Devices and Desires

by P. D. James

  There was a moment’s silence and then Amy heard Caroline’s voice. It was clear and loud but to Amy’s ears it signalled a high note of fear. “No. We’re a party of four friends from Yarmouth, but we’ll probably put in at Wells. We’re all right. No help needed, thank you.”

  But the searchlight didn’t move. The boat was held as if suspended between sea and sky in a blaze of light. The seconds passed. Nothing more was said. Then the light was switched off and they heard again the sound of the engines, this time retreating. For a minute, still waiting, still frightened to speak, they shared a common desperate hope that the ruse had worked. And then they knew. The light held them again. And now the engines were roaring and the boat came straight at them out of the mist, with only time for Caroline to place an icy cheek against Amy’s. She said: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  And then the great hull towered above them. Amy heard the crack as the wood splintered and the boat leapt out of the water. She felt herself hurled through an eternity of wet darkness and then falling, endlessly falling, spread-eagled in time and space. And then there was the smack of the sea and a coldness so icy that for a few seconds she felt nothing. She came back to consciousness as she surfaced, gasping and fighting for breath, no more aware of the cold, feeling only the agony of a metal band crushing her chest, terror and the desperate fight to keep her head above water, to survive. Something hard scraped against her face, then floated free. She thrashed out with flailing arms and fastened on a plank of wood from the boat. It offered at least a chance. She rested her arms on it and felt the blessed release of strain. And now she was capable of rational thought. The plank might support her until morning light and the fog lifted. But she would be dead of cold and exhaustion long before then. Somehow to swim ashore was her only hope, but which way lay the shore? If the mist lifted she would be able to see the lights, perhaps even the light of the caravan. Neil would be there waving to her. But that was silly. The caravan was miles away. Neil would be desperately worried by now. And she had never finished those envelopes. Timmy might be crying for her. She had to get back to Timmy.

  But in the end the sea was merciful. The cold that numbed her arms so that she could no longer hold on to the plank numbed also her mind. She was slipping into unconsciousness when the searchlight again found her. She was beyond thought, beyond fear when the boat turned and came driving at full power into her body. And then there was silence and darkness and a single plank of wood gently bobbing where the sea was stained red.

  4

  It was after 8.00 before Rickards got home on Saturday night, but this was still earlier than usual and, for the first time in weeks, he was able to feel that an evening stretched ahead with its choices: a leisurely meal, television, radio, a gentle, undemanding catching-up with household chores, telephoning Susie, an early bed. But he was restless. Faced with a few hours of leisure, he was uncertain what to do with them. For a moment he wondered whether to go out for a solitary restaurant meal, but the effort of choosing, the expense, even the bother of booking seemed disproportionate to any possible pleasure. He showered and changed as if the steaming water were a ritual cleansing-away of his job, of murder and failure, which might give the evening before him some meaning, some pleasure. Then he opened a tin of baked beans, grilled four sausages and a couple of tomatoes and carried his tray into the sitting room to eat while watching the television.

  At 9.20 he switched off the set and, for a few minutes, sat immobile with the tray still on his lap. He thought that he must look like one of those modern paintings, Man with a Tray, a stiff figure immobilized in an ordinary setting made unordinary, even sinister. As he sat, trying to summon the energy even to wash up, the familiar depression settled on him, the sense that he was a stranger in his own house. He had felt more at home in that fire-lit, stone-walled room at Larksoken Mill, drinking Dalgliesh’s whisky, than he did here in his own sitting room, in his familiar, tightly upholstered chair, eating his own food. And it wasn’t only the absence of Susie, the heavily pregnant ghost in the opposite chair. He found himself comparing the two rooms, seeking in his different responses a clue to the deepening depression of which the sitting room seemed partly a symbol, partly a cause. It wasn’t only that the mill had a real wood fire, hissing and spitting real sparks and smelling of autumn, while his was synthetic, or that Dalgliesh’s furniture was old, polished by centuries of use, arranged purely for convenience, not for show, not even that the paintings were real oils, genuine water-colours, or that the whole room had been put together with no apparent sense that anything in it was particularly highly regarded for its own sake. Above all, he decided, the difference surely lay in the books, the two walls covered with shelves holding books of every age and description, books for use, for pleasure in the reading and the handling. His own small collection, and Susie’s, was in the bedroom. Susie had decreed that the books were too diverse, too tattered to be worthy of a place in what she called the “lounge,” and there weren’t many of them. In recent years he had had so little time for reading: a collection of modern adventure novels in paperback, four volumes from a book club to which, for a couple of years, he had belonged, a few hardback travel books, police manuals, Susie’s school prizes for neatness and needlework. But a child should be brought up with books. He had read somewhere that it was the best possible beginning to life, to be surrounded with books, to have parents who encouraged reading. Perhaps they could fit shelves each side of the fireplace and make a start. Dickens: he had enjoyed Dickens at school; Shakespeare, of course, and the major English poets. His daughter—neither he nor Susie doubted that the baby would be a girl—would learn to love poetry.

