by P. D. James
When he had left Claudia Etienne said: ‘I wonder why Gabriel gets the privilege of going first.’
James de Witt answered: ‘Probably because he uses the little archives office more than most of us.’
Frances said: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever used it. The last time I was there was when they took the bed away. You don’t go up there either, do you, James?’
‘I’ve never worked up there, at least not for more than half an hour. The last time was about three months ago. I went up to find Esmé Carling’s original contract with us. I couldn’t find it.’
‘You mean you couldn’t find her old file?’
‘I found her file. I took it into the little archives room to study it. The original contract wasn’t there.’
Claudia said, without particular interest: ‘That’s not surprising. We’ve had her on the list for thirty years. It was probably misfiled twenty years ago.’ And then, with sudden energy: ‘Look, I don’t see why I should waste time just because Adam Dalgliesh wants to chat with a fellow poet. We don’t have to stay in this room.’
Frances sounded doubtful. ‘He said he wanted to see us together.’
‘Well, he has seen us together. Now he’s seeing us separately. When he wants me he’ll find me in my office. Tell him that, will you.’
After she had left James said: ‘She’s right you know. We. may not feel like working but it’s worse sitting and waiting, looking at that empty chair.’
‘But we haven’t been looking at it, have we? We’ve been carefully not looking at it, keeping our eyes elsewhere, almost as if Gerard were an embarrassment. I can’t work, but I would like some more coffee.’
‘Then let’s find it. Mrs Demery must be about somewhere. I’d rather like to hear her version of her interview with Dalgliesh. If that doesn’t lighten the atmosphere nothing will.’
They moved together to the door. As they reached it Frances turned to him. ‘James, I feel so frightened. I ought to be feeling grief and shock and the horror of it. We were lovers. I did love him once and now he’s dead. I ought to be thinking of him, of the awful finality of his death. I ought to be praying for him. I did try but it came out as meaningless words. What I’m feeling is totally selfish, totally ignoble. It’s fear.’
‘Fear of the police? Dalgliesh isn’t a bully.’
‘No, it’s worse than that. Fear of what’s going on here. That make – whoever did that to Gerard is evil. Don’t you find it, the presence of evil in Innocent House? I think I’ve been feeling it for months. This just seems like the inevitable end, something all the petty mischiefs have been leading up to. My mind ought to be full of grief for Gerard. It isn’t, it’s full of terror, terror and an awful foreboding that this isn’t the end.’
James said gently: ‘There aren’t any right or wrong emotions. We feel what we feel. I doubt whether any of us feels intense grief, even Claudia. Gerard was a remarkable man but he wasn’t lovable. What I try to persuade myself is grief is probably no more than that universal and impotent sadness one always feels at the death of the young, the talented, the healthy. Even that is overlaid by a fascinated curiosity spiced with apprehension.’ He turned to her and said: ‘I’m here, Frances. When you need me and if you need me, I’m here. I shan’t be a nuisance. I shan’t thrust myself on you just becauseshock and fear have made us both vulnerable. I’m just offering you whatever you need when you need it.’
‘I know. Thank you, James.’
She put out her hand and for a second laid it against his face. It was the first time she had ever voluntarily touched him. Then she turned to the door and, in turning, missed the spreading radiance of joy and triumph on his face.
25
Twenty years previously Dalgliesh had heard Gabriel Dauntsey reading his poetry in the Purcell Room on the South Bank. He had no intention of telling Dauntsey so, but as he waited for the old man the event came back to him with such clarity that he listened to the approaching footsteps through the archives room with something of the excited expectation of youth. Of the two World Wars it was the first which had produced the greater poetry and sometimes he occupied his mind by wondering why this should be so. Was it that the year 1914 had seen the death of innocence, that the cataclysm had swept away more than a orilliant generation? But for a few years – was it only three? – it had seemed that Dauntsey might be the Wilfred Owen of his own time, his very different war. But the promise of those first two volumes had never been fulfilled and he had published nothing more. Dalgliesh told himself that the word promise, with its suggestion of a talent as yet unrealized, was hardly appropriate. One or two of those early poems had represented achievement at a level which few post-war poets had reached.
