The Murder Room

by P. D. James

  During the questioning he had continued to collect his papers, tidy his desk and take a mug into his bathroom to rinse it out. Now he was ready to leave and showed every inclination to do so without enduring further questioning. Handing his keys to the museum to Dalgliesh, he said that he’d be glad to have them returned as soon as possible. It was highly inconvenient not to have the use of his room.

  Last of all, Dalgliesh and Kate called Caroline Dupayne and Muriel Godby from the downstairs office. Miss Dupayne had apparently reconciled herself to the inspection of the flat. The door was to the rear of the house and on the west side, and was unobtrusive. Miss Dupayne unlocked it and they entered a small vestibule with a modern lift controlled by pushbuttons. Punching out the sequence, Caroline Dupayne said, “The lift was installed by my father. He lived here in old age and was obsessive about security. So am I when I’m here alone. I also value my privacy. No doubt you do too, Commander. I find this inspection an intrusion.”

  Dalgliesh didn’t reply. If there were evidence that Celia Mellock had been here or could have entered the museum from the flat, then Miss Dupayne would be faced with a professional search which would indeed be intrusive. The tour of the flat, if it could be called that, was perfunctory, but he was unworried. Briefly she showed him the two spare bedrooms—both with adjoining bathroom and shower and neither showing any sign of recent use—the kitchen with a huge refrigerator, a small utility-room with its large washing machine and dryer, and the sitting-room. It could not have been more different from Neville Dupayne’s room. Here were comfortable chairs and a sofa in pale green linen. The low bookcase ran the length of three walls, and rugs covered almost the whole of the polished floor. Above the bookcases the walls were hung with small pictures, water-colours, lithographs and oils. Even on this dull day light poured in from the two windows with their view of the sky. This was a comfortable room which, in its airy silence, must provide a relief from the noise, the impersonality and lack of privacy of her apartment at Swathling’s, and he could understand its importance for her.

  Last of all, Caroline Dupayne showed them her bedroom. The room surprised Kate. It was not what she had expected. It was unfussy but comfortable, even luxurious, and, despite a hint of austerity, it was very feminine. Here, as in all the other rooms, the windows were fitted with blinds as well as curtains. They didn’t go in but stood briefly at the door which Caroline had opened wide, standing back against it and gazing fixedly at Dalgliesh. Kate caught a look that was both challenging and lubricious. The look intrigued her. It went some way to explaining Caroline Dupayne’s attitude to the investigation. And then, still in silence, Caroline closed the door.

  But what interested Dalgliesh was the possible access to the museum. A white-painted door led to a short flight of carpeted steps and a narrow hallway. The mahogany door facing them had bolts at top and bottom and a key hanging on a hook to the right. Caroline Dupayne stood silent and motionless. Taking his latex gloves from his pocket, Dalgliesh put them on and then drew back the bolts and unlocked the door. The key turned easily but the door was heavy and, once open, it needed his weight to prevent it from swinging back.

  Before them was the Murder Room. Nobby Clark and one of the fingerprint officers looked at them with surprise. Dalgliesh said, “I want the museum side of this door dusted for prints.” Then he closed and bolted it again.

  In the last few minutes Caroline Dupayne hadn’t spoken, and Miss Godby hadn’t uttered a word since their arrival. Returning to the flat, Dalgliesh said, “Will you confirm that only you two have keys to the ground-floor door?”

  Caroline Dupayne said, “I’ve already told you so. No other keys exist. No one can get into the flat from the Murder Room. There’s no handle on the door. That, of course, was deliberate on my father’s part.”

  “When were you, either of you, first in the flat following Dr. Dupayne’s murder?”

  And now Muriel Godby spoke. “I came in early on Saturday because I knew Miss Dupayne planned to be in the flat for the weekend. I did some dusting and checked that things were in order for her. The door to the museum was locked then.”

  “Was it normal for you to check that door? Why should you?”

  “Because it’s part of my routine. When I come to the flat I check that everything is in order.”

