Original Sin

1

For a temporary shorthand-typist to be present at the discovery of a corpse on the first day of a new assignment, if not unique, is sufficiently rare to prevent its being regarded as an occupational hazard. Certainly Mandy Price, aged nineteen years two months, and the acknowledged star of Mrs. Crealey’s Nonesuch Secretarial Agency, set out on the morning of Tuesday 14 September for her interview at the Peverell Press with no more apprehension than she usually felt at the start of a new job, an apprehension which was never acute and was rooted less in any anxiety whether she would satisfy the expectations of the prospective employer than in whether the employer would satisfy hers. She had learned of the job the previous Friday, when she called in at the agency at six o’clock to collect her pay after a boring two-week stint with a director who regarded a secretary as a status symbol but had no idea how to use her skills, and she was ready for something new and preferably exciting, although perhaps not as exciting as it was subsequently to prove.

Mrs. Crealey, for whom Mandy had worked for the past three years, conducted her agency from a couple of rooms above a newsagent and tobacconist’s shop off the Whitechapel Road, a situation which, she was fond of pointing out to her girls and clients, was convenient both for the City and for the towering offices of Docklands. Neither had so far produced much in the way of business, but while other agencies foundered in the waves of recession Mrs. Crealey’s small and underprovisioned ship was still, if precariously, afloat. Except for the help of one of her girls when no outside work was available, she ran the agency single-handed. The outer room was her office, in which she propitiated clients, interviewed new girls and assigned the next week’s work. The inner was her personal sanctum, furnished with a divan bed on which she occasionally spent the night in defiance of the terms of the lease, a drinks cabinet and refrigerator, a cupboard which opened to reveal a minute kitchen, a large television set and two easy chairs set in front of a gas fire in which a lurid red light rotated behind artificial logs. She referred to her room as the cosy, and Mandy was one of the few girls who were admitted to its privacies.

It was probably the cosy which kept Mandy faithful to the agency, although she would never have openly admitted to a need which would have seemed to her both childish and embarrassing. Her mother had left home when she was six and she herself had been hardly able to wait for her sixteenth birthday, when she could get away from a father whose idea of parenthood had gone little further than the provision of two meals a day which she was expected to cook, and her clothes. For the last year she had rented one room in a terraced house in Stratford East, where she lived in acrimonious camaraderie with three young friends, the main cause of dispute being Mandy’s insistence that her Yamaha motor bike should be parked in the narrow hall. But it was the cosy in Whitechapel Road, the mingled smells of wine and takeaway Chinese food, the hiss of the gas fire, the two deep and battered armchairs in which she could curl up and sleep, which represented all Mandy had ever known of the comfort and security of a home.

Mrs. Crealey, sherry bottle in one hand and a scrap of jotting pad in the other, munched at her cigarette holder until she had manoeuvred it to the corner of her mouth, where, as usual, it hung in defiance of gravity, and squinted at her almost indecipherable handwriting through immense horn-rimmed spectacles.

It’s a new client, Mandy, the Peverell Press. I’ve looked them up in the publishers’ directory. They’re one of the oldest—perhaps the oldest—publishing firm in the country, founded in 1792. Their place is on the river. The Peverell Press, Innocent House, Innocent Walk, Wapping. You must have seen Innocent House if you’ve taken a boat trip to Greenwich. Looks like a bloody great Venetian palace. They do have a launch, apparently, to collect staff from Charing Cross Pier, but that’ll be no help to you, living in Stratford. It’s your side of the Thames, though, which will help with the journey; I suppose you’d better take a taxi. Mind you get them to pay before you leave.

That’s OK, I’ll use the bike.

Just as you like. They want you there on Tuesday at ten o’clock.

Mrs. Crealey was about to suggest that, with this prestigious new client, a certain formality of dress might be appropriate, but desisted. Mandy was amenable to some suggestions about work or behaviour but never about the eccentric and occasionally bizarre creations with which she expressed her essentially confident and ebullient personality.

She asked: Why Tuesday? Don’t they work Mondays?

Don’t ask me. All I know is that the girl who rang said Tuesday. Perhaps Miss Etienne can’t see you until then. She’s one of the directors and she wants to interview you personally. Miss Claudia Etienne. I’ve written it all down.

Mandy said: What’s the big deal, then? Why have I got to be interviewed by the boss?

One of the bosses. They’re particular who they get, I suppose. They asked for the best and I’m sending the best. Of course they may be looking for someone permanent, and want to try her out first. Don’t let them persuade you to stay on, Mandy, will you?

Have I ever?

Accepting a glass of sweet sherry and curling into one of the easy chairs, Mandy studied the paper. It was certainly odd to be interviewed by a prospective employer before beginning a new job, even when, as now, the client was new to the agency. The usual procedure was well understood by all parties. The harassed employer telephoned Mrs. Crealey for a temporary shorthand-typist, imploring her this time to send a girl who was literate and whose typing speed at least approximated to the standard claimed. Mrs. Crealey, promising miracles of punctuality, efficiency and conscientiousness, despatched whichever of her girls was free and could be cajoled into giving the job a try, hoping that this time the expectations of client and worker might actually coincide. Subsequent complaints were countered by Mrs. Crealey’s invariably plaintive response: I can’t understand it. She’s got the highest reports from other employers. I’m always being asked for Sharon.

