Original Sin

by P. D. James

  Dalgliesh took the key from Claudia Etienne. It turned easily in the lock and he opened the door. A sour, gaseous smell wafted out like a contagion. The half-naked body seemed to leap up at them with the stark theatricality of death and hang for a moment suspended in unreality, an image bizarre and powerful, staining the quiet air.

  He was lying supine, his feet towards the door. He was wearing grey trousers and grey socks. The shoes of fine black leather looked new, the soles almost unscuffed. It was odd, Kate thought, how one noticed such details. The top of his body was naked and a white shirt was bunched in the extended fist of his outstretched right hand. The velvet snake was wound twice round his neck, the tail lying against his chest, the head jammed into the wide-stretched mouth. Above it his eyes, open and glazed, unmistakably the eyes of death, seemed to Kate to hold for a moment a look of outraged surprise. All the colours were strong, unnaturally bright. The rich dark brown of the hair, the face and torso stained an unnatural pinkish red, the stark whiteness of the shirt, the livid green of the snake. The impression of a physical force emanating from the body was so strong that Kate instinctively recoiled and felt the soft bump of her shoulder against Claudia’s. She said: ‘I’m sorry,’ and the conventional apology sounded inadequate even if it referred only to that brief physical encounter. Then the image faded and reality reasserted itself. The body became what it was, dead bare flesh, grotesquely adorned, displayed as if on a stage.

  And now in a swift glance, standing in the open doorway, she took in the details of the room. It was small, no more than twelve feet by eight, and bleak as an execution shed, the wooden floor uncovered, the walls bare. There was one high narrow window, closed tight shut, and a single white shaded bulb suspended from the middle of the ceiling. From the window frame hung a broken window cord no more than three inches long. To the left of the window was a small Victorian fireplace with coloured tiles of fruit and flowers. The grate had been removed and replaced by an old-fashioned gas fire. Against the opposite wall was a small wooden table holding a modern black angled reading lamp and two wire filing trays each holding a few shabby manila files. Aware that some small detail was incongruous, Kate looked for the remaining length of the window cord and saw it under the table, as if it had been casually kicked or thrown out of the way. Claudia Etienne was still standing at her shoulder. Kate was aware of her stillness, of her breathing, shallow and controlled.

  Dalgliesh asked: ‘Is this how you found the room? Does anything strike you now which didn’t then?’

  She said: ‘Nothing’s changed. Well how could it? I locked the door before we left. I didn’t notice much about the room when I – when I found him.’

  ‘Did you touch the body?’

  ‘I knelt by him and felt his face. He was very cold, but I knew he was dead before then. I stayed kneeling by him. When the others had gone, I think …’ She paused, then went on resolutely, ‘I laid my cheek briefly against his.’

  ‘And the room?’

  ‘It looks odd now. I’m not often up here – the last time was when I found Sonia Clements’ body – but it looks different, emptier, cleaner. And there’s something missing. It’s the tape recorder. Gabriel – Mr Dauntsey – dictates on to a tape and the recorder is usually left on the table. And I didn’t notice that broken window cord when I first came in. Where’s the end? Is Gerard lying on it?’

  Kate said: ‘It’s under the table.’

  Claudia Etienne looked at it and said: ‘How odd. You’d expect it to be lying by the window.’

  She swayed, and Kate put out a supporting hand but the girl shrugged it quickly away.

  Dalgliesh said: ‘Thank you for coming up with us, Miss Etienne. I know it wasn’t easy. That’s all I wanted to ask now. Kate, will you …?’

  But before Kate could move, Claudia Etienne said: ‘Don’t touch me. I’m perfectly capable of walking downstairs by myself. I’ll be with the others in the boardroom if you need me again.’

  But her way down the narrow stairs was impeded. There was the sound of male voices, quick light footsteps. A few seconds later Daniel Aaron came swiftly into the room, followed by two scene-of-crime officers, Charlie Ferris and his assistant.

  Aaron said: ‘I’m sorry I’m late, sir. The traffic was heavy on the Whitechapel Road.’

