A Taste for Death

PENGUIN BOOKS

A TASTE FOR DEATH

P. D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated Cambridge High School. From 1949 to 1968 she wor in the National Health Service as an administrator, a the experience she gained from her job helped her w the background for Shroud for a Nightingale, The Bla Tower and A Mind to Murder. In 1968 she entered t Home Office as Principal, working first in the Poli Department concerned with the forensic science servi and later in the Criminal Policy Department. She retir in 1979 and is currently a Fellow of the Royal Society Literature, Governor of the BBC and member of t boards of the Arts Council and of the British Coun� P. D. James has twice been the winner of the Sil Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association and 1987 was awarded the Diamond Dagger Award f services to crime writing. In 1983 she received the OB She has been a widow for twenty-five years and has tx children and five grandchildren.

Her other novels include Cover Her Face, Unnatm Causes, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Death of, Expert Witness, Innocent Blood, The Skull Beneath t Skin and Devices and Desires. She is co-author, with A. Critchley, of The Maul and the Pear Tree.

P. D. JAMES

A

Taste for Death

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKs

Published by the pngUin Group 27 Wrights Lane, LondoO W8 5TZ, England

Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ri'gWOod, Victoria, Australia penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Onutrio, Canada L3R lB4 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Waira. Road, Auckiand 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Ol'fice: larm0ndsworth, Middlesex, Enghmd

First published in Great Britais by Faber & Fabe 1986 Published by Sphere Books 1987

Published by PenguiU liooks 19g9

I 3579 10 8642

Copyright P. D- James, 196

For permission to quote from A. E. Housnn the publishers achnowld with 'atitude the Society of Authors as th llterry representative of the Estate of A. E. Honsma and Jonathan Cape Ltd, publishers of A. E. Houenan's Co//ected Pozu

Made and printed in Jret Britain by

Richard Clay Ltd, luny, Suffolk

Except in the United States o America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way o pounds trade or othcrwisc, bc lent, re-sold, Itired out, or Otherwise circulated without thc publisher's prior' consent in any pounds rm of bindn8 or cover other thn that in which it is published and without/ sinilar condition including this condition bein imposed on the subsequent purchaser

To my daughters,

Clare and Jane and in memory of their father, Connor Bantr White

Some can gaze and not be sick,

But I could never learn the trick. There's this to say for blood and breath, They give a man a taste for death.

A. E. Housman

Contents

B o o K O N v. Death of a Baronet 1

BOOK TWO Next of Kin 99

BOOK TXR.E Helping with Inquiries 191

B o o F o u R Devices and Desires 259

BOOK FVE Rhesus.Positive 345

B o o K S I X Mortal Consequences 413

B o o K S ]5 V . N Aftermath 503

Author's note

My apologies are due to the inhabitants of Campden Hill Square for my temerity in erecting a Sir John Soane house to disrupt the symmetry of their terraces and to the Diocese of London for providing, surplus to pastoral requirements, a Sir Arthur Biota-field basilica and its campanile on the banks of the Grand Union Canal. Other places described are recognizably part of London. It is the more important to state, therefore, that all the events described in the novel are fictional and all the characters, living and dead, wholly imaginary.

I am grateful to the Director and stag of the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory for their generous help with the scientific details.

k

The bodies were discovered at eight forty-five on the morning of Wednesday 18 September by Miss Emily Wharton, a 65-year-old spinster of the parish of St Matthew's in Paddington, London, and Darren Wilkes, aged 10, of no particular parish as far as he knew or cared. This unlikely pair of companions had left Miss Wharton's flat in Crowhurst Gardens just before half past eight to walk the half-mile stretch of the Grand Union Canal to St Matthew's church. Here Miss Wharton, as was her custom each Wednesday and Friday, would weed out the dead flowers from the vase in front of the statue of the Virgin, scrape the wax and candle stubs from the brass holders, dust the two rows of chairs in the Lady Chapel, which would be adequate for the small congregation expected at that morning's early Mass, and make everything ready for the arrival at nine twenty of Father Barnes.

