The Black Tower

CHAPTER FIVE Act of Malice

WHEN HE LOOKED BACK on his first weekend in Dorset, Dalgliesh saw it as a series of pictures, so different from the later images of violence and death that he could almost believe that his life at Toynton Head had been lived on two levels and at different periods of time. These early and gentle pictures, unlike the later harsh black and white stills from some crude horror film, were suffused with colour and feeling and smell. He saw himself plunging through the sea-washed shingle of Chesil Bank, his ears loud with bird cries and the grating thunder of the tide to where Portland reared its dark rocks against the sky; climbing the great earthworks of Maiden Castle and standing, a solitary windblown figure, where four thousand years of human history were encompassed in numinous contours of moulded earth; eating a late tea in Judge Jeffrey’s lodgings in Dorchester as the mellow autumn afternoon faded into dusk; driving through the night between a falling tangle of golden bracken and high untrimmed hedgerows to where the stone-walled pub waited with lighted windows on some remote village green.

And then, late at night when there could be small risk of a visitor from Toynton Grange disturbing him, he would drive back to Hope Cottage to the familiar and welcoming smell of books and a wood fire. Somewhat to his surprise, Millicent Hammitt was faithful to her promise not to disturb him after that first visit. He soon guessed why; she was a television addict. As he sat drinking his wine and sorting Father Baddeley’s books, he could hear through the chimney breast the faint and not disagreeable sounds of her nightly entertainment; the sudden access of a half familiar advertising jingle; the antiphonal mutter of voices; the bark of gun shots; feminine screams; the blaring fanfare to the late night film.

He had a sense of living in a limbo between the old life and the new, excused by convalescence from the responsibility of immediate decision, from any exertion which he found disagreeable. And he found the thought of Toynton Grange and its inmates disagreeable. He had taken what action he could. Now he was waiting on events. Once, looking at Father Baddeley’s empty and shabby chair, he was reminded irreverently of the fabled excuse of the distinguished atheist philosopher, ushered after death to his astonishment into the presence of God.

“But Lord, you didn’t provide sufficient evidence.”

If Father Baddeley wanted him to act he would have to provide more tangible clues than a missing diary and a broken lock.

He was expecting no letters except Bill Moriarty’s reply since he had left instructions that none were to be forwarded. And he intended to collect Bill’s letter himself from the postbox. But it arrived on the Monday, at least a day earlier than he had thought possible. He had spent the morning in the cottage and hadn’t walked to the postbox until after his lunch at two-thirty when he had taken back his milk bottles for collection.

The postbox contained the one letter, a plain envelope with a W.C. postmark; the address was typed but his rank omitted. Moriarty had been careful. But as he slipped his thumb under the flap, Dalgliesh wondered if he himself had been careful enough. There was no obvious sign that the letter had been opened; the flap was intact. But the glue was suspiciously weak, and the flap slid open a little too easily under the pressure of his thumb. And the postbox was otherwise empty. Someone, probably Philby, must already have collected the Toynton Grange post. It was odd that he hadn’t delivered this letter at Hope Cottage. Perhaps he should have used a poste restante in Toynton village or Wareham. The thought that he had been careless irritated him. The truth is, he thought, that I don’t know what, if anything, I’m investigating, and I only spasmodically care. I haven’t the stomach to do the job properly or the will and courage to leave it alone. He was in the mood to find Bill’s prose style more than usually irritating.

“Nice to see your elegant handwriting again. There’s general relief here that the reports of your impending decease were exaggerated. We’re keeping the wreath contributions for a celebration party. But what are you doing anyway gum-shoeing in Dorset among such a questionable group of weirdies? If you pine for work there’s plenty here. However, here’s the gen.

“Two of your little lot have records. You know, apparently, something about Philby. Two convictions for GBH in 1967 and 1969, four for theft in 1970 and a miscellany of earlier misdemeanours. The only extraordinary thing about Philby’s criminal history is the leniency with which judges have sentenced him. Looking at his CRO I’m not altogether surprised. They probably felt that it was unjust to punish too harshly a man who was following the only career for which physiognomy and talents had fitted him. I did manage to have a word with ‘the open door’ about him. They admit his faults, but say that he is capable, given affection, of a ferocious loyalty. Watch out that he doesn’t take a fancy to you.

“Millicent Hammitt was convicted twice for shoplifting by the Cheltenham Magistrates in 1966 and 1968. In the first case there was the usual defence of menopausal difficulties, and she was fined. She was lucky to escape so easily the second time. But that was a couple of months after her husband, a retired army major, had died and the court were sympathetic. They were probably influenced too, by Wilfred Anstey’s assurances that she was coming to live with him at Toynton Grange and would be under his eye. There’s been no trouble since so I assume that Anstey’s surveillance has been effective, the local shopkeepers more accommodating, or Mrs. Hammitt more skilful in lifting the goods.

“That’s all the official gen. The rest of them are clean, at least as far as the CRO is concerned. But if you’re looking for an interesting villain—and I hardly suppose that Adam Dalgliesh is wasting his talents on Albert Philby—then may I recommend Julius Court? I got a line on him from a man I know who works at the FCO. Court is a bright grammar school boy from Southsea who entered the foreign service after university equipped with all the usual elegant appurtenances but rather short on cash. He was at the Paris Embassy in 1970 when he gave evidence in the notorious murder trial when Alain Michonnet was accused of murdering Poitaud the racing driver. You may remember the case. There was a fair amount of publicity in the English press. It was pretty clear cut, and the French police were salivating happily at the thought of nailing Michonnet. He’s the son of Theo d’Estier Michonnet who owns a chemical manufacturing plant near Marseilles and they’ve had their eyes on père and fils for quite a time. But Court gave his chum an alibi. The odd thing was that they weren’t really chums—Michonnet is aggressively heterosexual as the media make only too boringly plain—and the horrid word blackmail was hissed round the Embassy. No one believed Court’s story; but no one could shake it. My informant thinks that Court’s motive was nothing more sinister than a desire to amuse himself and to get his superiors twisting their knickers. If that was his motive he certainly succeeded. Eight months later his godfather conveniently died leaving him £30,000 and he chucked the service. He’s said to have been rather clever with his investments. Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge. Nothing is known to his discredit as they say, except, perhaps, a tendency to be a little too accommodating to his friends. But I give you the story for what it’s worth.”