  His eyes met Kate’s and he gave a shrug and a brief, rueful smile. She liked and respected him. She had no difficulty in working with him. He was in every way an improvement on Massingham, but like Massingham he was never happy to find that Kate had got to the scene of crime before him.

  21

  The four partners had moved together into the boardroom on the first floor less by deliberate intention than by an unspoken feeling that it was wiser to stay together, to hear what words were spoken by the others, to feel at least the spurious comfort of human comradeship, not to retreat to a suspicious isolation. But they were without occupation and each was unwilling to send for files, papers or reading matter in case this demonstrated a callous indifference. The house seemed curiously quiet. Somewhere, they knew, the few staff still on the premises would be conferring, discussing, speculating. There were things they too needed to discuss, a provisional reallocation of work to be agreed, but to do so now seemed as brutally insensitive as robbing the dead.

  But at first their wait was not long. Within ten minutes of his arrival Commander Dalgliesh appeared with Inspector Miskin. As the tall dark figure moved quietly up to the table, four pairs of eyes turned and regarded him soberly as if his presence, at once desired and half-feared, was an intrusion into a common grief. They sat unmoving as he pulled out a chair for the woman police officer and then himself sat down, resting his hands on the table.

  He said: ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting but I’m afraid that waiting and disruption are inevitable after an unexplained death. I shall need to see you separately and I hope to give those interviews before too long. Is there a room here with a telephone I could use without too great inconvenience? I shall need it only for the rest of the day. The incident room will be at Wapping Police Station.’

  It was Claudia who replied. ‘If you took over the whole house for a month the inconvenience would be slight compared with the inconvenience of murder.’

  De Witt broke in quietly, ‘If it is murder,’ and it seemed as if the room, already quiet, grew quieter as they waited for his reply.

  ‘We can’t be sure of the cause of death until after the post-mortem. The forensic pathologist will be here shortly and I shall then know when that’s likely to be. Then there may be some laboratory investigations which will also take time.’

  Claudia said: ‘You can use my brother’s office. That would seem appropriate. It’s on the ground floor, the right-hand front room. You have to go through his PA’s office to get to it but Miss Blackett can move out if that’s inconvenient. Is there anything else you need?’

  ‘I would like, please, a list of all staff presently employed and the rooms they occupy and the names of any who may have left but were here for the whole of the period during which your practical joker has been at work. I believe that you have already carried out an investigation into these incidents. I need details of the incidents and what, if anything, you have discovered.’

  De Witt said: ‘So you know about that?’

  ‘The police had been told. It would be helpful too if I could have a plan of the building.’

  Claudia said: ‘There’s one in the files. We had some interior alterations done a couple of years ago and the architect drew up new drawings of the interior and the exterior. The original designs for the house and for its decoration are in the archives, but I don’t suppose your interest is primarily architectural.’

  ‘Not at present. What arrangements are there for securing the building? Who holds the keys?’

  Miss Etienne said: ‘Each of the partners has a set of keys to all the doors. The formal entrance is from the terrace and the river but that door is only used now for big occasions, when mos
t of the guests come by boat. We don’t have many of those nowadays. The last one was the joint summer party and celebration of my brother’s engagement on the 10th of July. The door from Innocent Walk is the main street door but it’s rarely used. Because of the architectural oddity of the house it leads past the servants’ quarters and the kitchen. It’s always kept locked and bolted. It’s still locked and bolted. Lord Stilgoe checked the doors before you arrived.’ She seemed about to make some comment on Lord Stilgoe’s activities but checked herself and went on: ‘The door we use is the side one on Innocent Lane by which you came in. That is normally left open during the day as long as George Copeland is on the switchboard. George has a key to that door, but not the back door or the river frontage. The burglar alarm system is controlled from the panel beside the switchboard. The doors and the windows on three storeys are locked. The system is fairly rudimentary, I’m afraid, but burglary has never really been a problem. The house itself is, of course, almost priceless but few of the pictures, for example, are originals. There is a large safe in Gerard’s office and after an incident when the page proofs of Lord Stilgoe’s book were tampered with we installed additional locking cupboards in three of the offices and under the reception desk so that any manuscripts or important papers can be locked up at night.’

