Unnatural Causes

2

It was early evening before Dalgliesh saw Reckless alone. The Inspector had spent the afternoon interviewing his suspects and checking on Digby Seton’s movements during the past few days. He arrived at Pentlands just before six o’clock, ostensibly to ask Miss Dalgliesh again if she had seen anyone walking along the shore towards Sizewell on the previous day and whether she had any idea what could have induced Digby Seton to visit the hide. Both questions had been answered earlier when Dalgliesh and his aunt had met Reckless at the Green Man to give their formal account of the finding of the body. Jane Dalgliesh had stated that she had spent the whole of Monday evening at Pentlands and had seen no one. But then, as she had pointed out, it would be possible for Digby-or indeed, anyone else-to have walked to the hide by the sunken lane behind the sand dunes or by way of the beach, and this path for most of its length wasn’t visible from Pentlands.

“All the same,” said Reckless obstinately, “he must have come past your cottage to get into the lane. Would that really be possible without you seeing him?”

“Oh perfectly, provided he kept close in to the cliffs. There is a strip of about twenty yards between my access to the beach and the beginning of the lane when I might have glimpsed him. But I didn’t. Perhaps he wanted to avoid notice and chose his moment to slip past.”

Reckless muttered as if thinking aloud. “And that suggests a secret assignation. Well, we suspect that. He wasn’t the man to go birdwatching on his own. Besides, it must have been dusk before he set off. Miss Kedge said that he got his own tea at Seton House yesterday. She found the dirty tea things waiting for her to wash up this morning.”

“But no supper?” enquired Miss Dalgliesh.

“No supper, Miss Dalgliesh. It looks as if he died before he had his evening meal. But the PM will tell us more, of course.”

Jane Dalgliesh made her excuses and went into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Dalgliesh guessed that she thought it tactful to leave him alone with Reckless. As soon as the door closed behind her, he asked: “Who saw him last?”

“Latham and Bryce. But nearly everyone admits to having spent some time yesterday with him. Miss Kedge saw him shortly after breakfast when she went up to the house to do her chores. He has kept her on as a kind of secretary-housemaid. Making use of her rather as his half-brother did, I imagine. Then he lunched with Miss Calthrop and her niece at Rosemary Cottage and left shortly after three. He called in on Bryce on his way home to Seton House to gossip about the return of your aunt’s chopper and to try to find out what you were doing in London. That little trip seems to have aroused general interest. Latham was with Bryce at the time and the three of them were together until Seton left shortly after four.”

“What was he wearing?”

“The clothes he was found in. He could have carried his flask in his jacket, trousers or overcoat pocket. He took the coat off, of course, at Rosemary Cottage and Miss Calthrop hung it in the hall cupboard. At Bryce’s place he slung it over a chair. No one admits to seeing the flask. As I see it, any of them could have put in the poison, Kedge, Calthrop, Marley, Bryce or Latham. Any of them. And it needn’t have been yesterday.”

He did not, Dalgliesh noted, add Miss Dalgliesh’s name; but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t on the list.

Reckless went on: “I can’t make much headway, of course, until I get the PM and know what the poison was. Then we shall get moving. It shouldn’t be too difficult to prove possession. This wasn’t the kind of stuff you get prescribed on EC 10 or buy over the chemist’s counter.”

Dalgliesh thought he could guess what the poison was and where it had come from. But he said nothing. There had already been too much theorising in advance of the facts and he judged it wiser to wait for the post-mortem. But if he were right, Reckless wasn’t going to find it so easy to prove possession. Nearly everyone at Monksmere had access to this particular source. He began to feel rather sorry for the Inspector.

They sat together in silence for a minute. It wasn’t a companionable silence. Dalgliesh could sense the stress between them. He couldn’t guess what Reckless was feeling, he could only recognise with a kind of hopeless irritation his own awkwardness and dislike. He looked across at the Inspector’s face with detached interest, building up the features in his mind as he might an Identikit picture, observing the flatness of the wide cheekbones, the patch of white smooth-looking skin at each side of the mouth, the downward fold at the corners of the eyes and the little rhythmic twitch at the upper lid which was the only sign that the man had nerves. The face was uncompromising in its ordinariness, its anonymity. And yet, sitting there in that grubby raincoat, his face grey with tiredness, he still had force and personality. It might not be a personality which others found appealing. But it was there.

Suddenly Reckless, as if making up his mind to something, said harshly, “The Chief Constable wants to call in the Yard. He’s sleeping on it. But I think he’s already made up his mind. And there are those who will say it’s none too soon.”

Dalgliesh could find nothing appropriate to say to this. Reckless, still not looking at him, added: “He seems to take your view, that the two crimes are connected.”

Dalgliesh wondered whether he was being accused of trying to influence the Chief Constable. He couldn’t recall expressing this view to Reckless but it seemed to him obvious. He said so and added: “When I was in London yesterday it came to me how Maurice Seton could have been killed. It’s little more than conjecture at present and God knows how you’ll be able to prove it. But I think I know how it was done.”

Briefly he outlined his theory, morbidly sensitive to every inflection in his own voice which the Inspector might interpret as criticism or self-congratulation. His story was received in silence. Then Reckless said: “What put you on to that, Mr. Dalgliesh?”

“I’m not altogether sure. A number of small things I suppose. The terms of Seton’s will; the way he behaved at that basement table in the Cortez Club; his insistence on having one particular room whenever he stayed at the Cadaver Club; the architecture of his house even.”

Reckless said: “It’s possible, I suppose. But without a confession I’ll never prove it unless someone panics.”

“You could look for the weapon.”

“A funny kind of weapon, Mr. Dalgliesh.”

“But a weapon and a lethal one.”

Reckless drew an ordnance survey map from his pocket and spread it out on the table. Together they bent their heads over it, the Inspector’s pencil hovering above the twenty-mile radius around Monksmere.

“Here?” he asked.

“Or here. If I were the killer I’d look for deep water.”

Reckless said: “Not the sea, though. It might get washed up while we could still identify it. Not that I think it likely anyone would have connected it with the crime.”

“But you might have. And the murderer couldn’t risk that. Better get rid of it where there was every chance it wouldn’t be found, or would be found too late. Failing an old mine shaft I’d have looked for a sluice or river.”

The pencil came down and Reckless made three small crosses.

“We’ll try here first, Mr. Dalgliesh. And I hope to God you’re right. Otherwise with this second death on our hands, it’s all going to be a waste of time.”

Without another word, he folded the map and was gone.