A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  Dalgliesh said:

  “Are you telling me that the girl’s story is untrue?”

  “Let’s be charitable and say mistaken. She was lonely, guilt-ridden, particularly about sex, depressed, losing touch with reality. There’s a psychiatrist’s report on her medical file which, stripped of its jargon, says precisely that. Or you can argue that she was deliberately lying, she or Berowne. Neither was a particularly reliable witness. Both, as it happens, are dead. If this is meant to give me a motive, it’s absurd. It’s also close to slander and I know how to deal with that.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “As you knew how to deal with libel. A police officer, carrying out a murder investigation, isn’t so easily ruined.”

  “Not financially, perhaps. The courts are so ridiculously indulgent to the police.”

  The nurse who had received them at Pembroke Lodge had said “Mr. Lampart has just finished operating, if you would come this way,” and they had been shown into a room adjacent to the theatre. Lampart had joined them almost at once, pulling off his green operating cap, peeling off his gloves. The room was small, clinical, seeming full of rushing water and the sound of feet passing in the room next door, of confident voices above the unconscious body of the patient. It was a temporary place, a room for quick clinical exchanges, not for confidences. Dalgliesh wondered if the ploy had been deliberate, a way of demonstrating the subtle power of his professional status, of reminding the police that there was more than one kind of authority. Dalgliesh didn’t think that Lampart had dreaded the interview, even if he had thought it prudent to face it on his own territory. He hadn’t shown the least sign of apprehension. After all, he had enjoyed power, one kind of power, long enough to have acquired the self-assertive hubris of success. A man who had developed the confidence of a successful obstetrician certainly had the confidence to confront an investigating officer of the Metropolitan Police.

  Now he said:

  “I didn’t kill Berowne. Even if I were capable of a particularly brutal and bloody murder, I certainly wouldn’t take Berowne’s wife with me and expect her to wait in the car while I slit her husband’s throat. As for this other nonsense, even if it were true that I aborted healthy foetuses because they weren’t the sex the mother wanted, how do you propose to prove it? The operations were done here. The pathological reports are on the medical records. There’s nothing incriminating on any file in this building. And even if there were, you wouldn’t have access to it, not without a great deal of trouble. I have strong feelings about the sanctity of medical records. So what can you do? Start interviewing a succession of patients in the hope of tricking or bullying one of them into an indiscretion? And how would you track them down without my cooperation? Your allegation is ridiculous, Commander.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “But Paul Berowne believed it. He got rid of his shares in Pembroke Lodge after Theresa Nolan’s death. I think he spoke to you. I don’t know what he said to you, but I can guess. You could trust him to keep silent at that time, but after his experience in that church, his conversion, whatever it was, could you trust his silence then?”

  He wondered whether he had been wise to show his hand so soon and so clearly. But the doubt was momentary. Lampart had to be confronted by the new evidence, tenuous as it might be. He had to be given the right to reply. And if it was irrelevant, the sooner it was cleared out of the way, the better.

  Lampart said:

  “It wasn’t like that. We never spoke. And, assuming that he did believe it, he would have been in a somewhat invidious position, rather more invidious than you realize. He wanted a son, but he certainly didn’t want another daughter. Nor, incidentally, did Barbara. Barbara might be willing to bear him an heir, if only to consolidate her position. She saw that as part of the bargain. But nine months’ discomfort to produce another daughter for him to resent, despise and ignore was asking rather too much of a woman, particularly one who dislikes and fears the thought of childbirth. Assuming the story is true, you could say that Berowne found himself in a curious position, morally anyway. He couldn’t stomach the means, but I suspect he wasn’t entirely displeased with the ends. That has never been a particularly dignified moral stance, not in my book. Barbara had one miscarriage—a female—eight months after their marriage. Do you suppose he grieved over that? No wonder the poor devil was in a mess psychologically. No wonder he took a razor to his throat. What you’ve discovered, Commander, if true, is an added reason for suicide, not a motive for murder.”

  Lampart took down his jacket from a peg, then opened the door for Dalgliesh and Kate with a smiling courtesy that was almost insulting. Then he led the way to his private drawing room, shut the door and motioned them towards the easy chairs before the fire. Sitting opposite, he leaned forward, legs apart, and almost thrust his face at Dalgliesh. Dalgliesh could see the handsome features magnified, the pores of the skin glistening with sweat as if he were still in the heat of the theatre, the taut muscles straining at the neck, the smudge of tiredness under the eyes and the threads of scarlet around the irises, the flecks of dandruff at the roots of the undisciplined forelock. It was still a comparatively young face but the signs of ageing were there, and he could suddenly see how Lampart would look in another thirty years: the skin speckled and bleached, the bones less firmly fleshed, the machismo confidence soured into the cynicism of old age. But now his voice was strong and harsh and the aggression came over to Dalgliesh, powerful as a force.

