A Taste for Death (15 page)

He stood for a minute looking up at it, Kate unspeaking at his side. On the second floor rose three very high, curved windows, originally, he suspected, an open loggia but now glazed and fronted with a low stone balustrade. Between the windows, mounted on incongruous corbels which looked more Gothic than neo-classical, were stone cary-atids, whose flowing lines, reinforced by the typically Soanian pilasters at the corners of the house, drew the eye upwards, past the square windows of the third storey to a fourth storey faced in brick and, finally, to the stone balus-trade with its row of curved shells echoing the curve of the

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lower windows. As he stood contemplating it, as if hesi-tating to violate its calm, there was a moment of extraordin-ary silence in which even the muted roar of the traffic in the avenue was stilled and in which it seemed to him that two images, the shining fafade of the house and that dusty blood-boltered room in Paddington, were held suspended out of time, then fused so that the stones were blood splattered, the caryatids dripped red. And then the traffic lights released the stream of cars, time moved on, the house lay uncontaminated in its pale pristine silence. But he had no sense that they were being watched, that somewhere between these walls and the windows glinting in the transitory sun there were people waiting for him in anxiety, grief, perhaps in fear. Even when he rang the doorbell it was a full two minutes before the door was opened and he faced a woman who he knew must be Evelyn Matlock.

She was, he guessed, in her late thirties, and was un-compromisingly plain in a way it struck him few women nowadays were. A small sharp nose was imbedded between pudgy cheeks on which the threads of broken veins were emphasized rather than disguised by a thin crust of make-up. She had a primly censorious mouth above a slightly receding chin already showing the first slackness of a dewlap. Her hair, which looked as if it had been inexpertly permed, was pulled back at the sides but frizzed over the high forehead in the poodle-like fashion of an Edwardian. But as she stood aside to let them enter he saw that her wrists and ankles were slim and delicate, curiously at odds with the sturdy body, heavy-busted, almost voluptuous under the high-necked blouse. He remembered what Paul Berowne had said of her. Here was the women whose father he had unsuccessfully defended, to whom he had given a home and a job, who was supposed to be devoted to him. If that were true, she was concealing her grief at his death with remarkable stoicism. A police officer, he thought, is like a visiting doctor. One is greeted with no ordinary emotions. He was used to seeing relief, ap-prehension, dislike, even hatred; but now, for a moment,

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he saw in her eyes naked fear. It passed almost at once and gave place to what seemed to him an assumed and slightly truculent indifference, but it had been there. She turned her back on them, saying:

'Lady Ursula is expecting you, Commander. Will you please follow me.'

The words, spoken in a high, rather forced voice, had the repressive authority of a nurse-receptionist greeting a patient from whom she expects nothing but trouble. They passed through the outer vestibule then under the fluted dome of the inner hall. To their left, the finely wrought balustrade of a stone cantilevered staircase rose like a border of black lace. Miss Matlock opened the double door to the right and stood back to let them enter. She said:

'If you will wait in here I will let Lady Ursula know that you have arrived.'

The room in which they found themselves ran the whole length of the house and was obviously both the formal dining-room and library. It was full of light. At the front, two high curved windows gave a view of the square garden while at the rear one huge expanse of glass looked out over a stone wall with three niches, each containing a marble statue; Venus, naked, one hand delicately shielding the mons Veneris, one pointing at her left nipple, a second female figure, half robed and wearing a wreath of flowers and, between them, Apollo with his lyre, laurel-crowned. The two sections of the room were divided by projecting piers formed of mahogany glass-fronted bookcases from which sprang a canopy of three semi-circular arches decor-ated and painted in green and gold. High bookcases lined the library walls and stood between the windows, each topped with a marble bust. The volumes, bound in green leather and tooled in gold, were identical in size and fitted the bookshelves so precisely that the effect was more of an artist's trornpe-l'eil than of a working library. Between the shelves and in the recesses over them were mirrors so that the rich splendour of the room seemed to be endlessly reflected, a vista of painted ceilings, leather books, of marble, gleaming mahogany and glass. It was difficult to

