The Murder Room

by P. D. James

  Mrs. Pickering said, “They took it all very calmly, didn’t they? They didn’t tell us anything, not really. Do you think the handbag really is important?”

  “Of course it is, Grace. They wouldn’t have taken all that trouble and asked for our fingerprints if it isn’t.” She was about to add, all that apparent indifference is just their cunning, but said instead, “I thought it rather unnecessary of that senior officer, Inspector Tarrant, to hint that if this came out it would have to be we two who were responsible. After all, we did give him our assurance that we wouldn’t tell anyone and we’re obviously both responsible women. That should have been sufficient for him.”

  “Oh, Elinor, I don’t think he was hinting that. It’s a pity, though, isn’t it? I always like to have something to tell John at the end of the day when I’ve been here. I think he enjoys hearing about the people I’ve met, particularly the customers. Some of them have such interesting stories once you get talking, haven’t they? It seems a shame not to be able to share the most exciting thing that’s ever happened.”

  Privately Mrs. Fraser agreed. Returning in the police car she had impressed on Mrs. Pickering the need for silence but she was already contemplating perfidy. She had no intention of not telling her husband. After all, Cyril was a magistrate and knew the importance of keeping a secret. She said, “I’m afraid your John will have to wait. It would be disastrous if this got round the golf course. And you have to remember, Grace, that it was you who actually found the handbag. You may be wanted as a witness.”

  “Good gracious!” Mrs. Pickering paused, coffee cup half-way to her lips, then replaced it in the saucer. “You mean I’d have to go into the witness-box? I’d have to attend court?”

  “Well, they’ll hardly hold the trial in the public lavatory!”

  Really, thought Mrs. Pickering, for the daughter-in-law of a previous Lord Mayor, sometimes Elinor could be very crude.

  7

  The meeting with Sir Daniel Holstead had been arranged for half-past nine, a time suggested by Sir Daniel when he rang Dalgliesh an hour earlier. It would hardly give him and his wife a chance to recover from the flight but their anxiety to hear from the police first had been imperative. Dalgliesh doubted whether either of them had slept except in snatches since learning the news. He thought it prudent as well as considerate to see the couple himself, taking Kate with him. Their address, in a modern block in Brook Street, had a commissionaire at the reception desk who scrutinized their warrant cards and announced them by telephone, then showed them to a lift controlled by a security device. He punched out the numbers, then ushered them in and said, “You just press the button there, sir. It’s a private lift that goes straight to Sir Daniel’s apartment.”

  The lift was fitted with a low padded seat along one side and three of the walls were lined with mirrors. Dalgliesh saw himself and Kate reflected in an apparently unending line. Neither of them spoke. The upward journey was swift and the lift came gently to a stop. Almost at once the doors opened silently.

  They found themselves in a wide corridor with a series of doors opening on either side. The wall facing them was hung with a double row of prints of exotic birds. As they stepped out of the lift, they saw two women coming towards them soundlessly on the soft carpet. One, in a black trouser suit and with a look of slightly intimidating self-confidence, had the brisk efficiency of a personal assistant. The other, fair-haired and younger, was wearing a white overall and carrying a folded massage table, the straps slung over one shoulder.

  The older woman said, “Until tomorrow then, Miss Murchison. If you can be through in an hour I can fit you in before the hair appointment and manicure. It will mean your arriving fifteen minutes early. I know Lady Holstead dislikes hurrying a massage.”

  The masseuse stepped into the lift and the door closed. Then the woman turned to Dalgliesh. “Commander Dalgliesh? Sir Daniel and Lady Holstead are expecting you. Will you come this way, please.”

  She had taken no notice of Kate, nor did she introduce herself. They followed her down the corridor to a door which she opened with easy confidence and announced, “Commander Dalgliesh and his colleague, Lady Holstead,” then closed the door behind her.

