Death in Holy Orders (54 page)

There was a low knock on the door and it opened. She swung round and saw Inspector Miskin. For a moment they stood regarding each other, and Emma saw no friendliness in the other’s eyes.

Then the Inspector said, “Father John said I’d find you here. Commander Dalgliesh has asked me to put everyone in the picture. He’s returned to London and I shall be staying on for the present with Inspector Tarrant and Sergeant Robbins. Now that security locks have been fitted to the guest sets, it’s important that you lock yourself in at night. I’ll be in the college after Compline and will see you to your set.”

So Commander Dalgliesh had gone without saying goodbye. But why should he have said goodbye? There were more important matters on his mind than a casual courtesy. He would have said his formal farewells to Father Sebastian. What else would have been necessary?

Inspector Miskin’s tone had been perfectly polite, and Emma knew she was being unjust in resenting it. She said, “I don’t need to be escorted to my set. And does this mean that you think we’re in danger?”

There was a pause, then Inspector Miskin said, “We’re not saying that. It’s just that there is still a murderer on this headland, and until we make an arrest it’s sensible for everyone to take precautions.”

“And do you expect to make an arrest?”

Again there was a pause, then Inspector Miskin said, “We hope to. After all, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it, to make an arrest? I’m sorry I can’t say any more at present. I’ll see you later, then.”

She went out, closing the door. Standing alone by the bed,
looking down at the folded cap and tunic and with the ring still on her finger, Emma felt tears welling in her eyes but didn’t know whether she was weeping for Miss Betterton, for her dead lover or a little for herself. Then she replaced the ring in its envelope and set about completing her task.

T
he next morning Dalgliesh drove before first light to the Lambeth laboratory. Rain had been falling steadily all night, and although it had now stopped, the changing red, amber and green of the traffic lights cast their trembling and gaudy images on roads still awash, and the air held a fresh river-smell borne on a full tide. London seems to sleep only for the hours between two and four in the morning, and then it is a fitful slumber. Now, slowly, the capital was waking up and the workers, in small preoccupied groups, were emerging to take possession of their city.

Material from Suffolk scenes of crime would normally have been sent to the Huntingdon forensic-science laboratory, but that laboratory was over-loaded. Lambeth was able to offer Premium One priority, which was what Dalgliesh requested. He was well known at the lab and was greeted with warmth by the staff. Dr. Anna Prescott, the senior forensic biologist who was awaiting him, had given evidence for the Crown in a number of his cases, and he knew how much success had depended on her reputation as a scientist, on the confidence and lucidity with which she presented her findings to the court and on her calm assurance under cross-examination. But, like all forensic scientists, she wasn’t an agent of the police. If Gregory were ever brought to trial, she would be there as an independent expert witness with allegiance only to the facts.

The cloak had been dried in the laboratory drying cupboard and had now been spread out on one of the wide search tables under the glare of the four fluorescent lights. Gregory’s track suit had been taken to another part of the lab to avoid cross-contamination. Any transferred fibres from the track suit would
be recovered from the surface of the cloak with adhesive tape and then be examined by comparison microscopy. If this initial preliminary microscope examination suggested that there was a match, a further series of comparative tests would be undertaken, including the instrumental analysis of the chemical composition of the fibre itself. But all that, which would take considerable time, was in the future. The blood had already gone for analysis, and Dalgliesh awaited the report without anxiety; he had no doubt that it had come from Archdeacon Crampton. What Dr. Prescott and he were looking for now were hairs. Together, gowned and masked, they bent over the cloak.

Dalgliesh reflected that the keen human eye was a remarkably effective instrument of search. It took them only a few seconds to find what they were seeking. Twisted in the brass chain at the neck of the cloak were two grey hairs. Dr. Prescott unwound them with delicate care and placed them in a small glass dish. She immediately examined them under a low-power microscope and said with satisfaction, “Both have roots. That means there’s a good chance of getting a DNA profile.”