Dalgliesh folded the letter and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He wondered how much, if any, of either story was known at Toynton Grange. Julius Court was unlikely to worry. His past was his own affair; he was independent of Wilfred’s suffocating hold. But Millicent Hammitt had a double weight of gratitude. Who else except Wilfred knew, he wondered, about those two discreditable and pathetic incidents? How much would she care if the story became generally known at Toynton Grange? He wished again that he had used a poste restante.

A car was approaching. He looked up. The Mercedes, driven very fast, was coming down the coast road. Julius stepped on the brakes and the car rocked to a stop, its front bumper inches from the gate. He wrenched himself out and began tugging at the gate, calling out to Dalgliesh.

“The black tower’s on fire! I saw the smoke from the coast road. Have you a rake at Hope Cottage?”

Dalgliesh put his shoulder to the gate.

“I don’t think so. There’s no garden. But I found a yard broom—a besom—in the shed.”

“Better than nothing. D’you mind coming? It may take the two of us.”

Dalgliesh slipped quickly into the car. They left the gate open. Julius drove to Hope Cottage with little regard for the car springs or his passenger’s comfort. He opened the boot while Dalgliesh ran to the yard shed. There among the paraphernalia of past occupants was the remembered besom, two empty sacks, and, surprisingly, an old shepherd’s crook. He threw them into the capacious boot. Julius had already turned the car and the engine was running. Dalgliesh got in beside him and the Mercedes leapt forward.

As they swung on to the coast road Dalgliesh asked:

“Is anyone there do you know? Anstey?”

“Could be. That’s the worry. He’s the only one who goes there now. And I can’t see otherwise how the fire started. We can get closest to the tower this way, but it means foot slogging it over the headland. I didn’t try when I first spotted the smoke. It’s no use without something to tackle the fire.”

His voice was tight, the knuckles on the wheel shone white. In the driving mirror Dalgliesh saw that the irises of his eyes were large and bright. The triangular scar above the right eye, normally almost invisible, had deepened and darkened. Above it he could see the insistent beat of the temple pulse. He glanced at the speedometer; they were doing over a hundred but the Mercedes, beautifully handled, held the narrow road easily. Suddenly the road twisted and rose and they caught a glimpse of the tower. The broken panes in the slitted windows below the cupola were belching puffballs of greyish smoke like miniature cannon fire. They tumbled merrily over the headland until the wind shook them into shredded dusters of cloud. The effect was absurd and picturesque, as innocuous as a child’s entertainment. And then the road dipped and the tower was lost to view.

The coast road, wide enough only for a single car, was bounded to the seaward by a drystone wall. Julius was sure of his way. He had swung the car to the left even before Dalgliesh noticed the narrow gap, gateless but still bounded by two rotting posts. The car bumped to a standstill in a deep hollow to the right of the entry. Dalgliesh seized the crook and sacks and Julius the broom. Thus ridiculously lumbered, they began running across the headland.

Julius had been right; this was the quickest way. But they had to do it on foot. Even had he been willing to drive over this rough, rock-strewn ground it wouldn’t have been possible. The headland was crossed with fragmented stone walls, low enough to leap over and with plenty of gaps, but none wide enough for a vehicle. The ground was deceptive. At one minute the tower seemed almost to recede, separated from them by interminable barriers of tumbling stone. Then it was upon them.

The smoke, acrid as a damp bonfire, was rolling strongly from the half-open door. Dalgliesh kicked it wide and leapt to one side as the gusts billowed out. There was an immediate roar and the tongue of flame fanged out at him. With the crook he began raking out the burning debris, some still identifiable—long dried grass and hay, rope ends, what looked like the remains of an old chair—the years of accumulated rubbish since the headland had been public land and the black tower, unlocked, used as a shepherd’s shelter or a night lodging for tramps. As he raked out the burning, malodorous clumps he could hear Julius behind him frantically beating them out. Little fires started and crawled like red tongues among the grasses.

As soon as the doorway was clear Julius rushed in stamping down the smouldering remnants of grass and hay with the two sacks. Dalgliesh could see his smoke-shrouded figure coughing and reeling. He dragged him unceremoniously out and said:

“Keep back until I’ve cleared it. I don’t want the two of you on my hands.”

“But he’s there! I know he is. He must be. Oh, God! The bloody fool!”

The last smouldering clump of grass was out now. Julius, pushing Dalgliesh aside, ran up the stone stairway which circled the walls. Dalgliesh followed. A wooden door to a middle chamber was ajar. Here there was no window, but in the smoke-filled darkness they could see the huddled sack-like figure against the far wall. He had drawn the hood of the monk’s cloak over his head and had swathed himself into its folds like a human derelict wrapped against the cold. Julius’s feverish hands got lost in its folds. Dalgliesh could hear him cursing. It took seconds before Anstey’s arms were freed and, together, they dragged him to the door and, with difficulty, supported and manoeuvred the inert body between them down the narrow stairs and into the fresh-smelling air.

They laid him prone on the grass. Dalgliesh had dropped to his knees, ready to turn him and start artificial respiration. Then Anstey slowly stretched out both arms and lay in an attitude both theatrical and vaguely blasphemous. Dalgliesh, relieved that he wouldn’t now have to fasten his mouth over Anstey’s, got to his feet. Anstey drew up his knees and began to cough convulsively in hoarse whooping gasps. He turned his face to one side, his cheek resting on the headland. The moist mouth coughing out saliva and bile, seemed to be sucking at the grass as if avid for nourishment. Dalgliesh and Court knelt and raised him between them. He said weakly:

“I’m all right. I’m all right.”

Dalgliesh asked:

“We’ve got the car on the coast road. Can you walk?”

“Yes. I’m all right, I tell you. I’m all right.”

“There’s no hurry. Better rest for a few minutes before we start.”

They lowered him against one of the large boulders and he sat there a little apart from them, still coughing spasmodically, and looking out to sea. Julius paced the cliff edge, restlessly as if fretting at the delay. The stench of the fire was blown gently from the blackened headland like the last waves of a fading pestilence.

