by P. D. James
Unprovoked, Dalgliesh replied equably:
“More than I would have expected. We seldom wrote except to exchange cards at Christmas but he was a man more often in my thoughts, I suppose, than some people I saw almost daily. I don’t know why I never bothered to get in touch. One makes the excuse of busyness. But, from what I remember of him, I can’t quite see how he fitted in here.”
Julius laughed:
“He didn’t. He was recruited when Wilfred was going through a more orthodox phase, I suppose to give Toynton Grange a certain religious respectability. But in recent months I sensed a coolness between them, didn’t you, Henry? Father Baddeley was probably no longer sure whether Wilfred wanted a priest or a guru. Wilfred picks up any scraps of philosophy, metaphysics and orthodox religion which take his fancy to make his Technicolor dreamcoat. As a result, as you’ll probably discover if you stay long enough, this place suffers from the lack of a coherent ethos. There’s nothing more fatal to success. Take my London club, dedicated simply to the enjoyment of good food and wine and the exclusion of bores and pederasts. It’s unstated of course, but we all know where we stand. The aims are simple and comprehensible and, therefore, realizable. Here the poor dears don’t know whether they’re in a nursing home, a commune, a hotel, a monastery or a particularly dotty lunatic asylum. They even have meditation sessions from time to time. I’m afraid Wilfred may be getting a touch of the Zens.”
Carwardine broke in:
“He’s muddled, but which of us isn’t? Basically he’s kind and well meaning, and at least he’s spent his own personal fortune at Toynton Grange. In this age of noisy and self-indulgent commitment when the first principle of private or public protest is that it mustn’t relate to anything for which the protestor can be held in the least responsible or involve him in the slightest personal sacrifice that, at least, is in his favour.”
“You like him?” asked Dalgliesh.
Henry Carwardine answered with surprising roughness.
“As he’s saved me from the ultimate fate of incarceration in a long-stay hospital and gives me a private room at a price I can afford, I’m naturally bound to find him delightful.”
There was a short, embarrassed silence. Sensing it, Carwardine added:
“The food is the worst thing about Toynton, but that can be remedied, even if I do occasionally feel like a greedy schoolboy feasting alone in my room. And listening to my fellow inmates read their favourite bleeding chunks from popular theology and the less enterprising anthologies of English verse is a small price to pay for silence at dinner.”
Dalgliesh said:
“Staffing must be a difficulty. According to Mrs. Hewson, Anstey chiefly relies on an ex-convict and an otherwise unemployable matron.”
Julius Court reached out for the claret and refilled the three glasses. He said:
“Dear Maggie, discreet as always. It’s true that Philby, the handyman, has some kind of record. He’s not exactly an advertisement for the place, but someone has to sluice the foul linen, slaughter the chickens, clean the lavatories and do the other jobs which Wilfred’s sensitive soul cringes at. Besides, he’s passionately devoted to Dot Moxon, and I’ve no doubt that helps to keep her happy. Since Maggie has let slip so much, you may as well know the truth about Dot. Perhaps you remember something of the case—she was that notorious staff nurse at Nettingfield Geriatric Hospital. Four years ago she struck a patient. It was only a light blow but the old woman fell, knocked her head against a bedside locker and nearly died. Reading between the lines at the subsequent enquiry report, she was a selfish, demanding, foul-mouthed virago who would have tempted a saint. Her family would have nothing to do with her—didn’t even visit—until they discovered that there was a great deal of agreeable publicity to be made out of righteous indignation. Perfectly proper too, no doubt. Patients, however disagreeable, are sacrosanct and it’s in all our ultimate interests to uphold that admirable precept. The incident sparked off a spate of complaints about the hospital. There was a full-dress enquiry covering the administration, medical services, food, nursing care, the lot. Not surprisingly, they found plenty to enquire into. Two male nurses were subsequently dismissed and Dot left of her own accord. The enquiry, while deploring her loss of control, exonerated her from any suspicion of deliberate cruelty. But the damage was done; no other hospital wanted her. Apart from the suspicion that she wasn’t exactly reliable under stress, they blamed her for provoking an enquiry which did no one any good and lost two men their jobs. Afterwards, Wilfred tried to get in touch with her; he thought from the accounts of the enquiry that she’d been hard done by. He took some time to trace her, but succeeded in the end and invited her here as a kind of matron. Actually, like the rest of the staff, she does anything that’s needed from nursing to cooking. His motives weren’t entirely beneficent. It’s never easy to find nursing staff for a remote specialized place like this, apart from the unorthodoxy of Wilfred’s methods. If he lost Dorothy Moxon he wouldn’t easily find a replacement.”
