A Certain Justice (57 page)

Dalgliesh said, “No, I haven’t come to make an arrest,” and stood aside to let them out.

Inside Chambers, Valerie Caldwell was at her desk, with Harry Naughton bending over her holding an open file. Both looked happier than when Dalgliesh had last seen them. The girl smiled at him. He greeted them, then asked after Valerie’s brother.

“He’s settling in much better, thank you. That’s a funny way of talking about prison, but you know what I mean. He’s concentrating on earning his remission and getting out. Not long now. And my gran knows about him and that makes visiting easier. I don’t have to pretend.”

Harry Naughton said: “Miss Caldwell has been promoted. She’s our Chambers secretary now.”

Dalgliesh congratulated her and asked whether Mr. Langton and Mr. Ulrick were in Chambers.

“Yes, they’re both here, although Mr. Langton said that he’d be leaving early.”

“Will you tell Mr. Ulrick that I’m here, please?”

He waited until she had telephoned, then made his way down the stairs. The basement room was as claustrophobic and as over-heated as on his first visit, but the afternoon was cooler and the heat of the fire less oppressive. Ulrick, seated at his desk, didn’t get up but motioned him to the same armchair, and Dalgliesh felt again the warm stickiness of the leather. Among the old furniture, the books and papers piled on every surface, the archaic gas fire, the stark white refrigerator set against the wall was a discordant intrusion of modernity. Ulrick swung his chair round and gravely regarded him.

Dalgliesh said; “When we last spoke in this room we talked of your brother’s death. You said that someone bore a heavy responsibility but that it wasn’t Venetia Aldridge. I thought afterwards that you might mean yourself.”

“That was percipient, Commander.”

“You were eleven years older. You were at Oxford, only a few miles away. An elder brother, particularly one so much older, is often hero worshipped or at least looked up to. Your parents were overseas. Did Marcus write to you about what was happening at school?”

There was a silence before Ulrick replied, but when he did his voice was calm, unworried. “Yes, he wrote. I should have gone to the school at once, but the letter came at the wrong time. I played cricket for my college. There was a match that day and a party in London afterwards. Then three more days passed quickly, as they do when you’re young, happy, busy. I intended to go to the school. On the fourth day I received a telephone call from my uncle with the news that Marcus had killed himself.”

“And you destroyed the letter?”

“Is that what you would have done? Perhaps we are not so unalike. I argued that it was unlikely that anyone at the school knew of the letter’s existence. I burned it, more I think in panic than after careful thought. There was, after all, enough evidence against the headmaster without it. Once the dam breaks nothing can hold back the waters.”

Again there was a silence, not awkward but curiously companionable. Then Ulrick asked: “Why are you here, Commander?”

“Because I think I know how and why Venetia Aldridge died.”

“You know, but you can’t prove it and you never will be able to prove it. What I’m telling you now, Commander, is a little for your satisfaction, perhaps more for my own. Think of it as fiction. Imagine as our protagonist a man, successful in his career, reasonably content if not happy, but who loved only two people in his life: his brother and his niece. Have you ever experienced obsessive love, Commander?”

After a moment, Dalgliesh replied: “No. I was close to it once, close enough, perhaps, to have some understanding of it.”

“And close enough to feel its power and draw back. You are armoured, of course, by the creative artist’s splinter of ice in the heart. I had no such defence. Obsessive love is the most appalling, the most destructive of all love’s tyrannies. It is also the most humiliating. Our protagonist — let us use my name and call him Desmond — well knew that his niece, despite her beauty, was selfish, greedy, even a little silly. Nothing made any difference. But perhaps you would like to go on with the story, now that we have the characters and the beginning of the plot.”

Dalgliesh said: “I think, although I have no evidence, that the niece telephoned her uncle and told him that her husband’s career was in jeopardy, that Venetia Aldridge had acquired information which might prevent him ever becoming a QC, might even destroy him as a lawyer. She pleaded with her uncle to put a stop to it, to use his influence to see that it didn’t happen. She was, after all, used to coming to her uncle for advice, for money, for help, for support — for anything she wanted. Always he had provided it. So I see him going upstairs to reason with Venetia Aldridge. That couldn’t have been easy for him. I see him as a proud and private man. Venetia Aldridge and he are the only two people in Chambers. She was taking a telephone call when he entered and he could tell by her voice that it was a bad time to choose. She had recently learned of her daughter’s affair with a man she had defended but knew was a particularly brutal murderer. She had looked for advice and support from men who might have been expected to help and had found none. I don’t of course know what was said, but I imagine that it was a bitter rejection of our protagonist’s plea for mercy or restraint. And there was something which she could use, some knowledge which she could throw in his face. I think she did use that knowledge. I think it was Venetia Aldridge who posted Marcus Ulrick’s letter. Letters at prep schools are invariably censored. How else could he get it out unless he gave it to Venetia to post on her way to school?”

Ulrick said: “We are, of course, devising fiction, inventing a plot. This isn’t a confession. There will be no confession and no admission of anything that is said between us. That is an ingenious sophistication of our plot. Let us assume that it is true. What then?”

Dalgliesh said: “I think it’s your turn now.”

“My turn to continue this interesting fabrication. So let us suppose that all the suppressed emotions of an essentially private man come together. Long years of guilt, disgust with himself, anger that this woman whose family have already harmed his so irrevocably should be planning more destruction. The paper-knife was on the desk. She had moved to the door, a file in her hand to replace in the cabinet. It was a way of saying that she had work to do, that the interview was over. He seized the dagger, rushed at her and struck. It must, I think, have been an amazement to him that he was capable of the deed, that the dagger went in so cleanly, so easily, that he had actually killed a human being. Astonishment rather than horror or fear would have been the first emotion.

