A Taste for Death (33 page)

'All right,' he said with dull resignation. 'We'll go to the Harrow Road police station. We'll tell them about the

6

Sarah Berowne's flat was in a gaunt Victorian terrace of five-storey houses whose over-ornate and grimy fafade was set back some thirty feet from the Cromwell Road behind a hedge of dusty laurel and spiky, almost leafless privet. Next to the entry-phone was a bank of nine bells, the top one bearing only the single word 'Berowne'. The door opened to their push as soon as they rang and Dalgliesh and Kate passed through a vestibule into a narrow hall, the floor linoleum-covered, the walls painted the ubiqui-tous glossy cream, the only furniture a table for letters. The caged box of a lift was only large enough for two passengers. Its back wall was almost completely mirrored, but as it groaned slowly upwards, the image of their two figures standing so close that he could smell the clean sweet scent of her hair, could almost imagine that he could hear her heart beat, did nothing to dispel his incipient claustrophobia. They stopped with a jerk. As they stepped out into the corridor and Kate turned to close the lift grille

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he saw that Sarah Berowne was standing waiting for them at her open door.

The family resemblance was almost uncanny. She stood framed against the light from her flat like a frail feminine shadow of her father. Here were the same wide spaced grey eyes, the same droop of the eyelid, the same finely boned distinction but devoid of the patina of masculine confidence and success. The fair hair, not layered in gold like Barbara Berowne's but darker, almost ginger, already showed its first grey and hung in dry lifeless strands framing the tapering Berowne face. She was, he knew, only in her early twenties but she looked much older, the honey-coloured skin drained with weariness. She didn't even bother to glance at his warrant card and he wondered whether she didn't care or was making a small gesture of contempt. She gave only a nod of acknowledgement as he introduced Kate, then stood aside and motioned them across the hall into the sitting room. A familiar figure rose to meet them and they found themselves facing Ivor Garrod.

Sarah Berowne introduced them but didn't explain his presence. But then there was no reason why she should; this was her flat, she could invite in whom she wished. It was Kate and he who were the interlopers, there at best by invitation or on sufferance, tolerated, seldom welcome.

After the dimness of the hall and the claustrophobic lift they had walked into emptiness and light. The flat was a conversion from the mansard roof, the low sitting roo running almost the whole length of the house, its norther wall composed entirely of glass with sliding doors openin?, on to a narrow balustraded balcony. There was a door at the far end, presumably leading to the kitchen. The bed-room and bathroom would, he assumed, open from thc entrance-hall at the front of the house. Dalgliesh had developed a knack of taking in the salient features of a room without that preliminary frank appraisal which he himself would have found offensive from any stranger, Itt alone a policeman. It was odd, he sometimes thought, that a man morbidly sensitive about his own privacy should

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have chosen a job that required him to invade almost daily the privacy of others. But people's living-space, and the personal possessions with which they surrounded them-selves, were inevitably fascinating to a detective, an affirmation of identity, intriguing both in themselves and as a betrayal of character, interests, obsessions.

This room was obviously both her living room and her studio. It was sparsely but comfortably furnished. Two large and battered sofas sat against opposite walls with shelves over them for books, stereo and a drinks cupboard. Before the window there was a small round table with four dining chairs. The wall facing the window was covered with a cork board on which was pinned a col-lection of photographs. To the right were pictures of London and Londoners obviously designed to make a political point; couples over-dressed for a Palace garden party drifting across the grass of St James's Park against the background of the bandstand; a group of blacks in Brixton staring resentfully into the lens; the Queen's Scholars of Westminster School filing decorously into the Abbey; an over-crowded Victorian playground with a thin wistful-eyed child grasping the railings like an imprisoned waii a woman with a face like a fox choosing a fur in Harrods; a couple of pensioners, gnarled hands curled in their laps sitting stiff as Staffordshire figures one each side of their single-bar electric ,fire. The political message was, he thought, too facile to carry much weight but, as far as he was capable of judging, the pictures were technically clever; they were certainly well composed. The left of the board displayed what had probably been a more lucrative commission: a line of portraits of well-known writers. Some of the photographer's concern with social deprivation seemed to have infected even her work here. The men, unshaven, fashionably under-dressed in their tieless open-necked shirts, looked as if they had either just taken part in a literary discussion on Channel Four, or were on their way to a 1930s labour exchange, while the women looked either haunted or defensive, except for a buxom grand-mother noted for her detective stories, who gazed

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mournfully at the camera as if deploring either the bloodiness of her craft or the size of her advance.

Sarah Berowne motioned them to the sofa at the right of the door .and seated herself on the one opposite. It was hardly, thought Dalgliesh, a convenient arrangement for other than shouted conversation. Garrod perched himself on the arm of the sofa further from her as if deliberately distancing himself from all three of them. In the last year he had, it seemed deliberately, moved out of the political limelight and was now less often heard propounding the views of the Workers' Revolutionary Campaign, concen-trating apparently, on his job as a community social worker, whatever that might mean. But he was immediately re-cognizable, a man who even in repose held himself as if well aware of the power of his physical presence but with that power under conscious control. He was wearing denim jeans with a white open-necked shirt and contrived to look both casual and elegant. He could, thought Dal-gliesh, have stepped down from a portrait in the Uffizi with his long arrogant Florentine face, the generously curved mouth under the short upper lip, the high arched nose and tumble of dark hair, the eyes which gave nothing away. He said:

'Would you like something to drink? Wine, whisky or coffee?'

His tone was almost studiously polite, but neither sardonic nor provocatively obsequious. Dalgliesh kne' opinion of the Metropolitan Police; he had proclaimed it often enough. But he was playing this very carefully. were all to be on the same side, at least for the present. Dalgliesh and Kate refused his offer of a drink and there was a small silence broken by Sarah Berowne. She said:

'You're here about my father's death, of course. I don't think there's very much I can say to help. I haven't seen

or spoken to him for over three months.'

Dalgliesh said:

'But you were at 62 Campden Hill Square on Tuesday afternoon.'

'Yes, to see my grandmother. I had an hour to spare

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between appointments and I wanted to try to find ou! what was happening, my father's resignation, the rumour about his experience in that church. There was no one else to ask, to talk to. But she was out to tea. I didn't wait. I left at about four thirty.'

'Did you go into the study?'

'The study?'

She looked surprised, then asked:

'I suppose you're thinking of his diary. Grandmama told me that you'd found it half-burned in the church. I was in

the study but I didn't see it.'

Dalgliesh said:

'But you knew where he kept it?'

'Of course. In the desk drawer. We all knew that. Why do you ask?'

Dalgliesh said:

'Just in the hope that you might have seen it. It would have been useful to know if the diary was there at four thirty. We can't trace your father's movements after he left the office of an estate agent in Kensington High Street at half past eleven. If you had happened to look in the drawer and seen the diary then there is the possibility that he came back to the house unnoticed sometime during the afternoon.'

That was only one possibility and Dalgliesh didn't deceive himself that Garrod, for one, was ignorant of the others. Now he said:

'We don't even know what happened except what Sarah has learned from her grandmother, that Sir Paul and the tramp had their throats cut and that it looks as if his razor was the weapon. We were hoping you would be able to

tell us more. Are you suggesting that it was murder?' Dalgliesh said:

'Oh, I don't think there can be any doubt that this was murder.'

He watched as the two bodies opposite seemed visibly to stiffen, then added calmly:

'The tramp, Harry Mack, certainly didn't slit his own throat. His death may not be of shattering social

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significance but no doubt his life had some importance, at least to him.'

He thought: If that doesn't provoke Garrod then I wonder what would. But Garrod merely said:

'If you're asking us to provide an alibi for Harry Mack's murder, then we were here together from six o'clock on Tuesday until nine o'clock Wednesday morning. We had supper here. I bought a mushroom flan from Marks and Spencer's in Kensington High Street and we ate that.

could tell you what wine we drank with it but I don't suppose that's relevant.'

