A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  Dalgliesh said:

  “And she struck lucky.”

  “Indeed she did. A boy, he’s fourteen, was doing his homework upstairs in his front bedroom in the cottage and saw a black Rover parked. Being a boy, he was naturally interested. He was quite definite about the make. It was there from about ten o’clock and was still there when he went to bed.”

  “Did he get the number?”

  “No, that would have meant going out of the house, of course, and he wasn’t sufficiently intrigued to take that kind of trouble. What interested him was that there was only one man in the car. He parked it, locked it and walked off towards the Black Swan. It’s not unusual to have cars parked there, but they’re usually courting couples and they stay in the car.”

  “Was he able to give a description?”

  “Only a very general one, but as far as it went it corresponded more or less with Berowne. I’m satisfied myself that it was his car and that he was there. But I admit there’s no proof. It was ten at night when the boy glimpsed him, and there are no lights in the lane. I couldn’t be certain that he was at the Black Swan when Diana Travers drowned, and as you’ll have noticed from my piece, I very carefully didn’t say that he was.”

  “Did you check it with your lawyers before you printed it?”

  “Indeed I did. They weren’t exactly happy, but they had to admit that it wasn’t libellous. After all, it was purely factual. Our gossip always is.”

  And gossip, thought Dalgliesh, was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give. And Ackroyd, one of London’s most notorious gossips, had a reputation for accuracy and value. He collected small titbits of information as other men hoarded screws and nails. They might not be wanted for the job on hand, but sooner or later they would come in useful. And he liked the sense of power which gossip gave him. Perhaps it reduced the vast amorphous city to manageable proportions for him, a few hundred people who counted in his world and who gave him the illusion of living in a private village, intimate but diverse and not unexciting. And he wasn’t vicious. He liked people and he enjoyed pleasing his friends. Ackroyd crouched spider-like in his study and spun his web of mild intrigue. It was important to him that at least one thread connected him to a senior police officer as others, rather stronger, did to the parliamentary lobby, the theatre, Harley Street, the bar. Almost certainly he would have tapped his sources, ready to offer Dalgliesh a small bonus of information, if he could get it. Dalgliesh thought it was time he fished for it. He said:

  “What do you know of Stephen Lampart?”

  “Not a great deal, since nature has mercifully spared me the experience of childbirth. Two dear friends had their babies at his place in Hampstead, Pembroke Lodge. Everything went very well; an heir to a dukedom and a future merchant banker, both safely delivered and both boys, which, after a succession of girls, was what was wanted. He’s reputedly a good gynaecologist.”

  “What about women?”

  “Dear Adam, how prurient you are. Being a gynaecologist must present particular temptations. Women, after all, are so ready to show their gratitude in the only way some of the poor dears know. But he protects himself, and not only where his sex life is concerned. There was a libel case eight years ago. You may remember it. A journalist, Mickey Case, was so ill advised as to suggest that Lampart had carried out an illegal abortion at Pembroke Lodge. Things were a little less liberal in those days. Lampart sued and got exemplary damages. It ruined Mickey. There’s not been a hint of scandal since. There’s nothing like a reputation for being litigious to save you from slander. It is occasionally rumoured that he and Barbara Berowne are rather more than cousins, but I don’t think anyone has actual proof. They’ve been remarkably discreet, and Barbara Berowne, of course, played the part of the MP’s adoring and beautiful wife to perfection when called upon to do so, which wasn’t so very often. Berowne was never a social chap. A small dinner party occasionally, the usual mild constituency beanfeasts, fund raising and so on. But otherwise, she wasn’t required to exhibit herself in that particular role inconveniently often. The odd thing about Lampart is that he spends his life delivering babies, but he dislikes children intensely. But I rather agree with him. Up to four weeks they’re quite enchanting. After that all one can say in favour of children is that they eventually grow up. He took his own precautions against procreation. He’s had a vasectomy.”

  “How on earth did you get to know that, Conrad?”