The client, made to feel that the disaster was somehow his or her fault, replaced the receiver with a sigh, urged, encouraged, endured until the mutual agony was over and the permanent member of staff returned to a flattering welcome. Mrs. Crealey took her commission, more modest than was charged by most agencies, which probably accounted for her continued existence in business, and the transaction was over until the next epidemic of ’flu or the summer holidays provoked another triumph of hope over experience.

Mrs. Crealey said: You can take Monday off, Mandy, on full pay of course. And better type out your qualifications and experience. Put ‘Curriculum Vitae’ at the top, that always looks impressive.

Mandy’s curriculum vitae, and Mandy herself—despite her eccentric appearance—never failed to impress. For this she had to thank her English teacher, Mrs. Chilcroft. Mrs. Chilcroft, facing her class of recalcitrant eleven-year-olds, had said: You are going to learn to write your own language simply, accurately and with some elegance, and to speak it so that you aren’t disadvantaged the moment you open your mouths. If any of you has ambitions above marrying at sixteen and rearing children in a council flat you’ll need language. If you’ve no ambitions beyond being supported by a man or the state you’ll need it even more, if only to get the better of the local-authority Social Services department and the DSS. But learn it you will.

Mandy could never decide whether she hated or admired Mrs. Chilcroft, but under her inspired if unconventional teaching she had learned to speak English, to write, to spell and to use it confidently and with some grace. Most of the time this was an accomplishment she preferred to pretend she hadn’t achieved. She thought, although she never articulated the heresy, that there was little point in being at home in Mrs. Chilcroft’s world if she ceased to be accepted in her own. Her literacy was there to be used when necessary, a commercial and occasionally a social asset, to which Mandy added high shorthand-typing speeds and a facility with various types of word processor. Mandy knew herself to be highly employable, but remained faithful to Mrs. Crealey. Apart from the cosy there were obvious advantages in being regarded as indispensable; one could be sure of getting the pick of the jobs. Her male employers occasionally tried to persuade her to take a permanent post, some of them offering inducements which had little to do with annual increments, luncheon vouchers or generous pension contributions. Mandy remained with the Nonesuch Agency, her fidelity rooted in more than material considerations. She occasionally felt for her employer an almost adult compassion. Mrs. Crealey’s troubles principally arose from her conviction of the perfidy of men combined with an inability to do without them. Apart from this uncomfortable dichotomy, her life was dominated by a fight to retain the few girls in her stable who were employable, and her war of attrition against her ex-husband, the tax inspector, her bank manager and her office landlord. In all these traumas Mandy was ally, confidante and sympathizer. Where Mrs. Crealey’s love-life was concerned this was more from an easy goodwill than from any understanding, since to Mandy’s nineteen-year-old mind the possibility that her employer could actually wish to have sex with the elderly—some of them must be at least fifty—and unprepossessing males who occasionally haunted the office, was too bizarre to warrant serious contemplation.

After a week of almost continuous rain Tuesday promised to be a fine day with gleams of fitful sunshine shafting through the low clusters of cloud. The ride from Stratford East wasn’t long, but Mandy left plenty of time and it was only a quarter to ten when she turned off The Highway, down Garnet Street and along Wapping Wall, then right into Innocent Walk. Reducing speed to a walking pace, she bumped along a wide cobbled cul-de-sac bounded on the north by a ten-foot wall of grey brick and on the south by the three houses which comprised the Peverell Press.

At first sight she thought Innocent House disappointing. It was an imposing but unremarkable Georgian house with proportions which she knew rather than felt to be graceful, and it looked little different from the many others she had seen in London’s squares or terraces. The front door was closed and she saw no sign of activity behind the four storeys of eight-paned windows, the two lowest ones each with an elegant wrought-iron balcony. On either side was a smaller, less ostentatious house, standing a little distanced and detached like a pair of deferential poor relations. She was now opposite the first of these, number 10, although she could see no sign of numbers 1 to 9, and saw that it was separated from the main building by Innocent Passage, barred from the road by a wrought-iron gate, and obviously used as a parking space for staff cars. But now the gate was open and Mandy saw three men bringing down large cardboard cartons by a hoist from an upper floor and loading them into a small van. One of the three, a swarthy under-sized man wearing a battered bush-ranger’s hat, took it off and swept Mandy a low ironic bow. The other two glanced up from their work to regard her with obvious curiosity. Mandy, pushing up her visor, bestowed on all three of them a long discouraging stare.

