A Certain Justice

by P. D. James

  Piers said: “But this time they weren’t. My God, this killer had it handed to him on a plate. She’d already written the note to place with the plants. He reads it, puts the plants outside, locks the door when he leaves, puts the keys through the letter-box of Number Nine. He couldn’t have reckoned on that amount of luck.”

  Dalgliesh said: “What about the rest of the tenants?”

  It was Piers who replied. “One of the two basement flats is unoccupied and we didn’t get any reply from four of the others. I suppose they’re out at work. The girl we saw this morning, the one who let us in, wasn’t helpful. Her boyfriend’s home now and he’s no lover of the police. And they guessed we weren’t here because of a break-in. She’d hardly let us in when she said, ‘It’s murder, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve come about. Mrs. Carpenter’s dead.’ There seemed no point in denying it, but we didn’t confirm it either. After that they were both pretty cagey, although I don’t think it’s because they’re hiding anything, at least not about the murder. It’s just funk and a wish not to get involved. The girl—her name’s Hicks—won’t even stand by her story that Mrs. C.’s TV was on very loudly at about seven-thirty. She’s not sure now whether it was television or radio or where the noise came from. When we left she was insisting that the boyfriend go out immediately to buy a strong bolt for the inside of the door while imploring him not to leave her alone in the flat.”

  “Did she let anyone in through the street door last night?”

  “She says not, and she’s pretty definite about it, but she may be lying. On the other hand we haven’t spoken to the other tenants, who are at work. One of them could have released the door. The couple in the basement flat are unemployed. She’s just finished her teacher-training and is applying for jobs. He’s been made redundant from a law firm. They were still in bed and none too pleased to see us. Apparently they were at a party until the early hours. Nothing of any use there, I’m afraid. They only bought the flat two months ago and say they didn’t even know that Mrs. C. was a tenant. They’re adamant that they didn’t let anyone in last night. They claim that they’d left for the party by half past eight.”

  Kate added: “We did get something from the last flat we tried. Mrs. Maud Capstick, a widow living alone. She only knew Mrs. C. because Mrs. C. attended a meeting of the Residents’ Association when they were discussing the cost of external painting—the only time she did attend. They sat together and Mrs. Capstick rather took to her, thought they might have things in common, but it never came to anything. She did issue an invitation to coffee from time to time but Mrs. C. always had an excuse. She didn’t hold it against her, she too likes her privacy. She said that Mrs. C. was always pleased when they did meet, but it wasn’t often. Mrs. Capstick’s flat is the garden flat at the back, so there was no occasional passing on the stairs.”

  Piers broke in. “You should meet Mrs. Capstick, sir. She’s the garden expert on one of the glossy monthlies. My aunt takes it and I recognized her from her photograph in the mag. She sees herself as the Elizabeth David of gardening journalists—reliable advice and elegant, original writing. My aunt swears by her. Mrs. Capstick writes about her magnificent garden in Kent. She admitted to me that she hasn’t got a garden in Kent and never has had. It’s a garden of the imagination. That way, she claims, her readers get a better garden and so does she.”

  An unseen listener might have been surprised to hear him speak with such amused detachment, but his colleagues were grateful to Maud Capstick for the eccentricity which, for a moment, had lightened their mood.

  Intrigued, Dalgliesh asked: “What about photographs? Aren’t the articles illustrated?”

  “She takes them herself using partial views of gardens she visits, clumps of plants from London parks. That’s half the fun, she says, finding a suitable shot, one that won’t be recognized. She never actually states that the photographs are of her garden. The one she has here is about six feet by eight, a patch of rough grass much visited by local dogs, a flower bed which provides a useful scrape for cats, and about three indistinguishable shrubs which the local children have vandalized.”

  “I’m surprised she admitted to all this.”

  Kate said, more tolerantly than Dalgliesh would have expected: “He just sits there with that look of boyish sympathy. It usually does the trick.”

  “Well, I did recognize her. I asked how often she was in Kent. I think she’d been keeping it as a secret for years and just wanted to tell someone. That’s the fascination of policing. People are either concealing secrets or pouring them out. I wish you’d been there, sir. She said, ‘You should avoid living too much in the real world, young man. It isn’t conducive to happiness.’”

  “I hope she’s sufficiently in the real world to answer questions reliably. When you weren’t exchanging homespun philosophy or discussing herbaceous borders, did she have anything useful to tell?”

  “Only that she definitely didn’t let anyone in last night. Her bell did ring just after seven but she was in the shower and by the time she got to the door to answer it there was no one there. She wasn’t expecting a caller. She says she often gets non-productive calls. Sometimes it’s the local kids pressing the bells, sometimes it’s someone who’s mistaken the number.”

  Kate said: “It could have been the murderer. By the time she got to the door someone could have let him in.”

  Dalgliesh said: “Someone did. If we can get them to admit it we will at least know when he arrived—provided, of course, that he got in that way. Was that all?”

  Kate answered: “We asked Mrs. Capstick when she’d last seen Mrs. Carpenter. It was Sunday at half past three. Mrs. Capstick was coming home from lunch with a friend and saw Mrs. C. going into the church at the end of the crescent, St James’s. So she was alive then. But it doesn’t get us any further. We knew that already.”

  It could, thought Dalgliesh, be of no importance except as a piece of somewhat surprising information. There was nothing in the flat to suggest that Mrs. Carpenter was a churchgoer, but, then, there was nothing in the flat to throw any light on her interests or her personality, except that she was essentially private. No life could be as uncluttered as this living-space. But Sunday afternoon was an odd time to visit a church unless, unusually surely, there was a service. It was possible that she was using it as a meeting-place. It wouldn’t be the first time in his experience that one of these quiet empty places had been used for an assignation or for the passing on of a message. If she had wanted to talk privately without the risk of inviting a visitor to her flat, the church was an obvious place to choose.

  Kate asked: “Is it worth calling in, sir? I suppose there’s a chance it will be open.”

  Dalgliesh went over to the bureau and took out a photograph of Mrs. Carpenter with her granddaughter. He studied it carefully for half a minute, his face giving nothing away, then placed it in his wallet.

  “A good chance. It’s usually kept open. I know the parish priest, Father Presteign. If Father Presteign is involved in all of this we may have complications.”

  Glancing at him, Kate saw his rueful, half-amused smile. She would have liked to have asked more but felt herself on uncertain ground. Was there any world, she wondered, in which AD didn’t feel at home? Well, he was said to be the son of a parson. That gave him a familiarity with a part of life which was to her as unfamiliar as if St. James’s had been a mosque. Religion, whether as a practical guide to life, a source of legend and myth, or a philosophical concept, had never entered that seventh-floor flat in Ellison Fairweather Buildings. Her moral training had at least had the benefit of simplicity. Certain actions—reading when she should be cleaning the flat, forgetting items from the shopping list—were inconvenient or abhorrent to her grandmother, and were therefore wrong. Others were accepted as illegal and therefore dangerous. On the whole the law had seemed both a more sensible and a more consistent guide to morality than her grandmother’s eccentric self-interest. Her large inner-city comprehensive
school, attempting to accommodate the religious affiliations of seventeen different nationalities, had been content to instil the belief that racism was the greatest if not the only unforgivable sin, and that all faiths were equally valid—or invalid, as you chose to believe. The minority ones, their feasts and their ceremonies, received most attention, presumably on the grounds that Christianity had had an unfair head start and could be left to look after itself. Kate’s personal moral code, never discussed with her grandmother, had in childhood been instinctive and in adolescence worked out without reference to any power beyond herself. She sometimes found it bleak, but it was all she had.

  Now she wondered why Mrs. Carpenter had visited the church. To pray? There was presumably a particular grace, and therefore a greater hope of success, if one prayed in church. To take a short rest? Surely not; she was within eighty yards of her home. To meet someone? That was possible; a large church could be a good place for an assignation. But she expected nothing of use from the visit to St James’s.

  The young constable on duty in the hall saluted as they left and ran down the steps to the car. Dalgliesh said: “Thank you, Price, we’ll walk.” Then he turned to Piers: “Get back to the incident room, will you, Piers, and set up the inquiry. Then go on to break the news at Pawlet Court. Tell them as little as you need. This will be hard on Langton.”

  Piers was following through his own thoughts: “I can’t see it, sir. They’re not butchers. This is a very different murder.”

  Kate said with a touch of impatience: “Not the same delicate touch. But they’re connected. They have to be. If we’re right, if the motive was to set up Carpenter for the Aldridge killing, then we’re back at Pawlet Court.”

  “Only if the first murder really was an inside job. I’m beginning to wonder. If we separate the actual killing from the business with the wig and the blood …”

  Kate broke in: “In my book it had to be an inside job and Carpenter was, and still is, the prime suspect. She had it all, means, motive, opportunity.”

  Dalgliesh said: “We already know one thing: three members of Chambers have an alibi for the Carpenter killing, Ulrick, Costello and Langton. I was speaking with them last evening and there’s no way any of them could have got to Sedgemoor Crescent by seven-thirty. Kate and I will call in at the church since we’re so close, then come on later.”

  The crescent was almost deserted. The news of the murder hadn’t yet broken in the neighbourhood. When it did, there would be the usual small crowd of onlookers standing with careful nonchalance at a prudent distance, trying to give the impression that they were loitering there by chance.

  Dalgliesh said, almost as if he were talking to himself: “Father Presteign is a remarkable man. He’s reputed to know more secrets both in and out of the confessional than any other man in London. He’s become a kind of personal chaplain to writers who are High Anglicans—novelists, poets, scholars. They would hardly consider themselves properly baptized, married, shriven or buried without Father Presteign’s assistance. It’s a pity he’ll never be able to write his autobiography.”

  The church was open. The great oak door swung easily inward to Dalgliesh’s push and they passed into a cavernous sweet-scented dimness pierced with a momentary flicker of candles like distant stars. As Kate’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness the great church took shape and she paused for a moment in amazement. Eight slender marble pillars rose to a roof set with medallions of red and blue, and flanked by carved angels, crimp-haired, their wings outstretched. Behind the high altar was a gilded reredos; in the glow of a crimson lamp she could just make out the haloes of saints and the mitres of bishops rank on golden rank. The south wall was completely covered with a fresco in pink and blue. It looked like an illustration to Scott’s Ivanhoe. The opposite one was similarly adorned, but the work had stopped halfway, as if the money had run out.

  Dalgliesh said: “One of Butterfield’s later efforts, but I’m not sure he didn’t go too far this time. What do you think of it?”

  The question, unexpected and unlike him, disconcerted her. After a moment’s thought, she said: “I suppose it’s impressive, but I don’t feel at home in it.”

  The answer had been honest. She wished it didn’t sound inadequate.

  “I wonder if Mrs. Carpenter was—at home in it.”

  The only other person visible was a cheerful-faced, middle-aged woman who was polishing and dusting the stand which held prayer books and guides to the church. She gave the visitors a brief smile intended, Kate thought, to welcome them while reassuring them that they wouldn’t be bothered and that their devotions, if any, would be tactfully ignored. The English, thought Kate, obviously regarded praying much as they did a necessary physical function, something best done in private.

  Dalgliesh apologized for interrupting her work: “We’re police officers and I’m afraid we’re here on police business. Were you in church, I wonder, when a Mrs. Carpenter came in on Sunday afternoon?”

  “Mrs. Carpenter? I’m afraid I don’t know her. I don’t think she’s a regular member of the congregation, is she? But I was here on Sunday between services. We try to keep the church open, which means having a rota of people who can come in for a few hours every day. I’m doing two days this week, because Miss Black is in hospital. I may have seen her. Is she in any trouble—Mrs. Carpenter, I mean?”

  “I’m afraid that she’s been attacked.”

  “And badly injured? I am sorry.” The cheerful face expressed a genuine concern. “Mugged, I suppose. And soon after she left here? That’s terrible.”

  Taking out the photograph of Mrs. Carpenter, Dalgliesh handed it to her. She said at once: “So that’s who you mean. Yes, she was here on Sunday afternoon. I remember her very clearly. There were only three people for confession and she was one of them. Confessions are from three to five on Sundays. Father Presteign will be terribly distressed to know she’s been hurt. He’s in the vestry now, if you want to see him.”

  Dalgliesh thanked her gravely and put away the photograph. As he and Kate walked together up the side aisle she glanced back. The woman was standing, duster drooping from her hand, looking after them. Meeting Kate’s glance, she bent again and began a vigorous polishing, as if caught out in an unseemly curiosity.

  The vestry was a large room to the right of the high altar. The door was open and, as they darkened the entrance, an elderly man turned to meet them. He had been standing at a cupboard with a heavy leather-bound book in his hand. Now he placed it on a shelf, shut the cupboard door and said without a trace of surprise: “It’s Adam Dalgliesh, isn’t it? Please come in. It must be six years since we last met. It’s good to see you. You’re well, I hope?”

  He was less immediately impressive than Kate had envisaged. Somehow she had expected someone taller and with the thin aesthetic face of a scholarly celibate. Father Presteign could be no more than five feet five inches. He was old but gave no impression of weakness. The grey hair was still thick, but cropped rather than shaped, round a moon-shaped face more suited, she felt, to a comedian than to a priest. His mouth was long and humorous. But the eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles were as shrewd as they were gentle, and when he spoke she thought that she had seldom heard a more attractive human voice.

  Dalgliesh said: “I’m well, thank you, Father. May I introduce Detective Inspector Kate Miskin? I’m afraid we’re here on police business.”

  “I thought you might be. How can I help?”

  Dalgliesh again took out the photograph. “I understand that this woman, Mrs. Janet Carpenter, came to confession Sunday afternoon. She lived in Coulston Court, at Number Ten. We found her this morning in her sitting-room with her throat cut. Almost certainly it was murder.”

  Father Presteign looked at the photograph but did not take it. Then he crossed himself unobtrusively and stood for a moment silently with his eyes closed.

  “We need any information you can give which will help us to discover why she was killed and who killed her.�
� Dalgliesh’s voice was calm, uncompromising, but gentle.

  Father Presteign had expressed neither horror nor surprise, but now he said: “If I can help, then of course I shall. That would be a matter of duty as it would be my wish. But I never met Mrs. Carpenter before Sunday. Everything I now know about her was told to me under the seal of the confessional. I’m sorry, Adam.”

  “That was rather what I expected, and what I feared.”

  He made no protest. Was that, thought Kate, all they were going to get? She tried to control her frustration and an emotion closer to anger than disappointment. She said: “You know, of course, that the QC, Venetia Aldridge, has also been murdered. The two deaths are almost certainly connected. Surely you can tell us whether we should still be looking for Miss Aldridge’s killer?”

  His eyes looked into hers and she saw in them a pity which she thought was as much for her as it was for the two dead women. Resenting it, she resented, too, the implacable will which she knew couldn’t be broken.

  She said more roughly: “It’s murder, Father. Whoever killed these two could kill again. Surely you can tell us that one thing. Did Mrs. Carpenter confess to killing Venetia Aldridge? Are we wasting our time looking for someone else? Mrs. Carpenter’s dead. She can’t care now whether you break faith with her. Wouldn’t she want you to help? Wouldn’t she want her murderer to be caught?”

  Father Presteign said: “My child, it isn’t Janet Carpenter I’d be breaking faith with.” Then he turned to Dalgliesh. “Where is she now?”

  “She’s been taken to the mortuary. The PM will be held later today, but the cause of death was apparent. As I said, her throat was cut.”

  “Is there someone I should see? She lived alone, I believe.”

  “As far as we know she lived alone and there’s no family. But you must know more about her than I, Father.”

  Father Presteign said: “If there’s no one else to take responsibility, I will help with the funeral arrangements. I think she would like a requiem. You will keep in touch, Adam?”