by P. D. James
His parents had furnished the house by taking his grandparents’ few pieces from store and buying what else they needed from the cheaper London auction houses. He was caged in by heavy nineteenth-century mahogany, by bulbous armchairs and cupboards so ornately carved and so heavy that it sometimes seemed that the delicate little house would collapse under their weight. Everything had been left as it was when the ambulance took his mother off to her last and final operation. He had neither the will nor the wish to change a ponderous legacy which he no longer noticed, and indeed seldom saw, since most of his time was spent in his study on the top floor. Here was the desk he had had since his Oxford days, a high-backed wing chair which was one of his parents’ happier acquisitions, and his library, meticulously catalogued and arranged on shelves fitted from floor to ceiling and covering three walls.
Nothing here was touched by Mrs. Jordan, who cleaned for him three days a week, but the rest of the house received from her a rigorous attention. She was a large taciturn woman of ferocious energy. The furniture was waxed until the surfaces shone like mirrors, and the strong smell of the lavender polish she used met him whenever he opened his door, and permeated the whole house. Occasionally he wondered, but with little curiosity, whether his clothes smelt of it. Mrs. Jordan didn’t cook for him. A woman who attacked mahogany as if physically to subdue it was unlikely to be a good cook, and she wasn’t. That, too, didn’t worry him. The district was well supplied with restaurants and he dined out and alone most evenings, greeted at either of his two favourites with a deferential welcome and shown to his usual secluded table.
When Lois dined with him—and until the arrival of the twins it had been weekly—they would eat at a restaurant of her choice, usually at an inconvenient distance, and would return to the house for coffee, which she would make. Carrying the tray into the drawing-room, she would say: “That kitchen is antediluvian. I must say Mrs. Jordan keeps it clean, but honestly! And, Duncs, darling, you really ought to do something about this room, get rid of all this old stuff of Granny’s. It could look really elegant with different wallpaper and curtains and the right furniture. I know just the designer for you. Or I’ll write down some ideas and a colour scheme and come shopping with you, if you like. We’d have fun.”
“No thank you, Lois, I don’t notice the room.”
“But, darling, you should notice it. You’d love it once I’d done it, I know you would.”
Thursday was one of Mrs. Jordan’s days, and it seemed to him as though the hall smelt even more pungent than usual. There was a note on the hall table. “Mrs. Costello has rung three times. She says, please, to ring her.” Simon must have telephoned home or to her office with the news of the murder. Well, of course he had. He wouldn’t have waited until he got home. Probably she’d been reluctant to ring Chambers in case the police were still there.
He turned over the sheet of paper and, rummaging in his pocket for a pencil, wrote in his meticulous script: “Mrs. Jordan. Thank you. My operation arranged for Saturday has been postponed so I won’t need you to come in on the extra days to feed Tibbles.” He signed it with his initials and began slowly making his way up the stairs to his study, grasping the banisters like an old man.
On the top step of the first flight Tibbles lay stretched out in her usual pose, back legs extended, her paws across her eyes as if to shield them from the light. She was a white longhaired cat inherited from his parents and, after some unsuccessful excursions in the neighbourhood, had condescended to remain with him. She opened her small pink mouth in a soundless mew, but did not move. Mrs. Jordan had fed her as usual at five o’clock and no further demonstration of affection was necessary. Ulrick stepped over her and made his way up to the study.
The telephone rang as soon as he got inside the door. He lifted the receiver and heard his niece’s voice.
“Duncs, I’ve been trying all day to get you. I didn’t like to ring Chambers. I thought you’d be home early. Look, I haven’t got long. Simon is with the twins but he’ll be down any minute. Duncs, I need to see you. I’d better come round. I’ll make some excuse to get away.”
He said: “No, don’t do that. I have work to do. I need to be on my own.”
The note of anxiety bordering on panic came clearly across to him: “But we have to see each other. Duncs, darling, I’m frightened. We have to talk.”