  Caroline Dupayne said, “I arrived at about three o’clock and stayed here on Saturday night alone. I left by ten-thirty on Sunday. No one, to my knowledge, has been here since.”

  And if they had, thought Dalgliesh, the conscientious Muriel Godby would have eliminated any trace. It was in silence that the four of them descended to the ground floor and in silence that Miss Dupayne and Miss Godby handed over their sets of the museum keys.

  5

  It was shortly after midnight before Dalgliesh was at last in his high riverside flat at the top of a converted nineteenth-century warehouse at Queenhithe. He had his own entrance and a secure lift. Here, except during the working week, he lived above silent and empty offices in the solitude he needed. By eight o’clock every evening even the cleaners had gone. Returning home he could picture below him the floors of deserted rooms with the computers shut down, the waste-paper baskets emptied, the telephone calls unanswered, with only the occasional bleep of the fax machine to break the eerie silence. The building had originally been a spice warehouse and a pungent evocative aroma had permeated the wood-lined walls and was faintly detectable even above the strong sea smell of the Thames. As always he moved over to the window. The wind had dropped. A few frail shreds of cloud stained ruby by the glare of the city hung motionless in a deep purple sky spangled with stars. Fifty feet below his window the full tide heaved and sucked at the brick walls; T. S. Eliot’s brown god had taken on his black nocturnal mystery.

  He had received a letter from Emma in reply to his. Moving over to his desk, he read it again. It was brief but explicit. She could be in London on Friday evening and planned to catch the six-fifteen train, arriving at King’s Cross at three minutes past seven. Could he meet her at the barrier? She would need to set out by five-thirty, so could he phone her before then if he couldn’t make it. It was signed simply Emma. He reread the few lines in her elegant upward strokes, trying to decide what might lie behind the words. Did this brevity convey the hint of an ultimatum? That wouldn’t be Emma’s way. But she had her pride and after his last cancellation might now be telling him that this was his last chance, their last chance.

  He hardly dared hope that she loved him, but even if she were on the edge of love she might draw back. Her life was in Cambridge, his in London. He could, of course, resign from his job. He had inherited enough money from his aunt to make him comparatively rich. He was a respected poet. From boyhood he had known that poetry would be the mainspring of his life, but he had never wanted to be a professional poet. It had been important to him to find a job which would be socially useful—he was, after all, his father’s son—a job in which he could be physically active and preferably occasionally in danger. He would set up his ladder, if not in W. B. Yeats’s foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart, at least in a world far removed from the seductive peace of that Norfolk rectory, from the subsequent privileged years of public school and Oxford. Policing had provided all that he was looking for and more. His job had ensured his privacy, had protected him from the obligations of success, the interviews, the lectures, the overseas tours, the relentless publicity, above all from being part of the London literary establishment. And it had fuelled the best of his poetry. He couldn’t give it up, and he knew Emma wouldn’t ask that of him, any more than he would ask her to sacrifice her career. If by a miracle she loved him, somehow they would find a way to make a life together.

  And he would be at King’s Cross station on Friday to meet that train. Even if there were important developments by Friday afternoon, Kate and Piers were more than competent to cope with anything that happened over the weekend. Only an arrest would keep him in London, and none was imminent. Already he ha
d Friday evening planned. He would go early to King’s Cross and spend the half hour before the train was due to arrive in the British Library, then stroll the short distance to the station. If the skies fell, she would see him waiting at the barrier when she arrived.

  His last act was to write a letter to Emma. He hardly knew why he needed now, in this moment of quietude, to find the words which might convince her of his love. Perhaps the time would come when she no longer wanted to hear his voice or, if she listened, might need time to think before she responded. If that moment ever came, the letter would be ready.