The second of these smaller houses was separated from Innocent House by Innocent Lane. It was here, according to Mrs. Crealey’s instructions, that she would find the entrance. She switched off the engine, dismounted and wheeled the bike over the cobbles, looking for the most unobtrusive place in which to park. It was then that she had her first glimpse of the river, a narrow glitter of shivering water under the lightening sky. Parking the Yamaha, she took off her crash-helmet, rummaged for her hat in the side pannier and put it on, and then, with the helmet under her arm, and carrying her tote bag, she walked towards the water as if physically drawn by the strong tug of the tide, the faint evocative sea smell.

She found herself on a wide forecourt of gleaming marble bounded by a low railing in delicate wrought iron with at each corner a glass globe supported by entwined dolphins in bronze. From a gap in the middle of the railing a flight of steps led down to the river. She could hear its rhythmic slap against the stone. She walked slowly towards it in a trance of wonder as if she had never seen it before. It shimmered before her, a wide expanse of heaving sun-speckled water which, as she watched, was flicked by the strengthening breeze into a million small waves like a restless inland sea, and then, as the breeze dropped, mysteriously subsided into shining smoothness. And, turning, she saw for the first time the towering wonder of Innocent House, four storeys of coloured marble and golden stone which, as the light changed, seemed subtly to alter colour, brightening, then shading to a deeper gold. The great curved arch of the main entrance was flanked by narrow arched windows and above it were two storeys with wide balconies of carved stone fronting a row of slender marble pillars rising to trefoiled arches. The high arched windows and marble columns extended to a final storey under the parapet of a low roof. She knew none of the architectural details but she had seen houses like this before, on a boisterous ill-conducted school trip to Venice when she was thirteen. The city had left little impression on her beyond the high summer reek of the canal, which had caused the children to hold their noses and scream in simulated disgust, the overcrowded picture galleries and palaces which she was told were remarkable but which looked as if they were about to crumble into the canals. She had seen Venice when she was too young and inadequately prepared. Now, for the first time in her life, looking up at the marvel of Innocent House, she felt a belated response to that earlier experience, a mixture of awe and joy which surprised and a little frightened her.

The trance was broken by a male voice: Looking for someone?

Turning, she saw a man looking at her through the railings, as if he had risen miraculously from the river. Walking over, she saw that he was standing in the bow of a launch moored to the left of the steps. He was wearing a yachting cap set well back on a mop of black curls and his eyes were bright slits in the weatherbeaten face.

She said: I’ve come about a job. I was just looking at the river.

Oh, she’s always here, is the river. The entrance is down there. He cocked a thumb towards Innocent Lane.

Yes, I know.

To demonstrate independence of action, Mandy glanced at her watch, then turned and spent another two minutes regarding Innocent House. With a final glance at the river she made her way down Innocent Lane.

The outer door bore a notice: PEVERELL PRESS—PLEASE ENTER. She pushed it open and passed through a glass vestibule and into the reception office. To the left was a curved desk and a switchboard manned by a grey-haired, gentle-faced man who greeted her with a smile before checking her name on a list. Mandy handed him her crash-helmet and he received it into his small age-speckled hands as carefully as if it were a bomb, and for a few moments seemed uncertain what to do with it, finally leaving it on the counter.

He announced her arrival by telephone, then said: Miss Blackett will come to take you up to Miss Etienne. Perhaps you would like to take a seat.

Mandy sat and, ignoring the three daily newspapers, the literary magazines and the carefully arranged catalogues fanned out on a low table, looked about her. It must once have been an elegant room; the marble fireplace with an oil painting of the Grand Canal set in the panel above it, the delicate stuccoed ceiling and the carved cornice contrasted incongruously with the modern reception desk, the comfortable but utilitarian chairs, the large baize-covered noticeboard and the caged lift to the right of the fireplace. The walls, painted a dark rich green, bore a row of sepia portraits. Mandy supposed they were of previous Peverells and had just got to her feet to have a closer look when her escort appeared, a sturdy, rather plain woman who was presumably Miss Blackett. She greeted Mandy unsmilingly, cast a surprised and rather startled look at her hat and, without introducing herself, invited Mandy to follow her. Mandy was unworried by her lack of warmth. This was obviously the managing director’s PA, anxious to demonstrate her status. Mandy had met her kind before.

The hall made her gasp with wonder. She saw a floor of patterned marble in coloured segments from which six slim pillars rose with intricately carved capitals to an amazing painted ceiling. Ignoring Miss Blackett’s obvious impatience as she lingered on the bottom step of the staircase, Mandy unselfconsciously paused and slowly turned, eyes upwards, while above her the great coloured dome spun slowly with her; palaces, towers with their floating banners, churches, houses, bridges, the curving river plumed with the sails of high-masted ships and small cherubs with pouted lips blowing prosperous breezes in small bursts like steam from a kettle. Mandy had worked in a variety of offices, from glass towers furnished with chrome and leather and the latest electronic wonders to rooms as small as cupboards with one wooden table and an ancient typewriter, and had early learned that the office ambience was an unreliable guide to the firm’s financial standing. But never before had she seen an office building like Innocent House.

