A Certain Justice (45 page)

“I’m afraid that she’s been attacked.”

“And badly injured? I am sorry.” The cheerful face expressed a genuine concern. “Mugged, I suppose. And soon after she left here? That’s terrible.”

Taking out the photograph of Mrs. Carpenter, Dalgliesh handed it to her. She said at once: “So that’s who you mean. Yes, she was here on Sunday afternoon. I remember her very clearly. There were only three people for confession and she was one of them. Confessions are from three to five on Sundays. Father Presteign will be terribly distressed to know she’s been hurt. He’s in the vestry now, if you want to see him.”

Dalgliesh thanked her gravely and put away the photograph. As he and Kate walked together up the side aisle she glanced back. The woman was standing, duster drooping from her hand, looking after them. Meeting Kate’s glance, she bent again and began a vigorous polishing, as if caught out in an unseemly curiosity.

The vestry was a large room to the right of the high altar. The door was open and, as they darkened the entrance, an elderly man turned to meet them. He had been standing at a cupboard with a heavy leather-bound book in his hand. Now he placed it on a shelf, shut the cupboard door and said without a trace of surprise: “It’s Adam Dalgliesh, isn’t it? Please come in. It must be six years since we last met. It’s good to see you. You’re well, I hope?”

He was less immediately impressive than Kate had envisaged. Somehow she had expected someone taller and with the thin aesthetic face of a scholarly celibate. Father Presteign could be no more than five feet five inches. He was old but gave no impression of weakness. The grey hair was still thick, but cropped rather than shaped, round a moon-shaped face more suited, she felt, to a comedian than to a priest. His mouth was long and humorous. But the eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles were as shrewd as they were gentle, and when he spoke she thought that she had seldom heard a more attractive human voice.

Dalgliesh said: “I’m well, thank you, Father. May I introduce Detective Inspector Kate Miskin? I’m afraid we’re here on police business.”

“I thought you might be. How can I help?”

Dalgliesh again took out the photograph. “I understand that this woman, Mrs. Janet Carpenter, came to confession Sunday afternoon. She lived in Coulston Court, at Number Ten. We found her this morning in her sitting-room with her throat cut. Almost certainly it was murder.”

Father Presteign looked at the photograph but did not take it. Then he crossed himself unobtrusively and stood for a moment silently with his eyes closed.

“We need any information you can give which will help us to discover why she was killed and who killed her.” Dalgliesh’s voice was calm, uncompromising, but gentle.

Father Presteign had expressed neither horror nor surprise, but now he said: “If I can help, then of course I shall. That would be a matter of duty as it would be my wish. But I never met Mrs. Carpenter before Sunday. Everything I now know about her was told to me under the seal of the confessional. I’m sorry, Adam.”

“That was rather what I expected, and what I feared.”

He made no protest. Was that, thought Kate, all they were going to get? She tried to control her frustration and an emotion closer to anger than disappointment. She said: “You know, of course, that the QC, Venetia Aldridge, has also been murdered. The two deaths are almost certainly connected. Surely you can tell us whether we should still be looking for Miss Aldridge’s killer?”

His eyes looked into hers and she saw in them a pity which she thought was as much for her as it was for the two dead women. Resenting it, she resented, too, the implacable will which she knew couldn’t be broken.

She said more roughly: “It’s murder, Father. Whoever killed these two could kill again. Surely you can tell us that one thing. Did Mrs. Carpenter confess to killing Venetia Aldridge? Are we wasting our time looking for someone else? Mrs. Carpenter’s dead. She can’t care now whether you break faith with her. Wouldn’t she want you to help? Wouldn’t she want her murderer to be caught?”

Father Presteign said: “My child, it isn’t Janet Carpenter I’d be breaking faith with.” Then he turned to Dalgliesh. “Where is she now?”

“She’s been taken to the mortuary. The PM will be held later today, but the cause of death was apparent. As I said, her throat was cut.”

“Is there someone I should see? She lived alone, I believe.”

“As far as we know she lived alone and there’s no family. But you must know more about her than I, Father.”

Father Presteign said: “If there’s no one else to take responsibility, I will help with the funeral arrangements. I think she would like a requiem. You will keep in touch, Adam?”

