Original Sin

by P. D. James

  ‘Yes, it wouldn’t have done any good. Gerard wasn’t susceptible to pleading.’ He added, ‘Or to threats.’

  ‘How could I threaten him? I was powerless. He could sack me the next week and I couldn’t stop him. And if I did anything more to antagonize him he’d have given me one of those cunningly worded references which you can’t contest but which make sure that you never get another job. He had me in his power. I’m glad he’s dead. If I were a religious man I’d go down on my knees and thank God that he’s dead. But I didn’t kill him. You have to believe me. If you don’t, Mr Dauntsey, my God, who will?’

  The figure at his side didn’t move or speak but stood staring out over the black waste of the river. At last, humbly, he had asked: ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Nothing. I had to see you to find out whether you’ve told the police, whether you propose to tell them. I was asked, of course, whether I’d seen anyone going into Innocent House. We all were. I lied. I lied and I’m proposing to go on lying, but it will be pointless if you’ve told them or are likely to lose your nerve.’

  ‘No, I didn’t tell them. I said I got home at the usual time, just before seven. I rang my wife as soon as I heard the news, before the police arrived, and told her to confirm that I was home on time if anyone rang to ask. It was lucky I was the first one in. I had the office to myself. I hated having to ask her to lie but she didn’t think it mattered. She knew that I was innocent, that I hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of. I’ll explain more fully to her tonight. She’ll understand.’

  ‘You rang her before you knew that his death might be murder?’

  ‘I thought it was murder from the start. The snake, that half-naked body. How could that be a natural death?’ He added simply: ‘Thank you for keeping silent, Mr Dauntsey. I won’t forget this.’

  ‘You don’t need to thank me. It’s the sensible thing to do. I’m not doing you a favour. You don’t have to be grateful. It’s a matter of common sense, that’s all. If the police waste time suspecting the innocent they’ll have less chance of catching the guilty. And I haven’t quite the confidence I once had that they don’t make mistakes.’

  He had said, greatly daring: ‘And you care about that? You want them to catch the guilty?’

  ‘I want them to find out who put that snake round Gerard’s neck and stuffed its head in his mouth. That was an abomination, a desecration of death. I prefer the guilty to be convicted and the innocent vindicated. I suppose most people do. That, after all, is what we mean by justice. But I don’t feel personally outraged by Gerard’s death, not by any death, not any longer. I doubt whether I have the capacity to feel strongly about anything. I didn’t murder him; I have done more than my share of killing. I don’t know who did, but this murderer and I have something in common. We didn’t have to look our victim in the eyes. There’s something particularly ignoble about a murderer who doesn’t even have to face the reality of what he has done.’

  He had brought himself to the final humiliation: ‘My job, Mr Dauntsey. Do you think it’s safe now? It is important to me. You don’t know what Miss Etienne has in mind – what any of the partners has in mind? I know that there have to be changes. I could learn new methods if you think it necessary. And I don’t mind if you bring someone in over my head if he’s better qualified. I can work loyally as a subordinate.’ He added with bitterness: ‘That’s all Mr Gerard thought I was good for.’

  Dauntsey had said: ‘I don’t know what will be decided but I dare say we’ll make no major changes for at least six months. And if I have anything to do with it, your job will be safe.’

  Then they had turned together and walked without speaking to the side road where both had parked their cars.

  31

  The house which Sydney and Julie Bartrum had chosen, and which he was buying on the highest mortgage obtainable, was close to Buckhurst Hill Station on a sloping narrow road which was more like a country lane than a suburban street. It was a conventional 1930s house with a front bay window and porch and narrow back garden. Everything in it he and Julie had chosen together. Neither had brought anything from the past except memories. It was this home, this hard-won security, which Gerard Etienne had threatened to take from him with so much else. If he lost his job at fifty-two, what hope would there be of an equal salary? His lump sum would drain away, month after month, until even paying the mortgage became an impossible burden.