  But all that would have to wait. He could at least make a start with the housework. The room’s air of dull pretentiousness was partly due, he realized, to dirt. It looked like an uncleaned hotel room in which no one took pride because no guest was expected and those few who came wouldn’t care. He realized now that he should have kept on Mrs. Adcock, who came in to clean for three hours every Wednesday. But she had only worked for them in the last two months of Susie’s pregnancy. He had hardly met her, and he disliked the thought of handing over house keys to a comparative stranger, more from his love of privacy than from any lack of trust. So, despite Susie’s misgivings, he had paid Mrs. Adcock a retainer and had said that he could cope. Now he added his supper things to a load of crockery in the dishwasher and took a duster from those neatly folded in the drawer. Dust lay heavy on every surface. In the sitting room he drew the duster along the windowsill and saw with wonder the black line of grimed dirt.

  He moved next to the hall. The cyclamen on the table beside the telephone had unaccountably wilted, despite his hurried daily watering, perhaps because of it. He was standing, duster in hand, wondering whether to throw it out or whether rescue was possible, when his ears caught the crunch of wheels on the gravel. He opened the door, then flung it wide with such force that it swung back and the latch clicked. Then he was at the taxi door, gently receiving the swollen figure into his arms.

  “My darling, oh, my darling, why didn’t you ring?”

  She leaned against him. He saw with compassion the white, transparent skin, the smudges under her eyes. He seemed to feel even beneath the thick tweed of her coat the stirring of his child.

  “I didn’t wait. Mummy had only gone up the road to see Mrs. Blenkinsop. I just had time to ring for a taxi and leave her a note. I had to come. You’re not cross?”

  “Oh, my love, my darling. Are you all right?”

  “Only tired.” She laughed. “Darling, you’ve let the door close. You’ll have to use my key.”

  He took her handbag from her, rummaged for the key and her purse, paid the driver, who had placed her one case by the door. His hands were shaking so that he could hardly fit the key in the lock. He half-lifted her over the threshold and lowered her onto the hall chair.

  “Sit there a moment, darling, while I see to the case.”

  “Terry, the
cyclamen is dead. You’ve over-watered it.”

  “No, I haven’t. It died missing you.”

  She laughed. The sound was strong, a happy, contented peal. He wanted to lift her up into his arms and shout aloud. Suddenly serious, she said: “Has Mummy phoned?”

  “Not yet, but she will.”

  And then, as if on cue, the telephone rang. He snatched it up. This time, awaiting the sound of his mother-in-law’s voice, he was totally without fear, without anxiety. By that one magnificent affirming action Susie had placed them both for ever beyond her mother’s destructive reach. He felt that he had been lifted out of misery as if by a huge wave and set for ever with his feet firmly on a rock. There was a second in which he saw Susie’s look of anxiety, so acute that it was a spasm of pain, and then she got clumsily to her feet and leaned against him, slipping her hand into his. But the caller wasn’t Mrs. Cartwright.

