A Certain Justice

by P. D. James

  Kate showed her warrant card. Miss Kemp took it and peered at it closely, silently mouthing the words. Then, for the first time, her eyes lit on the plants.

  “So she’s left them. She said she would. That’s kind of her. Police officers, are you? Then I suppose it’s all right. But she’s not here. You won’t find her at home. She told me she was going for a short holiday and she’d leave me the plants. I always water and feed them if she’s away—not that she is very often. Just a weekend at the sea occasionally. I’d better take them in, no use leaving them out here.”

  She unchained the door and picked up the nearest pot with gnarled and shaking hands. Kate bent to help her. “I see there’s a note. That’ll be to say goodbye and to tell me about the plants too, I dare say. Well, she knows they’re going to a good home.”

  Dalgliesh said: “If we might have the key, Miss Kemp.”

  “But I told you, she’s not here. She’s on holiday.”

  “We’d like to be sure.”

  Kate was holding two of the plants and, after a long look at her, Miss Kemp opened the door. Kate and Dalgliesh followed her into the tiny hall.

  “Set them down on the hall table. The saucers are clean at the bottom, aren’t they? She never over-watered. Wait here.”

  She returned quickly with two keys on a ring. Thanking her, Dalgliesh wondered how he could persuade her to stay in her flat. But she showed no further interest in them or in their doings except to say again: “You won’t find her. She isn’t there. She’s gone for a holiday.”

  Kate carried in the last two plants and the door was quickly and firmly closed.

  He knew what he would find as soon as he turned the key and pushed open the door. Beyond the small entrance hall, the door to the sitting-room was open. The premonition of disaster isn’t confined to violent death; there is always that instant of realization, however brief, before the blow falls, the car strikes, the ladder gives way. Part of his mind had been forewarned of the horror which smell and sight now confirmed. But not of its extent. Never that. Her throat had been cut. Strange that those five monosyllables could cover such an effusion of blood.

  Janet Carpenter was lying on her back, her head towards the door, her legs splayed in a stiff decrepitude which looked somehow indecent. The left leg was grotesquely bent, the heel raised, the toe just touching the floor. Close to her right hand was a kitchen knife, the blade and handle heavily bloodstained. She was wearing a skirt in brown-and-blue-flecked tweed and a high-necked blue jumper with a matching cardigan. The left sleeve of both had been pushed up to reveal the forearm. There was a single cut across the left wrist and, above it on the inner side of the arm, some letters written in blood.

  They squatted beside the body. The blood had dried into a brownish smear but the initials were plain, the date even plainer: “R v Beale 1992.”

  It was Kate who put the obvious into words, whispering as if to herself: “Dermot Beale. The murderer Aldridge defended in 1992 and got off. And a year later he raped and murdered again. This time it was Emily Carpenter.”

  Like Dalgliesh, Kate was being careful not to tread in the blood. It had spurted across the room to spot the ceiling, the wall, the polished wooden floor, and had seeped into the single rug on which she lay. Her jumper was stiff with it. The very air smelt of blood.

  It was not, perhaps, the most terrible of violent deaths. It was quick enough, more merciful than most methods if one had the strength of hand and will to make that first incision deep and certain. But few suicides did. There were usually a few tentative slices of the throat or wrist. Not here, however. Here the preliminary cut on the wrist, which had provided the blood for the message, was superficial but purposeful, a single smudged thread beaded with dried blood.

  He glanced at Kate as she stood quietly by the body. Her face was white but calm and he had no fear that she would faint. She was a senior officer; he could rely on her to behave like one. But whereas, with his male colleagues, their calm professionalism came from long experience, an acquired protective insensitivity and the stolid acceptance of the realities of their job, he suspected that with Kate it took a more painful discipline of the heart. None of his officers, male or female, was unfeeling. He rejected the callous, the incipient sadist, those who needed a crude graveyard humour to anaesthetize horror. Like doctors, nurses or the traffic police who extract the pulped bodies from the crushed metal, you couldn’t do the job if your thoughts were centred on your own emotions. It was necessary to grow a carapace, however fragile, of acceptance and detachment if one was to remain competent and sane. Horror might enter, but must never be allowed to take a permanent lodging in the mind. But he sensed Kate’s effort of will and he sometimes wondered what it was costing her.

  With a part of his mind formed in early childhood, he wished for a moment that she was not there. His father had had a great respect and love for women, had desperately wanted daughters, had thought women capable of anything, short of actions requiring great physical strength, that a man could do. But he had seen them, too, as a civilizing influence without whose peculiar sensitivity and compassion the world would have been an uglier place. The young Dalgliesh had been brought up to believe that these qualities should be protected by chivalry and respect. In this as in other things his clerical father could not have been less politically correct. But he had never found it easy in a very different and more aggressive age to shake off this early indoctrination, nor in his heart did he really wish to.

  Kate said: “A clean cut through the jugular. She must have more strength in her hands than you’d expect. They don’t look particularly strong, but, then, the hands always do look frail.” She added, “More dead than the rest of the body,” and then blushed slightly, as if the comment had been stupid.

  “More dead and sadder, perhaps because they are the busiest part of us.”

  Still squatting, and without touching the body, he looked carefully at each hand. The right was covered with blood, the left lying curled with the palm upwards. He gently pressed the mound of the flesh at the base of the fingers, then ran an exploring hand down each of her fingers. After a moment he got quickly to his feet and said: “Let’s have a look at the kitchen.”

  If Kate was surprised, she didn’t show it. The kitchen was at the end of the sitting-room and must originally have been part of it; the high curved window matched the two in the larger room and gave the same leafy view of the garden. The room was small but well fitted out and immaculately tidy. The double-drainer sink was set under the window and the working surface of simulated wood ran from it and then right down the whole length of the room with cupboards beneath and above. A ceramic hob was set into the working surface with, to its left, a large wooden chopping-board. To the left of this was a knife-block. One slot—the one on the left at the back, for the largest knife—was empty.

  Dalgliesh and Kate stood in the doorway but did not go in. Dalgliesh asked: “Anything strike you as odd?”

  “Not really, sir.” Kate paused and looked more closely, then she said: “It all looks ordinary enough, except that I’d probably have put the washing-up liquid to the left of the sink. And that large chopping-board and the knives are a bit oddly placed. Hardly convenient in relation to the cooker, not as she’s got them.” She paused again, then said: “You think she was left-handed, sir?”

  Dalgliesh didn’t reply. He pulled out three of the drawers and looked inside, then shut them, dissatisfied. They returned to the sitting-room.

  Dalgliesh said: “Take a look at her left hand, Kate. She did housework, remember.”

  “Only three nights a week, sir, and she wore gloves.”

  “There’s a slight thickening of the skin, almost a callus, on the inner side of the second finger. I think she wrote with that hand.”

  Kate squatted and looked again carefully at the hand, but without touching it. After a second she said: “If she was left-handed, who would have known? She didn’t arrive for work until most people in Chambers had gone,
and they wouldn’t have seen her writing.”

  Dalgliesh said: “Probably Mrs. Watson, who worked with her. But Miss Elkington is the one to confirm it. Mrs. Carpenter must have signed for her money. Phone her from the car, will you, Kate, and if she confirms what we suspect, get Dr. Kynaston, photographers, SOCO, the lot—and, of course, Piers. And in view of the pattern of the bloodstains it would be helpful if the lab could send a forensic biologist. And stay down there until some reinforcements arrive. I want someone on the door to see that no one leaves. Keep it discreet. The story is that Mrs. Carpenter has been attacked, not that she’s dead. It will get out soon enough, but let’s keep out the vultures while we can.”

  Kate went quietly without another word. Dalgliesh moved over to the window and stood looking out at the garden. He had disciplined his mind not to speculate; speculation in advance of the facts was always futile and could be dangerous.

  These few minutes in the company of the undemanding dead seemed a bonus of time, stilled and inviolate, in which nothing was required of him but to wait. He could retire, less by an act of will than by an easy relaxation of mind and body, into that central privacy on which his life and his art depended. This was not the first time he had been alone with a dead body. The sensation, familiar but always forgotten until the next occasion, returned and took possession. He was experiencing a solitude, unique and absolute. A room empty except for himself could not have been more lonely. Janet Carpenter’s personality could not have been more powerful in life than was its absence in death.

  Below him the house shared his quietude. In these self-contained cabins the small business of daily life was going on. Curtains were being drawn, tea brewed, plants watered, the late-risers were stumbling to bathrooms or showers. All were unaware of the horror above. When the news did break, the response would be as varied as it always was: fear, pity, fascinated interest, self-importance; a surge of heightened energy at being alive; the pleasure of sharing the news at work, among friends; the half-shameful excitement of blood spilt which was not one’s own. If this were murder the house would never escape its contamination, but it would be felt less here than in those desecrated Chambers of the Middle Temple. More had been lost there than a friend or colleague.

  The ringing of his mobile telephone broke the silence and he heard Kate’s voice. “Janet Carpenter was left-handed. There’s no doubt about it.”

  So this was murder. But with part of his mind he had known this from the start. He asked: “Did Miss Elkington ask why you wanted to know?”

  “No sir, and I didn’t tell her. Doc Kynaston is expected in the hospital this morning but hasn’t arrived. I left a message. Piers and the rest of the team are on their way. The lab can’t send anyone until this afternoon. Sickness and two officers out on a case.”

  Dalgliesh said: “The afternoon will have to do. I’d like them to have a look at the pattern of the bloodstains. Don’t let anyone leave the building without being interviewed. Probably most of them are at work, but we can get the names from the bells. I’d like you and Piers to get on with the interviews. Miss Kemp will probably be able to tell us most about her neighbour. And then there’s that young woman who let us in. What time precisely did she hear the TV and when was it switched off? And let me know when you’re coming up, Kate. There’s an experiment I want to make.”

  It was five minutes before she rang again. “I’ve got Robbins and DC Meadows on the door now, sir. I’m coming up.”

  Dalgliesh left the flat and stood on the landing, flattening himself against the wall at the side of the cupboard. He heard Kate’s quick footsteps. As she reached the landing and moved over to the door he came swiftly up behind her. She gave a gasp as she felt his hand on the back of her neck propelling her through the doorway.

  Then she turned and said: “So that’s one way he could have got in.”

  “It’s possible. It would mean, of course, that he knew when she was expected home. She could have let him in, but would she do that for a stranger?”

  Kate said: “She was less worried about security than most old people. Two locks, one a Banham, but no chain.”

  Miles Kynaston was first on the scene, with Piers and the photographers close behind him. He must have arrived at his hospital laboratory soon after Kate’s call and come on immediately. He stood in the doorway, the calm eyes surveying the room, then coming to rest on the victim. His gaze was always the same, the momentary gleam of compassion, so fleeting that it would be missed by anyone who did not know him, and then the intense considering scrutiny of a man facing once again the fascinating evidence of human depravity.

  Dalgliesh said: “Janet Carpenter. One of the suspects for the Venetia Aldridge murder. Discovered by Kate and myself forty minutes ago, when we came to interview her.”

  Kynaston nodded without speaking, then stood well clear of the body while the photographers, equally taciturn, moved past him, briefly acknowledging Dalgliesh, and got on with their work. In this charnel-house the position of the body and the pattern of the blood splatters were important evidence. The camera’s eye came first, fixing the stark reality, before Dalgliesh and Kynaston risked even a small disturbance of the body. For Dalgliesh these preliminaries to the investigation, the careful manoeuvring of the photographers round the body, the lens focused impersonally on glazed, unreproachful eyes and the crude butchery of gaping flesh, was the first step in the violation of the defenceless dead. But was it really any worse than the dehumanizing routines which followed even a natural death? The almost superstitious tradition that the dead should be treated with reverence always failed at some point along that carefully documented final journey to the crematorium or the grave.

  Ferris and his fellow SOCO arrived, their feet so silent on the stairs that the tap on the door was the first indication of their presence. Ferris watched avid-eyed at the door, frowning with anxiety as the photographers circled the body, anxious to get on with his search before the scene was contaminated. But he would have to wait. After the photographers had packed up with the same economic efficiency with which they had worked, Miles Kynaston took off his jacket and squatted to his task.

  Dalgliesh said: “She was left-handed, but it always looked an unlikely suicide. There are those spatters on the ceiling and the top half of the wall. She must have been standing when her throat was cut.”

  Kynaston’s gloved hands were busy with the body, gently, as if the dead nerves could still feel. He said: “A single cut, left to right, slicing the jugular. Superficial cut on the left wrist. He probably took her from behind, pulled the head back, one swift cut, then let the body gently down. Look at that ungainly twist to the leg. She was dead when she hit the floor.”

  “He’d be shielded by her body from the main spurt of blood. What about the right arm?”

  “Difficult to say. It was quick and sure. Even so, I think the right arm would be fairly heavily stained. He’ll have needed to wash before leaving. And if he was wearing a jacket the cuff and the lower part of the sleeve would be bloody. She’d hardly wait patiently while he stripped.”

  Dalgliesh said: “We may find blood traces in the U-bend of the sink or the bathroom, but it’s unlikely. I think this killer knew his business. He’d have let the water run. The knife is from the kitchen block, but I don’t think it’s the one he used. This was a premeditated killing. I think he brought his own knife.”

  Kynaston said: “If he didn’t use this knife it was one like it. So he killed her, washed the knife and himself, took a knife from the kitchen block, smeared it with her blood and pressed her hand round the handle. Is that how you see it?”

  “It’s a working hypothesis. Would it need much strength? Could a woman have done it?”

  “With determination and a sharp enough knife. But it doesn’t strike me as a woman’s crime.”

  “Nor me.”

  “How did he get in?”

  “The door was locked when we arrived. I think he probably stood concealed in the shadows by the l
anding cupboard and waited for her. When she opened the door he pushed in after her. It would have been easy enough to gain access to the building. You just push all the bells and wait for someone to respond. Someone always does.”

  “And then he waited. A patient man.”

  “Patient when he needed to be. But he may have known her routine, where she’d been, when she was likely to come home.”

  Kynaston said: “If he knew that much, it’s odd he didn’t know she was left-handed. The letters written in blood—I suppose they mean something?”

  Dalgliesh told him. He added: “She was a prime suspect for the Aldridge murder. She had the means and the opportunity. That 1992 case, when Aldridge successfully defended Beale, gave her the motive. This was meant to look like suicide and if she’d been right-handed I don’t think we could have proved otherwise. But it looked suspicious from the first, the throat cut standing when it would have been more usual to find her slumped over the bath or sink. She was a fastidious woman, she would have bothered about the mess. Odd how suicides often do. And why leave a message written in your own blood when you’ve got paper and pen? And she wouldn’t have slit her throat. There are kinder, less brutal ways.” But, however odd the circumstances, suspicion wasn’t legal proof. Juries were apt to believe that suicides, having brought themselves to that one incredible act, were capable of any eccentricity.

  Kynaston said: “The one fatal mistake. And it’s usually the clever ones who make it.”

  He had finished his preliminary examination, wiping his thermometer and replacing it carefully in its box. Then he said: “Time of death, between seven and eight last night. That’s judging by body temperature and the extent of rigor. I may be able to narrow it down after the autopsy. I suppose it’s urgent? With you it usually is. I could fit it in tonight but it will be late, probably eight to eight-thirty. I’ll give you a ring.” He took a last look at the body. “Poor woman. But at least it was quick. This one knew what he was about. Hope you get him, Adam.”