A Taste for Death (34 page)

'Well, he could hardly splash it on the front pages of the Sunday heavies. Perhaps he realized that he'd only make

himself ridiculous. Himself and the family.'

Dalgliesh asked:

'Would that have mattered?'

'Not to me, but Grandmama would have minded - will mind now, I suppose. And his wife, of course. She thought she was marrying the next prime minister but one. She wouldn't relish being tied to a religious crank. Well, she's free of him now. And he's free of us, all of us.'

She was silent for a moment, then said with sudden vehemence:

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'I'm not going to pretend. Anyway you know perfectly well that my father and I were, well, estranged. There's no secret about it. I didn't like his politics, I didn't like the way he treated my mother, I didn't like the way he treated me. I'm a Marxist, there's no secret about that either. Your people will have me on one of their little lists somewhere. And I care about my political beliefs. I don't believe he really did. He expected me to discuss politics as if we were chatting about a recent play we'd both seen, or a book we'd read, as if it were an intellectual diversion, something you could have what he would call a civilized argument about. He said that was one of the things he deplored about the loss of religion, it meant that people elevated politics into a religious faith and that was dan gerous. Well that's what politics are for me, a faith.' Dalgliesh said:

'Feeling as you do about him, his bequest to you must

you with a dilemma of conscience.'

'Is that your tactful way of asking me if I killed my !father for his money?'

'No, Miss Berowne. It's a not particularly tactful way of

out what you feel about a not uncommon moral

'I feel fine, just fine. There's no dilemma as far as I'm Anything I get will be put to good use for a It won't be much. Twenty thousand, isn't it? It's to need more than twenty thousand pounds to change i:this world.'

Suddenly she went back to the sofa, sat down, and they that she was crying. She said: 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. This is ridiculous. It's 0nly shock. tiredness. I didn't sleep much last night. And I've had a busy day, things ! couldn't cancel. Why should I cancel them, anyway? There's nothing I can do for him.'

The phenomenon wasn't new to him. Other people's tears, other people's grief were inseparable from a murder inquiry. He had learned not to show surprise or embar-rassment. The response varied, of course. A cup of hot, sweet tea if there was someone around to make it, a glass

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of sherry if the bottle was to hand, a slug of whisky. He had never been good at the comforting hand on the shoulder, and here, he knew, it wouldn't be welcome. He felt Kate stiffen at his side as if to make an instinctive move towards the girl. Then she looked at Garrod, but Garrod didn't move. They waited silently. The sobbing was quickly checked and Sarah Berowne again raised her face to them. She said:

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please don't mind me. I'll be all

right in a minute.'

Garrod said:

'! don't think there's anything else we can usefully tell you but if there is, perhaps it could wait until another

time. Miss Berowne is upset.'

Dalgleish said:

'I can see that. If she wants us to go, of course we shall.' She looked up and said to Garrod:

'You go. I'm all right. You've said what you came to say. You were here with me on Tuesday night, all night. We were together. And there's nothing you can say about my father. You never knew him. So why don't you go?'

Dalgliesh was surprised by the sudden venom in her voice. Garrod could have hardly welcomed this curt dismissal, but he was too controlled and too astute to pro-test. He looked at her with what seemed detached interest

rather than resentment and said:

'If you need me, just ring.'

Dalgliesh waited until he was at the door then said quietly:

'One moment. Diana Travers and Theresa Nolan. What do you know about them?'

Garrod was motionless for a second then swung slowly round. He said:

'Only that they're both dead. I do occasionally see the

Paternoster Review.'

Dalgliesh said:

'The recent article about Sir Paul in the Review was partly based on a scurrilous communication sent to him and to a number of papers. This communication.'

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He took it from his briefcase and handed it to Garrod. There was a silence while he read it. Then, his face devoid of expression, he handed it to Sarah Berowne. He said:

'You aren't, surely, suggesting that Berowne cut his throat because someone sent him an unkind letter? Wouldn't that be a little over-sensitive for a politician? And he was a barrister. If he thought it was actionable, he had his remedy.'

