A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  “No, I’ve never felt embarrassed about you.”

  “I think it’s all rather gruesome actually. I don’t think Paul would have wanted all that fuss. But the constituency seemed to feel that we ought to have a memorial service. After all, he was a Minister. The cremation will be private. I don’t think you ought to go to that anyway, do you? It will be just the family and really intimate friends.”

  Intimate friends. Suddenly she wanted to laugh aloud. She said:

  “Is that why you’re here? To tell me about the funeral arrangements?”

  “I thought Paul would want you to know. After all, we both loved him in our different ways. We’re both concerned to safeguard his reputation.”

  She said:

  “There’s nothing you can teach me about safeguarding his reputation. How did you know where to find me?”

  “Oh, I’ve known where to find you for months. A cousin of mine employed a private detective. It wasn’t very difficult, just a matter of following Paul’s car on a Friday evening. And then he eliminated all the couples in this block, all the old women and all the single men. That left you.”

  She had drawn off her black gloves and had laid them on her knee. Now she was smoothing them out, finger by finger, with pink-tipped hands. She said without looking up:

  “I’m not here to make trouble for you. After all, we’re in this together. I’m here to help.”

  “We aren’t in anything together. We never have been. And what do you mean by help? Are you offering me money?”

  The eyes looked up, and Carole thought she detected a flicker of anxiety, as if the question needed to be taken seriously.

  “Not really. I mean, I didn’t think you were actually in need. Did Paul buy this flat for you? It’s rather cramped, isn’t it? Still, it’s quite pleasant if you don’t mind living in a suburb. I’m afraid he hasn’t mentioned you in his will. That’s another thing I thought you ought to know, in case you were wondering.”

  Carole said, her voice over-loud and harsh even to her own ears:

  “This flat is mine. The deposit was paid by me, the mortgage is paid with my money. Not that it’s any of your business. But if you have a conscience about me, forget it. There’s nothing I want from you or from anyone else connected with Paul. Women who prefer to be kept by men all their lives can never get it into their heads that some of us like to pay our own way.”

  “Did you have any choice?”

  Speechless, she heard the high, childish voice continuing:

  “After all, you’ve always been discreet. I admire you for that. It can’t have been easy only seeing him when he hadn’t anything better to do.”

  The amazing thing was that the insult wasn’t deliberate. She was capable of being intentionally offensive, of course, but this had been a casual remark born of an egotism so insensitive that she spoke what she thought, not wanting particularly to wound, but incapable of caring whether she wounded or not. Carole thought: Paul, how could you have married her? How could you have been taken in? She’s stupid, third-rate, spiteful, insensitive, mean-minded. Is beauty really so important?

  She said:

  “If that’s all you’ve come to say, perhaps you’ll go. You’ve seen me. You know what I look like. You’ve seen the flat. This is the chair he used to sit in. That’s the table he used for his drink. If you want, I can show you the bed we made love on.”

  “I know what he came for.”

  She wanted to cry out, “Oh no you don’t. You know nothing about him. I was as happy lying with him on that bed as I’ve ever been or ever shall be. But that wasn’t what he came for.” She had believed, still believed, that only with her had he been wholly at peace. He had lived his over-busy life neatly compartmentalized: the Campden Hill Square house, the House of Commons, his ministerial suite at the Department, his constituency headquarters. Only in this high, ordinary, suburban flat did the disparate elements fuse together and could he be a whole person, uniquely himself. When he had come in and sat opposite her, had dropped his briefcase at his feet and smiled at her, she had watched with joy, time and time again, the taut face soften and relax, become already smooth as if they had just made love. There were things about his private life which she knew he had held back from her, not consciously or out of lack of trust, but because, when they were together, they had no longer seemed important. But he had never held back himself.

  Barbara Berowne was admiring her engagement ring, holding out her hand and moving it slowly in front of her face; the huge diamond in its setting of sapphires twinkled and flashed. She gave a secretive reminiscent smile, then looked across at Carole and said:

  “There’s one other thing which you might as well know. I’m having a baby.”

  Carole cried:

  “It isn’t true! You’re lying! You can’t be!”

  The blue eyes widened.

  “Of course it’s true. It isn’t something you can lie about, not for long anyway. I mean, the truth will be obvious to the whole world in a couple of months.”

  “It isn’t his child!”

  She thought: I’m shouting, screaming at her. I must keep calm. Oh God, help me not to believe.

  “Of course it’s his child. He always wanted an heir, didn’t you know that? Look, you may as well accept it. The only other man I’ve slept with since my marriage is sterile. He’s had a vasectomy. I’m going to have Paul’s son.”

  “He wouldn’t have done it. You couldn’t have made him do it.”

  “But he did. There is one thing you can always make a man do. That is, if he likes women at all. Haven’t you found that out? You’re not pregnant, too, are you?”

  Carole buried her face in her hands. She whispered:

  “No.”

  “I thought I ought to be sure.” She giggled. “That would have been a complication, wouldn’t it?”

  Suddenly all control was gone. There was nothing left but naked anger, naked shame. She heard herself bawling like a shrew:

  “Get out! Get out of my flat!”

