by P. D. James
As she had gently asked him on the first day, he removed his working boots in the porch, hung up his jacket and went on stockinged feet into the bathroom to wash before joining her. He brought with him the scent of earth and grass and a faint masculine smell which she liked. She was amazed how clean he always seemed, how fragile. His hands looked as delicately boned as a girl’s, strangely discordant with the brown muscled arms.
His face was round, firm-cheeked, the skin faintly pink and looking soft as suede. His large brown eyes were wide-spaced, the upper lids heavy, above a retroussé nose and a cleft chin. His hair was cut very short, showing the shape of the rounded head. Tally saw it as a baby face which the years had enlarged, but without any imprint of adult experience. Only his eyes belied this apparent untouched innocence. He could raise the lids and gaze at the world with a wide-eyed and disarming insouciance, or disconcertingly dart a sudden glance, both sly and knowledgeable. This dichotomy mirrored what he knew; odd snippets of sophistication which he picked up as he might fragments of litter from the drive, combined with an astonishing ignorance of wide areas of knowledge which her generation acquired before they left school.
She had found him by placing a card on the vacant jobs board of a local newsagent. Mrs. Faraday, the volunteer responsible for the garden, had pointed out that the sweeping up of leaves and some of the heavier pruning of shrubs and young trees had become too much for her. It was she who had suggested the card rather than an approach to the local job centre. Tally had given the telephone number of the cottage and had made no mention of the museum. When Ryan phoned, she had interviewed him with Mrs. Faraday and they had been inclined to take him on for a month’s trial. Before he left she had asked for a reference.
“Is there anyone, Ryan, someone you have worked for, who could write and recommend you?”
“I work for the Major. I clean his silver and do odd jobs about the flat. I’ll ask him.”
He had given no further information, but a letter had arrived from an address in Maida Vale within two days:
Dear Madam. Ryan Archer tells me you are thinking of offering him the job of handyman/gardener’s boy. He is not particularly handy but has done some household chores for me satisfactorily and shows willingness to learn if interested. I have no experience of his gardening ability, if any, but I doubt whether he can distinguish a pansy from a petunia. His timekeeping is erratic but when he arrives he is capable of hard work under supervision. In my experience people are either honest or dishonest and either way there is nothing to be done about it. The boy is honest.
On this less than enthusiastic recommendation, and with Mrs. Faraday’s endorsement, she had taken him on.
Miss Caroline had shown little interest and Muriel had disclaimed all responsibility. “The domestic arrangements are for you, Tally. I don’t wish to interfere. Miss Caroline has agreed that he’ll receive the national minimum wage and I will pay him from my petty cash each day before he leaves. I shall, of course, require a receipt. If he needs protective clothing, that can come out of petty cash too, but you’d better buy it and not leave it to him. He can do the heavy cleaning of the floor here, including the stairs, but I don’t want him in any other part of the museum except under supervision.”
Tally had explained, “Major Arkwright, who provided his reference, says he’s honest.”
“So he may be, but he could be a talker, and we’ve no way of knowing whether his friends are honest. I think Mrs. Faraday and you had better make a formal report on his progress after his month’s trial.”
Tally had reflected that, for someone who had no wish to interfere in domestic affairs, Muriel was behaving true to form. But the experiment had worked. Ryan was certainly unpredictable—she could never be sure whether he would turn up when expected—but he had become more reliable as the months passed, no doubt because he needed cash in hand at the end of the day. If not an enthusiastic worker, he certainly wasn’t a slacker and Mrs. Faraday, never easy to please, seemed to like him.
This morning Tally had made chicken soup from the bones she had boiled up from last night’s supper, and now he was sipping it with evident enjoyment, thin fingers warming on the mug.
He said, “Does it take a lot of courage to kill someone?”
“I’ve never thought of murderers as courageous, Ryan. They’re more likely to be cowards. Sometimes it can take more courage not to murder.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Tally.”
“Nor do I. It was just a remark. Rather a silly one now I come to think of it. Murder isn’t a pleasant subject.”
“No, but it’s interesting. Did I tell you that Mr. Calder-Hale took me round the museum last Friday morning?”
“No you didn’t, Ryan.”
“He saw me weeding the front bed when he arrived. He said good morning, so I asked him, ‘Can I see the museum?’ He said, ‘You can, but it’s a question of whether you may. I don’t see why not.’ So he told me to clean up and join him in the front hall. I don’t think Miss Godby liked it from the look she gave me.”
Tally said, “It was good of Mr. Calder-Hale to take you round. Working here—well it was right that you had a chance to see it.”
“Why couldn’t I see it before and on my own? Don’t they trust me?”
“You’re not kept out because we don’t trust you. It’s just that Miss Godby doesn’t like people who haven’t paid wandering about at will. It’s the same for everyone.”
“Not for you.”
“Well it can’t be, Ryan. I have to dust and clean.”
“Or for Miss Godby.”
“But she’s the secretary–receptionist. She has to be free to go where she likes. The museum couldn’t be run otherwise. Sometimes she has to escort visitors when Mr. Calder-Hale isn’t here.”
