Devices and Desires

by P. D. James

  Reaching down with difficulty, Oliphant dragged his grip onto the seat beside him, took out a pair of Bumble trainers and placed them on the table neatly, side-by-side. Rickards watched Lessingham’s face. He controlled himself immediately but he hadn’t been able to disguise the shock of recognition in the eyes, the tensing of the muscles around the mouth. The pair of trainers, pristine, new, grey and white, with the small bumblebee on each heel, seemed to dominate the cabin. Having placed them there, Oliphant ignored them.

  He said: “But you were south of the water towers at the power station. The scratch is on the starboard side. You must have been travelling north, sir, when you got that scrape.”

  “I turned for home when I was about fifty yards beyond the towers. I’d planned to make the power station the limit of the journey.”

  Rickards said: “These trainers, sir, have you seen a pair like these?”

  “Of course. They’re Bumbles. Not everyone can afford them, but most people have seen them.”

  “Have you seen them worn by anyone who worked at Larksoken?”

  “Yes, Toby Gledhill had a pair. After he killed himself, his parents asked me if I’d clear out his clothes. There weren’t very many. Toby travelled light, but I suppose there were a couple of suits, the usual trousers and jackets and half a dozen pairs of shoes. The trainers were among them. Actually, they were almost new. He bought them about ten days before he died. He only wore them once.”

  “And what did you do with them, sir?”

  “I bundled up all the clothes and took them to the Old Rectory for the next church jumble sale. The Copleys have a small room at the back of the house where people can leave their junk. From time to time Dr. Mair puts a notice on the notice board asking people to donate anything they don’t want. It’s part of the policy of being part of the community, all one happy family on the headland. We may not always go to church but we show goodwill by bestowing on the righteous our cast-off clothes.”

  “When did you take Mr. Gledhill’s clothes to the Old Rectory?”

  “I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was a fortnight after he died. Just before the weekend, I think. Probably on Friday, twenty-sixth August. Mrs. Dennison may remember. I doubt whether it’s worth asking Mrs. Copley, although I did see her.”

  “So you handed them over to Mrs. Dennison?”

  “That’s right. Actually, the back door of the rectory is usually kept open during daylight hours and people can walk in and drop anything they want to leave. But I thought on this occasion that it would be better to hand the things over formally. I wasn’t entirely sure they’d be welcome. Some people are superstitious about buying the clothes of the recently dead. And it seemed, well, inappropriate just to drop them.”

  “What happened at the Old Rectory?”

  “Nothing very much. Mrs. Dennison opened the door and showed me into the drawing room. Mrs. Copley was there and I explained why I had called. She produced the usual meaningless platitudes about Toby’s death, and Mrs. Dennison asked me if I would like tea. I declined and I followed her through the hall to the room at the back where they store the jumble. There’s a large tea chest there which holds the shoes. The pairs are just tied by the laces and thrown in. I had Toby’s clothes in a suitcase, and Mrs. Dennison and I unpacked it together. She said that the suits were really too good for the jumble sale and asked if I’d mind if she sold them separately, provided, of course, the money went to church funds. She thought she might get a better price. I had a feeling that she was wondering whether Mr. Copley might not use one of the jackets. I said she could do what she liked with them.”

  “And what happened to the trainers? Were they put into the tea chest with the rest of the shoes?”

  “Yes, but in a plastic bag. Mrs. Dennison said they were in too good a condition to be thrown in with the others and get dirty. She went off and returned with the bag. She seemed to be uncertain what to do with the suits, so I said I’d leave the suitcase. It was Toby’s after all. It could be sold at the jumble sale with the rest of the things. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, jumble to jumble. I was glad to see the end of it.”

  Rickards said: “I read about Dr. Gledhill’s suicide, of course. It must have been particularly distressing for you, who actually saw it happen. He was described as a young man of brilliant promise.”