It was on a similar mission seven months earlier that she had first met Darren. He had been playing alone on the towpath, if anything as purposeless as hurling old beer cans into the canal could be described as playing, and she had paused to say good morning to him. Perhaps he had been surprised to be greeted by an adult who didn't either admonish or cross-examine him. For whatever reason, after his initial expressionless stare, he had attached himself to her, at first dawdling behind, then circling round her, as might a stray dog, and finally trotting at her side. When they had reached St Matthew's church he had followed her inside as naturally as if they had set out together that morning.

It was apparent to Miss Wharton, on that first day, that he had never been inside a church before, but neither then nor on any subsequent visit did he evince the least curiosity about its purpose. He had prowled contentedly in and out of the vestry and bellroom while she got on with her chores, had watched critically while she had arranged her six daffodils eked out with foliage in the vase

at the foot of the Virgin, and had viewed with the bland indifference of childhood Miss Wharton's frequent genu-flections, obviously taking these sudden bobbings to be one more manifestation of the peculiar antics of adults.

But she had met him on the towpath the next week and the one following. After the third visit he had, without invitation, walked home with her and had shared her tin of tomato soup and her fish fingers. The meal, like a ritual communion, had confirmed the curious, unspoken, mutual dependence which bound them. But by then she had known, with a mixture of gratitude and anxiety, that he had become necessary to her. On their visits to St Matthew's he always left the church, mysteriously present one moment and the next gone, when the first members of the congregation began to trickle in. After the service, she would find him loitering on the towpath, and he would join her as if they hadn't parted. Miss Wharton had never mentioned his name to Father Barnes or to anyone else 'at St Matthew's and, as far as she knew, he had never, in his secretive world of childhood, mentioned hers. She knew as little about him now, his parents, his life, as she had at their first meeting.

But that had been seven months ago, a chill morning in mid-February, when the bushes which screened the canal walk from the neighbouring council estate had been tangled thickets of lifeless thorn; when the branches of the ash trees had been black with buds so tight that it seemed impossible they could ever crack into greenness; and the thin denuded wands of willow, drooping over the canal, had cut delicate feathers on the quickening stream. Now high summer was browning and mellowing into autumn. Miss Wharton, briefly closing her eyes as she trudged through the mush of fallen leaves, thought that she could still scent, above the smell of sluggish water and damp earth, a trace of the heady elderberry flowers of June. It was that smell that on summer mornings most clearly brought back tO her the lanes of her Shropshire childhood. She dreaded the onset of winter, and on waking this morning she had thought that she could smell its breath in

the air. Although it hadn't rained for a week, the path was slippery with mud, deadening sound. They walked under the leaves in an ominous quietness. Even the tinny clatter of the sparrows was stilled. But to their right the ditch which bordered the canal was still lush with its summer greenness, its grasses thick over the split tyres, discarded mattresses and scraps of clothing rotting in its depths, and the torn and laden boughs of the willows dropped their thin leaves on to a surface which seemed too oily and stagnant to suck them in.

It was eight forty-five and they were nearing the church, passing now into one of the low tunnels that spanned the canal. Darren, who liked best this part of the walk, gave a whoop and rushed into the tunnel, hollering for an echo and running his hands, like pale starfish, along the brick walls. She followed his leaping figure, half-dreading the moment when she would pass through the arch into that claustrophobic, dank, river-smelling darkness and would hear, unnaturally loud, the suck of the canal against the paving stones and the slow drip of water from the low roof. She quickened her pace and within minutes the hall moon of brightness at the end of the tunnel had widened to receive them again into the daylight and he was back,

shivering at her side.

She said:

'It's very cold, Darren. Oughtn't you to be wearing your parka?' He hunched his thin shoulders and shook his hed. She was amazed at how little he wore and how impervious he was to the cold. Sometimes it seemed to her that he preferred to live in a perpetual shiver. Surely wrapping up well on an autumn chill morning wasn't considered unmanly? And he looked so nice in his parka. She had been relieved when he first appeared in it; it was bright blue striped with red, expensive, obviously new, a reassur-ing sign that the mother she had never met and of whom he never spoke, tried to take good care of him.

Wednesday was her day for replacing the flowers, and this morning she was carrying a small tissue-wrapped bunch of pink roses and one of small white chr)santhemums.

