Unnatural Causes (17 page)

Desperately she looked round the sitting room at the dark and heavy furniture which her mother had brought with her when she married. Either the great ornate bookcase or the corner cupboard would have made an effective barrier to the door if only she could have moved them. But she was helpless. Heaving herself from the narrow bed she grasped her crutches and swung herself into the kitchen. In the glass of the kitchen cabinet she saw her face reflected, a pale moon with eyes like black pools, the hair heavy and dank like the hair of a drowned woman. A witch’s face. She thought: “Three hundred years ago they would have burnt me alive. Now they aren’t even afraid of me.” And she wondered whether it was worse to be feared or pitied. Jerking open the cabinet drawer she seized a fistful of spoons and forks. These she balanced in a row on the edge of the narrow window ledge. In the silence she could hear her own breath rasping against the pane. After a moment’s thought she added a couple of glasses. If he tried to climb in through the kitchen window at least she would have some warning in the tinkle of falling silver and the smashing of glass. Now she looked round the kitchen for a weapon. The carving knife? Too cumbersome and not really sharp enough. The kitchen scissors perhaps? She opened the blades and tried to pull them apart but the rivet was too strong even for her tough hands. Then she remembered the broken
knife which she used to peel vegetables. The tapering blade was only six inches long but it was keen and rigid, the handle short and easy to grasp. She whetted the blade against the stone edge of the kitchen sink and tested it with her finger. It was better than nothing. Armed with this weapon she felt better. She checked again that the bolts on the front door were secure and placed a row of small glass ornaments from the corner cupboard on the window ledge of the sitting room. Then, without taking the braces from her legs, she propped herself upright on the bed, a heavy glass paperweight on the pillow beside her, the knife in her hand. And there she sat, waiting for fear to pass, her body shaken with her heartbeats, her ears straining to hear through the faraway sighing of the wind, the creak of the garden gate, the tinkle of falling glass.

Dalgliesh set out next morning after an early and solitary breakfast, pausing only to telephone Reckless to ask for Digby Seton’s London address and the name of the hotel at which Elizabeth Marley had stayed. He didn’t explain why he wanted them and Reckless didn’t ask but gave the information without comment except to wish Mr. Dalgliesh a pleasant and successful trip. Dalgliesh replied that he doubted whether it would be either but that he was grateful for the Inspector’s co-operation. Neither troubled to disguise the irony in his voice. Their mutual dislike seemed to be crackling along the wire.

It was a little unkind to call on Justin Bryce so early but Dalgliesh wanted to borrow the photograph of the beach party. It was several years old but was a good-enough likeness of the Setons, Oliver Latham and Bryce himself to help an identification.

Bryce came paddling down in response to his knock. The earliness of the hour seemed to have bereft him of sense as well as speech and it was some time before he grasped what Dalgliesh wanted and produced the snap. Only then,
apparently, was he struck with doubt about the wisdom of handing it over. As Dalgliesh was leaving he came scurrying down the path after him, bleating anxiously: “You won’t tell Oliver that I let you have it, will you, Adam? He’ll be absolutely furious if he learns that one is collaborating with the police. Oliver is the teeniest bit distrustful of you, I’m afraid. One must implore secrecy.”

Dalgliesh made reassuring noises and encouraged him back to bed, but he was too familiar with Justin’s vagaries to take him at face value. Once Bryce had breakfasted and gained strength for the day’s mischief he would almost certainly be telephoning Celia Calthrop for a little cosy mutual speculation about what Adam Dalgliesh could be up to now. By noon all Monksmere including Oliver Latham would know that he had driven to London, taking the photograph with him.

It was a comparatively easy journey. He took the quickest route and, by half past eleven, he was approaching the city. He hadn’t expected to be driving into London again so soon. It was like a premature ending to a holiday already spoilt. In a half-propitiatory hope that this might not really be so, he resisted the temptation to call at his flat high above the Thames near Queenhithe and drove straight on to the West End. Just before noon he had garaged the Cooper Bristol in Lexington Street and was walking towards Bloomsbury and the Cadaver Club.