  Oliphant said: “Jonathan Reeves has rung headquarters, sir, and they’ve put him on to me. He says that Caroline Amphlett and Amy Camm have gone boating together. They’ve been gone three hours now, and the mist is getting thicker.”

  “Then why did he ring the police? He should have got on to the Coast Guard.”

  “I’ve already done that, sir. That wasn’t really why he phoned. He and Amphlett didn’t spend last Sunday evening together. She was on the headland. He wanted to tell us that Amphlett lied. So did he.”

  “I don’t suppose they’re the only ones. We’ll pull them in first thing tomorrow morning and hear their explanations. I’ve no doubt she’ll come up with one.”

  Oliphant said stolidly: “But why should she lie if she’s got nothing to hide? And it isn’t just the false alibi. Reeves says that their love affair was only pretence, that she only pretended to care for him to cover up her lesbian affair with Camm. I reckon the two women were in it together, sir. Amphlett must have known that Robarts swam at night. All the staff at Larksoken knew that. And she worked closely with Mair, none closer. She’s his PA. He could have told her all the details of that dinner party, how the Whistler operated. There’d be no problem in getting hold of the Bumbles. Camm knew about the jumble box even if Amphlett didn’t. Her kid had clothes from it.”

  Rickards said: “There’d be no trouble in getting hold of the shoes. There might be trouble in wearing them. Neither woman is tall.”

  Oliphant dismissed what he probably felt was a puerile objection. He said: “But they would have had no time to try them on. Better to grab a pair too large than too small, a soft shoe rather than unyielding leather. And Camm’s got a motive, sir. A double motive. She threatened Robarts after her kid was pushed over. We’ve got Mrs. Jago’s evidence of their quarrel. And if Camm wanted to stay on in the caravan, close to her lover, it was important to put a stop to Robarts’s libel action against Pascoe. And Camm almost certainly knew exactly where Robarts took her nightly swim. If Amphlett didn’t tell her, Pascoe probably did. He admitted to us that he used to sneak out occasionally to spy on her. Dirty-minded little devil. And there’s another thing. Camm has a dog lead, remember. So has Amphlett, come to that. Reeves said that she was exercising her dog on the headland Sunday night.”

  “There were no paw marks at the scene, Sergeant. Don’t let’s get too excited. She might have been at the scene, but the dog wasn’t.”

  “Kept in the car, sir. Maybe she didn’t have him with her, but I reckon she used the lead. There’s another thing. Those two wineglasses in Thyme Cottage. I reckon Caroline Amphlett was with Robarts before she went for that last swim. She’s Mair’s PA. Robarts would have let her in without question. It all adds up, sir. It’s a water-tight case, sir.”

  Rickards thought that it was as water-tight as a sieve. But Oliphant was right. There was a case, even if there wasn’t as yet a scintilla of proof. He mustn’t let his feelings about the man cloud his judgement. And one fact was depressingly obvious. If he arrested another suspect, this theory, for all the lack of firm evidence, would be a gift to any defence counsel.

  He said: “Ingenious, but it’s totally circumstantial. Anyway, it can wait until tomorrow. There’s nothing we can do tonight.”

  “We ought to see Reeves, sir. He may change his story before morning.”

  “You see him. And let me know when Camm and Amphlett get back. I’ll see you at Hoveton at eight. We’ll pull them in then. And I don’t want them questioned, either of them, until I see them tomorrow. Is that understood?”

  “Yes sir. Good night, sir.”

  When he had replaced the receiver, Susie said: “If you think you ought to go, darling, don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right now I’m home.”

  “It’s not urgent. Oliphant can cope. He likes being in charge. Let’s make him a happy Jumbo.”

  “But I don’t want to be a trouble to you, darling. Mummy thought that life would be better for you with me away.”

  He turned and took her in his arms. He felt his own tears warm on her face. He said: “Life is never better for me when you’re away.”