After five minutes Dalgliesh called:

“Shall we start now?”

Together and without speaking, they raised Anstey and supported him between them across the headland and to the car.

No one spoke on the drive back to Toynton Grange. As usual, the front of the house seemed deserted, the tessellated hall was empty, unnaturally silent. But Dorothy Moxon’s sharp ears must have heard the car, perhaps from the clinical room at the front of the house. Almost immediately she appeared at the top of the stairs.

“What is it? What happened?”

Julius waited until she had come swiftly down, then said quietly:

“It’s all right. Wilfred managed to set fire to the black tower with himself inside. He isn’t hurt, just shocked. And the smoke hasn’t done his lungs any good.”

She glanced accusingly from Dalgliesh to Julius as if it were their fault, then put both her arms round Anstey in a gesture fiercely maternal and protective and began to urge him gently up the stairs, muttering encouragement and remonstration into his ear in a soft grumbling monotone which, to Dalgliesh, sounded like an endearment. Anstey, he noticed, seemed less capable of supporting himself now than he had been on the headland and they made slow progress. But when Julius came forward to help, a glance from Dorothy Moxon made him draw back. With difficulty she got Anstey into his small white-painted bedroom at the back of the house and helped him on to the narrow bed. Dalgliesh made a swift mental inventory. The room was much as he had expected. One small table and chair set under the window giving a view of the patients’ rear courtyard; a well-stocked bookcase; one rug; a crucifix over the bed; a bedside table with a simple lamp and a carafe of water. But the thick mattress bounced gently as Wilfred rolled on to it. The towel hanging beside the wash basin looked luxuriantly soft. The bedside rug, plain in design, was no strip of worn, discarded carpet. The hooded dressing gown in white towelling hanging behind the door had a look of simplicity, almost austerity; but Dalgliesh did not doubt that it was agreeably soft to the skin. This might be a cell, but it lacked none of the essential comforts.

Wilfred opened his eyes and fixed his blue gaze on Dorothy Moxon. It was interesting, Dalgliesh thought, how he managed to combine humility with authority in one look. He held out a suppliant hand.

“I want to talk to Julius and Adam, Dot dear. Just for a moment. Will you?”

She opened her mouth, clamped it shut again, and stomped out without a word, closing the door firmly behind her. Wilfred closed his eyes again and appeared mentally to withdraw himself from the scene. Julius looked down at his hands. His right palm was red and swollen and a blister had already formed over the bowl of the thumb. He said with a note of surprise:

“Funny! My hand’s burnt. I never felt it at the time. Now it’s beginning to hurt like hell.”

Dalgliesh said:

“You should get Miss Moxon to dress it. And it might be as well to let Hewson have a look at it.”

Julius took a folded handkerchief from his pocket, soaked it in cold water at the wash basin and wrapped it inexpertly round his hand.

He said:

“It can wait.”

The realization that he was in pain appeared to have soured his temper. He stood over Wilfred and said crossly:

“Now that a definite attack has been made on your life and damn nearly succeeded, I suppose you’ll act sensibly for once and send for the police.”

Wilfred did not open his eyes, he said weakly:

“I have a policeman here.”

Dalgliesh said:

“It isn’t for me. I can’t undertake an official investigation for you. Court is right, this is a matter for the local police.”

Wilfred shook his head.

“There’s nothing to tell them. I went to the black tower because there were things I needed to think over in peace. It’s the only place where I can be absolutely alone. I was smoking; you know how you all complain about my smelly old pipe. I remember knocking it out against the wall as I went up. It must have been still alight. All that dried grass and straw would have gone up at once.”

Julius said grimly:

“It did. And the outside door? I suppose you forgot to lock it after you, despite all the fuss you make about never leaving the black tower open. You’re a careless lot at Toynton Grange aren’t you? Lerner forgets to check the wheelchair brakes and Holroyd goes over the cliff. You knock out your pipe above a floor strewn with highly combustible dry straw, leave the door open to provide a draught, and bloody nearly immolate yourself.”

Anstey said:

“That’s how I prefer to believe it happened.”

Dalgliesh said quickly:

“Presumably there’s a second key to the tower. Where is it kept?”

Wilfred opened his eyes and stared into space as if patiently dissociating himself from this dual interrogation.

“Hanging on a nail on the keyboard in the business room. It was Michael’s key, the one I brought back here after his death.”

“And everyone knows where it’s hung?”

“I imagine so. All the keys are kept there and the one to the tower is distinctive.”

“How many people at Toynton Grange knew that you planned to be in the tower this afternoon?”

“All of them. I told them my plans after prayers. I always do. People have to know where to find me in an emergency. Everyone was there except Maggie and Millicent. But what you’re suggesting is ridiculous.”

“Is it?” asked Dalgliesh.

Before he could move, Julius, who was nearer the door, had slipped out. They waited in silence. It was another two minutes before he returned. He said with grim satisfaction:

“The business room is empty and the key isn’t there. That means whoever took it hasn’t yet had a chance to put it back. Incidentally, I called in on Dot on my way back. She’s lurking in her surgical hell sterilizing enough equipment for a major operation. It’s like confronting a harpy through a hiss of steam. Anyway, she claims with bad grace that she was in the business room continually from 2 p.m. until about five minutes before we got back. She can’t remember whether the tower key was on the keyboard. She didn’t notice it. I’m afraid I’ve made her suspicious, Wilfred, but it seemed important to establish some facts.”

Dalgliesh thought that the facts could have been established without direct questioning. But it was too late now to initiate more discreet enquiries and in any case he had neither the heart nor stomach to undertake them. Certainly, he had no wish to pit the claims of orthodox detection against Julius’s enthusiastic amateurism. But he asked:

“Did Miss Moxon say whether anyone had come into the business room while she was there? They may have made an attempt to replace the key.”

