P James - Unnatural Causes

“In Ipswich on Saturday. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Only that it was posted a hell of a long way from here. Isn’t Ipswich near that place where they found Maurice Seton?”

“The nearest large town to Monksmere. The nearest place where one could be certain of being unrecognised. You could hardly post this in Walberswick or Southwold and expect that no one would remember.”

“For God’s sake, L. J.! What’s in it?”

“Open it and see for yourself.”

Lil advanced cautiously but with an assumption of unconcern. There were more layers of the brown wrapping paper than she had expected. The box itself was revealed as an ordinary white shoebox but with the labels torn away. It looked very old, the kind of box that could be found tucked away in a drawer or cupboard in almost any house. Lil’s hands hovered over the lid.

“If there’s some bloody animal in here that jumps out at me I’ll kill you, L. J., God help me if I don’t. I hate damn silly jokes. What’s the stink, anyway?”

“Formalin. Go on, open it.”

He was watching her closely, the cold grey eyes interested, almost amused. He had her worried now. For a second her eyes met his. Then she stepped back from the desk and, reaching forward, flipped off the lid with one jerk of her wrist.

The sweetly acrid smell rose like an anaesthetic. The severed hands were lying on their bed of damp cotton wool curved as if in a parody of prayer, palms touching briefly, finger tips pressed together. The puffy skin, what was left of it, was chalk white and so crumpled that it looked as if the phalanges were loosely clothed with a pair of old gloves which would peel off at a touch. Already the flesh was shrinking from the butchered wrists and the nail of the right index finger had shifted from its bed.

The woman stared at the hands, fascinated and repelled. Then she seized the lid of the box and rammed it home. The cardboard buckled under her force.

“It wasn’t murder, L. J. I swear it! Digby hadn’t anything to do with it. He hasn’t the nerve.”

“That’s what I would have said. You’ve told me the truth, Lil?”

“Of course. Every word, L. J. Look, he couldn’t have done it. He was in the nick all Tuesday night.”

“I know all about that. But if he didn’t send these, who did? He stood to make £200,000, remember.”

Lil said suddenly: “He said that his brother would die. He told me that once.” She gazed at the box, fascinated and horrified.

Luker said: “Of course he was going to die. Some time. He had a dicky heart, didn’t he? That’s not to say Digby put him away. It was natural causes.”

Lil may have detected some tinge of uncertainty in his voice. She glanced at him and said quickly: “He’s always been keen to come in with you, L. J. You know that. And he’s got £200,000.”

“Not yet. And he may never get his hands on it. I don’t want a fool in with me, capital or no capital.”

“If he put Maurice away and made it look like natural death, he’s not all that of a fool, L. J.”

“Maybe not. Let’s wait and see if he gets away with it.”

“And what about… those?” asked Lil jerking her head towards the innocuous-looking box.

“Back in the safe. Tomorrow I’ll get Sid to parcel them up and send them off to Digby. That should tell us something. It would be a rather nice touch to enclose my visiting card. It’s time Digby Seton and I had a little talk.”

Dalgliesh closed the door of the Cortez Club behind him and gulped in the Soho air as if it were as sweet as the sea wind on Monksmere Head. Luker had always had this effect of seeming to contaminate the atmosphere. He was glad to be out of that stuffy little office and free from the stare of those dead eyes. It must have rained briefly while he was in the club for the cars were hissing over a wet road and the pavement was tacky under his feet. Soho was wakening now and the narrow street was swirling its gaudy flotsam from kerb to kerb. A stiff breeze was blowing, drying the road as he watched. He wondered if it was blowing on Monksmere Head. Perhaps even now his aunt would be closing the shutters against the night.

Walking slowly towards Shaftesbury Avenue he pondered his next move. So far this dash to London, prompted by angry impulse, had told him little that he couldn’t have learned in greater comfort by staying in Suffolk. Even Max Gurney could have told his news over the telephone although Max was, of course, notoriously cautious. Dalgliesh didn’t altogether regret his journey, but it had been a long day and he wasn’t disposed to make it longer. It was the more irritating, therefore, to find himself harassed by the conviction that there was still something to be done.

It was difficult to decide what. None of the possibilities was attractive. He could visit the fashionable and expensive flats where Latham lived and attempt to get something out of the hall porter but, in his present unofficial capacity, he was unlikely to succeed. Besides, Reckless or his men would have been there before him and if Latham’s alibi could be broken they would have broken it. He could try his luck at the eminently respectable Bloomsbury hotel where Eliza Marley claimed to have spent last Tuesday night. There too his reception would hardly be cordial and, there too, Reckless would have been before him. He was getting a little tired of following in the Inspector’s footsteps like a tame dog.

He could take a look at Justin Bryce’s flat in the City; but there seemed little point in it. Since Bryce was still in Suffolk there could be no chance of seeing inside and he didn’t imagine that there was much to be learned from an examination of the building itself. He already knew it well since it was one of the pleasanter architectural conceits in the City. Bryce lived over the offices of the Monthly Critical Review in a small eighteenth-century courtyard off Fleet Street, so carefully preserved that it looked wholly artificial. Its only outlet to the street was through Pie Crust Passage, almost too narrow for a single man. Dalgliesh didn’t know where Bryce garaged his car but it certainly wasn’t in Pie Crust Court. He had a sudden fantastic vision of the little man staggering down Pie Crust Passage with Seton’s body slung over his shoulder and stowing it in the back of his car under the interested gaze of the local traffic wardens and half the City police. He wished he could believe it.

There was, of course, another way to spend the evening. He could telephone Deborah Riscoe at her office-she would be almost due to leave-and ask her to join him at his flat. She would come, of course. Those days, sweet to the memory despite their occasional torments, when he could never be sure that she would come, were over now. Whatever else she might have planned for the evening, she would come. Then all the boredom, the irritation and the uncertainties would find at least a physical relief. And tomorrow the problem would still remain, casting its shadow between him and the first light.

Suddenly he made up his mind. He turned briskly towards Greek Street, hailed the first taxi that he saw and asked to be put down outside Paddington Underground Station.

He decided to walk from Paddington Underground to Digby Seton’s address. If Maurice Seton had come this way he might have taken a bus or even another taxi (had Reckless checked on that, Dalgliesh wondered) but the chances were that he had walked. Dalgliesh timed himself. It took exactly sixteen minutes of fast walking before he arrived at the archway of brickwork and crumbling stucco which led into Carrington Mews. Maurice Seton might have taken longer.

The cobbled entrance was uninviting, ill lit and smelt strongly of urine. Dalgliesh, unobserved, since the place was obviously deserted, passed under the archway into a wide yard lit only by a solitary and unshaded bulb over one of a double row of garages. The premises had apparently once been the headquarters of a driving school and a few tattered notices still clung to the garage doors. But they were dedicated now to a nobler purpose, the improvement of London’s chronic housing shortage. More accurately, they were being converted into dark, undersized and overpriced cottages soon, no doubt, to be advertised as “bijou town residences” to tenants or owners prepared to tolerate any expense or inconvenience for the status of a London address and the taste for contemporary chi-chi. The existing double garages were being halved to provide a downstairs room while retaining space for one small car, and the lofts enlarged to form a couple of cells for bedroom and bath.