A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  It was, she thought, hardly a code that would defeat the ingenuity of the police, let alone the security forces, if they became interested, but perhaps its very openness and simplicity was a safeguard. There was, after all, no law against friends spending an hour looking round museums together, and the rendezvous was a sensible one. They could pore over the same guidebook, talk in the almost obligatory whispers, move about at will to find the deserted galleries.

  In those first heady months after he had recruited her to the Cell of Thirteen, when she was beginning to fall in love with him, she had looked for these cards as she might for a love letter, lurking in the hall for the post to fall through the letter box, seizing on the card and poring over its message as if these cramped letters could say everything that she needed so desperately to be told but which she knew he would never write, still less speak. But now, for the first time, she read the summons with a mixture of depression and irritation. The notice was ridiculously short; it wouldn’t be easy to get to Bloomsbury by three. And why on earth couldn’t he telephone? Tearing up the card, she felt as she never had before, that the code was a childish and unnecessary device born of his obsessional need to manipulate and conspire. It made them both ridiculous.

  He was, as usual, there on time, selecting cards from the stand. She waited while he paid and, without speaking, they moved out of the gallery together. He was fascinated by the Egyptian antiquities and, almost instinctively, they made their way first to the ground-floor galleries and stood together while he contemplated the huge granite torso of Rameses the Second. It had seemed to her once that these dead eyes, this finely chiselled half-smiling mouth above the jutting beard had been a powerfully erotic symbol of their love. So much had been whispered between them in sly elliptical phrases while they stood regarding it as if seeing the Pharaoh for the first time, shoulders touching, and she had fought the need to stretch out her hand, to feel his fingers in hers. But now all its power had drained away. It was an interesting artifact, a huge slab of cracked granite, no more. He said:

  “Shelley is supposed to have used these features as a model when he wrote ‘Ozymandias.’”

  “I know.”

  A couple of Japanese tourists, their scrutiny completed, drifted away. With no change in the level or tone of his voice, he said:

  “The police seem more certain now that your father was murdered. I imagine they’ve got the pm and forensic reports. They’ve been to see me.”

  A sliver of fear slid down her spine like iced water. “Why?”

  “In hope of breaking our alibi. They didn’t, and of course they can’t. Not unless they break you. Have they been back?”

  “Once. Not Commander Dalgliesh, the woman detective and a younger man, a Chief Inspector Massingham. They asked about Theresa Nolan and Diana Travers.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That I’d seen Theresa Nolan twice, once when I’d called to see Grandmama when she was ill, and once at that dinner party, and that I’d never seen Diana. Wasn’t that what you expected me to say?”

  He answered:

  “Let’s go and visit Ginger.”

  Ginger, named from the colour of the remnants of his hair, was the body of a pre-dynastic man, mummified by the hot desert sands three thousand years before Christ. Ivor had always been intrigued by him, and they never left the museum without this almost ritual visit. Now she gazed down at the emaciated body curled on its left side, the pathetic collection of pots to hold the food and drink which would nourish his spirit on its long journey through the underworld, the spear with which he would defend himself against its ghostly terrors until he reached his Egyptian heaven. Perhaps, she thought, if that spirit could awake now and see the bright lights, the huge room, the moving forms of twentieth-century man, he would think that he had attained it. But she had never been able to share Ivor’s pleasure in this memento mori; the body’s emaciation, even its attitude, evoked too strongly a modern horror: the pictures and newsreels of the dead at Belsen. She thought: Even when we’re here he never asks what I think, what I feel, what I’d like most to see. She said:

  “Let’s go to the Duveen Gallery. I want to look at the Parthenon screen.”

  They moved slowly away. As they paced, their eyes on the open guidebook, she said:

  “Diana Travers. You told me that she wasn’t put into Campden Hill Square to spy on Daddy’s private life. You said it was only his job you were interested in, finding out what was in the new Police Tactical Options Manual. I must have been naive. I can’t think why I believed you. But that’s what you told me.”

