if that was Berowne’s intention, it was destined to be thwarted. They had hardly crossed Birdcage Walk when they were hailed by a cheerful shout, and Jerome Mapleton trotted up beside them, rubicund, sweaty-faced, a little out of breath. He was the Member for a South London constituency, a safe seat which he nevertheless hardly ever left, as if fearing that even a week’s absence might put it in jeopardy. Twenty years in the House still hadn’t dampened his extraordinary enthusiasm for the job and his not unappealing surprise that he should actually be there. Talkative, gregarious and insensitive, he attached himself as if by magnetic force to any group larger or more important than the one he was actually in. Law and order was his chief interest, a concern popular with his prosperous middle-class constituents cowering behind their security locks and decorative window bars. Adapting his subject to his captive audience, he plunged at once into parliamentary small talk about the newly appointed committee, bobbing up and down between Berowne and Dalgliesh like a small craft on bumpy water.

  “This committee, ‘Policing a Free Society: The Next Decade,’ isn’t that what it’s called? Or is it ‘Policing in a Free Society: The Next Decade’? Didn’
t you spend the first session deciding whether to include that little preposition? So typical. You’re looking at policy as well as technical resources, aren’t you? Isn’t that a tall order? It’s made the committee larger than is usually thought effective, hasn’t it? Wasn’t the original idea to look again at the application of science and technology to policing? The committee seems to have enlarged its terms of reference.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “The difficulty is that technical resources and policy aren’t easily separated, not when you get to practical policing.”

  “Oh, I know, I know. I quite appreciate that, my dear Commander. This proposal to monitor vehicle movements on the motorways, for example. You can do it, of course. The question is, should you do it? Similarly with surveillance. Can you examine advanced scientific methods divorced from the policy and ethics of their actual use? That’s the question, my dear Commander. You know it, we all know it. And, come to that, can we any longer rely on the received doctrine that it’s for the chief constable to decide on the allocation of resources?”

  Berowne said:

  “You aren’t, of course, about to utter heresy—that we ought to have a national force?” He spoke without apparent interest, his eyes fixed ahead. It was as if he were thinking: Since we’re lumbered with this bore, let’s throw him a predictable subject and hear his predictable views.

  “No. But it might be better to have one by will and intention than by default. De jure, Minister, not de facto. Well, you’ll have plenty to keep you busy, Commander, and given the membership of the working party, it won’t be dull.” He spoke wistfully. Dalgliesh suspected that he had hoped to be a member. He heard him add: “I suppose that’s the attraction of the job for the sort of man you are.”

  What sort of man, thought Dalgliesh. The poet who no longer writes poetry. The lover who substitutes technique for commitment. The policeman disillusioned with policing. He doubted whether Mapleton intended his words to be offensive. The man was as insensitive to language as he was to people.