“Of course. In the meantime we will get on with our inquiries.”

Father Presteign walked down the nave with them. When they reached the door he turned to Dalgliesh. “There may be a way in which I can help. Before she left the church, Mrs. Carpenter said that she would write me a letter. After I’d read it I could make what use of it I thought right, including showing it to the police. She may have changed her mind: no letter may exist. But if she did write it, and if as she promised that letter gives me the authority to pass on to you whatever it contains, then I shall consider doing so.”

Dalgliesh said: “She did post a letter yesterday evening. To be accurate, she was seen leaving the house with an envelope in her hand.”

“Then perhaps that is the letter she promised to write. If she sent it by first-class post, it may arrive tomorrow morning, although one can never be sure. It’s rather strange that, being so close, she didn’t put it through the church door, but perhaps she thought the post would be safer. The letters are usually delivered shortly after nine o’clock. I shall be here by eight-thirty to say an early Mass. The church will be open, if you care to come back then.”

They thanked him and shook hands. There was, thought Kate, nothing more to be said.

I
t was six o’clock of the same day. In his room in Chambers, Hubert Langton stood at the window looking out over the gas-lit court.

He said to Laud: “I was standing here — remember? — two days before Venetia died and we talked of her becoming Head of Chambers. It seems an eternity away and yet it’s only eight days. And now this second murder. Horror heaped on horror. It may have been Venetia’s world, but it isn’t mine.”

Laud said: “It’s nothing to do with Chambers.”

“Inspector Tarrant seemed to think that it was.”

“He also seemed to think — although we had difficulty prising it out of him — that Janet Carpenter died between seven and eight. If so most of us here have got the best of alibis — Adam Dalgliesh in person. It’s over now, Hubert. At least the worst is.”

“Is it?”

“Of course. Janet Carpenter killed Venetia.”

“The police don’t seem to think so.”

“It may not suit them to think so, but they’ll never prove otherwise. They’ve got their motive now. Tarrant more or less admitted that when he told us who Mrs. Carpenter was. I can picture exactly how it happened. Mrs. Watson was unexpectedly absent. Mrs. Carpenter found herself alone in Chambers with only Venetia still working. She couldn’t resist the opportunity of confronting her, accusing her of being indirectly responsible for the death of her granddaughter. I can imagine how Venetia would have responded. She had been opening letters. The paper-knife was there on the desk. Carpenter seized it and drove it in. She may not have meant to kill, but kill she did. She would almost certainly have got away with manslaughter if it had ever come to trial.”

“And this second murder?”

“Can you see anyone in Chambers cutting a woman’s throat? Leave Janet Carpenter’s death to the police, Hubert. Solving murder is their job, not ours.”

Langton didn’t answer at once. Then he said: “How is Simon taking it?”

“Simon? Relieved, I imagine, as we all are. It was uncomfortable knowing oneself to be a suspect. The experience had its initial interest, if only as a novelty, but it became tedious when prolonged. Incidentally, Simon seems to have taken against Dalgliesh. I can’t think why, the man was perfectly civil.”

He was silent for a moment, looking across at Langton, then said more gently: “Hadn’t we better settle the agenda for the 31st? Are you happy with the main items and with the order? Rupert and Catherine are offered the two places in Chambers. Harry gets a year’s extension with the possibility of a second. Valerie is confirmed as Chambers secretary and we advertise for a permanent second girl to help her out. Harry tells me she’s been too pressed recently. You announce your retirement at the end of the year and it’s agreed that I take over. And I suggest that for the benefit of the Salisbury contingent you begin with a brief statement about Venetia’s death. As the police don’t exactly confide in us there’s not much to tell, but Chambers will expect a statement. Don’t let it get out of hand. We don’t want questions, conjecture. Keep it short and factual. And are you sure you want to announce your retirement at the end of the meeting, not the beginning?”

“At the end. We don’t want to waste time on formal expressions of regret, however insincere.”