“According to her, the place was—untypically—like a railway station. Henry wheeled himself in shortly after two, and then went out again. No explanation. Millicent dropped in about half an hour ago looking, so she said, for you, Wilfred. Dennis arrived a few minutes later to look up an unspecified telephone number. Maggie arrived just before we did. Again, no explanation. She didn’t stay, but she did ask Dot whether she’d seen Eric. The only safe deduction from all this is that Henry couldn’t have been on the headland at the material time. But then, we know he wasn’t. Whoever started that fire had the use of a pair of very sound legs.”

His own, or someone else’s, thought Dalgliesh.

He spoke again directly to the quiet figure on the bed.

“Did you see anyone when you were in the tower, either before or after the fire started?”

Wilfred paused before replying.

“I think so.”

Seeing Julius’s face, he went on quickly:

“I’m sure I did, but only very briefly. When the fire started I was sitting at the southern window, the one overlooking the sea. I smelt smoke and went down into the middle chamber. I opened the door to the base of the tower and saw the hay smouldering and a sudden tongue of flame. I could have got out then, but I panicked. I’m terrified of fire. It isn’t a rational fear. It goes well beyond that. I suppose you’d call it a phobia. Anyway, I scrambled ignominiously back into the top room and began running from window to window looking hopelessly for help. It was then I saw—unless it was an hallucination—a figure in a brown habit slipping between that clump of boulders to the southwest.”

Julius said:

“From which he could escape unrecognized by you either to the road or down the cliffs to the beach. That’s if he were agile enough for the cliff path. What sort of figure, a man or a woman?”

“Just a figure. I only had a glimpse. I shouted but the wind was against me and he obviously didn’t hear. I never thought of it being a woman.”

“Well, think now. The hood was up, I suppose?”

“Yes. Yes it was.”

“And on a warm afternoon! Think it out for yourself, Wilfred. Incidentally, there are three brown habits hanging in the business room. I felt in the pockets for the key. That’s why I noticed. Three habits. How many have you altogether?”

“Eight of the lightweight summer ones. They’re always kept hanging in the business room. Mine has rather different buttons, but otherwise we have them in common. We’re not really particular which one we take.”

“You’re wearing yours; presumably Dennis and Philby are wearing theirs. That means two are missing.”

“Eric may be wearing one, he does occasionally. And Helen sometimes slips into one if the day is chilly. I seem to remember that one is in the sewing room being mended. And I think one was missing just before Michael died, but I can’t be sure. It may have turned up again. We don’t really keep a check on them.”

Julius said:

“So it’s practically impossible to know whether one is missing. I suppose what we ought to be doing, Dalgliesh, is to check up on them now. If she hasn’t had a chance to replace the key, presumably she’s still got the habit.”

Dalgliesh said:

“We’ve no proof that it was a woman. And why hang on to the habit? It could be discarded anywhere in Toynton Grange without suspicion.”

Anstey propped himself up and said with sudden strength:

“No, Julius, I forbid it! I won’t have people questioned and cross-examined. It was an accident.”

Julius, who seemed to be relishing his role of chief inquisitor, said:

“All right. It was an accident. You forgot to lock the door. You knocked out your pipe before it was dead and started the fire smouldering. The figure you saw was just someone from Toynton Grange taking an innocent stroll on the headland, somewhat overclad for the time of year and so immersed in the beauty of nature that he, or she, neither heard your shout, smelt the fire nor noticed the smoke. What happened then?”

“You mean, after I saw the figure? Nothing. I realized of course that I couldn’t get out of the windows and I climbed down again into the middle room. I opened the door to the bottom of the tower. The last thing I remember was a great billow of choking smoke and a sheet of flame. The smoke was suffocating me. The flames seemed to be searing my eyes. I hadn’t even time to shut the door again before I was overcome. I suppose I should have kept both doors shut and sat tight. But it isn’t easy to make sensible decisions in a state of panic.”

Dalgliesh asked:

“How many people here knew that you are abnormally afraid of fire?”

“Most of them suspect, I should think. They may not know just how obsessive and personal a fear it is, but they do know that fire worries me. I insist on all the patients sleeping on the ground floor. I’ve always worried about the sick room, and I was reluctant to let Henry have an upper room. But someone has to sleep in the main part of the house, and we must have the sick room close to the clinical room and the nurses’ bedrooms in case there’s an emergency at night. It’s sensible and prudent to fear fire in a place like this. But prudence has nothing to do with the terror I feel at the sight of smoke and flame.”

He put one hand up to his eyes and they saw that he had begun to tremble. Julius looked down at the shaking figure with almost clinical interest.

Dalgliesh said:

“I’ll get Miss Moxon.”

He had hardly turned to the door when Anstey shot out a protesting hand. They saw that the trembling had stopped. He said, looking at Julius:

“You do believe that the work I’m doing here is worthwhile?”

Dalgliesh wondered if only he had noticed a fraction of a second’s pause before Julius replied evenly:

“Of course.”

“You’re not just saying that to comfort me, you believe it?”

“I wouldn’t say it otherwise.”

“Of course not, forgive me. And you agree that the work is more important than the man?”

“That’s more difficult. I could argue that the work is the man.”

“Not here. This place is established now. It could go on without me if it had to.”

“Of course it could, if it’s adequately endowed, and if the local authorities continue to send contractual patients. But it won’t have to go on without you if you act sensibly instead of like the reluctant hero of a third-rate TV drama. It doesn’t suit you, Wilfred.”

“I’m trying to be sensible and I’m not being brave. I haven’t much physical courage you know. It’s the virtue I most regret. You two have it—no, don’t argue. I know, and I envy you for it. But I don’t really need courage for this situation. You see, I can’t believe that someone is really trying to kill me.” He turned to Dalgliesh.

“You explain, Adam. You must see what I’m getting at.”

Dalgliesh said carefully:

“It could be argued that neither of the two attempts were serious. The frayed climbing rope? It’s hardly a very certain method, and most people here must know that you wouldn’t start a climb without checking your equipment and that you certainly wouldn’t climb alone. This afternoon’s little charade? You would probably have been safe enough if you’d closed both the doors and stayed in the top room; uncomfortably hot probably, but in no real danger. The fire would have burnt itself out in time. It was opening the middle door and gasping in a lungful of smoke which nearly did for you.”

