Original Sin (41 page)

Kate protested: “But if she’d wanted a reason to disbelieve in God why go back to the nineteenth century? There are plenty of contemporary tragedies. She’d only got to look at the television or read the newspaper. She’d only got to think of Yugoslavia. Eliza Brady has been dead for over a hundred years.”

Sister Agnes said: “That is what I told her, but Sonia replied that justice had nothing to do with time. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be dominated by time. If God is eternal, then His justice is eternal. And so is His injustice.”

Kate asked: “Before your estrangement from your sister, did you often visit Innocent House?”

“Not often, but I went there occasionally. Actually there was a possibility, months before I decided that I had a vocation, that I might have worked part-time at Innocent House. Jean-Philippe Etienne was very anxious that the archives should be examined and catalogued and apparently he thought I might be a suitable person to do it. The Etiennes have always had an eye for a bargain and he probably guessed that I would work as much for interest as for money. However, Henry Peverell put a stop to that, and, of course, I understood why.”

Dalgliesh asked: “You knew Jean-Philippe Etienne?”

“I got to know all the partners reasonably well. The two old men, Jean-Philippe and Henry, seemed to be almost wilfully hanging on to a power neither seemed able or willing to exercise. Gerard Etienne was obviously the young Turk, the heir apparent. I never got on particularly well with Claudia Etienne but I liked James de Witt. De Witt is an example of a man who lives a good life without the help of religious belief. There are those who are apparently born with a deficiency of original sin. Goodness in them is hardly a merit.”

Dalgliesh said: “Surely religious belief isn’t necessary to a good life.”

“Perhaps not. Belief in religion may not influence behaviour. The practice of religion surely should.”

Kate said: “You weren’t, of course, at the last party they held. Did you go to any of the earlier parties? Were the visitors able to wander where they wanted throughout the house?”

“I only went to two of the parties. They held one in the summer and one in the winter. There was certainly nothing to prevent visitors from wandering round the house. I don’t think many people did. It is hardly courteous to take the opportunity
of a party to explore rooms which are generally held to be private. Of course, Innocent House is now mainly offices and perhaps that makes a difference. But the Innocent House parties were fairly formal affairs. The guest list was controlled and Henry Peverell greatly disliked having more than eighty people in the house at one time. Peverell Press has never gone in for the ordinary kind of literary party—too many people invited in case any of their writers are offended at being left out; overcrowded, overheated rooms with guests trying to balance plates of cold food and drink lukewarm inferior white wine while bawling at each other. The majority of guests came by water, so it was fairly easy, I imagine, to repel gatecrashers.”

There was little else to be learned. By common consent they turned at the end of the next path and retraced their steps. In silence they returned with Sister Agnes to the front door, then said their goodbyes without re-entering the convent. She looked at Dalgliesh and Kate with great intensity, holding their eyes, compelling them to a moment of concentrated attention as if by a force of will she could compel them to respect her confidence.

They had hardly turned out of the drive and were waiting at the first red traffic light when Kate’s pent-up resentment burst out.

“So that’s why the bed was there in the little archives room, why the door had a bolt and lock. My God, what a bastard! Sister Agnes was right, he did sneak up to that room like some Victorian petty despot. He did humiliate her, make use of her. I can imagine what went on up there. The man was a sadist.”

Dalgliesh said quietly: “You’ve no evidence for that, Kate.”

“Why the hell did she put up with it? She was an experienced, well-regarded editor. She could have left.”

“She was in love with him.”

“And her sister in love with God. She’s looking for peace. I didn’t get the impression that she’s found it. Even the future of the convent is at risk.”

“The founder of her religion didn’t promise it. ‘I came not to send peace but a sword.’ ” Glancing at her he saw that the text meant nothing to her. He said: “It was a useful visit. We know now why Sonia Clements died and it was nothing—or little—to do with Gerard Etienne’s treatment of her. There is apparently no one living with a motive to avenge her death. We already knew that visitors to Innocent House could wander at will through the house, but it’s useful to have Sister Agnes’s confirmation. And then there’s the interesting piece of information about the archives. According to Sister Agnes it was Henry Peverell who was anxious that she shouldn’t be given the job of working on them. It was only after his death that Jean-Philippe Etienne agreed that Gabriel Dauntsey should undertake the job.”

