A Taste for Death (14 page)

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one comes from.' Sometimes he suspected that she had even known how diminished was his remaining store of faith, that it was this essential lack and not his general inadequacy which was at the core of her disdain..

His most recent library book had been a Barbara Pym. He had read with envious disbelief the gentle and ironic story of a village parish where the curates were enter-tained, fed, and generally spoilt by the female members of the congregation. Mrs McBride, he thought, would soon put a stop to anything like that at St Matthew's. Indeed, she had put a stop to it. During his first week, Mrs Jordan had visited him with a homemade fruitcake. She had seen it on the table on her Wednesday visit and had said:

'One of Ethel Jordan's, is it? You want to watch her, Father, an unmarried priest like you.' The words had hung on the air, heavy with innuendo, and an act of simple kindness had been spoiled. Eating the cake, he had felt it like tasteless dough in his mouth, every mouthful an act of shared indecency.

She arrived on time. Whatever her other negligences, Mrs McBride was a stickler for punctuality. He heard her key in the door and a minute later she was in the kitchen. She didn't seem surprised to see him sitting there still in his cloak and obviously only just returned from Mass, and he knew at once that she had been told about the murders. He watched while she carefully removed her headscarf to reveal the upswept waves of unnaturally dark hair, hung up her coat in the hall cupboard, donned her overall from its hook behind the kitchen door, took off her outdoor shoes and eased her feet into her house slippers. It wasn't until she had put on the kettle for their morning coffee that she spoke.

'Well, here's a nice thing for the parish, Father. Two of 'em dead, so Billy Crawford was saying in the newsagent's. And one of 'em old Harry Mack.'

'I'm afraid so, Mrs McBride. One of them was Harry.'

'And who would the other be? Or aren't the police knowing yet?'

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'I think we'll have to wait until they notify the next o kin before they release that information.'

'But you saw him, Father. Wasn't it with your own eye now? And were you not recognizing .him?'

'You really mustn't ask me that, Mrs McBride. We mus wait for the police.'

'And who'd be wantin' to kill Harry? Sure, he wouldn' be killed for anything he had on him, the poor soul. I wasn't suicide, was it, Father? One of those suicide pacts: Or do the police think Harry did it?'

'They don't know what happened yet. We really ough not to speculate.'

'Well, I don't believe it. Harry Mack's no murderer. A., well believe that the other chap, the one you're keeping sc quiet about, the one you're not telling about, did in Harry Harry was a nasty, thieving, foul-mouthed old devil, G� rest him, but he was harmless enough. The police have nc call to be pinning it on Harry.'

'I'm sure they won't try to. It could have been anyone someone who broke in to steal. Or someone Sir Pau Berowne himself let in. Anyone. The door of the vestry wa open when Miss Wharton arrived this morning.'

He turned towards the stove so that she shouldn' see the flush of shame and dismay that he had let sliI Berowne's name. And she hadn't missed it, not she. An why had he told her about that unlocked door? Was h trying to reassure her, or himself?. But what did it matter. The details would be out soon enough and it would 1oo odd if he were too reticent, odd and suspicious. But wh) suspicious? Surely no one, not even Mrs McBride, wa.' going to suspect him. He recognized, with a familiar con. fusion of self-disgust and hopelessness, that he was tellin[ more than he ought in his usual attempt to propitiate her to get her on his side. It had never worked and it wouldn' now. She didn't pick up the name Berowne although hi knew that it was safely stowed in her mind. Sitting acros from her, he saw the triumph in her cunning little eyes heard in her voice the note of ghoulish relish.

'Bloody murder, is it then? That's a nice thing for th

parish. You'll be needing to get the church fumigated, Father.'

'Fumigated?'

'Well, sprinkled with holy water, that sort of thing. Maybe my Tom had better speak to Father Donovan. He could let us have some from St Anthony's.'

'We have our own holy water, Mrs McBride.'

'In a case like this, you can't take chances. Better get some from Father Donovan. Be on the safe side. My Tom can bring it along after Mass on Sunday. Here's your coffee, Father. I've made it extra strong. You've had a nasty shock and that's the truth of it.'

