Unnatural Causes

by P. D. James

  “On holiday, remember,” said Dalgliesh. “I’m in exactly the same position as you.”

  “Like hell you are!” Seton twisted himself into a sitting position and groped under the couch for his shoes. “Brother Maurice hasn’t left you £200,000. God, it’s crazy! It’s unbelievable! Some sod pays off an old score and I get a fortune! Where the hell did Maurice get that kind of money anyway?”

  “Apparently partly from his mother and partly from the estate of his late wife,” replied Reckless. He had finished with the papers and was now going through a small drawer of index cards with the methodical intentness of a scholar looking for a reference.

  Seton gave a snort of laughter. “Is that what Pettigrew told you? Pettigrew! I ask you, Dalgliesh! Trust Maurice to have a solicitor called Pettigrew. What else could the poor devil be with a name like that? Pettigrew! Doomed from birth to be a respectable provincial solicitor. Can’t you picture him? Dry, precise, sixtyish, resplendent watch chain and pin stripes. God, I hope he knows how to draw up a valid will.”

  “I don’t think you need worry on that score,” said Dalgliesh. Actually, he knew Charles Pettigrew who was his aunt’s solicitor. It was an old firm but the present owner, who had inherited from his grandfather, was a capable and lively thirty-year-old, reconciled to the tedium of a country practice by the nearness of the sea and a passion for sailing. He said: “I gather you’ve found a copy of the will?”

  “It’s here.” Reckless passed over the single sheet of stiff paper, and Dalgliesh scanned it. The will was short and soon read. Maurice Seton, after instructing that his body be used for medical research and afterwards cremated, left £2,000 to Celia Calthrop, “in appreciation of her sympathy and understanding on the death of my dear wife,” and £300 to Sylvia Kedge, “provided she has been ten years in my service at the time of my death.” The remainder of the estate was left to Digby Kenneth Seton, on trust until he married, and then to revert to him absolutely. If he died before his half-brother or died unmarried the estate went absolutely to Celia Calthrop.

  Seton said: “Poor old Kedge! She’s lost her £300 by two months. No wonder she looks sick! Honestly, I’d no idea about the will. At least, I knew that I would very likely be Maurice’s heir. He more or less said so once. Anyway, he hadn’t anyone else to leave it to. We’ve never been particularly close but we did have the same father and Maurice had a great respect for the old man. But £200,000! Dorothy must have left him a packet. Funny that, when you consider that their marriage was pretty well on the rocks when she died.”

  “Mrs. Maurice Seton had no other relatives then?” asked Reckless.

  “Not that I know of. Lucky for me, isn’t it? When she killed herself there was some talk of a sister who ought to be contacted. Or was it a brother? Honestly, I can’t remember. Anyway, no one turned up and no one but Maurice was mentioned in the will. Her father was a property speculator and Dorothy was left pretty well off. And it all came to Maurice. But £200,000!”

  “Perhaps your half-brother did well with his books,” suggested Reckless. He had finished with the card index but was still seated at the desk, making entries in a notebook and seemingly only half-interested in Seton’s reactions. But Dalgliesh, himself a professional, knew that the interview was going very much according to plan.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think so! Maurice always said that writing wouldn’t keep him in socks. He was rather bitter about it. He said that this was the age of ‘Soap-powder fiction.’ If a writer hadn’t a gimmick no one was interested. Bestsellers were created by the advertisers, good writing was a positive disadvantage and the public libraries killed sales. I daresay he was right. If he had £200,000 I don’t know why he bothered. Except, of course, that he liked being a writer. It did something for his ego, I suppose. I never understood why he took it seriously, but then, he never understood why I wanted my own club. And I’ll be able to have it now. A whole chain of them if things go my way. You’re both invited to the opening night. Bring the whole of West Central with you if you like. No sneaking in on expenses to check on the drinking and see that the floor show isn’t too naughty. No women sergeants tarted up to look like provincial tourists on the spree. The best tables. Everything on the house. D’you know, Dalgliesh, I could have made a go of the Golden Pheasant if only I’d had the capital behind me. Well, I’ve got it now.”

