An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

by P. D. James

  She had at least had time before her first visit to decide on tactics. There was little advantage and much danger in concealing facts which an intelligent man could easily discover for himself. She would disclose, if asked, that she had discussed Mark Callender with the Tillings and his tutor; that she had traced and interviewed Mrs. Goddard; that she had visited Dr. Gladwin. She decided to say nothing about the attempt on her life or about her visit to Somerset House. She knew which facts it would be vital to conceal: Ronald Callender’s murder; the clue in the prayer book; the actual way in which Mark had died. She told herself firmly that she mustn’t be drawn into discussing the case, mustn’t talk about herself, her life, her present job, her ambitions. She remembered what Bernie had told her: “In this country, if people won’t talk, there’s nothing you can do to make them, more’s the pity. Luckily for the police most people just can’t keep their mouths shut. The intelligent ones are the worst. They just have to show how clever they are, and once you’ve got them discussing the case, even discussing it generally, then you’ve got them.” Cordelia reminded herself of the advice she had given to Elizabeth Leaming: “Don’t embroider, don’t invent, don’t be afraid to say you can’t remember.”

  Dalgliesh was speaking: “Have you thought of consulting a solicitor, Miss Gray?”

  “I haven’t got a solicitor.”

  “The Law Society can give you the names of some very reliable and helpful ones. I should think about it seriously if I were you.”

  “But I should have to pay him, shouldn’t I? Why should I need a solicitor when I’m telling the truth?”

  “It’s when people start telling the truth that they most often feel the need of a solicitor.”

  “But I’ve always told the truth. Why should I lie?” The rhetorical question was a mistake. He answered it seriously as if she had really wanted to know.

  “Well, it could be to protect yourself—which I don’t think likely—or to protect someone else. The motive for that could be love, fear, or a sense of justice. I don’t think you’ve known any of the people in this case long enough to care for them deeply so that rules out love, and I don’t think you would be very easy to frighten. So we’re left with justice. A very dangerous concept, Miss Gray.”

  She had been closely questioned before. The Cambridge Police had been very thorough. But this was the first time she had been questioned by someone who knew; knew that she was lying; knew that Mark Callender hadn’t killed himself; knew, she felt desperately, all there was to know. She had to force herself to an acceptance of reality. He couldn’t possibly be sure. He hadn’t any legal proof and he never would have. There was no one alive to tell him the truth except Elizabeth Leaming and herself. And she wasn’t going to tell. Dalgliesh could beat against her will with his implacable logic, his curious kindness, his courtesy, his patience. But she wouldn’t talk, and in England there was no way in which he could make her.

  When she didn’t reply, he said cheerfully: “Well, let’s see how far we’ve got. As a result of your enquiries you suspected that Mark Callender might have been murdered. You haven’t admitted that to me but you made your suspicions plain when you visited Sergeant Maskell of the Cambridge Police. You subsequently traced his mother’s old nurse and learned from her something of his early life, of the Callender marriage, of Mrs. Callender’s death. Following that visit you went to see Dr. Gladwin, the general practitioner who had looked after Mrs. Callender before she died. By a simple ruse you ascertained the blood group of Ronald Callender. There would only be point in that if you suspected that Mark wasn’t the child of his parents’ marriage. You then did what I would have done in your place, visited Somerset House to examine Mr. George Bottley’s will. That was sensible. If you suspect murder, always consider who stands to gain by it.”

  So he had found out about Somerset House and the call to Dr. Venables. Well, it was to be expected. He had credited her with his own brand of intelligence. She had behaved as he would have behaved.

  She still didn’t speak.

  He said: “You didn’t tell me about your fall down the well. Miss Markland did.”

  “That was an accident. I don’t remember anything about it, but I must have decided to explore the well and overbalanced. I was always rather intrigued by it.”