“After that I think he would have moved quite quickly, dragging the body across and arranging it in her swivel chair. I remember reading somewhere that this attempt to make the body look normal, even comfortable, is typical of killers who didn’t intend their deed. He decided to leave the room unlocked, with the key still in place. That way it would be assumed that the killing was the work of an intruder. Who would be able to prove otherwise? The wound, to his relief, did not bleed, and the dagger, when he withdrew it, was remarkably clean. But even he knew that it would be tested for prints. He extracted with care the middle portion of the evening paper to wrap the dagger, took the weapon downstairs to the basement cloakroom, washed it thoroughly, then wound a length of toilet tissue round the handle. He tore up the newspaper and flushed the pieces down the lavatory bowl. He then returned to his own room and turned off the gas fire. Does this recital, so far, seem to you a convincing hypothesis, Commander?”

“It’s what I believe happened, yes.”

“Our putative Desmond is happily ignorant of the minutiae of the criminal law but he does know that malefactors find it convenient to supply the police with an alibi. For a man without an accomplice and one who lives alone this presented a difficulty. He decides to go at once to Rules in Maiden Lane, a short walk only, leaving his briefcase in his room. Mrs. Carpenter, who usually cleans his room, must not be allowed a sight of it, so he pushes it into the bottom drawer of his desk. His plan is to say that he left Chambers at seven-fifteen, not just after eight, and went home first to wash and leave his case. He realized that there would be a difficulty next morning, but the carrying of a raincoat over his arm and a more hurried entry than usual should deal with that little problem. I think he was rather pleased with his alibi. It was, of course, important to make sure that Pawlet Court was empty before he left the shelter of the doorway of Number Eight. There was no problem about his non-arrival home until after dinner. A neighbour if questioned might be able to attest that he came home at the usual time, but not that he didn’t. He dropped the dagger in Valerie Caldwell’s filing cabinet, scrunching the toilet tissue in his pocket for disposal in the first rubbish bin he found, and he remembered not to set the alarm system. But he made one mistake. Criminals usually do, I believe. Under stress, it is difficult to think of everything. On leaving, perhaps from long habit, he double-locked the front door. It would, of course, have been wiser to have left it open, thus casting suspicion on an outsider rather than on members of Chambers. The subsequent furore has, however, had its interest to a student of human nature. His own indignation and disgust on viewing the body next morning were unfeigned and, presumably, convincing. He did not place the full-bottomed wig on her head, nor did he waste his own blood.”

Dalgliesh said: “That was Janet Carpenter.”

“I thought it might be. So, Commander, we have devised a plausible solution to your problem. What a pity for you that it is unprovable. There isn’t a single piece of forensic evidence to link our protagonist with the crime. It’s much more likely that Janet Carpenter stabbed Miss Aldridge before decorating her with the wig, symbol of her profession, and the blood, which metaphorically she had shed. I am told she has confessed only to the desecrations, but could a woman like Janet Carpenter ever have brought herself to confess to murder? And if not Carpenter, why Desmond? How much more likely that someone from outside Chambers had gained entry and killed out of revenge or hatred. More likely, even, that it was Ashe. Ashe had an alibi, but alibis are meant to be broken. And Ashe, like Carpenter, is dead.

“You have nothing to reproach yourself with, Commander. Console yourself with the thought that all human justice is necessarily imperfect and that it is better for a useful man to continue to be useful than to spend years in gaol. But it wouldn’t happen, would it? The DPP would never allow so flimsy a case to be brought. And if it were brought, it wouldn’t need a Venetia Aldridge to defend it successfully. You are used to success, of course. Failure, even partial failure, must be galling, but perhaps salutary. It is good for us to be reminded from time to time that our system of law is human and, therefore, fallible and that the most we can hope to achieve is a certain justice. And now, if you’ll forgive me, I have this Opinion to write.”

They parted without another word. Making his way upstairs, Dalgliesh left his keys to Chambers with Harry Naughton, who came to show him out. As he walked across the court, Dalgliesh saw that Hubert Langton was just ahead of him. The Head of Chambers was walking without a stick but with the shuffling gait of an old man. He heard Dalgliesh’s footsteps, paused and seemed about to look back. Then, quickening his step, he walked resolutely on. Dalgliesh thought: He doesn’t want to speak. He doesn’t even want to see me. Does he know? He slackened his pace to let Langton get ahead, then slowly followed. Carefully distanced, they made their way through the gas-lit court, then down Middle Temple Lane towards the river.

P.D. James was awarded the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1999. Like Agatha Christie, she created an urbane male detective with an interesting dose of neuroses and affectations. Adam Dalgliesh (named for one of her teachers) writes poetry, mournfully misses his deceased wife and child, and seems never to fully connect with romantic partners or colleagues. In a P.D. James mystery, the minor figures are as interesting as the major suspects. And when she probes the psychological and sometimes warped depths of her characters, even the innocent reveal dark interior terrains of the heart and mind. James’s worked from 1968 to 1979 as principal administrative assistant in London’s police and criminal policy departments. She became a full-time writer after retiring in 1979. By that time, she had produced seven successful novels. A Certain Justice was produced as an episode of Masterpiece Theater starring Roy Marsden as Adam Dalgliesh.