  “Not unless you also get a wife,” Dalgliesh reminded him unkindly. He had noted the names of the trustees in Seton’s will and couldn’t see either of those cautious and conservative gentlemen parting with trust funds to finance a second Golden Pheasant. He asked why Maurice Seton had been so anxious for Digby to marry.

  “Maurice was always hinting that I ought to settle down. He was a great one for the family name. He hadn’t any children himself—none that I know of anyway—and I don’t suppose he was keen to marry again after the Dorothy fiasco. Besides, he had a dicky heart. He was afraid, too, that I might set up house with a queer. He didn’t want his money shared with a pansy boyfriend. Poor old Maurice! I don’t think he’d recognise a queen if he met one. He just had the idea that London, and West End clubs in particular, are full of them.”

  “Extraordinary!” said Dalgliesh dryly.

  Seton seemed unaware of the irony. He said anxiously: “Look, you do believe me about that phone call, don’t you? The murderer phoned me as I arrived here Wednesday night and sent me off on a fool’s errand to Lowestoft. The idea was to get me away from the house and make sure I hadn’t an alibi for the time of death. At least, I suppose that was the idea. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. It puts me in a spot all right. I wish to God that Liz had come in with me. I don’t see how I can prove that Maurice wasn’t in the house when I got here or that I didn’t take a late-night walk on the beach with him, conveniently armed with the kitchen knife. Have you found the weapon, by the way?”

  The Inspector replied briefly that they hadn’t. He said: “It would help me, Mr. Seton, if you could remember more about this phone call.”

  “Well, I can’t.” Seton sounded suddenly peevish. He added sullenly: “You keep asking me about it and I keep telling you! I don’t remember. Damn it, I’ve had a bloody great bang on the head since then! If you told me I’d imagined the whole thing I wouldn’t be surprised except that it must have happened or I wouldn’t have taken out the car. I was dog tired and I wouldn’t have set off to Lowestoft just for the fun of it. Someone phoned. I’m sure of that. But I can’t remember what the voice sounded like. I’m not even sure if it was a man or a woman.”

  “And the message?”

  “I’ve told you, Inspector! The voice said it was speaking from Lowestoft Police Station, that Maurice’s body had come ashore in my dinghy with the hands chopped off—”

  “Chopped or cut?”

  “Oh, I don’t know! Chopped I think. Anyway, I was to go to Lowestoft at once and identify the body. So I set off. I knew where Maurice keeps the car keys and luckily the Vauxhall had plenty of juice in her. Or unluckily. I damn near killed myself. Oh, I know you’re going to say it was my fault. I admit I had a pull or two from my hip flask on the way. Well, do you wonder! And I was bloody tired before I started. I had a lousy night on Tuesday—the West Central’s hardly a hotel. And then that long train journey.”

  “And yet you set off for Lowestoft straight away without bothering to check?” asked Reckless.

  “I did check! When I got to the road it occurred to me to see if Sheldrake had really gone. So I drove down Tanner’s Lane as far as I could and walked to the beach. The boat wasn’t there. That was good enough for me. I suppose you think that I ought to have rung back the police station but it never occurred to me that the message might be a hoax until I was on my way and then the easiest thing was to check on the boat. I say …”

  “Yes?” enquired Reckless calmly.

  “Whoever phoned must have known that I was here. And it couldn’t have been Liz Marley because she’d only just left when the phone rang. Now, how could
anyone else have known?”

  “You could have been seen arriving,” suggested Reckless.

  “And I suppose you put the lights on when you got in. They could be seen for miles.”

  “I put them on all right. The whole bloody lot. This place gives me the creeps in the dark. Still, it’s odd.”

  It was odd, thought Dalgliesh. But the Inspector’s explanation was probably correct. The whole of Monksmere Head could have seen those blazing lights. And when they went out, someone would know that Digby Seton was on his way. But why send him? Was there something still to be done at Seton House? Something to be searched for? Some evidence to be destroyed? Was the body hidden in Seton House? But how was that possible if Digby was telling the truth about the missing boat?

  Suddenly Digby said: “What am I supposed to do about handing the body over for medical research? Maurice never said anything to me about being keen on medical research. Still, if that’s what he wanted …” He looked from Dalgliesh to Reckless enquiringly.