  “I don’t need to have a cell member polishing the Berowne family silver to discover what’s in the Tactical Options Manual. And she wasn’t put there to spy on his private life, not primarily. I put her there to make her think she had a job to do, that she was trusted. It kept her occupied while I decided what to do about her.”

  “What do you mean, do about her? She was a member of the cell. She replaced Rose when Rose went back to Ireland.”

  “She thought she was a member, but she wasn’t. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. After all, she’s dead. Diana Travers was a Special Branch spy.”

  He had trained her not to look at him when they were talking but to keep her eyes on the exhibits, the guidebook or straight ahead. She gazed straight ahead now. She said:

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Four of you were told, not the whole cell. I don’t tell the cell everything.”

  She had, of course, known that his membership in the Workers’ Revolutionary Campaign was a cover for the Cell of Thirteen. But even the cell, apparently, had only been a cover for his private inner cabinet. Like a Russian doll, one deceit was unscrewed to find another nestling within it. There were only four people whom he trusted completely, confided in, consulted, and she hadn’t been among them. Had he ever trusted her, she wondered, even from the beginning? She said:

  “That first time, when you rang me nearly four years ago and asked me to take photographs of Brixton, was that all part of a plan to recruit me, to get the daughter of a Tory MP into the WRC?”

  “Partly. I knew where your political sympathies lay. I guessed you wouldn’t exactly welcome your father’s second marriage. It seemed a propitious time to make an approach. Afterwards, my interest became, well, more personal.”

  “But was there ever love?”

  He frowned. She knew how much he hated any intrusion of the personal, the sentimental. He said:

  “There was, there still is, great liking, respect, physical attraction. You can call that love if you want to use the word.”

  “What do you call it, Ivor?”

  “I call it liking, respect, physical attraction.”

  They had moved into the Duveen Gallery. Above them pranced the horses on the Parthenon frieze, the naked riders with their flying cloaks, the chariots, the musicians, the elders and maidens approaching the seated gods and goddesses. But she looked up at this marvel with unseeing eyes. She thought: I need to know, I need to know everything. I have to face the truth. She said:

  “And it was you who sent that poison pen note to Daddy and to the Paternoster Review? Doesn’t it seem rather petty even to you, the people’s revolutionary, the great campaigner against oppression, prophet of the new Jerusalem, reduced to gossip, slander, to childish spite? What did you think you were doing?”

  He said:

  “Making a little mild mischief.”

  “Is that what you call it—helping to discredit decent men? And not only my father. Most of them on your own side, men who’ve given years to the Labour movement, a cause you’re supposed to support.”

  “Decency doesn’t come into it. This is a war. Wars may be fought by decent men, but they’re not won by them.”

  A small group of visitors had drifted up. They moved away and walked slowly down the side of the gallery. He said:

  “If you’re in the job of organizing a revolutionary group,
even a small one, and they’re going to have to wait for real action, real power, then you must keep them occupied, keen, give them the illusion that they’re achieving something. Talk isn’t enough. There has to be action. It’s partly a matter of training for the future, partly of keeping up morale.”

  She said:

  “From now on you’re going to have to do it without me.”

  “I realize that. I knew that after Dalgliesh had seen you. But I expect you to stay on, at least nominally, until this murder enquiry is over. I don’t want to say anything to the others while Dalgliesh is nosing around. Then you can join the Labour Party. You’ll be happier there. Or the SDP, of course. Take your choice, there’s no difference. By the time you’re forty you’ll be a Tory anyway.”

  She said:

  “And you still trust me? You’ve told me all this, knowing that I want to get out?”

  “Of course. I know you. You’ve inherited your father’s pride. You wouldn’t want people saying that your lover chucked you so you took your revenge by betraying him. You wouldn’t want your friends, your grandmother even, to know that you’ve conspired against your father. You can say I rely on your bourgeois decencies. But there isn’t much of a risk. The cell will be dissolved, re-formed, meet elsewhere. That’s necessary now anyway.”