Kate said: “It would have been more interesting if it had been the Etiennes who wanted the archives left undisturbed. It’s obvious why Henry Peverell didn’t want Sonia Clements’ sister working up there. It would have upset his little arrangements with his mistress.”

Dalgliesh said: “That’s the obvious explanation, and like most obvious explanations it’s probably the right one. But there might be something else in the archives that Henry Peverell wanted to leave undisturbed, something he either knew or suspected was there. It’s difficult to see, even so, why that should be relevant to Gerard Etienne’s death. As you say, it would have been more interesting if it had been the Etiennes who were insisting that the archives were left undisturbed. Even so, I think we’re going to have to take a look at those papers.”

“All of them, sir?”

“If necessary, Kate. All of them.”

It was now half past nine on Sunday and Daniel and Robbins were working together at the top of Innocent House searching through the files. They were using the desk and chair in the little archives room. The method Daniel had decided upon was for both of them to work their way along the shelves, pulling out any file which looked hopeful and then taking it in to the little archives room for further investigation. It was a discouraging task since neither knew what he was looking for. Daniel had estimated that the task would take weeks with two of them working but they were making better progress than he had expected. If AD’s hunch was right and there were papers which could throw a light on Etienne’s murder someone must surely have consulted them fairly recently. This meant that the very old nineteenth-century files, many of which had obviously been untouched for a hundred years, could safely be ignored, at least for the present. There was no problem about the light; the unshaded overhead bulbs were only a few feet part. But the job was dusty, tiring and boring and he did it without hope.

Soon after half past nine he decided that enough was enough for one night. He was aware of a disinclination to go back to his Bayswater flat, a reluctance so strong that almost any alternative seemed preferable. He had spent as little time in it as possible since Fenella had departed for the States. They had bought their flat together just eighteen months ago and he had known within weeks of their living together that this commitment to a joint mortgage and a shared life had been a mistake.

She had said: “We’ll have separate rooms, of course, darling. We both need our privacy.”

Later he was to wonder whether he had actually heard the words. Not only did Fenella not need her privacy, she had no intention of allowing him his, less he thought from wilful denial than from a total lack of understanding of what the word meant. He recalled too late what should have been a salutary childhood lesson: a friend of his mother’s telling her complacently, “We’ve always respected books and learning in our home,” while her six-year-old son, unrebuked, systematically tore to pieces the pages of Daniel’s copy of
Treasure Island
. That should surely have taught him that what people believed about themselves seldom bore resemblance to how they behaved in reality. Even so, Fenella had set a record in the irreconcilability of belief and action. The flat was always crowded; friends dropped in, were fed in his kitchen, quarrelled and were reconciled on his sofa, took baths in his bathroom, made international calls on his telephone, raided his refrigerator and drank his beer. The flat was never quiet, the two of them never alone. His bedroom became their shared bedroom, largely because Fenella’s was usually temporarily occupied by a homeless chum. She drew people to her like a lighted doorway. Hers was the attraction of unbreakable good humour. She would probably have captivated his mother if he had ever allowed them to
meet, no doubt by immediately promising to convert to Judaism. Fenella was nothing if not obliging.

Her compulsive gregariousness went with an untidiness which had never ceased to amaze him during their eighteen months together and which he could never reconcile with her fussiness about small items of décor. He remembered her holding up against the sitting room wall three small prints, vertically mounted on a length of ribbon and surmounted by a bow. “Just here, darling, or another two inches to the left? What do you think?”

It scarcely seemed to matter when they had a kitchen sink full of unwashed dishes, a bathroom whose door had to be pushed open against the weight of a heap of dirty and malodorous towels, unmade beds and clothes strewn over the bedroom. With this sluttishness over domestic detail went a compulsive need to bathe and to wash her clothes. The flat was perpetually noisy with the thump and whirl of the washing machine and the hiss of the shower.