  Even in the middle of her anguish and fury, she didn’t miss the sudden flicker of fear in the blue eyes. She saw it with a spurt of pleasure and triumph. So she wasn’t inviolate after all, she could be frightened. But the knowledge was vaguely unwelcome; it made Barbara Berowne vulnerable, more human. Now she got up almost gracelessly, bent to pick up her shoulder bag by the strap, then scampered to the door, ungainly as a child. Only when Carole had opened it and stood aside to let her out did she turn and speak.

  “I’m sorry you’ve taken it like this. I think you’re being rather silly. After all, I was his wife, I’m the injured party.”

  And then she was hurrying down the corridor. Carole called after her:

  “The injured party! My God, that’s good. The injured party!”

  She closed the door and leaned against it. Sickness heaved at her stomach. She rushed to the bathroom, spewed into the basin, grasping the taps for support. And then came anger, cleansing, almost exhilarating. Between fury and grief, she wanted to fling her head back and howl like an animal. She groped her way back into the sitting room and felt for her own chair like a blind woman, then sat gazing at his empty seat, willing herself to calm. When she had herself under control, she fetched her handbag and took out the card with the Scotland Yard extension she had been asked to telephone.

  It was Sunday, but someone would be on duty. Even if she couldn’t speak to Inspector Miskin now, she could leave a message, ask that she be rung back. It couldn’t wait until tomorrow. She had to commit herself irrevocably, and now.

  A male voice answered, one she didn’t recognize. She gave her name and asked for Inspector Miskin. She said:

  “It’s urgent. It’s about the Berowne murder.”

  There was a delay of only seconds before the inspector answered. Although she had heard the voice only once before, it came to her with a shock of recognition. She said:

  “This is Carole Washburn. I want to see you. There’s someth
ing I’ve decided to tell you.”

  “We’ll come round now.”

  “Not here. I don’t want you to come here, not ever again. I’ll meet you tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. The formal garden in Holland Park, the one near the orangery. Do you know it?”

  “Yes, I know it. We’ll be there.”

  “I don’t want Commander Dalgliesh. I don’t want any male officer. Just you. I won’t talk to anyone else.”

  There was a pause, then the voice spoke again, unsurprised, accepting:

  “Nine o’clock tomorrow. The garden, Holland Park. I’ll be on my own. Can you give me any idea what it’s about?”

  “It’s about the death of Theresa Nolan. Good-bye.”

  Then she replaced the receiver and leaned her forehead against the cold stickiness of the metal. She felt empty, light-headed, shaken by her heartbeats. She wondered what she would feel, how she could go on living when she was capable of knowing what she had done. She wanted to cry aloud: “My darling, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” But she had made her decision. There was no going back now. And it seemed to her that there still hung in the room the fugitive scent of Barbara Berowne’s perfume, like the taint of betrayal, and that the air of her flat would never be free of it.

  BOOK FIVE

  Rhesus Positive

  one

  Miles Gilmartin of Special Branch was protected from the importunities of casual visitors and the attention of the ill-intentioned by a series of checks and counterchecks which to Dalgliesh, waiting in thwarted anger and impatience while each was negotiated, seemed more childishly ingenious than necessary or effective. It wasn’t a game he was in the mood to play. By the time he was finally ushered into Gilmartin’s office by a secretary who irritatingly combined exceptional beauty with an obvious consciousness of her unique privilege in serving the great man, Dalgliesh was beyond considerations of prudence or discretion. Bill Duxbury was with Gilmartin, and they had hardly got beyond the few preliminary courtesies before anger found its relief in words.

  “We’re supposed to be on the same side, if you people acknowledge any side but your own. Paul Berowne was murdered. If I can’t get cooperation from you, where can I expect to get it?”

  Gilmartin said:

  “I can understand a certain resentment that we didn’t tell you earlier that Travers was one of our operatives …”

  “Operatives. You make it sound as if she were on a production line. And you didn’t tell me. I had to discover it for myself. Oh, I can see the fascination of your world. It reminds me of my prep school. We had our little secrets, our code words, initiation ceremonies. But when the hell are you people going to grow up? All right, I know it’s necessary, some of it anyway, and for some of the time. But you make it into an obsession. Secrecy for its own sake, the whole vast paper-ridden bureaucracy of spying. No wonder your kind of organization breeds its own traitors. In the meantime, I’m investigating an actual murder and it would help if you stopped playing games and joined the real world.”

  Gilmartin said mildly:

  “I’m not sure that speech wouldn’t have been more appropriately made to MI5. There’s something in what you say. One ought to guard more against over-enthusiasm, and we’re certainly over-bureaucratized. But then what organization isn’t? We deal in information, after all, and information is valueless if it isn’t properly documented and easily available. Still, pound for pound, I think we give the taxpayers value for money.”

  Dalgliesh looked at him.

  “You really haven’t understood a word I’ve been saying.”

  “Oh yes I have, Adam. But it’s all so unlike you. Such vehemence! You’ve been reading too many of those espionage novels.”

  Three years ago, thought Dalgliesh bitterly, Gilmartin might have thought, even if he hadn’t dared to speak it: It’s all that poetry you write. But he couldn’t say that now. Gilmartin went on:

  “Are you sure this Berowne murder isn’t getting under your skin? You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “For God’s sake, if another person suggests I can’t handle the case because I knew the victim, I’ll resign.” For the first time, a look of concern like a brief spasm of pain passed over Gilmartin’s bland, almost colourless face.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t do that. Not over a small sin of omission on our part. I suppose that Berowne was murdered, by the way. There’s a rumour that it could have been suicide. After all, he was hardly normal at the time. This habit he’d developed of sleeping in church vestries. And isn’t he supposed to have had some kind of divine revelation? Listening to his voices when he should have been listening to the Prime Minister. And such a very curious church to choose. I can understand an enthusiasm for English Perpendicular, but a Romanesque basilica in Paddington is surely an improbable choice for a good night’s sleep, let alone one’s personal road to Damascus.”

  Dalgliesh was tempted to ask him whether he would have found St. Margaret’s Westminster a more acceptable choice. Gilmartin, having neatly demonstrated at least a superficial knowledge of church architecture and Scripture to his own evident satisfaction, got up from his desk and began to pace between the windows as if suddenly aware that he was the only one sitting down at a desk and that this lower status might put him at a disadvantage. He could afford a good tailor and dressed with a careful formality which, in a less confident man, might suggest that he was aware of the slightly ambiguous reputation of the security service and was anxious not to reinforce it by any slovenliness in manner or appearance. But Gilmartin dressed to please himself, as he did everything. Today he was elegant in grey. Above the formal suit with its almost invisible darker stripe, the square almost bloodless face and the sleek hair, prematurely white and brushed straight back from the high forehead, reinforced both image and colour scheme: a carefully composed arrangement in grey and silver against which his old school tie, despite its comparative sobriety, hung like a garish flag of defiance.

  In contrast Bill Duxbury, stocky, ruddy-faced and loud-voiced, looked like a gentleman farmer whose farming is more successful than his gentility. He stood half looking out of the window like a child ordered to distance himself from the adults and their concerns. Dalgliesh saw that he had recently got rid of his moustache. Without it, his face looked incomplete and naked, as if he had been forceably shaved. He was wearing a tweed checked suit, rather too heavy for the comparatively mild autumn, the jacket cut with a back flap which strained over his large, rather feminine buttocks. When Gilmartin looked at him, which was infrequently, it was with a pained, slightly surprised expression as though deploring both his subordinate’s figure and his tailor.

  It had early been apparent that Gilmartin was to do the talking. Duxbury would have briefed him, but Duxbury would remain silent unless invited to speak. Dalgliesh was suddenly reminded of a dinner party conversation some years previously. He had found himself sitting with a woman on one of those three-person sofas which can only comfortably hold two. It had been a Georgian drawing room in a North Islington square, but he couldn’t now remember the name of his hostess and God knew what he thought he had been doing there. His companion had been slightly drunk, not offensively so but enough to make her flirtatious, merry and then confiding. Memory refused to come up with her name and it didn’t matter. They had sat together for half an hour before their hostess, with practised tact, had separated them. He could remember only part of their conversation. She and her husband had a penthouse overlooking a street which was commonly used for student demonstrations, and the police—she was sure they were Special Branch—had asked permission to use their front sitting room to take photographs from the window.

  “We said they could, of course, and they were really very sweet about it. But part of me wasn’t really happy. I wanted to say: ‘They’re British subjects. They’ve got the right to march if they want to. If you want to photograph them, can’t you do it openly, in the street?’ But I didn’t. After all, it was rather fun in a way. The sense of conspiracy, bei
ng in the know. And it wasn’t up to us to make a stand. They know what they’re doing. And it never does to antagonize these people.”

  It had seemed to him then, and it did now, to sum up the attitude of decent liberals all over the world: “They know what they’re doing. It isn’t up to us to make a stand. It never does to antagonize these people.”

  He said bitterly:

  “I’m surprised that you and MI5 don’t encourage regular secondments to the KGB. You’ve more in common with them than you have with any outsider. It might be instructive to see how they deal with the paperwork.”

  Gilmartin lifted an eyelid at Duxbury as if inviting solidarity in the face of unreason. He said mildly:

  “As far as paperwork is concerned, Adam, it would help us if your people were a little more conscientious. Massingham, when requesting information about Ivor Garrod, should have put in an IR49.”

  “In quadruplicate, of course.”

  “Well, registry need a copy and so, presumably, do you. We’re supposed to keep MI5 in the picture. We could look at the procedure again, of course, but I would say that four copies were the minimum.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “This girl, Diana Travers. Was she the most suitable person you could find to spy on a Minister of State? Even for Special Branch, it seems an odd choice.”

  “But we weren’t spying on a Minister of State, she wasn’t assigned to Berowne. As we told you when you enquired about his mistress, Berowne never was a risk. No IR49 submitted there either, incidentally.”

  “I see. You infiltrated Travers into Garrod’s group or cell, whatever he calls it, and conveniently forgot to mention the fact when we enquired about him. You must have known that he was a suspect. He still is.”