  She thought: That’s another aspect of the revolutionary struggle, getting to know people’s decencies and using them against them. She said:

  “There’s something I’ve learned about Daddy, something I didn’t realize until he died. He tried to be good. I suppose those words don’t mean anything to you.”

  “They mean something. I’m not sure what exactly you expect them to mean. I suppose he tried to behave so that he wasn’t made uncomfortable by too much guilt. We all do. Given his politics and life-style, that can’t have been easy. Perhaps in the end he gave up trying.”

  She said:

  “I wasn’t talking about politics. It had nothing to do with politics. I know you think everything has, but there is another view. There is a world elsewhere.”

  “I hope you’ll be happy in it.”

  They were moving out of the gallery now, and she knew that this was the last time they would be there together. It surprised her how little she cared. She said:

  “But Diana Travers, you said you put her into Campden Hill Square until you decided what to do with her. What did you do? Drown her?”

  And now for the first time she saw that he was angry.

  “Don’t be melodramatic.”

  “But it was convenient for you, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh yes, and not only for me. There’s someone else who had a much stronger motive for getting rid of her. Your father.”

  Forgetting the need for secrecy, she almost cried:

  “Daddy? But he wasn’t there! He was expected, but he never arrived.”

  “Oh, but he was there. I followed him that night. You could call it an exercise in surveillance. I drove behind him all the way to the Black Swan and watched him turn into the drive. And if you should decide to talk to Dalgliesh, who seems for some reason to induce in you the need for sentimental girlish confidences, then that is one piece of information that I shall feel it necessary to pass on.”

  “But you can’t, can you? Not without admitting that you were there, too. If it’s a question of motive, Dalgliesh might think there’s not a lot to choose between you. And you’re alive; he’s dead.”

  “But, unlike your father, I have an alibi. A genuine one this time. I drove straight back to London, to a meeting of senior social workers at the town hall. I’m in the clear. But is he? His memory is unsavoury enough as it is. D’you want another scandal linked to his name? Isn’t poor Harry Mack enough for you? Think about that if you’re tempted to make an anonymous call to Special Branch.”

  eight

  Tuesday morning couldn’t have heralded a better day for a drive out of London. The sunlight was fitful but surprisingly strong, and the sky was a high ethereal blue above the scudding clouds. Dalgliesh drove fast, but almost in silence. Kate had expected that they would drive straight to Riverside Cottage, but the road passed the Black Swan and when they reached it Dalgliesh stopped the car, appeared to think, then turned into the drive. He said:

  “We’ll have a beer. I’d like to walk along the river, view the cottage from this bank. It’s Higgins’s property, most of it anyway. We’d better let him know we’re here.”

  They left the Rover in the car park, which was empty except for a Jaguar, a BMW, and a couple of Fords, and made their way to the entrance hall. Henry greeted them with impassive courtesy as if unsure whether he was expected to recognize them and, in reply to Dalgliesh’s question, told them that Monsieur was in London. The bar was empty except for a quartet of businessmen conspiratorially bent over their whiskies. The barman, baby-faced above his white starched jacket and bow tie, served them with a notable brew of real ale which the Black Swan took some pride in obtaining, then began industriously washing glasses and rearranging his bar as if hoping that a show of busyness might inhibit Dalgliesh from asking any questions. Dalgliesh wondered by what extraordinary alchemy Henry had managed to signal their identities. They carried their beer to the chairs each side of the log fire, drank in companionable silence, then returned to the car park and passed through the gate in the hedge to the riverbank.

  It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. The rich colours of grass and earth were intensified by the mellow light of a sun almost warm enough for spring, and the air was a sweet evocation of all Dalgliesh’s boyhood autumns: woodsmoke, ripe apples, the last sheaves of harvest and the strong sea-smelling breeze of flowing water. The Thames was running strongly, under a quickening breeze. It flattened the grasses fringing the river edge and eddied the stream into the little gulleys which fretted the bank. Under a surface iridescent in blues and greens, on which the light moved and changed as if on coloured glass, the blade-like weeds streamed and undulated. Beyond the clumps of willows on the far bank, a herd of Friesians were peacefully grazing.