The stems were wet and she felt the dampness seeping through her woollen gloves. The flowers were fight budded but one was beginning to open and a transitory evocation of summer came to her, bringing with it an old anxiety. Darren often arrived on their church morning with a gift of flowers. These, he had told her, were from Uncle Frank's stall at Brixton. But could that really be true? And then, there was the smoked salmon, last Friday's gift, brought to her flat just before suppertime. He told her he had been given it by Uncle Joe who kept a caf up Kilburn way. But the slivers, so moist, so delicious, had been interleaved with greaseproof paper, and the white tray in which they lay had looked so very like the ones she had looked at with hopeless longing in Marks and Spencer, except that some-one had torn off the label. He had sat opposite her, watching her while she ate, making an extravagant moue of distaste when she suggested that he share it, but stating at her with a concentrated, almost angry, satisfaction; rather, she thought, as a mother might watch a convales-cent child taking her first mouthful. But she had eaten it, and with the delicious taste still lingering on her palate it had seemed ungrateful to cross-question him. But the presents were getting more frequent. If he brought her any more, then they would have to have a little talk.

Suddenly, he gave a yell, raced furiously ahead and leapt up at an overhanging bough. There he swung, thin legs jerking, the white, thick-soled running shoes looking incongruously heavy for the bony legs. He was given to these sudden spurts of activity, running ahead to hide among the bushes and jump out at her, leaping across puddles, rummaging for broken bottles and cans in the ditch and hurling them with a desperate intensity into the water. She would pretend to be frightened when he jumped out, would call out to him to be careful when he crept 'along an overhanging branch and hung, skimming the water. But on the whole, she rejoiced in his liveliness. It was less worry than the lethargy which so often seemed to overcome him. Now, watching his grinning monkey face as he swung, arm over arm, the frantic twisting of his body,

the silver of the delicate ribcage under the pale flesh where the jacket had parted from his jeans, she felt a surge ot love so painful that it was like a thrust to the heart. And with the pain came again the old anxiety. As he dropped beside her she said:

'Darren, are you sure your mother doesn't mind your

helping me with St Matthew's?'

'Naw, that's OK, I told ya.'

'You come to the fiat so often. It's lovely for me but are

you quite sure she doesn't mind?'

'Look, I told ya. It's OK.'

'But wouldn't it be better if I came to see her, just to meet her, so that she knows who you're with?'

'She knows. Anyway, she ain't at home. She's offvisiting me Uncle Ron at Romford.'

Another uncle. How could she possibly keep track of them? But a fresh anxiety surfaced.

'Then who is looking after you, Darren? Who is al home?'

'No one. I'm sleepin' with a neighbour till she comes back. I'm OK.'

'And what about school today?'

'I told ya. I don't have to go. It's a holiday, see, it's a holiday! ! told ya!'

His voice had become high, almost hysterical. Then, as she didn't speak, he fell in beside her and said more calmly:

'They got Andrex at forty-eight pee a double roll up at

Notting Hill. That new supermarket. I could get ya a ,couple of rolls if you're interested.'

He must, she thought, spend a lot of time in super-markets, shopping for his mother, perhaps, on his way home from school. He was clever at finding bargains,

reporting back to her about the special offers, the cheaper ylines. She said:

'I'll try t,o get up there myself, Darren. That's a very good price.

'Yeah, that's what I thought. It's a good price. First time I seen 'em under fifty pee.'

For almost the whole of their walk their objective had been in sight: the green copper cupola of the soaring campanile of Arthur Blomfield's extraordinary Roman-esque basilica, built in 1870 on the bank of this sluggish urban waterway with as much confidence as if he had erected it on the Venetian Grand Canal. Miss Wharton, on her first visit to St Matthew's, nine years previously, had decided that it was expedient to admire it since it was her parish church and offered what she described as Catholic privileges. She had then put its architecture firmly out of her mind, together with her yearnings for Norman arches, carved reredos and familiar Early English spires. She supposed that she had now got used to it. But she was still slightly surprised when she found Father Barnes showing round groups of visitors, experts interested in Victorian architecture, who enthused over the bal-dachin, admired the Pre-Raphaelite paintings on the eight panels of the pulpit, or set up their tripods to photograph the apse, and who compared it, in confident, un-ecclesiastical tones (surely even experts ought to lower their voices in church) with the Cathedral of Torcello near Venice or with Blomfield's similar basilica at Jericho in Oxford.