  The room was low but large with four windows looking out over Mayfair. It was richly, indeed luxuriously, furnished in the style of an expensive hotel suite. Despite an arrangement of photographs in silver frames on a side-table beside the fireplace, there was little to indicate individual taste. The fireplace was ornate and in marble, and clearly hadn’t originally been part of the room. There was a fitted carpet in silver grey and over it an assortment of large rugs, the colours a brighter version of the satin cushions, sofas and armchairs. Over the fireplace was a large portrait of a fair-haired woman in a scarlet ball-gown.

  The subject of the portrait was sitting beside the fire, but as Dalgliesh and Kate entered, she rose in one elegant movement and came towards them, stretching out a tremulous hand. Her husband had been standing behind her chair but now he too came forward and put his hand under her forearm. The impression was of delicate feminine anguish supported by impressive masculine strength. Gently he led her back to the chair.

  Sir Daniel was a large man, broad of shoulder, heavy-featured and with strong iron-grey hair brushed back from a wide forehead. His eyes were rather small above the double pouches and the look they fixed on Dalgliesh gave nothing away. Looking at his bland, unrevealing face sparked off for Dalgliesh a childhood memory. A multimillionaire, in an age when a million meant something, had been brought to dinner at the rectory by a local landowner who was one of his father’s churchwardens. He too had been a big man, affable, an easy guest. The fourteen-year-old Adam had been disconcerted to discover during the dinner conversation that he was rather stupid. He had then learned that the ability to make a great deal of money in a particular way is a talent highly advantageous to its possessor and possibly beneficial to others, but implies no virtue, wisdom or intelligence beyond expertise in a lucrative field. Dalgliesh reflected that it was easy but dangerous to stereotype the very rich, but they did hold qualities in common, among them the self-confident exercise of power. Sir Daniel might possibly be impressed by a high court judge, but he could certainly take a commander of the Metropolitan Police and a detective inspector in his stride.

  His wife said, “Thank you for coming so quickly. Let’s all sit down, shall we?” She looked at Kate. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you wouldn’t be alone.”

  Dalgliesh introduced Kate and the four of them moved to the two immense sofas set at right angles to the fire. Dalgliesh would have preferred almost any other seat in the room to this smothering opulence. He sat forward on the edge and looked across at the two Holsteads.

  He said, “I’m sorry we had to give you such terrible news, and by telephone. It’s too early to give you very much information about how Miss Mellock died, but I’ll do what I can.”

  Lady Holstead leaned forward. “Oh do, please do. One feels so utterly helpless. I don’t think I’ve taken it in yet. I almost expected you to say that it’s some terrible mistake. Please forgive me if I’m not more coherent. The flight . . .” She broke off.

  Her husband said, “You could have broken the news with more tact, Commander. The female officer who telephoned—I presume it was you, Inspector Miskin—was hardly considerate. I was given no indication that the call was particularly important.”

  Dalgliesh said, “We wouldn’t have telephoned you and woken you at that hour if this had been a minor matter. I’m sorry if you feel that the news was insensitively broken. Obviously Inspector Miskin wanted to speak to you rather than Lady Holstead so that you could decide how best to tell her.”

  Lady Holstead turned to him. “And you were sweet, darling. You did your best, but you can’t really break news like that gently, can you? Not really. Telling a mother her child has been murdered, there’s no way of softening it. None.”

  The distress, Dalgliesh thought, was genuine enough. How
could it be otherwise? It was unfortunate that everything about Lady Holstead suggested a certain theatricality that was close to falseness. She was dressed to perfection in a black suit reminiscent of a military uniform, short-skirted and with a row of small brass buttons at the cuffs. The blonde hair looked as if it had been recently set and her make-up, the careful shading of rouge on the cheekbones and the meticulous outlining of the lips, could not have been achieved except with a steady hand. Her skirt was drawn up above her knees and she sat with her shapely thin legs stretched side by side, the bones sharp under the sheen of the fine nylon. You could see this perfection as the courage of a woman who preferred to face life’s tragedies as well as its minor imperfections looking her best. He could see no resemblance to her daughter, but that was hardly surprising. Violent death erased more than the semblance of life.

