A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  She said:

  “That at least was frank. You seem well suited to each other.”

  He accepted the subtle insult behind the irony.

  “Oh yes,” he said sadly, “we suit each other.” He added, “I suspect she doesn’t even feel particularly guilty. Less so than I do, oddly enough. It’s difficult to take adultery seriously if you’re not getting much pleasure out of it.”

  “Your role must be exhausting and hardly satisfying. I admire your self-sacrifice.”

  His smile was reminiscent, secretive.

  “She’s so beautiful. It’s absolute, isn’t it? It doesn’t even depend on whether she’s well or happy or not tired or on what she wears. It’s always there. You can’t blame me for trying.”

  “Oh yes,” she said, “I can, and I do.”

  But she knew that she was being less than honest. All her life she had been beguiled by physical beauty in men and in women. It was what she had lived by. When, in 1918, with her brother and fiancé both killed, she, an earl’s daughter, had gone on the stage in defiance of tradition, what else had she to offer? Not, she thought with wry honesty, any great dramatic talent. She had, almost casually and instinctively, demanded physical beauty in her lovers and had been unjealous and over-indulgent of it in her women friends. They had been the more surprised when, at the age of thirty-two, she had married Sir Henry Berowne, apparently for less obvious qualities, and had given him two sons. She thought now of her daughter-in-law as she had watched her many times, standing motionless in front of the glass in the hall. Barbara was incapable of passing a mirror without that moment of narcissistic stillness, that calm reflective gaze. What had she been watching for? That first droop from the corner of the eyes, the fading blue, the dry fold of skin, the first crêping of the neck which would show how transitory it was, this over-prized perfection.

  He was still restlessly pacing, still talking.

  “Barbara likes to feel that attention is being paid to her. You have to admit that about the sexual act. Attention, specific and intense, is certainly being paid. She needs men to desire her. She doesn’t much want them actually to touch her. If she thought I had a hand in killing Paul, she wouldn’t thank me. I don’t think she’d forgive me. And she certainly wouldn’t protect me. I’m sorry. I’ve been too frank. But I think it had to be said.”

  “Yes, it had to be said. Whom would she protect?”

  “Her brother, possibly, but not, I should have thought, for long and certainly not at any risk to herself. They’ve never been particularly close.”

  She said drily:

  “No sibling loyalty will be demanded of her. Dominic Swayne was here in this house with Mattie for the whole of yesterday evening.”

  “Is that his story or hers?”

  “Are you accusing him of having a hand in my son’s death?”

  “Of course not. The idea is ridiculous. And if Mattie says he was with her, I’ve no doubt he was. We all know that Mattie is a model of rectitude. You asked me if there was anyone Barbara would protect. I can think of no one else.”

  He had stopped his pacing now and sat down again opposite to her.

  He said:

  “Your reasons for telephoning me. You said there were two things we needed to discuss.”

  “Yes. I should like to be sure that the child Barbara is carrying is my grandchild, not your bastard.”

  His shoulders stiffened. For a moment, it could have been a second only, he sat rigidly gazing down at his clasped hands. In the silence she heard the ticking of the carriage clock. Then he looked up. He was still calm but she thought that his face was paler.

  “Oh, there’s no doubt about that. No possible doubt. I had a vasectomy three years ago. I’m not suited to fatherhood and I hadn’t any wish to be made ridiculous by paternity suits. I can give you the name of my surgeon if you want proof. That’s probably simpler than relying on blood tests once he’s born.”

  “He?”

  “Oh yes, it’s a boy. Barbara had an amniocentesis. Your son wanted an heir and he’s going to get an heir. Didn’t you know?”

  She sat for a moment in silence. Then she said: “Isn’t that a risky procedure for the foetus, particularly so early in the pregnancy?”

  “Not with the new techniques and in expert hands. And I saw that she was in expert hands. No, not mine. I’m not that kind of fool.”

  She asked:

  “Did Paul know about the child before he died?”

  “Barbara hasn’t said. I imagine not. After all, she’s only just heard of it herself.”

  “The pregnancy? Surely not.”

  “No, the sex of the child. I rang and told her first thing yesterday morning. But Paul may have suspected that there was a child on the way. After all, he did go back to that church, presumably to ask his God for further and better instructions.”

  She was seized by an anger so intense that, for a moment, she couldn’t speak. And when her voice did come it quavered like the voice of an old, impotent woman. But at least her words could sting. She said:

  “You never could resist it, even as a boy, the temptation to combine vulgarity with what you imagined was wit. Whatever happened to my son in that church, and I don’t pretend to understand it, in the end he died because of it. When next you’re tempted to indulge in a cheap witticism, you might remember that.”

  His own voice was low and as cold as steel.

  “I’m sorry. I thought from the beginning that this conversation was a mistake. We’re both too shocked to be rational. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go down to see Barbara before the police descend on her. She’s alone, I take it?”

  “As far as I know she is. Anthony Farrell should be arriving soon. I sent for him to his private address as soon as I got the news, but he has to get up from Winchester.”

