by P. D. James
“Have you put in for a transfer?”
“Don’t be daft. Every decent family on this estate has put in for a transfer, and there are decent families.”
“I know. I lived here with Gran, remember? We were one of them.”
“But you got away, didn’t you? And stayed away. Monday’s dustbin day, so they’re out early kicking over the bins and strewing the muck up the stairway. Half of them don’t know what a lavatory’s for, or don’t care. Have you smelled the lift?”
“It always smelt.”
“Yes, but it was pee, not the other thing. And if they catch the little bastards and take them to youth court, what happens?
Bloody nothing. They come home laughing. They’re in gangs now by the time they’re eight.”
Of course they are, thought Kate. How else can they survive?
Enid said: “But they leave us alone now. I found a way. I whisper to them that I’m a witch. Upset me or George and you’re as good as dead.”
“Does that frighten them?” Kate found it difficult to believe that it could.
“It bloody well does, them and their mums. It started with Bobby O’Brian, a kid in this block with leukaemia. When they took him off in the ambulance, I knew he wouldn’t be back. You don’t get to my age without knowing death when you’re looking it in the face. He was the worst of the kids till he got ill. So I chalked a white cross on his door and told the kids I’d put a curse on him and he’d die. He was gone quicker than I thought, within three days. I’ve had no trouble since. I tell ‘em: Any bother from you and you get a cross on your door, too. I keep my eyes open. There’s always a bit of trouble I can see coming and I’m ready with the chalk.”
Kate sat for a moment in impotent silence, afraid that the disgust she felt at the exploitation of a child’s pain, a child’s death, must show in her face. Perhaps it did. Enid looked at her closely but said nothing. What was there to say? Like everyone else on the estate, Enid and George did what they needed to do to survive.
The visit hadn’t done any good. Why had she ever thought that it would? You couldn’t exorcise the past either by returning to it or by running away. You couldn’t resolve to put it out of your mind and memory, because it was part of mind and memory. You couldn’t reject it, because it had made you what you were. It had to be remembered, thought about, accepted, perhaps even given thanks for, since it had taught her how to survive.
Kate closed the door on the river and the night, and suddenly there came into her mind a picture of Venetia Aldridge, of the hands falling with graceful abandon over the arms of her chair, of that one dead open eye, and she wondered what luggage Venetia Aldridge had brought from her privileged past to that successful life, to that lonely death.
BOOK THREE
A LETTER FROM THE DEAD
1
The office of Miss Elkington’s Domestic Agency, in a short street of neat early-nineteenth-century town houses off Vincent Square, was so unexpected in its location and appearance that, if it hadn’t been for the neat brass name-plate above the two bell-pushes, Kate would have wondered whether they had been given the right address. She and Piers had walked the half-mile from New Scotland Yard, cutting through the noisy busyness of the Strutton Ground street market. The rails of gaudy-coloured cotton shirts and dresses and the clear bright gleam of the piled fruit and vegetables, the smell of food and coffee and the raucous camaraderie of one of London’s villages going about its daily business seemed further to raise Piers’s spirits. He was singing softly under his breath, a complicated and half-recognized tune.
She said: “What’s that, last Saturday at Covent Garden?”
“No, this morning on Classic FM.” He sang on, then said: “I’m rather looking forward to this interview. I have high hopes of Miss Elkington. It’s surprising that she actually exists, for one thing. You’d expect to find that the original Miss Elkington died in 1890 and Elkington’s is now just the usual boring domestic agency which has kept on the name. You know the sort of thing: glass-fronted premises, insalubrious street, depressed receptionist battered into submission by dissatisfied householders, the occasional sinister housekeeper looking for a rich widower with no relations.”
“Your imagination’s wasted on the police. You should be a novelist.”
The top bell said “House,” the lower “Office.” Piers pressed it and the door was opened almost immediately. A cheerful-faced young woman, crop-haired and wearing a multi-striped jersey and a short black skirt, danced a small jig of welcome at the door and almost threw herself into Piers’s arms as she ushered them in.
“Don’t bother to show your warrant cards. Policemen always do, don’t they? It must get very boring. We know who you are. Miss Elkington’s expecting you. She’ll have heard the bell, she always does, and she’ll be down as soon as she feels like it. Have a seat. Do you want coffee? Tea? We’ve got Darjeeling, Earl Grey and herbal. Nothing? Oh well, I’ll just get on with these letters. No good grilling me, by the way. I’m only the temp, been here just two weeks. Funny place, but Miss Elkington’s all right if you make allowances. Oh sorry, I forgot. My name’s Eager, Alice Eager. Eager by name, eager by nature.”
Miss Eager, as if to justify the name, settled herself at her typewriter and began tapping the keys with a confident energy which suggested that she was at least good at part of her job.
