The Murder Room
P. D. JAMES
The Murder Room
ALFRED A. KNOPFÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
         NEW YORK 2003
CONTENTS
To my two sons-in-law
Lyn Flook
Peter Duncan McLeod
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
âT. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I must apologize to all lovers of Hampstead Heath and to the Corporation of London for my temerity in erecting the fictional Dupayne Museum on the fringes of these beautiful and well-loved acres. Some other locations mentioned in the novel are also real and the notorious cases of murder exhibited in the Murder Room at the museum were real crimes. It is the more important to emphasize that the Dupayne Museum, its trustees, staff, volunteers and visitors exist only in my imagination, as does Swathling's College and all other characters in the story. I should also apologize for arranging temporary breakdowns of service to the London Underground and the rail link between Cambridge and London, but travellers by public transport may feel that this is a fictional device which imposes no great strain on their credulity.
As usual I am grateful to Dr. Ann Priston OBE of the Forensic Science Service and to my secretary, Mrs. Joyce McLennan. I also owe particular thanks to Fire Investigation Officer Mr. Andrew Douglas of the Forensic Science Service, for his invaluable help in educating me in the procedure for the investigation of suspicious fires.
âP. D. James
BOOK ONE
The People and the Place
FRIDAY 25 OCTOBERâFRIDAY 1 NOVEMBER
1
On Friday 25 October, exactly one week before the first body was discovered at the Dupayne Museum, Adam Dalgliesh visited the museum for the first time. The visit was fortuitous, the decision impulsive and he was later to look back on that afternoon as one of life's bizarre coincidences which, although occurring more frequently than reason would expect, never fail to surprise.
He had left the Home Office building in Queen Anne's Gate at two-thirty after a long morning meeting only briefly interrupted by the usual break for brought-in sandwiches and indifferent coffee, and was walking the short distance back to his New Scotland Yard office. He was alone; that too was fortuitous. The police representation at the meeting had been strong and Dalgliesh would normally have left with the Assistant Commissioner, but one of the Under Secretaries in the Criminal Policy Department had asked him to look in at his office to discuss a query unrelated to the morning's business, and he walked unaccompanied. The meeting had produced the expected imposition of paperwork and as he cut through St. James's Park underground station into Broadway he debated whether to return to his office and risk an afternoon of interruptions or to take the papers home to his Thames-side flat and work in peace.
There had been no smoking at the meeting but the room had seemed musty with spent breath and now he took pleasure in breathing fresh air, however briefly. It was a blustery day but unseasonably mild. The bunched clouds were tumbling across a sky of translucent blue and he could have imagined that this was spring except for the autumnal sea-tang of the riverâsurely half imaginedâand the keenness of the buffeting wind as he came out of the station.
Seconds later he saw Conrad Ackroyd standing on the kerb at the corner of Dacre Street and glancing from left to right with that air of mingled anxiety and hope typical of a man waiting to hail a taxi. Almost immediately Ackroyd saw him and came towards him, both arms outstretched, his face beaming under a wide-brimmed hat. It was an encounter Dalgliesh couldn't now avoid and had no real wish to. Few people were unwilling to see Conrad Ackroyd. His perpetual good humour, his interest in the minutiae of life, his love of gossip and above all his apparent agelessness were reassuring. He looked exactly the same now as he had when Dalgliesh and he had first met decades earlier. It was difficult to think of Ackroyd succumbing to serious illness or facing personal tragedy while the news that he had died would have seemed to his friends a reversal of the natural order. Perhaps, thought Dalgliesh, that was the secret of his popularity; he gave his friends the comforting illusion that fate was beneficent. As always, he was dressed with an endearing eccentricity. The fedora hat was worn at a rakish angle, the stout little body was encased in a plaid tweed cloak patterned in purple and green. He was the only man Dalgliesh knew who wore spats. He was wearing them now.
“Adam, lovely to see you. I wondered whether you might be in your office but I didn't like to call. Too intimidating, my dear. I'm not sure they'd let me in, or if I'd get out if they did. I've been lunching at a hotel in Petty France with my brother. He comes to London once a year and always stays there. He's a devout Roman Catholic and the hotel is convenient for Westminster Cathedral. They know him and are very tolerant.”
Tolerant of what? wondered Dalgliesh. And was Ackroyd referring to the hotel, the cathedral, or both? He said, “I didn't know you had a brother, Conrad.”
“I hardly know it myself, we meet so seldom. He's something of a recluse.” He added, “He lives in Kidderminster,” as if that fact explained all.
