by P. D. James
The gibe plucked at too many chords of memory. Wilfully obtuse, Cordelia said: “I didn’t enquire what political party Sir Ronald favours.”
Hugo laughed. “Davie doesn’t mean that. By fascist Davie means that Ronald Callender holds certain untenable opinions. For example, that all men may not be created equal, that universal suffrage may not necessarily add to the general happiness of mankind, that the tyrannies of the left aren’t noticeably more liberal or supportable than the tyrannies of the right, that black men killing black men is small improvement on white men killing black men in so far as the victims are concerned and that capitalism may not be responsible for all the ills that flesh is heir to from drug addiction to poor syntax. I don’t suggest that Ronald Callender holds all or indeed any of these reprehensible opinions. But Davie thinks that he does.”
Davie threw a book at Hugo and said without rancour: “Shut up! You talk like the Daily Telegraph. And you’re boring our visitor.”
Sophie Tilling asked suddenly: “Was it Sir Ronald who suggested that you should question us?”
“He said that you were Mark’s friends, he saw you at the inquest and funeral.”
Hugo laughed: “For God’s sake, is that his idea of friendship?”
Cordelia said: “But you were there?”
“We went to the inquest—all of us except Isabelle, who, we thought, would have been decorative but unreliable. It was rather dull. There was a great deal of irrelevant medical evidence about the excellent state of Mark’s heart, lungs and digestive system. As far as I can see, he would have gone on living forever if he hadn’t put a belt round his neck.”
“And the funeral—were you there too?”
“We were, at the Cambridge Crematorium. A very subdued affair. There were only six of us present in addition to the undertaker’s men: we three, Ronald Callender, that secretary/housekeeper of his and an old nanny type dressed in black. She cast rather a gloom over the proceedings, I thought. Actually she looked so exactly like an old family retainer that I suspect she was a policewoman in disguise.”
“Why should she be? Did she look like one?”
“No, but then you don’t look like a private eye.”
“You’ve no idea who she was?”
“No, we weren’t introduced; it wasn’t a chummy kind of funeral. Now I recall it, not one of us spoke a single word to any of the others. Sir Ronald wore a mask of public grief, the King mourning the Crown Prince.”
“And Miss Leaming?”
“The Queen’s Consort; she should have had a black veil over her face.”
“I thought that her suffering was real enough,” said Sophie.
“You can’t tell. No one can. Define suffering. Define real.”
Suddenly Davie Stevens spoke, rolling over onto his stomach like a playful dog. “Miss Leaming looked pretty sick to me. Incidentally, the old lady was called Pilbeam; anyway, that was the name on the wreath.”
Sophie laughed: “That awful cross of roses with the black-edged card? I might have guessed it came from her; but how do you know?”
“I looked, honey. The undertaker’s men took the wreath off the coffin and propped it against the wall so I took a quick butcher’s. The card read ‘With sincere sympathy from Nanny Pilbeam.’ ”
Sophie said: “So you did, I remember now. How beautifully feudal! Poor old nanny, it must have cost her a packet.”
“Did Mark ever talk about a Nanny Pilbeam?” Cordelia asked.
They glanced at each other quickly. Isabelle shook her head. Sophie said, “Not to me.”
Hugo Tilling replied: “He never talked about her, but I think I did see her once before the funeral. She called at college about six weeks ago—on Mark’s twenty-first birthday actually, and asked to see him. I was in the Porter’s Lodge at the time and Robbins asked me if Mark was in college. She went up to his room and they were there together for about an hour. I saw her leaving, but he never mentioned her to me either then or later.”
And soon afterwards, thought Cordelia, he gave up university. Could there be a connection? It was only a tenuous lead, but she would have to follow it.
She asked out of a curiosity that seemed both perverse and irrelevant: “Were there any other flowers?”
It was Sophie who replied: “A simple bunch of unwired garden flowers on the coffin. No card. Miss Leaming, I suppose. It was hardly Sir Ronald’s style.”
Cordelia said: “You were his friends. Please tell me about him.”
