by P. D. James
Dalgliesh said: ‘And that was the first you knew of it?’
‘Yes. It was his habit to work later than most of us, particularly on Thursdays. He was usually in later in the morning, except on the days when we had a partners’ meeting when he liked to begin promptly at ten. I’d assumed, of course, that he had gone home at about the time I left for my reading.’
‘But you didn’t see him when you left for the Connaught Arms?’
‘No, I didn’t see him.’
‘Or see anyone entering Innocent House?’
‘No one. I saw no one.’
‘And when you were given the news that he was dead the three of you went up to the little archives office?’
‘Yes, we went up together, Stilgoe, de Witt and myself. It was a natural response to the news, I suppose, the need to see for oneself. James got there first. Stilgoe and I couldn’t keep up with him. Claudia was still kneeling by her brother’s body when we arrived. She got up and faced us and spread out one arm towards us. It was a curious gesture. It was as if she were displaying this enormity to public gaze.’
‘And how long were you in the room?’
‘It could only have been less than a minute. It seemed longer. We were bunched together just inside the door, looking, staring, unbelieving, appalled. I don’t think anyone spoke. I know I didn’t. Everything in the room was extremely vivid. The shock seemed to have jarred my eyes into an extraordinary keenness of perception. I saw every detail of Gerard’s body and of the room itself with astonishing clarity. Then Stilgoe spoke. He said: “I’ll telephone the police. We can do nothing here. This room must be locked at once and I’ll keep the key.” He took over. We left together and Claudia locked the door after us. Stilgoe took the key. The rest you know.’
26
During the innumerable discussions of the tragedy which were to occupy the following weeks and months, it was generally agreed by the staff of the Peverell Press that the experience of Marjorie Spenlove had been singular. Miss Spenlove, senior copy-editor, had arrived at Innocent House punctually at her usual hour of 9.15. She had murmured a ‘good morning’ to George who, sitting stricken at his switchboard, hadn’t noticed her. Lord Stilgoe, Dauntsey and de Witt were in the little archives room with the body, Mrs Demery was ministering to Blackie in the ground-floor cloakroom surrounded by the rest of the staff and the hall was for a few minutes empty. Miss Spenlove went straight up to her room, took off her jacket and settled down to work. When working she was oblivious to everything except the text before her. It was claimed by Peverell Press that no work copy-edited by Miss Spenlove ever contained an undetected error. She was at her best working on non-fiction, occasionally finding it difficult, with young modern novelists, to distinguish between grammatical mistakes and their cultivated and much-praised natural style. Her expertise went beyond details of the words; no geographical or historical inaccuracy went unchecked, no inconsistencies of weather, topography or dress unnoticed. Authors valued her even though their session with her to approve the final text left them feeling that they had undergone a particularly traumatic session with an intimidating headmistress of the old school.
Sergeant Robbins and a detective constable had searched the premises soon after their arrival. The search had been a little perfunctory; no one could seriously expect that the murderer was still on the premises unless he or she was a member of the staff. But Sergeant Robbins, perhaps excusably, had neglected to look in the small lavatory on the second floor. Descending to fetch Gabriel Dauntsey, his sharp ears detected the sound of a cough from the adjoining office and, opening the door, he found himself confronting an elderly lady working at a desk. Regarding him sternly above her half-moon spectacles she inquired: ‘And who may you be?’
‘Detective Sergeant Robbins of the Metropolitan Police, madam. How did you get in?’
‘Through the door. I work here. This is my office. I am the senior copy-editor of Peverell Press. As such I have a right to be here. I very much doubt whether that could be said of you.’
‘I’m here on duty, madam. Mr Gerard Etienne has been found dead under suspicious circumstances.’
‘You mean someone has murdered him?’
‘We can’t be sure of that yet.’
‘When did he die?’
‘We shall know more after the forensic pathologist has reported.’
‘How did he die?’
‘We don’t yet know the cause of death.’
‘It seems to me, young man, that there is very little you do know. Perhaps you had better come back when you are better informed.’
Sergeant Robbins opened his mouth then shut it firmly, just managing to prevent himself saying, ‘Yes, miss. Very good, miss.’ He disappeared, closing the door behind him, and was halfway down the stairs before realizing that he hadn’t asked the woman’s name. He would, of course, learn it in time. It was a small omission in a brief encounter which, he admitted, hadn’t gone well. Being honest and given to mild speculation, he also admitted that part of the reason was the woman’s uncanny resemblance in appearance and voice to Miss Addison, who had been his first teacher when he moved up from the infants’ school and who had believed that children do best and are happiest when they know from the start who is boss.
Miss Spenlove was more shaken by the news than she had let him see. After completing work on the page she telephoned the switchboard.
‘George, could you find Mrs Demery for me?’ In seeking information she believed in going to an expert. ‘Mrs Demery? There’s a young man roaming the building who claims to be a detective sergeant of the Metropolitan Police. He told me that Mr Etienne is dead, possibly murdered. If you know anything about it, perhaps you could come up and enlighten me. And I’m ready for my coffee.’