Dalgliesh said:
“I remember the case but not her face. It’s the young blonde girl—Jennie Pegram, isn’t it?—who looks familiar.”
Carwardine smiled; indulgent, a little contemptuous.
“I thought you might ask about her. Wilfred ought to find a way of using her for fund raising, she’d love it. I don’t know anyone who’s better at assuming that expression of wistful, uncomprehending, long-suffering fortitude. She’d make a fortune for the place properly exploited.”
Julius laughed:
“Henry, as you have gathered, doesn’t like her. If she looks familiar, you may have seen her on television about eighteen months ago. It was the month for the media to lacerate the British conscience on behalf of the young chronic sick, and the producer sent out his underlings to scavenge for a suitable victim. They came up with Jennie. She had been nursed for twelve years, and very well nursed, in a geriatric unit, partly, I gather, because they couldn’t find a more suitable place for her, partly because she rather liked being the petted favourite of the patients and visitors, and partly because the hospital had group physiotherapy and occupational therapy facilities of which our Jennie took advantage. But the programme, as you can imagine, made the most of her situation—“Unfortunate twenty-five-year-old girl incarcerated among the old and dying; shut away from the community; helpless; hopeless.” All the most senile patients were carefully grouped round her for the benefit of the camera with Jennie in the middle doing her stuff magnificently. Shrill accusations against the inhumanity of the Department of Health, the regional hospital board, the hospital managers. Next day, predictably, there was a public outburst of indignation which lasted, I imagine, until the next protest programme. The compassionate British public demanded that a more suitable place be found for Jennie. Wilfred wrote offering a vacancy here, Jennie accepted, and fourteen months ago she arrived. No one quite knows what she makes of us. I should give a lot to look into what passes for Jennie’s mind.”
Dalgliesh was surprised that Julius had such an intimate knowledge of the patients at Toynton Grange, but he asked no more questions. He dropped unobtrusively out of the chatter and sat drinking his wine, half listening to the desultory voices of his companions. It was the quiet, undemanding talk of men who had acquaintances and interests in common, who knew just enough about each other and cared just sufficiently to create an illusion of companionship. He had no particular wish to share it. The wine deserved silence. He realized that this was the first fine wine he had drunk since his illness. It was reassuring that yet another of life’s pleasures still held its power to solace. It took him a minute to realize that Julius was talking to him directly.
“I’m sorry about the proposed poetry reading. But I’m not altogether displeased. It illustrates one thing that you’ll realize about Toynton. They exploit. They don’t mean to, but they can’t help it. They say that they want to be treated as ordinary people, and then make demands no ordinary person would dream of mak
ing, and naturally one can’t refuse. Now, perhaps, you won’t think too harshly of those of us who seem less than enthusiastic about Toynton.”
“Us?”
“The little group of normals, physically normal anyway, in thrall to the place.”
“Are you?”
“Oh, yes! I get away to London or abroad so that the spell never really has a chance to take hold. But think of Millicent, stuck in that cottage because Wilfred lets her have it rent free. All she wants is to get back to the bridge tables and cream cakes of Cheltenham Spa. So why doesn’t she? And Maggie. Maggie would say that all she wanted was a bit of life. Well, that’s what we all want, a bit of life. Wilfred tried to get her interested in bird watching. I remember her reply. ‘If I have to watch another bloody seagull shitting on Toynton Head I’ll run screaming into the sea.’ Dear Maggie. I rather take to Maggie when she’s sober. And Eric? Well, he could break away if he had the courage. Looking after five patients and medically supervising the production of hand lotion and bath powder is hardly an honourable job for a registered medical practitioner, even one with an unfortunate predilection for little girls. And then there’s Helen Rainer. But I rather fancy that our enigmatic Helen’s reason for staying is more elemental and understandable. But they’re all a prey of boredom. And now I’m boring you. Would you like to hear some music? We usually listen to records when Henry’s here.”