They looked at each other as if deciding who should speak. Their embarrassment was almost palpable. Sophie Tilling was picking at small blades of grass and rolling them in her hands. Without looking up, she said: “Mark was a very private person. I’m not sure how far any of us knew him. He was quiet, gentle, self-contained, unambitious. He was intelligent without being clever. He was very kind; he cared about people, but without inflicting them with his concern. He had little self-esteem but it never seemed to worry him. I don’t think there is anything else we can say about him.”
Suddenly Isabelle spoke in a voice so low that Cordelia could hardly catch it. She said: “He was sweet.”
Hugo said with a sudden angry impatience: “He was sweet and he is dead. There you have it. We can’t tell you any more about Mark Callender than that. We none of us saw him after he chucked college. He didn’t consult us before he left, and he didn’t consult us before he killed himself. He was, as my sister has told you, a very private person. I suggest that you leave him his privacy.”
“Look,” said Cordelia, “you went to the inquest, you went to the funeral. If you had stopped seeing him, if you were so unconcerned about him, why did you bother?”
“Sophie went out of affection. Davie went because Sophie did. I went out of curiosity and respect; you mustn’t be seduced by my air of casual flippancy into thinking that I haven’t a heart.”
Cordelia said obstinately: “Someone visited him at the cottage on the evening he died. Someone had coffee with him. I intend to find out who that person was.”
Was it her fancy that this news surprised them? Sophie Tilling looked as if she were about to ask a question when her brother quickly broke in: “It wasn’t any of us. On the night Mark died we were all in the second row of the dress circle of the Arts Theatre watching Pinter. I don’t know that I can prove it. I doubt whether the booking clerk has kept the chart for that particular night, but I booked the seats and she may remember me. If you insist on being tediously meticulous, I can probably introduce you to a friend who knew of my intention to take a party to the play; to another who saw at least some of us in the bar in the interval; and to another with whom I subsequently discussed the performance. None of this will prove anything; my friends are an accommodating bunch. It would be simpler for you to accept that I am telling the truth. Why should I lie? We were all four at the Arts Theatre on the night of 26th May.”
Davie Stevens said gently: “Why not tell that arrogant bastard Pa Callender to go to hell and leave his son in peace, then find yourself a nice simple case of larceny?”
“Or murder,” said Hugo Tilling.
“Find yourself a nice simple case of murder.”
As if in obedience to some secret code, they began getting up, piling their books together, brushing the grass cuttings from their clothes. Cordelia followed them through the courts and out of college. Still in a silent group they made their way to a white Renault parked in the forecourt.
Cordelia came up to them and spoke directly to Isabelle. “Did you enjoy the Pinter? Weren’t you frightened by that dreadful last scene when Wyatt Gillman is gunned down by the natives?”
It was so easy that Cordelia almost despised herself.
The immense violet eyes grew puzzled. “Oh, no! I did not care about it, I was not frightened. I was with Hugo and the others, you see.”
Cordelia turned to Hugo Tilling. “Your friend doesn’t seem to know the difference between Pinter and Osborne.”
Hugo was settling hims
elf into the driving seat of the car. He twisted round to open the back door for Sophie and Davie. He said calmly: “My friend, as you choose to call her, is living in Cambridge, inadequately chaperoned I’m happy to say, for the purpose of learning English. So far her progress has been erratic and in some respects disappointing. One can never be certain how much my friend has understood.”
The engine purred into life. The car began to move. It was then that Sophie Tilling thrust her head out of the window and said impulsively: “I don’t mind talking about Mark if you think it will help. It won’t, but you can come round to my house this afternoon if you like—57 Norwich Street. Don’t be late; Davie and I are going on the river. You can come too if you feel like it.”
The car accelerated. Cordelia watched it out of sight. Hugo raised his hand in ironic farewell but not one of them turned a head.
Cordelia muttered the address to herself until it was safely written down: 57 Norwich Street. Was that the address where Sophie lodged, a hostel perhaps, or did her family live in Cambridge? Well, she would find out soon enough. When ought she to arrive? Too early would look overeager; too late and they might have set out for the river. Whatever motive prompted Sophie Tilling to issue that belated invitation, she mustn’t lose touch with them now.
