A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  “Oh yes. If Berowne was murdered, then the killing was premeditated. But I’m theorizing in advance of the facts, the unforgivable sin. All the same, there’s something contrived about it, Miles. It’s too obvious, too neat.”

  Kynaston said:

  “I’ll finish the preliminary examination and then you can take them away. I would normally do the pm first thing tomorrow, but they aren’t expecting me back at the hospital until Monday and the pm room is tied up until the afternoon. Three thirty is the earliest. Is that all right for your people?”

  “I don’t know about the lab. The sooner the better for us.”

  Something in his voice alerted Kynaston. He said:

  “Did you know him?”

  Dalgliesh thought: This is going to come up again and again. You knew him. You’re emotionally involved. You don’t want to see him as mad, a suicide, a killer. He said:

  “Yes, I knew him slightly, mostly across a committee table.”

  The words seemed to him grudging, almost a small treachery. He said again:

  “Yes, I knew him.”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “He had some kind of religious quasi-mystical experience here in this room. He may have been hoping to recapture it. He’d arranged with the parish priest to stay the night here. He gave no explanation.”

  “And Harry?”

  “It looks as if Berowne let him in. He may have found him sleeping in the porch. Apparently Harry couldn’t tolerate being with other people. There’s evidence that he was proposing to sleep further along the passage in the larger vestry.”

  Kynaston nodded and got down to his familiar routine. Dalgliesh left him to it and went out into the passage. Watching this violation of the body’s orifices, preliminaries to the scientific brutality to follow, had always made him feel uncomfortably like a voyeur. He had often wondered why he found it more offensive and ghoulish than the autopsy itself. Was it, perhaps, because the body was so recently dead, sometimes hardly cold? A superstitious man might fear that the spirit, so recently released, hovered around to be outraged at this insult to the discarded, still vulnerable, flesh. There was nothing for him to do now until Kynaston had finished. He was surprised to find himself tired. He expected to be exhausted later in an investigation when he would be working a sixteen-hour day, but this early heaviness, the feeling that he was already spent in mind and body, was new to him. He wondered whether it was the beginning of age or one more sign that this case was going to be different.

  He went back into the church, sat down in a chair in front of a statue of the Virgin. The huge nave was empty now. Father Barnes had gone, escorted home by a police constable. He had been readily helpful about the mug, identifying it as one Harry had often had with him when he was found sleeping in the porch. And he had tried to be helpful about the blotter, staring at it with almost painful intensity before saying that he thought that the black markings hadn’t been there when he had last seen the blotter on Monday evening. But he couldn’t be sure. He had taken a sheet of writing paper from the desk and used it to make notes during the meeting. This had covered the blotter so that he had really only seen it for a short time. But, as far as his memory went, the black markings were new.

  Dalgliesh was grateful for these minutes of quiet contemplation. The scent of incense seemed to have intensified, but it smelt to him overlaid with a sickly, more sinister smell, and the silence wasn’t absolute. At his back he could hear the ring of footsteps, an occasional raised voice, calm, confident and unhurried, as the unseen professionals went about their work behind the grille. The sounds seemed very far off and yet distinct, and he had the sensation of a secret, sinister busyness, like the scrabbling of mice behind the wainscot. Soon, he knew, the two bodies would be neatly parcelled in plastic sheeting. The rug would be carefully folded to preserve bloodstains, and in particular that one significant stain of dried blood. The scene-of-crime exhibits packed and tagged would be carried to the police car: the razor, the crumbs of bread and cheese from the larger room, the fibres from Harry’s clothing, that single burnt match head. For the moment he would keep possession of the diary. He needed to have it with him when he went to Campden Hill Square.

