A Taste for Death (20 page)

'Yes, I'm here.'

'We were together the whole of yesterday evening. �Vt were together from six o'clock when I arrived from work. We stayed together all night. We ate in the flat. Get that into your mind. Start concentrating on it now. And stay where you are. I'll be there in about forty minutes.'

She replaced the receiver and stood for a moment motion-less, her head against the cold metal of the instrument. A furious female voice said: 'Do you mind. Some of us have trains to catch', and she felt herself pushed aside. She fought her way out of the hall and leaned against the wall. Small waves of faintness and nausea flowed over her, each leaving her more desolate, but there was nowhere to sit, no privacy no peace. She could go to the coffee bar but he might get there early. Suppose she became disorientated, lost track of time. He had said 'stay where you are', and obeying him had become a habit. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She had to obey him now, rely on his strength, rely on him to tell her what to do. She had no one else.

He hadn't once said he was sorry that her father wa dead, but he wasn't sorry and he didn't expect her to be. He had always been brutally unsentimental; that was what he meant by honesty. She wondered what he would do if she said: 'He was my father and he's dead. I loved him once. I need to mourn for him, for myself. I need to be comforted. I'm lost, I'm frightened. I need to feel your arms around me. I need to be told that it wasn't my fault.'

The marching horde flowed past her, a phalanx of grey intent faces, eyes staring ahead. They were like a flood of

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refugees from a stricken city, or a retreating army, still dis-ciplined, but dangerously on the edge of panic. She closed her eyes and let the tramp of their feet engulf her. And, suddenly, she was in another station, another crowd. But then she had been six years old and the station had been Victoria. What were they doing there, she and her father? Probably meeting her grandmother, returning by overland and by boat from her house rising out of the Seine at Les Andelys. For one moment she and her father had been parted. He had paused to greet an acquaintance and she had momen-tarily slipped his hand and run to look at the brightly coloured poster of a seaside town. Looking round she saw with panic that he was no longer there. She was alone, menaced by a moving forest of endless, tramping, terrifying legs. They could have been parted only for seconds, but the terror had been so dreadful that, recalling it now, eighteen years later, she felt the same loss, the same engulfing terror, the same absolute despair. But suddenly he had been there, striding towards her, his long tweed coat flapping open, smiling, her father, her safety, her god. Not crying, but shuddering with terror and relief, she had run into his outstretched arms and felt herself lifted high, had heard his voice: 'It's all right, my darling, it's all right, it's all right.' And she had felt the dreadful shaking dissolving in his strong clasp.

She opened her eyes and blinking away the smarting tears she saw the drab blacks and greys of the marching army fudge, dissolve, then whirl into a kaleidoscope shot through with flashes of bright colour. It seemed to her that the moving feet were pounding over and through her, that she had become invisible, a brittle, empty shell. But suddenly the mass parted and he was there, still in that long tweed coat, moving towards her, smiling, so that she had to restrain herself from crying 'Daddy, Daddy', and running into his arms. But the hallucination passed. This wasn't he, this was a hurrying stranger with a briefcase who glanced with momentary curiosity at her eager face and outstretched arms, then looked through her and passed on. She shrank back, wedging herself more firmly against the wall, and began her long, patient wait for Ivor.

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5

It was just before ten o'clock and they were thieking of locking up their papers for the night when Lady Ursula rang. Gordon Halliwell had returned and she wtId be grateful if the police could see him now. He himself' would prefer it. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day for both of them, and she couldn't say when they would be avail-able. Dalgliesh knew that Massingham, if in charge, would have said firmly that they would arrive next morning, if only to demonstrate that they worked at their own con-venience, not that of Lady Ursula. Dalgliesh, who was anxious to question Gordon Halliwell and who had never felt the need to bolster either his own authority or his self-esteem, said that they would arrive as soon as possible.

The door of number sixty-two was opened by Miss Matlock who gazed at them for a couple of seconds with tired, resentful eyes before standing to one side to let them in. Dalgliesh could see that her skin was grey with weari-ness, the set of her shoulders a little too rigid to be natural. She was wearing a long dressing gown in flowered nylon, strained across the breast, the belt double-knotted as if she were afraid they would tear it off. She made a clumsy flutter of her hands towards it and said peevishly:

'I'm not dressed for visitors. We were hoping to get to

bed early. I wasn't expecting you to come back tonight.' Dalgliesh said:

'I'm sorry to have to disturb you again. If you want to go to bed, perhaps Mr Halliwell could let us out.'