“No,” he said again, “we don’t have to talk. There’s nothing either of us has to say. If you need to talk, talk to your husband, talk to Simon.”
“But, Duncs, this is murder! I didn’t want her murdered! And I think the police are going to come here. They’re going to want to talk to me.”
Ulrick said: “Then talk to them. And, Lois, I am capable of much folly, but did you really think that I’m capable of planning a murder, even for your convenience?”
He put down the receiver and then, after a moment, bent and pulled the plug from the wall. He said aloud, “Duncs.” That was what she had called him from her childhood. Uncle Desmond. Duncs. Duncs, who could be relied upon for presents and meals and the odd cheque when needed, the cheque which Simon wasn’t told about, and of course for other, less tangible marks of his besottedness. He placed his battered and bulging briefcase on the desk, selected from the bookcase the small leather-bound volume of Marcus Aurelius he would read at dinner and went down to the bathroom one flight below to wash his hands. Two minutes later he locked the front door behind him and set out to walk the fifty yards or so to his Thursday restaurant and his solitary dinner.
13
It was now just after ten o’clock. Dalgliesh, still at this desk in his office on the seventh floor of New Scotland Yard, closed the file he had been working on and for a moment leaned back and closed his eyes. Piers and Kate would be with him shortly for their review of the day’s progress. He had left them to attend the post-mortem at eight o’clock, and Miles Kynaston had promised to fax through his report as soon as it was ready. He was aware for the first time of his tiredness. The day, like all days charged with a multiplicity of activity, physical and mental, seemed to have lasted for more than the fifteen hours he had been working. He reflected that, in defiance of popular opinion, time passes more quickly when the hours are filled with predictable routine.
Today had been anything but predictable. The afternoon meeting between senior officers of the Yard and their counterparts in the Home Office to consider yet again the ramifications of the Security Services Act had not been acrimonious—both sides had tiptoed with almost over-punctilious dexterity around the most dangerous ground—but it might have been easier if words, carefully unspoken, had actually been said. The co-operation had already proved its value in the recent success against the IRA; there was no wish on anyone’s part to sabotage what was being painfully achieved; but, like two regiments in the process of amalgamation, both brought with them more than their insignia. There was a history, a tradition, a different way of working, a different perception of the enemy, even a different language and professional argot. And always there was the complication of class and snobbery present at every level of English society, the unspoken conviction that men could only work best with their own kind. The committee on which he served had, he thought, passed its interesting stage and was now slowly battling through the hinterland of boredom.
He had been glad to turn thought and energy again to the more straightforward rituals of a murder investigation, but even here he was becoming aware of unexpected complications. It should have been an easy enough case—a small community of people, the relatively secure building, an investigation not particularly difficult since the field of suspects was necessarily limited. But even after the first day he was beginning to suspect that it could turn into one of those cases which all detectives abhor: the inquiry in which the murderer is known but the evidence is never sufficient in the eyes of the DPP to justify prosecution. And the police team was, after all, dealing with lawyers. They would know better than most that what condemned a man was the inabili
ty to keep his mouth shut.
The office in which he waited was uncluttered, functional, a room which only a perceptive visitor might have found revealing of character, if only because of its occupant’s obvious intention that it should be nothing of the kind. There was the minimum furniture prescribed by the Met as appropriate for a Commander: the large desk and chair, the two comfortable but upright chairs for visitors, the small conference table seating six, the bookcase. The shelves, in addition to the usual reference books, held volumes on police and criminal law, manuals, histories, a miscellany of recent Home Office publications, recent Acts of Parliament and Green and White Papers—a working library which proclaimed the job and defined its seniority. Three walls were bare, the fourth held a series of prints of policing in eighteenth-century London. They had been a happy find in a second-hand book-and-print shop off the Charing Cross Road, discovered by Dalgliesh when he was a detective sergeant, bought after anxious calculation of their affordability and now worth ten times what he had paid. He still liked them, but not as much as when he had first bought them. Some of his colleagues imposed on their offices an ostentatious celebration of masculine camaraderie, adorning their walls with badges from foreign forces, pennants, group photographs, cartoons, and their cupboards with cups and sporting trophies. For Dalgliesh the effect was depressingly contrived, as if a film designer, with a less than keen perception of his brief, had gone over the top. To him the office wasn’t a substitute for a private life, a home, an identity. It was not the first office in the Yard he had occupied, probably it wouldn’t be the last. It wasn’t required to minister to any need except those of the job. And the job, for all its variety, its stimulus and its fascination, was that and no more. There was a world elsewhere; for Dalgliesh there always had been.