Mrs Demery, abandoning Miss Blackett to the ministrations of Mandy, was only too eager to oblige.
27
Dalgliesh, with Kate, conducted the remaining interviews with the partners in Gerard Etienne’s office. Daniel was occupied in the little archives room where the gas man was already at work dismantling the fire and, when this was completed and samples of any chimney debris dispatched to the lab, would go on to Wapping Police Station to set up the incident room. Dalgliesh had already spoken to the station superintendent who had accepted philosophically the need for the intrusion and the temporary use of one of his offices. Dalgliesh hoped that it wouldn’t be for long. If this was murder, and he now had no doubt in his own mind that it was, then the number of possible suspects was unlikely to be great.
He had no wish to sit at Etienne’s desk, partly because of sensitivity to the feelings of the partners, but principally because a confrontation across four feet of pale oak invested any interview with a formality which was more likely to inhibit or antagonize a suspect than elicit helpful information. There was, however, a small conference table in the same wood, with six chairs, close to the windows, and they seated themselves there. The long walk from the door would be intimidating for all but the most self-possessed, but he doubted whether it would worry Claudia or James de Witt.
The room had obviously once been a dining-room but its elegance had been desecrated by the end partition which cut across the oval stucco decorations on the ceiling and bisected one of the four tall windows which looked out on Innocent Passage. The magnificent marble fireplace with its elegant carving was in Miss Blackett’s office. And here in Etienne’s office the furniture – desk, chairs, conference table and filing cabinets – was almost aggressively modern. They might have been chosen to be deliberately at odds with the marble pilasters and porphyry entablatures, the two magnificent chandeliers, one almost touching the partition, and the gilt of picture frames against the pale green of the walls. The pictures were conventional rural scenes, almost certainly Victorian. They were well but a little over-painted, too sentimental for his taste. He doubted whether these were the pictures which had originally hung here and he wondered what portraits of the Peverells had once graced these walls. There
was still one piece of the original furniture; a marble and bronze wine-table, obviously Regency. So one reminder of past glories, at least, was still in use. He wondered what Frances Peverell thought of the room’s desecration and whether now, with Gerard Etienne dead, the partition would be taken down. He wondered, too, if Gerard Etienne had been insensitive to all architecture or only disregarding of this particular house. Was the partitioning, the discordant modern furnishing, his comment on the unsuitability of the room for his purposes, a deliberate rejection of a past which had been dominated by Peverells not Etiennes?
Claudia Etienne walked across the thirty feet towards him with confident grace and seated herself as if she were conferring a favour. She was very pale, but had herself well under control, although he suspected that her hands, plunged in the pockets of her cardigan, would have been more revealing than her taut, grave face. He offered his condolences simply and, he hoped, sincerely but she cut him short.
‘Are you here because of Lord Stilgoe?’
‘No. I’m here because of your brother’s death. Lord Stilgoe did get in touch with me indirectly through a mutual friend. He had received an anonymous letter which greatly upset his wife; she saw it as a threat to his life. He asked for an official assurance that the police have no suspicion of foul play in the three deaths concerned with Innocent House, two authors and Sonia Clements.’
‘Which you were, of course, able to give.’
‘Which the police divisions concerned were able to give. He should have received that assurance about three days ago.’
‘I hope it satisfied him. Lord Stilgoe’s self-absorption amounts to paranoia. Still, he can hardly suppose that Gerard’s death is a deliberate attempt to sabotage his precious memoirs. I still find it strange, Commander, that you are here personally, and in such impressive force. Are you treating my brother’s death as murder?’
‘As an unexplained and suspicious death. That is why I need to trouble you now. I would be grateful for your cooperation, not only personally, but in explaining to your staff that some invasion of their privacy and interference with their work is inevitable.’
‘I think they will understand that.’
‘We shall need to take fingerprints for the purpose of elimination. Any not needed in evidence will be destroyed when the case is complete.’
‘That will be a new experience for us. If it is necessary, of course, we must accept it. I assume that you will be requiring all of us, particularly the partners, to provide an alibi.’
‘I need to know what you were doing, Miss Etienne, and who you were with from six o’clock last night.’
She said: ‘You have the unenviable task, Commander, of expressing sympathy at my brother’s death while requiring an alibi to prove that I didn’t murder him. You do it with some grace. I congratulate you; but then you’ve had plenty of practice. I was on the river with a friend, Declan Cartwright, last night. When you check with him he’ll probably describe me as his fiancée. I prefer to use the word lover. We started off shortly after 6.30 when the launch returned from taking staff to Charing Cross Pier. We were on the river until about 10.30, perhaps a little later, when we returned here and I drove him back to his flat off Westbourne Grove. He lives above an antique shop which he manages for the owner. I shall, of course, give you the address. I was with him until two o’clock, then drove back to the Barbican. I have a flat there on the floor beneath that of my brother.’
‘It was a long time to spend on the river on an October night.’
‘A fine October night. We went downstream to see the Thames Barrier and then returned and put in at Greenwich Pier. We had dinner at Le Papillon in Greenwich Church Street. We booked for eight o’clock and I suppose we were there for about an hour and a half. Then we went upstream beyond Battersea Bridge and returned and, as I’ve said, were back here shortly after 10.30.’
‘Did anyone see you, other, of course, than the staff of the restaurant and the other diners?’
‘The river wasn’t very busy. Even so, plenty of people must have seen us, but that doesn’t mean they’ll remember us. I was in the wheelhouse and Declan was with me most of the time. We saw at least two police launches on the river. I dare say they will have noticed us. That’s their job, isn’t it?’
‘Did anyone see you when you embarked or on your return?’
‘Not as far as I know. We saw and heard no one.’
‘And you can think of no person who wished your brother dead?’
‘You asked that question before.’
‘I’m asking it again now that we’re here in private.’
‘Are we? Is anything one says to a police officer really private? The answer is the same. I know of no one who hated him enough to kill him. There are probably people who won’t be sorry he’s dead. No death is universally regretted. Every death advantages someone.’
‘Who will be advantaged by this death?’
‘I shall. I’m Gerard’s heir. That would, of course, have changed once he was married. As it is I inherit his shares in the firm, his Barbican flat, the proceeds of his life insurance. I didn’t know him very well, we weren’t brought up to be loving siblings. We went to different schools, different universities, had different lives. My Barbican flat is underneath his but we didn’t make a habit of dropping in on each other. It would have seemed an invasion of privacy. But I liked him, I respected him. I was on his side. If he was murdered I hope that his killer rots in prison for the rest of his life. He won’t, of course. We’re so quick to forget the dead and forgive the living. Perhaps we need to show mercy because we’re uncomfortably aware that one day we may need it. Incidentally, here are his keys. You asked for a set. I’ve taken off his car keys and the keys to his flat.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dalgliesh, taking them. ‘I don’t need to assure you that they will stay in my possession, or be held by one of my team. Has your father been told that his son is dead?’
‘Not yet. I’m going to drive down to Bradwell-on-Sea late this afternoon. He lives as a recluse and doesn’t take incoming calls. In any case I would prefer to break it to him personally. Do you want to see him?’
‘It’s important I do. I’d be grateful if you would ask him if I could see him tomorrow at any time convenient for him.’
‘I’ll ask but I’m not sure whether he’ll agree. He has a strong dislike of visitors. He lives with an elderly French woman who looks after him. Her son is his chauffeur. He’s married to a local girl and I imagine they’ll take over when Estelle dies. She certainly won’t retire. She regards it as a privilege to devote her life to a hero of France. Father, as always, has his life well organized. I tell you this so that you’ll know what to expect. I don’t think you will be welcome. Is that all?’
‘I need, too, to see the next of kin of Sonia Clements.’
‘Sonia Clements? What possible connection can there be between her suicide and Gerard’s death?’
‘None as far as I know at present. Does she have next of kin, or was there someone she lived with?’
‘Only her sister, and they didn’t live together for the last three years of her life. She’s a nun, a member of a community at Kemptown outside Brighton. They run a hostel for the dying. I think it’s called St Anne’s Convent. I’m sure the Reverend Mother will allow you to see her. After all the police are like the VAT inspectors, aren’t they? However disagreeable or inconvenient their presence, when they call on you, you have to let them in. Is there anything else you want from me?’
‘The little archives room will be sealed and I should also like to lock the archives room itself.’
‘For how long?’
‘For as long as necessary. Will that be very inconvenient?’
‘Of course it will be inconvenient. Gabriel Dauntsey is working on the old records. The job is already well behind schedule.’
‘I realize that it will be inconvenient. I asked if it will be very inconvenient. The work of the firm can continue without access to tho
se two rooms?’
‘Obviously if you think it important, we shall have to manage.’
‘Thank you.’
He ended by asking her about the practical joker at Innocent House and the steps taken to discover the culprit. The investigation seemed on the whole to have been as superficial as it was unsuccessful.
She said: ‘Gerard more or less left it to me, but I didn’t get very far. All I could do was to list the incidents as they happened and the number of people who were on the premises at the time or could have been responsible. That meant practically everyone except staff who were off sick or on holiday. It was almost as if the joker deliberately chose times when all the partners and most of the staff were here and could have been responsible. Gabriel Dauntsey has an alibi for the last incident, the fax that was sent yesterday from this office to Better Books in Cambridge. He was on his way at the time to lunch with one of our authors at the Ivy, but the other partners and the senior staff were here. Gerard and I took the launch to Greenwich and had a pub lunch at the Trafalgar Tavern, but we didn’t leave here until twenty past one. The fax was sent at 12.30. Carling was due to begin signing at one o’clock. The most recent incident, of course, is the stealing of my brother’s diary. That could have been taken from his desk drawer any time on the Wednesday. He missed it first thing yesterday morning.’