Dalgliesh was on the point of making tactful murmurings of imminent departure when his companion said, “I suppose, dear boy, I couldn't bend you to my will? I want to spend a couple of hours at the Dupayne Museum in Hampstead. Why not join me? You know the Dupayne of course?”
“I've heard of it but never visited.”
“But you should, you should. It's a fascinating place. Dedicated to the inter-war years, 1919 through 1938. Small but comprehensive. They have some good pictures: Nash, Wyndham Lewis, Ivon Hitchens, Ben Nicholson. You'd be particularly interested in the library. First editions and some holographs and, of course, the inter-war poets. Do come.”
“Another time, perhaps.”
“You never manage another time, do you? But now I've caught you, regard it as fate. I'm sure you have your Jag tucked up somewhere in the Met's underground garage. We can drive.”
“You mean I can drive.”
“And you'll come back to Swiss Cottage for tea won't you? Nellie will never forgive me if you don't.”
“How is Nellie?”
“Bonny, thank you. Our doctor retired last month. After twenty years together it was a sad parting. Still, his successor seems to understand our constitutions and it might be as well to have a younger man.”
Conrad and Nellie Ackroyd's marriage was so well established that few people now bothered to wonder at its incongruity or to indulge in prurient speculation about its possible consummation. Physically they could hardly have been more different. Conrad was plump, short and dark with inquisitive bright eyes and moved as sprightly as a dancer on small nimble feet. Nellie was at least three inches taller, pale-skinned and flat-chested, and wore her fading blonde hair curled in plaits on each side of her head like earphones. Her hobby was collecting first editions of 1920s and 1930s girls' school stories. Her collection of Angela Brazils was regarded as unique. Conrad and Nellie's enthusiasms were their house and garden, mealsâNellie was a superb cookâtheir two Siamese cats and the indulgence of Conrad's mild hypochondria. Conrad still owned and edited
The Paternoster Review,
notable for the virulence of its unsigned reviews and articles. In private life he was the kindest of Jekylls, in his editorial role an unrepentant Hyde.
A number of his friends whose wilfully overburdened lives inhibited the enjoyment of all but necessary pleasures somehow found time to take afternoon tea with the Ackroyds in their neat Edwardian villa in Swiss Cottage with its comfortable sitting-room and atmosphere of timeless indulgence. Dalgliesh was occasionally among them. The meal was a nostalgic and unhurried ritual. The delicate cups with their handles aligned, the thin brown bread and butter, bite-size cucumber sandwiches and homemade sponge and fruit cakes made their expected appearance, brought in by an elderly maid who would have been a gift to a casting agent recruiting actors for an Edwardian soap opera. To older visitors the tea brought back memories of a more leisurely age and, to all, the temporary illusion that the dangerous world was as susceptible as was this domesticity to order, reason, comfort and peace. To spend the early evening gossiping with the Ackroyds would, today, be unduly self-indulgent. All the same, Dalgliesh could see that it wouldn't be easy to find a valid excuse for refusing to drive his friend to Hampstead.
He said, “I'll drive you to the Dupayne with pleasure, but I might not be able to stay if you plan a long visit.”
“Don't worry, dear boy. I'll get a cab back.”
It took Dalgliesh only a few minutes to collect the papers he needed from his office, hear from his PA what had happened during his absence and drive his Jaguar from the underground car-park. Ackroyd was standing near the revolving sign looking like a child obediently waiting for the grown-ups to collect him. He wrapped his cloak carefully around him, climbed into the car with grunts of satisfaction, struggled impotently with the seat belt and allowed Dalgliesh to strap him in. They were travelling along Birdcage Walk before he spoke.
“I saw you at the South Bank last Saturday. You were standing by the window on Level Two looking out at the river with, I might say, a remarkably beautiful young woman.”
Without looking at him, Dalgliesh said evenly, “You should have come up and been introduced.”
“It did occur to me until I realized that I would be
de trop.
So I contented myself with looking at your two profilesâhers more than yoursâwith more curiosity than might have been considered polite. Was I wrong in detecting a certain constraint, or should I say restraint?”
Dalgliesh did not reply and, glancing at his face, at the sensitive hands for a second tightening on the wheel, Ackroyd thought it prudent to change the subject. He said, “I've rather given up the gossip in the
Review.
