A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  “None, I should think,” he said easily. “No possible harm in the world. Come and have a drink.”

  But before they could reach the door his telephone rang. He went to answer it, then held out the receiver to Kate.

  “It’s for you.”

  Kate took it from him, listened in silence for a minute, then said briefly:

  “All right, I’ll come now.”

  Watching her face as she put down the receiver, Massingham asked:

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s my grandmother. She’s been mugged. That was the hospital. They want me to collect her.”

  He said with easy sympathy:

  “That’s tough. Is it serious? Is she all right?”

  “Of course she’s not all right! She’s over eighty and the bastards have mugged her. She’s not seriously hurt, if that’s what you’re asking. But she’s not fit to be alone. I’ll have to take the rest of today off. Probably tomorrow, too, by the sound of it.”

  “Can’t they get someone else to cope?”

  “If there was anyone else they wouldn’t be ringing me.” Then she added more calmly:

  “She brought me up. There is no one else.”

  “Then you’d better go. I’ll tell AD. Sorry about the drink.” He added, his eyes still on her face: “It’s not going to be convenient.”

  She said fiercely:

  “Of course it’s not bloody convenient. You don’t have to tell me. When would it ever be?”

  Walking beside him down the corridor to her room, she suddenly asked:

  “What would happen if your father fell ill?”

  “I hadn’t thought. I suppose my sister would fly home from Rome.”

  Of course, she thought. Who else? The resentment against him which she had begun to think was fading spurted into angry life. The case was at last beginning to break, and she wouldn’t be there. She might be away only for a day and a half, but it couldn’t be at a worse time. And it could be longer, much longer. Looking up at Massingham’s carefully controlled face as they parted at her door, she thought: He and AD are on their own now. It’ll be like the old days. He might be sorry about our missed drink. But that’s all he’s sorry about.

  three

  Thursday was one of the most frustrating days that Dalgliesh could remember. They had decided to give Swayne a rest and there was no further interrogation, but a press conference called for the early afternoon had been particularly difficult. The media were getting impatient, not so much with the lack of progress as with the lack of information. Either Sir Paul Berowne had been murdered or he had killed himself. If the latter, then the family and the police should admit the fact; if the former, it was time for the new squad to be more forthcoming about their progress in bringing the murderer to book. Both within and outside the Yard there were snide comments about the squad’s being more noted for its sensitivity than for its effectiveness. As a super in C1 muttered to Massingham in the bar:

  “It’ll be a nasty one to leave unsolved, the sort that breeds its own mythology. Lucky that Berowne was on the right, not the left, or someone would be writing a book by now to prove that MI5 slit his throat for him.”

  Even the tidying of loose ends, although satisfying, hadn’t lifted his depression. Massingham had reported on a visit to Mrs. Hurrell. He must have been persuasive; Mrs. Hurrell had admitted that her husband, in the hours before his death, had confided in her. There had been a small bill for posters overlooked when the final accounts were prepared after the last General Election. It would have put the party’s expenses over the statutory limit and invalidated Berowne’s victory. Hurrell had himself covered the discrepancy and had decided to say nothing, but it had been on his conscience and he had wanted to confess to Berowne before he died. What purpose he thought would be served by the confession was difficult to envisage. Mrs. Hurrell wasn’t a good liar and Massingham reported that she had been rather unconvincingly insistent that her husband hadn’t at any time confided in Frank Musgrave. But it wasn’t a path they needed to explore. They were investigating murder not malpractice, and Dalgliesh was convinced that he knew his man.

  And Stephen Lampart had been cleared of any possible part in Diana Travers’s death. His two guests on the night of the drowning, a fashionable plastic surgeon and his young wife, had been seen by Massingham. They apparently knew him slightly, and between pressing drink on him and the gratifying discovery of shared acquaintances, had confirmed that Stephen Lampart hadn’t left the table during the meal and had spent less than a couple of minutes fetching the Porsche while they waited chatting with Barbara Berowne at the door of the Black Swan.

  But it was useful to clear this detail out of the way, as it was useful to know from Sergeant Robins’s enquiries that Gordon Halliwell’s wife and daughter had been drowned while on holiday in Cornwall. Dalgliesh had briefly wondered whether Halliwell could have been Theresa Nolan’s father. It had never seemed very likely, but the possibility had had to be explored. These were all loose ends neatly tied up, but the main line of the enquiry was still blocked. The words of the AC rang in his brain as insistent and irritating as a television jingle: “Find me the physical evidence.”

  Strangely, it was a relief rather than an additional irritation to hear that Father Barnes had telephoned while he was in the press conference and would like to see him. The message was somewhat confused, but hardly more so than Father Barnes himself. Apparently the priest wanted to know whether the Little Vestry could now be unsealed and brought into use and when, if at all, the church was likely to get back the carpet. Would the police arrange for it to be cleaned, or was that a matter for him? Would they have to wait until it had been produced at the trial? Was there a chance that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board might pay for a new carpet? It seemed odd that even someone as unworldly as Father Barnes should seriously expect the statutory powers of the CICB to include supplying carpets, but, for a man beginning seriously to fear that a murder case might never be brought to trial, this innocent preoccupation with trivia was reassuring, almost touching. He decided on impulse that he might as well call on Father Barnes.