The Cadaver Club is a typically English establishment in that its function, though difficult to define with any precision, is perfectly understood by all concerned. It was founded by a barrister in 1892 as a meeting place for men with an interest in murder and, on his death, he bequeathed to the club his pleasant house in Tavistock Square. The club is exclusively masculine; women are neither admitted as members nor entertained. Among the members there is a solid core of
detective novelists, elected on the prestige of their publishers rather than the size of their sales; one or two retired police officers; a dozen practising barristers; three retired judges; most of the better-known amateur criminologists and crime reporters; and a residue of members whose qualification consists in the ability to pay their dues on time and discuss intelligently the probable guilt of William Wallace or the finer points of the defence of Madeline Smith. The exclusion of women means that some of the best crime writers are unrepresented but this worries no one; the Committee takes the view that their presence would hardly compensate for the expense of putting in a second set of lavatories. The plumbing at the Cadaver has, in fact, remained virtually unaltered since the club moved to Tavistock Square in 1900 but it is a canard that the baths were originally purchased by George Joseph Smith. The club is old-fashioned in more than its plumbing; even its exclusiveness is justified by the assumption that murder is hardly a fit subject for discussion in front of women. And murder at the Cadaver seems itself a civilised archaism, insulated from reality by time or the panoply of the law, having nothing in common with the sordid and pathetic crimes which took up most of Dalgliesh’s working life. Murder here evokes the image of a Victorian maid-servant, correct in cap and streamers, watching through a bedroom door as Adelaide Bartlett prepares her husband’s medicine; of a slim hand stretched through an Edinburgh basement railing proffering a cup of cocoa and, perhaps, arsenic; of Dr. Lamson handing round Dundee cake at his wealthy brother-in-law’s last tea party; or of Lizzie Borden, creeping, axe in hand, through the quiet house in Fall River in the heat of a Massachusetts summer.

Every club has its peculiar asset. The Cadaver Club has the Plants. The members are apt to say “What shall we do if we
lose the Plants?” much as they might ask “What shall we do if they drop the Bomb?” Both questions have their relevance but only the morbid dwell on them. Mr. Plant has sired—one would almost believe for the benefit of the club—five buxom and competent daughters. The three eldest, Rose, Marigold and Violet, are married and come in to lend a hand. The two youngest, Heather and Primrose, are employed in the dining room as waitresses. Plant himself is steward and general factotum and his wife is generally acknowledged as one of the best cooks in London. It is the Plants who give the club its atmosphere of a private townhouse where the family’s comfort is in the hands of loyal, competent and discreet family servants. Those members who once enjoyed these benefits have the comfortable illusion that they are back in their youth, and the others begin to realise what they have missed. Even the eccentricities of the Plants are odd enough to make them interesting without detracting from their efficiency and there are few club servants of whom this can be said.

Dalgliesh, although he was not a member of the club, had occasionally dined there and was known to Plant. Luckily, too, by that curious alchemy which operates in these matters, he was approved of. Plant made no difficulties about showing him round or answering his questions; nor was it necessary for Dalgliesh to emphasise his present amateur status. Very little was said but both men understood each other perfectly. Plant led the way to the small front bedroom on the first floor which Seton had always used and waited just inside the door while Dalgliesh examined the room. Dalgliesh was used to working under scrutiny or he might have been disconcerted by the man’s stolid watchfulness. Plant was an arresting figure. He was six feet three inches tall, and broad shouldered, his face pale and pliable as putty with a thin scar sliced diagonally
across his left cheekbone. This mark, the result of an undignified tumble from a bicycle onto iron railings in his youth, looked so remarkably like a duelling scar that Plant had been unable to resist adding to its effect by wearing a pince-nez and cropping his hair en brosse, like a sinister Commander in an anti-Nazi film. His working uniform was appropriate, a dark blue serge with a miniature skull on each lapel; this vulgar conceit, introduced in 1896 by the club’s founder, had now, like Plant himself, been sanctified by time and custom. Indeed, members were always a little puzzled when their visitors commented on Plant’s unusual appearance.

There was little to be seen in the bedroom. Thin terylene curtains were drawn against the grey light of the October afternoon. The drawers and wardrobe were empty. The small desk of light oak in front of the window held nothing but a clean blotter and a supply of club writing paper. The single bed, freshly made up, awaited its next occupant.

Plant said: “The officers from the Suffolk CID took away his typewriter and clothes, Sir. They looked for papers, too, but he hadn’t any to speak of. There was a packet of buff envelopes and about fifty sheets of foolscap and a sheet or two of unused carbon paper but that’s all. He was a very tidy gentleman, Sir.”