They mounted the wide double staircase without speaking. Miss Etienne’s office was on the first floor. It had obviously once been a library but the end had been partitioned to provide a small office. A serious-faced young woman, so thin she looked anorexic, was typing on a word processor and gave Mandy only a brief glance. Miss Blackett opened the interconnecting door and announced, It’s Mandy Price from the agency, Miss Claudia, then left.

The room seemed to Mandy very large after the ill-proportioned outer office and she walked across an expanse of parquet flooring towards a desk set to the right of the far window. A tall dark woman got up to receive her, shook hands and motioned her to the opposite chair.

She said: You have your curriculum vitae?

Yes, Miss Etienne.

Never before had she been asked for a CV, but Mrs. Crealey had been right; obviously one was expected. Mandy reached down to her tasselled and garishly embroidered tote bag, a trophy from last summer’s holiday in Crete, and handed over three carefully typed pages. Miss Etienne studied them and Mandy studied Miss Etienne.

She decided that she wasn’t young, certainly over thirty. Her face was sharp-boned with a pale delicate skin, the eyes shallowly set with dark, almost black, irises under heavy lids. Above them the brows had been plucked to a high arch. The short hair, brushed to a sheen, was parted on the left side, the falling strands tucked behind her right ear. The hands which rested on the CV were ringless, the fingers very long and slender, the nails unpainted.

Without looking up, she asked: Is your name Mandy or Amanda Price?

Mandy, Miss Etienne. In other circumstances Mandy would have pointed out that if her name were Amanda the CV would have said so.

Have you had any previous experience of working in a publishing house?

Only about three times during the last two years. I’ve listed the names of the firms I’ve worked for on page three of my CV.

Miss Etienne read on, then looked up, the bright luminous eyes under the curved brows studying Mandy with more interest than she had previously shown.

She said: You seem to have done very well at school, but you’ve had an extraordinary variety of jobs since. You haven’t stuck to any of them for more than a few weeks.

In three years of temping Mandy had learned to recognize and circumvent most of the machinations of the male sex, but was less assured when it came to dealing with her own. Her instinct, sharp as a ferret’s tooth, told her that Miss Etienne might need careful handling. She thought, That’s what being a temp is, you silly old cow. Here today and gone tomorrow. What she said was: That’s why I like temporary work. I want to get as wide a variety of experience as possible before I settle down to a permanent job. Once I do, I’d like to stay on and try to make a success of it.

Mandy was being less than candid. She had no intention of taking a permanent job. Temporary work, with its freedom from contracts and conditions of service, its variety, the knowledge that she wasn’t tied down, that even the worst job experience could end by the following Friday, suited her perfectly; her plans, however, lay elsewhere. Mandy was saving for the day when, with her friend Naomi, she could afford a small lock-up shop in the Portobello Road. There Naomi would fashion her jewellery and Mandy would design and make her hats, both of them rising rapidly to fame and fortune.

Miss Etienne looked again at the curriculum vitae. She said dryly: If your ambition is to find a permanent job, then make a success of it, you are certainly unique in your generation.

She handed back the curriculum vitae with a quick impatient gesture, rose to her feet and said: All right, we’ll give you a typing test. Let’s see if you’re as good as you claim. There’s a second word processor in Miss Blackett’s office, on the ground floor. That’s where you’ll be working, so you may as well do the test there. Mr. Dauntsey, our poetry editor, has a tape he wants transcribed. It’s in the little archives office. She got up and added, We’ll fetch it together. You may as well get some idea of the layout of the house.

Mandy said: Poetry? This could be tricky, typing from tape. From her experience it was difficult with modern verse to know where the lines began and ended.

Not poetry. Mr. Dauntsey is examining and reporting on the archives, recommending which files should be retained, which destroyed. The Peverell Press has been publishing since 1792. There’s some interesting material in the old files and it ought to be properly catalogued.

Mandy followed Miss Etienne down the wide curved stairs, across the hall and into the reception room. Apparently they were to use the lift and it ran only from the ground floor. It was hardly, she thought, the best way to get an idea of the layout of the house, but the comment had been promising; it looked as if the job was hers if she wanted it. And from that first view of the Thames, Mandy knew that she did want it.

The lift was small, little more than five feet square, and as they groaned upwards she was sharply aware of the tall silent figure whose arm almost brushed her own. She kept her eyes fixed on the grid of the lift but she could smell Miss Etienne’s scent, subtle and a little exotic but so faint that perhaps it wasn’t scent at all but only an expensive soap. Everything about Miss Etienne seemed to Mandy expensive, the dull sheen of the shirt which could only be silk, the double gold chain and gold stud earrings, the cardigan casually slung around her shoulders which had the fine softness of cashmere. But the physical closeness of her companion and her own heightened senses, stimulated by the novelty and excitement of Innocent House, told her something more: that Miss Etienne wasn’t at ease. It was she, Mandy, who should have been nervous. Instead she was aware that the air of the claustrophobic lift, jerking upwards with such maddening slowness, was quivering with tension.

They shuddered to a stop and Miss Etienne hauled back the double-grille gates. Mandy found herself in a narrow hall with a facing door and one on the left. The door ahead was open and she saw a large cluttered room filled from floor to ceiling with wooden shelves tightly packed with files and bundles of papers. The racks ran from the windows to the door with just enough room to walk between them. The air smelled of old paper, musty and stale. She followed Miss Etienne between the ends of the shelves and the wall and to another, smaller, door, this time closed.

Pausing, Miss Etienne said: Mr. Dauntsey works on the files in here. We call it the little archives office. He said that he’d leave the tape on the table.

It seemed to Mandy that the explanation was unnecessary and rather odd, and that Miss Etienne hesitated for a second, hand on the knob, before turning it. Then, with a sharp gesture, almost as if she expected some obstruction, she pushed the door wide open.

The stink rolled out to meet them like an evil wraith, the familiar human smell of vomit, not strong but so unexpected that Mandy instinctively recoiled. Over Miss Etienne’s shoulder her eyes took in at once a small room with an uncarpeted wooden floor, a square table to the right of the door and a single high window. Under the window was a narrow divan bed and on the bed sprawled a woman.

It had needed no smell to tell Mandy that she was looking at death. She didn’t scream; she had never screamed from fear or shock; but a giant fist mailed in ice clutched and squeezed her heart and stomach and she began shivering as violently as a child lifted from an icy sea. Neither of them spoke but, with Mandy close behind Miss Etienne, they moved with quiet almost imperceptible steps closer to the bed.

She was lying on top of a tartan rug but had taken the single pillow from beneath it to rest her head as if needing this final comfort even in the last moments of consciousness. By the bed stood a chair holding an empty wine bottle, a stained tumbler and a large screw-top jar. Beneath it a pair of brown laced shoes had been neatly laid side by side. Perhaps, thought Mandy, she had taken them off because she hadn’t wanted to soil the rug. But the rug was soiled and so was the pillow. There was a slime of vomit like the track of a giant snail gummed to the left cheek and stiffening the pillow. The woman’s eyes were half-open, the irises turned upwards, her grey hair, worn in a fringe, was hardly disarranged. She was wearing a brown high-necked jumper and a tweed skirt from which two skinny legs, oddly twisted, stuck out like sticks. Her left arm was flung outwards, almost touching the chair, the right lay across her breast. The right hand had scrabbled at the thin wool of the jumper before death, drawing it up to reveal a few inches of white vest. Beside the empty pill bottle there was a square envelope addressed in strong black handwriting.

Mandy whispered as reverently as if she were in church: Who is she?

Miss Etienne’s voice was calm. Sonia Clements. One of our senior editors.

Was I going to work for her?

Mandy knew the question was irrelevant as soon as she asked it, but Miss Etienne replied: For part of the time, yes, but not for long. She was leaving at the end of the month.

She picked up the envelope, seeming to weigh it in her hands. Mandy thought, She wants to open it but not in front of me. After a few seconds Miss Etienne said: Addressed to the coroner. It’s obvious enough what’s happened here even without this. I’m sorry you’ve had this shock, Miss Price. It was inconsiderate of her. If people wish to kill themselves they should do so in their own homes.

Mandy thought of the small terrace in Stratford East, the shared kitchen and one bathroom, her own small back room in a house in which you’d be lucky to find enough privacy to swallow the pills, let alone die of them. She made herself gaze again at the woman’s face. She felt a sudden urge to close the eyes and shut the slightly gaping mouth. So this was death, or rather this was death before the undertakers got their hands on you. Mandy had seen only one other dead person, her gran: neatly shrouded with a frill at her neck, packaged into her coffin like a doll in a gift box, curiously diminished and looking more peaceful than Gran ever had in life, the bright restless eyes closed, the over-busy hands folded in quietude at last. Suddenly grief came upon her in a torrent of pity, perhaps released by delayed shock or the sudden acute memory of the gran whom she had loved. At the first hot prick of tears she wasn’t sure whether they were for Gran or for this stranger sprawled in such defenceless ungainliness. She seldom cried but when she did her tears were unstoppable. Terrified she would disgrace herself, she fought for control and, gazing round, her eyes lit on something familiar, unfrightening, something she could cope with, an assurance that there was an ordinary world continuing outside this death-cell. On the table was a small tape recorder.

Mandy went over to it and closed her hand round it as if it were an icon. She said, Is this the tape? Is it a list? Do you want it tabulated?

Miss Etienne regarded her for a moment in silence, then she said, Yes, tabulate it. And two copies. You can use the word processor in Miss Blackett’s office.

And in that moment Mandy knew that she had the job.