  “My dear boy, it isn’t a secret. People used to boast about it. When he first had it done he used to wear one of those revolting ties advertising the fact. A little vulgar, I admit, but then there is a streak of vulgarity in Lampart. He keeps it under better control now—the vulgarity, I mean. The tie is folded away in a drawer along, no doubt, with other mementoes from his past.”

  And this indeed was a bonus, thought Dalgliesh. If Barbara Berowne was pregnant and Lampart wasn’t the father, then who was? If it was Berowne himself and he had known of the fact, would he have been more or less likely to have killed himself? A jury would probably think less likely. To Dalgliesh, who had never believed the suicide theory, this wasn’t particularly relevant. But it would be highly relevant to the prosecution if he caught his man and the case came to trial.

  Ackroyd said:

  “How did you get on with the formidable Lady Ursula? Had you met her before?”

  “No. In my life, I don’t often meet the daughter of an earl. Until now I haven’t met one in my job either. What should I think of her? You tell me.”

  “What everyone wants to know about her—everyone of her generation, anyway—is why she married Sir Henry. Now, I happen to know the answer. I’ve thought it out all on my own. You may think my theory is obvious, but it’s none the worse for that. It explains why so many beautiful women choose such ordinary men. It’s because a beautiful woman—and I’m talking about beauty, not just prettiness—is so ambivalent about her beauty. With part of her mind she knows it’s the most important thing about her. Well, of course, it is. But with another part she distrusts it. After all, she knows how transitory it is. She has to watch it fading. She wants to be loved for some other quality, usually one she doesn’t possess. So when Lady Ursula got tired of all the importunate young men badgering and praising her, she chose dear old Henry, who had loved her devotedly for years, would obviously continue to love her until he died and seemed not to notice that he’d got himself the most admired beauty in England. Apparently it worked out very well. She gave him two sons and was faithful to him, well, more or less. And now, poor dear, she’s left with nothing. Her father’s title became extinct when her only brother was killed in 1917. And now this. Unless, of course, Barbara Berowne is pregnant with an heir, which, on the face of it, seems unlikely.”

  Dalgliesh asked:

  “Isn’t that the least important part of the tragedy, the extinction of the baronetcy?”

  “Not necessarily. A title, particularly an old one, confers a comforting sense of family continuity, almost a kind of personal immortality. Lose it and you really begin to understand that all flesh is grass. I’ll give you a word of advice, my dear Adam. Never underestimate Lady Ursula Berowne.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “I’m in no danger of that. Did you ever meet Paul Berowne?”

  “Never. I knew his brother, but not well. We met when he was first engaged to Barbara Swayne. Hugo was an anachronism, more like a First World War hero than a modern soldier. You half-expected to see him slapping his cane against khaki breeches, carrying a sword. You expect his kind to get killed. They’re born for it. If they didn’t, what on earth would they do with themselves in old age? He was very much the favourite son, of course. He was the kind of man his mother understood, was brought up with, that mixture of physical beauty, recklessness and charm. I began to get interested in Paul Berowne when we decided to do that short feature, but I admit that most of my information about him is second hand. Part of
Paul Berowne’s private tragedy, admittedly a small one viewed sub specie aeternitatis, was neatly summed up by Jane Austen. ‘His temper might, perhaps, be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty he was the husband of a very silly woman.’ Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet.”

  “Sense and Sensibility, Mr. Palmer. And when one meets Barbara Berowne the bias doesn’t seem so very unaccountable.”

  “Sense and Sensibility? Are you sure? Anyway, I’m glad that I’m immune to that particular enthrallment and the urge for possession that seems inseparable from it. Beauty suborns the critical faculty. God knows what Berowne thought he was getting, apart from a load of guilt. Probably the Holy Grail.”

