A Taste for Death

by P. D. James

  Lady Ursula gave her a long speculative gaze, rather, thought Sarah, as if she were a new lady’s maid arriving with somewhat suspect references. Her grandmother said:

  “It is not my wish particularly that there should be a memorial service, but his colleagues expect it and his friends seem to want it. I shall be there, and I expect his widow and his daughter to be there with me.”

  Sarah Berowne said:

  “I told you, it’s not possible. I’ll come to the cremation, of course, but that will be private and for the family only. But I’m not going to display myself suitably clad in black in St. Margaret’s Westminster.”

  Lady Ursula drew a stamp across the dampened pad and stuck it precisely in the right-hand corner of the envelope.

  “You remind me of a girl I knew in childhood, the daughter of a bishop. She caused something of a scandal in the diocese when she resolutely refused to be confirmed. What struck me as strange even at thirteen was that she hadn’t the wit to see that her scruples had nothing to do with religion. She merely wanted to embarrass her father. That, of course, is perfectly understandable, particularly given the bishop in question. But why not be honest about it?”

  Sarah Berowne thought: I shouldn’t have come. It was stupid to believe that she would understand or even want to try. She said:

  “I suppose, Grandmama, you would have wanted her to conform even if the scruples had been genuine.”

  “Oh yes, I think so. I would put kindness above what you would call conviction. After all, if the whole ceremony were a charade, which as you know is my opinion, then it could do her no possible harm to let the episcopal hands rest momentarily upon her head.”

  Sarah said quietly:

  “I’m not sure I’d want to live in a world that put kindness before conviction.”

  “No? But it might be more agreeable than the one we have, and considerably safer.”

  “Well, this is one charade which I prefer not to have any part in. His politics weren’t mine. They still aren’t. I should be making a public statement. I shan’t be there, and I hope that people will know why.”

  Her grandmother said drily:

  “Those who notice will; but I shouldn’t expect too much propaganda value from it. The old will be watching their contemporaries and wondering how long it will be before their turn comes, hoping their bladders will hold out, and the young will be watching the old. But I daresay enough of them will notice your absence to get the message that you hated your father and are pursuing your political vendetta beyond the grave.”

  The girl almost cried:

  “I didn’t hate him! Most of my life I loved him, I could have gone on loving him if he had let me. And he wouldn’t want me to be there, he wouldn’t expect it. He would have hated it himself. Oh, it will all be very tasteful, carefully chosen words and music, the right clothes, the right people, but you won’t be celebrating him, not the person, you will be celebrating the class, a political philosophy, a privileged club. You can’t get it into your head, you and your kind, that the world you grew up in is dead, it’s dead.”

  Lady Ursula said:

  “I know that, my child. I was there in 1914 when it died.”

  She took the next letter from the top of a pile and, without looking up, went on:

  “I’ve never been a political woman and I can understand the poor and the stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you’ve no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery. But I must say that I have an objection to your lover, a man who has enjoyed privilege all his life, working to promote a political system which will ensure that no one else gets a chance at what he has so singularly enjoyed. It would be excusable if he were physically ugly; that misfortune tends to breed envy and aggression in a man. But he isn’t. I can understand the sexual attraction even if I am fifty years too old to feel it, but you could have gone to bed with him, surely, without taking on all the fashionable baggage.”

  Sarah Berowne turned wearily away, walked over to the window and looked out over the square. She thought: My life with Ivor and the cell is over, but it was never honest, it never had any reality, I never belonged. But I don’t belong here. I’m lonely and I’m afraid. But I have to find my own place. I can’t run back to Grandmama, to an old creed, a spurious safety. And she still dislikes and despises me, almost as much as I despise myself. That makes it easier. I’m not going to stand beside her in St. Margaret’s like a prodigal daughter.

  Then she was aware of her grandmother’s voice. Lady Ursula had stopped writing and, leaning both hands on the table, she said:

  “Now that you are both here, there is something that I need to ask. Hugo’s gun and the bullets are missing from the safe. Does either of you know who has taken them?”