He moved over to the window and looked down over London. This was his city and he had loved it since he had first been brought as a birthday treat to spend a day’s sightseeing with his father. London had laid its spell on him then, and though his love-affair with the city, as with all loves, had had its moments of disillusion, disappointment and threatened infidelity, the spell had remained. Through all the slow accretions of time and change there remained at its core, solid as the London clay, the weight of history and tradition which gave authority even to its meaner streets. The panorama beneath him never failed to enchant. He saw it always as an artefact, sometimes a coloured lithograph in the delicate shades of a spring morning, sometimes a pen-and-ink drawing, every spire, every tower, every tree lovingly delineated, sometimes an oil, strong and vigorous. Tonight it was a psychedelic water-colour, splashes of scarlet and grey layering the blue-black of the night sky, the streets running with molten red and green as the traffic lights changed, the buildings with their squares of white windows pasted like coloured cutouts against the backcloths of the night.
He wondered what was keeping Kate and Piers. The day wasn’t yet over for them, but both were young. They were buoyed along on a rush of adrenalin; a fifteen-hour day, with food eaten on their feet when it could be grabbed, was what they expected when an investigation was underway. It was also, he suspected, what they enjoyed. But he was worried about Kate. Since Daniel Aaron had left the force and Piers had taken his place in the squad, he had seen a change in her, a small alienation of confidence as if she was no longer sure why she was there or what she was supposed to be doing. He tried not to exaggerate the difference; occasionally he could believe that it wasn’t there, that she was still the old confident, opinionated Kate who had combined the eager, almost naïve enthusiasm of a new recruit with the experience and tolerance which came with years of hands-on policing. Thinking that she might welcome time off from the job, he had suggested a few months earlier that she should apply for one of the university-entrance schemes and read for a degree, but she had stood for a moment without speaking and had then said: “Do you think it would make me a better police officer, sir?”
“That wasn’t what I had in mind. I thought that three years at university might be an experience you’d enjoy.”
“And give me a better chance of promotion?”
“That too, although it wasn’t my first thought. A degree does help.”
She had said, “I’ve policed too many student demonstrations. If I wanted to cope with screaming kids I’d apply to the Juvenile Bureau. Students seem to enjoy shouting down anyone they don’t agree with. If a university isn’t for free speech, what’s the point of it?”
She had spoken as she always did, without apparent resentment, but there had been something close to it in her voice and he had detected a note of suppressed anger which surprised him. The suggestion had been more than unwelcome; it had been resented. He had wondered at the time whether her reaction was really to do with free speech and the spasmodic barbarism of the over-privileged, or was grounded in some more subtle, less easily articulated objection. Her present slight draining of enthusiasm might, he thought, be due to the loss of Daniel. She had been fond of him; how fond he had never thought it his business to inquire. Perhaps she resented the newcomer and, being honest and knowing the resentment to be unworthy, was trying to cope with it in her own way. He would watch the situation, more for the good of the squad than for hers. But he cared about her. He wanted her to be happy.
It was as he turned away from the window that they came in together. Piers was wearing his raincoat. It was swinging open. A bottle of wine was lodged in the inner pocket. Tugging it out, he placed it with some ceremony on Dalgliesh’s desk.
“Part of my birthday present from a perceptive uncle. I thought we deserved it, sir.”