  Her husband, like Dalgliesh, was sitting well forward on the sofa, his arms dangling between his knees. His face was impassive and his eyes, fixed for most of the time on his wife’s face, were watchful. He couldn’t, thought Dalgliesh, be expected to feel a personal loss for a girl whom he had hardly known and who had probably been an irritant in his busy life. And now he was faced with this very public tragedy for which he would be expected to show appropriate feeling. He was probably no different from other men. He wanted domestic peace with a happy—or at least contented—wife, not a perpetually grieving mother. But all this would pass. She would forgive herself for being unloving, perhaps by persuading herself that she had loved her child, however unrewardingly, perhaps more rationally by accepting that one cannot love even a child by an act of will. She now seemed more confused than grief-stricken, holding out her arms to Dalgliesh in a gesture more histrionic than pathetic. Her nails were long and painted a bright red.

  She said, “I still can’t believe it. Even with you here it doesn’t make sense. Coming over in the jet I imagined that we’d touch down and she’d be there waiting, explaining that it was all a mistake. If I saw her I’d believe it, but I don’t want to see her. I don’t think I could bear that. I don’t have to see her, do I? They can’t make me do that.”

  She turned imploring eyes on her husband. Sir Daniel was having difficulty in keeping the impatience out of his voice. “Of course they can’t. If it’s necessary, I’ll identify her.”

  She turned her eyes to Dalgliesh. “To have your child die before you, it’s not natural, it’s not meant to be.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not meant to be.”

  His own child, a boy, had died with his mother soon after his birth. They were stealing into his mind more often now than they had for years, bringing back long-dormant memories: the dead young wife; that early impulsive marriage when giving her what she so desperately wanted—himself—had seemed so slight a gift; the face of his stillborn son with its look of almost smug contentment, as if he who had known nothing, would never know anything, now knew it all. Grief for his lost son had been subsumed in the greater agony of his wife’s death and in an overwhelming sense of participating in a universal sorrow, of becoming part of something not previously understood. But the long years had gradually laid down their merciful cicatrice. He still lit a candle for her on the anniversary of her death because that was what she would have wanted, but he could think of her now with nostalgic sadness and without pain. And now, if all went well, there might still be a child, his and Emma’s. That such a thought, compounded of fear and an unfounded longing, should come into his mind at this moment unnerved him.

  He was aware of the intensity of Lady Holstead’s gaze. Something passed between them which she could believe was a moment of shared sympathy. She said, “You do understand, don’t you? I can see you do. And you will find out who killed her? Promise me that.”

  He said, “We shall do all we can, but we need your help. We know very little of your daughter’s life, her friends, her interests. Do you know if there’s anyone close to her, someone she might have gone to meet at the Dupayne Museum?”

  She looked helplessly at her husband. He said, “I don’t think you’ve grasped the situation, Commander. I thought I’d made it clear that my stepdaughter lived as an independent woman. She came into her money on her eighteenth birthday, bought the London flat and virtually moved out of our lives.”

  His wife turned to him. “The young do, darling. They want to be independent. I understood that, we both did.”

  Dalgliesh asked, “Before she moved, did she live here with you?”

  Again it was Sir Daniel who replied. “Normally, yes; but she spent some time at our house in Berkshire. We keep the minimum staff there and occasionally she would turn up, sometimes with friends. They used the house for parties, usually to the inconvenience of the staff.”

  Dalgliesh asked, “Did you or Lady Holstead meet any of these friends?”

  “No. I imagine they were temporary hangers-on rather than friends. She never spoke of them. Even when we were in England we rarely saw her.”

  Lady Holstead said, “I think she resented my divorce from her father. And then, when he was killed in that air crash, she blamed me. If we’d been together he wouldn’t have been on that plane. She adored Rupert.”

  Sir Daniel said, “So I’m afraid there’s very little we can tell you. I know she was trying to become a pop star at one time and spending a great deal of money on singing lessons. She actually had an agent, but it came to nothing. Before she came of age we managed to persuade her to go to a finishing school, Swathling’s, for a year. Her education had been very neglected. There was one school after another. Swathling’s has a good reputation. But of course she didn’t stay.”

