The Private Patient by P D James

Author:P D James
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780571242450
Publisher: London : Faber and Faber, 2008.
Published: 2010-03-24T18:30:00+00:00

BOOK THREE

16–18 December London, Dorset, Midlands, Dorset

1

Dalgliesh and Kate left Stoke Cheverell before six o’clock, an early start planned partly because of Dalgliesh’s strong dislike of getting tangled in the heavy morning traffic, but also because he needed the extra time in London. There were papers on which he had been working to be delivered to the Yard, a confidential draft report requiring his comments to be collected, and a note to be left on his secretary’s desk. This done, he and Kate drove in silence through the almost empty streets.

For Dalgliesh, as for many, the early hours of Sunday morning in the City held a particular appeal. For five weekdays, the air pulsates with energy so that one can believe that its great wealth is being physically hammered out with sweat and exhaustion in some underground engine room. By Friday afternoon, the wheels slowly stop spinning, and to watch the City toilers swarm in their thousands over the Thames bridges to their railway termini is to see this mass exodus less as a matter of will than of obedience to some centuries-old compulsion. By early Sunday morning, the City, so far from settling itself for a deeper sleep, lies silently expectant, awaiting the visitation of a ghostly army, summoned by bells to worship old gods in their carefully preserved shrines and to walk down quiet, remembered streets. Even the river seems to flow more slowly.

They found a parking space some hundred yards from Absolution Alley; Dalgliesh gave a final glance at the map and took his murder bag from the car and they set off eastwards. The narrow cobbled entrance under a stone arch, discordantly ornate for such a narrow opening, would have been easy to miss. The paved courtyard, lit by two wallmounted lamps, which merely illumined a Dickensian gloom, was small, with a centre plinth supporting an age-crumbled statue, possibly of antiquated religious significance but now no more than a shapeless mass of stone. Number 8was on the eastern side, the door painted a green so dark that it looked almost black and with an iron knocker in the shape of an owl. Next to number 8was a shop which sold old prints, with a wooden display tray outside, now empty. A second building was obviously a select employment agency but gave no sign of the type of workers it hoped to attract. Other doors bore small polished plaques with unfamiliar names. The silence was absolute.

The door had been fitted with two security locks, but there was no problem in selecting the right keys from Miss Gradwyn’s bunch, and the door opened easily. Dalgliesh put out his hand and found the light switch. They entered a small room, oak-panelled and with an ornate plaster ceiling incorporating the date: 1684. A mullioned window at the rear gave a view of a paved patio with room for little more than a leaf-denuded tree in an immense terra-cotta pot. There was a row of coat hooks to the right with a shelf beneath for shoes, and on the left a rectangular oak table.

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