  5

  The bodies were washed up two days later, two miles south of Hunstanton, or enough of them to make identification certain. On the Monday morning a retired tax officer, exercising his dalmatian dog on the beach, saw the animal sniffing round what looked like a white slab of lard entwined with seaweed, rolling and gliding at the edge of the tide. As he drew close the object was sucked back by the receding wave, then taken up by the next surge and flung at his feet, and he found himself gazing in incredulous horror at the torso of a woman neatly severed at the waist. For a second he stood petrified, staring down as the tide boiled in the empty socket of the left eye and swayed the flattened breasts. Then he turned away and was violently sick before shambling like a drunkard up the shingle of the beach, dragging the dog by its collar.

  The body of Caroline Amphlett, unmutilated, was washed up on the same tide together with planks from the boat and part of the roof of the cabin. They were found by Daft Billy, a harmless and amiable beachcomber, on one of his regular sorties. It was the wood which first caught his eye, and he dragged the planks ashore with squeals of glee. Then, his prize secure, he turned his puzzled attention to the drowned girl. It was not the first body he had found in forty years of beachcombing and he knew what he must do, whom he must tell. First he placed his hands under the arms and pulled the body out of the reach of the tide. Then, moaning softly, as if mourning his clumsiness, her lack of response, he knelt beside her and, pulling off his jacket, spread it over the torn rags of her shirt and slacks.

  “Comfy?” he asked. “Comfy?”

  Then, putting out his hand, he carefully moved the strands of hair out of her eyes and, rocking himself gently, began crooning to her as he might to a child.

  6

  Dalgliesh made three visits on foot to the caravan after lunch on Thursday, but on no occasion was Neil Pascoe at home. He was unwilling to telephone to check whether the man had returned. He could think of no valid excuse for wanting to see him, and it seemed best to make the visit part of a walk, as if the decision to call at the caravan were merely an impulse. In one sense he supposed it could be a visit of condolence, but he had only known Amy Camm by sight and that excuse seemed to him dishonest as well as unconvincing. Shortly after five o’clock, when the light was beginning to fade, he tried again. This time the door of the caravan was wide open, but there was no sign of Pascoe. While he stood hesitating, a billow of smoke rose from above the edge of the cliff, followed by a brief flash of flame, and the air was suddenly filled with the acrid smell of bonfire.

  From the edge of the cliff he looked down on an extraordinary scene. Pascoe had built a fireplace of large stones and chunks of concrete and had lit a fire of brushwood, onto which he was emptying papers, box files, cartons, bottles and what looked like an assortment of clothes. The pile awaiting burning was caged down against the strengthening wind by the bars of Timmy’s cot; that too, no doubt, destined for the flames. A soiled mattress lay curled to one side l
ike a makeshift and ineffectual windbreak. Pascoe, wearing only a pair of grubby shorts, was working like a demented demon, his eyes white saucers in his blackened face, his arms and naked chest glistening with sweat. As Dalgliesh slithered down the sandy slope of the cliff and moved up to the fire, he nodded a brief acknowledgement of his presence, then began dragging a small, scuffed suitcase from under the cot bars with desperate haste. Then he sprang up and balanced himself on the wide rim of the fireplace, his legs wide apart. In the ruddy glow of the flames his whole body gleamed, seeming for a moment transparent, as if it were lit from within, and the great dollops of sweat ran from his shoulders like blood. With a shout he swung the case high over the fire and wrenched it open. The baby clothes fell in a brightly coloured shower, and the flames leapt like living tongues to snatch at the woollen garments in mid-air, spinning them into briefly burning torches before they fell blackened into the heart of the fire. Pascoe stood for a moment breathing heavily, then sprang down with a cry half-exultant, half-despairing. Dalgliesh could understand and partly shared his exultation in this tumultuous juxtaposition of wind, fire and water. With each gust the tongues of flame roared and hissed so that he saw through a shimmering haze of heat the veins of the tumbling waves stained as if with blood. As Pascoe emptied into the fire yet another box file of papers, the charred fragments rose and danced like frantic birds, blew gently against Dalgliesh’s face and settled over the dry stones of the upper shingle like a black contagion. He could feel his eyes prickling with the smoke.