After that reading Dalgliesh had discovered as much as Dauntsey wanted known of his history; how, living in France, he had been in England on business when war was declared, leaving his wife and two children trapped by the invading Germans; how they had totally disappeared from knowledge and official records so that it was only after years of searching after the war that he had discovered that all three, living under a false name to avoid internment, had been killed in a British bomber raid on occupied France. Dauntsey himself had served in RAF Bomber Command but had been spared the ultimate tragic irony; he had not taken part in that raid. His had been the poetry of modern war, of loss and grief and terror, comradeship and courage, cowardice and defeat. The strong, sinuous, brutal verses were lit by passages of lyrical beauty, like shells bursting in the mind. The great Lancasters lifting themselves like ponderous beasts with death in their bellies, the dark and silent skies exploding in a cacophony of terror, the boyish crew for whom he, little older, was responsible, climbing clumsily accoutred into that frail metal shell night after night, knowing the arithmetic of survival, that this could be the night when they would fall from the sky like flaming torches. And always the guilt, the sense that this nightly terror, both dreaded and welcomed, was an expiation, that there was a betrayal for which only death could atone, personal betrayal mirroring a greater universal desolation.
And now he was here, an ordinary old man if any old man could be described as ordinary, not bent, but holding himself with disciplined effort as if endurance and courage could successfully overcome the ravages of time. Old age either produces a soft plumpness obliterating character in crinkled nonentity or, as here, strips the face so that the bones stand out like a skeleton temporarily clothed in flesh dry and delicate as paper. But the hair, although grey, was still strong, the eyes as black and darting as Dalgliesh remembered. Now they fixed on him a questioning ironic stare.
Dalgliesh swung round the chair from the table and placed it near the door. Dauntsey sat.
Dalgliesh said: ‘You came up with Lord Stilgoe and Mr de Witt. Did anything strike you about this room apart from the presence of the body?’
‘Not at first, apart from a disagreeable smell. A corpse, half-naked, grotesquely decorated as that corpse was, assaults the senses. After a minute, perhaps less, I did notice other things, and with unusual clarity. The room struck me as different – odd. It looked stripped, although it wasn’t, unnaturally clean, warmer than usual. The body looked so – so disordered; the room so very ordered. The chair was precisely in place, the files as neatly on the table. I noticed, of course, that the tape recorder was missing.’
‘Were the files as you had left them?’
‘Not as I remember. The two filing trays have been reversed. The tray with the smaller number of files should be on the left. I had two piles, the right higher than the left. I work from left to right with six to ten files at a time, depending on their size. When I finish with a file I transfer it to the right. When all six have been dealt with I return them to the main archives room with a ruler inserted to show how far I’ve got.’
Dalgliesh said: ‘We noticed the ruler in a space on the bottom shelf of the second row. Does that mean that you’ve only completed one row?’
‘It’s very slow work. I tend to get
interested in old letters even if they aren’t worth preserving. I’ve found quite a lot that are – letters from twentieth-century writers and others who corresponded with Henry Peverell and his father, even if the firm didn’t publish them. There are letters from H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, members of the Bloomsbury group, some even earlier.’
‘What is your system?’
‘I dictate a description of the contents of each file and my recommendation either for Destruction, Doubtful, Preserve or Important on the tape recorder. A typist then types a list and periodically the board goes through it. Nothing has actually been thrown out yet. Until we know the future of the firm it seemed unwise to destroy anything.’
‘When did you last use this room?’
‘On Monday. I worked here all day. Mrs Demery put her head round the door at about ten o’clock but said that she wouldn’t disturb me. The place only gets cleaned about one week in four and then superficially. She told me about the frayed window cord and I said I’d mention it to George and get him to do the repair. I haven’t spoken to him yet.’
‘You hadn’t noticed it yourself?’
‘I’m afraid not. The window has been open for weeks. I prefer it that way. I suppose I would have noticed when the weather gets colder.’
‘How do you heat the room?’