  Dalgliesh asked: ‘And who normally arrives first in the morning and unlocks?’

  Gabriel Dauntsey said: ‘Usually it’s George Copeland. He’s due to start work at nine o’clock and he’s usually on the switchboard by then. He’s very reliable. If he does get held up – he lives south of the river – it could be Miss Peverell or me. We each have a flat in number 12, that’s the house to the left of Innocent House. It’s a bit haphazard. Whoever arrives first unlocks and switches off the alarm system. The door on Innocent Lane has a Yale and one security lock. This morning George arrived first as usual and found that the security lock hadn’t been used. He was able to open the door with the Yale. The alarm system was also switched off so he naturally assumed that one of us had already arrived.’

  Dalgliesh asked, ‘Which of you four last saw Mr Etienne?’

  Claudia said: ‘I did. I went into the office to talk to him before I left, just before half past six. He usually worked late on Thursday nights. He was still at his desk. There may have been other people in the building at the time but I think they had all gone. Obviously I didn’t check or make a search.’

  ‘Was it generally known that your brother worked late on Thursdays?’

  ‘It was known within the office. Probably other people knew as well.’

  Dalgliesh said: ‘He seemed as usual? He didn’t tell you that he intended to work in the little archives office?’

  ‘He seemed perfectly as usual, and he never mentioned the little archives office. As far as I know it wasn’t a room he ever visited. I have no idea why he went up there or why he died there – if, in fact, that is where he died.’

  Again the four pairs of eyes looked intensely into Dalgliesh’s face. He didn’t comment. After formally asking the expected question whether they knew of anyone who might wish Etienne dead and receiving their short and equally expected answers, he got up from his chair and the woman officer, who hadn’t spoken, got up too. Then he thanked them quietly and she stood a little aside so that he moved first out of the door.

  After they had left there was a silence for half a minute then de Witt said: ‘Not exactly the kind of copper from whom one asks the time. Personally I find him terrifying enough to the innocent, so God knows what he does to the guilty. Do you know him, Gabriel? After all you’re in the same line of business.’

  Dauntsey looked up and said, ‘I know his work, of course, but I don’t think we’ve ever met. He’s a fine poet.’

  ‘Oh, we all know that. I’m only surprised you’ve never tried to wean him away from his publisher. Let’s hope he’s an equally good detective.’

  Frances said: ‘It’s odd though, isn’t it, he never asked us about the snake?’

  Claudia said sharply: ‘What about the snake?’

  ‘He didn’t ask us whether we knew where to find it.’

  ‘Oh, he will,’ said de Witt. ‘Believe me, he will.’

  22

  In the little archives room Dalgliesh asked: ‘Did you manage to speak to Dr Kynaston, Kate?’

  ‘No, sir. He’s in Australia visiting his son. Doc Wardle’s coming. He was in his lab so he shouldn’t be long.’

  It was an unpropitious start. Dalgliesh was used to working with Miles Kynaston whom he both liked as a man and respected as probably the country’s most brilliant forensic pathologist. He had, perhaps unreasonably, taken it for granted that it would be Kynaston who would be squatting by this body, Kynaston’s stubby-fingered hands in the latex gloves, fine as a second skin, which would be moving about the corpse with as much gentleness as if these stiff limbs could still tense under his probing hands. Reginald Wardle was a perfectly capable forensic pathologist; he wouldn’t otherwise have been employed by the Met. He would do a good job. His report would be as thorough as Kynaston’s and would come on time. He would be as effective in the witness box, if it came to that, cautious but definite, unshakeable under cross-examination. But Dalgliesh had always found him irritating and suspected that the mild antipathy, not strong enough to be called dislike or to prejudice their cooperation, was mutual.