  She came out of the kitchen as soon as she heard his key in the lock. As always she put out both arms and kissed him on the cheek, but tonight her arms were taut and she clung to him almost desperately.

  ‘Darling, what is it? What’s happened? I didn’t like to phone you back. You said not to ring.’

  ‘No, that wouldn’t have been wise. Darling, there’s nothing for you to worry about. Everything is going to be all right.’

  ‘But you said that Mr Etienne is dead. Killed.’

  ‘Come into the sitting-room, Julie, and I’ll tell you.’

  She sat very close to him and very still while he spoke. Afterwards she said: ‘They can’t think you had anything to do with it, darling. I mean, that’s ridiculous, that’s stupid. You wouldn’t hurt a soul. You’re kind, good, gentle. They can’t believe that.’

  ‘Of course they won’t. But innocent people do sometimes get harassed, questioned and put under suspicion. Sometimes they even get arrested and tried. It does happen. And I was the last person to leave the office. I had some important work to do and stayed a little late. That’s why I rang as soon as I heard the news. It seemed sensible to tell the police that I was home at the usual time.’

  ‘Of course it was, darling. You’re right. I’m glad you did.’

  He was a little surprised that his request to her to lie had caused her no unease, no guilt. Perhaps women lied more easily than men provided they believed the cause was just. He needn’t have worried that he was causing her a crisis of conscience. Like him, she knew where her allegiance lay.

  He said: ‘Has anyone been in touch – anyone from the police?’

  ‘Someone rang. He said he was a Sergeant Robbins. He just asked what time you got back last night. Nothing else. He didn’t give me any information or say that Mr Gerard was dead.’

  ‘And you didn’t let on that you knew?’

  ‘Of course not. You’d warned me. I did ask what it was all about and he said you would explain when you got home, that you were all right and that I wasn’t to worry.’

  So the police had been quick off the mark. Well, that was to be expected. They had wanted to check before he had had time to arrange an alibi.

  He said: ‘You see what I mean, darling. It really was wise to be prepared.’

  ‘Of course it was. But you don’t really think Mr Gerard was murdered?’

  ‘They don’t seem to know how he died. Murder’s a possibility, but only one. He could have had a heart attack and the snake been put round his neck afterwards.’

  ‘Darling, how terrible! That’s a horrible thing for anyone to do. It’s wicked.’

  He said: ‘Don’t think about it. It’s nothing to do with us. It can’t touch us. If we stick to our story, there’s nothing anyone can do.’

  She had no idea how closely it touched them. This death was his salvation. He hadn’t confided in her about the risk to his job or his hatred and fear of Etienne. This had partly been because he didn’t want to worry her, but he knew that the main motive had been pride. He needed her to believe that he was successful, respected, invaluable to the firm. Now she need never know the truth. He decided, too, to say nothing of the earlier interview with Dauntsey. Why worry her? Everything was going to be all right.

  As usual before supper, they went up together to look at their sleeping daughter. The baby was in the nursery at the back of the house, which he with Julie’s help had decorated. She had recently been promoted from the basket crib to the railed cot and lay, as always, pillowless and supine. Julie had explained that this was the recommended posi
tion. She didn’t speak the words ‘to avoid cot death’, but both of them knew what she meant. That anything should happen to the child was their greatest unspoken horror. He put out a hand and touched the downy head. It was incredible that any human hair could feel so soft, any scalp so vulnerable. Overcome with love, he wanted to pick up the child and hold her against his cheek, to enfold mother and daughter in an embrace that was strong, eternal and unbreakable, to shield them against all the terrors of the present and all the terrors to come.

  This house was his kingdom. He told himself that he had won it by love but he felt for it some of the fierce possessiveness of a conqueror. It was his by right and he would kill a dozen Gerard Etiennes before he lost it. No one before Julie had ever found him lovable. Plain, scrawny, humourless and shy, he knew that he wasn’t lovable, the years in the children’s home had taught him that. Your father didn’t die, your mother didn’t walk out on you, if you were lovable. The staff at the home had done their best according to the received wisdom of the times, but the children hadn’t been loved. The caring, like the food, had been carefully allocated to go round. The children knew that they were rejects. He had taken in that knowledge with his porridge. After the children’s home there had been a succession of landladies, of bed-sitting-rooms, of small rented flats, of evening classes and examinations, watery cups of coffee, solitary meals in inexpensive restaurants, breakfast cooked in a shared kitchen, of solitary pleasures, solitary, unsatisfying, guilt-inducing sex.

  He felt now like a man who all his life had been living underground in partial darkness. With Julie he had come up into the sunlight, his eyes dazed by an unimagined world of light and sound and colour and sensation. He was glad that Julie had been previously married, but in their love-making she managed to make him feel that it was she who was inexperienced, who was finding fulfilment for the first time. He told himself that perhaps she was. Sex with her had been a revelation. He could never have believed that it was at once so simple and so marvellous. He was glad, too, with a half-guilty relief, that her first marriage had been unhappy and that Terry had walked out on her. He need never fear that she was comparing him with a first love romanticized and immortalized by death. They spoke rarely of the past; for both of them, the people who lived and walked and spoke in that past were different people. Once, early in their marriage, she had said to him: ‘I used to pray that I could find someone to love, someone I could make happy and who could make me happy. Someone who would give me a child. I had almost given up hope. And then I found you. It seems like a miracle, darling, the answer to a prayer.’ Her words had exalted him. He felt for a moment as if he was the agent of God himself. He who all his life had known only what it was to feel powerless was filled with an intoxication of power.

  He had been happy at Peverell Press until Gerard Etienne took over. He knew himself to be a valued, conscientious accountant. He worked long hours of unpaid overtime. He did what was required of him by Jean-Philippe Etienne and Henry Peverell; and what they required was well within his powers. But then one had retired and the other died, and the young Gerard Etienne had taken his seat in the managing director’s chair. He had played little part in the firm for the previous few years but he had been watching, learning, biding his time, taking his Master’s degree in business administration, formulating plans which didn’t include a fifty-two-year-old accountant with minimal qualifications. Gerard Etienne, young, successful, handsome, rich, who through all his privileged life had grasped what he wanted without compunction, had been going to take from him, Sydney Bartrum, everything which made his life worthwhile. But Gerard Etienne was dead, lying in a police mortuary with a snake stuffed into his mouth.

  He tightened his arm around his wife and said: ‘Darling, let’s go down to supper. I’m hungry.’

  32

  The street entrance to Wapping Police Station is so unobtrusive that it can easily be missed by the uninitiated. From the Thames its agreeable and unpretentious brick façade and the domestic note of a bay window overlooking the river suggest an old and accommodating utility, the residence of an eighteenth-century merchant, with a preference for living above his warehouse. Standing at the window of the incident room, Daniel looked down at the wide ramp, the three bays of the floating pier with its flotilla of police launches and the discreetly sited stainless-steel bath trolley for the reception and hosing-down of drowned bodies, and reflected that few perceptive travellers by water would fail to recognize the function of the house.

  He had been busy since he and Sergeant Robbins had arrived, passing through the vehicle parking lot and up the iron staircase into the subdued busyness of the station. He had set up the computers, cleared desks for Dalgliesh, himself and Kate, had spoken to the coroner’s officer about arrangements for the post-mortem and the inquest and had liaised with the forensic science laboratory. The photographs taken at the scene had been pinned to the noticeboard, their stark, shadowless clarity seeming to reduce horror to an exercise in photographic technique. He had also spoken to Lord Stilgoe in his private room at the London Clinic. Happily the effect of a general anaesthetic, the cosseting of the nurses and the number of his visitors had temporarily diverted Lord Stilgoe’s attention from the murder and he had received Daniel’s report with surprising equanimity and had not, as expected demanded Dalgliesh’s immediate appearance at his bedside. Daniel had also put the Met’s Press Bureau in the picture. When the story broke they would be responsible for setting up press conferences and for liaison with the media. There were a number of details which the police in the interests of their inquiry had no intention of divulging, but the bizarre use of the snake would be known to everyone at Innocent House by tomorrow at the latest and would be round the publishing houses of London and into the papers within hours. The Press Bureau was likely to be busy.

  Robbins had moved up beside him, obviously taking his senior’s inactivity as the justification for a break. He said: ‘It’s interesting to be here, isn’t it? The oldest police station in the United Kingdom.’

  ‘If you’re itching to tell me that the River Police were established in 1798, thirty-one years before the Met, then I know.’

  ‘I don’t know whether you’ve seen their museum, sir. It’s in the carpenter’s shop of the old boatyard. I was taken round it when I was at Preliminary Training School. They’ve got some interesting exhibits. Leg irons, police cutlasses, old uniforms, a surgeon’s chest, early nineteenth-century records and accounts of the Princess Alice disaster. It’s a fascinating collection.’

  ‘That probably accounts for the less than enthusiastic welcome. They probably suspect the Met curator of wanting to get his hands on it, or suspect we might nick the choicest exhibits. I like their new toys though.’

  Below them the river had erupted into foaming tumult. A couple of high-speed semi-rigid inflatables, bright orange, black and grey, with their crew of two in crash helmets and fluorescent green jackets, skimmed, veered and circled the police launches like dangerous adult playthings before roaring downstream.

  Robbins said: ‘No seats. I should think those back rolls are hard on the muscles. They must be doing close on forty knots. Do you think there will be time to have another look at the museum, sir?’

  ‘I shouldn’t rely on it.’

  In Daniel’s opinion Sergeant Robbins, who had come into the police service straight from his red-brick university, with a second-class degree in history, was almost too good to be true. Here surely was the epitome of every mother’s favourite son: fresh-faced, ambitious without being ruthless, a devout Methodist, engaged, so it was rumoured, to a girl from his church. No doubt after a virtuous engagement they would marry and produce admirable children who would go to the right schools, pass the right exams, cause no grief or pain to their parents and eventually end up interfering with people for their own good, as teachers, social workers and possibly even policemen. In Daniel’s book Robbins should have long ago resigned, disillusioned by a macho ethos which could so easily degener
ate into violence, by the necessary compromises and fudges, and by the job itself with its daily evidence of the sleaziness of crime and man’s inhumanity to man. Instead he was apparently both unshockable and idealistic. Daniel supposed that he had a secret life; most people did. It was hardly possible to live without one. But Robbins was singularly adept at keeping his hidden. Daniel reflected that it would pay the Home Office to parade him round the country to persuade idealistic school-leavers of the advantages of a police career.

  They settled back to work. There was very little time before they were due at the mortuary, but there was no justification for wasting it. Daniel sat down to go through Etienne’s papers. Even at his first and cursory glance he had been surprised at the amount of work Gerard Etienne had taken on. The firm published about sixty books a year with a total staff of thirty. Publishing was an alien world to him. He had no idea whether this was average but the administrative structure seemed odd and Etienne’s load disproportionate. De Witt was the editorial director with Gabriel Dauntsey assisting him as poetry editor but otherwise, apparently, doing little except for his job in the archives. Claudia Etienne was responsible for sales and publicity, including personnel, and Frances Peverell for contracts and rights. Gerard Etienne, as chairman and managing director, had overseen production, accounts and the warehouse and had had by far the heaviest load.

  Daniel was interested, too, in how far Etienne had pushed forward his plans to sell Innocent House. The negotiations with Hector Skolling had been under way for some months and were now advanced. Looking through the minutes of the monthly partners’ meetings, he could see little reference to much that was happening. While Dalgliesh and Kate had been busy with the formal interviews, he had learned almost as much by listening to Mrs Demery’s gossip and talking to George and the few staff who were in the building. The partners might wish to present the picture of a generally united board with a common purpose, but the evidence so far showed a very different reality.