A Taste for Death (59 page)

'Yes, sir. There's a lot to do. It's a pity we haven't Kate. This tends to happen with women officers, the incox venient domestic emergency.'

Dalgliesh said coldly:

'Not noticeably, John, particularly not with that office, In twenty minutes then.'

4

It was only the second time since her father's murder th:,t Sarah had called at 62 Campden Hill Square. The had been on the morning after the news broke. Then there had been a small group of photographers outside the railings and she had turned instinctively as they had called her name. Next morning she had seen a newspaper picture of herself scurrying furtively up the steps like a delinquent housemaid sneaking in at the wrong door under the caption 'Miss Sarah Berowne was among the callers at Campden Hill Square'. But now the square was cra[ of people. The great elms waited in sodden acquiesce,ce for winter, their boughs moving sluggishly in the rain-drenched air. Although the storm was over the evening was so dark that lights shone palely from first-floor drawing rooms as if it were already night. She supposed that, behind those windows, people lived their secretive, separ-ate even desperate lives, yet the lights seemed to shine out with the promise of unattainable security.

She had no key. Her father had offered her one when she had walked out with, or so it had seemed to he :..t the

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time, the stiff formality of a Victorian father reluctant to have her under his roof but recognizing that, as an un-married daughter, she was entitled to his protection and to a room in his house should she need it. Looking up at the famous fafade, at the high elegantly curved windows, she knew that it never had been and that it never could be her home. How much, she wondered, had it really mattered to her father? It had always seemed to her that he lodged in it but had never made it his own any more than it was hers. But had he in boyhood envied his elder brother these dead prestigious stones? Had he lusted after the house as he had lusted after his brother's fiancee? What had he been think-ing of when, her mother at his side, he had jammed down his foot at that dangerous corner? What was it out of his past which had finally confronted him in that dingy vestry at St Matthew's Church?

Waiting for Mattie to answer the door she wondered how to greet her. It seemed natural to ask 'How are you, Mattie?' but the question was meaningless. When had she ever cared how Mattie felt? What possible answer other than an equally meaningless courtesy could she expect? The door opened. Gazing at her with a stranger's eyes, Mattie said her quiet 'Good evening'. There was some-thing different about her; but then, hadn't they all changed since that awful morning? She had the drained look which Sarah had seen on a friend's face who had recently given birth, bright eyed, flushed, but bloated and

somehow diminished, as if virtue had gone out of her. She said:

'How are you, Mattie?'

'I am well thank you, Miss Sarah. Lady Ursula and Lady Berowne are in the dining room.'

The oval dining table was spread with correspondence. Her grandmother sat stiffly upright, her back to the window. In front of her was a large blotter and to her left boxes ,? writing paper and envelopes. She was folding a handxitten letter as Sarah came up to her. The girl was intrigued, as always, that her grandmother should be so meticulous over the niceties of social behaviour, having all

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her life flouted its sexual and religious conventions. Her stepmother apparently either had no letters of condolence to answer or was leaving the chore to someone else. Now she sat at the end of the table preparing to varnish her nails, her hands hesitating over the ranked bottles. Sarah thought: Surely not blood red? But no, it was to be a soft pink, entirely innocuous, entirely suitable. She ignored Barbara Berowne and said to her grandmother:

'I've come in answer to your letter. The memorial ser-vice, it isn't possible. I am sorry but I shan't be there.'

Lady Ursula gave her a long speculative gaze, rather. thought Sarah, as if she were a new lady's maid arrivit. with somewhat suspect references. She said:

'It is not my wish particularly that there should be memorial service, but his colleagues expect it and his friends seem to want it. I shall be there and I expect his

widow nd his daughter to be there with me.'

Sarah Berowne said:

'I told you, it's not possible. I'll come to the cremation, of course, but that will be private and for the family only. But I'm not going to display myself suitably clad in black in St Margaret's, Westminster.'

Lady Ursula drew a stamp across the dampened pad and stuck it precisely in the right-hand corner of the en-velope.

'You remind me of a girl I knew in childhood, daughter of a bishop. She caused something of a scan, in the diocese when she resolutely refused to be confirm : What struck me as strange even at thirteen was that e hadn't the wit to see that her scruples had nothing to with religion. She merely wanted to embarrass her fat} That, of course, is perfectly understandable, particul*.ly given the bishop in question. But why not be honest ab it?'

Sarah Berowne thought: I shouldn't have come. It was stupid to believe that she would understand or even want to try. She said:

'I suppose, Grandmama, you would have wanter! 'e � conform even if the scruples had been genuine.'

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'Oh yes, I think so. I would put kindness above what you would call conviction. After all, if the whole ceremony were a charade, which as you know is my opinion, then it could do her no possible harm to let the episcopal hands

rest momentarily upon her head.'

Sarah said quietly:

'I'm not sure I'd want to live in a world that put kindness before conviction.'

'No? But it might be more agreeable than the one we have and considerably safer.'

'Well this is one charade which I prefer not to have any part in. His politics weren't mine. They still aren't. I should be making a public statement. I shan't be there

and I hope that people will know why.'

Her grandmother said drily:

'Those who notice will; but I shouldn't expect too much propaganda value from it. The old will be watching their contemporaries and wondering how long it will be before their turn comes, hoping their bladders will hold out, and the young will be watching the old. But I dare say enough of them will notice your absence to get the message that you hated your father and are pursuing your political

vendetta beyond the grave.'

The girl almost cried:

'I didn't hate him! Most of my life I loved him, I could e gone on loving ham fhe had let me. And he wouldn't ]ant me to be there, he wouldn't expect it. He would .,ve hated it himself. Oh, it will all be very tasteful,

ar, efully chosen words and music, the right clothes, the 'ght people, but you won't be celebrating him, not the person, you will be celebrating a class, a political philos-ophy, a privileged club. You can't get it into your head, you and your kind, that the world you grew up in is dead, it's dead.'

Lady Ursula said:

'I know that, my child. I was there in 1914 when it died.'

She took the next letter from the top of a pile and with-out looking up, went on:

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'I've never been a political woman and I can understand the poor and the stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery. But I must say that I have an objection to your lover, a man who has enjoyed privilege all his life, working to promote a political system which will ensure that no one else gets a chance of what he has so singularly enjoyed. It would be excusable if he were physically ugly; that misfortune tends to breed envy and aggression in a man. But he isn't. I can understand the sexual attraction even if I am fifty years too old to feel it. But you could have gone to bed with him, surely, without taking on all the fashionable baggage.'

Sarah Berowne turned wearily away, walked over to the window and looked out over the square. She thought: My life with Ivor and the cell is over, but it was never honest, it never had any reality, I never belonged. But I don't belong here. I'm lonely and I'm afraid. But I hav to find my own place. I can't run back to Grandmama, an old creed, a spurious safety. And she still dislikes ar despises me, almost as much as I despise myself. Th:: makes it easier. I'm not going to stand beside her in Margaret's like a prodigal daughter.

Then she was aware of her grandmother's voice. Lad Ursula had stopped writing and was leaning both hanc on the table. She said:

'Now that you are both here, there is something th I need to ask. Hugo's gun and the bullets are missing from the safe. Does either of you know who has tale. them?'

Barbara Berowne's head was buried over her tray ;f bottles. She glanced up but didn't reply. Sarah, start!?d, turned quickly round.

'Are you sure, Grandmama?'

Her surprise must have been obvious. Lady UI looked at her.

'So you haven't taken it, and presumably, you , know who has?'

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'Of course I haven't taken it. When did you find it was missing?'

'Last Wednesday morning, shortly before the police arrived. I thought then that it was possible that Paul had killed himself and that there might be a letter to me with his papers. So I opened the safe. There was nothing new. But the gun had gone.' Sarah asked:

'When was it taken, do you know?'

'I haven't had occasion to look in the safe for some months. That is one reason why I have said nothing to the police. It could have been missing for weeks. It could have had nothing to do with Paul's death, and there was no point in concentrating their attention on this house. Later

I had another reason for silence.'

Sarah asked:

'What possible other reason could you have had?'

'I thought his murderer might have taken it to use on himself if the police got too close to the truth. That would seem an eminently sensible thing for him to do. I saw no reason to prevent it. Now I think it is time for me to tell the police.'

'Obviously you must tell them.' Sarah frowned, then she said:

'I suppose Halliwell wouldn't have taken it as a sort of memento. You know how devoted he was to Uncle Hugo. He might not like the idea of it getting into someone else's hands.'

Lady Ursula said drily:

'Very probably. I share his concern. But whose hands?'

Barbara Berowne looked up and said in her little girl voice:

'Paul threw it away weeks ago. He told me that it wasn't safe to keep it.'

Sarah looked at her:

'Nor particularly safe, I should have thought, to throw it away. He could have handed it to the police, I suppose. But why? He has a licence and it was perfectly safe where it was.'

Barbara Berowne shrugged:

'Well, that is what he said. And it doesn't matter, does it? He wasn't shot.'

Before either of the other women could reply, they heard the ring of the front door bell. Lady Ursula said:

'That may well be the police. If so, they're back rather sooner than expected. I have a feeling that they may be

getting to the end of their inquiries.'

Sarah Berowne said roughly:

'You know, don't you? You have always known.'

'I don't know and I have no real evidence. But I am beginning to guess.'

They listened in silence for Matfie's footfalls on tle marble hall, but she seemed not to have heard the bell. Sarah Berowne said impatienfiy:

'I'11 go. And I hope to God that it is the police; it's tim that we faced the truth, all of us.'

5

He went first to the Shepherd's Bush fiat to collect t;.;: gun. He wasn't sure why he needed it, any more than he was sure why he had stolen it from the safe. But it couldn't be left at Shepherd's Bush; it was time he found a new hiding place for it. And to have the gun with him rein-forced his sense of power, of being inviolate. The fact that it had once been Paul Berowne's and was now his made it a talisman as well as-a weapon. When he held it, pointed it, stroked the barrel, something of that first triumph returned. He needed to feel it again. It was strange how quickly it faded, so that he was sometimes tempted to tell Barbie what he had done for her, tell her now, long before it was safe or wise to confide, seeing in imagination the blue eyes widening with terror, with admiration, with gratitude and, at last, With love.

Bruno was in his workroom, busy with his latest model. Swayne thought how disgusting he was with his hut: hallo

naked chest on which a lucky charm, a silver goat's head on a chain, moved repulsively among the hairs, his pudgy fingers on which the delicate pieces of cardboard seemed to stick while he edged them with infinite care into place. Without looking up, he said:

'I thought you'd moved out for good.'

'I have. I'm just collecting the last of my gear.'

'I'd like the key, then.'

Without speaking, Swayne placed it on the table. 'What shall I say if the police turn up?'

'They won't. They know I've moved out. Anyway, I'm off to Edinburgh for a week. You can tell them that if they come snooping around.'

In the small back room, its walls covered with shelves, which was both Bruno's spare bedroom and a repository for his old models, nothing was ever moved, nothing ever tidied. He stood on the bed to reach the topmost high cluttered shelf, felt under the stage of a model of Dunsinane Castle and drew out the Smith and Wesson and the ammunition. He slipped them into a small canvas bag together with the last of his socks and a couple of shirts. Then, without a final word to Bruno, he left. It had been a mistake to come in the first place. Bruno had never really wanted him. And the place was a hovel, he wondered how he had stuck it for so long. Paul's bedroom at Campden Hill Square was much more suitable. He ran lightly down the stairs to the front door, rejoicing that he need never enter it again.

He was on the canal path too early, just after three thirty, but it wasn't because he was anxious. He knew that the boy would come. Since the meeting with Miss Whart ;, he had had the sensation of being carried along by evc% not a mere passenger of fate, but triumphantly borne forward on a crest of luck and euphoria. He had never felt stronger, more confident, more in control. He knew theft the boy would come, just as he knew that the meeting would be important in ways that he couldn't at present begin to guess.