  Wardle, when called out, came promptly to the murder scene – no one could fault him there – but would invariably stroll in with leisurely unconcern as if to demonstrate the unimportance of violent death, and this corpse in particular, in his private scheme of things. He was apt to sigh and tut-tut over the body, as if the problem it presented was irritating rather than interesting and one which hardly justified the police in dragging him away from the more immediate concerns in his laboratory. He provided the minimum of information at the scene, perhaps from natural caution, but too often giving the impression that the police were unreasonably pressing him for a premature judgement. His most common words spoken over the corpse were: ‘Better wait, better wait, Commander. I’ll get him on the table soon enough and then we’ll know.’

  He was, too, a self-publicist. At the scene he might give the impression of a boring and reluctant colleague but, surprisingly, he was a brilliant after-dinner speaker and probably enjoyed more free meals than most of his profession. Dalgliesh, who found it astonishing that a man could actually volunteer for, let alone enjoy, a protracted and usually poor hotel dinner for the satisfaction of getting on his feet afterwards, privately added this fact to the list of Wardle’s mild delinquencies. Once in his autopsy room, however, Doc Wardle was a different man. Here, perhaps because this was his acknowledged kingdom, he seemed to take a pride in demonstrating his considerable skills and was ready enough to share opinions and propound theories.

  Dalgliesh had worked with Charlie Ferris before and was glad to see him. His nickname of ‘the Ferret’ was rarely used to his face but it was perhaps too appropriate a soubriquet to be always avoided. He had pale-lashed sharp little eyes, a long nose sensible to every variety of smell and tiny fastidious fingers which could pick up small objects as if by magnetism. He presented an eccentric and occasionally bizarre appearance when on the job, his preferred clothes for a search being tight-fitting cotton shorts or trousers, a sweatshirt, surgeon’s latex gloves and a plastic swimming cap. His professional creed was that no murderer left the scene of his crime without depositing some physical evidence and it was his business to find it.

  Dalgliesh said: ‘Your usual search, Charlie, but we’ll need a gas engineer to take out that gas fire and make a report. Tell them it’s urgent. If there’s rubble blocking the flue I want that sent to the lab with samples of any loose pieces of the chimney lining. It’s a very old nursery gas fire with a removable tap. I don’t know whether we’ll get a useful print from there, almost certainly not. All surfaces of the fire need testing for prints. The window cord is important. I’d like to know if it snapped be
cause of natural wear and tear or was deliberately frayed. I doubt whether you’ll get more than an opinion but the lab may be able to help.’

  Leaving them to it he knelt by the body, studied it intently for a moment then, putting out his hand, touched the cheek. Was it his imagination and the ruddiness of the skin which made it feel slightly warm to the touch? Or was it that the warmth of his own fingers had for a few seconds given a spurious life to the dead flesh? He moved his hand to the jaw taking care not to dislodge the snake. The flesh was soft, the bone moved under his gentle urging.

  He said to Kate and Daniel: ‘See what you make of the jaw. Be careful. I want the snake in place until after the PM.’

  They knelt in turn, Kate first, touched the jaw, looked closely into the face, put their hands to the naked torso.

  Daniel said: ‘Rigor mortis is well established in the top part of the body but the jaw is free.’

  ‘Which means?’

  It was Kate who replied. ‘That someone broke the rigor in the jaw some hours after death. Presumably it was necessary in order to stuff the snake into the mouth. But why bother? Why not wind it round his neck? That would make the point just as well.’

  Daniel said: ‘But less dramatically.’

  ‘Maybe. But forcing open the jaw proves that someone visited the body hours after death. It could have been the murderer – if this is murder. It could have been someone else. We’d never have suspected that there was a second visit to the scene if the snake had been merely wrapped round the neck.’

  Daniel said: ‘Perhaps it’s precisely what the murderer wanted us to know.’

  Dalgliesh looked carefully at the snake. It was about five feet long and was obviously intended as a draught excluder. The top of the body was of striped velvet, the bottom of some tougher brown material. Under the softness of the velvet, it felt grainy to his touch.