A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

“Yes, that would be very nice, thank you.”

  “Dry?”

  “Well, not too dry, perhaps.”

  Mrs. Kendrick had brought out the sherry decanter before dinner every evening at St. Crispin’s vicarage. It had invariably been dry, a pale sour sharpness not really to her taste. But she had missed the evening ritual on her return home. There was no doubt one did get quickly used to these little luxuries. He lifted his finger and the waiter came, swiftly deferential. The sherry arrived, a rich amber, half-sweet, immediately reviving. There was a little bowl of nuts and one of small dry biscuits. How elegant, how soothing it all was. The raucous life of Victoria Street could have been miles away. She sat back, glass at her lips, and looked with tremulous wonder at the ornately carved ceiling, the twin wall lights with their fringed shades, the hugh urns of flowers at the foot of the stair. And suddenly she knew why she felt so at home. Sight, sound, sensation, even the young man’s face bent smiling towards her, all fused into a long-forgotten picture. She was in a hotel lounge, surely this same hotel, this very place, sitting with her brother on his first leave after he had gained his sergeant’s stripes. And then she remembered. He had been stationed at Bassingbourn in East Anglia. They must have met at a hotel near Liverpool Street, not Victoria. But it had been so very similar. She remembered her pride in the smartness of his uniform, the one winged badge of an air gunner on his breast, the pristine brightness of his three stripes, her sense of importance at being escorted by him, how she had revelled in the unaccustomed luxury, in the assured way in which he had summoned the waiter, ordered sherry for her, beer for himself. And her present companion reminded her a little of John. Like John, he was barely her own height. “They like us small, we tail-end Charlies,” John had said. But he had John’s fairness, something of John in the blue eyes and the high curve of the eyebrows, and all of John in his kindness and courtesy. Almost she could imagine that she saw the single-winged emblem of the air gunner on his chest. He said:

  “They’ve been questioning you again about the murders, I suppose. Did they give you a bad time?”

  “Oh no, it wasn’t at all like that.”

  She explained the purpose of her visit, finding it easy to talk to him about Darren, their walks along the towpath, their visits to the church, her need to see him. She said:

  “Inspector Miskin couldn’t do anything about the local authority, but she told me where Darren goes to school. She was really very kind.”

  “The police are never kind, only when it suits them. They weren’t kind to me. You see, they think I know something. They’ve got a theory. They think my sister might have done it, she and her lover together.”

  Miss Wharton cried:

  “Oh no! But that’s a terrible idea. Surely not a woman—and his own wife! A woman couldn’t have done it, not this murder. Surely they can’t think that.”

  “Perhaps not. Perhaps they’re only pretending to think it. But they’re trying to make me say that she confided in me, confessed even. We’re very close, you see; we always have been. We only have each other. They know she’d tell me if she were in any trouble.”

  “But that’s awful for you. I can’t believe that Commander Dalgliesh really believes that.”

  “He needs to make an arrest, and the wife or husband is always the obvious suspect. I’ve had a couple of bad hours.”

  Miss Wharton had finished her sherry, and, miraculously it seemed, another was in its place. She took a sip and thought: You poor dear. You poor young man. He, too, was drinking, a paler liquid in a tumbler, mixed with water. Perhaps it was whisky. Now he put down the glass and leaned across the table towards her. She could smell the spirit on his breath, masculine, sour, a little disquieting. He said:

  “Talk to me about the murders. Tell me what you saw, what it was like.”

  She could feel his need, strong as a force; and her own need rose to meet it. She, too, needed to talk. She had spent too many sleepless nights fighting off horror, willing herself not to think about it, not to remember. It was better to open that vestry door again and confront reality. So she told him, whispering it across the table. She was back again in that slaughterhouse. She described it all: the wounds like flaccid mouths, Harry Mack with his rigid breastplate of dried blood, the stench, more insistent in imagination than it had been in reality, the pale lifeless hands, drooping like flowers. He leaned over the table towards her, mouth to mouth. Then she said:

  “And that’s all I can remember. Nothing that happened before, nothing afterwards, only the dead bodies. And afterwards, when I dream about them, they’re always naked, quite naked. Isn’t that extraordinary?”