The office, the walls painted a clear green, was obviously once the front sitting-room of the house. The cornice and ceiling rose looked original. There were fitted bookcases each side of an elegant fireplace where flames of gas licked the simulated coals. The floor was of stripped oak covered with two faded rugs. The room was sparsely furnished. To the right of the door were two four-drawer metal filing cabinets. Apart from Miss Elkington’s desk and chair and the smaller, more functional desk of the typist, the only other pieces of furniture were two armchairs and a sofa against the wall. Here Kate and Piers seated themselves. The most incongruous objects were the pictures: framed and apparently original seaside posters from the 1930s; an exuberant fisherman in cap and sea boots bouncing across the beach at bracing Skegness; hikers in shorts and with rucksacks pointing their walking sticks at views of the Cornish cliffs; steam trains puffing through an idealized landscape of patchwork fields. Kate couldn’t remember the last time she had seen such posters, but they were vaguely familiar. Perhaps, she thought, it had been on a school visit to an exhibition of life and art of the thirties. Looking at them, she felt drawn into an age remote, unknown and unknowable, but curiously comforting and nostalgic.
They had been waiting for precisely five minutes when the door opened and Miss Elkington stepped briskly into the room. They stood up as she entered and waited while she inspected their warrant cards, then looked keenly into each of their faces as if to satisfy herself by personal inspection that neither was an impostor. Then she motioned them back to the sofa and took her own chair behind the desk.
Her appearance was as subtly out of time as was the room itself. She was tall and thin, with a suggestion of gawkiness, and was dressed as if deliberately to accentuate her height. The fawn skirt in fine wool was narrow and almost ankle-length, topped by a matching silky cardigan over a high-necked blouse. Her shoes, with barred straps, were highly polished, narrow, long and slightly pointed. But it was her hairstyle which reinforced the impression of a woman dressed to personify, and perhaps celebrate, a less thrusting era. Above a face which was an almost perfect oval, with wide-spaced grey eyes, her hair was parted in the middle with a tight plait wound in an intricate whorl round each ear.
Alice Eager, busily dissociating herself from the business in hand, kept her eyes on the typewriter. Miss Elkington took an envelope from her right-hand drawer and, holding it out, said: “Miss Eager, would you be good enough to collect the new writing-paper from John Lewis? They telephoned yesterday to say that the order is ready. You can walk to Victoria and take the Jubilee Line to Oxford Circus, but you’ll need a taxi to come back. The parcel wil
l be heavy. Take ten pounds from petty cash. Don’t forget to ask for a receipt.”
Miss Eager departed with many enthusiastic bobbings and thanks. No doubt the prospect of an hour out of the office compensated for missing what could be an interesting conversation.
Miss Elkington got down to business with admirable promptness. “You said on the telephone that you were interested in the keys to Chambers and in the cleaning arrangements. Since the latter concerns two of my employees, Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs. Watson, I telephoned them early this morning to get their permission to give you any information you require about their arrangements with me. You must speak to them personally for anything you require to know about their private lives.”
Kate said: “We have already spoken to Mrs. Carpenter. I believe that you hold a spare set of keys to Chambers.”
“Yes, to the front door of Chambers and to the Devereux Court entrance. I have keys to ten of the offices we clean. It’s useful in case one of the women unexpectedly can’t do her hours and I need a replacement. Some offices are happy to provide a spare key for this purpose, others not. I keep all the keys in my safe. None is named, as you’ll see. I can assure you that none has left my possession in the last month.”
She walked over to the bookshelves to the right of the fireplace and, bending down, touched some knob under the lower shelf. The row of books, obviously false, swung open and behind was a small modern safe. Kate thought that the false books would hardly deceive even an inexperienced burglar, but the safe was a kind that she recognized. It was one not easily forced. Miss Elkington fiddled with the knob, opened the door and brought out a metal box.
She said: “There are ten sets of keys in here. This set belongs to Mr. Langton’s Chambers. No one has access to these keys but myself. As you will see, they are numbered but not named. I keep the code in my bag.”
Piers said: “Most of your cleaning ladies work in the Inns of Court, then?”
“The majority do. My father was a lawyer and it is a world of which I have some knowledge. What I provide is a service which is reliable, efficient and discreet. It is quite extraordinary how careless people are over their cleaning arrangements. Men and women who would never dream of lending their office keys even to their closest friends are quite happy to hand them over to their cleaning woman. That is why each of my employees is guaranteed to be honest and reliable. I take up and check all references.”
Kate said: “As you did with Mrs. Carpenter. Could you tell us how she came to be employed?”
Miss Elkington went over to the nearby filing cabinet and took a file from the bottom drawer. She returned to her desk and opened it in front of her.
She said: “Mrs. Janet Carpenter came to me over two and a half years ago, on 7th February 1994. She telephoned the office and asked for an appointment. When she arrived she explained that she had recently come to live in Central London from Hereford, was a widow and required a few hours’ domestic work each week. She thought she would like the Inns of Court, because she and her husband used to go regularly to hear morning service in the Temple Church. Apparently she called at Mr. Langton’s Chambers and inquired whether they had a vacancy and someone—I imagine the receptionist—referred her to me. There was no vacancy in those Chambers but I was able to find her a place in the Chambers of Sir Roderick Matthews. She was there for about six months, but when I had a vacancy for her in Mr. Langton’s Chambers she asked to be transferred.”
Kate asked: “Did she give any reason for preferring that set?”
“None except she had been kindly received there when she inquired and apparently liked the look of the place. She was greatly valued by Sir Roderick’s Chambers and they were sorry to see her go. She has been working with Mrs. Watson in her present Chambers for over two years. Both women work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from eight-thirty to ten. On Tuesdays and Thursdays Mrs. Watson carries out a less thorough cleaning on her own. And I understand that Mrs. Carpenter occasionally helps out at Pelham Place when Miss Aldridge’s housekeeper is away or needs an extra pair of hands. But that is a private arrangement and does not go through my books.”
Piers said: “And the references?”
Miss Elkington turned over some pages. “I had three, one from her bank manager, one from her parish priest and one from a local magistrate. They gave no personal details, but each wrote very highly of her honesty, probity, reliability and discretion. I asked her about her cleaning skills, but she pointed out that any woman who has effectively cleaned her own home and is house-proud is perfectly capable of cleaning an office, and this, of course, is true. I always ask the employer whether he is satisfied after a month, and both sets of Chambers have spoken most highly of her. She has told me that she wishes to give up working for the next month or two but I am hoping that she will return. No doubt the murder was a shock but I am a little surprised that a woman of her character and intelligence has allowed herself to be so upset by it.”
Kate asked: “Isn’t she a rather unusual person to be doing domestic work? I thought, when we interviewed her, that she was the sort of woman who would have looked for an office job.”
“Did you indeed? I should have thought that, as a senior police officer, you would have been wary of making that kind of judgement. There aren’t many advantages in office work for a mature woman. She has to compete with much younger women, and not all of us are enamoured of modern technology. The advantage of domestic work is that a woman can choose her hours, be particular about the firm she cares to work for and is unsupervised. It seems to me a perfectly natural choice for Mrs. Carpenter. And now, unless you have any other specific questions, I think I must get on with my own work.”
It was a statement, and now there was no offer of coffee or tea.
Kate and Piers walked almost in silence until they reached Horseferry Road, then he said: “Doesn’t it strike you that that place is a little too good to be true?”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s hardly real. That woman, her office, the archaic gentility of the whole set-up. We could have been back in the 1930s. Pure Agatha Christie.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever read Christie, and what do you know of the thirties?”
“You don’t have to read Christie to know her world, and actually I’m rather interested in the thirties. Their painters are under-valued, for one thing. But she isn’t really thirties, is she? The clothes, I suppose, are closer to the 1910s. Whatever world she’s living in, it isn’t ours. She hasn’t even a word processor. Miss Eager was using what must be one of the earliest electric typewriters. And think of the logistics of the exercise. How in the hell does she break even, let alone make a profit?”
Kate said: “It depends on how many women she has on the books. When she opened that filing drawer it looked pretty full to me.”
“Only because some of the files are bulky. She seems to keep an eye on every detail. Who the hell, running a domestic agency, goes to that trouble? What’s the point of it?”
“Useful for us that she did.”
He was silent, obviously calculating, then he said: “Suppose she has thirty women on her books, and they work an average of twenty hours each a week. That’s six hundred hours. They get paid six pounds, which is high, and if she takes fifty pence per hour, that’s a total of three hundred pounds a week. Out of that she has to keep up the office and pay her assistant. It’s just not viable.”
“It’s all surmise, Piers. You don’t know how many women she’s got on the books, and you don’t know what commission she takes. But, OK, suppose she only clears three hundred, so what?”
“I’m wondering if it isn’t a cover of some kind. It could be a nice little racket, couldn’t it? A group of respectable women, all carefully vetted, placed in strategic offices, feeding back valuable information. I like it—I mean, I like the theory.”
Kate said: “If you’re thinking of blackmail, that doesn’t seem likely. What are they going to pick up in legal offices?�
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“Oh, I don’t know. It depends what Miss Elkington is looking for. Some people would pay a great deal of money for copies of legal documents. Counsel’s opinion, for example. Now, that’s a possibility. And suppose Venetia Aldridge discovered the racket. Now, there’s a motive for murder.”
It was impossible to know whether he was being serious; probably not. But, glancing at his lively, amused face, she could believe that he was even now concocting some ingenious plot for his private entertainment, working out how he would organize the racket to maximize the gains and minimize the risk.
She said: “It’s all too far-fetched. But perhaps we should have asked a few more questions. After all, she does have a key. We didn’t even ask for her alibi. I’m not sure that AD will think we’ve made much of a job of it. We asked questions about Janet Carpenter but not about Miss Elkington. We certainly ought to have asked where she was on Wednesday night.”
“So we go back?”
“I think so. No good leaving the job half done. Do you want to do the talking?”
“It’s my turn.”
“You’re not proposing to ask her outright, I suppose, whether the Elkington agency is a cover for blackmail, extortion and murder?”
“If I did, she’d take it in her stride.”
This time it was Miss Elkington who opened the door. She seemed unsurprised to see them and showed them into the office without speaking, then seated herself at her desk. Piers and Kate remained standing.
Piers said: “We’re sorry to bother you again but there’s something we forgot. The reason we overlooked it is because it’s only a formality. We should have remembered to ask where you were on Wednesday night.”