  “I’ll be frank with you, Commander, more frank than I would probably think prudent if what you’re saying were true. If I had aborted those unwanted foetuses, it wouldn’t be giving me a single pang of what you would probably call conscience. Two hundred years ago, anaesthesia in childbirth was regarded as immoral. Less than a hundred years ago birth control was virtually illegal. A woman has a right to choose whether she bears a child. I happen to think she also has a right to choose which sex. An unwanted child is usually a nuisance to itself, to society, to its parents. And a two-month foetus isn’t a human being, it’s a complicated collection of tissue. You probably don’t personally believe that the child has a soul before birth, at birth or after birth. Poet or no poet, you’re not the kind of man who sees visions and hears voices in church vestries. I’m not a religious man. I was born with my share of neuroses, but not that one. But what surprises me about those who claim to have faith is that they seem to think that we can find out scientific facts behind God’s back. That first myth, the Garden of Eden, is remarkably persistent. We always feel we haven’t a right to knowledge or that, when we get it, we haven’t the right to use it. In my book we’ve the right to do anything we can to make human life more agreeable, safer, less full of pain.”

  His voice grated and there was a gleam in the grey eyes uncomfortably close to fanaticism. He could, thought Dalgliesh, have been a seventeenth-century religious mercenary reciting his credo with drawn sword.

  Dalgliesh said mildly:

  “Provided, presumably, we don’t hurt other people and the act isn’t illegal.”

  “Provided we don’t hurt other people. Yes, I’d accept that. Getting rid of an unwanted foetus hurts no one. Either abortion is never justified or it’s justified on grounds which the mother happens to think important. The wrong sex is as good a reason as any. I’ve more repect for those Christians who oppose abortion on any grounds than for those ingenious compromisers who want life on their own terms and a good conscience at the same time. At least the former are consistent.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “The law is consistent. Indiscriminate abortion is unlawful.”

  “Oh, but this would have been highly discriminatory. All right, I know what you mean. But the law has no place when it comes to private morality, sexual or otherwise.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “Where else is it supposed to operate?”

  He got up and Lampart saw them out, deferential, smiling, confident. Except for perfunctory courtesies, neither
spoke another word.

  In the car Kate said:

  “It was practically a confession, sir. He didn’t even bother to deny it.”

  “No. But it isn’t one he’d ever make on paper or which we could use in court. And it was a confession to medical malpractice, not murder. And he’s right, of course. It would be the devil to prove.”

  “But it gives him a double motive. His affair with Lady Berowne and the fact that Berowne might have felt he had a duty to expose him. Under all that bluff and arrogance, he must know that he’s as vulnerable to scandal as any other doctor. Even a rumour wouldn’t have done him any good. And coming from someone of Berowne’s standing, it would have been taken seriously.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “Oh, yes, Lampart has got it all—means, motive, opportunity, knowledge, and the arrogance to think he can get away with it. But I accept one thing he told us. He wouldn’t have taken Barbara Berowne with him into that vestry, and I can’t see her agreeing to be left alone in a car parked in a not particularly salubrious area of Paddington, whatever the excuse. And, always, we get back to the timing. The night porter saw them leaving Pembroke Lodge together. Higgins saw them arriving at the Black Swan. Unless one or both are lying, Lampart has to be in the clear.”

  And then he thought: Unless we’ve been misled by that gush of water from the waste pipe. Unless we’ve got the time of death totally wrong. If Berowne had died at the earliest time Dr. Kynaston had thought possible, say seven o’clock, what happened to Lampart’s alibi then? He had claimed to be at Pembroke Lodge with his mistress, but there had to be more ways than one of leaving the Lodge and returning unseen. But someone had been in the church kitchen at eight o’clock; unless, of course, the water had been left deliberately running. But by whom? Someone who had come earlier, at seven o’clock, someone who had arrived in a black Rover? If Berowne had died at seven o’clock, there were suspects other than Stephen Lampart. But what possible purpose would be served by leaving the tap running? There was, of course, always the possibility that it had been left on by accident. But if that were the case, then how and when had it been turned off?

  five

  Lady Ursula’s friends had expressed their condolences with flowers, and her sitting room was incongruously festive with long-stemmed thornless roses, carnations and imported boughs of white lilac which looked like plastic artefacts sprayed with scent. The flowers had been less arranged than stuck into a variety of vases placed around the room for convenience rather than effect. By her side on the rosewood table was a small cut-glass bowl of freesias. Their scent, sweet and unmistakable, came up to Dalgliesh as he neared her chair. She made no attempt to rise, but held out her hand, and he took it. It felt cold and dry and there was no responsive pressure. She was sitting, as always, bolt upright, wearing an ankle-length black wrapover skirt with above it a high-necked blouse in fine gray wool. Her only jewellery was a double chain in old gold and her rings; the long fingers resting on the arms of her chair were laden with great flashing stones, so that the blue-corded hands with their parchment skin seemed almost too frail to hold the weight of gold.

  She motioned Dalgliesh to the opposite chair. When he had seated himself and Massingham had found a place on a small sofa set against the wall, she said:

  “Father Barnes called here this morning. Perhaps he thought he had a duty to bring me spiritual comfort. Or was he apologizing for the use made of his vestry? He could hardly suppose I thought it was his fault. If he intended to offer spiritual consolation, I’m afraid he found me a disappointing mourner. He’s a curious man. I found him rather unintelligent, commonplace. Was that your opinion?”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “I wouldn’t describe him as commonplace, but it’s difficult to see him influencing your son.”