2

Fifteen minutes earlier Gerard Etienne, chairman and managing director of Peverell Press, was leaving the boardroom to return to his office on the ground floor. Suddenly he stopped, stepped back into the shadows, delicate-footed as a cat, and stood watching from behind the balustrade. Below him in the hall a girl was slowly pirouetting, her eyes upwards to the ceiling. She was wearing thigh-length black boots flared at the top, a short tight fawn skirt and a velvet jacket in a dull red. One thin and delicate arm was raised to hold on her head a remarkable hat. It seemed to be made of red felt and was wide-brimmed, turned up at the front and decorated with an extraordinary array of objects: flowers, feathers, strips of satin and lace, even small fragments of glass. As she turned it flashed and gleamed and glittered. She should, he thought, have looked ridiculous, the peaked childish face half-hidden by untidy swathes of dark hair, topped by such a grotesque confection. Instead she looked enchanting. He found himself smiling, almost laughing, and was suddenly seized with a madness he hadn’t felt since he was twenty-one, the urge to rush down the wide staircase, sweep her into his arms and dance with her across the marble floor, out through the front door and to the rim of the glittering river. She had finished her slow turn and followed Miss Blackett across the hall. He stood for a moment savouring this upsurge of folly which, it seemed to him, had nothing to do with sex but the need to hold distilled a memory of youth, of early loves, of laughter, of freedom from responsibility, of sheer animal delight in the world of the senses. None of it had any part in his life now. He was still smiling as he waited until the hall was clear and then slowly descended to his office.

Ten minutes later the door opened and he recognized his sister’s footsteps. Without looking up he said: Who is the child in the hat?

The hat? For a moment she seemed not to understand, then she said: Oh, the hat. Mandy Price from the secretarial agency.

There was an odd note in her voice and he turned, giving her his full attention. He said, Claudia, what’s happened?

Sonia Clements is dead. Suicide.

Where?

Here. In the little archives office. The girl and I found her. We were fetching one of Gabriel’s tapes.

That girl found her? He paused and added, Where is she now?

I’ve told you, in the little archives office. We didn’t touch the body. Why should we?

I mean where is the child?

Next door with Blackie, working on the tape. Don’t waste your pity. She wasn’t alone and there isn’t any blood. That generation is tough. She didn’t blink an eye. All she worried about was getting the job.

You’re sure it was suicide?

Of course. She left this note. It’s open but I haven’t read it.

She handed over the envelope, then walked to the window and stood looking out. After a couple of seconds he slid out the flap and drew the paper carefully from the envelope, then read aloud.  ‘I am sorry to cause a nuisance but this seemed the best room to use. Gabriel will probably be the one to find me and he’s too familiar with death to be shocked. Now that I live alone I might not have been discovered at home until I began to stink and I find that one has the need to preserve some dignity, even in death. My affairs are in order, and I have written to my sister. I am under no obligation to give a reason for my act, but in case anyone is interested it is simply that I prefer annihilation to continued existence. It is a reasonable choice and one which we are all entitled to make.’ 

He said: Well that’s clear enough, and in her own hand. How did she do it?

With drugs and drink. There isn’t much mess, as I said.

Have you phoned the police?

The police? I haven’t had time yet. I came straight to you. And is it really necessary, Gerard? Suicide isn’t a crime. Can’t we just ring Dr. Frobisher?

He said curtly, I don’t know whether it’s necessary but it’s certainly expedient. We don’t want any doubts about this death.

Doubts? she said. Doubts? Why should there be doubts?

She had lowered her voice and now they were almost whispering. Almost imperceptibly they moved further from the partition towards the window.

He said: Gossip, then, rumours, scandal. We can phone the police from here. There’s no point in going through the switchboard. If they bring her down in the lift we can probably get her out of the building before the staff know what’s happened. There’s George of course. I suppose that the police had better come in by that door. George will have to be told to keep his mouth shut. Where is the agency girl now?

I’ve told you. Next door, in Blackie’s room, doing her typing test.

Or, more likely, describing to Blackie and anyone else who comes by how she was taken upstairs to get a tape and found a dead body.

I’ve instructed them both to say nothing until we’ve told all the staff. Gerard, if you think you can keep this quiet even for a couple of hours, forget it. There’ll be an inquest, publicity. And they’ll have to bring her down by the stairs. You can’t possibly fit a body bag on a stretcher in the lift. My God, though, this is all we needed! Coming on top of the other business, it’s going to be great for staff morale.

There was a moment’s silence in which neither moved towards the telephone. Then she looked at him and asked: When you sacked her last Wednesday, how did she take it?

She didn’t kill herself because I gave her the push. She was a rational woman, she knew she had to go. She must have known that from the day I took over here. I always made it clear that I thought we had one editor too many, that we could farm out the work to a freelance.

But she’s fifty-three. It wouldn’t have been easy for her to get another job. And she’s been here for twenty-four years.

Part-time.

Part-time but working almost full-time. This place was her life.

Claudia, that’s sentimental nonsense. She had an existence outside these walls. What the hell has that to do with it anyway? Either she was needed here or she wasn’t.

And is that how you broke it to her? No longer needed.

I wasn’t brutal, if that’s what you’re implying. I told her that I proposed to employ a freelance for some of the non-fiction editing and that her post was therefore superfluous. I said that although she didn’t legally qualify for maximum redundancy pay we would come to some financial arrangement.

Arrangement? What did she say?

She said that it wouldn’t be necessary. She would make her own arrangements.

And she has. Apparently with distalgesic and a bottle of Bulgarian cabernet. Well at least she’s saved us money but, by God, I’d rather have paid out than be faced with this. I know I ought to feel pity for her. I suppose I shall when I’ve got over the shock. Just now it isn’t easy.

Claudia, it’s pointless to reopen all those old arguments. It was necessary to sack her and I sacked her. That had nothing to do with her death. I did what had to be done in the interests of the firm and at the time you agreed. Neither you nor I can be blamed for her suicide and her death has nothing to do with the other mischief here either. He paused then said: Unless of course she was the one responsible.

She didn’t miss the sudden note of hope in his voice. So he was more worried than he would admit. She said bitterly: That would be a neat way out of our troubles, wouldn’t it? But how could she have been, Gerard? She was off sick, remember, when the Stilgoe proofs were tampered with and visiting an author in Brighton when we lost the illustrations for the Guy Fawkes book. No, she’s in the clear.

Of course. Yes, I’d forgotten. Look, I’ll ring the police now while you go round the office and explain what’s happened. That’s less dramatic than getting everyone together for a general announcement. Tell them to stay in their rooms until the body has been removed.

She said slowly: There is one thing. I think I was the last person to see her alive.

Someone had to be.

It was last night, just after seven. I was working late. I came out of the cloakroom on the first floor and saw her going up the stairs. She was carrying a bottle of wine and a glass.

You didn’t ask her what she was doing?

Of course I didn’t. She wasn’t a junior typist. For all I knew she was taking the wine to the archives room to do a spot of secret drinking. If so it was hardly my concern. I thought it odd that she was working so late, but that’s all.

Did she see you?

I don’t think so. She didn’t look round.

And no one else was about?

Not at that hour. I was the last.

Then say nothing about it. It isn’t relevant. It doesn’t help.

I did have a feeling, though, that there was something strange about her. She did look—well—furtive. She was almost scurrying.

That’s hindsight. You didn’t check on the building before you locked up?

I looked in her room. The light wasn’t on. There was nothing there, no coat, no bag. I suppose she’d locked them in her cupboard. Obviously I thought she’d left and gone home.

You can say that at the inquest, but no more. Don’t mention seeing her earlier. It might only lead the coroner to ask why you didn’t check the top of the building.

Why should I?

Exactly.

But, Gerard, if I’m asked when I saw her last …

Then lie. But for God’s sake, Claudia, lie convincingly and stick with the lie. He moved over to the desk and lifted the receiver. I suppose I’d better dial 999. It’s odd, but this is the first time in my memory that we’ve ever had the police at Innocent House.

She turned from the window and looked full at him. Let’s hope that it’s the last.

3

In the outer office Mandy and Miss Blackett sat each at her word processor, each typing, eyes fixed on the screen. Neither spoke. At first Mandy’s fingers had refused to work, trembling uncertainly over the keys as if the letters had been inexplicably transposed and the whole keyboard had become a meaningless jumble of symbols. But she clasped her hands tightly in her lap for half a minute and by an effort of will brought the shaking under control, and when she actually began typing the familiar skill took over and all was well. From time to time she glanced quickly at Miss Blackett. The woman was obviously deeply shocked. The large face, with its marsupial cheeks and small, rather obstinate mouth, was so white that Mandy feared that at any moment she would slump forward over the keyboard in a faint.

It was over half an hour since Miss Etienne and her brother had left. Within ten minutes of closing the door Miss Etienne had put her head round it and had said: I’ve asked Mrs. Demery to bring you some tea. It’s been a shock for both of you.

The tea had come within minutes, carried in by a red-haired woman in a flowered apron who had put down the tray on top of a filing cabinet with the words: I’m not supposed to talk so I won’t. No harm in telling you, though, that the police have just arrived. That’s quick work. No doubt they’ll be wanting tea now. She had then disappeared, as if aware that there was more excitement to be had outside the room than in.

Miss Blackett’s office was an ill-proportioned room, too narrow for its height, the discordancy emphasized by the splendid marble fireplace with its formal patterned frieze, the heavy mantelshelf supported by the heads of two sphinxes. The partition, wooden for the bottom three feet with paned glass above, cut across one of the narrow arched windows as well as bisecting a lozenge-shaped decoration on the ceiling. Mandy thought that, if the large room had had to be divided, it could have been done with more sensitivity to the architecture, not to mention Miss Blackett’s convenience. This way it gave the impression that she was grudged even enough space in which to work.

Another but different oddity was the long snake in striped green velvet curled between the handles of the two top drawers of the steel filing cabinets. Its bright button eyes were crowned with a minute top hat and its forked tongue in red flannel hung from a soft open mouth lined with what looked like pink silk. Mandy had seen similar snakes before; her gran had had one. They were intended to be laid along the bottom of doors to exclude draughts, or wound round the handles to keep the door ajar. But it was a ridiculous object, a kind of kid’s toy, and hardly one she had expected to see in Innocent House. She would have liked to have asked Miss Blackett about it but Miss Etienne had told them not to talk and Miss Blackett was obviously interpreting this as prohibiting all speech except about work.

