The Murder Room by P. D. James Page B

museum, forced by his employer’s whim to produce exactly an eighteenth-century replica for the main house, had indulged his preference when designing the cottage. Situated as it was, at the back of the museum and out of sight, his client may not have been greatly troubled that it was discordant. It looked like a picture from a child’s storybook with its two ground-floor bay windows on each side of a jutting porch, the two plain windows under a pantile roof, its neat front garden with the paved stone path leading to the front door and a lawn each side bound by a low privet hedge. There was an oblong, slightly raised bed in the middle of each lawn and here Tally Clutton had planted her usual white cyclamen and purple and white winter pansies.
    As he approached the gate of the garden, Tally appeared from among the trees. She was wearing the old mackintosh that she usually donned for gardening and carrying a wooden basket and holding a trowel. She had told him, although he couldn’t remember when, that she was sixty-four, but she looked younger. Her face, the skin a little roughened, was beginning to show the clefts and lines of age, but it was a good face, keen-eyed behind the spectacles, a calm face. She was a contented woman, but not, thank God, given to that resolute and desperate cheerfulness with which some of the ageing attempted to defy the attrition of the years.
    Whenever he re-entered the museum grounds after walking on the Heath he would call at the cottage to see if Tally was at home. If it were the morning there would be coffee and in the afternoon there was tea and fruit cake. This routine had begun some three years earlier when he had been caught in a heavy storm without an umbrella and had arrived with soaking jacket and sodden trousers clinging to his legs. She had seen him from the window and had come out, offering him a chance to dry his clothes and have a warm drink. Her anxiety at his appearance had overcome any shyness she must have felt and he remembered gratefully the warmth of the imitation coal fire and the hot coffee laced with a little whisky which she had provided. But she hadn’t repeated the invitation to come in, and he sensed that she was anxious that he should not think she was lonely for company or somehow imposing on him an obligation. It was always he who knocked or called out, but he had no doubt that she welcomed his visits.
    Now, waiting for her, he said, “Am I too late for coffee?”
    â€œOf course not, Mr. Calder-Hale. I’ve just been planting daffodil bulbs between the showers. I think they look better under the trees. I’ve tried them in the middle beds but they look so depressing after the flowers have died. Mrs. Faraday says that we must leave the leaves until they’re absolutely yellow and can be pulled out or we won’t get flowers next year. But that takes so long.”
    He followed her into the porch, helped her off with the raincoat and waited while she sat on the narrow bench, tugged off her Wellington boots and put on her house slippers. Then he followed her down the narrow hall and into the sitting-room.
    Switching on the fire, she said, “Your trousers look rather damp. Better sit here and dry off. I won’t be long with the coffee.”
    He waited, resting his head against the high back of the chair and stretching out his legs to the heat. He had overestimated his strength and the walk had been too long. And now his tiredness was almost pleasurable. This room was one of the few, apart from his own office, where he could sit totally without strain. And how pleasant she had made it. It was unostentatiously comfortable without being cluttered, over-prettified or self-consciously feminine. The fireplace was the original Victorian with a blue Delft–tiled surround and an ornamental iron hood. The leather chair in which he rested, with its high-buttoned back and comfortable armrests, was just right for his height. Opposite