A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  “No. I expect she asked my mother-in-law. They look after the house between them. They don’t bother me with it.”

  “And the other dead girl, Theresa Nolan. Did you have anything to do with her?”

  “She was my mother-in-law’s nurse, nothing to do with me. I hardly saw her.”

  She turned to Anthony Farrell:

  “Do I have to answer all these questions? I want to help, but how can I? If Paul did have enemies, I don’t know about them. We didn’t really talk about politics, things like that.”

  The sudden blaze of blue conveyed that no man would wish to burden her with matters so irrelevant to the essential fact about her.

  She added:

  “It’s too dreadful. Paul dead, murdered—I can’t believe it. I haven’t really taken it in. I don’t want to go on talking about it. I just want to be left alone and to go to my room. I want Mattie.”

  The words were a piteous appeal for sympathy, for understanding, but the voice was that of a querulous child.

  Farrell went over to the fireplace and pulled on the bell cord. He said:

  “I’m afraid that one of the dreadful facts about murder is that the police are obliged to intrude on grief. It’s their job. They have to be sure that there is nothing your husband said to you which could give them a clue to suggest that he had an enemy. Someone who might know that he would be in St. Matthew’s Church that night, someone who had a grudge against him, might want him out of the way. It seems most likely that Paul was killed by a casual intruder, but the police have to exclude other possibilities.”

  If Anthony Farrell thought that he was going to conduct the interview on his terms, he was mistaken. But before Dalgliesh could speak, the door burst open and a young man flung himself across the room to Barbara Berowne. He cried:

  “Barbie darling! Mattie rang me with the news. It’s awful, unbelievable. I’d have come earlier only she couldn’t reach me until eleven. Darling, how are you? Are you all right?”

  She said rather faintly:

  “This is my brother, Dominic Swayne.”

  He nodded at them as if their presence were an intrusion and turned again to his sister.

  “But what happened, Barbie? Who did it? D’you know?”

  Dalgliesh thought, this isn’t genuine, he’s acting. And then he told himself that the judgement was certainly premature and possibly unjust. One thing policing taught you was that in moments of shock and grief, even the most articulate could sound platitudinous. If Swayne was overacting the part of a devoted consoling brother, that didn’t necessarily mean that he wasn’t both genuinely devoted and anxious to console. But Dalgliesh hadn’t missed Barbara Berowne’s small shudder as his arms went round her shoulders. It could, of course, have been a small manifestation of shock, but Dalgliesh wondered if it hadn’t also been one of mild revulsion.

  He wouldn’t have known at first that they were brother and sister. True, Swayne had the same corn-yellow hair, but his, either by nature or art, was tightly curled above a round pale forehead. The eyes, too, were alike, the same remarkable violet blue under the curved brows. But there the resemblance ended. He had none of his sister’s classical, heart-catching beauty. But his face, delicately featured, wasn’t without a certain puckish charm with its well-formed, rather petulant mouth, ears as tiny as a child’s, milk white and slightly jutting like incipient wings. He was short, little more than five foot three, but broad-shouldered and with long arms. This simian strength grafted onto the delicate head and face was so discordant that the first impression was of a minor physical deformity.

  But Miss Matlock had answered the bell and was standing in the doorway. Without saying good-bye and with a little moan, Barbara Berowne half-stumbled over to her. The woman gazed first at her, then at the men in the room impassively, then, placing an arm across her shoulder, guided her out. There was a moment of silence, then Dalgliesh turned to Dominic Swayne.

  “As you are here, perhaps you would answer one or two questions. It’s possible you may be able to help us. When did you last see Sir Paul?”

  “My revered brother-in-law? Do you know, I can’t remember. Not for some weeks anyway. Actually I was in this house all yesterday evening, but we didn’t meet. Evelyn, Miss Matlock, wasn’t expecting him back for dinner. She said that he had left after breakfast and no one knew where he had gone.”

  Kate asked from her seat by the wall:

  “When did you arrive, sir?”

  He turned to look at her, the blue eyes amused, frankly appraising, as if signalling a sexual invitation.