  “He was a creative scientist. Mair will confirm that, if you’re interested one way or the other. Of course, all good science is creative, whatever the humanities try to tell you, but there are scientists who have this special vision, genius as opposed to talent, inspiration as well as the necessary patient conscientiousness. Someone, I forget who, described it rather well. Most of us edge forward, painfully advancing, yard by yard; they parachute behind enemy lines. He was young, only twenty-four. He could have become anything.”

  Rickards thought, Anything or nothing, like most of these young geniuses. Early death usually conferred a brief vicarious immortality. He’d never known a young DCI, accidentally killed, who wasn’t at once proclaimed a potential Chief Constable. He asked: “What exactly was he doing at the power station, what was his job?”

  “Working with Mair on his PWR safety studies. Briefly, it’s to do with the behaviour of the core in abnormal conditions. Toby never discussed it with me, probably because he knew I couldn’t understand the complicated computer codes. I’m just a poor bloody engineer. Mair is due to publish the study before he leaves for his rumoured new job, no doubt under both their names and with a suitable acknowledgement to his collaborator. All that will last of Toby is his name under Mair’s on a scientific paper.”

  He sounded utterly weary and, looking towards the open door, made a half-movement as if to get up, out of the claustrophobic little cabin and into the air. Then he said, his eyes still on the door: “It’s no use trying to explain Toby to you, you wouldn’t understand. It would be a waste of your time and mine.”

  “You seem very sure of that, Mr. Lessingham.”

  “I am sure, very sure. I can’t explain why without being offensive. So why don’t we keep it simple, stick to the facts. Look, he was an exceptional person. He was clever, he was kind, he was beautiful. If you find one of these qualities in a human being, you’re lucky; if you find all three, then you get someone rather special. I was in love with him. He knew, because I told him. He wasn’t in love with me and he wasn’t gay. Not that it’s any business of yours. I’m telling you because it was a fact and you’re supposed to deal in facts, and because if you’re determined to be interested in Toby you may as well get him right. And there’s another reason. You’re obviously grubbing about for all the dirt you can find. I’d rather you had facts from me than rumours from other people.”

  Rickards said: “So you didn’t have a sexual relationship.”

  Suddenly the air was rent with a wild screeching and there was a beating of white wings against the porthole. Outside someone must be feeding the seagulls.

  Lessingham started up as if the sound were alien to him. Then he collapsed back in his seat and said with more weariness than anger: “What the hell has that to do with Hilary Robarts’s murder?”

  “Possibly nothing at all, in which case the information will be kept private. But at this stage it’s for me to decide what may or may not be relevant.”

  “We spent one night together two weeks before he died. As I said, he was kind. It was the first and the last time.”

  “Is that generally known?”

  “We didn’t broadcast it over local radio or write to the local paper or put up a notice in the staff canteen. Of course it wasn’t generally known, why the hell should it be?”

  “Would it have mattered if it had been? Would either of you have cared?”

  “Yes, I would, we both would. I would care in the way you would care if your sex life was sniggered about in public. Of course we would have cared. After he died, it ceased to matter as far as I was concerned. There’s this to be said for the death of a friend: it free
s you from so much you thought was important.”

  Frees you for what? thought Rickards. For murder, that iconoclastic act of protest and defiance, that single step across an unmarked, undefended frontier which, once taken, sets a man apart forever from the rest of his kind? But he decided to defer the obvious question.

  Instead he asked: “What sort of family had he?” The question sounded innocuous and banal, as if they were casually discussing a common acquaintance.

  “He had a father and a mother. That sort of family. What other sort is there?”

  But Rickards had resolved on patience. It was not a ploy that came easily to him, but he could recognize pain when its taut and naked sinews were thrust so close to his face. He said mildly: “I mean, what sort of background did he come from? Had he brothers or sisters?”

  “His father is a country parson. His mother is a country parson’s wife. He was an only child. His death nearly destroyed them. If we could have made it look like an accident, we would have. If lying could have helped, I would have lied. Why the hell didn’t he drown himself? That way there would at least have been room for doubt. Is that what you meant by background?”