Julius said:

“But suppose the grass had burnt fiercely and the flames had caught the wood floor of the first storey? The whole of the middle of the tower would have gone up in a matter of seconds; the fire must have reached the top room. If it had, nothing could have saved you.” He turned to Dalgliesh:

“Isn’t that true?”

“Probably. That’s why you ought to tell the police. A practical joker who takes risks like that has to be taken seriously. And the next time there mightn’t be someone handy to rescue you.”

“I don’t think there will be a next time. I think I know who’s responsible. I’m not really quite as foolish as I seem. I’ll take care, I promise. I have a feeling that the person responsible won’t be here with us much longer.”

Julius said:

“You’re not immortal, Wilfred.”

“I know that, too, and I could be wrong. So I think it’s time I spoke to the Ridgewell Trust. The Colonel is overseas, visiting his homes in India, but he’s due back on the 18th. The trustees would like my answer by the end of October. It’s a question of tying-up capital for future developments. I wouldn’t hand over to them without a majority agreement from the family. I propose to hold a family council. But, if someone is really trying to frighten me into breaking my vow, then I’ll see that my work here is made indestructible, whether I’m alive or dead.”

Julius said:

“If you hand the whole property over to the Ridgewell Trust, it isn’t going to please Millicent.”

Wilfred’s face set into a mask of obstinacy. Dalgliesh was interested to see how the features changed. The gentle eyes became stern and glazed as if unwilling to see, the mouth set into an uncompromising line. And yet the whole expression was one of petulant weakness.

“Millicent sold out to me perfectly willingly and at a fair valuation. She can’t reasonably complain. If I’m driven out of here, the work goes on. What happens to me isn’t important.”

He smiled at Julius.

“You aren’t a believer, I know, so I’ll find another authority for you. How about Shakespeare? ‘Be absolute for death, and life and death shall thereby be the sweeter.’”

Julius Court’s eyes briefly met Dalgliesh’s over Wilfred’s head. The message simultaneously passed was simultaneously understood. Julius had some difficulty in controlling his mouth. At last he said dryly:

“Dalgliesh is supposed to be convalescent. He’s already practically passed out with the exertion of saving you. I may look healthy enough but I need my strength for the pursuit of my own personal pleasures. So if you are determined to hand over to the Ridgewell Trust by the end of the month, try being absolute for life, at least for the next three weeks, there’s a good chap.”

When they were outside the room Dalgliesh asked:

“Do you believe he’s in real danger?”

“I don’t know. It was probably a closer thing this afternoon than someone intended.” He added with affectionate scorn:

“Silly old pseud! Absolute for death! I thought we were about to move on to Hamlet and be reminded that the readiness is all. One thing is certain though, isn’t it? He isn’t putting on a show of courage. Either he doesn’t believe that someone at Toynton Grange has it in for him, or he thinks he knows his enemy and is confident that he can deal with him, or her. Or, of course, he started the fire himself. Wait until I’ve had this hand bandaged and then come in for a drink. You look as if you need it.”

But there were things Dalgliesh had to do. He left Julius, volubly apprehensive, to the mercies of Dorothy Moxon and walked back to Hope Cottage to collect his torch. He was thirsty, but there was no time for anything but cold water from the kitchen tap. He had left the cottage windows open but the little sitting-room, insulated by thick stone walls, was as warm and stuffy as on the day he had arrived. As he closed the door, Father Baddeley’s cassock swung against it and he caught again the musty, faintly ecclesiastical smell. The crochet chair back and arm covers were sleekly in place uncrumpled by Father Baddeley’s head and hands. Something of his personality still lingered here, although already Dalgliesh felt its presence less strongly. But there was no communication. If he wanted Father Baddeley’s counsel he would have to seek it in paths familiar but unaccustomed and to which he no longer felt that he had any right of way.

He was ridiculously tired. The cool, rather harsh-tasting water only brought him to a clearer realization of just how tired. The thought of the narrow bed upstairs, of throwing himself down upon its hardness, was almost irresistible. It was ridiculous that so comparatively little exertion could so exhaust him. And it seemed to have become insufferably hot. He drew a hand over his brow and felt the sweat, clammy cold on his fingers. Obviously he had a temperature. He had, after all, been warned by the hospital that the fever might recur. He felt a surge of anger against his doctors, against Wilfred Anstey, against himself.

It would be easy now to pack his things and get back to the London flat. It would be cool and unencumbered there high above the Thames at Queenhythe. People would leave him alone supposing him to be still in Dorset. Or he could leave a note for Anstey and drive away now; the whole of the West Country was open to him. There were a hundred better places for convalescence than this claustrophobic, self-regarding community dedicated to love and self-fulfilment through suffering, where people sent each other poison pen letters, played at childish and malicious pranks or got tired of waiting for death and hurled themselves into annihilation. And there was nothing to keep him at Toynton; he told himself so with stubborn insistence, resting his head against the coolness of the small square of glass over the sink which had obviously served Father Baddeley as a shaving mirror. It was probably some freak aftermath of illness that made him at once so indecisive and so stubbornly reluctant to leave. For someone who had made up his mind never to go back to detection, he was giving a good imitation of a man committed to his job.

He saw no one as he left the cottage and began the long trudge up the cliff. It was still a bright day on the headland with that sudden almost momentary intensification of light which comes before the setting of the autumn sun. The cushions of moss on the fragmented walls were an intense green, dazzling the eye. Each individual flower was bright as a gem, its image shimmering in the gently moving air. The tower, when at last he came up to it, glistened like ebony and seemed to shiver in the sun. He felt that if he touched it it would reel and dissolve. Its long shadow lay like a monitory finger across the headland.

Taking advantage of the light, since the torch would be more use inside the tower, he began his search. The burnt straw and blackened debris lay in untidy heaps close to the porch, but the light breeze, never absent from this peak of the headland, had already begun to shift the humps and had strewn odd strands almost to the edge of the cliff. He began by scrutinizing the ground close to the walls, then moved out in widening circles. He found nothing until he reached the clump of boulders about fifty yards to the southwest. They were a curious formation, less a natural outcrop of the headland than an artifact, as if the builder of the tower had transported to the site double the weight of stone needed and had amused himself by arranging the surplus in the form of a miniature mountain range. The stones formed a long semicircle about forty yards long, the peaks, from six to eight feet high, linked by smaller, more rounded uplands. There was adequate cover here for a man to escape undetected either to the cliff path or by way of the rapidly falling ground to the northwest to within a couple of hundred yards of the road.

It was here, behind one of the larger boulders, that Dalgliesh found what he had expected to find, a light-weight brown monk’s habit. It was tightly rolled into a bolster and wedged into the crevice between two smaller stones. There was nothing else to be seen, no discernible footprints in the firm dry turf, no tin smelling of paraffin. Somewhere he expected to find a tin. Although the straw and dry grass in the base of the tower would have burned quickly enough once a fire was well established, he doubted whether a thrown match could have been relied upon to start a blaze.

He tucked the habit under his arm. If this were a murder hunt the forensic scientists would examine it for traces of fibre, for dust, for paraffin, for any biological or chemical link with someone at Toynton Grange. But it wasn’t a murder hunt; it wasn’t even an official investigation. And even if fibres were identified on the habit which matched those from a shirt, a pair of slacks, a jacket, a dress even, of someone at Toynton Grange, what did that prove? Apparently any of the helpers had a right to array themselves in Wilfred’s curious idea of a working uniform. The fact that the habit had been abandoned, and at that point, suggested that the wearer had chosen to escape down the cliff rather than by way of the road; otherwise why not continue to rely on its camouflage? Unless, of course, the wearer were a woman and one who didn’t normally thus array herself. In that case, to be seen by chance on the headland shortly after the fire would be damning. But no one, man or woman, would choose to wear it on the cliff path. It was the quicker but the more difficult route and the habit would be a dangerously entangling garment. Certainly it would bear telltale traces of sandy earth or green stains from the seaweed-covered rocks on that difficult scramble to the beach. But perhaps that was what he was meant to believe. Had the habit, like Father Baddeley’s letter, been planted for him to discover, so neatly, so precisely placed exactly where he might have expected to find it? Why abandon it at all? Thus rolled, it was hardly an impossible burden to manage on that slippery path to the shore.

The door of the tower was still ajar. Inside the smell of the fire still lingered but half pleasantly now in the first cool of the early evening, an evocative autumnal smell of burnt grass. The lower part of the rope banister had burnt away and hung from the iron rings in scorched and tattered fragments.

He switched on his torch and began systematically to search among the blackened threads of burnt straw. He found it within minutes, a battered, soot-covered and lidless tin which could once have held cocoa. He smelt it. It could have been his imagination that a trace of paraffin still lingered.

He made his way up the stone steps carefully hugging the fire-blackened wall. He found nothing in the middle chamber and was glad to climb out of this dark, windowless and claustrophobic cell into the upper room. The contrast with the chamber below was immediate and striking. The little room was filled with light. It was only six feet wide and the domed and ribbed ceiling gave it a charming, feminine and slightly formal air. Four of the eight compass point windows were without their glass and the air streamed in, cool and scented with the sea. Because the room was so small the height of the tower was accentuated. Dalgliesh had the sensation of being suspended in a decorative pepper pot between sky and sea. The quiet was absolute, a positive peace. He could hear nothing but the ticking of his watch and the ceaseless anodyne surge of the sea. Why, he wondered, hadn’t that self-tormented Victorian Wilfred Anstey signalled his distress from one of these windows? Perhaps, by the time his will to endure had been broken by the tortures of hunger and thirst, the old man had been too weak to mount the stairs. Certainly nothing of his final terror and despair had penetrated to this miniature light-filled eyrie. Looking out of the southern window Dalgliesh could see the crinkled sea layered in azure and purple with one red triangle of sail stationary on the horizon. The other windows gave a panoramic view of the whole sunlit headland; Toynton Grange and its clutter of cottages could be identified only by the chimney of the house itself since they lay in the valley. Dalgliesh noticed too that the square of mossy turf, where Holroyd’s wheelchair had rested before that final convulsive heave towards destruction, and the narrow sunken lane were also invisible. Whatever had happened on that fateful afternoon, no one could have seen it from the black tower.

The room was simply furnished. There was a wooden table and a chair set against the seaward window, a small oak cupboard, a rush mat on the floor, a slatted old-fashioned easy chair with cushions set in the middle of the room; a wooden cross nailed to the wall. He saw that the door of the cupboard was ajar and the key in the lock. Inside he found a small and unedifying collection of paper-back pornography. Even allowing for the natural tendency—to which Dalgliesh admitted himself not immune—to be disdainful of the sexual tastes of others, this was not the pornography that he would have chosen. It was a paltry and pathetic little library of flagellation, titillation and salacity, incapable, he thought, of stimulating any emotion beyond ennui and vague disgust. True it contained Lady Chatterley’s Lover—a novel which Dalgliesh considered overrated as literature and not qualifying as pornography—but the rest was hardly respectable by any standard. Even after a gap of over twenty years, it was difficult to believe that the gentle, aesthetic and fastidious Father Baddeley had developed a taste for this pathetic trivia. And if he had, why leave the cupboard unlocked or the key where Wilfred could find it? The obvious conclusion was that the books were Anstey’s and that he had only just had time to unlock the cupboard before he smelt the fire. In the subsequent panic he had forgotten to lock away the evidence of his secret indulgence. He would probably return in some haste and confusion as soon as he was fit enough and got the opportunity. And, if this were true, it proved one thing: Anstey could not have started the fire.

Leaving the cupboard door ajar precisely as he had found it, Dalgliesh then carefully searched the floor. The rough mat of what looked like plaited hemp was torn in places and overlaid with dust. From the drag on its surface and the lie of the torn and minute filaments of fibre he deduced that Anstey had moved the table from the eastern to the southern window. He found too, what looked like traces of two different kinds of tobacco ash, but they were too small to be collected without his magnifying glass and tweezers. But, a little to the right of the eastern window and resting between the interstices of the mat, he found something which could be identified easily with the naked eye. It was a single used yellow match identical with those in the booklet by Father Baddeley’s bed, and it had been peeled down in five separate pieces to its blackened head.