It isn't worth printing unless it's fresh, accurate and scurrilous, and then you risk the chance of being sued. People are so litigious. I'm trying to diversify somewhat. That's what this visit to the Dupayne is all about. I'm writing a series of articles on murder as a symbol of its age. Murder as social history, if you like. Nellie thinks I could be on to a winner with this one, Adam. She's very excited. Take the most notorious Victorian crimes, for example. They couldn't have happened in any other century. Those cluttered claustrophobic drawing-rooms, the outward respectability, the female subservience. And divorceâif a wife could find grounds for it, which was difficult enoughâmade her a social pariah. No wonder the poor dears started soaking the arsenical flypapers. But those are the easiest years. The inter-war years are more interesting. They have a room at the Dupayne dedicated entirely to the most notorious murder cases of the 1920s and '30s. Not, I assure you, to titillate public interestâit's not that kind of museumâbut to prove my point. Murder, the unique crime, is a paradigm of its age.”
He paused and looked at Dalgliesh intensely for the first time. “You're looking a little worn, dear boy. Is everything all right? You're not ill?”
“No, Conrad, I'm not ill.”
“Nellie said only yesterday that we never see you. You're too busy heading that innocuously named squad set up to take over murders of a sensitive nature. âSensitive nature' sounds oddly bureaucraticâhow does one define a murder of an insensitive nature? Still, we all know what it means. If the Lord Chancellor is found in his robes and wig brutally battered to death on the Woolsack, call in Adam Dalgliesh.”
“I trust not. Do you envisage a brutal battering while the House is sitting, no doubt with some of their Lordships looking on with satisfaction?”
“Of course not. It would happen after the House had risen.”
“Then why would he be sitting on the Woolsack?”
“He would have been murdered somewhere else and the body moved. You should read detective fiction, Adam. Real-life murder today, apart from being commonplace andâforgive meâa little vulgar, is inhibiting of the imagination. Still, moving the body would be a problem. It would need considerable thought. I can see that it might not work.”
Ackroyd spoke with regret. Dalgliesh wondered if his next enthusiasm would be writing detective fiction. If so, it was one that should be discouraged. Murder, real or fictional, and in any of its manifestations, was on the face of it an unlikely enthusiasm for Ackroyd. But his curiosity had always ranged widely and once seized by an idea he pursued it with the dedicated enthusiasm of a lifelong expert.
And the idea seemed likely to persist. He went on, “And isn't there a convention that no one dies in the Palace of Westminster? Don't they shove the corpse into the ambulance with indecent haste and later state that he died on the way to hospital? Now, that would create some interesting clues about the actual time of death. If it were a question of inheritance, for example, timing could be important. I've got the title, of course.
Death on the Woolsack.
”
Dalgliesh said, “It would be very time-consuming. I should stick to murder as a paradigm of its age. What are you expecting to get from the Dupayne?”
“Inspiration perhaps, but mostly information. The Murder Room is remarkable. That's not its official name, by the way, but it's how we all refer to it. There are contemporary newspaper reports of the crime and the trial, fascinating photographs including some originals, and actual exhibits from the scene of the murder. I can't think how old Max Dupayne got his hands on those, but I believe he wasn't always scrupulous when it came to acquiring what he wanted. And, of course, the museum's interest in murder coincides with mine. The only reason the old man set up the Murder Room was to relate the crime to its age, otherwise he would have seen the room as pandering to depraved popular taste. I've already selected my first case. It's the obvious one, Mrs. Edith Thompson. You know it, of course.”
“Yes, I know it.”
Everyone interested in real-life murder, the defects of the criminal justice system, or the horror and anomalies of capital punishment knew of the ThompsonâBywaters case. It had spawned novels, plays, films, and its share of the journalism of moral outrage.
Apparently oblivious of his companion's silence, Ackroyd prattled happily on. “Consider the facts. Here we have an attractive young woman of twenty-eight married to a dull shipping clerk four years her senior and living in a dull street in a drab east London suburb. Do you wonder she found relief in a fantasy life?”
“We have no evidence that Thompson was dull. You're not suggesting dullness is a justification for murder?”
“I can think of less credible motives, dear boy. Edith Thompson is intelligent as well as attractive. She's holding down a job as the manageress of a millinery firm in the City and in those days that meant something. She goes on holiday with her husband and his sister, meets Frederick Bywaters, a P&O Line steward eight years her junior, and falls desperately in love. When he's at sea she writes him passionate letters which, to the unimaginative mind, could certainly be interpreted as an incitement to murder. She claims that she's put ground electric lightbulbs in Percy's porridge, the probability of which the forensic pathologist, Bernard Spilsbury, discounted at the trial. And then on 3 October 1922, after an evening at the Criterion Theatre in London, when they're walking home, Bywaters springs out and stabs Percy Thompson to death. Edith Thompson is heard crying out âDon'tâoh don't!' But the letters damned her, of course. If Bywaters had destroyed them she'd be alive today.”