“Don’t under-rate what you’ve done for Chambers. But there’ll be a more appropriate time to say a formal goodbye. By the way, I had a telephone call from Salisbury. They think we should begin the meeting with two minutes’ silence. I tried the suggestion out on Desmond. He said he would so far subjugate principle as to present himself suitably attired for any service we care to arrange in the Temple Church, but that there were some hypocrisies which even Chambers ought to jib at.”

Langton didn’t smile. He came over to his desk and picked up the draft agenda written in Laud’s elegant hand. He said: “We haven’t begun to think of the memorial service. Venetia isn’t even cremated yet, and next week everything she opposed will be agreed. Does nothing of us last once we are dead?”

“For the lucky ones, perhaps love. Influence, maybe. But not power. The dead are powerless. You’re the churchman, Hubert. Remember Ecclesiastes? Something about a living dog being better than a dead lion?”

Langton said quietly: “ ‘For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.’”

Laud said: “And that includes decisions in Chambers. If you’re happy, Hubert, I’ll take the agenda and get it typed and copied. I suppose some people will complain that it should have been circulated earlier, but we’ve had other things on our minds.”

He moved over to the door, then turned and looked back. Langton thought: Does he know, is he going to tell me, or is he going to ask? — and realized that Laud was thinking exactly the same of him. But nothing further was said by either of them. Laud went out and closed the door behind him.

I
t was Kate whom Dalgliesh asked to accompany him to the church next morning, leaving Piers to get on with the inquiries at the Middle Temple. It seemed to Kate that this second murder had for a time eclipsed the first, had produced in the team a sense of added urgency and more immediate danger than the death of Miss Aldridge. If the same man was responsible — and she had little doubt that the murder of Mrs. Carpenter had been the work of a man — then he was one of that dangerous breed who are prepared to kill and kill again.

Father Presteign was at the church before them and answered the side door to Kate’s ring. Leading them down the short passage and into the vestry, he asked: “Would you care for some coffee?”

“If it isn’t a trouble, Father.”

He opened a cupboard and took down a large jar of ground beans, a packet of sugar and two mugs. Filling the kettle and switching it on, he said: “The milk will be here soon. Joe Pollard brings it with him. He serves at Mass on Wednesdays. He and I will have ours later. That’ll be him now. I think I can hear his bike.”

A young man made immense by a motorcycling outfit more appropriate for a ride across Antarctica than for an English autumn day, burst into the vestry and took off his helmet.

“Morning, Father. Sorry I cut it fine. It’s my day to get the kids’ breakfast and the traffic’s hell on Ken High Street.”

Introducing him, Father Presteign said: “Joe always complains of the traffic but I’ve never known it inconvenience him when I ride pillion. We dodge and weave between the buses in the most exhilarating fashion, followed, I have to say, by imprecations.”

Joe, having shed leathers, scarves and jumpers with extraordinary speed, had buttoned himself into a cassock and pulled a cotta over his head with the ease of long practice.

Father Presteign silently robed and said: “I’ll see you after Mass, Adam.”

The door closed behind them. It was a solid door of ironbound oak and they could hear nothing beyond it. Presumably, thought Kate, a congregation of sorts had assembled. She pictured the early-morning faithfuls: a few old women, fewer men, perhaps some of the homeless finding the door open and seeking warmth. Had Mrs. Carpenter been one of them? She thought not. Hadn’t Father Presteign said she wasn’t a regular member of the congregation? So what had brought her into the church to seek his advice, to make her confession, to receive absolution? Absolution from what? Well, with luck they would know before they left the building. That was, of course, if Mrs. Carpenter had written the promised letter. Perhaps they were investing too much hope in what Father Presteign had said. She had been seen leaving the flats with a letter in her hand; it could have been to anyone.

Kate disciplined herself to sit in patience. It was obvious that Dalgliesh didn’t intend to talk and she had learned very early to be sensitive to his moods and to be silent when he was silent. Usually it wasn’t difficult. He was one of the few people she knew who could produce by their silence not embarrassment but a sense of quiet relief. But now she would have welcomed talk, an acknowledgement that he shared her impatience and anxieties. He was sitting very still, the dark head bent over his mug of black coffee, his fingers cupped round it but not touching it. He could have been waiting for it to cool, or perhaps he had forgotten it was there.