‘Always with an electric fire. Actually it belongs to me. I prefer it to the gas fire. I don’t mean that I thought the gas fire was unsafe, but I don’t smoke so I never seem to have matches when I need them. It was easier to bring the electric reflector fire over from my flat. It’s very light and I either carry it back to number 12 with me or leave it here if I propose to work next day. On Monday I took it home.’
‘And the door was unlocked when you left the room?’
‘Oh yes. I never lock the door. The key is kept in the lock, usually on this side, but I’ve never used it.’
Dalgliesh said: ‘The lock looks comparatively new. Who had it fitted?’
‘Henry Peverell. He liked to work up here occasionally. I don’t know why, but he was a solitary man. I suppose he thought fitting a lock gave him an added sense of security. But it isn’t really new – much newer than the door, of course, but I think the key has been there for at least five years.’
Dalgliesh said: ‘But it hasn’t been unused for five years. The lock has been kept oiled, the key turns easily.’
‘Does it? I don’t use it so I haven’t noticed. But it’s odd about the oiling. Mrs Demery may have done it but it seems unlikely.’
Dalgliesh said: ‘Did you like Gerard Etienne?’
‘No, but I respected him. Not for qualities which necessarily deserve respect; I respected him for being so different from me. He had the virtues of his defects. And he was young. He could hardly claim credit or responsibility for that, but it gave him an enthusiasm which most of us here no longer have and which I think the firm needs. We may have complained about what he did or disliked what he proposed to do, but at least he knew where he was going. I suspect we shall feel rudderless without him.’
‘Who will take over as managing director?’
‘Oh, his sister, Claudia Etienne. The job here goes to the person with the greatest number of shares. As far as I know she will inherit his. That will give her an overall majority.’
Dalgliesh said: ‘To do what?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her. I doubt whether she knows herself. She’s just lost a brother. I doubt whether she’s spending much time thinking about the future of Peverell Press.’
Dalgliesh went on to ask Dauntsey how he had spent the previous day and night. Dauntsey looked down with a small wry smile. He was too intelligent not to know that what he was being asked for was his alibi. He was silent for a little time as if marshalling his thoughts. Then he said: ‘I was in the partners’ meeting from ten o’clock until 11.30. Gerard liked to get it over within two hours, but yesterday we stopped earlier than usual. After the meeting he had a few words with me coming down from the boardroom about the future of the poetry list. I think, too, he was trying to enlist my support for his plan to sell Innocent House and move the firm down-river to Docklands.’
‘You saw that as desirable?’
‘I saw it as necessary.’ He paused, then said, ‘Unfortunately.’ Again he paused, then continued, speaking slowly and deliberately but with little emphasis, occasionally pausing as if to select one word over another, from time to time frowning as if memory were painful or uncertain. Dalgliesh listened in silence to the monologue.
‘After I left Innocent House I went back to my flat to get ready for a luncheon appointment. When I say get ready, I mean merely to run a comb through my hair and wash my hands. I wasn’t there long. I took a young poet, Damien Smith, to lunch at the Ivy. Gerard used to say that James de Witt and I spent money on entertaining authors in inverse proportion to their importance to the firm. I thought the boy might enjoy the Ivy. I was due there at one o’clock and was taken by launch to London Bridge and then caught a taxi to the restaurant. We spent two hours over lunch and I was back at my flat about half past three. I made myself a pot of tea and returned to my office here at four. I worked for about an hour and a half.
‘The last time I saw Gerard was when I went to the ground-floor lavatory. It’s the one at the back of the house next to the shower-room. The women usually use the lavatory on the first floor. Gerard was coming out as I went in. We didn’t speak but I think he nodded or smiled. There was some kind of passing acknowledgement, that’s all. I didn’t see him again. I came back to my flat and spent the next two hours in reading over the poems I’d selected for the evening, thinking about them, making coffee. I listened to the BBC six o’clock news. Shortly afterwards Frances Peverell rang me to wish me good luck. She had offered to go with me. I think she thought that someone from the firm ought to be there. We had spoken about it a few days earlier and I managed to dissuade her. One of the poets due to read was Marigold Riley. She’s not a bad poet but much of her verse is scatological. I knew that Frances wouldn’t enjoy the poetry, the company or the atmosphere. I told her that I would prefer to be on my own, that having her there would make me nervous. It wasn’t entirely a lie. I hadn’t read my verse for fifteen years. Most of the people there would assume that I was dead. I was already wishing I hadn’t agreed to go. Having Frances there, wondering whether she was unhappy, how much she was disliking it all, would only have increased the trauma. I rang for a taxi and left shortly after half past seven.’
