Authors: P. D. James
Suddenly she glanced round the room, leaned forward and gave Dalgliesh a sly conspiratorial glance.
“I'll tell you something that no one at Toynton Grange knows, except Wilfred. If he does sell out I shall get half the sale price. Not just half the extra profit, fifty per cent of what he gets. I've got an undertaking from Wilfred, properly signed and witnessed by Victor. Actually it was Victor's suggestion. He thought it would stand up in law. And it isn't kept where Wilfred can get his hands on it. It's with Robert Loder, a solicitor in Wareham. I suppose Wilfred was so confident that he'd never need to sell, that he didn't care what he signed or perhaps he was arming himself against temptation. I don't think for one minute that he will sell. He cares too much about the place for that. But if he should change his mind, then I shall do very nicely.”
Dalgliesh said, greatly daring:
“When I arrived, Mrs. Hewson said something about the Ridgewell Trust. Hasn't Mr. Anstey got it in mind to transfer the Home?”
Mrs. Hammitt took the suggestion more calmly than he had expected. She retorted robustly:
“Nonsense! I know Wilfred talks about it from time to time, but he'd never just hand over Toynton Grange. Why should he? Money's tight, of course, but money always is tight. He'll just have to put up the fees or get the local authorities to pay more for the patients they send. There's no reason why he should subsidize the local authorities. And if he still can't make the place pay, then he'd do better to sell out, miracle or no miracle.”
Dalgliesh suggested that, in all the circumstances, it was surprising that Anstey hadn't become a Roman Catholic. Millicent seized on the thought with vehemence.
“It was quite a spiritual struggle for him at the time.” Her voice deepened and throbbed with the echo of cosmic forces linked in mortal struggle. “But I was glad that he decided to remain in our church. Our father”âher voice boomed out in such a sudden access of hortatory fervour that Dalgliesh, startled, half expected that she was about to launch into the Lord's prayerâ“would have been so very distressed. He was a great churchman, Commander Dalgliesh. Evangelical of course. No, I was glad that Wilfred didn't go over.”
She spoke as if Wilfred, faced with the Jordan river, had neither liked the look of the water nor had confidence in his boat.
Dalgliesh had already asked Julius Court about Anstey's religious allegiance and had received a different and, he suspected, a more accurate explanation. He recalled their conversation on the patio before they had rejoined Henry; Julius's amused voice: “Father O'Malley, who was supposed to be instructing Wilfred, made it plain that his church would in future proclaim on a number of matters that Wilfred had seen as coming within his personal jurisdiction.
It occurred to dear Wilfred that he was on the point of joining a very large organization and one which thought that, as a convert, he was receiving rather than bestowing benefit. In the end, after what I have no doubt was a gratifying struggle, he decided to remain in a more accommodating fold.”
“Despite the miracle?” Dalgliesh had asked.
“Despite the miracle. Father O'Malley is a rationalist. He admits the existence of miracles but prefers the evidence to be submitted to the proper authorities for thorough examination. After a seemly delay the Church in her wisdom will then pronounce. To go about proclaiming that one has been the recipient of special grace smacks to him of presumption. Worse, I suspect he thinks it in poor taste. He's a fastidious man, is Father O'Malley. He and Wilfred don't really get on. I'm afraid that Father O'Malley has lost his church a convert.”
“But the pilgrimages to Lourdes still go on?” Dalgliesh had asked.
“Oh, yes. Twice a year regularly. I don't go. I used to when I first came here but it isn't, in the contemporary idiom, exactly my scene. But I usually make it my business to provide a slap-up tea to welcome them all back.”
Dalgliesh, his mind recalled to the present, was aware that his back was beginning to ache. He straightened up just as the clock on the mantelshelf struck the three-quarters. A charred log tumbled from the grate shooting up a final cascade of sparks. Mrs. Hammitt took it as a signal that it was time to go. Dalgliesh insisted first on washing up the coffee mugs and she followed him into the little kitchen.
“It has been a pleasant hour, Commander, but I doubt whether we shall repeat it. I'm not one of those neighbours who keep dropping in. Thank God I can stand my own company. Unlike poor Maggie, I have resources. And I'll
say one thing for Michael Baddeley, he did keep himself to himself.”