The claret, unaccompanied by speech or music, would have contented Dalgliesh. But he could see that Henry was as anxious to hear a record as Julius probably was to demonstrate the superiority of his stereo equipment. Invited to choose Dalgliesh asked for Vivaldi. While the record was playing he strolled out into the night. Julius followed him and they stood in silence at the low barricade of stone at the cliff edge. The sea lay before them, faintly luminous, ghostly under a scatter of high, unemphatic stars. He thought that the tide was on the ebb but it still sounded very close, thudding against the rocky beach in great chords of sound, a bass accompaniment to the high, sweet counterpoint of the distant violins. Dalgliesh thought that he could feel the spume light on his forehead, but when he put up his hand he found it was only a trick of the freshening breeze.
So there must have been two poison pen writers, only one genuinely committed to his or her obscene trade. It was obvious from Grace Willison’s distress and Carwardine’s laconic disgust that they had received a very different type of letter from the one found at Hope Cottage. It was too great a coincidence that two poison pens should be operating at the same time in so small a community. The assumption was that Father Baddeley’s note had been planted in the bureau after his death, with small attempt at concealment, for Dalgliesh to find. If this were so, then it must have been put there by someone who knew about at least one of the other letters; had been told that it was typed on a Toynton Grange machine and on Toynton Grange paper, but who hadn’t actually seen it. Grace Willison’s letter had been typed on the Imperial machine and she had confided only in Dot Moxon. Carwardine’s, like Father Baddeley’s, had been typed on the Remington, and he had told Julius Court. The inference was obvious. But how could a man as intelligent as Court expect such a childish ruse to deceive a professional detective, or even an enthusiastic amateur? But then, had it been intended to? Dalgliesh had signed his postcard to Father Baddeley only with his initials. If it had been found by someone with a guilty secret as he searched feverishly through the bureau it would have told him nothing except that Father Baddeley was expecting a visitor on the afternoon of 1st October, a visitor who was probably as innocuous as a fellow clergyman or an old parishioner. But, just in case Father Baddeley had confided that something was on his mind, it might have seemed worthwhile to concoct and plant a false clue. Almost certainly, it had been placed in the bureau shortly before his arrival. If Anstey were telling the truth about looking through Father Baddeley’s papers on the morning after his death, it was impossible that he should have missed the poison pen note or failed to remove it.
But even if all this were an elaborate and over-sophisticated edifice of conjecture, and Father Baddeley had indeed received the poison pen note, Dalgliesh now felt certain that it wasn’t the reason for his summons. Father Baddeley would have felt perfectly competent both to discover the sender and to deal with him. He was unworldly but not naïve. Unlike Dalgliesh, he had probably seldom become involved professionally with the more spectacular sins but that didn’t mean they were outside his comprehension or, for that matter, his compassion. It was arguable, anyway, that those were the sins which did least damage. Of the more corrosive, petty, mean-minded delinquencies in all their sad but limited variety he, like any other parish priest, would have had his fill. He had his answer ready, compassionate but inexorable, offered, Dalgliesh remembered wryly, with all the gentle arrogance of absolute certainty. No, when Father Baddeley wrote he wanted professional advice he meant just that; advice which he could only get from a police officer on a matter which he felt unable to deal with himself. And that was unlikely to include the detection of a spiteful but not particularly vicious poison pen writer operating in a small community of which every member must have been known intimately to him.