  She gave a little giggle and lifted her glass carefully to her lips.

  She heard him sigh as if the dreadful recital had released something in him. He leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily as if he had been running. Then he said:

  “And you didn’t go into the room, the vestry where they were found?”

  “That’s what the Commander kept asking us. He even looked at the soles of our shoes. That wasn’t at first, he did that just before we left. And then next day a policeman came and took the shoes away. Wasn’t that strange?”

  “They were looking for blood.”

  “Oh yes,” she said sadly, “there was so much blood.”

  Again, he leaned across the table towards her, his face pale and intent. She could see a small bleb of mucus at the corner of the left eye, a dewing of moisture along the upper lip. She took another gulp of the sherry. How warming, how comforting it was. He said:

  “Whoever did that, whoever it was, he can’t be an ordinary, common intruder. This murder was carefully planned, brilliantly planned too. You’re looking for someone with intelligence and nerve. To come back into that room, naked, razor in hand. To confront him, and then to kill. My God, it must have taken courage!” He leaned towards her even closer. “You must see that. You do see it, don’t you?”

  Courage, she thought. But courage was a virtue. Could a man be as evil as this and yet show courage? She would have to ask Father Barnes, except that it wasn’t so easy to talk to Father Barnes nowadays. But it was easy to talk to this young man looking at her with John’s eyes.

  She said:

  “I had a feeling while Darren and I were sitting there in the church waiting to be interviewed that there was something he knew, something he was keeping back, something he was feeling … well, perhaps a little guilty about.”

  “You’ve told the police about this?”

  “Oh no, I haven’t told them. It would sound so stupid. There isn’t anything he could be keeping back, not really. We were together the whole time.”

  “But he might have noticed something, something you didn’t see.”

  “But then the police would have seen it too. It’s just a feeling I had. You see, I really know Darren quite well. I know when he’s feeling … well, a little ashamed. But this time I must be wrong. Perhaps I shall know more when I’m able to see him.”

  “What are you planning to do? Meet him outside the school?”

  “I thought so. The inspector said they come out at three thirty.”

  “But he’ll be with other boys. You know what they are, shouting and rushing home. He might not want to leave the gang. He might be embarrassed to see you waiting there.”

  Miss Wharton thought: Perhaps he’ll be ashamed of me. Boys are so odd. It will be terrible if I see him and he won’t stop, won’t acknowledge me.

  Her companion said:

  “Why not write him a note and ask him to meet you at the usual place. He’ll know that means the towpath. I could take it to him if you like.”

  “Oh, could you? But you won’t know him.”

  “I’ll give it to one of the other kids to deliver. Give him a tip and tell him it’s secret. Or I’ll ask one of them to point him out. Darren will get it, I promise. Look, let me write it for you. He can read, can’t he?”

  “Oh yes, I’m sure he can read. He can read
the notices in church. He’s really an intelligent little boy. His social worker told Mrs. Kendrick that Darren hasn’t been going to school. Apparently his mother moved with him to Newcastle, but she didn’t find the same opportunities there for her job so they moved back. But she never told the school, and I’m afraid it was all too easy for Darren to truant. It was naughty of him. But I’m sure he can read.”

  He crooked his finger. The waiter came on silent feet. A few minutes later he was back with a sheet of headed paper and an envelope. Miss Wharton’s glass was taken away and a filled one put in place of it.

  He said:

  “I’ll print the message and your name. That’ll make it easier for him. And we’d better say to meet you after school. That will be simpler for him than slipping out in the early morning. I may not be able to contact him today but I shall by tomorrow. Suppose we make it Friday at four o’clock on the towpath. Will that be all right for you?”

  “Oh yes, yes, perfectly. And I won’t let him be too late home.”

  He wrote quickly, folded the paper then, without showing it to her, put it in the envelope.