  “He seemed to me a man who had long ago given up the expectation of influencing anyone. Perhaps he has lost his faith. Isn’t that fashionable in the Church today? But why should that distress him? The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It’s a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid. And why doesn’t he get his cassock cleaned? It is a cassock, isn’t it? There were what I assumed were egg stains on the right cuff, and the front looked as if he’s dribbled on it.”

  Dalgliesh said:

  “It’s a garment he practically lives in, Lady Ursula.”

  “He could buy a spare, surely.”

  “If he could afford one. And he had made an attempt to sponge off the stain.”

  “Had he? Not very effectively. Well, that’s the sort of thing you’re trained to notice, of course.”

  It did not surprise him that they were discussing ecclesiastical garb while what remained of her son lay headless and dismembered in a mortuary icebox. Unlike herself and Father Barnes, they had been able to communicate from their first meeting. She shifted a little in her chair, then she said:

  “But you are not, of course, here to discuss Father Barnes’s spiritual problems. What are you here to say, Commander?”

  “I’m here to ask you again, Lady Ursula, whether or not you saw your son’s diary in the desk drawer when General Nollinge rang this house at six o’clock last Tuesday.”

  The remarkable eyes looked straight into his.

  “You asked that question twice before. I am, of course, always happy to talk to the poet who wrote ‘Rhesus Negative,’ but your visits are becoming rather frequent and your conversation predictable. I’ve nothing to add to what I told you before. I find this reiteration rather offensive.”

  “You do understand the implication of what you’re saying?”

  “Naturally I understand it. Is there anything else you need to ask?”

  “I should like you to confirm that you did, in fact, speak to Halliwell twice on the evening your son died and that, to your knowledge, the Rover was not taken out that night before ten o’clock.”

  “I’ve already told you, Commander. I spoke to him at about eight o’clock and then at nine fifteen. That must have been about forty-five minutes before he left for Suffolk. And I think you can safely assume that, if anyone had taken the Rover, Halliwell would have known. Anything else?”

  “Yes, I should like to see Miss Matlock again.”

  “In that case, I would prefer that you see her here and that I remain. Perhaps you will ring the bell.”

  He tugged at the bell cord. Miss Matlock didn’t hurry. But three minutes later she stood in the doorway, wearing again the long grey skirt with its gaping pleat, the same ill-fitting blouse.

  Lady Ursula said:

  “Sit down, will you, Mattie. The Commander has some questions for you.”

  The woman took one of the chairs against the wall and brought it over, placing it beside Lady Ursula’s chair. She looked stolidly at Dalgliesh. This time she seemed almost without anxiety. He thought: She’s beginning to get confidence. She knows how little we’re able to do if she sticks to her story. She’s beginning to think that it could be easy after all. He went through her account again. She answered his questions about the Tuesday evening in almost the same words she had previously used. At the end he said:

  “It wasn’t, of course, unusual for Mr. Dominic Swayne to call here for a bath, perhaps a meal?”

  “I’ve told you. He did it from time to time. He’s Lady Berowne’s brother.”

  “But Sir Paul wasn’t necessarily aware of these visits?”

  “Sometimes he was, sometimes not. It wasn’t my place to tell him.”

  “What about the time before last, not the Tuesday, but the time before? What did you do then?”

  “He had a bath as usual, then I cooked him supper. He doesn’t always have supper here when he comes for his bath, but that night he did. I cooked him a pork chop with m
ustard sauce, sauté potatoes and green beans.”

  A more substantial meal, thought Dalgliesh, than the omelette she had cooked on the night of Berowne’s death. But on that night he had arrived at shorter notice. Why? Because his sister had telephoned him after her quarrel with her husband? Because she had told him where Berowne would be that night? Because his plan of murder was beginning to take shape?

  He asked:

  “And after that?”

  “He had apple tart and cheese.”

  “I mean, what did you do after the meal?”

  “After that we played Scrabble.”

  “You and he seem extraordinarily fond of Scrabble.”

  “I like it. I think he plays to please me. There’s no one here to give me a game.”

  “And who won that time, Miss Matlock?”

  “I think I did. I can’t remember by how much, but I think I won.”

  “You think you won? It was only ten days ago, can’t you be sure?”

  Two pairs of eyes looked into his, hers and Lady Ursula’s. They were not, he thought, natural allies, but now they sat side by side rigidly upright, motionless as if held in a field of force which both sustained and linked them. Lady Ursula was, he sensed, almost at the end of her endurance, but he thought he saw in Evelyn Matlock’s defiant gaze a glint of triumph. She said:

  “I can remember perfectly. I won.”

  It was, he knew, the most effective way of fabricating an alibi. You described events which had, in fact, happened, but on a different occasion. It was the most difficult of all alibis to break since, apart from the alteration in time, the parties concerned were speaking the truth. He thought she was lying, but he couldn’t be sure. She was, he knew, a neurotic, and the fact that she was now beginning to enjoy pitting her wits against his might be no more than the self-dramatization of a woman whose life had afforded few such heady excitements. He heard Lady Ursula’s voice: