by P. D. James
Kate asked him for details of the evening and was unsurprised when he confirmed Claudia Etienne’s account.
Daniel said: ‘So you were together the whole evening from 6.30 until the early hours of the morning?’
‘That’s right, Sergeant – you are a sergeant, aren’t you? If not, I’m so sorry. It’s just that you look so very like a sergeant. We were together from 6.30 until about two in the morning. I don’t suppose you’re interested in what we were doing between, say, eleven o’clock and two. If you are, you’d better ask Miss Etienne. She’ll be able to give an account suitable for your chaste ears. I suppose you’ll be wanting all this in the form of a statement?’
It gave Kate considerable satisfaction to say that they would indeed and that he could come to Wapping Police Station to make it.
Under questioning by Kate so gentle and patient that it seemed only to increase his terror, Mr Simon confirmed that he had heard them come in at eleven. He had been listening for Declan because he always slept more soundly knowing that there was someone in the house. That was partly why he had suggested to Mr Cartwright that he should live on the premises. But once he had heard the door, he had settled to sleep. He wouldn’t have heard if either of them had subsequently gone out.
Unlocking the car, Kate said: ‘Shit scared, wasn’t he? Cartwright, I mean. D’you think he’s a rogue or a fool or both, or just a pretty boy with a taste for baubles? What on earth does an intelligent woman like Claudia Etienne see in him?’
‘Oh come on, Kate. Since when has intelligence had anything to do with sex? I’m not sure they aren’t incompatible, sex and intelligence I mean.’
‘They aren’t for me. Intelligence turns me on.’
‘Yes I know.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply.
‘Nothing. I find I do best with pretty, good-natured, obliging women who aren’t very bright.’
‘Like most of your sex. You should try to train yourself out of it. How much do you think that alibi’s worth?’
‘About as much as Rupert Farlow’s. Cartwright and Claudia Etienne could have killed Etienne, taken the launch straight over to Greenwich pier and easily been in the restaurant by eight. There’s not a lot of traffic on the river after dark, the chances of anyone seeing them aren’t great. Another boring job of checking.’
Kate said: ‘He has a motive – both of them have. If Claudia Etienne is fool enough to marry him he’ll be getting a wealthy wife.’
Daniel said: ‘Do you think he’s got the bottle to kill anyone?’
‘It didn’t need much bottle, did it? All he had to do was entice Etienne into that killing room. He didn’t have to stab or bludgeon or strangle. He didn’t even have to face his victim.’
‘One of them would have had to go back later and do that business with the snake. That would have taken some guts. I can’t see Claudia Etienne doing that, not to her brother.’
‘Oh I don’t know. If she was prepared to kill him, why balk at desecrating the body? Do you want to drive or shall I?’
While Kate took the wheel, Daniel telephoned Wapping. It was apparent that there was news. Replacing the receiver after a few minutes, he said: ‘The lab report is in. I’ve just heard the blood analysis from Robbins in boring detail. There was a blood saturation of 73 per cent. He probably died pretty quickly. Seven-thirty seems about right for the time of death. You get dizziness and headache at 30 per cent, incoordination and mental confusion at 40 per cent, exhaustion at 50 per cent and unconsciousness at 60 per cent. Weakness may come on suddenly because of muscular suboxia.’
Kate asked: ‘Anything on the rubble blocking the flue?’
‘It came from the chimney. It’s the same stuff. But we expected that.’
Kate said: ‘We already know that the gas fire isn’t defective and we’ve got no significant prints. What about the window cord?’
‘That’s rather more difficult. The likelihood is that it was deliberately frayed with some bluntish implement and over a period of time, but they can’t be 100 per cent sure. The fibres were crushed and broken, not cut. The rest of the cord was old and in parts weak, but they could see no reason why it should have snapped at that point unless it had been deliberately interfered with. Oh, and there’s one other finding. There was a minute stain of mucus on the head of the snake. That means that it was rammed into the mouth immediately or very soon after the sharp object was removed.’
42
On Sunday, 17 October Dalgliesh decided to take Kate with him to interview Sonia Clements’ sister, Sister Agnes, at her Brighton convent. He would have preferred to go alone, but a convent, even an Anglican one, and even for the son of a rector with High Church tendencies, was unfamiliar ground, to be approached with circumspection. Without a woman as chaperon he might not be permitted to see Sister Agnes except in the presence of the Mother Superior or another nun. He wasn’t sure what he expected to get from the visit but his instinct, which he sometimes distrusted but had learned not to ignore, told him that there was something to be learned. The two deaths, so very different, were linked by more than that bare upper room in which one person had chosen to die, the other had fought to live. Sonia Clements had worked at Peverell Press for twenty-four years; it was Gerard Etienne who had sacked her. Was that ruthless decision a sufficient reason for the suicide? And if not, why had she chosen to die? Who, if anyone, might have been tempted to avenge that death?
The weather held. An early mist lifted to promise another day of mellow if fitful sunshine. Even the London air held something of the sweetness of the summer and a light breeze dragged tatters of thin cloud across an azure sky. Making his tedious and circuitous way through the suburbs of south London with Kate at his side, Dalgliesh, with the return of a boyish longing for the sight and sound of the sea, found himself hoping that the convent would be situated on the coast. They spoke little on the journey. Dalgliesh preferred to drive in silence and Kate could tolerate even taciturnity without the need to chat. It was, he reflected, not the least of her virtues. He had called for her at her new flat but had waited in the Jaguar for her to appear rather than taking the lift and ringing her doorbell when she might have felt an obligation to invite him in. He valued his own privacy too much to risk invading hers. She had appeared precisely on time as he had expected. She looked different and he realized how seldom he saw her wearing a skirt. He smiled inwardly, wondering whether she had hesitated over the choice before deciding that her usual trousers might be seen as inappropriate for a visit to a convent. He suspected that, despite his sex, he might be more at home there than Kate.
His hope, never realistic, of stealing five minutes for a brisk walk along the edge of the beach was due to be frustrated. The convent stood on rising ground above a dull but busy main road, separated from it by an eight-foot brick wall. The main gate stood open and, turning in, they saw an ornate building in harsh red brick, obviously Victorian and as obviously designed as an institution, probably to house the first sisters of the order. The four storeys of identical windows placed closely together and ranged with precision reminded Dalgliesh uncomfortably of a prison, a thought which may have occurred to the architect since the incongruous addition of a thin spire at one end of the building and a tower at the other looked like afterthoughts, designed as much to humanize as to embellish. A wide sweep of gravel curved upwards to a front door of almost black oak banded with iron, which would have been more appropriate as the entrance to a Norman keep. To their right they could glimpse a brick-built church, large enough to serve a parish, with a graceless spire and narrow lancet windows. To the left was contrast; a low modern building with a covered terrace and small formal garden, which he guessed was the hospice for the dying.
There was only one car, a Ford, standing in front of the convent and Dalgliesh parked neatly beside it. Pausing outside the car for a moment, he glanced back over the terraced lawns and could at last glimpse the English Channel. Short streets of small coloured houses, pale blue, p
ink and green, their roofs patterned with a frail geometry of television aerials, ran down in parallel lines to the layered blue of the sea, their precisely ordered domesticity contrasting with the heavy Victorian pile at his back.
There was no sign of life from the main building but, as he turned to lock the car door, he saw a nun turn the corner of the hospice with a patient in a wheelchair. The patient wore a striped white-and-blue cap with a red bobble and was covered with a rug drawn up to the chin. The nun bent to whisper and the patient laughed, a thin falling trickle of joyous notes on the quiet air.
He pulled the iron chain to the left of the door and heard its echoing clangour even through the thick iron-bounded oak. The square grille slid open and a gentle-faced nun looked out. Dalgliesh gave his name and held out his warrant card. At once the door was opened and the nun, wordless, but still smiling, gestured them to enter. They found themselves in a wide hall which smelled not unpleasantly of mild disinfectant. The floor was chequered with black and white tiles which looked freshly scrubbed and the walls were bare except for a sepia portrait, obviously Victorian, of a formidable grave-faced nun whom Dalgliesh assumed to be the foundress of the order, and a reproduction of Millais’ Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop in an ornate carved-wood frame. The nun, still smiling, still wordless, ushered them into a small room to the right of the hall and with a somewhat theatrical gesture silently invited them to sit. Dalgliesh wondered if she was deaf and dumb.
The room was sparsely furnished but was not unwelcoming. The central table, highly polished, held a bowl of late roses and there were two easy chairs covered with faded cretonne set in front of the double windows. The walls were plain except for a large and ornate wood and silver crucifix of horrific realism to the right of the fireplace. It looked, Dalgliesh thought, Spanish and as if it must once have hung in a church. Over the fireplace was a copy in oil of a Madonna offering a bunch of grapes to the Christ Child which it took him some time to identify as Mignard’s La Vierge à la Grappe. A brass plaque bore the name of the donor. There were four upright dining chairs set in an uninviting line against the right-hand wall, but Dalgliesh and Kate remained standing.
They were not kept waiting long. The door opened and a nun entered with brisk self-assurance and held out her hand.
‘You are Commander Dalgliesh and Inspector Miskin? Welcome to St Anne’s. I am Mother Mary Clare. We spoke when you telephoned, Commander. Would you and the Inspector care for some coffee?’
The hand which briefly grasped his was plump but cool. He said: ‘No thank you, Mother. That is kind of you but we hope not to inconvenience you for too long.’
There was nothing intimidating about her. Her short and sturdy body was dignified by the long blue-grey habit bound with a leather belt, but she looked as comfortable in it as if the formal garb were workaday clothes. A single heavy cross in dark wood hung from a cord round her neck and her face, soft and pale as dough, bulged like a baby’s from the constricting wimple. But the eyes behind the steel spectacles were shrewd, and the little mouth, for all its delicate softness, held the promise of an uncompromising firmness. Dalgliesh knew that he and Kate were subject to a scrutiny as keen as it was unobtrusive.
Then, with a little nod, she said: ‘I’ll send Sister Agnes to you. It’s a lovely day, perhaps you would care to walk together in the rose garden.’
It was, Dalgliesh recognized, a command not a suggestion, but he knew that in that first brief encounter they had passed some private test. Had she been less than satisfied he had no doubt that the interview would have taken place in this room and under her supervision. She tugged at the bell-cord and the little smiling nun who had let them in again appeared.
‘Will you ask Sister Agnes to be good enough to join us?’
Again they waited in silence, still standing. In less than two minutes the door opened and a tall nun entered alone. The Mother Superior said: ‘This is Sister Agnes. Sister, this is Commander Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard and Inspector Miskin. I have suggested that you might like to walk outside in the rose garden.’
With a valedictory nod but no formal goodbye she was gone.
The nun who confronted them with wary eyes could not have been more different from the Mother Superior. The habit was the same, except that her cross was smaller, but on her it conferred a hieratic dignity, remote and a little mysterious. The Mother Superior had looked dressed for a stint at the kitchen stove; it was difficult to imagine Sister Agnes except at the altar. She was very thin, long-limbed and strong-featured, the wimple emphasizing the high cheekbones, the strong line of the eyebrows and the uncompromising set of the wide mouth.
She said: ‘Then shall we look at the roses, Commander?’ Dalgliesh opened the door and he and Kate followed her out of the reception room and through the hall on almost silent feet.
She led the way down the grand path to the terraced rose garden. The beds were in three long rows divided by parallel gravel paths, each path four stone steps down from the one above. There would be just room for the three of them to walk abreast, first along the top path, then down the steps, then back along the second path to the second flight of steps and the forty yards of the lowest path before turning, a bleak perambulation carried out in full view of all the convent windows. He wondered if there was a more private garden at the rear of the convent. Even if there was they were not, apparently, expected to walk there.
Sister Agnes paced between them, almost as tall as his six feet two inches, her head held high. She was wearing a long grey cardigan over her habit and with each hand thrust deeply into the opposite cuff as if for warmth. With her bound arms held tightly against her body she reminded Dalgliesh uncomfortably of old pictures he had seen of mental patients in strait-jackets. It seemed that she walked between them like a prisoner under escort, and he wondered if that was how the three of them would appear to any secret watcher from the high windows. The thought, and it was not agreeable, apparently also entered Kate’s mind for, muttering an excuse, she dropped a little behind and, kneeling, appeared to be tying the shoelace of her brogues. When she caught up with them she took her place next to Dalgliesh.
It was Dalgliesh who broke the silence. He said: ‘It is good of you to see us. I’m sorry to have to trouble you, particularly as it must seem an intrusion on private grief. I need to ask you about the death of your sister.’
‘“Intrusion on private grief”. That was the telephone message I received from Mother Superior. I suppose they are words you often have to use, Commander.’
‘Intrusion is sometimes inseparable from my job.’
‘And have you specific questions you hope I can answer, or is this a more general intrusion?’
‘A little of both.’
‘But you know how my sister died. Sonia killed herself, there is no possible doubt about that. She left a note at the scene. She also posted a letter to me on the morning she died. She didn’t think the news was worth a first-class stamp. I received it three days later.’
Dalgliesh said: ‘Would you mind telling me what was in the note? I know, of course, what was in the note to the coroner.’
She didn’t speak for a few seconds which seemed much longer, then spoke without emphasis as if reciting a piece of prose learned by heart. ‘“What I am about to do will seem a sin in your eyes. Please try to understand that what you see as sinful is to me both natural and right. We have made different choices but they lead to the same end. After the vacillating years at least I can be absolute for death. Try not to grieve for me too long; grief is only an indulgence. I could not have had a better sister.”’
She said: ‘Is that what you want to hear, Commander? It is hardly relevant, surely, to your present inquiry.’
‘We have to look at anything which happened at Innocent House in the months before Gerard Etienne died which could have had a bearing even remotely on that death. One is your sister’s suicide. The gossip in London literary circles and at Innocent House seems to be that Gerard Etienne drove
her to that act. If he did, her friend – a particular friend – might have wished him harm.’
She said: ‘I was Sonia’s particular friend. She had no particular friends except me, and I had no reason to wish Gerard Etienne dead. I was here on the day or night when he died. That is a fact you can easily check.’
Dalgliesh said: ‘I was not suggesting, Sister, that you were in any way personally concerned with Gerard Etienne’s death. I am asking if you knew of any other person close to your sister who could have resented the way she died.’
‘None except myself. But I resented it, Commander. Suicide is the final despair, the final rejection of God’s grace, the ultimate sin.’
Dalgliesh said quietly: ‘Then perhaps, Sister, it will receive the ultimate mercy.’
They had reached the end of the first path and together they descended the steps and turned left. Suddenly she said, ‘I dislike roses in autumn. They are essentially summer flowers. The December roses are the most depressing, brown and shrivelled buds on a tangle of prickles. I can hardly bear to walk here in December. Like us, roses don’t know when to die.’
He said: ‘But today we can almost believe it is summer.’ He paused, then added: ‘I expect you know that Gerard Etienne died from carbon-monoxide poisoning and in the same room as your sister. It is unlikely in his case to have been suicide. It could be accidental death, a blocked flue which caused the gas fire to malfunction, but we have to consider a third possibility, that the fire was deliberately tampered with.’
She said: ‘You’re saying that you believe he was murdered?’