by P. D. James
“You got a gun then?”
For all the childish assumption of nonchalance, he couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice.
“Of course. The Special Branch always go armed.”
He drew the Smith and Wesson out of his shoulder bag and held it out in his palm. The boy’s eyes fastened on it, fascinated. Swayne said:
“Put your hand on it and swear to tell no one about the button, about me, about this meeting.”
The small hand was stretched out eagerly. Swayne watched as it was laid on the barrel. The boy said:
“I swear.”
Swayne put his own hand over Darren’s and pressed it down. It felt small and very soft and curiously detached from the boy’s body, as if it had a separate life like a young animal.
He said solemnly:
“And I swear not to reveal anything that passes between us.”
He was aware of the boy’s longing. He said:
“Would you like to hold it?”
“Is it loaded?”
“No. I’m carrying the bullets, but it isn’t loaded.”
The boy took it and began to point it, first at the canal, then with a grin at Swayne, then again over the canal. He held it as he must have seen it held by cops on the television, straight out, grasping it with both hands. Swayne said:
“You’ve got the right idea. We could do with you in the Branch when you’re older.”
Suddenly they were aware of the swish of bicycle wheels. Both drew back instinctively into the deeper shelter of the bushes. They had a brief glimpse of a middle-aged man in a cloth cap slowly pedalling against the squelch of the mud, his eyes fixed on the towpath. They stood motionless, hardly breathing, until he had disappeared. But he had reminded Swayne that there wasn’t very much time. The canal path could become busier. There could be people taking a shortcut home. He must do what he had to do quickly and silently. He said:
“You want to be careful, playing by the canal. Can you swim?”
The boy shrugged.
“Didn’t they teach you how to swim at school?”
“Naw. I ain’t been to school that much.”
It was almost too easy. He fought back a sudden impulse to laugh aloud. He wanted to lie back there on the mushy earth and gaze upwards through the knotted boughs and shout his triumph. He was invincible, out of their reach, protected by luck and cleverness, and something which had nothing to do with either, but which was now part of him forever. The police couldn’t have found the button; if they had they would have confronted him with it, would have taken back the jacket with its tell-tale tag of knotted cotton on the hemline. They must have seen that tag, must have known the spare button was missing when they examined the jacket. But a serious-faced young constable had returned it without comment, and he had worn it almost daily since, feeling superstitiously ill at ease without it. Getting the button wouldn’t be difficult. He would first deal with the boy, then go at once to the church. No, not at once. He’d need a chisel to break open the offertory box. He could fetch one from Campden Hill Square, or better, buy one from the nearest Woolworth’s. One purchaser among so many wouldn’t be noticed. And he wouldn’t buy the chisel only. It would be safer to collect a number of small items before queuing at the cash point, that way the cashier would be less likely to remember the chisel. And breaking open the offertory box would look like a simple burglary. It was always happening. He doubted whether anyone would bother to inform the police, and if they did, why should anyone connect it with the murder? And then it struck him that the box might have been emptied. The thought sobered his triumph, but for a moment only. If it had, the button would either have been given to the police or thrown away as useless. And it couldn’t have been given to the police, they would have produced it. And even if by ill chance it was still in someone’s possession, only the boy knew where it had been found. And the boy would be dead, accidentally drowned, one more child unwisely playing on the canal bank.
He moved out of the shelter of the bushes and the boy followed. On either side the path stretched in empty desolation, the canal sliding thick and brown as sludge between the fretted banks. He shivered. For a second he had been seized with the illusion that no one was coming because there was no one left to come, that he and Darren were the last survivors of a dead, deserted world. Even the silence was eerie, and it struck him that since arriving on the path he hadn’t heard the rustle of a single animal, nor the note of a bird.
He was aware that Darren had moved from his side and was squatting beside the water. Pausing beside him, Swayne saw that there was a dead rat caught in the crook of a broken twig; the sleek body, elongated, rippled the surface, its snout pointing like a prow. He squatted beside the boy and they contemplated it in silence. The rat, he thought, looked curiously human in death, with its glazed eye and the small paws raised as if in a last despairing supplication. He said: “Lucky rat,” and then it struck him how senseless was that casual statement. The rat, no longer rat, was neither lucky nor unlucky. It didn’t exist. No statement about it had any meaning.