Dalgliesh asked: ‘How shortly?’
‘I rang for the taxi to be in the lane by 7.45, and I suppose I kept him waiting a few minutes, not more.’ He paused again, then went on: ‘What happened at the Connaught Arms will hardly interest you. There were enough people there to confirm my presence. I suppose the reading went rather better than I expected, but it was too crowded and too noisy. I hadn’t realized that poetry had become a spectator sport. There was a great deal of drinking and smoking and some of the poets were rather self-indulgent. It all went on too long. I meant to ask the landlord to telephone for a taxi but he was busy talking to a group of people and I slipped out more or less unnoticed. I thought I could pick up a cab at the end of the road, but before I got there I was mugged. There were three of them, I think, two black and one white, but I won’t be able to identify them. I was just aware of rushing figures, the strong shove from the back, of hands grabbing at my pockets. It wasn’t even a necessary assault. If they had asked I would have handed over my wallet. What else could I do?’
‘They got it?’
‘Oh yes, they got it. At least, it was missing when I looked. The fall stunned me for a moment. When I came to a man and a woman were bending over me. They had been at the reading and were trying to catch me up. I had banged my head when I fell and it was bleeding slightly. I took out my handkerchief and held it to the wound. I asked them to bring me home but they said that they had to drive past St Thomas’s Hospital and insisted on leaving me there.
They said that I ought to have an X-ray. I could hardly insist that they drove me home or found a cab. They were being very kind, but I don’t think they wanted to go too far out of their way. At the hospital I had to wait quite a time. There were more urgent cases in the casualty department. Eventually a nurse dressed the wound on my head and said that I must wait to have an X-ray. That meant another wait. The result of that was satisfactory but they wanted to keep me in for a night’s observation. I assured them that I would be well looked after at home and told them that I wasn’t prepared to be admitted. I asked them to ring Frances and let her know what had happened and call a taxi. I thought she would probably be watching out for me to hear how the evening went and might be worried when I wasn’t back by eleven. It was about half past one when I did get home, and I rang Frances at once. She wanted me to go up to her flat, but I told her I was perfectly all right and what I needed most was a bath. As soon as I’d had one I gave her another ring and she came down at once.’
Dalgliesh said: ‘And she didn’t insist on coming down to your flat as soon as you returned?’
‘No. Frances never intrudes if she thinks someone wants to be alone, and I did want to be alone at least for a little time. I wasn’t quite ready to give explanations, hear expressions of sympathy. What I needed was a drink and a bath. I had both and then rang Frances. I knew she was anxious and I didn’t want to keep her waiting until the morning to learn what had happened. I thought the whisky would make me feel better, but in fact it made me feel rather sick. I suppose I had some kind of delayed shock. By the time she knocked on the door I wasn’t feeling too good. We sat up together for a little time and then she insisted that I went to bed. She said she would stay in the flat in case I needed something in the night. I think she was afraid that I might be a great deal more ill than I made out and that she ought to be at hand to telephone a doctor if anything went wrong. I didn’t try to dissuade her, although I knew that all I needed was a night’s rest. I thought she would sleep in my spare room but I believe she wrapped herself in a blanket and stayed next door in the sitting-room. When I woke in the morning she was dressed and had made me a cup of tea. She insisted that I should stay at home, but I was feeling a great deal better by the time I was dressed and decided to go into Innocent House. We arrived together in the main hall just after the first launch of the day had arrived. That’s when we were told that Gerard was missing.’