  6

  On Thursday 7 November, Mrs. Pickering arrived to open the charity shop in Highgate promptly at nine-thirty as she always did. She saw with annoyance that there was a black plastic bag outside the door. The top was open revealing the usual jumble of wool and cotton. Unlocking the door, she dragged the bag in behind her with small clucks of irritation. It really was too bad. The notice pasted to the inside of the window stated plainly that donors shouldn’t leave bags outside the door because of the risk of theft, but they still did it. She went through to the small office to hang up her coat and hat, dragging the bag with her. It would have to wait until Mrs. Fraser arrived, shortly before ten. It was Mrs. Fraser, nominally in charge of the charity shop and an acknowledged expert on pricing the items, who would go through the bag and decide what should be put on display and how much should be charged.

  Mrs. Pickering had no great expectations of her find. All the voluntary workers knew that people with clothes worth buying liked to bring them in themselves, not leave them outside to be pilfered. But she couldn’t resist a preliminary inspection. Certainly there seemed nothing interesting in this bundle of faded jeans, woollen jumpers felted with washing, a very long hand-knitted cardigan which looked quite promising until she saw the moth-holes in the sleeves, and some half-dozen cracked and distorted pairs of shoes. Lifting the items one by one and thrusting her hands among them, she decided that Mrs. Fraser would probably reject the lot. And then her hand encountered leather and a narrow metal chain. The chain had become entangled with the laces on a man’s shoe but she pulled it through and found herself looking at an obviously expensive handbag.

  Mrs. Pickering’s place in the charity shop’s hierarchy was lowly, a fact she accepted without resentment. She was slow in giving change, completely confused when Euro notes or coins were proffered and inclined to waste time when the shop was busy, chatting with the customers and helping them to decide which item of clothing would best suit their size and colouring. She herself recognized these failings but was untroubled by them. Mrs. Fraser had once said to a fellow worker, “She’s hopeless on the till, of course, and dreadfully chatty, but she’s thoroughly reliable and good with the customers and we’re lucky to have her.” Mrs. Pickering had only caught the last part of this sentence but would probably not have been dismayed had she heard the whole. But although the assessing of quality and the pricing were privileges reserved for Mrs. Fraser, she could recognize good leather when she saw it. This was certainly an expensive and unusual handbag. She smoothed her hands over it, feeling the suppleness of the leather, then placed it back on the top of the bundle.

  The next twenty minutes were spent as usual in dusting the shelves, rearranging the items in the order prescribed by Mrs. Fraser, re-hanging the clothes which eager hands had dislodged from their hangers, and setting out the cups for the Nescafé which she would make as soon as Mrs. Fraser arrived. That lady, as usual, was on time. Relocking the door behind her and casting a preliminary approving look over the shop interior, she went into the back room with Mrs. Pickering.

  “There’s this bundle,” said Mrs. Pickering. “Left outside the door as usual. Really, people are very naughty, the notice is perfectly plain. It doesn’t look very interesting, except for a handbag.”

  Mrs. Fraser, as her companion knew, could never resist a new sack of donations. While Mrs. Pickering switched on the kettle and doled out the Nescafé, she went to the bag. There was a silence. Mrs. Pickering watched while Mrs. Fraser unclipped the bag, examined the fastener carefully, turned it over in her hands. Then she opened it. She said, “It’s a Gucci, and it looks as if it’s hardly been used. Who on earth would have given us this? Did you see who left the sack?”

  “No, it was here when I arrived. The handbag wasn’t on the top, though. It was stuffed well down the side. I just felt around out of curiosity and found it.”

  “It’s very strange. It’s a rich woman’s bag. The rich don’t give us their cast-offs. What they do is send their maids to sell them at those upmarket second-hand shops. That’s how the rich stay rich. They know the value of what they’ve got. We’ve never had a bag of this quality before.”

  There was a side pocket and she slipped her fingers into it, then drew out a business card. Coffee forgotten, Mrs. Pickering came over and they looked at it together. It was small and the lettering was elegant and plain. They read: CELIA MELLOCK, and at the bottom left-hand corner, POLLYANNE PROMOTIONS, THEATRICAL AGENTS, COVENT GARDEN, WC2.

  Mrs. Pickering said, “I wonder if we ought to get in touch with the agency and try to trace the owner? We could return the bag. It might have been given to us by mistake.”