  All in all, thought Dalgliesh, the visit to St. John’s Wood had been even more fruitful than he had hoped. He took his time over finishing his tea. He owed his hostess at least the appearance of a decent civility, and he had no particular wish to hurry away. Soothed by Nellie Ackroyd’s solicitous attention, comfortably ensonced in a gently rocking button-backed armchair whose arms and headrest seemed precisely designed to suit his body, and with his eyes soothed by the distant sheen of the canal seen through the light-filled conservatory, he had to make an effort to rouse himself to make his farewells and set off to drive back to the Yard, pick up Kate Miskin and take her with him to interview Berowne’s only child.

  five

  Melvin Johns hadn’t intended to make love. He had met Tracy at their usual place, the gate leading to the towpath, and they had walked together, her arm tucked under his, her thin body hugging against his until they came to their secret place, the patch of flattened grass behind the thick elderberries, the straight, dead stump of tree. And it had happened, as he knew it would. The brief, unsatisfactory spasm and what went before were no different than they had always been. The potent smell of loam and dead leaves, the soft earth under his feet, her eager body straining under his, the smell of her armpits, her fingers scratching at his scalp, the scrape of the bark of the tree against his cheek, the gleam of the canal seen through a thicket of leaves. All over. But afterwards the depression that always followed was worse than he had ever known. He wanted to sink into the earth and groan aloud. She whispered:

  “Darling, we have to go to the police. We must tell them what we saw.”

  “It wasn’t anything. Just a car parked outside the church.”

  “Outside the vestry door. Outside where it happened. The same night. And we know the time, about seven o’clock. It could be the murderer’s car.”

  “It isn’t likely he’d be driving a black Rover, and it isn’t as if we noticed the number, even.”

  “But we have to tell. If they never find who did it, if he kills again, we’d never forgive ourselves.”

  The note of unctuous self-righteousness nauseated him. How was it, he wondered, that he’d never noticed before that perpetual whine in her voice. He said hopelessly:

  “You said your dad would kill us if he knew we’d been meeting. The lies, telling him you were at evening classes. You said he’d kill us.”

  “But, darling, it’s different now. He’ll understand that. And we can get engaged. We’ll tell them all that we were engaged.”

  Of course, he thought, suddenly enlightened. Dad, that respectable lay preacher, wouldn’t mind as long as there was no scandal. Dad would enjoy the publicity, the sense of importance. They would have to marry. Dad, Mum, Tracy herself, would ensure that. It was as if his life were suddenly revealed to him in a slow unwinding reel of hopelessness, picture succeeding picture down the inescapable years. Moving into her parents’ small house; where else could they afford to live? Waiting for a council flat. The first baby crying in the night. Her whining, accusing voice. The slow death, even of desire. A man was dead, an ex-Minister, a man he had never known, never seen, whose life and his had never until this moment touched. Someone, his murderer or an innocent motorist, had parked his Rover outside the church. The police would catch the killer, if there was a killer, and he would go to prison for life and in ten years he would be let out, free again. But he was only twenty-one and his life sentence would end only with his death. And what had he done to deserve his punishment? Such a little sin compared with murder. He almost groaned aloud with the injustice of it.

  “All right,” he said with dull resignation. “We’ll go to the Harrow Road police station. We’ll tell them about the car.”

  six

  Sarah Berowne’s flat was in a gaunt Victorian terrace of five-storey houses whose over-ornate and grimy facade was set back some thirty feet from the Cromwell Road behind a hedge of dusty laurel and spiky, almost leafless privet. Next to the entry phone was a bank of nine bells, the top one bearing only the single word BEROWNE. The door opened to their push as soon as they rang, and Dalgliesh and Kate passed through a vestibule into a narrow hall, the floor linoleum-covered, the walls painted the ubiquitous glossy cream, the only furniture a table for letters. The caged box of a lift was large enough only for two passengers. Its back wall was almost completely mirrored, but as it groaned slowly upwards the image of their two figures standing so close that he could smell the clean sweet scent of Kate’s hair, could almost imagine that he could hear her heart beat, did nothing to dispel his incipient claustrophobia. They stopped with a jerk. As they stepped out into the corridor and Kate turned to close the lift grille, he saw Sarah Berowne was standing waiting for them at her open door.