He watched while the boy grasped the end of the twig and began moving the body under the water. Then he lifted it. Small eddies broke over its head, and it rose glistening, humpbacked from the suck of the stinking water. He said sharply:
“Don’t do that, Darren.”
The boy let go the twig and the rat plopped back and began drifting sluggishly downstream.
They walked on. And then suddenly his heart lurched. Darren darted from his side and with a high shout ran leaping into the tunnel mouth. For one appalled second Swayne thought that his victim must have divined his purpose and was dashing to escape. He rushed after him into the semi-darkness; and then he breathed easily again. Darren, whooping and hollering, was running his hands along the tunnel wall, then leaping, arms outflung, in a vain attempt to touch the roof. In his relief Swayne almost leaped with him.
And this, of course, was the place, none better. He would need only a minute, perhaps only seconds. It would have to be swift and sure. Nothing must be left to chance; he would have to do more than merely throw him in. He would need to kneel and hold the head under the water. The boy might struggle, but it would only be brief. He looked too frail to put up much of a struggle. He slipped his arms out of his jacket and folded it over his shoulder; there was no sense in getting an expensive jacket splashed. But the edge of the towpath was concrete here, not earth. He would be able to kneel if necessary without the risk of getting tell-tale mud on his trousers.
He called quietly:
“Darren.”
The boy, still leaping at the roof, took no notice. Swayne had drawn breath to call again when suddenly the small figure in front of him swayed, crumpled, fell, silently as a leaf, and lay still. His first thought was that Darren was playing games; but when he came up to him he saw that the boy had fainted. He lay sprawled, so close to the canal that one thin arm was flung out over it, the small half-clenched fist almost touching the water. He was so motionless that he could have been dead; but Swayne knew that he would have recognized death when he saw it. He squatted and gazed intently into the still face. The boy’s mouth was moistly open and he thought he could hear the gentle sigh of the breath. In the half-light the freckles stood out against the whiteness of the skin like splashes of gold paint, and he could just see the sparse lashes spiked against the cheek. He thought: There must be something wrong with him. He’s sick. Boys don’t faint for no reason. And then he was visited by a sensation which was half pity, half anger. Poor little bastard. They drag him before the juvenile court, put him under supervision, and they can’t even look after him. They can’t even see he’s sick. Sod them. Sod the whole fucking lot of them.
But now that what he had to do was made easier than ever, no more than a gentle nudge away, it had suddenly become difficult. He put his foot under the boy and lifted him gently. The body rose on his shoe, seemingly weightless, so that he could hardly feel it. But Darren didn’t stir. O
ne tip, he thought, one small thrust. If he had believed in a god, he would have said to him: “You shouldn’t have made it this easy. Nothing should be this easy.” It was very quiet in the tunnel. He could hear the slow drip of moisture from the roof, the faint slap of the canal against the pavement edge, the clicking of his digital watch, loud as a time bomb. The smell of the water came up to him, strong and sour. The two half-moons gleaming at the tunnel ends seemed suddenly very far away. He could imagine them receding and shrinking into thin curves of light, and then fading completely, leaving him and the quietly breathing boy sealed up together in black, damp-smelling nothingness.
And then he thought: Do I need to do it? He hasn’t done me any harm. Berowne deserved to die, but he doesn’t. And he won’t talk. The police have lost interest in him, anyway. And once I have the button, it won’t matter if he does talk. It will be his word against mine. And without the button, what can they prove? He plucked the jacket from his shoulder and knew as he felt the slip of the lining against his arms that this was the decisive action. The boy would be allowed to live. He savoured for one extraordinary moment a new sensation of power, and it seemed to him sweeter, more exhilarating than even the moment when he had finally turned to gaze down on Berowne’s body. This was what it felt like to be a god. He had the power to take life or to bestow it. And this time he had chosen to be merciful. He was giving the boy the greatest gift in his power, and the boy wouldn’t even know that it was he who had given it. But he would tell Barbie. Someday, when it was safe, he would tell Barbie, about the life he had taken, the life he had graciously spared. He pulled the body a little further from the water’s edge and heard the boy moan. The eyelids flickered. As if afraid to meet the opening gaze, Swayne sprang to his feet, then almost ran to the tunnel end, suddenly desperate to gain that half-moon of light before the darkness closed in on him forever.
six
It was Sarah Berowne who let them in. Without speaking, she led them across the hall to the library. Lady Ursula was seated at the dining room table on which were stacked letters and documents in three neat piles. Some of the writing paper was edged with black, as if the family had rummaged in their drawers for the mourning paper which must have been fashionable in her youth. As Dalgliesh entered she looked up and gave him a nod, then inserted her silver paper knife in yet one more envelope, and he heard the faint rasp as the paper split open. Sarah Berowne walked over to the window and stood looking out, her shoulders hunched. Beyond the rain-washed panes the heavy swathes of the sycamores drooped dankly in the drenched air, the dead leaves torn by the storm hanging like brown dusters among the green. It was very quiet. Even the hiss of the traffic on the avenue was muted like a spent tide on a far distant shore. But inside the room some of the heaviness of the day seemed still to linger and the diffused frontal headache which had plagued him since the morning intensified and focused behind his right eye, a stabbing needle of pain.
He had never felt in this house an atmosphere of peace or ease, but now the tension quivered on the air. Barbara Berowne alone seemed impervious to it. She, too, was sitting at the table. She was painting her nails; small gleaming bottles and tufts of cotton wool were set out before her on a tray. As he entered, the brush was for a moment poised, its bright tip motionless in the air.
Without looking round, Sarah Berowne said:
“My grandmother is concerned, among other matters, with the arrangements for the memorial service. I suppose you have no views, Commander, on the relative appropriateness of ‘Fight the Good Fight’ and ‘O Lord and Master of Mankind’?”
Dalgliesh walked across to Lady Ursula and held out the button on the palm of his hand. He said:
“Have you seen a button like this, Lady Ursula?”
She beckoned him nearer, then bent her head close to his fingers as if about to smell the button. Then she looked up at him expressionlessly and said:
“Not to my knowledge. It looks as if it came from a man’s jacket, probably an expensive one. I can offer no other help.”
“And you, Miss Berowne?”
She came over from the window, looked at it briefly and said:
“No, it isn’t mine.”
“That wasn’t my question. I asked if you’d seen it, or one like it.”
“If I have, I can’t remember. But then, I’m not very interested in clothes or in trivia. Why not ask my stepmother?”
Barbara Berowne was holding up her left hand and blowing gently on her nails. Only the thumbnail remained unpainted. It looked like a dead deformity among the four pink tips. As Dalgliesh came up to her she took up the brush and began to draw careful sweeps of pink along the thumbnail. This done, she glanced at the button, then turned quickly away and said:
“It isn’t off anything of mine. I don’t think it belonged to Paul either. I haven’t seen it before. Is it important?”
She was, he knew, lying, but not, he thought, through fear or any sense of danger. For her, to lie when in doubt was the easiest, even the most natural, response, a way of buying time, fending off unpleasantness, postponing trouble. He turned to Lady Ursula:
“I should like to speak to Miss Matlock, too, please.”
It was Sarah Berowne who went across to the fireplace and tugged at the bell.
When Evelyn Matlock came in, all three Berowne women turned as one and gazed at her. She stood for a moment, her eyes fixed on Lady Ursula, then marched across to Dalgliesh stiff as a soldier on a charge. He said:
“Miss Matlock, I’m going to ask you a question. Don’t answer it in a hurry. Think carefully before you speak and then tell me the truth.”
She glared at him. It was the look of a recalcitrant child, obstinate, malicious. He couldn’t remember when he had seen so much hate in a face. Again he took his hand from his pocket and held out on his palm the silver-crested button. He said:
“Have you ever seen this button or one like it?”
He knew that Massingham’s eyes as well as his own would be fixed on her face. It was easy to speak a lie, one short syllable. To act a lie was more difficult. She could just about control the tone of her voice, could make herself look up and gaze resolutely into his eyes, but the damage was already done. He hadn’t missed that instantaneous flicker of recognition, the small start, the quick flush across the forehead; that, most of all, was beyond her control. As she paused, he said:
“Come closer, look at it carefully. It’s a distinctive button, probably from a man’s jacket. Not the kind you find on ordinary jackets. When did you last see one like it?”
But now her mind was working. He could almost hear the process of thought.
“I can’t remember.”
“Are you saying that you can’t remember seeing a button like this, or that you can’t remember when you saw it last?”
“You’re muddling me.”
She turned her face to Lady Ursula, who said:
“If you want a lawyer before you answer, you’re entitled to one. I can ring Mr. Farrell.”
She said:
“I don’t want a lawyer. Why should I want a lawyer? And if I did, I wouldn’t choose Anthony Farrell. He looks at me as if I’m dirt.”
“Then I suggest you answer the Commander’s question. It seems a plain enough one to me.”
“I’ve seen something like it. I can’t remember where. There must be hundreds of similar buttons.”
Dalgliesh said:
“Try to remember. You think you’ve seen something like it. Where? In this house?”
Massingham, carefully avoiding Dalgliesh’s eyes, must have been awaiting his moment. His voice was a careful balance of brutality, contempt and amusement.
“Are you his mistress, Miss Matlock? Is that why you’re shielding him? Because you are shielding him, aren’t you? Is that how he paid you, a quick half hour on your bed between his bath and his supper? He was getting it cheap, wasn’t he, his alibi for murder.”
No one did it better than Massingham. Every word was a calcula
ted insult. Dalgliesh thought: My God, why do I always let him do my dirty work for me?
The woman’s face flared. Lady Ursula laughed, a tiny cackle of derision. She spoke to Dalgliesh:
“Really, Commander, apart from being offensive, I find that suggestion ridiculous. It’s grotesque.”
Evelyn Matlock turned on her, hands clenched, her body quivering with resentment:
“Why is it ridiculous, why is it grotesque? You can’t bear to believe it, can you? You’ve had lovers enough in your time, everyone knows that. You’re notorious. Well, you’re old now, crippled and ugly and no one wants you, man or woman, and you can’t bear to think that someone might want me. Well, he did and he does. He loves me. We love each other. He cares. He knows what my life is like in this house. I’m tired, I’m overworked and I hate you all. You didn’t know that, did you? You thought I was grateful. Grateful for the job of washing you like a baby, grateful for waiting on a woman too idle to pick up her own underclothes from the floor, grateful for the worst bedroom in the house, grateful for a home, a bed, a roof, the next meal. This place isn’t a home. It’s a museum. It’s dead. It’s been dead for years. And you think of no one but yourselves. Do this, Mattie, fetch that, Mattie, run my bath, Mattie. I do have a name. He calls me Evelyn. Evelyn, that’s my name. I’m not a cat or a dog, I’m not a household pet.” She turned on Barbara Berowne: “And what about you? There are things I could tell the police about that cousin of yours. You planned to get Sir Paul even before your fiancé was buried, before his own wife was dead. You didn’t sleep with him. Oh no, you were too cunning for that. And what about you, his daughter? How much did you care about him? Or that lover of yours? You only used him to hurt your father. Not one of you knows what caring is, what love is.” She turned again on Lady Ursula: “And then there’s Daddy. I’m supposed to be grateful for what your son did. But what did he do? He couldn’t even keep Daddy out of prison. And prison was torture for him. He was claustrophobic. He couldn’t take it. He was tortured to death. And how much do you care, any of you? Sir Paul thought that giving me a job, a home, what you call a home, was enough. He thought he was paying for his mistake. He never did pay. I did all the paying.”