  Mrs. Fraser had no truck with such inconvenient sensitivities. “If people give things by mistake, it’s up to them to come in and ask for them back. We can’t make that sort of judgement. After all, we have to remember the cause, the refuge for old and unwanted animals. If the goods are left outside, we’re entitled to sell them.”

  Mrs. Pickering said, “We might put it by for Mrs. Roberts to have a look at. I think she’d give a very good price. Isn’t she due in this afternoon?”

  Mrs. Roberts, an occasional and not particularly reliable volunteer, had an eye for a bargain, but as she always gave at least ten percent more than Mrs. Fraser would dare ask of ordinary customers, neither lady saw any moral difficulty in accommodating their colleague.

  But Mrs. Fraser didn’t reply. She had become very quiet, so quiet indeed that she seemed for the moment incapable of movement. Then she said, “I’ve remembered. I know this name. Celia Mellock. I heard it on this morning’s local radio. It’s the girl who was found dead in that museum—the Dupayne, wasn’t it?”

  Mrs. Pickering said nothing. She was affected by her companion’s obvious if repressed excitement, but couldn’t for the life of her see the significance of the find. Feeling at last that some comment was required, she said, “So she must have decided to give the bag away before she was killed.”

  “She could hardly decide to do so after she was killed, Grace! And look at the rest of these things. They can’t have come from Celia Mellock. Obviously someone shoved this handbag among the other things as a way of getting rid of it.”

  Mrs. Pickering had always regarded Mrs. Fraser’s intellect with awe and, faced with this remarkable deductive power, struggled to find an adequate comment. At last she said, “What do you think we should do?”

  “The answer’s perfectly plain. We keep the CLOSED notice showing on the door and we don’t open it at ten o’clock. And now we phone the police.”

  Mrs. Pickering said, “You mean ring Scotland Yard?”

  “Precisely. They’re the ones dealing with the Mellock murder and one should always go to the top.”

  The next hour and three-quarters were extremely gratifying to the two ladies. Mrs. Fraser rang while her friend stood by admiring the clear way in which she gave the news of their find. At the end she heard Mrs. Fraser say, “Yes, we’ve already done that, and we’ll stay in the back office so that people won’t see us and start hammering on the door. There’s an entrance at the rear, if you want to arrive discreetly.”

  She put down the receiver and said, “They’re sending someone round. They told us not to open the shop and to wait for them in the office.”

  The wait was not long. Two male officers arrived by car at the back entrance, one rather stocky who was obviously senior, and a
tall dark one so handsome that Mrs. Pickering could hardly take her eyes off him. The senior introduced himself as Detective Inspector Tarrant and his colleague as Detective Sergeant Benton-Smith. Mrs. Fraser, shaking hands with him, gave him a look which suggested that she wasn’t sure if police officers should be as good-looking as this. Mrs. Pickering told her story again while Mrs. Fraser, exerting considerable self-control, stood by, prepared to correct any small inaccuracies and save her colleague from police harassment.

  Inspector Tarrant put on gloves before handling the bag and slipping it into a large plastic envelope which he then sealed, writing something on the flap. He said, “We’re grateful to you two ladies for letting us know about this. The bag may well be of interest. If it is, we need to know who’s handled it. Do you think you could come with us now and have your fingerprints taken? They’re needed, of course, for the purposes of elimination. They’ll be destroyed if and when they’re no longer required.”

  Mrs. Pickering had imagined herself driving in splendour to New Scotland Yard in Victoria Street. She had seen the revolving sign often enough on television. Instead, and somewhat to her disappointment, they were taken to the local police station where their fingerprints were taken with the minimum of fuss. As each of Mrs. Pickering’s fingers was gently taken and rolled on the pad, she felt all the excitement of a totally new experience and chattered happily about the process. Mrs. Fraser, retaining her dignity, merely asked what procedure was followed to ensure the prints would be destroyed when appropriate. Within half an hour they were back in the shop and settling down to a fresh cup of coffee. After the excitement of the morning both felt they needed it.