The Private Patient by P. D. James

Author:P. D. James [P. D. James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780571246793
Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd
Published: 2008-03-24T16:00:00+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 and Dalgliesh gave a final glance at the map, 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 wall-mounted 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 eight was 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 eight was 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 terracotta 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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