  Opposite and about seventy yards downstream he could see a bungalow, little more than a large white shack on stilts, which he guessed must be their destination. And he knew too, as he had known walking under the trees of St. James’s Park, that here he would find the clue he sought. But he was in no hurry. Like a child postponing the moment of assured satisfaction, he was glad that they were early, grateful for this small hiatus of calm. And suddenly he experienced a minute of tingling happiness so unexpected and so keen that he almost held his breath as if he could halt time. They came to him so rarely now, these moments of intense physical joy, and he had never before experienced one in the middle of a murder investigation. The moment passed and he heard his own sigh. Breaking the mood with a commonplace, he said:

  “I suppose that must be Riverside Cottage.”

  “I think so, sir. Shall I get the map?”

  “No. We shall find out soon enough. We’d better get on.”

  But he still lingered, feeling the wind lift his hair and grateful for another minute of peace. He was grateful, too, that Kate Miskin could share it with him without the need to speak and without making him feel that her silence was a conscious discipline. He had chosen her because he needed a woman in his team and she was the best available. The choice had been partly rational, partly instinctive, and he was beginning to realize just how well his instinct had served him. It would have been dishonest to say that there was no hint of sexuality between them. In his experience there nearly always was, however repudiated or unacknowledged, between any reasonably attractive heterosexual couple who worked closely together. He wouldn’t have chosen her if he had found her disturbingly attractive, but the attraction was there and he wasn’t immune to it. But despite this pinprick of sexuality, perhaps because of it, he found her surprisingly restful to work with. She had an instinctive knowledge of what he wanted; she knew when to be silent
; she wasn’t over-deferential. He suspected that with part of her mind she saw his vulnerabilities more clearly, understood him better and was more judgemental than were any of his male subordinates. She had none of Massingham’s ruthlessness, but she wasn’t in the least sentimental. But then in his experience, women police officers seldom were.

  He took a final look at the bungalow. If he had walked along the riverbank on that first visit to the Black Swan, as he had been tempted to do, he would have viewed its pathetic pretensions with an incurious and disparaging eye. But now as its fragile walls seemed to shimmer in the slight haze from the river it held for him an infinite and disturbing promise. It was built about thirty yards from the water’s edge with a wide veranda, a central stack and to the left, upstream, a small landing stage. He thought he could see a patch of broken earth with clumps of mauve and white, perhaps a patch of Michaelmas daisies. Some attempt had been made at a garden. From a distance the bungalow looked well maintained, the white paintwork gleaming. But even so, it had a summer look; temporary, a little ramshackle. Higgins, he thought, would hardly relish having it in full view of his lawns.

  As they looked, the dumpy figure of a woman came out of the side door and made her way to the landing stage, a large dog trotting at her heels. She lowered herself into a dinghy, leaned over to cast off and began rowing purposefully across the river towards the Black Swan, humpbacked over the oars, the dog sitting bolt upright in the prow. As the dinghy crawled closer they could see that he was a cross between a poodle and some kind of terrier, with a woolly body and an anxious, amiable face almost entirely obscured by hair. They watched as the woman bent and rose over the dipping oars, making slow progress against a current that was bearing her downstream away from them. When the dinghy finally bumped the bank, Dalgliesh and Kate walked up to her. Bending down, he caught the bow of the dinghy and held it steady. He saw that her landing place had not been fortuitous. There was a steel stake driven deep into the grass at the water’s edge. He slipped the painter over it and held out his hand. She grasped it and almost hopped ashore, one-footed, and he saw that she wore a surgical boot on her left foot. The dog leapt out after her, sniffed at Dalgliesh’s trousers, then flopped, discouraged, on the grass as if the physical effort of the journey had all been his. Dalgliesh said: