You aren't going to tell me that he waited ten minutes or so before deciding to panic?' Buckley said:
'He could have spent the time searching for something and been enraged when he didn't find it. So he took out his frustration on the corpse.'
'But searching for what? We haven't found it either, unless it's still there in the room and we've missed its significance. And there's no sign of a search. If the room was searched it was done with care and by someone who knew what he was about. And if he was looking for something, my guess is that he found it.'
'There's still the lab report to come, sir. And they'll have the viscera within the hour.'
'I doubt whether they'll find anything. Doc Ellis-Jones saw no sign of poison. She may have been drugged – we mustn't theorize too far ahead of the facts – but my guess is that she was awake when she died and that she saw the face of her killer.'
It was extraordinary, thought Buckley, how cold the day became once the sun had gone. It was like moving from summer to winter in a couple of hours. He shivered and held open the car door for his Chief. They moved slowly out of the car park and turned towards the town. At first Grogan spoke only in laconic spurts:
'You've heard from the Coroner's Officer?' 'Yes, sir. The inquest's fixed for two o'clock on Tuesday.' 'And the London end? Burroughs is getting on with those inquiries?'
'He's going up first thing in the morning. And I've told the divers we'll be needing them for the rest of the week.' 'What about the bloody press conference?' 'Tomorrow afternoon, sir. Four thirty.'
Again there was silence. Changing gear to negotiate the steep and twisting hill which ran down to Speymouth, Grogan suddenly said:
'The name Commander Adam Dalgliesh mean anything to you, Sergeant?'
There was no need to ask of what force. Only the Met had Commanders. Buckley said:
'I've heard of him, sir.'
'Who hasn't? The Commissioner's blue-eyed boy, darling of the establishment. When the Met, or the Home Office come to that, want to show that the police know how to hold their forks and what bottle to order with the canard a l’orange and how to talk to a Minister on level terms with his Permanent Secretary, they wheel out Dalgliesh. If he didn't exist, the Force would have to invent him.'
The gibes might be unoriginal but there was nothing second-hand about the dislike. Buckley said:
'It's a bit old-fashioned isn't it, sir, all that stuff?'
'Don't be naive, Sergeant. It's only unfashionable to talk like that any more, but that doesn't mean that they've changed their thinking or their actions. He could have had his own force by now – probably be chairing ACPO – if he hadn't wanted to stick to detection. That and personal conceit. The rest of you can struggle in the muck for the prizes. I'm the cat who walks alone and all places are alike to me. Kipling.'
'Yes, sir.'
Buckley paused and then asked: 'What about the Commander?'
'He knows the girl, Cordelia Gray. They tangled together in a previous case. Cambridge apparently. No details offered and hone asked for. But he's given her and that Agency a clean bill. Like him or not, he's a good copper, one of the best. If he says that Gray isn't a murderess I'm prepared to take that as evidence of a sort. But he didn't say that she's incapable of lying and I wouldn't have believed him if he had.'
He drove on in a moody silence. But his mind must have been mulling over yesterday's interviews. After a space of ten minutes in which neither of them had spoken, he said:
'There's one thing which struck me as intriguing. You probably noticed it yourself. They all described the visit on Saturday morning to the Church and the crypt. They all mentioned that story about the drowned internee. But it was done a little too casually; the mere mention of an unimportant trifle; just a short excursion we happened to fancy before lunch. As soon as I invited them to dwell on the incident they reacted like a bunch of virgins who'd had an interesting experience in the Marabar caves. I suppose the allusion is wasted on you, Sergeant?’ 'Yes, sir.'
'Don't worry. I'm not degenerating into one of those literary cops. I'll leave that to Dalgliesh. We did A Passage to India as a set book when I was at school. I used to think it. overrated. But no knowledge is wasted in police work as they used to tell me at training school, not even E. M. Forster apparently. Something happened in the Devil's Kettle which none of them is prepared to talk about and I'd like to know what.'
'Miss Gray found one of the messages.'
'So she says. But I wasn't thinking of that. It's probably a long shot, but we'd better find out more about that 1940 drowning. I suppose Southern Command would be the starting point.'
Buckley's thoughts went back to that white, scientifically butchered body, to a nakedness which had been totally unerotic. Arid more than that. For a moment watching those gloved and probing fingers he had felt that no woman's body would ever excite him again. He said:
'There was no rape and no recent intercourse.'
'That hardly surprised us. Her husband hadn't the inclination and Ivo Whittingham hadn't the strength. And her murderer had other things on his mind. We'll call it a day, Sergeant. The Chief Constable wants a word with me first thing tomorrow. No doubt that means that Sir Charles Cottringham has been having
a word or two with him. That man's a nuisance. I wish he'd stick to amateur theatricals and leave real-life drama to the experts.
And then we'll get back to Courcy Island and see if a night's sleep has refreshed their memories.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
At last the interminable hours dragged to dinner-time. Cordelia came in from a last and solitary walk with barely time to shower and change, and by the time she went down, Ambrose, Sir George and Ivo were already in the dining-room. They were all seated before Simon appeared. He was wearing a dark suit. He looked at the others, flushed and said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't realize that we were going to change. I won't be long.'
He turned to the door. Ambrose said with a touch of impatience, 'What does it matter? You can dine in your swimming-trunks if it makes you feel more comfortable. No one here cares what you wear.'
Cordelia thought that it wasn't the happiest way of putting it. The unspoken words hung on the air. Clarissa would have cared; but Clarissa wasn't there. Simon's eyes slewed to the empty chair at the top of the table. Then he sidled to a chair beside Cordelia.
Ivo said:
'Where's Roma?'
'She asked for soup and chicken sandwiches in her room. She says she has a headache.'
It seemed to Cordelia that everyone was simultaneously doubting the reality of the headache while mentally congratulating Roma on having hit on so simple an expedient for avoiding this their first formal dinner together since Clarissa's death. The table had been rearranged, perhaps in an attempt to minimize the trauma of that empty chair. The two end places hadn't been laid and Cordelia and Simon sat facing Ambrose, Ivo and Sir George, almost, it seemed, eyeball to eyeball, while an expanse of mahogany stretched gleaming on either side: Cordelia thought that the arrangement made them look like a couple of viva-voce candidates facing a not particularly intimidating panel of examiners, an impression which was strengthened by Simon's suit in which, paradoxically, he looked less cool and more formally overdressed than did the other three in their frills and dinner-jackets.
Neither Munter nor his wife were present. Bowls of vichyssoise were already set at each place and the second course was under covers on the sideboard hotplates. There was a faint smell of fish, an unlikely choice for a Sunday. It was obviously to be a convalescent's dinner, blandly inoffensive, unexciting to the palate or the digestion. It was, thought Cordelia, a nice point of culinary etiquette, the choice of menu for a house party of murder suspects dining together the day after the crime.