“Nurse Rainer tells me that you persuaded him of the advantages of cremation.”
“Did she say that? Well, I daresay she's right. I may have mentioned it to Michael. I strongly disapprove of wasting good ground to bury putrifying bodies. As far as I remember, the old man didn't care what happened to him as long as he ended up in consecrated earth with the proper words said over him. Very sensible. My view entirely. And Wilfred certainly didn't object to the cremation. He and Dot Moxon agreed with me absolutely. Helen protested over the extra trouble, but what she didn't like was having to get a second doctor's signature. Thought it cast some kind of aspersion on dear Eric's clinical judgement, I suppose.”
“But surely no one was suggesting that Dr. Hewson's diagnosis was wrong?”
“Of course not! Michael died of a heart attack, and even Eric was competent to recognize that, I should hope. No, don't bother to see me home, I've got my torch. And if there's anything you need at any time, just knock on the wall.”
“But would you hear? You didn't hear Father Baddeley.”
“Naturally not, since he didn't knock. And after about nine-thirty I wasn't really listening for him. You see, I thought someone had already visited to settle him for the night.”
The darkness outside was cool and restless, a black mist, sweet-tasting and smelling of the sea, not the mere absence of light but a positive, mysterious force. Dalgliesh manoeuvred the trolley over the doorstep. Walking beside Millicent down the short path, and steadying the trolley with one hand, he asked with careful uninterest:
“Did you hear someone, then?”
“Saw, not heard. Or so I thought. I was thinking of making myself a hot drink and I wondered whether Michael would like one. But when I opened my front door to call in and ask, I thought I saw a figure in a cloak disappearing into the darkness. As Michael's light was offâI could see that the cottage was completely darkânaturally I didn't disturb him. I know now that I was mistaken. Either that or I'm going potty. It wouldn't be difficult in this place. Apparently no one did visit him and now they've all got a bad conscience about it. I can see how I was deceived. It was a night like this. Just a slight breeze but the darkness seeming to move and form itself into shapes. And I heard nothing, not even a footfall. Just a glimpse of a bent head, hooded and a cloak swirling into the darkness.”
“And this was at about nine-thirty?”
“Or a little later. Perhaps it was about the time he died. A fanciful person could frighten herself imagining that she'd seen his ghost. That was what Jennie Pegram actually suggested when I told them at Toynton Grange. Ridiculous girl!”
They had almost reached the door of Faith Cottage. She hesitated and then said as if on impulse, and, he thought, with some embarrassment:
“They tell me that you're worried about the broken lock of Michael's bureau. Well, it was all right the night before he came back from hospital. I found I'd run out of envelopes and I had an urgent letter to write. I thought that he wouldn't mind if I took a look in the bureau. It was locked then.”
Dalgliesh said:
“And broken when your brother looked for the will shortly after the body was found.”
“So he says, Commander. So he says.”
“But you have no proof that he broke it?”
“I've no proof that anyone did. The cottage was full of people running in and out. Wilfred, the Hewsons, Helen, Dot, Philby, even Julius when he arrived from London; the place was like a wake. All I know is that the bureau was locked at nine o'clock on the night before Michael died. And I've no doubt that Wilfred was keen to get his eyes on that will and see if Michael really had left Toynton Grange all he possessed. And I do know that Michael didn't break the lock himself.”
“How, Mrs. Hammitt?”
“Because I found the key, just after lunch on the day he died. In the place where, presumably, he always kept itâthat old tea tin on the second shelf of the food cupboard. I didn't think he'd mind my having any little bits of food he'd left. I slipped it into my pocket in case it got lost when Dot cleared the cottage. After all, that old bureau desk is quite valuable and the lock ought to be repaired. As a matter of fact, if Michael hadn't left it to Grace in his will, I would have moved it into here and looked after it properly.”
“So you still have the key?”
“Of course. No one has ever bothered about it but you. But, as you seem so interested you may as well take it.”
She dug her hand into the pocket of her skirt and he felt the cold metal pressed into his palm. She had opened the door of her cottage now and had reached for the light switch. In the sudden glare he blinked, and then saw it clearly, a small silver key, delicate as filigree, but tied now with thin string to a red plastic clothes peg, the red so bright that, for a dazzled second, it looked as if his palm were stained with blood.