Dalgliesh looked at the label. “Hardly a wine for casual tippling, is it? Save it for a meal which will do it justice. But we’ll have coffee. Judy’s left the things next door. See to it, will you, Piers?”
Piers gave Kate a rueful glance, pocketed the wine without comment and went out.
Kate said: “Sorry we’re late, sir. Doc Kynaston was running late at the mortuary, but he should be reporting any minute.”
“Any surprises?”
“None, sir.”
They didn’t speak again until Piers had come back with the cafetière, milk and three cups and set the tray down on the conference table. It was then that the fax chattered into life and they moved together over to the machine. Miles Kynaston had been true to his promise.
The report began with the usual preliminaries: the time and place of the post-mortem, the officers present, including members of the investigating team, photographer, scene-of-crime officer, laboratory liaison officer and forensic scientists and mortuary technicians. Under the instruction of the pathologist the external clothing was removed and the wig, suitably protected, handed to the exhibit officer. The lab would later confirm what they already knew: that the blood was Desmond Ulrick’s. Then came the part of the report for which they were waiting.
The body was that of a well-nourished, middle-aged Caucasian female. Rigor mortis, fully developed when the body was first examined at ten that morning, had passed off in all muscle groups. The fingernails were of medium length, clean and unbroken. The natural head hair was short and dark brown. There was a single small puncture wound over the anterior chest wall, 5 cm to the left of the midline. This injury lay approximately horizontally and measured 1.2 cm in length. Dissection showed the track penetrated directly backwards into the chest cavity between the seventh and eighth ribs, entering the pericardial sac and penetrating into the anterior wall of the left ventricle, where it caused a 0.7 cm injury. The track of the wound penetrated through the septum of the heart to a depth of approximately 1.5 cm. The injury itself and the pericardial sac showed minimal haemorrhage. It is my opinion that the injury was caused by the steel paper-knife, labelled Exhibit A.
There were no other external injuries except for a small bruise approximately 2 cm square on the back of the skull. There were no defensive injuries to the hands or arms. The bruise is consistent with the deceased being pushed back against the w
all or door with some force when the knife was inserted.
Then followed a long catalogue of Venetia Aldridge’s organs, central nervous system, respiratory system, cardiovascular system, stomach and oesophagus, intestines. The words came up one after another, always with the comment that the organs were normal.
The report on the internal organs was followed by the list of samples handed to the exhibit officer, including swabs and samples of blood. Then followed the weights of the organs. It was hardly relevant to the inquiry that Venetia Aldridge’s brain weighed one thousand three hundred and fifty grams, her heart two hundred and seventy grams and her right kidney two hundred grams, but the figures, baldly stated, were superimposed in Dalgliesh’s mind upon the picture of Miles Kynaston’s assistant, with his gloved and bloody hands, carrying the organs to the scales like a butcher weighing offal. Then came the conclusions.
The deceased was a well-nourished woman with no evidence of natural disease that could have caused or contributed to death. The injury to the chest is consistent with a deep penetrating injury from a thin-bladed weapon which resulted in injury to the septum of the heart. The absence of bleeding along the wound track indicates that death occurred very rapidly following infliction of this injury. No defensive injuries were present. I give the cause of death as a stab wound to the heart.
Dalgliesh asked: “Did Doc Kynaston give any closer estimate of the time of death?”
It was Kate who replied: “Confirmed it, sir. Between seven-thirty and eight-thirty would be a working hypothesis. I don’t think he’ll be any more precise in court but privately he thinks she was dead by eight or very soon afterwards.”
Estimating the time of death was always tricky, but Kynaston had never in Dalgliesh’s experience been proved wrong. Whether by instinct or experience, or a mixture of both, he seemed able to smell out the moment of death.
They moved across to the table and Piers poured the coffee. Dalgliesh didn’t intend to keep them long. There was no point in making an investigation into an endurance test, but it was important to review progress.