The Canon, predictably, knew that there was and could name it.
Dalgliesh said: “Then I think, Canon, that Great Aunt Allie would have agreed that a donation in her name would be entirely appropriate.”
The Twelve Clues of Christmas
The figure who leaps from the side of the road in the darkness of a winter afternoon, frantically waving down the approaching motorist, is so much the creature of fiction that when it happened to the newly promoted Sergeant Adam Dalgliesh his first thought was that he had somehow become involved in one of those Christmas short stories written to provide a seasonal frisson for the readers of an upmarket weekly magazine. But the figure was real enough, the emergency apparently genuine.
Dalgliesh wound down the window of his MG Midget letting in a stream of cold December air, a swirl of soft snow and a male head.
“Thank God you’ve stopped! I’ve got to telephone the police. My uncle’s committed suicide. I’m from Harkerville Hall.”
“Haven’t you got a telephone?”
“If I had I wouldn’t be stopping you. It’s out of order. It often is. And now the car’s packed up.”
Adam had noticed a telephone box on the outskirts of a village he had passed less than five minutes ago. On the other hand, he was only ten minutes’ drive from his aunt’s cottage on the Suffolk coast where he was to spend Christmas. But why intrude a not particularly agreeable stranger on her privacy? He said: “I can drive you to a telephone box. I passed one just outside Wivenhaven.”
“Then hurry. It’s urgent. He’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. He’s cold and he isn’t breathing and he’s got no pulse.”
Dalgliesh was tempted to say, “In that case there’s no particular hurry,” but forbore.
The stranger’s voice was harsh and didactic, and Adam suspected that his face might be equally unprepossessing. He was, however, wearing a heavy tweed coat with collar upturned and little was visible except a long nose. Adam leaned over to open the left-hand door and he got in. He was certainly genuine enough in the sense that he was obviously labouring under some emotion, but Adam detected more anxiety and chagrin than shock or grief.
His passenger said ungraciously: “I’d better introduce myself. Helmut Harkerville, and I’m not German. My mother liked the name.”
There seemed no possible reply to this. Dalgliesh introduced himself and they drove in uncompanionable silence to the telephone box. Getting out, Harkerville said crossly: “Oh God, I’ve forgotten the money.”
Dalgliesh dug into his jacket pocket and handed over an assortment of coins, then followed him out to the telephone. The local police wouldn’t relish being called out at 4:30 on Christmas Eve, and if this was some kind of hoax he preferred not to be an active participant. On the other hand, it was right to call his aunt to warn her that he might be delayed.
The first call took some minutes. Returning, Harkerville said with annoyance: “They took it remarkably calmly. Anyone would think people in this county kill themselves routinely at Christmas.”
Dalgliesh said, “East Anglians are robust. Family members are occasionally tempted, but most manage to resist.”
Adam’s call completed, they came to the place where he had picked up his passenger. Harkerville said shortly: “There’s a right-hand turning here. It’s less than a mile to Harkerville Hall.”
Driving in silence, it occurred to Adam that he might have a responsibility beyond dropping his passenger at the front door. He was, after all, a police officer. This wasn’t his patch, but he ought to confirm that the corpse was indeed a corpse and beyond help, and to await the arrival of the local police. He put this proposition to his companion, quietly but firmly, and after a minute received a grudging acquiescence.
“Do what you like, but you’re wasting your time. He’s left a note. This is Harkerville Hall, but if you’re local you probably know it, at least by sight.”
Dalgliesh did know the hall by sight and its owner by reputation. It was a house difficult to avoid noticing. He reflected that today not even the most accommodating planning authority would have sanctioned its erection close to one of the most attractive stretches of the Suffolk coastline. In the 1870s a more indulgent system had prevailed. The then Harkerville had made his millions from dosing insomniacs, dyspeptics and the impotent with a mixture of opium, bicarbonate of soda and liquorice, and had retired to Suffolk to build his status symbol designed to impress the neighbours and inconvenience his staff. Its present owner was reputed to be equally rich, mean and reclusive.
Helmut said: “I’m down for Christmas as usual with my sister Gertrude and my brother Carl. My wife isn’t with us. Not feeling up to it. Oh, and there’s a temporary cook, Mrs. Dagworth. My uncle instructed me to advertise for her in the Lady’s Companion and bring her down with us yesterday evening. His usual cook-housekeeper and Mavis the house parlour maid go home for Christmas.”
Having put Adam into the picture by this surely unnecessary recital of domestic arrangements, he relapsed into silence.
The hall came upon them with such suddenness that Adam instinctively braked. It reared up in the headlights, looking more like an aberration of the natural world than a human habitation. The architect, if architect had indeed been employed, had begun his monstrosity as a large, square, multi-windowed house in red brick and had then, under the impulse of a perverse creative frenzy, erected a huge ornamental porch more suitable for a cathedral, thrown out four large bay windows and adorned the roof with a turret at each corner and a central dome.
It had snowed all night, but the morning had been dry and very cold. Now, however, the first flakes were thickening, beginning to obliterate the double tyre marks in the car’s headlights. Their approach was silent, and the house itself seemed deserted. Only the ground floor and an upper window showed a frail light shining through the slits of drawn curtains.
The great hall, oak-panelled and ill-lit, was cold. A cavernous fireplace contained only a two-bar electric fire, and a bunch of holly stuck behind a couple of heavy, undistinguished portraits enhanced rather than mitigated the gloom. The man who let them in and who now pushed shut the solid oak door was clearly Carl Harkerville. Like his sister, who came rushing forward, he had the Harkerville nose, bright suspicious eyes and a thin tight mouth. A second woman, standing at the edge of the group in stony disapproval, was not introduced, but was presumably the hired cook, although a thin plaster on her middle right finger suggested a certain incompetence with a knife. Her mean little mouth and dark suspicious eyes suggested that her mind was as tightly corseted as her body. Helmut’s introduction of Adam as “a sergeant of the Metropolitan Police” was received by his siblings with a wary silence, and by Mrs. Dagworth with a quickly repressed gasp. When the family preceded Adam up to the bedroom she followed.
The room, also panelled in oak, was immense. The bed was an oak four-poster with a canopy, and the dead man lay on top of the counterpane. He was wearing only his pyjamas and there was a small sprig of dry holly, extremely prickly and with shrunken berries, stuck into the top buttonhole. The Harkerville nose stuck out, pitted and scarred like a ship’s prow weathered by many voyages. The eyes were tight-closed as if by an effort of will. The gaping mouth was stuffed with what looked like Christmas pudding. His gnarled hands, the nails surprisingly long and gummed with ointment, were disposed across his stomach. On his head was a crown in red tissue paper, obviously from a cracker. The heavy bedside table held a lamp, switched on but giving a subdued light, an empty bottle of whisky, a labelled pill bottle, also empty, an open tin containing an obnoxious-smelling ointment labelled Harkerville’s Hair Restorer, a small thermos-flask, a Christmas cracker which had been pulled, and a Christmas pudding still in its basin but with a lump gouged out of the top. There was also a note.