  “I don’t think it was an accident, Miss Gray. You couldn’t have pulled the lid free without a rope. Miss Markland tripped over a rope, but it was coiled neatly and half-hidden in the undergrowth. Would you have even troubled to detach it from the hook if you’d only been exploring?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember anything that happened before I fell. My first memory is hitting the water. And I don’t see what this has to do with Sir Ronald Callender’s death.”

  “It might have a great deal to do with it. If someone tried to kill you, and I think that they did, that person could have come from Garforth House.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the attempt on your life was probably connected with your investigation into Mark Callender’s death. You had become a danger to someone. Killing is a serious business. The professionals don’t like it unless it’s absolutely essential and even the amateurs are less happy-go-lucky about murder than you might expect. You must have become a very dangerous woman to someone. Someone replaced that well lid, Miss Gray; you didn’t fall through solid wood.”

  Cordelia still said nothing. There was a silence, then he spoke again: “Miss Markland told me that after your rescue from the well she was reluctant to leave you alone. But you insisted that she should go. You told her that you weren’t afraid to be alone in the cottage because you had a gun.”

  Cordelia was surprised how much this small betrayal hurt. Yet, how could she blame Miss Markland? The Superintendent would have known just how to handle her, probably persuaded her that frankness was in Cordelia’s own interest. Well, she could at least betray in her turn. And this explanation, at least, would have the authority of truth.

  “I wanted to get rid of her. She told me some dreadful story about her illegitimate child falling down the well to his death. I’d only just been rescued myself. I didn’t want to hear it, I couldn’t bear it just then. I told her a lie about the gun just to make her go. I didn’t ask her to confide in me, it wasn’t fair. It was only a way of asking for help and I hadn’t any to give.”

  “And didn’t you want to get rid of her for another reason? Didn’t you know that your assailant would have to return that night; that the well cover would have to be dragged clear again if your death were to look like an accident?”

  “If I’d really thought that I was in any danger I should have begged her to take me with her to Summertrees House. I wouldn’t have waited alone in the cottage without my gun.”

  “No, Miss Gray, I believe that. You wouldn’t have waited there alone in the cottage that night without your gun.”

  For the first time Cordelia was desperately afraid. This wasn’t a game. It never had been, although at Cambridge the police interrogation had held some of the unreality of a formal contest in which the result was both foreseeable and unworrying since one of the opponents didn’t even know he was playing. It was real enough now. If she were tricked, persuaded, coerced into telling him the truth, she would go to prison. She was an accessory after the fact. How many years did one get for helping to conceal murder? She had read somewhere that Holloway smelt. They would take away her clothes. She would be shut up in a claustrophobic cell. There was remission for good conduct but how could one be good in prison? Perhaps they would send her to an open prison. Open. It was a contradiction in terms. And how would she live afterwards? How would she get a job? What real personal freedom could there ever be for those whom society labelled delinquent?

  She was terrified for Miss Leaming. Where was she now? She had never dared ask Dalgliesh, and Miss Leaming’s name had hardly been mentioned. Was she even now in some other room of New Scotland Yard being similarly questioned? How reliable would she be under press
ure? Were they planning to confront the two conspirators with each other? Would the door suddenly open and Miss Leaming be brought in, apologetic, remorseful, truculent? Wasn’t that the usual ploy, to interview conspirators separately until the weaker broke down? And who would prove the weaker?

  She heard the Superintendent’s voice. She thought he sounded rather sorry for her.

  “We have some confirmation that the pistol was in your possession that night. A motorist tells us that he saw a parked car on the road about three miles from Garforth House and when he stopped to enquire if he could help he was threatened by a young woman with a gun.”

  Cordelia remembered that moment, the sweetness and silence of the summer night suddenly overlaid by his hot, alcoholic breath.

  “He must have been drinking. I suppose the police stopped him for a breath test later that night and now he’s decided to come up with this story. I don’t know what he expects to gain by it but it isn’t true. I wasn’t carrying a gun. Sir Ronald took the pistol from me on my first night at Garforth House.”

