The Murder Room by P. D. James Page A

satisfactorily explain he saw the history as a justification for his life.
    If the museum closed before the book was finished, it would be the end. He thought he knew the minds of the three trustees, and the knowledge was bitter. Marcus Dupayne was looking for employment that would confer prestige and relieve the boredom of retirement. If the man had been more successful, had achieved his K, the City directorships, the official commissions and committees, would be waiting. Calder-Hale wondered what had gone wrong. Probably nothing which Dupayne could have prevented; a change of government, a new Secretary of State’s preferences, a change in the pecking order. Who in the end got the top job was often a matter of luck.
    He was less certain why Caroline Dupayne wanted the museum to continue. Preserving the family name probably had something to do with it. Then there was her use of the flat which got her away from the school. And she would always oppose Neville. As long as he could remember the siblings had been antagonistic. Knowing nothing of their childhood, he could only guess at the roots of this mutual irritation. It was exacerbated by their attitudes to each other’s job. Neville made no secret of his contempt for everything Swathling’s stood for; his sister openly voiced her disparagement of psychiatry. “It isn’t even a scientific discipline, just the last resort of the desperate or the indulgence of fashionable neuroses. You can’t even describe the difference between mind and brain in any way which makes sense. You’ve probably done more harm in the last fifty years than any other branch of medicine and you can only help patients today because the neuroscientists and the drug companies have given you the tools. Without their little tablets you would be back where you were twenty years ago.”
    There would be no consensus between Neville and Caroline Dupayne about the future of the museum and he thought he knew whose will would be the stronger. Not that they would do much of the work of closing down the place. If the new tenant wanted quick possession, it would be a formidable task undertaken against time, fraught with arguments and financial complications. He was the curator; he would be expected to bear most of the brunt. It would be the end of any hope of finishing the history.
    England had rejoiced in a beautiful October more typical of spring’s tender vicissitudes than of the year’s slow decline into this multicoloured decrepitude. Now suddenly the sky, which had been an expanse of clear azure blue, was darkened by a rolling cloud as grimy as factory smoke. The first drops of rain fell and he had hardly time to push open his umbrella before he was deluged by a squall. It felt as if the accumulated weight of the cloud’s precarious burden had emptied itself over his head. There was a clump of trees within yards and he took refuge under a horse chestnut, prepared to wait patiently for the sky to clear. Above him the dark sinews of the tree were becoming visible among the yellowing leaves and, looking up, he felt the slow drops falling on his face. He wondered why it was pleasurable to feel these small erratic splashes on skin already drying from the rain’s first assault. Perhaps it was no more than the comfort of knowing that he could still take pleasure in the unsolicited benisons of existence. The more intense, the grosser, the urgent physicalities had long lost their edge. Now that appetite had become fastidious and sex rarely urgent, a relief he could provide for himself, at least he could still relish the fall of a raindrop on his cheek.
    And now Tally Clutton’s cottage came into view. He had paced up this narrow path from the Heath innumerable times during the last four years but always he came upon the cottage with a shock of surprise. It looked comfortably at home among the fringe of trees, and yet it was an anachronism. Perhaps the architect of the