P James - Unnatural Causes

Dalgliesh perversely decided to walk home along the edge of the cliff. It would add fifteen minutes to his journey but it wouldn’t hurt Reckless, comfortably ensconced at Pentlands, to wait another quarter of an hour. He found the path with his torch and followed the little pool of light which moved before him like a wraith. He looked back at the house. It was formless now, a black mass against the night sky with no sign of habitation except the thin shafts of light between the dining-room shutters and one high round window which blazed out like a cyclops eye. While he watched, the light went out. Someone, probably Alice Kerrison, had gone upstairs.

He was nearing the edge of the cliff now. The waves thudded more clearly in his ears and somewhere, piercingly shrill, a seabird called. He thought that the wind might be rising although it was still little more than a strong breeze. But here, on this exposed headland, it was as if sea, land and sky shared a perpetual and gentle turbulence. The path was becoming more overgrown. For the next twenty yards it was little more than a tortuous clearing through the brambles and gorse whose thorned branches caught at his legs. He was beginning to think that it would have been wiser to take the inland path. The gratification of making Reckless wait struck him now as irrational and childish and certainly not worth the ruining of a pair of perfectly good trousers. If Seton’s body had been carried from Priory House through this prickly jungle there should be some evidence of its passing. Reckless would certainly have gone over the ground with care; he wondered what, if anything, he had found. And it wasn’t only the path. There would be forty or so rackety wooden steps down to the beach to be negotiated. Sinclair was a strong man despite his age and Alice Kerrison was a healthy countrywoman; but Seton, small as he was, would have been literally a dead weight. It would have been an exhausting, almost impossible journey.

Suddenly he saw a white shape to the left of the path. It was one of the few remaining tombstones on this part of the cliff. Most of them had long since crumbled with age or been swept under the sea to yield in time their quota of bones to the human debris washed up by the tides. But this one stood and, on impulse, Dalgliesh went over to examine it. It was taller than he had expected and the lettering was cut clear and deep. Crouching low, he shone his torch on the inscription:

IN MEMORY OF HENRY WILLM. S CRIVENER

Shot from his horse by a party of smugglers

while travelling in these parts,

24th SEPT. 1786.

Poor Henry Scrivener! What ill chance, Dalgliesh wondered, had brought him travelling on the lonely road to Dunwich. He must have been a man of some substance. It was a fine stone. He wondered how many years it would be before Scrivener, his stone and its pious exhortation were in turn swept away and forgotten. He was scrambling to his feet when the torch jerked in his hand and shone full on the grave itself. He saw with surprise that someone had opened it. The turf had been replaced, the brambles twisted together again to form a dense and prickly panoply, but the grave had undoubtedly been disturbed. He knelt again and gently shifted the soil with his gloved hands. It was light and friable. Hands other than his had been there before. Within a few seconds he unearthed a femur, then a broken scapula and, finally, a skull. Henry Scrivener had been given companions in death. Dalgliesh guessed at once what had happened. This was Sinclair or Alice Kerrison’s way of disposing of the bones they found on the beach. All of them were very old, all bleached by the sea. Someone, and he thought it was probably Alice, had wanted to give them a reburial in consecrated ground.

He was musing over this fresh insight into the ways of that odd couple at Priory House and turning the skull over in his hands when he caught the soft thud of approaching footsteps. There was a rustle of parted branches and suddenly a dark figure was standing over him, blotting out the night sky. He heard Oliver Latham’s light, ironic voice: “Still detecting, Superintendent? You look, if I may say so, like an under-rehearsed First Grave Digger. What a glutton for work you are! But surely you can let poor Henry Scrivener rest in peace? It’s a little late, I should have thought, to start investigating that particular murder. Besides, aren’t you trespassing?”

“Rather less than you are at the moment,” said Dalgliesh evenly.

Latham laughed: “So you’ve been dining with R. B. Sinclair. I hope you appreciated the honour. And what did our great apostle of universal love have to say about Seton’s peculiarly unpleasant end?”

“Not much.” Dalgliesh scooped a hole in the soft earth and began covering up the skull. He smoothed soil over the pale forehead and trickled it into the eye sockets and the gaps between the teeth. Without looking up he said: “I didn’t know you were fond of nocturnal walks.”

“It’s a habit I’ve only recently taken up. It’s most rewarding. One sees such interesting sights.”

He watched Dalgliesh as the reburial was completed and the turfs replaced. Then, without speaking, he turned to go. Dalgliesh called quietly after him: “Did Dorothy Seton send you a letter shortly before she died?”

The dark figure stood stock still, then slowly turned. Latham asked softly: “Is that any concern of yours?” And, as Dalgliesh hesitated he added: “Then why ask?” Without another word he turned again and disappeared into the darkness.

The light was on over the cottage porch but the sitting room was almost in darkness. Inspector Reckless was sitting alone in front of the dying fire rather like a guest who, unsure of his welcome, is making a propitiatory gesture of economising on the lights. He rose as Dalgliesh entered and switched on a small table lamp. The two men faced each other in its soft but inadequate glow.

“Alone, Mr. Dalgliesh? You had some trouble perhaps in getting away?”

The Inspector’s voice was expressionless. It was impossible to detect either criticism or enquiry in the flat statement.

“I got away all right. I decided to walk back along the cliff. How did you know where to find me?”

“When I found the cottage empty I supposed you and Miss Dalgliesh would be dining somewhere in the district. I tried the most likely house first. There are developments which I wanted to discuss with you tonight and I didn’t want to talk on the phone.”

“Well, talk away. But what about something to drink?”

Dalgliesh found it almost impossible to keep the note of cheerful encouragement from his voice. He felt uncomfortably like a housemaster jollying along a promising but nervous examination candidate. And yet Reckless was entirely at ease. The sombre eyes gazed at him with no trace of embarrassment or servility. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong with me?” thought Dalgliesh. “Why can’t I feel at ease with the man?”

“I won’t have anything now, thank you Mr. Dalgliesh. I thought you’d be interested in the pathologist’s report. I got it early this evening. Dr. Sydenham must have been up all last night with him. Would you like to take a guess at the cause of death?”

“No,” thought Dalgliesh, “I wouldn’t. This is your case and I wish to God you’d get on with solving it. I’m not in the mood for guessing games.” He said: “Asphyxia?”

“It was natural causes, Mr. Dalgliesh. He died of a heart attack.”

“What?”

“There’s no doubt of it. He had a mild angina complicated by a defect of the left atrium. That adds up to a pretty poor heart and it gave out on him. No asphyxia, no poisoning, no marks of violence apart from the severed hands. He didn’t bleed to death, and he didn’t drown. He died three hours after his last meal. And he died of a heart attack.”