The coffee, as always, was the cheapest kind of bottled grains. It was even less palatable now that its strength made the taste discernible. On the brown surface a few globules of half-sour milk swam and coalesced. There was a smear of what looked like lipstick on the brim of the cup and he turned it away from him slowly, so that she shouldn't notice. He knew that he could have carried the coffee into the comparative serenity of his study but he hadn't the courage to get to his feet. And to leave before both cups had been drained would only offend her. She had said, on her first morning with him, 'Mrs Kendrick and me always had a cup of coffee together before I got started, nice and friendly like.' He had had no way of knowing whether this was the truth, but the pattern of spurious intimacy had been established.

'That Paul Berowne, he was an MP wasn't he? Resigned or something. I remember reading about him in the Standard.'

'Yes, he was an MP.'

'And a Sir, too, didn't you say?'

'A baronet, Mrs McBride.'

'What was he doing in the Little Vestry, then? I never

knew we had any baronets attending St Matthew's.'

It was too late now to take refuge in discretion.

'He didn't. He was just someone I knew. I gave him the key. He wanted to spend some time quietly in the church,' he added in a vain hope that a confidence so dangerously

close to intimacy, to his job as priest, might flatter her, might even silence curiosity. 'He wanted somewhere quiet to think, to pray.'

'In the Little Vestry? A funny place to choose. Why wasn't he on his knees in a pew? Why wasn't he in the Lady Chapel in front of the Blessed Sacrament? That's the proper place to be praying for them who can't wait till Sunday.' Her voice with its note of aggrieved disapproval suggested that both the place and the praying were equally reprehensible.

'He could hardly sleep in the church, Mrs McBride.'

'And why should he want to be sleeping? Hadn't he his own bed to be going home to?'

Father Barnes's hands had begun to shake again. The coffee cup lurched in his fingers and he felt two scalding drops on his hand. Carefully, he replaced the cup in its saucer, willing the dreadful shaking to stop. He almost lost her next words.

'Well, if he did kill himself, he died clean, I'll say that for him.'

'Died clean, Mrs McBride?'

'Wasn't he washing himself when Tom and I passed by last night just after eight o'clock? Him or Harry Mack? And you can't be telling me that Harry went near running water if he could help it. Fairly gushing out of the drainpipe it was. 'Course we thought you were there. "Father Barnes is having a stripwash in the vestry wash� room." That's what I said to Tom. "Perhaps he's saving on the gas bill back at the Vicarage." We had a laugh about it.'

'When exactly was this, Mrs McBride?'

'I told you, Father, just after eight. We were on our way to the Three Feathers. We wouldn't have been passing the church except that we called in to collect Maggie Sullivan and it's a shortcut from her place to the Feathers.'

'But the police ought to know. This could be important information. They'll be interested in anyone who was near St Matthew's last night.'

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'Interested? Is that what they'll be? And what are you getting at then, Father? You're saying that Tom and old Maggie Sullivan and I cut his throat for him?'

'Of course not, Mrs McBride. That's ridiculous. But you could be important witnesses. That gushing water. It means that Sir Paul was alive at eight o'clock.'

'Someone was alive in there at eight and that's for sure. And a fine rush of water he was using.'

Father Barnes was struck ;ith a terrible possibility and, without thinking, gave it voice:

'Did you notice what colour it was?'

'And what would I be doing peering down drains? Of course I didn't notice what colour it was. What colour would it be? But it was running away, fast and furious, that's for sure.'

Suddenly, she pushed her face over the table towards him. Her huge breasts, so much at odds with the thin face and the bony arms, were pushed into great half moons by the table edge. Her coffee cup clattered in the saucer. The sharp little eyes widened. She whispered with alliterative relish:

'Father, are you saying that it would be running red?' He said, weakly:

'I suppose it's possible.'

'You think he was in there do you, Father, washing his bloody hands? Oh my God! Suppose he had come out and seen us. We could have been murdered on the spot, Tom and Maggie and me. He could have slit our throats for us then and there and thrown us in the canal, likely as not. Holy Mother of God!'