  “What is his name?” he asked. “His surname.”

  “Wilkes. He’s Darren Wilkes. And the school is Bollington Road Junior, near Lisson Grove.”

  She watched while he printed it on the envelope and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He smiled across at her.

  “Drink up your sherry,” he said, “and don’t worry. It’s going to be all right. He’ll be there. You’ll see him, I promise.”

  As they left the hotel and stepped into the wan sunlight, it seemed to Miss Wharton that she was floating in an ecstasy of gratitude and relief. She was hardly aware of giving him her address, of being handed into a taxi, of the five-pound note being slipped into the cabbie’s hand. His face, unnaturally large, blocked the cab window.

  “Don’t worry,” he said again. “I’ve paid the cabbie. There’ll be a little change. And don’t forget. It’s Friday at four o’clock.”

  Tears of gratitude sprang to her eyes. She held out her hand, seeking for words, but none came. And then the cab moved forward, jerking her back in her seat, and he was gone. For the whole of the journey home she sat bolt upright, hugging her handbag to her chest as if it symbolized this newfound intoxicating happiness. “Friday,” she said aloud. Friday at four.

  After the taxi was out of sight, Swayne took out and read the message again, his face expressionless. Then he licked the flap and sealed the envelope. The time and place were exactly as he had said. But the date was the following afternoon—Thursday, not Friday. And it was he, not Miss Wharton, who would be waiting on the towpath.

  two

  Ten minutes after Kate got back to her office, Massingham came in. He and Dalgliesh had been interviewing Swayne. She had concealed her disappointment at being excluded from this first important encounter after the finding of the new evidence, telling herself that her time would come. Unless they broke Swayne quickly, the interrogations, carefully structured, conducted within judges’ rules and Force regulations, but planned, varied, persistent, would continue inexorably day after day until that moment when they would either have to charge him or, for the time being at least, leave him in peace. From the look on Massingham’s face she would get her chance. He almost threw the file on the desk, then walked over to the window as if the spectacular view of Westminster’s towers and the curve of the river could help soothe his frustration.

  She said:

  “How did it go?”

  “It didn’t. He sits there with his brief at his side smiling, saying less and less. Or rather, saying the same thing over and over. ‘Yes, Berowne and I did meet on the riverbank. Yes, we did have a scuffle. He accused me of seducing Theresa Nolan, and I resented him trying to father his bastard on me. He went for me as if he were crazy. He was crazy. But he didn’t throw me in the river. Berowne had left before I swam out to the punt. And I didn’t kill him. I was with Miss Matlock all that evening. I was seen arriving at Campden Hill Square. I took Mrs. Hurrell’s telephone call at eight forty. I was there until I left for the pub. I was seen there from ten forty-five to closing time. If you think otherwise, prove it.’”

  “And his brief, who has he got? Someone from Torrington, Farrell and Penge?”

  “No. No one from the Berowne connection. I have a feeling Barbara Berowne is distancing herself from her slightly disreputable brother. He’s dredged up a bright young pin-stripe from Maurice and Sheldon, perfectly competent and already calculating his fees. There’s nothing like a notorious case for getting your name before the public. His strength is that he really believes his client; that must be a rare pleasure for a brief from that firm. You could see how his mind was working. He doesn’t think that Swayne has the guts for this particular murder; he can’t believe that the motive is strong enough; he can’t see how Swayne could have left Campden Hill Square for long enough to commit the murder and returned without Matlock’s knowing; and he certainly can’t see why she should lie. But mainly, of course, he makes it plain that he doesn’t believe that Berowne was murdered, and in that he’s getting to be one of the majority. He and the AC should get together.”

  And so, thought Kate, we try again to break Evelyn Matlock. And she will sit there, chaperoned by Lady Ursula and advised by the family lawyers, half-obstinate, half-triumphant, with that look of dedicated virtue, enjoying her self-imposed martyrdom. In what cause, she wondered. Hatred, revenge, self-glorification, love? For the first time she faced the realization that the case, the first undertaken by the new squad, could end without an arrest in ignominious failure. Massingham turned from the window.