  At the foot of the statue of the Virgin and Child stood a wrought-iron candleholder bearing its triple row of clotted sockets, the tips of burnt wick deep in their rims of wax. On impulse he felt in his pocket for a tenpenny piece and dropped it in the box. The clatter was unnaturally loud. He half expected to hear Kate or Massingham moving up beside him to watch, unspeaking but with interested eyes, this untypical act of sentimental folly. There was a box of matches in a brass holder chained to the candlerack, similar to the one at the back of the church. He took one of the smaller candles and struck a match, holding it to the wick. It seemed to take an unduly long time before it took hold. Then the flame burnt steadily, a limpid, unflickering glow. He stuck the candle upright in a socket, then sat and gazed at the flame, letting it mesmerize him into memory.

  nine

  It was over a year ago but it seemed even longer. They had both been attending a seminar on judicial sentencing at a northern university, Berowne to open it formally with a brief speech, Dalgliesh to represent the police interest; and they had travelled by rail in the same first-class compartment. For the first hour Berowne, with his private secretary, had dealt with official papers, while Dalgliesh, after a final perusal of the agenda, had settled down to re-read Trollope’s The Way We Live Now. When the last file had been placed in the briefcase, Berowne had looked across at him and had seemed to want to talk. The young Principal, with a tact that would help ensure he remained a “high flyer,” had suggested that he should take first luncheon if that were agreeable to the Minister, and had disappeared. And for a couple of hours they had talked.

  Looking back on it, Dalgliesh was still amazed that Berowne should have been so frank. It was as if the train journey itself, the old-fashioned intimate compartment in which they had found themselves, the freedom from interruptions and the tyranny of the telephone, the sense of time visibly flying, annihilated under the pounding wheels, not to be accounted for, had released both of them from a carefulness which had become so much a part of living that they were no longer aware of its weight until they let it slip from their shoulders. Both were very private men. Neither needed the masculine camaraderie of club or golf course, pub or grouse moor, which so many of their colleagues found necessary to solace or sustain their over-busy lives.

  Berowne had spoken at first spasmodically, then easily, and finally intimately. From the ordinary subjects of casual conversation—books, recent plays, acquaintances they had in common—he had gone on to talk about himself. Both had leaned forward, hands loosely clasped. To a casual passenger, glancing in as he lurched down the corridor, they must, thought Dalgliesh, have looked like two penitents in a private confessional absolving each other. Berowne had seemed not to expect a reciprocal confidence, indiscretion traded for indiscretion. He spoke; Dalgliesh listened. Dalgliesh knew that no politician would have talked with such freedom unless he had had absolute confidence in his listener’s discretion. It was impossible not to feel flattered. He had always respected Berowne; now he warmed to him and was honest enough about his own reactions to know why.

  Berowne had spoken of his family:

  “We’re not a distinguished family, merely an old one. My great-grandfather lost a fortune because he was fascinated by a subject for which he had absolutely no talent—finance. Someone told him that the way to make money was to buy when the shares were low and sell when they were high. A simple enough rule which struck his rather undeveloped mind with the force of divine inspiration. He had absolutely no difficulty in following the first precept. The problem was that he never had the opportunity to follow the second. He had a positive genius for picking losers. So had his father. In his case the losers were on four legs. But I feel grateful to Great-grandfather nevertheless. Before he lost his money he had the good sense t
o commission John Soane to design the Campden Hill Square house. You’re interested in architecture, aren’t you? I’d like you to see it when you can spare a couple of hours. It needs at least that. In my view it’s even more interesting than the Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; a perverse neo-classicism, I suppose you’d call it. I find it satisfying, architecturally anyway. But I’m not sure that it isn’t a house to admire rather than to live in.”

  Dalgliesh had wondered how Berowne knew about his fondness for architecture. It could only have been because he read his poetry. A poet may heartily dislike having to talk about his verse, but the knowledge that someone has actually read it is never unwelcome.