The front door of Toynton Grange was, as usual, open. Dalgliesh walked swiftly and silently up the main staircase to Wilfred’s room. As he approached he could hear talking, Dot Moxon’s expostulatory and belligerent voice dominating the broken murmur of male voices. Dalgliesh went in without knocking. Three pairs of eyes regarded him with wariness and, he thought, with some resentment. Wilfred was still lying propped up in his bed. Dennis Lerner quickly turned away to look fixedly out of the window, but not before Dalgliesh had seen that his face was blotched, as if he had been crying. Dot was sitting by the side of the bed, stolid and immovable as a mother watching a sick child. Dennis muttered, as if Dalgliesh had asked for an explanation:

“Wilfred has told me what happened. It’s unbelievable.”

Wilfred spoke with a mulish obstinacy which only emphasized his satisfaction at not being believed.

“It happened, and it was an accident.”

Dennis was beginning “How could …” when Dalgliesh interrupted by laying the rolled habit on the foot of the bed. He said:

“I found this among the boulders by the black tower. If you hand it over to the police it may tell them something.”

“I’m not going to the police and I forbid anyone here—anyone—to go on my behalf.”

Dalgliesh said calmly:

“Don’t worry; I’ve no intention of wasting their time. Given your determination to keep them out of it, they’d probably suspect that you lit the fire yourself. Did you?”

Wilfred cut swiftly into Dennis’s gasp of incredulity and Dot’s outraged protest.

“No, Dot, it’s perfectly reasonable that Adam Dalgliesh should think as he does. He has been professionally trained in suspicion and scepticism. As it happens, I didn’t attempt to burn myself to death. One family suicide in the black tower is enough. But I think I know who did light the fire and I shall deal with that person in my own time and in my own way. In the meantime nothing is to be said to the family, nothing. Thank God I can be sure of one thing, none of them can have had a hand in this. Now that I’m assured of that I shall know what to do. And now if you would all be kind enough to leave …”

Dalgliesh didn’t wait to see if the others proposed to obey. He contented himself with one final word from the door.

“If you’re thinking of private vengeance, then forget it. If you can’t, or daren’t, act within the law, then don’t act at all.”

Anstey smiled his sweet infuriating smile.

“Vengeance, Commander? Vengeance? That word has no place in our philosophy at Toynton Grange.”

Dalgliesh saw and heard no one as he passed again through the main hall. The house might have been an empty shell. After a second’s thought he walked briskly over the headland to Charity Cottage. The headland was deserted except for a solitary figure making its way down the slope from the cliff; Julius carrying what looked like a bottle in either hand. He held them aloft in a half pugilistic, half celebratory gesture. Dalgliesh lifted his hand in a brief salute and, turning, made his way up the stone path to the Hewsons’ cottage.

The door was open and at first he heard no sign of life. He knocked, and getting no reply, stepped inside. Charity Cottage, standing on its own, was larger than the other two and the stone sitting room, bathed now in sunshine from its two windows, was agreeably proportioned. But it looked dirty and unkempt, reflecting in its untidiness Maggie’s dissatisfied and restless nature. His first impression was that she had proclaimed her intention that their stay would be brief by not bothering to unpack. The few items of furniture looked as if they still stood where the whim of the removal men had first deposited them. A grubby sofa faced the large television screen which dominated the room. Eric’s meagre medical library was stacked flat on the shelves of the bookcase, which held also a miscellany of crockery, ornaments, records and crushed shoes. A standard lamp of repellent design was without its shade. Two pictures were propped with their faces against the wall, their cords hanging knotted and broken. There was a square table set in the middle of the room bearing what looked like the remains of a late lunch; a torn packet of water biscuits spilling crumbs; a lump of cheese on a chipped plate; butter oozing from its greasy wrapping; a topless bottle of tomato ketchup with the sauce congealed round the lip. Two bloated flies buzzed their intricate convolutions above the debris.

From the kitchen came the rush of water and the roar of a gas boiler. Eric and Maggie were washing up. Suddenly the boiler was turned off and he heard Maggie’s voice:

“You’re so bloody weak! You let them all use you. If you are poking that supercilious bitch—and don’t think I care a damn either way—it’s only because you can’t say no to her. You don’t really want her any more than you want me.”

Eric’s reply was a low mutter. There was a crash of crockery. Then Maggie’s voice rose again:

“For Christ’s sake, you can’t hide away here for ever! That trip to St. Saviour’s, it wasn’t as bad as you feared. No one said anything.”

This time Eric’s reply was perfectly intelligible:

“They didn’t need to. Anyway, who did we see? Just the consultant in physical medicine and that medical records officer. She knew all right and she let me see it. That’s how it’d be in general practice, if I ever got a job. They’d never let me forget it. The practice delinquent. Every female patient under sixteen tactfully diverted to one of the partners, just in case. At least Wilfred treats me like a human being. I can make a contribution. I can do my job.”

Maggie almost yelled at him:

“What kind of a job, for God’s sake?” And then both their voices were lost in the roar from the boiler and the rush of water. Then it stopped and Dalgliesh heard Maggie’s voice again, high, emphatic.

“All right! All right! All right! I’ve said I won’t tell, and I won’t. But if you keep on nagging about it, I may change my mind.”

Eric’s reply was lost but it sounded like a long expostulatory murmur. Then Maggie spoke again:

“Well, what if I did? He wasn’t a fool, you know. He could tell that something was up. And where’s the harm? He’s dead, isn’t he? Dead. Dead. Dead.”

Dalgliesh suddenly realized that he was standing stock still, straining his ears to hear as if this were an official case, his case, and every surreptitiously stolen word was a vital clue. Irritated, he almost shook himself into action. He had taken a few steps back to the doorway and had raised his fist to knock again and more loudly when Maggie, carrying a small tin tray, emerged from the kitchen with Eric at her back. She recovered quickly from her surprise and gave a shout of almost genuine laughter.

“Oh God, don’t say Wilfred has called in the Yard itself to grill me. The poor little man has got himself into a tizzy. What are you going to do, darling, warn me that anything I say will be taken down and may be given in evidence?”

The door darkened and Julius came in. He must, thought Dalgliesh, have run down the headland to arrive so quickly. Why the hurry, he wondered. Breathing heavily, Julius swung two bottles of whisky on to the table.

