Devices and Desires (59 page)

Fifteen minutes later Meg helped wash up the coffee cups as if this were the end of an ordinary evening. Then they set out together to walk over the headland. The wind was at their back, and it seemed to Meg that they almost flew through the air, their feet hardly touching the turf, as if they were witches. At the door of the rectory Alice asked: “What will you do tonight, Meg, pray for me?”

“I shall pray for both of us.”

“As long as you don’t expect me to repent. I’m not religious, as you know, and I don’t understand that word unless, as I suppose, it means regret that something we’ve done has turned out less well for us than we hoped. On that definition I have little to repent of except ill luck that you, my dear Meg, are an incompetent car mechanic.”

And then, as if on impulse, she grasped Meg’s arms. The grip was so fierce that it hurt. Meg thought for a moment that Alice was going to kiss her, but her hold loosened and her hands fell. She said a curt goodbye and turned away.

Putting her key in the lock and pushing the door open, Meg looked back, but Alice had disappeared into the darkness, and the wild sobbing, which for an incredible moment she thought was a woman weeping, was only the wind.

Dalgliesh had just finished sorting the last of his aunt’s papers when the telephone rang. It was Rickards. His voice, strong, high with euphoria, came over the line as clearly as if his presence filled the room. His wife had given birth to a daughter an hour earlier. He was ringing from the hospital. His wife was fine. The baby was wonderful. He had only a few minutes. They were carrying out some nursing procedure or other, and then he’d be able to get back to Susie.

“She’s got home just in time, Mr. Dalgliesh. Lucky, wasn’t it? And the midwife says she’s hardly known such a quick labour for a first pregnancy. Only six hours. Seven and a half pounds, just a nice weight. And we wanted a girl. We’re calling her Stella Louise. Louise is after Susie’s mother. We may as well make the old trout happy.”

Replacing the receiver after warm congratulations which he suspected Rickards felt were hardly adequate, Dalgliesh wondered why he had been honoured with such early news and concluded that Rickards, possessed by joy, was ringing everyone who might have an interest, filling in the minutes
before he was allowed back to his wife’s bedside. His last words were: “I can’t tell you what it feels like, Mr. Dalgliesh.”

But Dalgliesh could remember what it had felt like. He paused for a moment, the receiver still warm under his hand, and faced reactions which seemed to him overcomplicated for such ordinary and expected news, recognizing with distaste that part of what he was feeling was envy. Was it, he wondered, his coming to the headland, the sense there of man’s transitory but continuing life, the everlasting cycle of birth and death, or was it the death of Jane Dalgliesh, his last living relative, that made him for a moment wish so keenly that he too had a living child?

Neither he nor Rickards had spoken about the murder. Rickards would no doubt have felt it an almost indecent intrusion into his private, almost sacrosanct, rapture. And there was, after all, little more to be said. Rickards had made it plain that he considered the case closed. Amy Camm and her lover were both dead, and it was unlikely now that their guilt would ever be proved. And the case against them was admittedly imperfect. Rickards still had no evidence that either woman had known details of the Whistler killings. But that, apparently, now assumed less importance in the police mind. Someone could have talked. Scraps of information picked up by Camm in the Local Hero could have been pieced together. Robarts herself could have told Amphlett, and what they hadn’t learned they could have guessed. The case might officially be classified as unsolved, but Rickards had now persuaded himself that Amphlett, helped by her lover Camm, had killed Hilary Robarts. Dalgliesh, when they had briefly met on the previous evening, had felt it right to put another view and had argued it calmly and logically, and Rickards had turned his own arguments against him.

“She’s her own woman. You said so yourself. She’s got her own life, a profession. Why the hell should she care who he marries? She didn’t try to stop him when he married before. And it’s not as if he needs protection. Can you imagine Alex Mair doing anything he doesn’t want to do? He’s the sort of man who’ll die at his own convenience, not God’s.”

Dalgliesh had said: “The absence of motive is the weakest part of the case. And I admit there isn’t a single piece of forensic or other physical evidence. But Alice Mair fulfils all the criteria. She knew how the Whistler killed; she knew where Robarts would be shortly after nine o’clock; she has no alibi; she knew where she could find those trainers and she is tall enough to wear them; she had an opportunity of throwing them into the bunker on her way back from Scudder’s Cottage. But there’s something else, isn’t there? I think this crime was committed by someone who didn’t know that the Whistler was dead when she did the murder and did know shortly afterwards.”

“It’s ingenious, Mr. Dalgliesh.”

Dalgliesh was tempted to say that it wasn’t ingenious, merely logical. Rickards would feel obliged to question Alice Mair again, but he would get nowhere. And it wasn’t his case. Within two days he would be back in London. Any more dirty work which MI5 wanted done they would have to do themselves. He had already interfered more than was strictly justified and certainly more than he had found agreeable. He told himself that it would be dishonest to blame either Rickards or the murderer for the fact that most of the decisions he had come to the headland to make were still undecided.