  There was no answer at the vicarage and all the windows were dark, and then he remembered from his first visit to the church that the noticeboard had shown Evensong at four on Thursdays. Father Barnes would presumably be in church. And so it proved. The great north door was unbolted, and when he turned the heavy iron handle and pushed it open he was met by the expected waft of incense and saw that the lights were on in the Lady Chapel and that Father Barnes, robed only in his surplice and stole, was leading the responses. The congregation was larger than Dalgliesh had expected and the mutter of voices came to him clearly in a gentle, disjointed murmur. He seated himself in the front row just inside the door and sat to listen in patience to Evensong, that most neglected and aesthetically satisfying portion of the Anglican liturgy. For the first time since he had known it, the church was being used for the purpose for which it had been built. But it seemed to him subtly changed. In the branched candleholder where, only last Wednesday, his single light had burned there was now a double row of candles, some newly lit, others flickering with their last tremulous flame. He felt no impulse to add to the glitter. In their light the Pre-Raphaelite face of the Madonna with her flare of crimped and yellow hair under the high crown shone glossily as if newly painted and the distant voices came to him like the ominous premonitory mutterings of success.

  The service was short; there was no address and no singing, and within minutes Father Barnes’s voice, as if from a far distance but very clear, perhaps because the words were so familiar, was speaking the Third Collect for aid against all perils:

  “Lighten our darkness we beseech Thee, O Lord; And by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night for the love of Thine only Son, our saviour Jesus Christ.”

  The congregation murmured their amens, got to their feet and began to disperse. Dalgliesh stood up and moved forwar
d. Father Barnes came briskly up to him in a flutter of white linen. He had certainly gained in confidence, almost, Dalgliesh could believe, in physical stature since their first meeting. Now he looked cleaner, more tidily dressed, even plumper, as if a little and a not unwelcome notoriety had put flesh on his bones.

  He said:

  “How kind of you to come, Commander. I’ll be with you in a moment. I just have to clear the offertory boxes. My churchwardens like me to keep to schedule. Not that we expect to find much.”

  He took a key from his trouser pocket and unlocked the box attached to the votive candlestand in front of the statue of the Virgin, and began counting the coins into a small leather draw-string bag. He said:

  “Over three pounds in small change and six one-pound coins. We’ve never done as well as that before. And the ordinary collections are well up, too, since the murders.” His face might make an attempt at solemnity but his voice was as happy as a child’s.

  Dalgliesh moved with him down the nave to the second candlestand in front of the grille. Miss Wharton, who had finished hanging up the kneelers and straightening the chairs in the Lady Chapel, bustled up beside him. As Father Barnes unlocked the box, she said:

  “I don’t expect there will be more than eighty pence. I used to give Darren a tenpenny piece to light a candle, but really no one else uses this box. He loved stretching his hands out through the grille and striking the match. He could just reach. It’s funny, but I’d forgotten about that until now. I suppose it was because he didn’t have time to light the candle that dreadful morning. There it is, you see, still unlit.”

  Father Barnes’s hands were busy in the box.

  “Only seven coins this time, and a button—rather an unusual one. It looks like silver. I thought at first it was a foreign coin.”

  Miss Wharton peered closer. She said:

  “That must have been Darren. How naughty of him. I remember now, he bent down by the path and I thought he was picking a flower. It really was very wrong of him to steal from the church. Poor child, it must have weighed on his conscience. No wonder I thought he was feeling guilty about something. I’m hoping to see him tomorrow. I’ll have a little word about it. But perhaps we should light the candle now, Commander, and say a prayer for the success of your investigation. I think I have tenpence.”

  She began rummaging in her bag.

  Dalgliesh said quietly to Father Barnes:

  “May I see the button, Father.”

  And there at last it was, resting on his palm, the piece of physical evidence they had been seeking. He had seen such a button before, on Dominic Swayne’s Italian jacket. A single button. So small a thing, so commonplace, but so vital. And he had two witnesses to its finding. He stood looking at it and there came over him a feeling not of excitement or of triumph, but of immense weariness, of completion.

  He said:

  “When was this box last cleared, Father?”

  “Last Tuesday, it must have been the seventeenth, after morning Mass. As I said, I should have cleared it this Tuesday, but I’m afraid in all the excitement I forgot.”

  So it had been cleared the morning Berowne was murdered. Dalgliesh said:

  “And it wasn’t in the box then? Could you have missed it?”

  “Oh no, that really wouldn’t have been possible. It certainly wasn’t there then.”

  And the whole west end of the church had been closed after the finding of the bodies until today. In theory, of course, someone in the church itself, a member of the congregation or a visitor, could have put the button in the box. But why should they? The obvious box to use, even for a practical joke, was the one in front of the statue of the Virgin. Why walk the length of the nave to the back of the church? And it couldn’t have been put in the box by mistake for a coin. No candle had been lit in this stand. But all this was academic. He was countering arguments like a defence counsel. There was surely only one jacket from which this button could have come: it was too great a coincidence to suppose that someone connected with St. Matthew’s Church other than Swayne should have dropped it outside the south door.