The prospect of trying to discover the truth filled Dalgliesh with a profound depression. He was at Toynton Grange merely as a private visitor. He had no standing, no facilities, no equipment even. The task of sorting Father Baddeley’s books could be stretched to cover a week, perhaps longer. After that, what excuse would he have to remain? And he had discovered nothing which would justify bringing in the local police. What did these vague suspicions, this sense of foreboding amount to? An old man, dying of heart disease, suffering his final and expected attack peacefully in his fireside chair, reaching perhaps in his last conscious moment for the familiar feel of his stole, lifting it over his head for the last time for reasons, probably only half understood, of comfort, of reassurance, of symbolism, of the simple affirmation of his priesthood or his faith. One could think of a dozen explanations, all simple, all more plausible than the secret visit of a murderous mock penitent. The missing diary; who could ever prove that Father Baddeley hadn’t himself destroyed it before his admission to hospital? The forced bureau lock; nothing but the diary was missing and, as far as he knew, nothing valuable had been stolen. In the absence of other evidence, how could he possibly justify an official enquiry into a mislaid key and a broken lock?
But Father Baddeley had sent for him. There had been something on his mind. If Dalgliesh, without too great involvement, inconvenience or embarrassment, could discover in the next week or ten days what it had been, then he would do so. He owed that at least to the old man. But there it would end. Tomorrow he would pay a duty visit to the police and to Father Baddeley’s solicitor. If anything came to light, then the police could deal with it. He was finished with police work, professional or amateur, and it would take more than the death of one old priest to change that decision.
V
When they got back to Toynton Grange shortly after midnight Henry Carwardine said roughly:
“They’ll be relying on you to help me to bed, I’m afraid. Dennis Lerner usually wheels me to Toynton Cottage and calls for me at midnight, but since you’re here … As Julius said, we’re great exploiters at Toynton Grange. And I’d better shower. Dennis is off duty tomorrow morning and I can’t stomach Philby. My room is on the first floor. We take the lift.”
Henry knew that he sounded ungracious but that, he guessed, would be more acceptable to his silent companion than humility or self-pity. It struck him that Dalgliesh looked as if he could have done with help himself. Perhaps the man had been more sick than they realized. Dalgliesh said calmly:
“Another half bottle and I suspect we would both have needed help. But I’ll do my best. Put down my clumsiness to inexperience and the claret.”
But he was surprisingly gentle and competent, getting Henry out of his clothes, supporting him to the lavatory, and finally, wheeling him under the shower. He spent a little
time examining the hoist and equipment and then used them intelligently. When he didn’t know what was needed, he asked. Apart from these brief and necessary exchanges, neither spoke. Henry thought that he had seldom been put to bed with such imaginative gentleness. But, catching a glimpse in the bathroom mirror of his companion’s drawn preoccupied face, of the dark secretive eyes cavernous with fatigue, he wished suddenly that he hadn’t asked for help, that he had tumbled unshowered and fully dressed on to his bed, free from the humiliating touch of these competent hands. He sensed that, behind the disciplined calm, every contact with his naked body was a disagreeable duty. And for Henry himself, illogically and surprisingly, the touch of Dalgliesh’s cool hands was like the touch of fear. He wanted to cry out:
“What are you doing here? Go away; don’t interfere; leave us in peace.” The urge was so strong that he could almost believe that he had spoken the words aloud. And when, at last, he was comfortably bedded by his temporary nurse and Dalgliesh said an abrupt goodbye and immediately left him without another word, he knew that it was because he couldn’t bear to hear even the most perfunctory and least gracious word of thanks.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Dreadful Shore
I
HE AWOKE SLUGGISHLY soon before seven to disagreeably familiar noises; intrusive plumbing, the clang of apparatus, the squeal of chair wheels, sudden hurrying footsteps, determinedly cheerful exhortatory voices. Telling himself that the bathrooms would be needed for the patients, he shut his eyes resolutely on the bleak, impersonal room and willed himself to sleep again. When he woke an hour later after a fitful doze the annexe was silent. Someone—he dimly remembered a brown cloaked figure—had placed a mug of tea on his bedside table. It was cold, the greyish surface mottled with milk. He dragged on his dressing gown and went in search of the bathroom.