P James: Unnatural Causes

They could make little of the conversation, which on Reckless’s part was conducted briefly and in monosyllables. He seemed to be speaking to a police station. For most of the time he listened in silence interspersed with grunts. He ended: “Right. Thank you. I shall be seeing him at Seton House first thing in the morning. Good night.” He replaced the receiver and turned to face the waiting company who were making no effort to hide their anxiety. Dalgliesh half-expected him to disappoint them but instead he said: “We’ve found Mr. Digby Seton. He has telephoned Lowestoft Police Station to say that he was admitted to hospital last night after driving his car into a ditch on the Lowestoft road. They are discharging him first thing tomorrow morning.”

Miss Calthrop’s mouth had opened for the inevitable question when he added: “His story is that someone telephoned him just after nine o’clock last night to ask him to go at once to Lowestoft Police Station to identify his brother’s body. The caller told him that Mr. Maurice Seton’s corpse had come ashore in a dinghy with both hands chopped off at the wrists.”

Latham said incredulously: “But that’s impossible! I thought you said the body wasn’t found until early this evening?”

“Nor was it, Sir. No one telephoned from the Lowestoft Police yesterday night. No one knew what had happened to Mr. Maurice Seton until his body came ashore this evening. Except one person, of course.”

He looked round at them, the melancholy eyes moving speculatively from face to face. No one spoke or moved. It was as if they were all fixed in a moment of time waiting helplessly for some unavoidable cataclysm. It was a moment for which no words seemed adequate; it cried out for action, for drama. And Sylvia Kedge, as if obligingly doing her best, slid with a moan from Eliza’s supporting arms and crumpled to the floor.

Reckless said: “He died at midnight on Tuesday, give or take an hour. That’s my guess based on the stage of rigor and the general look of him. I shall be surprised if the PM doesn’t confirm it. The hands were taken off sometime after death. There wasn’t much bleeding but it looked as if the seat of the dinghy had been used as a chopping block. Assuming that Mr. Bryce was telling the truth and the dinghy was still beached here at five o’clock Wednesday afternoon, he was almost certainly pushed out to sea after the tide turned an hour later. The butchery must have been done after dusk. But he had been dead then for the best part of eighteen hours, maybe longer. I don’t know where he died or how he died. But I shall find out.”

The three policemen were together in the sitting room. Jane Dalgliesh had made an excuse to leave them alone by offering them coffee; from the kitchen Dalgliesh could hear the faint tinkling sounds of its preparation. It was over ten minutes since the rest of the company had left. It had required little time or effort to revive Sylvia Kedge and once she and Liz Marley were on their way, there had been a general tacit agreement that the excitements of the evening might now be drawn to a close. The visitors looked suddenly bedraggled with weariness. When Reckless, as if gaining energy and animation from their exhaustion, began to question them about a possible weapon, he was met by weary incomprehension. No one seemed able to remember whether he or she owned a chopper, a cleaver or an axe, where these implements were kept or when they had last been used. No one except Jane Dalgliesh. And even Miss Dalgliesh’s calm admission that she had lost a chopper from her woodshed some months previously provoked no more than mild interest. The company had had enough of murder for one night. Like overexcited children at the end of the party, they wanted to go home.

It was not until Miss Dalgliesh had also left them that Reckless spoke of the case. This was to be expected but Dalgliesh was irritated to discover how much he resented the obvious implication. Reckless was presumably neither stupid nor crassly insensitive. He would utter no warnings. He wouldn’t antagonise Dalgliesh by inviting a discretion and cooperation which both of them knew he had the right to take for granted. But this was his case. He was in charge. It was for him to decide at leisure which pieces of the puzzle he would lay out for Dalgliesh’s inspection; how much he would confide and to whom. The situation was a novel one for Dalgliesh and he wasn’t sure he was going to like it.

The room was still very close. The fire was dying now into a pyramid of white ash but the heat trapped between the stone walls beat on their faces as if from an oven and the air smelt heavy. The Inspector seemed unaffected by it. He said: “These people who were here this evening, Mr. Dalgliesh. Tell me about them. Do they all call themselves writers?”

Dalgliesh replied: “I imagine that Oliver Latham would call himself a dramatic critic. Miss Calthrop likes to be known as a romantic novelist, whatever that may mean. I don’t know what Justin Bryce would call himself. He edits a monthly literary and political review which was founded by his grandfather.”

Reckless said surprisingly: “I know. The Monthly Critical Review . My father used to take it. That was in the days when sixpence meant something to a working man. And for sixpence the Monthly Crit . gave you the message, warm and strong. Nowadays it’s about as pink as the Financial Times; advice on your investments, reviews of books which nobody wants to read; cosy competitions for the intelligentsia. He can’t make a living out of that.”

Dalgliesh replied that, so far from making a living, Bryce was known to subsidise the review from his private income.

Reckless said: “He’s apparently one of those men who don’t mind people thinking he’s a queer. Is he, Mr. Dalgliesh?”

It was not an irrelevant question. Nothing about a suspect’s character is irrelevant in a murder investigation, and the case was being treated as one of murder. But, irrationally, Dalgliesh was irritated. He replied: “I don’t know. He may be a little ambivalent.”

“Is he married?”

“Not as far as I know. But we surely haven’t yet reached the point when every bachelor over forty is automatically suspect?”

Reckless did not reply. Miss Dalgliesh had returned with the tray of coffee and he accepted a cup with grave thanks but with no appearance of really wanting it. When she had again left them he began noisily sipping; his sombre eyes above the rim of the cup fixed on a water-colour of avocets in flight by Jane Dalgliesh which hung on the opposite wall. He said: “They’re a spiteful lot, queers. Not violent on the whole. But spiteful. And there was a spiteful crime. That secretary girl, the cripple. Where does she come from, Mr. Dalgliesh?”

Dalgliesh, feeling like a candidate at a viva voce examination, said calmly: “Sylvia Kedge is an orphan who lives alone in a cottage in Tanner’s Lane. She is said to be a highly competent shorthand typist. She worked chiefly for Maurice Seton but she does quite a bit for Miss Calthrop and Bryce. I know very little about her, about any of them.”

“You know enough for my needs at present, Mr. Dalgliesh. And Miss Marley?”

“Also an orphan. Her aunt brought her up. At present she’s at Cambridge.”

“And all these people are friends of your aunt?”

Dalgliesh hesitated. Friendship was not a word his aunt used easily and he thought it doubtful whether she would in fact speak of more than one person at Monksmere as a friend. But one does not willingly deny one’s acquaintances when they are about to be suspected of murder. Resisting the temptation to reply that they knew each other intimately but not well, he said cautiously: “You had better ask my aunt. But they all know each other. After all, it’s a small and isolated community. They manage to get on together.”