'It isn't his job. He's only the chauffeur. Locking up the house is my responsibility. Lady Ursula has asked him to take the telephone calls tomorrow, but it isn't suitable, it isn't right. We've had no peace since the six o'clock news. This will kill her if it goes on.'

It was, thought Dalgliesh, likely to go on for a very long time but he doubted whether it would kill Lady Ursula.

Their footsteps rang on the marble floor as Miss Matlock

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led them down the passage past the octagonal study then through the baize door to the back of the house and finally down three stairs to the outside door. Fhe house was very quiet but portentously expectant like an empty theatre. He had the sense, as he often did in the houses of the recently murdered, of a thin denuded air, a voiceless pres-ence. She drew the locks and they found themselves in the rear courtyard. The three statues in their niches were subtly lit with concealed lighting and seemed to float, gently gleaming, in the still air. The night was surprisingly balmy for autumn, and there came from some nearby garden the transitory smell of cypress so that he felt for a moment displaced, disorientated as if transported to Italy. It seemed to him inappropriate that the statues should be lit, the beauty of the house still celebrated when Berowne lay frozen like a carcass of meat in his plastic shroud, and he found himself instinctively putting out his hand for a switch before following Miss Matlock through a second door which led to the old mews and the garages.

The rear of the wall with the statues was unadorned; the spoils of the eighteenth-century grand tour were not for the eyes of the footmen or coachmen who once must have inhabited the mews. The yard was cobbled and led to two large garages. The double doors of the left were open and in the glare of two long tubes of fluorescent light they saw that the entrance to the flat was by way of a wrought-iron staircase leading up the side of the garage wall. Miss Matlock merely pointed to the door at the top and said:

'You'll find Mr Halliwell there.' And then, as if to justify the formal use of his name, she said: 'He used to be a sergeant in the late Sir Hugo's regiment. He's been decor-ated for bravery, the Military Medal. I expect Lady Ursula told you. He isn't the usual kind of chauffeur-handyman.'

And what in these egalitarian, servantless days, thought Dalgliesh, did she suppose the usual kind of chauffeur-handyman to be?

b,T.he garage was large enough comfortably to hold the aclt Rover with its A registration and a white Golf, both

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of which were neatly parked with room for a third car. Making their way down the side of the Rover through a strong smell of petrol they saw that the garage was obvi-ously also used as a workshop. Under a high, long window at the rear was a wooden bench with fitted drawers, and on the wall above, a pegboard on which tools were neatly displayed. Propped against the right-hand wall was a man's bicycle.

They had hardly set foot on thelbottom step of the staircase when the door above opened and the figure of a man stood stockily silhouetted against the light. As they came up to him Dalgliesh saw that he was both older and shorter than he had expected, surely only just the statutory height for a soldier, but broad shouldered and giving an immediate impression of disciplined strength. He was very dark, almost swarthy, and the straight hair, longer than it would have been in his Army days, fell across his forehead almost touching eyebrows straight as black gashes above the deet>-set eyes. His nose was short with slightly flared nostrils, the mouth uncompromising above a square chin. He was wearing well-cut fawn slacks and a woollen checked shirt, open-necked, and gave no sign of tiredness, seeming as fresh as if this were a morning visit. He looked at them with keen but untroubled eyes; eyes that had seen worse things than a couple of CID officers arriving at night. Standing aside to let them in, he said in a voice which held only a trace of roughness:

'I'm just making coffee, or there's whisky if you'd prefer it.'

They accepted the coffee and he went through a door at the back of the room from which presently they heard the noise of running water, the clatter of a kettle lid. The sitting room was long but narrow, its Iow windows looking out on the blank rear of the wall. Soane, as a good architect, would have ensured that the privacy of the family was protected; the mews would be unseen from all but the top windows of the house. At the far end of the room a door stood open and Dalgliesh could glimpse the end of a single bed. At the back was a small, delicately wrought Victorian

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fireplace with a carved wooden surround and an elegant fire-basket reminding him of the grate in St Matthew's Church. A modern three-bar electric fire was plugged in to a socket at its side.

