A Taste for Death by P. D. James Read Free Book Online Page B

Dalgliesh's
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    mind. A thin wedge of what looked like mud caked be-tween the heel and the sole of the left shoe; the pattern of blood stiffening the fine fawn cashmere of the sweater; the half-open mouth fixed in a rictus between a smile and a sneer; the dead eyes seeming as he watched to shrink into their sockets; the left hand with its long pale fingers, curved and delicate as a girl's; the palm of the right hand thick with blood. But the whole picture struck him as wrong, and he knew why. Berowne couldn't both have held the razor in his right hand and clutched at the blanket as he fell. But if he had first dropped the razor, why should it be lying on top of the blanket and so conveniently close to his hand as if it had slipped from the opening fingers? And why should the palm be so thickly clotted, almost as if another's hand had lifted it and smeared it into the blood at the throat? If Berowne himself had wielded the razor, surely the palm which had clutched it would have been les bloodied.
    He was aware of a small noise at his side and looked round to see Detective Inspector Kate Miskin looking, not at the corpse, but at him. She quickly turned her eyes away but not before he had detected, to his discomfort, ;
    look &grave, almost maternal solicitude. He said roughly: 'Well, Inspector?'
    'It looks obvious, sir, murder followed by suicide. The classical pattern of self-inflicted wounds - three cuts, two tentative, the third cutting through the trachea.' She added:
    'It could be used as an illustration in a textbook of
    forensic medicine.'
    He said:
    'There's no difficulty in recognizing the obvious. One should be slower to believe it. I want you to break the news to his family. The address is 62 Campden Hill Square. There is a wife and an elderly mother, Lady Ursula Berowne, and a housekeeper of sorts. Use your discretion about which is best able to take it. And take a DC. When the news breaks they may be pestered and need protection.'
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    'Yes, sir.' She showed scene. She knew. routine chore, th she was the only woman's job. S cretion, even wi enough practice still be a traitor she spoke the for an eyelid, the unwise word, for house in Campd all.
    resentment at being ordered from the lat the job of breaking the news wasn't a
    she hadn't been chosen merely because vOnlan in his team and he saw this as a Wtuld break the news with tact, dis-CCmpassion. God knew she had had ten years of policing. But she would
    grief, watching and listening, even as Vords of condolence, for the flicker of ng of hands and face muscles, for the ny ain that for someone in that waiting t HilSquare this might not be news at
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    Before he concehl Dalgliesh always surroundings to the scene of mur but he recognize, a psychological plore a country before, with a open the door discovery to the remaining minut print officers, the
    atel on the actual scene of the crime, kecl to make a cursory survey of the
    entate himself, and, as it were, to set r. 'he exercise had its practical value,
    thtt, in some obscure way, it fulfilled ed, just as in boyhood he would ex arch by first walking slowly round it )ri of awe and excitement, pushing
    Ieginning his planned progress of trtl mystery. And now, in these few bfore the photographer, the finger
    he had the plae relasic biologists arrived at the scene,
    passage he wontl almost to himself. Moving into the
    with the scent o1',red whether this quiet air tinctured
    Anglican smell oldncelase, candles, and the more solidly
    flowers, had heltt Uty prayer books, metal polish and
    covery, of a scer or Bcrowne also the promise of dis escapable, already set, a task inevitable and in
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    The brightly lit passage with its fior of encaustic tiles and its white painted walls ran the whole west end of the church. The Little Vestry was the first roora on the left. Next to it and with a connecting door, was a small kitchen about ten feet by eight. Then came a narrow lavatory with an old-fashioned bowl of decorated porcelain