She thought but didn’t say, Or doesn’t think they’re important enough. Instead she asked, “Did you enjoy the museum?”
“I liked the Murder Room.”
Oh dear, she thought. Well, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising. He wouldn’t be the only visitor who had lingered longest in the Murder Room.
He said, “That tin trunk—do you think it really is the one Violette’s body was put in?”
“I suppose so. Old Mr. Dupayne was very particular about provenance—where the objects come from. I don’t know how he got hold of some of them but I expect he had contacts.”
He had finished his soup now and took his sandwiches from the bag: thick slices of white bread with what looked like salami between them.
He said, “So if I lifted the lid I’d see her bloodstains?”
“You’re not allowed to open the lid, Ryan. The exhibits mustn’t be touched.”
“But if I did?”
“You would probably see a stain, but no one can be sure it’s Violette’s blood.”
“But it could be tested.”
“I think it was. But even if it’s human blood that doesn’t mean it’s her blood. They didn’t know about DNA in those days. Ryan, isn’t this rather a morbid conversation?”
“I wonder where she is now.”
“Probably in a Brighton churchyard. I’m not sure anyone knows. She was a prostitute, poor woman, and perhaps there wasn’t any money for a proper funeral. She may have been buried in what they call a pauper’s grave.”
But had she? Tally wondered. Perhaps celebrity had elevated her to the rank of those who are dignified in death. Perhaps there had been a lavish funeral, horses with black plumes, crowds of gawpers following the cortège, photographs in the local newspapers, perhaps even in the national press. How ridiculous it would have seemed to Violette when she was young, years before she was murdered, if someone had prophesied that she would be more famous in death than in life, that nearly seventy years after her murder a woman and a boy in a world unimaginably different would be talking about her funeral.
She raised her eyes and heard Ryan speaking. “I think Mr. Calder-Hale only asked me because he wanted to know what I’m
doing here.”
“But Ryan, he knows what you’re doing. You’re the part-time gardener.”
“He wanted to know what I did on the other days.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him that I work in a bar near King’s Cross.”
“But Ryan, is that true? I thought you worked for the Major.”
“I do work for the Major, but I don’t tell everyone my business.”
Five minutes later, watching as he put on his outdoor shoes, she realized again how little she knew about him. He had told her that he had been in care, but not why or where. Sometimes he told her that he lived in a squat, sometimes that he was staying with the Major. But if he was private, so was she—and so was everyone at the Dupayne. She thought, We work together, we see each other frequently, sometimes every day, we talk, we confer, we have a common purpose. And at the heart of each of us is the unknowable self.
9
It was Dr. Neville Dupayne’s last domiciliary visit of the day and the one he most dreaded. Even before he had parked and locked the car he had begun to steel himself for the ordeal of meeting Ada Gearing’s eyes, eyes that would gaze into his with mute appeal as soon as she opened the door. The few steps up to the first-floor walkway seemed as wearying as if he were mounting to the top storey. There would be a wait at the door; there always was a wait. Albert, even in his catatonic phase, responded to the sound of the front doorbell, sometimes with a terror which held him shaking in his armchair, sometimes by rising from it with surprising speed, shoving his wife aside to get to the door first. Then it would be Albert’s eyes which would meet his; old eyes which yet were able to blaze with such differing emotions as fear, hatred, suspicion, hopelessness.
Tonight he almost wished it would be Albert. He passed down the walkway to the middle door. There was a peephole in it, two security locks and a metal mesh nailed to the outside of the single window. He supposed that this was the cheapest way of ensuring protection but it had always worried him. If Albert set the place on fire, the door would be the only exit. He paused before ringing. It was darkening into evening. How quickly, once the clocks were put back, the daylight hours faded and darkness stealthily took over. The lights had come on along the walkways and, looking up, he saw the huge block towering like a great cruise ship anchored in darkness.
He knew that it wasn’t possible to ring quietly; even so his finger was gentle on the bell. This evening’s wait wasn’t longer than usual. She would have to ensure that Albert was settled in his chair, calmed after the shock of the ring. After a minute he heard the rasp of the bolts and she opened the door to him. At once he gave her an almost imperceptible shake of the head and stepped inside. She relocked and bolted the door.
Following her down the short passage, he said, “I’m sorry. I rang the hospital before I left and there’s no vacancy yet in the special unit. But Albert is top of the waiting list.”
She said, “He’s been there, Doctor, for eight months now. I suppose we’re waiting for someone to die.”
“Yes,” he said. “For someone to die.”
It was the same conversation they had had for the last six months. Before going into the sitting-room, and with her hand on the doorknob, he asked, “How are things?”
She had always had this reluctance to discuss her husband while he sat there, apparently either not hearing or not caring. She said, “Quiet today. Been quiet all the week. But last Wednesday he got out, the day the woman social worker called, and he was through the door before I could lay a hand on him. He’s quick on his feet when the mood takes him. He was down the steps and off down the high street before we could catch him. And then there was a struggle. People look at you. They don’t know what you’re doing hauling an old man about like that. The social worker tried to persuade him, talking gentle like, but he wasn’t going to listen to her. That’s what terrifies me, that one day he’ll get out on the road and be killed.”