  Barbara Berowne’s head was buried over her tray of bottles. She glanced up but didn’t reply. Sarah, startled, turned quickly round.

  “Are you sure, Grandmama?”

  Her surprise must have been obvious. Lady Ursula looked at her.

  “So you haven’t taken it, and presumably you don’t know who has?”

  “Of course I haven’t taken it. When did you find it was missing?”

  “Last Wednesday morning, shortly before the police arrived. I thought then that it was possible that Paul had killed himself and that there might be a letter to me with his papers. So I opened the safe. There was nothing new. But the gun had gone.”

  Sarah asked:

  “When was it taken, do you know?”

  “I haven’t had occasion to look in the safe for some months. That is one reason why I have said nothing to the police. It could have been missing for weeks. It could have had nothing to do with Paul’s death, and there was no point in concentrating their attention on this house. Later I had another reason for silence.”

  Sarah asked:

  “What possible other reason could you have had?”

  “I thought his murderer might have taken it to use on himself if the police got too close to the truth. That would seem an eminently sensible thing for him to do. I saw no reason to prevent it. Now I think it is time for me to tell Commander Dalgliesh.”

  “Obviously you must tell him.” Sarah frowned, then she said:

  “I suppose Halliwell wouldn’t have taken it as a sort of memento. You know how devoted he was to Uncle Hugo. He might not like the idea of it getting into someone else’s hands.”

  Lady Ursula said drily:

  “Very probably. I share his concern. But whose hands?”

  Barbara Berowne looked up and said in her little girl voice:

  “Paul threw it away weeks ago. He told me that it wasn’t safe to keep it.”

  Sarah looked at her.

  “Nor particularly safe, I should have thought, to throw it away. He could have handed it in to the police, I suppose. But why? He had a licence, and it was perfectly safe where it was.”

  Barbara Berowne shrugged.

  “Well, that is what he said. And it doesn’t matter, does it? He wasn’t shot.”

  Before either of the other women could reply, they heard the ring of the front doorbell. Lady Ursula said:

  “That may well be the police. If so, they’re back rather sooner than I expected. I have a feeling that they may be getting to the end of their enquiries.”

  Sarah Berowne said roughly:

  “You know, don’t you? You have always known.”

  “I don’t know, and I have no real evidence. But I am beginning to guess.”

  They listened in silence for Mattie’s footfalls in the marble hall, but she seemed not to have heard the bell. Sarah Berowne said impatiently:

  “I’ll go. And I hope to God that it is the police. It’s time that we faced the truth, all of us.”

  five

  He went first to the Shepherds Bush flat to collect the gun. He wasn’t sure why he needed it, any more than he was sure why he had stolen it from the safe. But it couldn’t be left a
t Shepherds Bush; it was time he found a new hiding place for it. And to have the gun with him reenforced his sense of power, of being inviolate. The fact that it had once been Paul Berowne’s and was now his made it a talisman as well as a weapon. When he held it, pointed it, stroked the barrel, something of that first triumph returned. He needed to feel it again. It was strange how quickly it faded, so that he was sometimes tempted to tell Barbie what he had done for her, tell her now, long before it was safe or wise to confide, seeing in imagination the blue eyes widening with terror, with admiration, with gratitude and, at last, with love.

  Bruno was in his workroom, busy with his latest model. Swayne thought how disgusting he was with his huge half-naked chest on which a lucky charm, a silver goat’s head on a chain, moved repulsively among the hairs, his pudgy fingers on which the delicate pieces of cardboard seemed to stick while he edged them with infinite care into place. Without looking up, he said:

  “I thought you’d moved out for good.”

  “I have. I’m just collecting the last of my gear.”

  “I’d like the key, then.”

  Without speaking, Swayne placed it on the table.

  “What shall I say if the police turn up?”

  “They won’t. They know I’ve moved out. Anyway, I’m off to Edinburgh for a week. You can tell them that if they come snooping around.”

  In the small back room, its walls covered with shelves, which was both Bruno’s spare bedroom and a repository for his old models, nothing was ever moved, nothing ever tidied. He stood on the bed to reach the topmost high cluttered shelf, felt under the stage of a model of Dunsinane Castle and drew out the Smith and Wesson and the ammunition. He slipped them into a small canvas bag, together with the last of his socks and a couple of shirts. Then, without a final word to Bruno, he left. It had been a mistake to come in the first place. Bruno had never really wanted him. And the place was a hovel; he wondered how he had stuck it for so long. Paul’s bedroom at Campden Hill Square was much more suitable. He ran lightly down the stairs to the front door, rejoicing that he need never enter it again.

  He was on the canal path too early, just after three thirty, but it wasn’t because he was anxious. He knew that the boy would come. Since the meeting with Miss Wharton, he had had the sensation of being carried along by events, not a mere passenger of fate, but triumphantly borne forward on a crest of luck and euphoria. He had never felt stronger, more confident, more in control. He knew that the boy would come, just as he knew that the meeting would be important in ways that he couldn’t at present begin to guess.

  Even getting the message to Darren had been easier than he had dared to hope. The school was a two-storey building of grimy Victorian brick set behind railings. He had loitered close but not directly outside, anxious not to attract the attention of the little group of waiting mothers, and hadn’t moved up to the gate until he heard the first squeals of the released children. He had chosen a boy as his messenger. A girl, he felt, might be more curious, more noticing, more likely to question Darren about the message. He picked on one of the younger boys and asked:

  “Do you know Darren Wilkes?”

  “Yeah. He’s over there.”

  “Give him this, will you? It’s from his mum. It’s important.”

  He had handed over the envelope with a fifty-pence piece. The boy had taken it with hardly a glance at him, snatching the coin as if afraid that he would change his mind. He had run across the playground to where a boy was kicking a football against the wall. Swayne had watched until he saw the envelope change hands and then had turned and walked quickly away.

  He had chosen the meeting place with care: a tangled hawthorn growing close to the canal in whose shelter he could stand and watch the long Stretch of path to his right and the forty yards which led to the mouth of the tunnel to his left. Behind him, a few yards to the right, was one of the iron gates to the canal path. His brief exploration had shown that it led to a narrow road bounded by lock-up garages, padlocked yards, the blank faces of anonymous industrial buildings. It wasn’t a road to tempt the canal walker on a dark autumn afternoon, and it would give him an escape route from the towpath in case of need. But he wasn’t seriously worried. He had been standing here for over twenty minutes and had seen no one.

  And the boy, too, was early. Just before ten to four the small figure came into sight, loitering along the canal bank. He looked unnaturally tidy in his obviously new jeans topped with a brown and white zipped jacket. Swayne stepped a little back against the bark of a tree and watched his approach through a shield of leaves. Suddenly he wasn’t there, and Swayne felt a wild apprehension until he saw that the boy had climbed down into the ditch and was now reappearing, his hands stretched round the rim of an old cycle wheel. He began bowling it along the towpath. The wheel lurched and bounded. Swayne stepped out of his hiding place and caught it. The boy, no more than twelve yards away, stopped short, looked at him, wary as an animal, seemed about to turn and run. At once Swayne smiled and bowled the wheel back. The boy caught it, still fixing on him his steady unsmiling gaze. Then he swung it round, clumsily twirling, staggered and let it go. It rose out over the water, then fell with a splash which seemed to Swayne so loud that he half expected the canal path to be suddenly alive with people. But there was no one, no calling voices, no running feet.

  The ripples widened, then died. He strolled up to the boy and said easily:

  “It made a good splash. Do you find many of those in the ditch?”

  The boy shifted his glance. Looking out over the canal, he said:

  “One or two. Depends.”

  “You’re Darren Wilkes, aren’t you? Miss Wharton told me I’d find you here. I was looking for you. I’m an inspector of Special Branch. Do you know what that means?”

  He took out his wallet with its credit cards and his old university identity card. How lucky that he’d never given that in after his first and last disastrous semester. It bore his photograph and he flashed it at the boy, not giving him a chance to see more.

  “Where is she then, Miss Wharton?”

  The question was carefully casual. He didn’t want to betray his need, if he had a need. But he had bothered to come. He was here.

  Swayne said:

  “She can’t come. She told me to say that she’s sorry, but she isn’t feeling very well. Did you bring the note she sent you?”

  “What’s wrong with ‘er then?”

  “Only a cold. It’s nothing to worry about. Did you bring the note, Darren?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got it.”

  He thrust a small fist into his jeans pocket and brought it out. Swayne took the crumpled page, glanced at it, then tore it deliberately into small pieces. The boy watched silently as he threw them into the water. They lay on the surface like frail spring petals, then moved sluggishly, darkened, and were lost.

  He said:

  “Better take no chances. You see, I had to be certain that you really are Darren Wilkes. That’s why the note was so important. We have to have a talk.”

  “What about?”

  “The murder.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about the murder. I’ve talked to the cops.”

  “The ordinary police, yes, I know. But they’re a bit out of their depth. There’s more to this than they understand. Much more.”

  They were moving together slowly upstream towards the entrance to the tunnel. The bushes were thicker here, in one place so thick that even with their summer greenness dropping away, they still provided a safe screen from the path. He drew the boy with him into the semi-darkness and said:

  “I’m going to trust you, Darren. That’s because I need your help. You see, we in the Special Branch think that this wasn’t an ordinary murder. Sir Paul was killed by a gang, a terrorist gang. You know what I mean by the Special Branch, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Somethin’ to do with spying.”

  “That’s right. It’s our job to catch the enemies of the state. It’s called
special because that’s what it is. Special and secret. Can you keep secrets?”

  “Yeah. I keep plenty.”

  The small body seemed to swagger. He looked up at Swayne, the face so like an intelligent monkey, suddenly sharp and knowing.

  “Is that why you was there then? Watching ’im?”

  The shock was like a physical punch on the chest, painful, disabling. When he could speak Swayne was surprised how calm his voice sounded.

  “What makes you think I was there?”

  “Them fancy buttons on yer jacket. I found one.”

  His heart leaped, then for a second seemed to stop, a dead thing in his chest, dragging him down. But then he felt again its regular thudding, pulsing back warmth and life and confidence. He knew now why he was here, why both of them were here. He said:

  “Where, Darren? Where did you find it?”

  “On the path by the church. I picked it up. Miss Wharton thought I was picking a flower. She never seed me. She give me ten pee for a candle, see, same as always. I always have ten pee for the BVM.”

  For a moment Swayne’s mind seemed to whirl out of control. The boy’s words no longer made sense. He saw the peaked face, a sickly green in the gloom of the bush, look up at him with something like contempt.

  “The BVM. The statue of the lady in blue. Miss Wharton always give me ten pee for the box. Then I lit a candle, see? For the BVM. Only this time I kept the ten pee and I never ’ad time to light the candle ’cos she called me.”

  “And what did you do with the button, Darren?”

  He had to clench his fists to keep his hands from the boy’s neck.

  “Put it in the box, didn’t I? Only she never knowed. I never tell ’er.”

  “And you’ve told no one else?”

  “No one arsed me.” He looked up again, suddenly sly. “I don’t reckon Miss Wharton would like it.”

  “No. Nor would the police—the ordinary police. They’d call it stealing, taking the money for your own use. You know what they do to boys who steal, don’t you? They’re trying to get you put away, Darren. They want an excuse to put you in a home. You know that too, don’t you? You could be in real trouble. But you keep my secret and I’ll keep yours. We’ll both swear on my gun.”