A pine table with four chairs occupied the middle of the room and two rather battered armchairs stood each side of the fireplace. Between the windows was a worktop with, above it, a pegboard of tools, smaller and more delicate than those in the garage. They saw that Halliwell's hobby was wood carving and that he was working on a Noah's Ark with a set of animals. The ark was beautifully con-structed with dove-tail joints and an elegant clapboard roof; the completed animals, a pair of lions, tigers and giraffes were more crudely carved but instantly re-cognizable and with a certain vigorous fife.

The far wall was fitted with a bookshelf from floor to ceiling. Dalgliesh moved across to it and saw with interest that Halliwell owned what looked like a complete set of the Votable British Trials. And there was one other volume even more interesting: he drew out and leafed through the eighth edition of Keith Simpson's Textbook on Forensic Medicine. Replacing it, and glancing round the room he was struck with its tidiness, with its self-containment. It was the room of a man who had organized his living space and probably his life to fulfil his needs, who knew his own nature and was at peace with it. Unlike Paul Berowne's study, this was the room of a man who felt he had a right to be there.

Halliwell came in carrying a tray with three stoneware mugs, a bottle of milk and one of Bell's whisky. He motioned towards the whisky and when Dalgliesh and Massingham shook their heads added a generous measure

to his own black coffee. They sat round the table. Dalgliesh said:

'I see you've got what looks like a complete set of the

Votable British Trials. That must be comparatively rare.' Helliwell said:

'It's an interest of mine. I could have fancied being a criminal lawyer if things had been different.'

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He spoke without resentment. It was a statement of fact; but there was no need to ask which things. The law was still a privileged profession. It was rare for a working-class

boy to end up eating his dinners in the Inns of Court. He added:

'It's the trials I find interesting, not the defendants. Most murderers seem pretty stupid and commonplace when you see them in the dock. Same will be true of this chap, no doubt, when you get your hands on him. But maybe a caged animal is always less interesting than one running

wild, especially when you've glimpsed his spoor.' Massingham said:

'So you're assuming it's murder.'

'I'm assuming that a Commander and Chief Inspector of the CID wouldn't come here after ten at night to discuss why Sir Paul Berowne should want to slit his throat.'

lIassingham leaned across to reach the milk bottle. Stirring his coffee he asked:

'When did you hear of Sir Paul's death?'

'On the six o'clock news. I rang Lady Ursula and said I'd drive back at once. She said I wasn't to hurry. There was nothing I could do here and she wouldn't be wanting the car. She said the police had asked to see me, but that

you'd have plenty to occupy yourselves until I got back.' Massingham asked:

'How much has Lady Ursula told you?'

'As much as she knows, which isn't a great deal. She said that their throats were cut and that Sir Paul's razor had been the weapon.'

Dalgliesh had asked Massingham to do most of the questioning. This apparent reversal of role and status was often disconcerting to a suspect, but not to this one. Hal-liwell was either too confident or too unworried to be troubled by such niceties. Dalgliesh had the impression that, of the two, it was Massingham who was, unaccout-ably, the less at ease. Halliwell, who answered his questi, with what seemed deliberate slowness, had an odd disconcerting trick of fixing his dark eyes intently on the questioner as if it were he who was the interrogator, he

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who was seeking to fathom an unknown, elusive per-sonality.

He admitted that he had known that Sir Paul used a cut-thoat razor; anyone in the house would know that. He knew that the diary was kept in the top right-hand drawer. It wasn't private. Sir Paul might ring and ask whoever answered the telephone to check on the time of an en-gagement. There was a key to the drawer, kept usually in the lock or in the drawer itself. Occasionally Sir Paul had been known to lock the drawer and take the key with him, but that wasn't usual. These were the sort of details you got to know if you lived or worked in a house. But he couldn't remember when he had last seen the razors or the diary, and he hadn't been told that Sir Paul would be visiting the church that previous evening. He couldn't say whether anyone else in the house had known; no one had mentioned the matter to him.