  “There still isn’t a single piece of physical evidence linking him to the scene. OK, so he had a motive. So did half a dozen others.”

  “But if he killed out of hate, surely he couldn’t conceal it even now?”

  “Oh yes he could, well enough, anyway. He’s purged it, hasn’t he, the worst of his hatred? He’s rid himself of its power. He can sit there smiling, the arrogant bastard, because he’s free of his enemy forever. He had himself well under control, but he was exulting like a man in love.”

  She said:

  “He killed him and we know he killed him. But we’ve got to break the alibi. And more than that, we’ve got to find some physical evidence.”

  “Oh, Swayne knows that, none better. He’s confident that the evidence doesn’t exist. It’s all circumstantial. If we’d got anything stronger, we’d have produced it by now. And he’s actually saying what other people are thinking, that Berowne got Theresa Nolan pregnant, rejected her, and killed himself, partly out of remorse and partly because the dirt in the Paternoster Review warned him that the scandal was going to break. My God, Kate, if the old man’s got this wrong, it’ll be one hell of a fuck-up.”

  She glanced at him in surprise. It was rare to hear him use an obscenity. And she guessed that he wasn’t thinking only of the success of the new squad, or of those colleagues in CI, and not the most junior, who wouldn’t be unhappy to see the maverick Dalgliesh taken down a peg. He had planned his career as carefully as she had hers, and the last thing he wanted was a spectacular failure chalked up against him. But he should worry, she thought bitterly. He was hardly likely to find himself back in division.

  She said:

  “They’ll hardly hold it against you. You’ll be off to the Senior Command Course in January anyway, the next step towards the chairmanship of ACPO.”

  Chairman or not, she thought bitterly, his eventual promotion into that august body, the Association of Chief Police Officers, could be taken for granted.

  He spoke almost as if he had forgotten she was there:

  “It’s not going to be so easy when my father dies.”

  “He’s not ill, is he?”

  “Not ill, but he’s over seventy, and a lot of life seems to have gone out of him since my mother died last April. I’d like to move out, buy a flat, but it’s difficult just now.”


  It was the first time he had ever spoken of his family. The confidence surprised her. The fact that he had made it must, she supposed, say something about their changing relationship, but she sensed that it would be imprudent to probe.

  She said:

  “I shouldn’t lose any sleep over the title. You can always disclaim it. Anyway, the police’ll find it easier to accommodate Chief Constable the Lord Dungannon than they would Chief Constable Kate Miskin.”

  He grinned.

  “Oh well,” he said easily, “you could have chosen to join the Wrens, but you’d hardly expect to end up First Sea Lord. It will come in time, the first woman Chief Constable: about a decade after the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, I’d say. Not in my time, thank God.”

  She didn’t respond to the provocation. She was aware of his sudden glance, then he said:

  “What’s the matter? Something worrying you?”

  Is it obvious? she thought, not altogether pleased at his unusual perception.

  There was little point in never inviting him to the flat if her mind had become so accessible. She said:

  “Miss Wharton turned up while you were with Swayne. She wants to see Darren.”

  “Well, what’s to stop her?”

  “His social worker, apparently, in the interests of good social work practice. Miss Wharton’s fond of the boy. She obviously understands him. They get on well together. He likes her. D’you wonder his social worker is determined to keep them apart?”

  He smiled, amused, a little indulgent, a man in whose privileged life the word “welfare” had meant its dictionary definition, nothing more.

  “You really hate them, don’t you?”

  “Anyway, I told her the name of his school. I suggested she could loiter outside and meet him coming out.”

  “And you’re wondering whether the social services will like it?”

  “I know damn well they won’t like it. I’m wondering if it was wise.” She added, as if to reassure herself: “All right, so she’ll hang around the school, and with luck get the chance to walk home with him. I can’t see what possible harm it can do.”