  And now, sitting legs stretched, on a chair too low comfortably to accommodate his six feet two inches, eyes fixed on that single taper, unflickering in the incense-heavy stillness, he could hear again the tone, taut with self-disgust, in which Berowne had explained why he had given up the law:

  “Such odd things determine why and when one makes that kind of decision. I suppose I had persuaded myself that sending men to prison wasn’t something I cared to do for the rest of my life. And appearing only for the defence has always seemed too easy an option. I was never really good at pretending that I could assume my client to be innocent because I or my instructing solicitor had been careful to ensure that he didn’t actually confess. By the time you’ve seen your third rapist walk free because you’ve been cleverer than the prosecuting counsel, you lose the taste for that particular victory. But that’s just the easy explanation. I suspect it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t lost an important case, important to me, anyway. You won’t remember it—Percy Matlock. He killed his wife’s lover. It wasn’t a particularly difficult case, and we were confident we’d get it reduced to manslaughter. Even with that lesser verdict there was plenty of mitigation. But I didn’t prepare carefully enough. I suppose I thought I didn’t need to. I was pretty arrogant in those days. But it wasn’t only that. At the time I was very much in love, one of those adventures which seem of overwhelming importance at the time but, afterwards, leave one wondering if it wasn’t a kind of sickness. But I just wasn’t giving the case what it needed. Matlock was convicted of murder and died in prison. He had one child, a daughter. Her father’s conviction unhinged what precarious stability she’d managed to maintain. After she came out of the psychiatric hospital, she got in touch with me, and I gave her a job. She still keeps house for my mother. I don’t think she’s otherwise employable, poor girl. So I live with a constant and uncomely reminder of folly and failure, and no doubt it does me good. The fact that she’s actually grateful to me, ‘devoted’ is the word people use, doesn’t make it easier.”

  He had gone on to talk of his brother, killed five years earlier in Northern Ireland:

  “The title came to me through his death. Most of the things I expected to value in life have come to me through death.”

  Not, Dalgliesh remembered, the “things I value.” The “things I expected to value.”

  He could smell above the all-pervading redolence of incense the faint acrid smoke of the candle. Getting up from his chair, he left it burning, the pale flame staining the air, and moved down the nave through the grille and into the back of the church.

  In the bell room Ferris had set up his metal exhibits table and had neatly laid out his spoils, each tagged and shrouded in its plastic envelope. Now he was standing back regarding them with the faintly anxious proprietorial air of a stallholder at a church bazaar wondering whether he has set out his wares to best advantage. And indeed, thus dignified and labelled, these diverse and ordinary objects had assumed an almost ritualistic significance: the shoes, one with its wedge of mud behind the heel, the stained beaker, the blotter with its criss-cross of dead marks made by dead hands, the diary, the remains of Harry Mack’s last meal, the closed razor case and, occupying the centre of the table, the prize exhibit, the open cut-throat razor, its blade and bone handle gummy with blood.

  Dalgliesh asked:

  “Anything interesting?”

  “The diary, sir.” He made a move as if to take it out of its packet. Dalgliesh said:

  “Leave it. Just tell me.”

  “It’s the last page. It looks as if he tore out the entries for the last two months and burned those pages separately, then chucked the book open on the flames. The cover is only singed. The last page is the one which sets out the summary of the calendars for last year and next. There’s no sign even of singeing, but the top half is missing. Someone has torn the page in two.” He added:

  “I suppose he could have folded it and used it as a spill to get a light from the pilot on the gas water heater.”

  Dalgliesh picked up the bag containing the shoes. He said:

  “It’s possible.”

  But it struck him as unlikely. For a murderer in a hurry, and this murderer had been in a hurry, it would have been a tedious and uncertain way to get a light. If he’d come without a lighter or matches, surely the obvious thing would have been to remove the box from the chained brass holder attached to the heater. He turned the shoes over in his hands and said:

  “Handmade. There are some extravagances it’s difficult to forgo. The toes are still polished, the sides and heels dull and slightly smeared. It looks as if they’ve been washed. And there are still traces of mud at the sides as well as under the left heel. The lab will probably find scrape marks.”

  They were hardly, he thought, the shoes you’d expect to find on a man who had spent the day in London unless he had walked in the parks or along the towpath of the canal. But he could hardly have walked to St. Matthew’s that way; there were no signs that he had cleaned his shoes anywhere in the church. But this, again, was theorizing in advance of the facts. They could hope to learn later where Berowne had spent his last day on earth.