  “It’s helping to fill in the picture.” He paused and then, almost casually, asked the seminal question. “Did Hilary Robarts know that you and Tobias Gledhill had spent a night together?”

  “Whatever possible relevance …? All right, it’s your job to do the scavenging. I know the system. You trawl up everything you can get your nets to and then throw away what you don’t want. In the process you learn a lot of secrets you’ve no particular right to know and cause a lot of pain. Do you enjoy that? Is that what gives you your kicks?”

  “Just answer the question, sir.”

  “Yes, Hilary knew. She found out by one of those coincidences which seem a one-in-a-million chance when they happen but which aren’t really so remarkable or unusual in real life. She drove past my house when Toby and I were leaving just after seven-thirty in the morning. She had taken a day’s leave, apparently, and must have left home early to drive off somewhere. It’s no use asking me where, because I don’t know. I suppose, like most other people, she has friends she visits from time to time. I mean, someone somewhere must have liked her.”

  “Did she ever speak about the encounter, to you or to anyone else you know?”

  “She didn’t make it public property. I think she regarded it as too valuable a piece of information to cast before the swine. She liked power, and this was certainly power of a kind. As she drove past, she slowed down almost to walking pace and stared straight into my eyes. I can remember that look: amusement, changing to contempt, then triumph. We understood each other all right. But she never subsequently spoke a word to me.”

  “Did she talk about it to Mr. Gledhill?”

  “Oh yes, she spoke to Toby all right. That’s the reason he killed himself.”

  “How do you know that she spoke to him? Did he tell you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re suggesting that she blackmailed him?”

  “I’m suggesting that he was unhappy, muddled, uncertain about every aspect of his life, his research, his future, his sexuality. I know that she attracted him sexually. He wanted her. She was one of those dominant, physically powerful women who do attract sensitive men like Toby. I think she knew that and she used it. I don’t know when she got hold of him or what she said to him, but I’m bloody sure that he’d be alive now if it weren’t for Hilary Robarts. And if you think that gives me a motive for her murder, you’re damned right. But I didn’t kill her and, that being so, you won’t find any evidence that I did. Part of me, a very small part, is actually sorry that she’s dead. I didn’t like her and I don’t think she was a happy woman, or even a particularly useful one. But she was healthy and intelligent and she was young. Death ought to be for the old, the sick and the tired. What I feel is a touch of lacrimae rerum. Even the death of an enemy diminishes us, apparently, or so, in certain moods, it seems. But that doesn’t mean I’d want her alive again. But it’s possible I’m prejudiced, perhaps even unjust. When Toby was happy, no one was more joyous. When he was miserable, he went down into his private hell. Perhaps she could reach him there, could help him. I know I couldn’t. It’s difficult to comfort a friend when you suspect that he sees it as a ploy to get him into your bed.”

  Rickards said: “You’ve been remarkably frank in suggesting a motive for yourself. But you haven’t given us a single piece of concrete evidence to support your allegation that Hilary Robarts was in any way responsible for Toby Gledhill’s death.”

  Lessingham looked straight into his eyes and seemed to be considering; then he said: “I’ve gone so far, I may as well tell you the rest. He spoke to me when he passed me on his way to death. He said, ‘Tell Hilary she doesn’t have to worry any more. I’ve made my choice.’ The next time I saw him he was climbing the fuelling machine. He balanced on it for a second, then dived down on top of the reactor. He meant me to see him die, and I saw him die.”

  Oliphant said: “A symbolic sacrifice.”

  “To the terrifying god of nuclear fission? I thought one of you might say that, Sergeant. That was the vulgar reaction. It’s altogether too crude and histrionic. All he wanted, for God’s sake, was the quickest way to break his neck.” He paused, seemed to consider, then went on: “Suicide is an extraordinary phenomenon. The result is irrevocable. Extinction. The end of all choice. But the precipitating action often seems so commonplace. A minor setback, momentary depression, the state of the weather, even a poor dinner. Would Toby have died if he’d spent the previous night with me instead of alone? If he was alone.”