T
wo days later, at seven-thirty in the morning, the message from the laboratory was telephoned to Dalgliesh at his Thames-side flat. The two hair roots had yielded their DNA, and it was Gregory’s. It was news that Dalgliesh had expected, but he still received it with a small surge of relief. Comparison microscopy of fibres on the cloak and on the top of the track suit had given a match, but the results of the final tests were still awaited. Replacing the receiver, Dalgliesh paused for a moment’s thought. To wait, or to act now? He was unwilling to leave it longer before making an arrest. The DNA showed that Gregory had worn Ronald Treeves’s cloak, and the fibre-match could only confirm this main incontrovertible finding. He could, of course, ring Kate or Piers at St. Anselm’s; both were perfectly competent to make an arrest. But he needed to be there himself, and he knew why. The act of arresting Gregory, of speaking the words of the caution, would in some way assuage the defeat of his last case, when he had known the identity of the murderer, had listened to his quickly withdrawn confession, but hadn’t sufficient evidence to justify arrest. Not to be present now would leave something incomplete, although he was unsure precisely what.

As expected, the two days had been more than usually busy. He had returned to a backlog of work, to problems which were his responsibility and others which laid their weight on his mind, as they did on the minds of all senior officers. The Force was seriously under-staffed. There was an urgent need to recruit intelligent, educated and highly motivated men and women from all sections of the community at a time when other careers offered this sought-after group higher salaries,
greater prestige and less stress. There was the need to reduce the burden of bureaucracy and paperwork, to increase the effectiveness of the detective force and to tackle corruption in an age when bribery wasn’t a ten-pound note slipped into a back pocket but a share in the huge profits of the illegal drugs trade. But now, at least for a short time, he would return to St. Anselm’s. It was no longer a place of unsullied goodness and peace, but there was a job to be finished and people he wanted to see. He wondered if Emma Lavenham was still in college.

Putting aside thoughts of his crowded diary, the weight of files requiring attention, the meeting planned for the afternoon, he left a message for the Assistant Commissioner and his secretary. Then he rang Kate. All was quiet at St. Anselm’s—abnormally so, Kate thought. People were going about their daily business with a kind of subdued intensity, as if that bloody corpse still lay under the
Doom
in the church. It seemed to her that the whole house was waiting for a consummation half longed-for and half dreaded. Gregory hadn’t shown himself. He had, at Dalgliesh’s request, handed over his passport after the last interrogation, and there was no fear that he would abscond. But flight had never been an option; it was no part of Gregory’s plan to be hauled back ignominiously from some inhospitable foreign refuge.

It was a cold day and he smelled in the London air for the first time the metallic tang of winter. A biting but fitful wind scoured the City, and by the time he reached the A12 it was blowing in strong, more sustained blasts. The traffic was unusually light except for the trucks on their way to the East Coast ports, and he drove smoothly and fast, his hands lightly on the wheel, his eyes fixed ahead. What had he but two grey hairs as the frail instruments of justice? They would have to be enough.

His thoughts moved from the arrest to the trial and he found himself rehearsing the case for the defence. The DNA could not be challenged; Gregory had worn Ronald Treeves’s cloak. But the defence counsel would probably claim that Gregory, when giving that last Greek lesson to Treeves, had borrowed it, perhaps complaining of feeling cold, and that at the time he had
been wearing his black track suit. Nothing was less likely, but would a jury believe that? Gregory had a strong motive, but so had others, including Raphael. The twig found on the floor of Raphael’s sitting-room could have blown in unseen when he left his set to go to Peter Buckhurst; the prosecution would probably be wise not to make too much of it. The telephone call to Mrs. Crampton, put through from the box in the college, was dangerous to the defence, but it could have been made by eight other people, and possibly by Raphael. And then there was a case to be made against Miss Betterton. She had motive and opportunity, but had she the strength to wield that heavy candle-stick? No one now would know: Agatha Betterton was dead. Gregory had not been accused of her murder, nor of murdering Margaret Munroe. In neither case had there been sufficient evidence even to justify his arrest.

He made the journey in under three and a half hours. Now he was at the end of the approach road and saw before him a waste of turbulent sea, white-specked to the horizon. He stopped the car and rang Kate. Gregory had left his cottage some half an hour previously and was walking on the beach.

Dalgliesh said, “Wait for me at the end of the coast road, and bring cuffs with you. We may not need them, but I’m taking no chances.”

Within minutes he saw her walking towards him. Neither spoke as she got into the car and he reversed and drove back to the steps leading to the beach. They could see Gregory now, a lone figure in an ankle-length tweed coat, the collar turned up against the wind, standing at the side of one of the decaying groynes and staring out to sea. As they scrunched over the shingle a sudden gust tore at their jackets, making it difficult to stand upright, but the howling of the wind was scarcely heard above the thunder of the sea. Wave upon wave crashed in explosions of spray, boiling around the groynes and setting balls of spume dancing and rolling like iridescent soap bubbles on the high ridges of shingle.

They walked side by side towards the still figure, and Gregory turned and watched them coming. Then, when they were within twenty yards, he stepped with deliberation on the edge
of the groyne and walked along its length to a post at the end. It was only about two feet square and less than a foot above the inrushing tide.

Dalgliesh said to Kate, “If he goes in, ring St. Anselm’s. Tell them we need the boat and an ambulance.”

Then, with equal deliberation, he stepped up onto the groyne and moved towards Gregory. When he was within eight feet he stopped, and the two men stood facing each other. Gregory called out strong-voiced, but his words only just reached Dalgliesh above the tumult of the sea.

“If you’ve come to arrest me, well, here I am. But you’ll need to come closer. Isn’t there some ridiculous rigmarole of a caution you need to pronounce? I take it I have a legal right to hear it.”

Dalgliesh did not shout a reply. For two minutes they stood in silence, regarding each other, and it seemed to him that that brief stretch of time covered half a lifetime of transitory self-knowledge. What he felt now was something new, an anger stronger than any he could remember. The anger he had felt when he had stood looking down at the Archdeacon’s body was nothing compared with this overwhelming emotion. He neither liked it nor distrusted it, but simply accepted its power. He knew why he had been reluctant to face Gregory across that small table in the interviewing room. By standing a little apart, he had distanced himself from more than the physical presence of his adversary. Now he could distance himself no longer.

For Dalgliesh his job had never been a crusade. He knew detectives for whom the sight of the victim in his or her pathetic final nothingness imprinted on the mind an image so powerful that it could only be exorcised at the moment of arrest. Some, he knew, even made their private bargains with fate: they wouldn’t drink, go to the pub or take a holiday until the killer was caught. He had shared their pity and outrage but never their personal involvement and antagonism. For him detection had been a professional and intellectual commitment to the discovery of the truth. That wasn’t what he felt now. It wasn’t only that Gregory had desecrated a place in which he had been happy; he asked himself bitterly what sanctifying grace was bestowed on St. Anselm’s by the mere fact of Adam Dalgliesh’s
happiness. It wasn’t only that he revered Father Martin and couldn’t forget the priest’s stricken face as he looked up at him from Crampton’s body; or that other moment, the soft brush of dark hair against his cheek and Emma trembling in his arms so briefly that it was difficult to believe that the embrace had ever happened. This overpowering emotion had an additional and more primitive, more ignoble cause. Gregory had planned the murder and carried it out when he, Dalgliesh, was sleeping within fifty yards. And now he planned to complete his victory. He would swim out to sea content in the element he loved, to a merciful death by cold and exhaustion. And he planned more than that. Dalgliesh could read Gregory’s mind as clearly as he knew Gregory was reading his. He planned to take his adversary with him. If Gregory went into the water, so would he. He had no choice. He could not live with the memory that he had stood and watched while a man swam to his death. And he would be risking his life not out of compassion and humanity, but out of obstinacy and pride.

He assessed their relative strengths. In physical condition they were probably about equal, but Gregory would be the stronger swimmer. Neither would last long in the bitterly cold sea, but if help came quickly—as it would—they could survive. He wondered whether to move back and instruct Kate now to ring St. Anselm’s and get the rescue boat launched, but decided against it: if Gregory heard cars racing along the cliff path he would hesitate no longer. There was still a chance, however faint, that he would change his mind. But Dalgliesh knew that Gregory had one almost overwhelming advantage: only one of them was happy to die.