  Kate said, “I don’t know whether you know that Miss Caroline Dupayne, one of the trustees of the museum, is the joint Principal at Swathling’s.”

  “You mean that Celia went to the museum to meet her?”

  “Miss Dupayne says not, and it seems unlikely. But she may have known of the museum through that connection.”

  “But surely someone saw her arriving? Someone must have noticed whom she was with.”

  Dalgliesh said, “The museum is understaffed and it is possible that both she and her killer got in to the museum unobserved. It is also possible that her killer may have left that Friday night without being seen. At present we don’t know. The fact that Dr. Neville Dupayne was also murdered on that Friday suggests there may be a connection. But at present nothing can be said with any certainty. The investigation is in its very early stages. We shall, of course, keep you informed of progress. The autopsy is being carried out this morning. The cause of death, strangulation, was self-evident.”

  Lady Holstead said, “Please tell me that it was quick. Please say that she didn’t suffer.”

  “I think it was quick, Lady Holstead.” What else could he say? Why burden her with her child’s final moment of utter terror?

  Sir Daniel asked, “When will the body be released?”

  “The inquest will be opened tomorrow and adjourned. I don’t know when the Coroner will release the body.”

  Sir Daniel said, “We’ll arrange a quiet funeral, a cremation. We’ll be grateful for any help you can give in keeping the gawpers away.”

  “We’ll do what we can. The best way of ensuring privacy is to keep the place and time secret, if that’s possible.”

  Lady Holstead turned to her husband. “But darling, we can’t just put her away as if she was nobody! Her friends will want to say goodbye. There ought at least to be a memorial service, a nice church somewhere. London would be most convenient. Hymns, flowers, something beautiful to celebrate her life—a service people will remember.”

  She looked at Dalgliesh as if he could be expected to conjure up the appropriate setting, priest, organist, choir, congregation and flowers.

  It was her husband who spoke. “Celia never went near a church in her life. If a murder is notorious or tragic enough you can fill a cathedral. I doubt whether that’s the case here. I have no wish to provide a photo opportunit
y for the tabloid press.”

  He could not have demonstrated his dominance more clearly. His wife looked at him, then her eyes fell and she said meekly, “If that’s what you think, darling.”

  They left soon afterwards. Sir Daniel had asked, or rather demanded, to be kept in touch with the progress of the investigation and a guarded assurance had been repeated. There was nothing more to be learned and nothing more to be said. Sir Daniel saw them to the door of the lift, and then down to the ground floor. Dalgliesh wondered whether this courtesy was to give him an opportunity for a private word, but he said nothing.

  In the car Kate was silent for a few minutes, then she said, “I wonder how long it took her this morning to put on that make-up and paint her nails. Hardly the grieving mother, was she?”

  Dalgliesh kept his eyes on the road ahead. He said, “If it’s important to her self-respect to face the day groomed and painted, if it’s as normal a routine for her as a morning shower, do you expect her to neglect it just so that she can look appropriately distraught? The rich and the famous are as capable of murder as the rest of us; privilege doesn’t confer immunity to the seven deadly sins. We should remember that they are also capable of other human emotions, including the confusing devastation of grief.”

  He had been speaking quietly and to himself, but that is not how Kate heard him. Criticism came rarely from Dalgliesh but, when it did, she knew better than to attempt explanation or excuse. She sat red-faced and consumed with misery.

  He went on, his voice gentler, as if the previous words had never been spoken. “I’d like you and Piers to interview Lady Swathling. Find out if she’s prepared to be more forthcoming about Celia Mellock than was Caroline Dupayne. They’ll have consulted, of course. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

  It was then that Kate’s mobile rang. Answering it she said, “It’s Benton-Smith, sir. He’s just had a telephone call from a charity shop in Highgate. It looks as if they’ve found the handbag. Piers and Benton are on their way.”