  “Just before seven. The neighbour was coming out of his door and saw me arrive, so he’ll be able to confirm the time if it’s important. I can’t see why it should be. Miss Matlock too, of course. I stayed until just before ten thirty, then went over to the local pub, the Raj, for a last drink. They’ll remember me there. I was one of the last to leave.”

  Kate asked:

  “And you were here the whole time?”

  “Yes. But what’s it got to do with Paul’s death? I mean, is it important?”

  He couldn’t, thought Dalgliesh, be as naive as that. He said:

  “It could be helpful in tracing Sir Paul’s movements yesterday. Could he have returned to the house while you were here?”

  “I suppose so, but it doesn’t seem likely. I was having a bath for about an hour, that’s principally why I came. He might have come back then, but I think that Miss Matlock would have mentioned it. I’m an actor, out of work at present. Just auditioning. They call it resting, God knows why. It seems more like feverish activity to me. I lodged here for a week or two in May, but Paul wasn’t all that welcoming, so I moved in with Bruno Packard. He’s a theatre designer. He has a small flat, a conversion, at Shepherds Bush. But what with his model sets and gear, there’s not a lot of room. On top of that there isn’t a bath, only a shower, and that’s in the l00, so it isn’t exactly convenient for anyone reasonably fastidious. I’ve taken to turning up here for an occasional bath and meal.”

  It was, thought Dalgliesh, almost suspiciously pat, as if the whole speech had been rehearsed. And he was certainly being unusually confiding for a man who hadn’t even been asked to explain his movements, who could have no reason to suppose that this was a case of murder. But if the times were confirmed, it looked as if Swayne could be in the clear. Swayne said:

  “Look, if there’s nothing else you want, I’ll go up to Barbie. This is an appalling shock for her. Mattie will give you Bruno’s address if you want it.”

  After he had left, no one spoke for a moment, then Dalgliesh said:

  “I am interested that Lady Berowne inherits the house. I would have expected it to be entailed.”

  Farrell took the question with professional calm.

  “Yes, the situation is unusual. I have, of course, authority from both Lady Ursula and Lady Berowne to give you any information you need. The old Berowne property, the one in Hampshire, was entailed, but that has long since gone, together with most of the fortune. This house has always been willed from one baronet to the next. Sir Paul inherited it from his brother, but he had absolute discretion about its disposal. After his marriage he made a new will and left it to his wife absolutely. The will is quite straightforward. Lady Ursula has her own money, but there is a small bequest to her and a larger one to his only child, Miss Sarah Berowne. Halliwell and Miss Matlock get £10,000 each and he has left an oil painting, an Arthur Devis if I remember rightly, to the chairman of his local party. There are other minor bequests. But the house, its contents, and an adequate provision go to his wife.”

  And the house alone, thought Dalgliesh, must be worth at least three-quarters of a million, probably considerably more, given its position and unique architectural interest. He recalled as he so often did the words of an old detective sergeant when he, Dalgliesh, had been a newly appointed DC. “Love, Lust, Loathing, Lucre, the four L’s of murder, laddie. And the greatest of these is lucre.”

  thr
ee

  Their last interview that afternoon at Campden Hill Square was with Miss Matlock. Dalgliesh had asked to be shown where Berowne had kept his diary, and she had led them into the ground floor study. It was, he knew, architecturally one of the most eccentric rooms in the house, and the one, perhaps, most typical of Soane’s style. It was octagonal, each wall fitted from floor to ceiling with glass-fronted bookcases between which fluted pilasters rose to a dome topped by an octagonal lantern decorated with richly coloured glass. It was, he thought, an exercise in the clever organization of limited space, an eminently successful example of the architect’s peculiar genius. But it was still a room to wonder at rather than to live in, to work in or to enjoy.

  Solidly placed in the centre of the room was Berowne’s mahogany desk. Dalgliesh and Kate moved over to it while Miss Matlock stood in the doorway and watched them, her eyes fixed on Dalgliesh’s face, as if a momentary lapse of concentration might cause him to spring at her. Dalgliesh said:

  “Could you show me, please, exactly where the diary was kept?”