  The Inspector said: “I shouldn’t worry about that now, Sir. Your brother left the necessary instructions and official forms among his papers. But it will have to wait.”

  Seton said: “Yes. I suppose so. But I wouldn’t like … I mean, if that’s what he wanted …”

  He broke off uncertainly. Much of the excitement had left him and he was looking suddenly very tired. Dalgliesh and Reckless glanced at each other, sharing the thought that there would be little more to be learned from Maurice’s body once Walter Sydenham had finished with it, the eminent and thorough Dr. Sydenham whose textbook on forensic pathology made it plain that he favoured an initial incision from the throat to the groin. Seton’s limbs might be useful for raw medical students to practise on, which was probably not what he had in mind. But his cadaver had already made its contribution to medical science.

  Reckless was preparing to leave. He explained to Seton that he would be required at the inquest in five days’ time, an invitation which was received without enthusiasm, and began putting his papers together with the satisfied efficiency of an insurance agent at the end of a good morning’s work. Digby watched him with the puzzled and slightly apprehensive air of a small boy who has found the company of adults a strain but isn’t sure that he actually wants them to leave. Strapping up his briefcase, Reckless asked his last question with no appearance of really wanting to know the answer: “Don’t you find it rather strange, Mr. Seton, that your half-brother should have made you his heir? It isn’t as if you were particularly friendly.”

  “But I told you!” Seton wailed his protest. “There wasn’t anyone else. Besides, we were friendly enough. I mean, I made it my business to keep in with him. He wasn’t difficult to get on with if you flattered him about his bloody awful books and took a bit of trouble with him. I like to get on with people if I can. I don’t enjoy quarrelling and unpleasantness. I don’t think I could have stood his company for long but then I wasn’t here very often. I told you I haven’t seen him since August Bank Holiday. Besides, he was lonely. I was the only family he had left and he liked to think that there was someone who belonged.”

  Reckless said: “So you kept in with him because of his money. And he kept in with you because he was afraid of being completely alone?”

  “Well, that’s how things are.” Seton was unabashed. “That’s life. We all want something from each other. Is there anyone who loves you, Inspector, for yourself alone?”

  Reckless got up and went out through the open window. Dalgliesh followed him and they stood together on the terrace in silence. The wind was freshening but the sun still shone, warm and golden. On the green-blue sea a couple of white sails moved fitfully like twists of paper blown in the wind. Reckless sat down on the steps which led from the terrace to the narrow strip of turf and the cliff edge. Dalgliesh, feeling unreasonably that he could hardly remain standing since it put Reckless at a disadvantage, dropped down beside him. The stones were unexpectedly cold to his hands and thighs, a reminder that the warmth of the autumn sun had little power.

  The Inspector said: “There’s no way down to the beach here. You’d have thought Seton would want his own way down. It’s a fair walk to Tanner’s Lane.”

  “The cliffs are pretty high here and there’s little solid rock. It could be tricky to build a stairway,” suggested Dalgliesh.

  “Maybe. He must have been a strange sort of chap. Fussy. Methodical. That card index, for instance. He picked up ideas for his stories from newspapers, magazines, and from people. Or just thought of them for himself. But they’re all neatly catalogued there, waiting to come in useful.”

  “And Miss Calthrop’s contribution?”

  “Not there. That doesn’t mean very much though. Sylvia Kedge told me that the house was usually left unlocked when Seton was living here. They all seem to leave their houses unlocked. Anyone could have got in and taken the card. Anyone could have read it for that matter. They just seem to wander in and out of each other’s places at will. It’s the loneliness I suppose. That’s assuming that Seton wrote out a card.”

  “Or that Miss Calthrop ever gave him the idea,” said Dalgliesh.

  Reckless looked at him. “That struck you too, did it? What did you think of Digby Seton?”

  “The same as I’ve always thought. It requires an effort of will to understand a man whose passionate ambition is to run his own club. But then, he probably finds it equally difficult to understand why we should want to be policemen. I don’t think our Digby has either the nerve or the brains to plan this particular killing. Basically he’s unintelligent.”

  “He was in the nick most of Tuesday night. I gave West Central a ring and it’s true all right. What’s more he was drunk. There was nothing feigned about it.”