W
HEN HE LOOKED BACK
on his first weekend in Dorset, Dalgliesh saw it as a series of pictures, so different from the later images of violence and death that he could almost believe that his life at Toynton Head had been lived on two levels and at different periods of time. These early and gentle pictures, unlike the later harsh black and white stills from some crude horror film, were suffused with colour and feeling and smell. He saw himself plunging through the sea-washed shingle of Chesil Bank, his ears loud with bird cries and the grating thunder of the tide to where Portland reared its dark rocks against the sky; climbing the great earthworks of Maiden Castle and standing, a solitary windblown figure, where four thousand years of human history were encompassed in numinous contours of moulded earth; eating a late tea in Judge Jeffrey's lodgings in Dorchester as the mellow autumn afternoon faded into dusk; driving through the night between a falling tangle of golden bracken and high untrimmed hedgerows to where the stone-walled pub waited with lighted windows on some remote village green.
And then, late at night when there could be small risk of a visitor from Toynton Grange disturbing him, he would drive back to Hope Cottage to the familiar and welcoming
smell of books and a wood fire. Somewhat to his surprise, Millicent Hammitt was faithful to her promise not to disturb him after that first visit. He soon guessed why; she was a television addict. As he sat drinking his wine and sorting Father Baddeley's books, he could hear through the chimney breast the faint and not disagreeable sounds of her nightly entertainment; the sudden access of a half familiar advertising jingle; the antiphonal mutter of voices; the bark of gun shots; feminine screams; the blaring fanfare to the late night film.
He had a sense of living in a limbo between the old life and the new, excused by convalescence from the responsibility of immediate decision, from any exertion which he found disagreeable. And he found the thought of Toynton Grange and its inmates disagreeable. He had taken what action he could. Now he was waiting on events. Once, looking at Father Baddeley's empty and shabby chair, he was reminded irreverently of the fabled excuse of the distinguished atheist philosopher, ushered after death to his astonishment into the presence of God.
“But Lord, you didn't provide sufficient evidence.”
If Father Baddeley wanted him to act he would have to provide more tangible clues than a missing diary and a broken lock.
He was expecting no letters except Bill Moriarty's reply since he had left instructions that none were to be forwarded. And he intended to collect Bill's letter himself from the postbox. But it arrived on the Monday, at least a day earlier than he had thought possible. He had spent the morning in the cottage and hadn't walked to the postbox until after his lunch at two-thirty when he had taken back his milk bottles for collection.
The postbox contained the one letter, a plain envelope with a W.C. postmark; the address was typed but his rank
omitted. Moriarty had been careful. But as he slipped his thumb under the flap, Dalgliesh wondered if he himself had been careful enough. There was no obvious sign that the letter had been opened; the flap was intact. But the glue was suspiciously weak, and the flap slid open a little too easily under the pressure of his thumb. And the postbox was otherwise empty. Someone, probably Philby, must already have collected the Toynton Grange post. It was odd that he hadn't delivered this letter at Hope Cottage. Perhaps he should have used a poste restante in Toynton village or Wareham. The thought that he had been careless irritated him. The truth is, he thought, that I don't know what, if anything, I'm investigating, and I only spasmodically care. I haven't the stomach to do the job properly or the will and courage to leave it alone. He was in the mood to find Bill's prose style more than usually irritating.
“Nice to see your elegant handwriting again. There's general relief here that the reports of your impending decease were exaggerated. We're keeping the wreath contributions for a celebration party. But what are you doing anyway gum-shoeing in Dorset among such a questionable group of weirdies? If you pine for work there's plenty here. However, here's the gen.
“Two of your little lot have records. You know, apparently, something about Philby. Two convictions for GBH in 1967 and 1969, four for theft in 1970 and a miscellany of earlier misdemeanours. The only extraordinary thing about Philby's criminal history is the leniency with which judges have sentenced him. Looking at his CRO I'm not altogether surprised. They probably felt that it was unjust to punish too harshly a man who was following the only career for which physiognomy and talents had fitted him. I did manage to have a word with âthe open door' about him. They admit his faults, but say that he is capable, given affection,
of a ferocious loyalty. Watch out that he doesn't take a fancy to you.