  “Are you saying that he wasn’t?”

  “There was no evidence either way, and now there will never be. But, then, the inquest was remarkable for the lack of evidence about anything. There were three witnesses, myself and two others, to the way he died. No one was near him, no one could have pushed him, it couldn’t have been an accident. There was no evidence from me or anyone else about his state of mind. You could say that it was a scientifically conducted inquest. It stuck to the facts.”

  Oliphant said quietly: “And where do you think he spent the night before he died?”

  “With her.”

  “On what evidence?”

  “None that would stand up in a court. Only that I rang him three times between nine and midnight and he didn’t reply.”

  “And you didn’t tell that to the police or the coroner?”

  “On the contrary. I was asked when I’d last seen him. That was in the canteen on the day before he died. I mentioned my telephone call, but no one regarded it as important. Why should they? What did it prove? He could have been out walking. He could have decided not to answer the phone. There was no mystery about how he died. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get out of here and on with cleaning that bloody engine.”

  They walked in silence back to the car. Rickards said: “Arrogant bastard, isn’t he? He made his view brutally plain. No point in trying to explain anything to the police. He can’t say why without being offensive. You bet he can’t. We’re too thick, ignorant and insensitive to understand that a research scientist isn’t necessarily an unimaginative technocrat, that you can be sorry a woman is dead without necessarily wishing her alive again and that a sexually attractive boy might actually be prepared to go to bed with either sex.”

  Oliphant said: “He could have done it if he used the engine at full power. He’d have had to come ashore north of where she bathed and kept to the tide line, or we’d have seen his footprints. It was a thorough search, sir, at least a mile north and south. We identified Mr. Dalgliesh’s prints, but otherwise the upper beach was clean.”

  “Oh yes, he’d have kept pretty clear of the killing ground. But he could have beached the inflatable dinghy on shingle without much problem. There are stretches which are practically all pebbled, or with narrow strips of sand which he could leap over.”

 
“What about the old beach defences, the hunks of concrete? It would be difficult to come close to shore anywhere north within easy walking distance without risking the boat.”

  “He has risked the boat recently, hasn’t he? There’s this scrape along the bow. He can’t prove that he made it on the water towers. Cool about it, too, wasn’t he? Calmly admitted that if we’d been an hour later he’d have repaired it. Not that repainting would have done him much good; the evidence would still be there. All right, so he manages to manoeuvre the boat as close in shore as he can—say, a hundred yards north of where she was found—makes his way along the shingle and into the trees and waits quietly in their shadow. Or he could have loaded the folding bicycle into the dinghy and landed at a safer distance. He couldn’t cycle along the beach at high tide, but he’d have been safe enough on the coast road if he cycled without a light. He gets back to the boat and berths her again at Blakeney, just catching the high tide. No trouble about the knife or the shoes: he drops them overboard. We’ll get the boat examined, with his consent, of course, and I want a single-handed chap to make that journey. If we’ve got an experienced sailor among our chaps, use him. If not, get someone local and accompany him. We’ve got to time it to the minute. And we’d better make enquiries of the crab fishermen down Cromer way. Someone may have been out that night and seen his boat.”

  Oliphant said: “Obliging of him, sir, to hand us his motive on a plate.”

  “So obliging that I can’t help wondering whether it isn’t a smoke screen for something he didn’t tell us.”

  But as Rickards fastened his seat belt another possibility occurred to him. Lessingham had said nothing about his relationship with Toby Gledhill until he had been questioned about the Bumble trainers. He must know—how could he fail to?—that these linked the murder even more strongly to the headlanders and, in particular, to the Old Rectory. Was his new openness with the police less a compulsion to confide than a deliberate ploy to divert suspicion from another suspect? And if so, which of the suspects, Rickards wondered, was most likely to evoke this eccentric act of chivalry?