  “The family lawyer? Having him here when the police arrive—won’t that look suspicious? Too like a necessary precaution?”

  “He’s a family friend as well as a lawyer. It’s natural for both of us to want him here. But I’m glad you’re seeing her before he arrives. Tell her to answer Dalgliesh’s questions but not to volunteer information, any information. I’ve no reason to suppose the police will take an unnecessarily dramatic view of what, after all, was common adultery. But it isn’t something they’ll expect her to confide even if they know about it. Too much candour looks as suspicious as too little.”

  He asked:

  “Were you with her when the police broke the news?”

  “The police didn’t break the news. I did. It seemed to me advisable in all the circumstances. A competent woman officer told me first, then I went down alone to see Barbara. She behaved very prettily. Barbara has always known what emotion it is appropriate for her to feel. And she’s a good actress. She should be. She’s had plenty of practice. Oh, and another thing. Tell her to say nothing about the child. That’s important.”

  “If it’s what you want, what you think is wise. But it could be helpful to mention the pregnancy. They’d be particularly gentle with her.”

  “They’ll be gentle. They won’t be sending a fool.”

  They were speaking like confederates, precariously allied in a conspiracy which neither would acknowledge. She felt a cold disgust as physical as nausea, and with it there swept over her a weakness which shrivelled her in her chair. Immediately, she was aware of him at her side, of his fingers, gentle, firm, pressing her wrist. She knew that she should have resented his touch, but now it comforted her. She lay back, her eyes closed, and her pulse strengthened under his fingers. He said:

  “Lady Ursula, you really should see your doctor. Malcolm Hancock, isn’t it? Let me ring him.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m all right. I can’t cope with another person yet. Until the police arrive I need to be alone.” It was a confession of weakness which she hadn’t expected to make, not to him and not at such a moment. He walked to the door. When his hand was on the knob, she said: />
  “There’s one more thing. What do you know about Theresa Nolan?”

  He turned and looked at her gravely.

  “No more than you, I imagine, probably less. She only worked at Pembroke Lodge for four weeks and I hardly set eyes on her. She nursed you, lived in this house, for over six. And when she came to me she was already pregnant.”

  “And Diana Travers?”

  “Nothing, except that she was unwise enough to overeat, drink too much and then dive into the Thames. As you must know, Barbara and I had left the Black Swan before she drowned.” He was silent for a moment and then said, gravely:

  “I know what you’re thinking about, that ludicrous article in the Paternoster Review. Lady Ursula, may I give you some advice? Paul’s murder, if it is murder, is perfectly simple. He let someone into that church, a thief, another derelict, a psychopath, and that person killed him. Don’t complicate his death, which, God knows, is horrible enough, with old, irrelevant tragedies. The police will have enough to get their teeth into without that.”

  “Are they both irrelevant?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he said:

  “Has Sarah been told?”

  “Not yet. I tried to telephone her this morning at the flat but there was no reply. She was probably out getting a paper. I’ll try again as soon as you leave.”

  “Would you like me to go round? She is Paul’s daughter, after all. This will be a terrible shock to her. She oughtn’t to learn it from the police or the television news.”

  “She won’t. If necessary, I’ll go round myself.”

  “But who will drive you? Isn’t Wednesday Halliwell’s day off?”

  “There are taxis.”

  She resented the way in which he seemed to be taking over, insinuating himself into the family as cunningly as he once had in Oxford. And then, again, she reproached herself for unfairness. He had never lacked his measure of kindness. He said:

  “She ought to have time for preparation before the police burst in on her.”

  Time for what? she wondered. To make a decent pretence that she cared? She didn’t reply. Suddenly she wanted him gone so urgently that it was all she could do not to order him to get out. Instead she held out her hand. Bending, he took it in his and then raised it to his lips. The gesture, theatrical and ludicrously inappropriate, disconcerted but did not disgust her. After he had left, she found herself looking down at her thin, ring-encrusted fingers, at the age-mottled knuckles against which, briefly, his lips had rested. Was the gesture a tribute to an old woman facing with dignity and courage a last tragedy? Or had it been something more subtle, a pledge that, despite everything, they were allies, that he understood her priorities and would make them his?

  eight

  Dalgliesh remembered a surgeon once telling him that Miles Kynaston had shown promise of becoming a brilliant diagnostician, but had given up general medicine for pathology at registrar level because he could no longer bear to watch human suffering. The surgeon had sounded a note of amused condescension as though he were betraying a colleague’s unfortunate weakness, wryly observed, which a more prudent man would have detected before beginning his medical training, or at least would have come to terms with before his second year. It could, Dalgliesh thought, have been true. Kynaston had fulfilled his promise, but now he applied his diagnostic skills to the unrepining dead, whose eyes couldn’t implore him to offer hope, whose mouths could no longer cry out. Certainly he had a taste for death. Nothing about it disconcerted him: its messiness, its smell, the most bizarre of its trappings. Unlike most doctors, he saw it not as the final enemy, but as a fascinating enigma, each cadaver, which he would gaze at with the same intent look as he must once have fixed on his living patients, a new piece of evidence which might, if rightly interpreted, bring him closer to its central mystery.