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imagine the room being used for dining, or indeed, for any purpose other than the admiring contemplation of the architect's romantic obsession with spatial surprise. The oval dining table stood before the rear window, but it held in the middle a model of the house on a low plinth as if it were a museum exhibit, and the eight high-backed dining chairs had been set back against the walls. Over the marble fireplace was a portrait, presumably of the baronet who had commissioned the house. Here the delicate fastidi-ousness of the painting in the National Portrait Gallery was metamorphosed into a sturdier nineteenth-century elegance, but with the unmistakable Berowne features still arrogantly confident above the faultlessly tied cravat. Looking up at it, Dalgliesh said:

'Lady Ursula Berowne, remind me of what she said, Kate.'

'She said: "After the first death there is no other." It sounded like a quotation.'

'It is a quotation.' He added without explanation, 'Her elder son was killed in Northern Ireland. Do you like this room?'

'If I wanted to settle down for a quiet read I'd prefer the Kensington public library. It's for show rather than use, isn't it? Odd idea, having a library and dining room in one.' She added: 'But I suppose it's splendid in its way. Not exactly cosy, ttough. I wonder if anyone has ever been murdered for a house.'

It was a long speech for Kate.

Dalgliesh said:

'I can't say that I remember a case. It might be a more rational motive than murdering for a person; less risk of subsequent disenchantment.'

'Less chance of betrayal, too, sir.'

Miss Matlock appeared in the doorway; she said with cold formality:

'Lady Ursula is ready to see you now. Her sitting room is on the fourth floor, but there is a lift. Would you please follow me.'

They could have been a couple of unpromising

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applicants for a minor domestic job. The lift was an elegant gilded birdcage in which they were borne slowly upwards in a repressive silence. When it jerked to a stop they were led out into a narrow carpeted paSSage. Miss Matlock opened a door immediately opposite and announced:

'Commander Dalgliesh and Miss Miskin are here, Lady Ursula.' Then without waiting for them to step into the room, she turned and left.

And now, as he entered Lady Ursula Berowne's sitting room, Dalgliesh felt for the first time that he was in a private house, that this was a room which the owner had made peculiarly her own. The two high beautifully proportioned windows with their twelve panes gave a view ofsky delicately laced with the top boughs of the trees and the long narrow room was full of light. Lady Ursula was sitting very upright to the right of the fireplace, her back to the window.

There was an ebony cane with a gold knob leaning against her chair. She did not rise when they came in but held out her hand as Kate introduced Dalgliesh. Her clasp, quickly released, was surprisingly strong but it was still like holding briefly a disconnected set of bones loosely enclosed in dry suede. She gave Kate a quick appraising glance and a nod which could have been acknowledge-ment or approval and said:

'Please sit down. If Inspector Miskin is required to make notes, then she may find that chair by the window con-venient. Perhaps you will sit opposite me, Commander.'

The voice, with its timbre of upper-class arrogance, an arrogance of which its owner so often seems unaware, was exactly as he would have expected. It seemed artificially produced, as if in an attempt to control any quavering she had had to gather both breath and energy to produce the measured cadences. But it was still a beautiful voice. As she sat facing him, rigidly upright, he saw that her chair was one designed for the disabled with a button in the armrest to raise the seat when she wanted help in rising. Its func-tional modernity struck a discordant note in a room which was otherwise cluttered with eighteenth-century furniture; two chairs with embroidered seats, a Pembroke table, a