  She moved forward and, without speaking, pulled open the top right-hand drawer. It was empty now except for a box of writing paper and one of envelopes. He asked:

  “Did Sir Paul work here?”

  “He wrote letters. He kept his parliamentary papers in his office at the House and everything to do with his constituency at his office at Wrentham Green.” She added:

  “He liked things separate.”

  Dalgliesh thought: Separate, impersonal, under control. Again he had the sense that he was in a museum, that Berowne had sat in this richly ornamented cell like a stranger. He said:

  “What about his private papers? Do you know where those are kept?”

  “I suppose in the safe. It’s concealed behind the books in the case to the right of the door.”

  If Berowne had, indeed, been murdered, the safe and its contents would have to be examined. But that, like much else, could wait.

  He moved over to the bookcases. It was, of course, popular wisdom that personality could be diagnosed from the shelves of a private library. This revealed that Berowne had read more biography, history and poetry than he had fiction, and yet, scanning the shelves, it struck Dalgliesh that he could have been browsing in the library of a private club or a luxury cruise ship, although admittedly one where the object of the voyage was cultural enrichment rather than popular entertainment, and the fares high. Here, tidily shelved, was essentially the predictable, unexceptional choice of a well-educated, cultured Englishman who knew what it was proper to read. But he couldn’t believe that Berowne was a man whose idea of choosing fiction was to order routinely the Booker shortlist. Again he had the sense of a personality escaping him, of even the room and its objects conspiring to hide from him the essential man. He asked:

  “How many people had access to this room yesterday?”

  The formal impersonality of the library must have affected him. The question sounded oddly phrased even to his own ears, and she made no attempt to hide the tone of contempt.

  “Access? The study is part of a private house. We don’t keep it locked. All the family and their friends have what you call access.”

  “And who did, in fact, come in here yesterday?”

  “I can’t be sure. I suppose Sir Paul must have done if you found his diary with him in the church. Mrs. Minns would have come in to dust. Mr. Frank Musgrave, who is chairman of the constituency party, was shown in here at lunchtime, but he didn’t wait. Miss Sarah Berowne called in during the afternoon to see her grandmother, but I think she waited in the drawing room. She left before Lady Ursula returned.”

  Dalgliesh asked:

  “Mr. Musgrave and Miss Berowne were let in by you?”

  “I opened the door to them. There’s no one else to do it.” She paused, then added:

  “Miss Berowne used to have her own keys to the front door, but she didn’t take them with her when she left home.”

  “And when did you last see the diary?”

  “I can’t remember. I think it was about two weeks ago, when Sir Paul rang from his office in the Department and asked me to check on a dinner engagement.”

  “And when did you last see Sir Paul?”

  “Just before ten o’clock yesterday. He came into the kitchen to collect some food for a picnic lunch.”

  “Then perhaps we could go to the kitchen now.”

  She led him along the tiled passage, down a couple of steps, then through a baize-covered door to the back of the house. Then she stood aside to let him in, and again stood at the door, hands clasped, the parody of a cook awaiting judgement on the cleanliness of the kitchen. And indeed there would be nothing to fault. Like the study, it was curiously impersonal, lacking cosiness without being actually uncomfortable or poorly equipped. There was a central table in well-scrubbed pine with four chairs and a large and very old gas cooker, in addition to a more modern solid-fuel stove. It was obvious that little money had been spent on the kitchen in recent years. From the low window he could see the back of the wall dividing the house from the mews garages, and the feet only of the marble statues in their niches. Thus truncated, a row of delicately carved toes, they seemed to emphasize the room’s colourless deprivation. The only individual note was a pink geranium in a pot on the shelf over the sink, and beside it a second pot with a couple of cuttings. He said:

  “You told me that Sir Paul collected his lunch. Did he do that himself or did you get it for him?”

  “He did. He knew where things were kept. He was often in the kitchen when I prepared Lady Ursula’s breakfast tray. He used to take it up to her.”

  “And what did he take away with him yesterday?”