  The family resemblance was almost uncanny. She stood framed against the light from her flat like a frail feminine shadow of her father. Here were the same wide-spaced grey eyes, the same droop of the eyelid, the same finely boned distinction but devoid of the patina of masculine confidence and success. The fair hair, not layered in gold like Barbara Berowne’s but darker, almost ginger, already showed its first grey and hung in dry lifeless strands framing the tapering Berowne face. She was, he knew, only in her early twenties, but she looked much older, the honey-coloured skin drained with weariness. She didn’t even bother to glance at his warrant card, and he wondered whether she didn’t care or was making a small gesture of contempt. She gave only a nod of acknowledgement as he introduced Kate, then stood aside and motioned them across the hall into the sitting room. A familiar figure rose to meet them and they found themselves facing Ivor Garrod.

  Sarah Berowne introduced them but didn’t explain his presence. But then there was no reason why she should; this was her flat, she could invite in whom she wished. It was Kate and he who were the interlopers, there at best by invitation or on sufferance, tolerated, seldom welcome.

  After the dimness of the hall and the claustrophobic lift, they had walked into emptiness and light. The flat was a conversion from the mansard roof, the low sitting room running almost the whole length of the house, its northern wall composed entirely of glass, with sliding doors opening onto a narrow balustraded balcony. There was a door at the far end, presumably leading to the kitchen. The bedroom and bathroom would, he assumed, open from the entrance hall at the front of the house. Dalgliesh had developed a knack of taking in the salient features of a room without that preliminary frank appraisal which he himself would have found offensive from any stranger, let alone a policeman. It was odd, he sometimes thought, that a man morbidly sensitive about his own privacy should have chosen a job that required him to invade almost daily the privacy of others. But people’s living space and the personal possessions with which they surrounded themselves were inevitably fascinating to a detective, an affirmation of identity, intriguing both in themselves and as a betrayal of character, interests, obsessions.

  This room was obviously both her living room and her studio. It was sparsely but comfortably furnished. Two large and battered sofas sat against opposite walls with shelves over them for books, stereo and a drinks cupboard. Before the window there was a small round table with four dining chairs. The wall facing the window was covered with a cork board on which was pinned a collection of photog
raphs. To the right were pictures of London and Londoners obviously designed to make a political point: couples over-dressed for a Palace garden party drifting across the grass of St. James’s Park against the background of the bandstand; a group of blacks in Brixton staring resentfully into the lens; the Queen’s Scholars of Westminster School filing decorously into the Abbey; an over-crowded Victorian playground with a thin, wistful-eyed child grasping the railings like an imprisoned waif; a woman with a face like a fox choosing a fur in Harrods; a couple of pensioners, gnarled hands curled in their laps, sitting stiff as Staffordshire figures one each side of their single-bar electric fire. The political message was, he thought, too facile to carry much weight but, as far as he was capable of judging, the pictures were technically clever; they were certainly well composed. The left of the board displayed what had probably been a more lucrative commission: a line of portraits of well-known writers. Some of the photographer’s concern with social deprivation seemed to have infected even her work here. The men, unshaven, fashionably under-dressed in their tieless open-necked shirts, looked as if they had either just taken part in a literary discussion on Channel Four or were on their way to a 1930s labour exchange, while the women looked either haunted or defensive, except for a buxom grandmother, noted for her detective stories, who gazed mournfully at the camera as if deploring either the bloodiness of her craft or the size of her advance.

  Sarah Berowne motioned them to the sofa to the right of the door and seated herself on the one opposite. It was hardly, thought Dalgliesh, a convenient arrangement for other than shouted conversation. Garrod perched himself on the arm of the sofa farthest from her as if purposely distancing himself from all three of them. In the last year he had, it seemed deliberately, moved out of the political limelight and was now less often heard propounding the views of the Workers’ Revolutionary Campaign, concentrating, apparently, on his job as a community social worker, whatever that might mean. But he was immediately recognizable, a man who even in repose held himself as if well aware of the power of his physical presence but with that power under conscious control. He was wearing denim jeans with a white open-necked shirt and contrived to look both casual and elegant. He could, thought Dalgliesh, have stepped down from a portrait in the Uffizi with his long arrogant Florentine face, the generously curved mouth under the short upper lip, the high arched nose and tumble of dark hair, the eyes which gave nothing away. He said: