A Taste for Death
Page 53
“They’re all right. Uncle’s going to take me fishing when I get out of here. They’re coming in later on. And I got a bicycle—a Chopper.”
Already his eyes were on the door. He had hardly looked at her since she had arrived, and when she had walked up to the bed she had glimpsed in his face a curiously adult embarrassment and had suddenly seen herself as he saw her, as all the children must see her, a pathetic and ridiculous old woman carrying her gift of an African violet in a small pot. She said:
“I miss you at St. Matthew’s, Darren.”
“Yeah. Well, I reckon I won’t have time for that now.”
“Of course not. You’ll be with your foster family. I quite understand.”
She wanted to add: But we did have happy times together, didn’t we? then stopped herself. It was too like a humiliating plea for something she knew he couldn’t give.
She had brought him the violet because it had seemed more manageable than a bunch of flowers. But he had seemed hardly to look at it and now, gazing round the toy-filled ward, she wondered how she could possibly have imagined that it was a suitable gift. He didn’t need it, and he didn’t need her. She thought: He’s ashamed of me. He wants to get rid of me before his new uncle arrives. He hardly seemed to notice when she said good-bye and slipped away, handing the violet to one of the nurses on her way out.
She took the bus to the Harrow Road and walked to the church. There was plenty for her to do. Father Barnes, refusing a period of convalescence, had been back only two days, but the number of services, and the size of the congregations, had increased since that article in the paper about a miracle, and there would be a long line of penitents waiting for confession after this afternoon’s Evensong. St. Matthew’s would never be the same again. She wondered how long there would be a place in it for her.
This was the first time she had gone alone to the church since the murder, but in her misery and loneliness she was hardly aware of apprehension until she tried to fit her key in the lock and found, as she had on that dreadful morning, that she couldn’t get it in. The door, as then, was unlocked. She pushed it open, her heart pounding, and called:
“Father, are you there? Father?”
A young woman came out of the Little Vestry. She was an ordinary, respectable, unfrightening girl, wearing a jacket and a blue headscarf. Seeing Miss Wharton’s white face, she said:
“I’m sorry. Did I startle you?”
Miss Wharton managed a faint smile.
“It’s all right. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting anyone. Was there anything you wanted? Father Barnes won’t be here for another half hour.”
The girl said:
“No, there’s nothing. I was a friend of Paul Berowne. It’s just that I wanted to visit the Little Vestry, to be alone here. I wanted to see where it happened, where he died. I’m going now. Father Barnes said to return the key to the vicarage, but perhaps I could leave it with you, as you’re here.”
She held it out and Miss Wharton took it. Then she watched as the girl went to the door. When she reached it, she turned and said:
“He was right, Commander Dalgliesh. It’s just a room, a perfectly ordinary room. There was nothing there, nothing to see.”
And then she was gone. Miss Wharton, still trembling, locked the outside door, went along the passage to the grille and gazed up through the church to the red glow of the sanctuary lamp. She thought: And that, too, is only an ordinary lamp made of polished brass with a red glass. You can take it apart, clean it, fill it with ordinary oil. And the consecrated wafers behind the drawn curtain, what are they? Only thin transparent discs of flour and water which come neatly packed in little boxes, ready for Father Barnes to take them in his hands and say the words over them which will change them into God. But they weren’t really changed. God wasn’t there in that small recess behind the brass lamp. He wasn’t any longer in the church. Like Darren, he had gone away. Then she remembered what Father Collins had once said in a sermon when she first came to St. Matthew’s: “If you find that you no longer believe, act as if you still do. If you feel that you can’t pray, go on saying the words.” She knelt down on the hard floor, supporting herself with her hands grasping the iron grille, and said the words with which she always began her private prayers: “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak but the word and my soul shall be healed.”
ALSO BY P. D. JAMES
DEVICES AND DESIRES
Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has just published a new book of poems and taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland of the Norfolk coast in a converted windmill, which was left to him by his aunt. But he cannot so easily escape murder. A psychotic strangler of young women is at large in Norfolk and getting nearer to Larksoken with every killing. And when he discovers the murdered body of the Acting Administrative Officer of a controversial nuclear power plant on the beach, Dalgliesh is himself caught up in the passions and dangerous secrets of the headland community and one of the most baffling murder cases of his career.
Fiction/Mystery/1-4000-7624-2
THE MURDER ROOM
Commander Dalgliesh is already acquainted with the Dupayne—a museum dedicated to the inter-war years, with a room celebrating the most notorious murders of that time—when he is called in to investigate the killing of a family trustee. He soon discovers that the victim was seeking to close the museum against the wishes of his fellow trustees and the Dupayne’s devoted staff. Everyone, it seems, has something to gain from the crime. When it becomes clear that the murderer has been inspired by the real-life crimes from the Murder Room—and is preparing to kill again—Dalgliesh knows that to solve this case he has to get into the mind of a ruthless killer.
Fiction/Mystery/1-4000-7609-9
VINTAGE BOOKS
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Copyright © 1986 by P. D. James
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber Ltd., London, in 1986, and subsequently in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1986.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint
previously published material:
The Society of Authors Ltd.: Poem XVI by A. E. Housman from A. E. Housman’s Collected Poems, Jonathan Cape edition 1967. Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the literary representative of the Estate of A. E. Housman, and Jonathan Cape Ltd., publishers of A. E. Housman’s Collected Poems.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
James, P. D.
A taste for death / P. D. James
p. cm.
1. Dalgliesh, Adam (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Cabinet officers—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Tramps—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. Police—England—Fiction.
I. Title.
PR6060.A467 T3 1986
823′.914—dcl9 86-45273
eISBN: 978-0-307-75898-9
www.vintagebooks.com
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