Dalgliesh said:

'I'm not suggesting that it provides a motive for suicide. I was wondering whether you or Miss Berowne had any idea who could have sent it?'

The girl handed it back, merely shaking her head. But Dalgliesh saw that its production had been unwelcome. She was neither a good actress nor a good liar. Garrod said:

'I admit that I took it for granted that the child Theresa Nolan aborted was Berowne's, but I didn't feel called upon to do anything about it. If I had, I'd have done something

more effective than this farrago of unsubstantiated spite. I only met the girl once, at an unfortunate dinner party at Campden Hill Square. Lady Ursula was convalescent; it was her first night down. The poor girl certainly didn't look happy. But then, Lady Ursula was brought up to know what room people are entitled to dine in, and, of course, their proper placement at table. Nurse Nolan, poor child, was eating out of her station and was made to feel it.'

Sarah Berowne said softly:

'Not intentionally.'

'Oh, I didn't say it was intentional. Women like your

grandmother are offensive merely by existing. Intention idoesn't come into it.'

Then without touching Sarah Berowne, without even a

at her, he said his goodbyes to Kate and Dalgliesh formally as if they had been fellow guests at a dinner party, and the door closed behind him. The girl tried to control herself, then broke into open sobbing. Kate got up, went through the opposite door and after what seemed

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to Dalgliesh an unnecessarily long time, came back x ith a glass of water, then sat down beside Sarah Berowne and silently offered it. The girl drank it thirstily, then said:

'Thank you. This is silly. It's just that I can't believe he's dead, that I'll never see him again. I suppose I always thought that sometime, somehow, things would be right between us. I suppose I thought that there was plenty of time. All the time in the world. They've all gone now, Mummy, Daddy, Uncle Hugo. Oh God, I feel so hope-less.'

There were things that he would have liked to have asked but now wasn't the time. They waited until she was calm again and then asked if she was sure she was all right before they left. The question struck him as insincere, a formal hypocrisy. She was as right as she would ever be when they were there.

As they drove away Kate was for a time silent, then she said:

'It's an all-electric kitchen, sir. There's one wrapped packet of four boxes of Bryant and May matches in the cupboard, that's all. But that doesn't prove anything. They could have bought a single box and chucked it away after-wards.'

Dalgliesh thought: She was fetching the glass of water showing genuine sympathy, genuine concern. But her mind was still on the evidence. And some of my officers think women are more sentimental than men. He said:

'We shan't get much joy trying to trace a single box of matches. A safety match is the easiest thing to lay hands on, the most difficult to identify.'

'There's another thing, though, sir. I looked in the waste bin. I found thc cardboard packet from the Marks and Spencer mushroom fian. They ate it all right, but it was two days past its last marked date of sale on Tuesday. He couldn't have bought it then. Since when have Marks and Spencer sold stale food? I wasn't sure whether you'd want

the package or not.'

Dalgliesh said:

'We haven't yet a right to take anything out of that flat.

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It's too early. You could argue that it's a clue in their favoue. If they'd planned this crime I suspect Garrod would have bought the food on Tuesday morning and have made sure that the girl at the desk remembered him. And there's another thing, they've produced an alibi for the whole night. That suggests that they may not know the relevant time.'

'But isn't Garrod too clever to fall into that trap?'

'Oh, he wouldn't produce an alibi neatly timed for eight o'clock, but the somewhat over-generous one he has produced to cover every hour from six to nine the next morning does suggest that he's playing safe.'

And like the other alibis it wouldn't be an easy one to break. They had briefed themselves before this visit as they did before every interview. They knew that Garrod lived alone in a single-bedroom mansion flat in Bloomsbury, a large, anonymous block, without a porter. If he claimed to have spent the night elsewhere it was difficult to see who could prove otherwise. Like everyone else concerned with the case whom they had interviewed to date, Sarah Berowne and her lover had produced an alibi. The police might not consider it a particularly convincing one, but Dalgliesh had too high an opinion of Garrod's intelligence to suppose that it could be easily broken and certainly not by a date stamp on the carton of a mushroom fian.