  “Half a loaf of bread, which he sliced ready to eat, a piece of Roquefort cheese, two apples.” She added:

  “He seemed preoccupied. I don’t think he much minded what he was taking.”

  It was the first time she had volunteered any information, but when he went on to question her gently about Berowne’s mood, what, if anything he had said, she seemed to regret the moment of confidence and became almost surly. Sir Paul had told her that he wouldn’t be in to luncheon, but nothing else. She hadn’t known that he was going to St. Matthew’s Church, nor whether he would be back for dinner. Dalgliesh said:

  “So you prepared dinner in the usual way and at the usual time?”

  The question disconcerted her. She flushed and the clasped hands tightened. Then she said:

  “No. No, not in the usual way. Lady Ursula asked me when she got back after her tea engagement to bring up a tray with a flask of soup and a plate of smoked salmon sandwiches in brown bread. She didn’t want to be disturbed again that evening. I took it up shortly after six. And I knew that Lady Berowne was dining out. I decided to wait and see if Sir Paul actually came back. There were things I could cook quickly if he did. I had soup I could warm up. I could make him an omelette. There’s always something.” She sounded as defensive as if he had accused her of dereliction of duty.

  He said:

  “But it was, perhaps, a little inconsiderate of him not to let you know whether he would be in to dinner.”

  “Sir Paul was never inconsiderate.”

  “And to stay out all night without word was surely unusual? It must have been worrying for all the household.”

  “Not for me. It isn’t my business what the family choose to do. He could have been staying in the constituency. At eleven o’clock I asked Lady Ursula if it was all right to go to bed and leave the front door unbolted. She said that I should. Lady Berowne knew that it was necessary to bolt it after her when she came in.”

  Dalgliesh changed the tack of his questions.

  “Did Sir Paul take matches with him yesterday morning?”

  Her surprise was obvious and, he thought, unfeigned.

  “Matches? He didn’t need matches. Sir Paul doesn’t—he didn’t—smoke. I didn’t see him with any matches.”

  “If he had take
n them, where would he have got them?”

  “From here at the side of the stove. It isn’t self-lighting. Or there is a packet of four boxes in the cupboard above.”

  She opened and showed him. The paper wrapping round the four boxes had been torn and one box taken, presumably that now lying at the side of the stove. She was gazing at him now with a fixed attention, her eyes very bright, her face a little flushed, as if she had a slight fever. His questions about the matches, which had first surprised her, now seemed to disconcert her. She was more on her guard, warier, much more tense. He was too experienced and she too poor an actress for him to be deceived. Up to now she had answered his questions in the tone of a woman performing a necessary if disagreeable duty. But now the interview had become an ordeal. She wanted him gone. He said:

  “We would like to see your sitting room, if you have no objection?”

  “If you think it necessary. Lady Ursula said that you were to be given every facility.”

  Dalgliesh thought it unlikely that Lady Ursula had said any such thing, and certainly not in those words. He and Kate followed her across the passage and into the opposite room. It must, Dalgliesh thought, once have been the butler’s or housekeeper’s sanctum. As with the kitchen, there was no view except of the courtyard and the door leading through to the mews garages. But the furniture was comfortable enough: a chintz-covered sofa for two, a matching armchair, a gate-legged table and two dining chairs set against the wall, a bookcase filled with volumes of an identical size, obviously from a book club. The fireplace was of marble with a wide overmantel on which was crowded, with no attempt at arrangement, a collection of modern and prettily sentimental figurines—women in crinolines, a child hugging a puppy, shepherds and shepherdesses, a ballet dancer. These presumably belonged to Miss Matlock. The pictures were prints in modern frames, Constable’s Hay Wain over the fireplace and Monet’s Women in a Field. They and the furniture were innocuous, predictable, as if someone had said, “We need to employ a housekeeper, furnish a room for her.” Even rejects from the rest of the house would have had more character than these impersonal objects. What again was missing was the sense that someone had impressed on this place her own personality. He thought: They live here their separate cabined lives. But only Lady Ursula is at home in this house. The rest are no more than squatters.