  “The Metropolitan Police stopped him just over the Force border. I think he may persist in his story. He was very definite. Of course, he hasn’t identified you yet but he was able to describe the car. His story is that he thought you were having trouble with it and stopped to help. You misunderstood his motives and threatened him with a gun.”

  “I understood his motives perfectly. But I didn’t threaten him with a gun.”

  “What did you say, Miss Gray?”

  “Leave me alone or I’ll kill you.”

  “Without the gun, surely that was an empty threat?”

  “It would always have been an empty threat. But it made him go.”

  “What exactly did happen?”

  “I had a spanner in the front pocket of the car and when he shoved his face in at the window I grasped that and threatened him with it. But no one in his right senses could have mistaken a spanner for a gun!”

  But he hadn’t been in his right senses. The only person who had seen the gun in her possession that night was a motorist who hadn’t been sober. This, she knew, was a small victory. She had resisted the momentary temptation to change her story. Bernie had been right. She recalled his advice; the Superintendent’s advice; this time she could almost hear it spoken in his deep, slightly husky voice: “If you’re tempted to crime, stick to your original statement. There’s nothing that impresses the jury more than consistency. I’ve seen the most unlikely defence succeed simply because the accused stuck to his story. After all, it’s only someone else’s word against yours; with a competent counsel that’s halfway to a reasonable doubt.”

  The Superintendent was speaking again. Cordelia wished that she could concentrate more clearly on what he was saying. She hadn’t been sleeping very soundly for the past ten days—perhaps that had something to do with this perpetual tiredness.

  “I think that Chris Lunn paid you a visit on the night he died. There’s no other reason that I could discover why he should have been on that road. One of the witnesses to the accident said that he came out in the little van from that side road as if all the devils in hell were following him. Someone was following him—you, Miss Gray.”

  “We’ve had this conversation before. I was on my way to see Sir Ronald.”

  “At that hour? And in such a hurry?”

  “I wanted to see him urgently to tell him that I’d decided to drop the case. I couldn’t wait.”

  “But you did wait, didn’t you? You went to sleep in the car on the side of the road. That’s why it was nearly an hour after you’d been seen at the accident before you arrived at Garforth House.”

  “I had to stop. I was tired and I knew it wasn’t safe to drive on.”

  “But you knew, too, that it was safe to sleep. You knew that the person you had most to fear from was dead.”

  Cordelia didn’t reply. A silence fell on the room but it seemed to her a companionable not an accusing silence. She wished that she wasn’t so tired. Most of all, she wished that she had someone to talk to about Ronald Callender’s murder. Bernie wouldn’t have been any help here. To him the moral dilemma at the heart of the crime would have held no interest, no validity, would have seemed a wilful confusion of straightforward facts. She could imagine his coarse and facile comment on Eliza Leaming’s relations with Lunn. But the Superintendent might have understood. She could imagine herself talking to him. She recalled Ronald Callender’s words that love was as destructive as hate. Would Dalgliesh assent to that bleak philosophy? She wished that she could ask him. This, she recognized, was her real danger—not the temptation to confess but the longing to confide. Did he know how she felt? Was this, too, part of his technique?

  There was a knock at the door. A uniformed constable came in and handed a note to Dalgliesh. The room was very quiet while he read it. Cordelia made herself look at his face. It was grave and expressionless and he continued looking at the paper long after he must have assimilated its brief message.

  She thought that he was making up his mind to something. After a minute he said: “This concerns someone you know, Miss Gray. Elizabeth Leaming is dead. She was killed two days ago when the car she was driving went off the coast road south of Amalfi. This note is confirmation of identity.”

  Cordelia was swept with relief so immense that she felt physically sick. She clenched her fist and felt the sweat start on her brow. She began to shiver with cold. It never occurred to her that he might be lying. She knew him to be ruthless and clever but she had always taken it for granted that he wouldn’t lie to her. She said in a whisper: “May I go home now?”