That unexpected spurt of envy had induced a mild self-disgust which wasn’t helped by the discovery that he had left the book he was currently reading, A. N. Wilson’s biography of Tolstoy, in the room at the top of the tower. It was providing
satisfaction and consolation of which at the present he felt particularly in need. Shutting the front door of the mill firmly against the wind, he fought his way round the curve of the tower, switched on the lights and climbed up to the top storey. Outside, the wind whooped and screamed like a pack of demented demons, but here, in this small domed cell, it was extraordinarily quiet. The tower had stood for over 150 years. It had resisted far worse gales. On an impulse he opened the eastward window and let the wind rush in like a wild cleansing force. It was then that he saw, over the flint wall which bounded the patio at Martyr’s Cottage, a light in the kitchen window. It was no ordinary light. As he watched, it flickered, then died, flickered again and then strengthened into a ruddy glow. He had seen that kind of light before and knew what it meant. Martyr’s Cottage was on fire.

He almost slid down the two ladders linking the mill floors and, dashing into the sitting room, paused only to telephone for the fire brigade and ambulance, grateful that he hadn’t yet garaged the car. Seconds later he was hurtling at top speed across the rough grass of the headland. The Jaguar rocked to a stop and he rushed to the front door. It was locked. For a second he considered battering it open with the Jaguar. But the frame was solid sixteenth-century oak, and valuable seconds could be lost in futile manoeuvring and accelerating. Racing to the side, he sprang at the wall, grasped the top, swung his body over and dropped onto the rear patio. It took only a second to check that the back door, too, was bolted top and bottom. He had no doubt who was inside; he would have to get her out through the window. He tore off his jacket and wrapped it round his right arm while, at the same time, turning on full the outside tap and drenching his head and upper body. The icy water dripped from him as he flexed his elbow
and crashed it against the glass. But the pane was thick, designed to keep out the winter gales. He had to stand on the sill, supporting himself by the window frame, and kick violently and repeatedly before the glass crashed inwards and the flames leapt at him.

Inside the window was a double sink. He rolled over it and, gasping in the smoke, dropped to his knees and began to crawl towards her. She was lying between the stove and the table, the long body rigid as an effigy. Her hair and clothes were alight and she lay there staring upwards, bathed in tongues of fire. But her face was as yet untouched, and the open eyes seemed to gaze at him with such an intensity of half-crazed endurance that there flashed into his mind unbidden the image of Agnes Poley, so that the blazing tables and chairs were the crackling fagots of her excruciating martyrdom, and he smelt above the acrid smoke the dreadful stink of burning flesh.

He tugged at Alice Mair’s body, but it was awkwardly wedged and the edge of the burning table had fallen across her legs. Somehow he had to buy a few seconds of time. He staggered, coughing through the smoke, to the sink, turned both taps full on and, seizing a pan, filled it and threw water over the flames again and again. A small area of fire hissed and began to die. Kicking away the burning debris, he managed to lift her over his shoulder, then stumbled to the window. But the bolts, almost too hot to touch, were jammed fast. He would have to get her out through the broken window. Gasping with the effort, he pushed the dead weight forward over the sink. But the rigid body caught on the taps, and it took an eternity of agonizing time before he was able to free her, shove her forward to the window and at last see her tip forward out of sight. He gasped in the fresh air and, grasping the edge of the sink, tried to raise himself. But suddenly his
legs had no strength. He felt them buckle and had to rest his arms on the sink edge to prevent himself from falling back into the strengthening fire. Until this minute he had been unaware of pain, but now it clawed and bit at his legs and back as if he were being savaged by a pack of dogs. He couldn’t stretch his head to reach the running taps, but he cupped his hands and threw the water against his face, as if this cool benison could assuage the agony in his legs. And suddenly he was visited with an almost overwhelming temptation to let go, to fall back into the fire rather than make the impossible effort to escape. It was only a second’s folly, but it spurred him to a last, desperate attempt. He seized the taps, one with each hand, and slowly and painfully lifted himself across the sink. And now his knees had a purchase on the hard edge and he could thrust himself forward to the windows. Smoke billowed around him, and the great tongues of flame roared at his back. His ears hurt with the roaring. It filled the headland, and he no longer knew whether he was hearing fire, wind or the sea. Then he made the last effort and felt himself falling onto the softness of her body. He rolled away from her. She was no longer burning. Her clothes had been burnt away and now clung like blackened rags to what was left of the flesh. He managed to get to his feet and half-crawled, half-stumbled towards the outside tap. He reached it just before he lost consciousness, and the last thing he heard was the hiss as the stream of water quenched his burning clothes.

A minute later he opened his eyes. The stones were hard against his burnt back, and when he tried to move the spasm of agony made him cry aloud. He had never known such pain. But a face, pale as the moon, was bending over him, and he recognized Meg Dennison. He thought of that blackened thing by the window and managed to say: “Don’t look. Don’t look.”

But she answered gently: “She’s dead. And it’s all right, I had to look.”

And then he ceased to know her. His mind, disorientated, was in another place, another time. And suddenly, among the crowd of gaping spectators, the soldiers with their pikes guarding the scaffold, there was Rickards saying: “But she isn’t a thing, Mr. Dalgliesh. She’s a woman.” He closed his eyes. Meg’s arms enclosed him. He turned his face and pressed it into her jacket, biting the wool so that he would not disgrace himself by groaning aloud. And then he felt her cool hands on his face.

She said: “The ambulance is coming. I can hear it. Lie still, my dear. It’s going to be all right.”

The last sound he heard was the clanging of the fire engine’s bell as he let himself slide again into unconsciousness.