  Dalgliesh respected him more than any other pathologist with whom he had worked. He came promptly when called and was equally prompt reporting on a post-mortem. He didn’t indulge in the crude autopsy humour which some of his colleagues found necessary to bolster their social self-esteem; dinner guests could know themselves safe from distasteful anecdotes about carving knives or missing kidneys. Above all he was good in the witness box, too good for some people. Dalgliesh remembered the sour comment of a defending counsel after a verdict of guilty: “Kynaston’s getting dangerously infallible with juries. We don’t want another Spilsbury.”

  He never wasted time. Even as he greeted Dalgliesh he was taking off his jacket and was drawing his fine latex gloves over stubby-fingered hands which looked unnaturally white, almost bloodless. He was tall and solidly built, giving an impression of shambling clumsiness until one saw him working in a confined space, when he would seem physically to contract and become compact, even graceful, moving about the body with the lightness and precision of a cat. His face was fleshy, the dark hair receding from a high speckled forehead, the long upper lip as precisely curved as an arrowhead, and the full, heavily lidded eyes dark and very bright, giving his face a look of sardonic, humorous intelligence. Now he squatted, toad-like, by Berowne’s body, his hands hanging loosely in front of him, palely disembodied. He gazed at the throat wounds with extraordinary concentration, but made no move to touch the body except to run his hand lightly over the back of the head, like a caress. Then he said:

  “Who are they?”

  “Sir Paul Berowne, late MP and junior Minister, and a tramp, Harry Mack.”

  “On the face of it, murder followed by suicide. The cuts are textbook: two fairly superficial from left to right, then one above, swift, deep, severing the artery. And the razor neatly to hand. As I say, on the face of it obvious. A little too obvious?”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “I thought so.”

  Kynaston stepped gingerly over the carpet to Harry, prancing on tiptoe like an inexpert dancer.

  “One cut. Enough. Again from left to right. Which means that Berowne, if it was Berowne, stood behind him.”

  “So why isn’t Berowne’s right shirt sleeve soaked with blood? All right, it’s heavily bloodstained, his own or Harry’s blood or both. But if he killed Harry, wouldn’t you expect a greater amount of soaking?”

  “Not if he turned up his shirt sleeve first and took him from behind.”

  “And turned it down again before slitting his own throat? Unlikely, surely.”

  Kynaston said:

  “Forensic should be able to identify Harry’s blood, or what could be Harry’s blood, on the shirt sleeve as well as Berowne’s own. There seem to be no visible stains between the bodies.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “Forensic have been over the carpet with the fibre-optic lamp. They may get something. And there is one discernible smudge under Harry’s jacket and a trace of what looks like blood on the jacket lining immediately above it.”

  He lifted the corner. Both of them looked at the stain on the carpet in silence. Dalgliesh said:

  “It was under the jacket when we found it. That means it was there before Harry fell. And if it proves to be Berowne’s blood, then he died first, unless, of course, he staggered across to Harry after making one or more of the superficial cuts in his own throat. As a theory, it strikes me as ludicrous. If he were in the very act of cutting his own throat, how could Harry have stopped him? So why bother to kill him? But is it possible, medically possible?”

  Kynaston looked at him. Both knew the importance of the question. He said:

  “After the first superficial cut, I’d say that it was.”

  “But would he still have had the strength to kill Harry?”

  “With his own throat partly cut? Again, after that first superficial cut, I don’t think one can rule it out. He’d be in a state of high excitement, remember. It’s amazing what strength people do find. After all, we’re supposing that he was interrupted in the act of suicide. Hardly the moment when a man is at his most rational. But I can’t be certain. No one can. You’re asking the impossible, Adam.”<
br />
  “I was afraid so. But it’s too neat.”

  “Or you want to believe it’s too neat. How do you see it?”

  “From the position of the body I think he could have been sitting on the edge of the bed. Assuming he was murdered, assuming that the murderer went first into the kitchen, then he could have crept back silently and attacked Berowne from behind. A blow, a cord round the throat. Or he grabs him by the hair, drags back the head, makes the first deep cut. The others, the ones designed to look tentative, could have come afterwards. So we look for any mark under the cuts, or for a bump on the back of the head.”

  Kynaston said:

  “There is a bump but it’s small. It could have been caused by the body falling. But we’ll know more at the pm.”

  “An alternative theory is that the killer knocked him out first, then went into the kitchen to strip and came back for the final throat-cutting before Berowne had a chance to come round. But that raises obvious objections. He’d have to judge the force of the blow very carefully, and you’d expect it to leave more than a slight bump.”

  Kynaston said:

  “But it raises fewer objections than the first theory, that he came in half-naked and armed with a razor and yet there are no obvious signs that Berowne put up any resistance.”

  “He could have been taken by surprise. He could expect his visitor to come back through the door to the kitchen. It’s possible that he tiptoed down the passage and came in by the main door. That’s the most likely theory, given the position of the body.”

  Kynaston said:

  “You’re assuming premeditation then? That the killer knew he’d find a razor to hand?”