It was the first sign of irritation but his voice was still mild, the gaze clear and unfiustered. Sarah Berowne said: 'But Daddy! What happened to Daddy?'

Suddenly she sounded as frightened and helpless as a lost child. Dalgliesh said:

'We're treating it as a suspicious death. We can't say much more until we get the result of the post-mortem and the forensic tests.'

Suddenly she got up and moved over to the window staring out OVer the thirty yards of dishevelled autumnal garden. Garrod slid down from the arm of the sofa ad went to the drinks cupboard, then poured a couple

glasses of red wine. He took one over to her and offered it silently, but she shook her head. He moved back to the sofa and sat holding his own glass, not drinking. He said:

'Look, Commander, this isn't exactly a visit of condo-lence, is it? And although it's reassuring to hear of yotr concern for Harry Mack, you're not here because of

dead tramp. If Harry's body had been the only one in that church vestry it would have ranked a detective ser-geant at best. I would have thought Miss Berowne had a right to know whether she's being questioned in a murd{:r investigation or whether you're just curious to know

Paul Berowne should have slit his own throat. I me::, either he did or he didn't. Criminal investigation is your job, not mine, but I should have thought that, by now, it ought to be pretty clear cut one way or the other.'

Dalgliesh wondered whether the dreadful pun had been

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intentional. Either way, Garrod saw no reason to apologize for it. Watching that still figure by the window Dalgliesh saw Sarah Berowne give a little shudder. Then, as if by an act of will, she turned from the window and faced him. He ignored Garrod and spoke directly to her.

'I should like to be more positive but, at the moment, that just isn't possible. Suicide is obviously one possibility. ! was hoping that you might have seen your father recently and been able to say how he seemed to you, whether he said anything that could be relevant to his death. I know this is painful for you. I'm sorry that we have to ask these

questions, that we have to be here.'

She said:

'He did speak to me once about suicide, but not in the way you mean.'

'Recently, Miss Berowne?'

'Oh no, we haven't spoken for years. Not really spoken, really talked to each other as opposed to making sounds with our mouths. No, this was when I was home from Cambridge after my first term. One of my friends had killed himself and my father and I talked about his death, about suicide generally. I've always remembered it. He said that some people thought of suicide as one of the options open to them. It wasn't. It was the end of all options. He quoted Schopenhauer: "Suicide may be regarded as an experiment, a question which man puts to nature trying to force her to an answer. It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer." Daddy said that while we live there is always the possibility, the certainty of change. The only rational time for a man to kill himself is not when life is intolerable but when he would prefer not to live it even if it became

tolerable, even pleasant.'

Dalgliesh said:

'That sounds like the ultimate despair.'

'Yes. I suppose that's what he could have felt, ultimate despair.'

Suddenly Garrod spoke. He said:

'He could more reasonably have quoted Nietzsche. "The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night."'

Ignoring him, Dalgliesh still spoke directly to Sarah Berowne. He said:

'So your father didn't see you or write to you? He didn't explain what had happened in that church, why he was giving up his job, his parliamentary seat?'

He almost expected her to say: 'What has that to do with this inquiry and what has it to do with you?' Instead she said:

'Oh no! I don't suppose he thought that ! cared one way or the other. I only learned about it when his wife telephoned me. That was when he gave up his ministerial job. She seemed to think I might have some influence over him. It showed how little she understood either of us. If she hadn't telephoned, I should have had to learn about his resignation from the newspapers.' Then she suddenly broke out:

'My God! He couldn't even get converted like an ordin-ary man. He had to be granted his own personal beatific vision. He couldn't even resign his job with decent reti-cence.'

Dalgliesh said mildly:

'He seems to have acted with considerable reticence. He obviously felt that it was a private experience to be acted upon rather than discussed.'