He recalled how she had announced the end of their relationship: “Darling, Terry wants me to join him in New York. Next Thursday, actually. He’s sent a first-class ticket. I didn’t think you’d mind. We haven’t been having a lot of fun together recently, have we? Don’t you think that something fundamental has gone out of the relationship? Something precious we once had has been lost. Don’t you feel that something has just drained away?”

“Apart from my savings.”

“Oh darling, don’t be mean. It’s so unlike you.”

He had asked: “What about your job? How will you work in the States? It isn’t easy getting a green card.”

“Oh, I shan’t bother about a job, not at once. Terry’s loaded. He says I can amuse myself decorating his apartment.”

Their parting had been unacrimonious. It was almost impossible, he found, to quarrel with Fenella. He was resigned, even wryly amused, to discover that this amiability went with a keener commercial sense than he had expected.

“Darling, I think you’d better buy me out at half what we paid for the flat, not half what it’s worth now. It’s gone down terribly, everything has. I’m sure you can get a higher mortgage. And if you pay me my half of what the furniture cost, I’ll leave it all for you. You must have something to sit on, sweetie.”

It seemed hardly worthwhile pointing out that he had paid for, although not chosen, most of the furniture and liked none of it. He noticed, too, that the more valuable of her small acquisitions disappeared with her and were presumably now in New York. The tat remained, and he had neither the time nor the will to dispose of it. She had left him with a crippling mortgage, a flat full of furniture he disliked, an outrageous telephone bill consisting mainly of calls to New York and a lawyer’s bill he could only hope to pay by instalments. It was the more irritating to find how much he occasionally missed her.

There was a small washroom and lavatory off the landing outside the archives room. While Robbins was washing the dirt of decades from his hands Daniel, on impulse, telephoned Wapping Police Station. Kate wasn’t there. He waited, thought for less than a second, then rang her home number.

She answered, and he said: “What are you doing?”

“Arranging papers. What about you?”

“Disarranging papers. I’m still at Innocent House. Would you care for a drink?”

She hesitated for a couple of seconds, then said: “Why not. Where do you suggest?”

“The Town of Ramsgate. It’s convenient for us both. I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

Kate parked her car at the bottom of Wapping High Street and walked the fifty yards or so to the Town of Ramsgate. As she approached, Daniel appeared from the alleyway leading to Wapping Old Stairs.

He said: “I’ve been looking at Execution Dock. D’you suppose the pirates were alive when they tied them to the piles at low tide and left them until they’d been washed by three tides?”

“I shouldn’t think so. They probably hanged them first. The eighteenth-century penal system was barbaric but not that barbaric.”

They pushed open the pub door and were received into the multicoloured glitter and Sunday-night conviviality of a London pub. The narrow seventeenth-century tavern was crowded and Daniel had to edge and push his way through the throng of regulars to get his pint and Kate’s half-pint of Charrington’s Ale. A man and woman were getting up from two seats at the end of the room close to the door into the garden and Kate quickly secured them. If Daniel had come primarily to talk rather than to drink, this was as good a place as
any. The pub was orderly but the noise level high. Against this background babble of voices and sudden guffaws of laughter they could talk with more privacy and less notice than if the bar had been empty.

He was, she sensed, in an odd mood and she wondered whether, in ringing her, he had been looking for a sparring partner rather than a drinking companion. But the call had been welcome. Alan hadn’t telephoned and, with the flat now almost in order, the temptation to ring him, to see him once more before he left, had been too strong for comfort. She was glad to be out of the flat and away from temptation.

Daniel’s temper had probably been soured by his frustrating evening in the archives. She would take her turn the next evening and probably with as little expectation of success. But if the object wrenched from Etienne’s mouth had indeed been a cassette, if this murderer had needed to tell the victim why he had been lured to his death, then the motive might well lie in the past, even in the distant past; an old evil, an imagined wrong, a hidden danger. The decision to examine the old records might be one of AD’s famous hunches but like all his hunches, it was rooted in reason.