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bureau, each a fine example of its period, were strategically placed to provide an island of support if she needed to make her painful progress to the door, so that the room looked rather like an antique shop with its treasures ineptly displayed. It was an old woman's room, and above the smell of beeswax and the faint summer scent from a bowl of pot-pourri on the Pembroke table, his sensitive nose could detect a whiff of the sour smell of old age. Their eyes met and held. Hers were still remarkable, immense, well-spaced and heavily lidded. They must once have been the focus of her beauty, and although they were sunken now, he could still see the glint of intelligence behind them. Her skin was cleft with deep lines running from the jaw to the high jutting cheekbones. It was as if two palms had been placed against the frail skin and forced it upwards so that he saw with a shock of premonitory recognition the shine of the skull beneath the skin. The scrolls of the ears flat against the side of the skull were so large that they looked like abnormal excrescences. In youth she would have dressed her hair to cover them. Her face was devoid of make-up and with the hair drawn back tightly and twisted into a high roll it looked naked, a face stripped for action. She was wearing black trousers topped with a belted tunic in thin grey wool, high-buttoned almost to the chin, and deep-cuffed. Her feet were lodged in wide black-barred shoes and in their immobility gave the impression of being clamped to the carpet. There was a paperback on the round table to the right of her chair. Dalgliesh saw that it was Philip Larkin's Required Writing. She pat out her hand and laid it on the book, then said:

'Mr Larkin writes here that it is always true that the idea for a poem and a snatch or line of it come simul-taneously. Do you agree, Commander?'

'Yes, Lady Ursula, I think I do. A poem begins with poetry, not with an idea for poetry.'

He betrayed no surprise at the question. He knew that shock, grief, trauma took people in different ways, and if this bizarre opening was helping her, he could conceal his impatience. She said:

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'To be a poet and a librarian, even if unusual, has a certain appropriateness, but to be a poet and a policeman

seems to me eccentric, even perverse.'

Dalgliesh said:

'Do you see the poetry as inimical to the detection, or the detection to the poetry?'

'Oh, the latter, surely. What happens if the muse strikes - no, that is hardly the appropriate word - if the muse visits you in the middle of a case? Although if I remember, Commander, your muse in recent years has been somewhat fugitive.' She added with a note of delicate

irony: 'to our great loss.'

Dalgliesh said:

'It hasn't so far happened. Perhaps the human mind

can deal with only one intense experience at a time.' 'And poetry is, of course, an intense experience.' 'One of the most intense there is.'

Suddenly she smiled at him. It lit up her face with the intimacy of a shared confidence, as if they were old sparring partners.

'You must excuse me. Being interrogated by a detective is a new experience for me. If there is an appropriate dialogue for this occasion, I haven't yet found it. Thank you, anyway, for not burdening me with your condolences. I have received too many official condolences in my time. They have always seemed to me either embarrassing or insincere.'

Dalgliesh wondered what she would reply if he had said: '! knew your son. Not well, but I did know him. I accept that you don't want my condolences, but if I had been able to speak the right words, they would not have been insincere.'

She said:

'Inspector Miskin broke the news to me with tact and consideration. I am grateful. But she was, of course, unable or unwilling to tell me much more than that my son was dead, and that there were certain wounds. How did he die, Commander?'

'His throat was cut, Lady UrsUla.'

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There was no way of softening that brutal reality. He added:

'The tramp with him, Harry Mack, died the same way.'

He wondered why he had felt it important to speak Harry's name. Poor Harry, so incongruously yoked in the forced democracy of death, whose stiffening body would receive far more attention in its dissolution than it had

ever received in life. She said:

'And the weapon?'

'A bloodstained razor, his apparently, was close to your son's fight hand. There are a number of forensic tests to be carded out but I expect to find that the razor was the weapon.'

'And the door to the church - the vestry, or wherever he was - that was open?'

'Miss Wharton, who with a young boy discovered the

bodies, says that she found it unlocked.'

'Are you treating this as suicide?'

'The tramp, Harry Mack, didn't kill himself. My pre-liminary view is that neither did your son. It's too early to say more until we get the results of the post-mortem examination and the forensic tests. Meantime I am treating it as a double murder.'

'I see. Thank you for being so frank.'

Dalgliesh said:

'There are questions I need to ask. If you would rather wait I could come back later, but it is, of course, important to lose as little time as possible.'

'I would prefer to lose none, Commander. And two of your questions I can anticipate. I have no reason to believe that my son was contemplating ending his life and he had to my knowledge no enemies.'

'As a politician that makes him unusual, surely.'