Devices and Desires by P. D. James Page B

world, could make his transitory life more agreeable, more comfortable, more free of pain. For him this was challenging enough, and if he had needed a faith to live by it would have been starkly sufficient. But sometimes, on the darkest nights, when the waves pounded the shingle like bursts of distant gunfire, both the science andthe symbol would seem to him as transitory as those drowned lives, and he would find himself wondering if this great hulk would one day yield to the sea, like the wave-smashed concrete from the last war’s defences, and like them become a broken symbol of man’s long history on this desolate coast. Or would it resist even time and the North Sea and still be standing when the final darkness fell over the planet? In his more pessimistic moments some rogue part of his mind knew this darkness to be inevitable, although he did not expect it to come in his time, maybe not even in his son’s. He would sometimes smile wryly, telling himself that he and Neil Pascoe, on different sides, would understand each other well. The only difference was that one of them had hope.

10
    Jane Dalgliesh had bought Larksoken Mill five years earlier, when she had moved from her previous home on the Suffolk coast. The mill, which was built in 1825, was a picturesque brick tower four storeys high with an octagonal dome cap and a skeleton fantail. It had been converted as a seaside home some years before Miss Dalgliesh had bought it by the addition of a flint-faced two-storey building with a large sitting room, smaller study and kitchen on the ground floor and three bedrooms, two of them with their own bathrooms, on the floor above. Dalgliesh had never asked her why she had moved to Norfolk, but he guessed that the mill’s main attraction had been its remoteness, its closeness to notable bird sanctuaries and the impressive view of headland, sky and sea from the top storey. Perhaps she had intended to restore it to working order but with increasing age hadn’t been able to summon the energy or enthusiasm to cope with the disturbance. He had inherited it as an agreeable but mildly onerous responsibility, together with her considerable fortune. The origin of that had only become plain after her death. It had been left to her by a noted amateurornithologist and eccentric with whom she had been friendly for many years. Whether the relationship had gone beyond friendship Dalgliesh would now never know. She had, apparently, spent little of the money on herself, had been a dependable benefactress of the few unusual charities of which she approved, had remembered them in her will but without egregious generosity and had left the residue of her estate to him without explanation, admonition or peculiar protestations of affection, although he had no doubt that the words “my dearly beloved nephew” meant exactly what they said. He had liked her, respected her, had always been at ease in her company, but he had never thought that he really knew her, and now he never would. He was a little surprised how much he minded.
    The only change she had made to the property was to build a garage, and after he had unloaded and put away the Jaguar, he decided to climb to the top chamber of the mill while it was still light. The bottom room, with its two huge grinding wheels of burr-granite propped against the wall and its lingering smell of flour, still held an air of mystery, of time held in abeyance, of a place bereft of its purpose and meaning, so that he never entered it without a slight sense of desolation. There were only ladders between the floors and, as he grasped the rungs, he saw again his aunt’s long, trousered legs ahead of him disappearing into the chamber above. She had used only the top room of the mill, which she had furnished simply with a small writing table and a chair facing the North Sea, a telephone and her binoculars. Entering it he could imagine her sitting there in the summer days and evenings, working on the papers