And that, he thought, was exactly what she did fear. The irrationality of it provoked in him a mixture of sadness and irritation. Her husband was being sucked deep into the quagmire of Alzheimer’s. The man she had married had become a confused and sometimes violent stranger, unable to give her either companionship or support. She was physically exhausted with trying to care for him. But he was her husband. She was terrified by the worry that he might get out on the road and be killed.
The small sitting-room with the flowered curtains with the patterned side hung against the panes, the shabby furniture, the solid old-fashioned gas fire, would have looked much the same when the Gearings first took the flat. But now there was a television set in the corner with a wide screen and a video recorder beneath it. And he knew that the bulge in Mrs. Gearing’s apron pocket was her mobile phone.
He drew up his customary chair between them. He had allocated the usual half hour to spend with them. He had brought no good news and there was nothing he could offer to help them other than that which was already being done, but at least he could give them his time. He would do what he always did, sit quietly as if he had hours to spend, and listen. The room was uncomfortably hot. The gas fire hissed out a fierce heat, scorching his legs and drying his throat. The air smelt, a sour-sweet stink compounded of stale perspiration, fried food, unwashed clothes and urine. Breathing it he could imagine that he detected each separate smell.
Albert was sitting motionless in his chair. The gnarled hands were clenched tightly over the edges of the armrests. The eyes looking into his were narrowed with an extraordinary malevolence. He was wearing carpet slippers, baggy tracksuit trousers in navy blue with a white stripe down each leg, and a pyjama jacket covered with a long grey cardigan. He wondered how long it had taken Ada and the daily helper to get him into his clothes.
He said, knowing the futility of the question, “How are you managing? Does Mrs. Nugent still come?”
And now she was talking freely, no longer worrying whether her husband could understand. Perhaps she was beginning to realize at last how pointless were those whispered consultations outside the door.
“Oh yes, she comes. It’s every day now. I couldn’t do without her. It’s a worry, Doctor. When Albert is difficult he says terrible things to her, hurtful things about her being black. They’re horrible really. I know he doesn’t mean it, I know it’s because he’s ill, but she shouldn’t have to hear it. He never used to be like that. And she’s so good, she doesn’t take it amiss. But it upsets me. And now that woman next door, Mrs. Morris, has heard him carrying on. She said if the welfare get to hear about it, we’ll be taken to court for being racist and fined. She says they’ll take Mrs. Nugent away and they’ll see we don’t get anyone else, black or white. And perhaps Mrs. Nugent’ll get fed up anyway and go somewhere where she doesn’t have to hear such things. I can’t say as how I’d blame her. And Ivy Morris is right. You can get taken to court for being a racist. It’s in the papers. How am I going to pay the fine? The money’s tight enough as it is.”
People of her age and class were too proud to complain of their poverty. The fact that, for the first time, she had mentioned money showed the depth of her anxiety. He said firmly, “No one’s going to take you to court. Mrs. Nugent’s a sensible and experienced woman. She knows that Albert’s ill. Would you like me to have a word with Social Services?”
“Would you, Doctor? It might be better coming from you. I’ve got so nervous about it now. Every time I hear a knock on the door I think it’s the police.”
“It won’t be the police.”
He stayed for another twenty minutes. He listened, as he had so many times before, to her distress that Albert would be taken from her care. She knew that she couldn’t manage, but something—perhaps the memory of her marriage vows—was even stronger than the need for relief. He tried again to reassure her that life in the hospital special unit would be better for Albert, that he would receive care that couldn’t be given at home, that she would be able to visit him whenever she wanted, that
if he had been capable of understanding he would understand.
“Maybe,” she said. “But would he forgive?”
What was the use, he thought, of trying to persuade her that she need feel no guilt? She was gripped always by those two dominant emotions, love and guilt. What power had he, bringing his secular and imperfect wisdom, to purge her of something so deep-seated, so elemental?
She made him tea before he left. She always made him tea. He didn’t want it and he had to fight down impatience while she tried to persuade Albert to drink, coaxing him like a child. But at last he felt able to go.
He said, “I’ll ring the hospital tomorrow and let you know if there’s any news.”
At the door she looked at him and said, “Doctor, I don’t think I can go on.”
They were the final words she spoke as the door closed between them. He stepped out into the chill of the evening and heard for the last time the rasp of the bolts.
10
It was just after seven o’clock and in her small but immaculate kitchen Muriel Godby was baking biscuits. It had been her practice ever since taking up her post at the Dupayne to provide biscuits for Miss Caroline’s tea when she was at the museum, and for the quarterly meetings of the trustees. Tomorrow’s meeting, she knew, was to be crucial, but that was no reason to vary her routine. Caroline Dupayne liked spiced biscuits made with butter, delicately crisp and baked to the palest brown. They had already been made and were now cooling on the rack. She began preparations for the florentines. These, she felt, were less appropriate for the trustees’ tea; Dr. Neville tended to prop his against his teacup so that the chocolate melted. But Mr. Marcus liked them and would be disappointed if they didn’t appear.