  “Very convenient for him.”

  “It’s always convenient to have an alibi, Mr. Dalgliesh. But there are some alibis I don’t intend to waste time trying to break. And that’s the kind he’s got. What’s more, unless he was acting just now, he just doesn’t know that the weapon wasn’t a knife. And he thinks that Seton died on Wednesday night. Maurice couldn’t have been in this house alive when Digby and Miss Marley arrived on Wednesday. That’s not to say that his body wasn’t here. But I can’t see Digby acting the butcher and I can’t see why he should. Even if he found the body here and panicked he’s the sort to hit the bottle then belt off back to town, not to plan an elaborate charade. And he was on the Lowestoft not the London road when he crashed. Besides, I don’t see how he could have known about Miss Calthrop’s pleasant little opening for a detective story.”

  “Unless Eliza Marley told him on the way here.”

  “Why should she tell Digby Seton? It’s not a likely topic for conversation on the drive home. But all right. We’ll assume that she did know and that she told Digby or that, somehow or other, he knew. He arrives here and finds his brother’s body. So he immediately decides to provide a reallife mystery by chopping off Maurice’s hands and pushing the body out to sea. Why? And what did he use for a weapon? I saw the body, remember, and I’d swear those hands were chopped off, not cut, nor sawed, chopped. So much for the kitchen knife! Seton’s chopper is still in the pantry. And your aunt’s—if that was the weapon—was stolen about three months ago.”

  “So Digby Seton is out. What about the others?”

  “We’ve only had time for a preliminary check. I’m taking their statements this afternoon. But it looks as if they’ve all got alibis of a sort for the time of death. All except Miss Dalgliesh. Living alone as she does, that’s not surprising.”

  The flat, monotonous voice did not change. The sombre eyes still looked out to sea. But Dalgliesh was not deceived. So this was the reason for the summons to Seton House, for the Inspector’s unexpected outburst of confidence. He knew how it must look to Reckless. Here was an elderly, unmarried woman living a lonely and isolated life. She had no alibi for the time of death nor for Wednesday night when the body was launched out to sea. She had an alm
ost private access to the beach. She knew where Sheldrake lay. She was nearly six foot tall, a strong, agile countrywoman, addicted to strenuous walking and accustomed to the night.

  Admittedly she had no apparent motive. But what did that matter? Despite what he had said to his aunt that morning Dalgliesh knew perfectly well that motive was not the first concern. The detective who concentrated logically on the “where,” “when” and “how” would inevitably have the “why” revealed to him in all its pitiful inadequacy. Dalgliesh’s old chief used to say that the four L’s—love, lust, loathing and lucre—comprised all motives for murder. Superficially that was true enough. But motive was as varied and complex as human personality. He had no doubt that the Inspector’s horribly experienced mind was already busy recalling past cases where the weeds of suspicion, loneliness or irrational dislike had flowered into unexpected violence and death.

  Suddenly Dalgliesh was seized with an anger so intense that for a few seconds it paralysed speech and even thought. It swept through his body like a wave of physical nausea leaving him white and shaken with self-disgust. Choked with this anger he was luckily saved from the worst follies of speech, from sarcasm, indignation or the futile protest that his aunt would, of course, make no statement except in the presence of her solicitor. She needed no solicitor. She had him. But, God, what a holiday this was proving to be!

  There was a creak of wheels and Sylvia Kedge spun her wheelchair through the French windows and manoeuvred it up beside them. She didn’t speak but gazed intently down the track towards the road. Their eyes followed hers. A post office van, brightly compact as a toy, was careering over the headland towards the house.

  “It’s the post,” she said. Dalgliesh saw that her hands were clamped to the chair sides, the knuckles white. As the van drew up before the terrace he watched her body half-rise and stiffen as if seized with a sudden rigor. In the silence which followed the stopping of the engine, he could hear her heavy breathing.

  The postman slammed the van door and came towards them, calling a cheerful greeting. There was no response from the girl and he glanced puzzled from her rigid face to the still figures of the two men. Then he handed Reckless the post. It was a single foolscap envelope, buff coloured and with a typewritten address.