“A peace offering.”

“So I should think!” Maggie had become flirtatious. Her eyes brightened under the heavy lids and she slewed them from Dalgliesh to Julius as if uncertain where to bestow her favours. She spoke to Dalgliesh:

“Julius has been accusing me of attempting to roast Wilfred alive in the black tower. I know: I realize it isn’t funny. But Julius is, when he’s trying to be pompous. And honestly, it’s a nonsense. If I wanted to get my own back on St. Wilfred I could do it without pussyfooting about the black tower in drag, couldn’t I darling?”

She checked her laughter and her glance at Julius was at once minatory and conspiratorial. It provoked no response. Julius said quickly:

“I didn’t accuse you. I simply enquired with the utmost tact where you’d been since one o’clock.”

“On the beach, darling. I do go there occasionally. I know I can’t prove it, but neither can you prove that I wasn’t there.”

“That’s rather a coincidence isn’t it, your happening to walk on the beach?”

“No more a coincidence than your happening to drive along the coast road.”

“And you didn’t see anyone?”

“I told you darling, not a soul. Was I expected to? And now, Adam, it’s your turn. Are you going to charm the truth out of me in the best Metropolitan tradition?”

“Not I. This is Court’s case. That’s one of the first principles of detection, never interfere with another man’s conduct of his case.”

Julius said:

“Besides, Maggie dear, the Commander isn’t interested in our paltry concerns. Strange as it may seem, he just doesn’t care. He can’t even pretend an interest in whether Dennis hurled Victor over the cliff and I’m covering up for him. Humiliating, isn’t it?”

Maggie’s laugh was uneasy. She glanced at her husband like an inexperienced hostess who fears that the party is getting out of control.

“Don’t be silly, Julius. We know that you aren’t covering up. Why should you? What would there be in it for you?”

“How well you know me, Maggie! Nothing. But then, I might have done it out of sheer good nature.” He looked at Dalgliesh with a sly smile and added:

“I believe in being accommodating to my friends.”

Eric said suddenly and with surprising authority:

“What was it you wanted, Mr. Dalgliesh?”

“Just information. When I arrived at the cottage I found a booklet of matches by Father Baddeley’s bed advertising the Olde Tudor Barn near Wareham. I thought I might try it for dinner tonight. Did he go there often, do you know?”

Maggie laughed.

“God, no! Never I should think. It’s hardly Michael’s scene. I gave him the matches. He liked trifles like that. But the Barn’s not bad. Bob Loder took me there for lunch on my birthday and they did us quite well.”

Julius said:

“I’ll describe it. Ambience: a chain of coloured fairy lights strung round an otherwise genuine and agreeable seventeenth-century barn. First course: tinned tomato soup with a slice of tomato to add verisimilitude and colour contrast; frozen prawns in bottled sauce on a bed of limp lettuce; half a melon—ripe if you’re lucky; or the chef’s own homemade pâté fresh from the local supermarket. The rest of the menu you may imagine. It’s usually a variety of steak served with frozen vegetables and what they describe as french fried. If you must drink, stick to the red. I don’t know whether the owner makes it or merely sticks the labels on the bottles but at least it’s wine of a kind. The white is cat’s pee.”

Maggie laughed indulgently.

“Oh, don’t be such a snob darling, it’s not as bad as that. Bob and I had quite a decent meal. And, whoever bottled the wine, it had the right effect as far as I was concerned.”

Dalgliesh said:

“But it may have deteriorated. You know how it is. The chef leaves and a restaurant changes almost overnight.”

Julius laughed:

“That’s the advantage of the Olde Barn Menu. The chef can and does change fortnightly but the tinned soup is guaranteed to taste the same.”

Maggie said:

“It won’t have changed since my birthday. That was only the 11th September. I’m Virgo, darlings. Appropriate, isn’t it?”

Julius said:

“There are one or two decent places within driving distance. I can let you have a few names.”

He did so and Dalgliesh dutifully noted them at the back of his diary. But as he walked back to Hope Cottage his mind had already registered more important information.

So Maggie was on lunching terms with Bob Loder; the obliging Loder, equally ready to alter Father Baddeley’s will—or to dissuade him from altering it?—and to help Millicent cheat her brother out of half his capital from the sale of Toynton Grange. But that little ploy, had, of course, been Holroyd’s idea. Had Holroyd and Loder cooked it up between them? Maggie had told them about her luncheon date with sly satisfaction. If her husband neglected her on her birthday she wasn’t without consolation. But what of Loder? Was his interest no more than a readiness to avail himself of a complaisant and dissatisfied woman, or had he a more sinister motive for keeping in touch with what happened at Toynton Grange? And the shredded match? Dalgliesh hadn’t yet compared it with the stubs in the booklet still by Father Baddeley’s bed, but he had no doubt that one of the stubs would match. He couldn’t question Maggie further without rousing suspicion, but he didn’t need to. She couldn’t have given the booklet of matches to Father Baddeley before the afternoon of 11th September, the day before Holroyd’s death. And on the afternoon of the eleventh, Father Baddeley had visited his solicitor. He couldn’t, then, have received the booklet of matches until that evening at the earliest. And that meant that he must have been in the black tower on either the following morning or afternoon. It would be useful when opportunity offered, to have a word with Miss Willison and ask whether Father Baddeley had been at the Grange on the Wednesday morning. According to the entries in his diary it had certainly been his invariable routine to visit the Grange every morning. And that meant that he had almost certainly been in the black tower on the afternoon of the twelfth, and, possibly, sitting at the eastern window. Those drag marks on the fibre matting had looked very recent. But even from that window, he couldn’t have seen Holroyd’s chair go over the cliff; couldn’t even have watched the distant figures of Lerner and Holroyd making their way along the sunken lane to that patch of green turf. And, even if he could, what would his evidence be worth, an old man sitting alone, reading and probably dozing in the afternoon sun? It was surely ludicrous to search here for a motive for murder. But suppose Father Baddeley had known beyond doubt that he had neither dozed nor read? Then it wasn’t a question of what he had seen, but of what he had singularly failed to see.