  “Yes. I don’t think there’s much point in your staying, do you?”

  “She didn’t kill Sir Ronald. He took the gun from me. He took the gun—”

  Something seemed to have happened to her throat. The words wouldn’t come out.

  “That’s what you’ve been telling me. I don’t think you need trouble to say it again.”

  “When do I have to come back?”

  “I don’t think you need come back unless you decide that there’s something you want to tell me. In that well-known phrase, you were asked to help the police. You have helped the police. Thank you.”

  She had won. She was free. She was safe, and with Miss Leaming dead, that safety depended only on herself. She needn’t come back again to this horrible place. The relief, so unexpected and so unbelievable, was too great to be borne. Cordelia burst into dramatic and uncontrollable crying. She was aware of Sergeant Mannering’s low exclamation of concern and a folded white handkerchief handed to her by the Superintendent. She buried her face in the clean, laundry-smelling linen and blurted out her pent-up misery and anger. Strangely enough—and the oddness of it struck her even in the middle of her anguish—her misery was centred on Bernie. Lifting a face disfigured with tears and no longer caring what he thought of her, she blurted out a final, irrational protest: “And after you’d sacked him, you never enquired how he got on. You didn’t even come to the funeral!”

  He had brought a chair over and had seated himself beside her. He handed her a glass of water. The glass was very cold but comforting and she was surprised to find how thirsty she was. She sipped the cold water and sat there hiccuping gently. The hiccups made her want to laugh hysterically but she controlled herself.

  After a few minutes he said gently: “I’m sorry about your friend. I didn’t realize that your partner was the Bernie Pryde who once worked with me. It’s rather worse than that, actually. I’d forgotten all about him. If it’s any consolation to you, this case might have ended rather differently if I hadn’t.”

  “You sacked him. All he ever wanted was to be a detective and you wouldn’t give him a chance.”

  “The Metropolitan Police hiring and firing regulations aren’t quite as simple as that. But it’s true that he might still have been a policeman if it hadn’t been for me. But he wouldn’t have been a detective.”

  “He wasn’t that
bad.”

  “Well, he was, you know. But I’m beginning to wonder if I didn’t underrate him.”

  Cordelia turned to hand him back the glass and met his eyes. They smiled at each other. She wished that Bernie could have heard him.

  Half an hour later Dalgliesh was seated opposite the Assistant Commissioner in the latter’s office. The two men disliked each other but only one of them knew this and he was the one to whom it didn’t matter. Dalgliesh made his report, concisely, logically, without referring to his notes. This was his invariable habit. The AC had always thought it unorthodox and conceited and he did so now.

  Dalgliesh ended: “As you can imagine, sir, I’m not proposing to commit all that to paper. There’s no real evidence and as Bernie Pryde used to tell us, hunch is a good servant but a poor master. God, how that man could churn out his horrible platitudes! He wasn’t unintelligent, not totally without judgement, but everything, including ideas, came apart in his hands. He had a mind like a police notebook. Do you remember the Clandon case, homicide by shooting? It was in 1954 I think.”

  “Ought I to?”

  “No. But it would have been helpful if I had.”

  “I don’t really know what you’re talking about, Adam. But if I understand you aright, you suspect that Ronald Callender killed his son. Ronald Callender is dead. You suspect that Chris Lunn tried to murder Cordelia Gray. Lunn is dead. You suggest that Elizabeth Leaming killed Ronald Callender. Elizabeth Leaming is dead.”

  “Yes, it’s all conveniently tidy.”

  “I suggest we leave it that way. The Commissioner incidentally has had a telephone call from Dr. Hugh Tilling, the psychiatrist. He’s outraged because his son and daughter have been questioned about Mark Callender’s death. I’m prepared to explain his civil duties to Dr. Tilling, he’s already well aware of his rights, if you really feel it necessary. But will anything be gained by seeing the two Tillings again?”