They had some guilty knowledge; that had been obvious. Why else had they reacted so strongly to her arrival? They wanted the facts of Mark Callender’s death to be left undisturbed. They would try to persuade, cajole, even to shame her into abandoning the case. Would they, she wondered, also threaten? But why? The most likely theory was that they were shielding someone. But again, why? Murder wasn’t a matter of climbing late into college, a venial infringement of rules which a friend would automatically condone and conceal. Mark Callender had been their friend. Someone whom he knew and trusted had pulled a strap tight round his neck, had watched and listened to his agonized choking, had strung his body on a hook like the carcass of an animal. How could one reconcile that appalling knowledge with Davie Stevens’ slightly amused and rueful glance at Sophie, with Hugo’s cynical calm, with Sophie’s friendly and interested eyes? If they were conspirators, then they were monsters. And Isabelle? If they were shielding anyone, it was most likely to be her. But Isabelle de Lasterie couldn’t have murdered Mark. Cordelia remembered those frail sloping shoulders, those ineffective hands almost transparent in the sun, the long nails painted like elegant pink talons. If Isabelle were guilty, she hadn’t acted alone. Only a tall and very strong woman could have heaved that inert body onto the chair and up to the hook.
Norwich Street was a one-way thoroughfare and, initially, Cordelia approached it from the wrong direction. It took her some time to find her way back to Hills Road, past the Roman Catholic church and down the fourth turning to the right. The street was terraced with small brick houses, obviously early Victorian. Equally obviously, the road was on its way up. Most of the houses looked well cared for; the paint on the identical front doors was fresh and bright; lined curtains had replaced the draped lace at the single ground-floor windows; and the bases of the walls were scarred where a damp course had been installed. Number fifty-seven had a black front door with the house number painted in white behind the glass panel above. Cordelia was relieved to see that there was space to park the Mini. There was no sign of the Renault among the almost continuous row of old cars and battered bicycles which lined the edge of the pavement.
The front door was wide open. Cordelia pressed the bell and stepped tentatively into a narrow white hall. The exterior of the house was immediately familiar to her. From her sixth birthday she had lived for two years in just such a Victorian terraced cottage with Mrs. Gibson on the outskirts of Romford. She recognized the steep and narrow staircase immediately ahead, the door on the right leading to the front parlour, the second door set aslant which led to the back parlour and through it to the kitchen and yard. She knew that there would be cupboards and a curved alcove on each side of the fireplace; she knew where to find the door under the stairs. Memory was so sharp that it imposed on this clean, sun-scented interior the strong odour of unwashed napkins, cabbage and grease which had permeated the Romford house. She could almost hear the children’s voices calling her outlandish name across the rookery of the primary school playground across the road, stamping the asphalt with the ubiquitous Wellington boots which they wore in all seasons, flailing their thin jerseyed arms: “Cor, Cor, Cor!”
The furthest door was ajar and she could glimpse a room painted bright yellow and spilling over with sunlight. Sophie’s head appeared.
“Oh, it’s you! Come in. Davie has gone to collect some books from college and to buy food for the picnic. Would you like tea now or shall we wait? I’m just finishing the ironing.”
“I’d rather wait, thank you.”
Cordelia sat down and watched while Sophie wound the flex around the iron and folded the cloth. She glanced around the room. It was welcoming and attractive, furnished in no particular style or period, a cosy hotchpotch of the cheap and the valuable, unpretentious and pleasing. There was a sturdy oak table against the wall; four rather ugly dining chairs; a Windsor chair with a plump yellow cushion; an elegant Victorian sofa covered with brown velvet and set under the window; three good Staffordshire figures on the mantelshelf above the hooded wrought-iron grate. One of the walls was almost covered with a noticeboard in dark cork which displayed posters, cards, aides-mémoires, and pictures cut from magazines. Two, Cordelia saw, were beautifully photographed and attractive nudes.
Outside the yellow-curtained window the small walled garden was a riot of greenery. An immense and multi-flowered hollyhock burgeoned against a tatty-looking trellis; there were roses planted in Ali Baba jars and a row of pots of bright-red geraniums lined the top of the wall.
Cordelia said: “I like this house. Is it yours?”
“Yes, I own it. Our grandmother died two years ago and left Hugo and me a small legacy. I used mine for the down payment on this house and got a local authority grant towards the cost of conversion. Hugo spent all of his laying down wine. He was ensuring a happy middle age; I was ensuring a happy present. I suppose that’s the difference between us.”