Back at the Yard, Dalgliesh had hardly entered his office before Massingham came in. He prided himself on his' ability to control his excitement and his voice was carefully nonchalant.

'Harrow Road have just been on the phone, sir. There's an interesting development. A couple walked into the station ten minutes ago, a 21-year-old and his girl. They say they were on the towpath on Tuesday evening, courting apparently. They passed through the turnstile by St Matthew's just before seven. There was a large black

Rover parked outside the south door.'

'Did they get the number?'

'No such luck. They can't even be sure of the make. But they are definite about the time. The girl was expected

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home by seven thirty and they looked at their watches just before leaving the towpath. And the boy, Melvin Johns, thinks that it could have been an A registration. Harrow Road think he's telling the truth. The poor kid seems petrified. He's certainly not a nutcase looking for publicity. They've asked the Couple to wait until I get over.' He added:

'That parking lot by the church could be useful for anyone who knew it. But the local people obviously prefer to park their cars Where they can keep an eye on them. And it isn't as if the area has a theatre, fashionable res-taurants. For my mohey, there's only one black Rover one

might expect to see Parked outside that church.'. Dalgliesh said:

'That's premature, John. It was dusk, they were in a hurry. They can't even be sure of the make.'

'You're depressing me, sir. I'd better get over there. It'll be just my luck to discover it was the local undertaker's hearse!'

7

She knew that Ivor would come back that night. He wouldn't telephone tSirst, partly out of excessive cauti, partly because he alvYays expected her to be there waitig when she knew he Was likely to arrive. For the first time since they had becore lovers she found herself dreading his signal, the one lng ring of the entry-phone followed by the three short. Why couldn't he telephone, she thought resentfully, let her krow when to expect him? She tried to settle to work on hep newest project, the montage of two black-and-white photographs taken last winter in Richmond Park of lhe naked boughs of huge oak trees under a sky of tureabling clouds, and which she nw planned to mount, Cne reversed under the other, so tlat the tangled boughs looked like roots reflected in water.

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But it seemed to her as she shifted the prints with in-creasing dissatisfaction that the device was meaningless, a cheap derivative effect; that this, like all her work, was symbolic of her life, thin, insubstantial, second-hand, pilfered from other people's experience, other people's ideas. Even the London pictures, cleverly composed, were without conviction, stereotypes seen through Ivor's eyes not her own. She thought: I must learn to be my own person, however late, however much it hurts, I have to do it. And it seemed to her strange that it should have taken her father's death to show her what she was.

At eight o'clock she was aware of hunger and cooked herself scrambled eggs, stirring them carefully over the low burner, taking as much trouble as if Ivor had been there to share them. If he did arrive while she was eating he could cook his own. She washed up and he still hadn't arrived. Walking out to the balcony she gazed over the garden to the darkening bulk of the opposite terrace whose windows were beginning to light up like signals from space. Those unknown people would be able to see her window too, the huge expanse of lighted glass. Would the police call on them, ask them whether they had seen a light here on Tuesday night? Had Ivor, for all his cleverness, thought of that?

Gazing out over the darkness she made herself think of her father. She could recall the precise moment at which things had changed between them. They had been living then in the Ghelsea house, just her parents, herself and Mattie. It had been seven o'clock on a misty August morning and she had been alone in the dining room, pouring her first cup of coffee, when the call came. She had answered the telephone from the hall and had been given the news just as her father came down the stairs. He had seen her face, stopped, his hand on the banister and she had looked up at him.

'It's Uncle Hugo's Colonel. He wanted to ring himself. Daddy, Hugo's dead.' And then their eyes had met, had for a moment held, and she had seen it clearly; the mixture of exultation and wild hope, the knowledge that now he

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could have Barbara. It had lated only a second. Time had moved on. And then he had taken the receiver from her and, without speaking, she had walked back into the dining room, through the french windows and into the enclosing greenness of the garden shaking with the horror of it.