“She won’t change her mind, sir,” said Dalgliesh bitterly. “Nagle doesn’t want to see her, of course, but nothing makes any difference. All she thinks about is planning their life together when he comes out. And God help her when he does.”
The AC shifted his immense bulk irritably in his chair, closed the file and pushed it across the table to Dalgliesh. He said: “There’s nothing that you or anyone else can do about that. She’s the kind of woman who pursues her own destruction. I’ve had that artist, Sugg, on to me, by the way. Extraordinary ideas about judicial procedure these people have! I told him that it’s out of our hands now and referred him to the proper quarter. He wants to pay for Nagle’s defence, if you please! Said that if we’ve made a mistake, the world will lose a remarkable talent.”
“It will be lost, anyway,” replied Dalgliesh. Thinking aloud, he added: “I wonder just how good an artist would have to be before one let him get away with a crime like Nagle’s. Michelangelo? Velazquez? Rembrandt?”
“Oh, well,” said the AC easily. “If we had to ask ourselves that question, we wouldn’t be policemen.”
Back in Dalgliesh’s office Sergeant Martin was putting away papers. He took one look at his super’s face, pronounced a stolid ‘good night, sir’ and left. There were some situations which his uncomplicated nature found it prudent to avoid. The door had hardly closed behind him when the telephone rang. It was Mrs. Shorthouse.
“Hullo!” she yelled. “Is that you? I had the devil of a job getting through to you. Saw you in court today. Don’t suppose you noticed me, though. How are you?”
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Shorthouse.”
“Don’t suppose we’ll be meeting again, so I thought I’d give you a ring to say cheerio and tell you the news. Things have been happening at the clinic, I can tell you. Miss Saxon’s leaving, for one thing. She’s going to work in a home for subnormal kids up north. Run by the RCs it is. Fancy going off to work in a convent! No one at the Steen ever did that before.”
Dalgliesh said he could well believe it.
“Miss Priddy’s been transferred to one of the group’s chest clinics. Mr. Lauder thought the change would do her good. She’s had a terrible row with her people and she’s living alone now in a bed-sitter in Kilburn. But you know all about that, no doubt. Mrs. Bolam’s gone to an expensive nursing home near Worthing. All on her share of Cousin Enid’s money, of course. Poor sod. I’m surprised she could bring herself to touch a penny of it.”
Dalgliesh wasn’t surprised but did not say so. Mrs. Shorthouse went on: “And then there’s Dr. Steiner. He’s getting married to his wife.”
“What did you say, Mrs. Shorthouse?”
“Well, re-married. Fixed it up very sudden they did. They got divorced and now they’re getting married again. What d’you think of that?”
Dalgliesh said that it was a question of what Dr. Steiner thought of it.
“Oh, he’s as pleased as a dog with a new collar. And a collar is just about what he’s getting, if you ask me. There’s a rumour that the Regional Board may close the clinic and move everyone to a hospital outpatient department. Well, you can’t wonder! First a stabbing and then a gassing and now a murder trial. Not nice really. Dr. Etherege says it’s upsetting for the patients, but I haven’t noticed it to speak of. The numbers haven’t half gone up since last October. That would have pleased Miss Bolam. Always worrying about the numbers, she was. Mind you, there are those who say we wouldn’t have had that trouble with Nagle and Priddy if you’d picked on the right one first go. It was a near thing all right. But what I say is, you did your best and there’s no harm done to speak of.”
No harm to speak of! So these, thought Dalgliesh bitterly, as he replaced the receiver, were the concomitants of failure. It was enough to taste his sour, corroding self-pity without enduring the AC’s moralizing, Martin’s tact, Amy Shorthouse’s condolences. If he were to break free from this pervasive gloom, he needed a respite from crime and death, needed to walk for one brief evening out of the shadow of blackmail and murder. It came to him that what he wanted was to dine with Deborah Riscoe. At least, he told himself wryly, it would be a change of trouble. He put his hand on the receiver and then paused, checked by the old caution, the old uncertainties. He was not even sure that she would wish to take a call at the office, what exactly her place was at Hearne and Illingworth. Then he remembered how she had looked when last they met and he lifted the receiver. He could surely dine with an attractive woman without this preparatory morbid self-analysis. The invitation would commit him to nothing more crucial than seeing that she had a pleasant evening and paying the bill. And a man was surely entitled to call his own publishers.
About the Author
P. D. James is the author of twenty-one books, most of which have been filmed for television. She spent thirty years in various departments of the British Civil Service, including the Police and Criminal Law Departments of Great Britain’s Home Office. She has served as a magistrate and as a governor of the BBC. The recipient of many prizes and honours, she was created Baroness James of Holland Park in 1991 and was inducted into the International Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2008. She lives in London and Oxford.