The conversation had become bizarre, unreal, totally uncontrollable. He had been told by the police to say as little as possible to anyone. He had meant to say nothing. But now she knew the names of the victims, she knew who had found them, she knew that the door had been unlocked, she knew how they had died, although surely he hadn't mentioned the slitting of throats. But that could have been guesswork. A knife was, after all, a more likely weapon in London than a gun. She knew all that and,

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more, she had actually been passing at the time. He gazed back at her across the stained table with appalled eyes, linked to her by that bloodstained gurgle of water which was gushing through both their minds, sharing the same dreadful imagining of that silently emerging figure, the raised and bloody knife. And he was aware of something else. Horrible as was the deed that bound them in a fas-cinated confederacy of blood they were, for the first time, having a conversation. The eyes which met his across the table top were bright with horrot and with an excitement which was too close to relish to be comfortable. But the familiar glance of insolence and contempt had gone. He could almost deceive himself that she was confiding in him. The relief was so great that he found that his hand was creeping across the table towards hers in some gesture of

mutual comfort. Ashamed, he quickly drew it back.

She said:

'Father, what shall we do?' It was the first time she had ever asked him that question. He was surprised at the confidence in his voice.

'The police have given me a special telephone number. I think we ought to ring now, at once. They'll send someone round, either here or to your house. After all, you and Tom and Maggie are very important witnesses. And then when we've done that, I shall need to be un-disturbed in the study. I wasn't able to say Mass. I shall read Morning Prayer.'

'Yes, Father,' she said, her voice almost meek. And there was something else he ought to do. Strange that thought hadn't occurred to him before. Surely it must be his duty to call in the next day or so on Paul Berowne's wife and his family. Now that he knew what had to be done, it was remarkable how different he felt. A biblical phrase dropped into his mind, 'Doing evil that good may come'. But he quickly put it away from him. It was too close to blasphemy to be comfortable.

Book Two

Next of Kin

After leaving the church Dalgliesh went briefly back to the Yard to pick up his files on Theresa Nolan and Diana Travers and it was after midday before he arrived at 62 Campden Hill Square. He had brought Kate with him, leaving Massingham to supervise what remained to be done at the church. Kate had told him that at present there were only women in the house and it seemed sensible that he should have a woman with him, particularly as it was Kate who had first broken the news. It was not a decision he had expected Massingham to welcome, and nor had he. These first interviews with the next of kin were crucial and Massingham wanted to be there. He would work with Kate Miskin loyally and conscientiously because he respected her as a detective and that was what he was required to do. But Dalgliesh knew that Mas-singham still half-regretted the days when women police officers were content to find lost children, search female prisoners, reform prostitutes, comfort the bereaved and, if they hankered for the excitement of criminal investigation, were suitably occupied coping with the peccadilloes of juvenile delinquents. And, as Dalgliesh had heard him argue, for all their demands for equality of status and opportunity, putting them in the front line behind the riot shields, taking the petrol bombs, the hurled stones and now the bullets, only made the job of their male colleagues even more onerous. In Massingham's view the instinct to protect a woman in moments of high danger was deep-seated and ineradicable, and the world would be a worse place if it wasn't. He had, as Dalgliesh knew, grudgingly respected Kate's ability to look down at the butchered bodies in St Matthew's vestry and not be sick, but he hadn't liked her the better for it.

He knew that he would find no police officer at the house. Lady Ursula had gently but firmly rejected the suggestion that someone should stay. Kate had reported her words:

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'You are not, presumably, expecting this murderer, if he exists, to turn his attention to the rest of the family. That being sO, I hardly see the need for police protection. You, I am sure, have a better use for your manpower and I would prefer not to have an officer sitting in the hall like a bailiff.'

She had, .too, insisted on herself breaking the news to her daughter-in-law and the housekeeper. Kate was given no opportunity to observe the reaction of anyone other than Lady Ursula to Paul Berowne's death.

Campden Hill Square lay in its midday calm, an urban oasis of greenery and Georgian elegance rising from the ceaseless grind and roar of Holland Park Avenue. An early morning mist had cleared and a fugitive sun glinted on leaves which were only now beginning to yellow and which hung in heavy swathes, almost motionless in the still air. Dalgliesh couldn't remember when he had last seen the Berowne house. Living as he did high above the Thames on the fringe of the city, this wasn't his part of London. But the house, one of the rare examples of Sir John Soane's domestic architecture, was pictured in so many books on the capital's buildings that its elegant eccentricity was as familiar to him as if he commonly walked these streets and squares. The conventional Georgian houses each side of it were as high, but its neo-classical fafade in Portland stone and brick dominated the terrace and the whole square, inalienably a part of them, yet looking almost arrogantly unique.