“He stayed here regularly every October didn’t he?”

“The last two weeks in the month, Sir. Every year. And he always had this room. We’ve only got the one bedroom on this floor and he couldn’t climb stairs because of his bad heart. Of course, he could have used the lift but he said he hadn’t any confidence in lifts. So it had to be this room.”

“Did he work in here?”

“Yes, Sir. Most mornings from ten until half past twelve. That’s when he lunched. And again from two-thirty until
half past four. That’s if he was typing. If it was a matter of reading or making notes he worked in the library. But there’s no typing allowed in the library on account of disturbing other members.”

“Did you hear him typing in here on Tuesday?”

“The wife and I heard someone typing, Sir, and naturally we thought it was Mr. Seton. There was a notice on the door saying not to disturb but we wouldn’t have come in anyway. Not when a member’s working. The Inspector seemed to think it might have been someone else in here.”

“Did he now? What do you think?”

“Well, it could have been. The wife heard the typewriter going at about eleven o’clock in the morning and I heard it again at about four. But we wouldn’t either of us know whether it was Mr. Seton. It sounded pretty quick and expert-like but what’s that to go on? That Inspector asked whether anyone else could have got in. We didn’t see any strangers about but we were both busy at lunchtime and downstairs most of the afternoon. People walk in and out very freely, Sir, as you know. Mind you, a lady would have been noticed. One of the members would have mentioned it if there’d been a lady about the club. But otherwise—well, I couldn’t pretend to the Inspector that the place is what he’d call well supervised. He didn’t seem to think much of our security arrangements. But, as I told him Sir, this is a club not a police station.”

“You waited two nights before you reported his disappearance?”

“More’s the pity, Sir. And even then, I didn’t call the police. I phoned his home and gave a message to his secretary, Miss Kedge. She said to do nothing for the moment and she would try to find Mr. Seton’s half-brother. I’ve never met the gentleman myself but I think Mr. Maurice Seton did mention him to
me once. But he’s never been to the club that I remember. That Inspector asked me particularly.”

“I expect he asked about Mr. Oliver Latham and Mr. Justin Bryce too.”

“He did, Sir. They’re both members and so I told him. But I haven’t seen either gentleman recently and I don’t think they’d come and go without a word to me or the wife. You’ll want to see this first-floor bathroom and lavatory. Here we are. Mr. Seton used this little suite. That Inspector looked in the cistern.”

“Did he indeed? I hope he found what he was looking for.”

“He found the ballcock, Sir and I hope to God he hasn’t put it out of action. Very temperamental this lavatory is. You’ll want to see the library, I expect. That’s where Mr. Seton used to sit when he wasn’t typing. It’s on the next floor as I think you know.”

A visit to the library was obviously scheduled. Inspector Reckless had been thorough and Plant was not the man to let his protegé get away with less. As they crushed together into the tiny claustrophobic lift, Dalgliesh asked his last few questions. Plant replied that neither he nor any member of his staff had posted anything for Mr. Seton. No one had tidied his room or destroyed any papers. As far as Plant knew there had been none to destroy. Except for the typewriter and Seton’s clothes, the room was still as he had left it on the evening he disappeared.

The library, which faced south over the square, was probably the most attractive room in the house. It had originally been the drawing room and, except for the provision of shelves along the whole of the west wall, looked much as it had when the club took over the house. The curtains were copies of the originals, the wallpaper was a faded Pre-Raphaelite design, the desks set between the four high windows were Victorian. The books made up a small but reasonably comprehensive library of crime. There were the notable British Trials and Famous Trials series;
textbooks on medical jurisprudence, toxicology and forensic pathology; memoirs of judges, advocates, pathologists and police officers; a variety of books by amateur criminologists dealing with some of the more notable or controversial murders; textbooks on criminal law and police procedure; and even a few treatises on the sociological and psychological aspects of violent crime which showed few signs of having been opened. On the fiction shelves a small section held the club’s few first editions of Poe, Le Fanu and Conan Doyle; for the rest, most British and American crime writers were represented and it was apparent that those who were members presented copies of their books. Dalgliesh was interested to see that Maurice Seton had had his specially bound and embellished with his monogram in gold. He also noted that, although the club excluded women from membership, the ban did not extend to their books, so that the library was fairly representative of crime writing during the last 150 years.