  Kate Miskin appeared in the doorway. She said:

  “Doc Kynaston has finished, sir. They’re ready to remove the bodies.”

  ten

  Massingham had expected that Darren would live in one of the high-rise local authority housing estates in Paddington. Instead the address which he had at last been persuaded to give was in a short and narrow street off the Edgware Road, an enclave of cheap, unsmart cafés chiefly Goan and Indian. As they turned into it Massingham realized that it wasn’t strange to him, he had been here before. It was surely in this street that he and old George Percival had picked up two excellent vegetarian take-aways when they were both detective sergeants on division. Even the names, exotic, until now almost forgotten, came back to him: Alu Ghobi, Sag Bhajee. It had changed little since then, a street where people minded their own business, principally that of supplying their own kind with meals remarkable for value and cheapness. Although it was morning and the quietest time of the day, the air was already pungent with the smell of curry and spices, reminding Massingham that it was some hours since breakfast and that there was no certainty when he would get his lunch.

  There was only one pub, a high narrow Victorian building squeezed between a Chinese take-away and a Tandoori café, darkly uninviting, with a painted scrawl on the window advertising with defiant Englishness: BANGERS AND MASH, BANGERS AND BUBBLE-AND-SQUEAK and TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE. Between the pub and the café was a small door with a single bell and a card with the one name: ARLENE. Darren stooped, took a key from the side of his canvas trainer shoes, then tiptoeing, inserted it in the lock. Massingham followed him up the narrow uncarpeted stairs. At the top he said:

  “Where’s your ma?”

  Still without speaking, the boy pointed to the door on the left. Massingham knocked gently, then, getting no reply, pushed it open.

  The curtains were drawn but they were thin and unlined, and even in the subdued light he could see that the room was spectacularly untidy. There was a woman lying on the bed. He moved over and, putting out his hand, found the switch of the bedside light. As it clicked on she gave a small grunt but didn’t move. She was lying on her back, naked except for
a short wrapover dressing gown from which one blue-veined breast had escaped and lay like a quivering jellyfish against the pink satin. A thin line of lipstick outlined the moistly open mouth from which a bleb of mucus ballooned and fell. She was snorting gently, small guttural sounds as if there were phlegm in her throat. Her eyebrows had been plucked in the manner of the thirties, leaving thin arches high above the natural line of the brow. They gave the face, even in sleep, a look of clownish surprise, enhanced by the circles of rouge on both cheeks. On a chair beside the bed was a large jar of Vaseline, the lid open, a single fly gummed to the rim. The back of the chair and the floor were strewn with clothes and the top of a chest of drawers which served as a dressing table under an oval mirror was crowded with bottles, dirty glasses, jars of make-up and packets of tissue. Set incongruously amid the mess was a jam jar with a bunch of freesias, still bound with a rubber band, whose delicate sweetness was lost in the stink of sex, scent and whisky. He said:

  “Is this your ma?”

  He wanted to ask “Is she often like this?” but instead he drew the boy out and closed the door. He had never liked questioning a child about its parents and he didn’t propose to do it now. It was a common enough tragedy, but it was a job for the Juvenile Bureau, not for him, and the sooner one of their officers arrived the better. He was fretted by the thought of Kate, back at the scene of crime by now, and he felt a spurt of resentment against Dalgliesh, who had involved him in this irrelevant mess. He asked:

  “Where do you sleep, Darren?”

  The boy pointed to a back bedroom and Massingham pushed him gently before him.

  It was very small, hardly more than a box room with a single high window. Under the window was a narrow bed covered with a brown army blanket, beside it a chair with a collection of objects neatly arranged. There was a model of a fire engine; a glass dome which shaken would produce a miniature snowstorm; two models of racing cars; three large veined marbles; and another jam jar, this one holding a bunch of roses, whose heads were already bending on their high thornless stems. An old chest of drawers, the only other furniture, was piled with an incongruous collection of objects, shirts still in their transparent packets, women’s underwear, silk scarves, tins of salmon, baked beans, soup, a packet of ham and one of tongue, three model kits for making boats, a couple of lipsticks, a box of model soldiers, three packets of cheap scent.