The minutes passed silently. Mandy would shortly be at the end of her tape. Then Miss Blackett, looking up, said: You can stop that now. I’ll give you some dictation. Miss Etienne wanted me to test your shorthand.

She took one of the firm’s catalogues from her desk drawer, handed Mandy a notebook, moved her chair beside her and began reading in a low voice, hardly moving her almost bloodless lips. Mandy’s fingers automatically formed the familiar hieroglyphics but her mind took in few of the details of the forthcoming non-fiction list. From time to time Miss Blackett’s voice faltered and Mandy knew that she too was listening to the sounds outside. After the initial sinister silence, they could now hear footsteps, half-imagined whispering, and then louder footfalls echoing on the marble and confident masculine voices.

Miss Blackett, her eyes on the door, said tonelessly: Perhaps you’d read it back now?

Mandy read back her shorthand faultlessly. Again there was a silence. Then the door opened and Miss Etienne came in. She said: The police have arrived. They are just waiting for the police surgeon and then they’ll be taking Miss Clements away. You’d better stay here until it’s all clear. She looked at Miss Blackett. Have you finished the test?

Yes, Miss Claudia.

Mandy handed up her typed lists. Miss Etienne glanced at them dismissively and said: Right, the job is yours if you want it. Start tomorrow at nine-thirty.

4

Ten days after Sonia Clements’ suicide and exactly three weeks before the first of the Innocent House murders, Adam Dalgliesh lunched with Conrad Ackroyd at the Cadaver Club. It was at Ackroyd’s invitation, given by telephone with that conspiratorial and slightly portentous air with which all Conrad’s invitations were invested. Even a duty dinner party given to pay off outstanding social obligations promised mystery, cabals, secrets to be imparted to the privileged few. The date suggested was not really convenient and Dalgliesh rearranged his diary with some reluctance while reflecting that one of the disadvantages of advancing age was an increasing disinclination for social engagements combined with an inability to summon the wit or energy to circumvent them. The friendship between them—he supposed the word was appropriate enough; they were certainly not mere acquaintances—was based on the use each occasionally made of the other. Since both acknowledged the fact, neither could see that it needed justification or excuse. Conrad, one of the most notorious and reliable gossips in London, had often been useful to him, notably in the Berowne case. On this occasion Dalgliesh would obviously be expected to confer the benefit, but the demand in whatever form it came would probably be more irritating than onerous, the food at the Cadaver was excellent and Ackroyd, although he could be facetious, was seldom dull.

Later he was to see all the horrors that followed as emanating from that perfectly ordinary luncheon, and would find himself thinking: If this were fiction and I were a novelist, that’s where it would all begin.

The Cadaver Club is not among the most prestigious of London’s private clubs but its coterie of members find it among the most convenient. Built in the 1800s, it was originally the house of a wealthy if not particularly successful barrister who, in 1892, bequeathed it, suitably endowed, to a private club formed some five years earlier which had regularly met in his drawing-room. The club was and remains exclusively masculine, the main qualification for membership being a professional interest in murder. Now, as then, it lists among the members a few retired senior police officers, practising and retired barristers, nearly all of the most distinguished professional and amateur criminologists, crime reporters and a few eminent crime-novelists, all male and there on sufferance since the club takes the view that, where murder is concerned, fiction cannot compete with real life. The club had recently been in danger of moving from the category of eccentric to the dangerous one of fashionable, a risk which the committee had promptly countered by blackballing the next six applicants for admission. The message was received. As one disgruntled applicant complained, to be blackballed by the Garrick is embarrassing, but to be blackballed by the Cadaver is ridiculous. The club kept itself small and, by its eccentric standards, select.

Crossing Tavistock Square, in the mellow September sunshine, Dalgliesh wondered how Ackroyd qualified as a member until he recalled the book his host had written five years earlier on three notorious murderers: Hawley Harvey Crippen, Norman Thorne and Patrick Mahon. Ackroyd had sent him a signed copy and Dalgliesh, dutifully reading it, had been surprised at the careful research and the even more careful writing. Ackroyd’s thesis, not entirely original, had been that all three were innocent in the sense that none had intended to kill his victim, and Ackroyd had made a plausible, if not entirely convincing case, based on a detailed examination of the medical and forensic evidence. For Dalgliesh the main message of the book had been that men wishing to be acquitted of murder should avoid dismembering their victims, a practice for which British juries have long demonstrated their distaste.

They were to meet in the library for a sherry before luncheon and Ackroyd was already there, ensconced in one of the leather high-backed chairs. He got to his feet with surprising agility for one of his size and came towards Dalgliesh with small, rather prancing steps, looking not a day older than when they had first met.

He said: "It’s good of you to make time, Adam. I realize how busy you are now. Special adviser to the Commissioner, member of the working party on