  He said:

  “I’m going to place this in one of the envelopes from the Little Vestry and I shall then seal it and ask both of you to sign across the flap. We can unseal the room now, Father.”

  “You mean, this button is important? It’s a clue?”

  Miss Wharton said nervously:

  “But the owner, do you suppose he’ll come looking for it?”

  “I don’t think for one moment that he’s missed it yet. But, even if he has, no one will be in any danger once he knows that the police have it. But I’ll send a man round to stay in the church, Father, until we pick him up.”

  Neither of them asked whose button it was, and he saw no reason to tell them. He went outside to the car and rang Massingham. Massingham said:

  “We’d better pick up the boy now.”

  “Yes, at once. That’s the first priority. Then Swayne. And we shall need the jacket. Check the lab report on it, will you, John? There were no buttons missing when we saw Swayne at Campden Hill Square. This is probably the spare. The lab will have noticed if there was a tag on the hem. And see if you can get proof of sale to Swayne. We need the name of the importers and the retailers. But that will probably have to wait now until tomorrow.”

  “I’ll put it in hand, sir.”

  “But we need a duplicate button now. I’m going to get this one sealed and certified and I haven’t a transparent envelope. You recognized the jacket. I suppose it’s too much to hope you’ve got one.”

  “Much too much. Three hundred-odd quid too much. My cousin has one. I can get hold of a button.” He added:

  “Do you think there’s any danger to Miss Wharton or Father Barnes?”

  “Obviously Swayne either hasn’t missed the button or has no idea when he lost it. But I’d like someone here in the church until we lay hands on him. But first get hold of Darren and quickly. I’m coming straight back, and then I’d like you to come with me to 62 Campden Hill Square.”

  “Yes, sir. There’s a lot to do. It’s a pity we haven’t Kate. This tends to happen with women officers, the inconvenient domestic emergency.”

  Dalgliesh said coldly:

  “Not noticeably, John, particularly not with that officer. In twenty minutes then.”

  four

  It was only the second time since her father’s murder that Sarah had called at 62 Campden Hill Square. The first had been on the morning after the news broke. Then there had been a small group of photographers outside the railings, and she had turned instinctively as they had called her name. Next morning she had seen a newspaper picture of herself scurrying furtively up the steps like a delinquent housemaid sneaking in at the wrong door under the caption “Miss Sarah Berowne was among the callers today at Campden Hill Square.” But now the square was empty of people. The great planes waited in sodden acquiescence for winter, their boughs moving sluggishly in the rain-drenched air. Although the storm was over, the evening was so dark that lights shone palely from first-floor drawing rooms as if it were already night. She supposed that, behind those windows, people lived their secretive, separate, even desperate lives, yet the lights seemed to shine out with the promise of unattainable security.

  She had no key. Her father had offered her one when she had walked out, with—or so it had seemed to her at the time—the stiff formality of a Victorian father reluctant to have her under his roof but recognizing that, as an unmarried daughter, she was entitled to his protection and to a room in his house, should she need it. Looking up at the famous facade, at the high elegantly curved windows, she knew that it never had been and that it never could be her home. How much, she wondered, had it really mattered to her father? It had always seemed to her that he lodged in it but had never made it his own any more than it was hers. But had he in boyhood envied his elder brother these dead prestigious stones? Had he lusted after the house as he had lusted after his brother�
�s fiancée? What had he been thinking of when, her mother at his side, he had jammed his foot down on the accelerator at that dangerous corner? What was it out of his past which had finally confronted him in that dingy vestry at St. Matthew’s Church?

  Waiting for Mattie to answer the door, she wondered how to greet her. It seemed natural to ask “How are you, Mattie?” but the question was meaningless. When had she ever cared how Mattie felt? What possible answer other than an equally meaningless courtesy could she expect? The door opened. Gazing at her with a stranger’s eyes, Mattie said her quiet “Good evening.” There was something different about her; but then, hadn’t they all changed since that awful morning? She had the drained look which Sarah had seen on the face of a friend who had recently given birth, bright-eyed, flushed, but bloated and somehow diminished, as if virtue had gone out of her.

  She said:

  “How are you, Mattie?”

  “I am well, thank you, Miss Sarah. Lady Ursula and Lady Berowne are in the dining room.”

  The oval dining table was spread with correspondence. Her grandmother sat stiffly upright, her back to the window. In front of her was a large blotter and to her left boxes of writing paper and envelopes. She was folding a handwritten letter as Sarah came up to her. The girl was intrigued, as always, that her grandmother should be so meticulous over the niceties of social behaviour, having all her life flouted its sexual and religious conventions. Her stepmother apparently either had no letters of condolence to answer or was leaving the chore to someone else. Now she sat at the end of the table preparing to varnish her nails, her hands hesitating over the ranked bottles. Sarah thought: Surely not blood red? But no, it was to be a soft pink, entirely innocuous, entirely suitable. She ignored Barbara Berowne and said to her grandmother:

  “I’ve come in answer to your letter. The memorial service, it isn’t possible. I am sorry, but I shan’t be there.”