She folded the ironing cloth on the end of the table and stowed it away in one of the cupboards. Sitting opposite to Cordelia, she asked abruptly: “Do you like my brother?”
“Not very much. I thought he was rather rude to me.”
“He didn’t mean to be.”
“I think that’s rather worse. Rudeness should always be intentional, otherwise it’s insensitivity.”
“Hugo isn’t at his most agreeable when he’s with Isabelle. She has that effect on him.”
“Was she in love with Mark Callender?”
“You’ll have to ask her, Cordelia, but I shouldn’t think so. They hardly knew each other. Mark was my lover, not hers. I thought I’d better get you here to tell you myself since someone’s bound to sooner or later if you go around Cambridge ferreting out facts about him. He didn’t live here with me, of course. He had rooms in college. But we were lovers for almost the whole of last year. It ended just after Christmas when I met Davie.”
“Were you in love?”
“I’m not sure. All sex is a kind of exploitation, isn’t it? If you mean, did we explore our own identities through the personality of the other, then I suppose we were in love or thought that we were. Mark needed to believe himself in love. I’m not sure I know what the word means.”
Cordelia felt a surge of sympathy. She wasn’t sure either. She thought of her own two lovers: Georges, whom she had slept with because he was gentle and unhappy and called her Cordelia, a real name, her name, not Delia, Daddy’s little fascist; and Carl, who was young and angry and whom she had liked so much that it seemed churlish not to show it in the only way which seemed to him important. She had never thought of virginity as other than a temporary and inconvenient state, part of the general insecurity and vulnerability of being young. Before Georges and Carl s
he had been lonely and inexperienced. Afterwards she had been lonely and a little less inexperienced. Neither affair had given her the longed-for assurance in dealing with Daddy or the landladies, neither had inconveniently touched her heart. But for Carl she had felt tenderness. It was just as well that he had left Rome before his lovemaking had become too pleasurable and he too important to her. It was intolerable to think that those strange gymnastics might one day become necessary. Lovemaking, she had decided, was overrated, not painful but surprising. The alienation between thought and action was so complete. She said: “I suppose I only meant were you fond of each other, and did you like going to bed together?”
“Both of those things.”
“Why did it end? Did you quarrel?”
“Nothing so natural or uncivilized. One didn’t quarrel with Mark. That was one of the troubles about him. I told him that I didn’t want to go on with the affair and he accepted my decision as calmly as if I were just breaking a date for a play at the Arts. He didn’t try to argue or dissuade me. And if you’re wondering whether the break had anything to do with his death, well you’re wrong. I wouldn’t rank that high with anyone, particularly not Mark. I was probably fonder of him than he was of me.”
“So why did it end?”
“I felt that I was under moral scrutiny. It wasn’t true; Mark wasn’t a prig. But that’s how I felt, or pretended to myself that I felt. I couldn’t live up to him and I didn’t even want to. There was Gary Webber, for example. I’d better tell you about him; it explains a lot about Mark. He’s an autistic child, one of the uncontrollable, violent ones. Mark met him with his parents and their other two children on Jesus Green about a year ago; the children were playing on the swings there. Mark spoke to Gary and the boy responded to him. Children always did. He took to visiting the family and looking after Gary one evening a week so that the Webbers could get out to the pictures. During his last two vacs he stayed in the house and looked after Gary completely while the whole family went off for a holiday. The Webbers couldn’t bear the boy to go to hospital; they’d tried it once and he didn’t settle. But they were perfectly happy to leave him with Mark. I used to call in some evenings and see them together. Mark would hold the boy on his lap and rock him backwards and forwards for hours at a time. It was the one way to quieten him. We disagreed about Gary. I thought he would be better dead and I said so. I still think it would be better if he died, better for his parents, better for the rest of the family, better for him. Mark didn’t agree. I remember saying: ‘Oh well, if you think it reasonable that children should suffer so that you can enjoy the emotional kick of relieving them—’ After that the conversation became boringly metaphysical. Mark said: ‘Neither you nor I would be willing to kill Gary. He exists. His family exists. They need help which we can give. It doesn’t matter what we feel. Actions are important, feelings aren’t.’ ”