An Unsuitable Job for a Woman Read Free

andomnipotent from Bernie’s brain, a necessary hero and mentor. It was with a shock of surprise that she had later seen a newspaper picture of Chief Superintendent Dalgliesh, a dark, sardonic face which, on her closer scrutiny, disintegrated into an ambiguity of patterned microdots, giving nothing away. Not all the wisdom Bernie so glibly recalled was the received gospel. Much, she suspected, was his own philosophy. She in turn had devised a private litany of disdain: supercilious, superior, sarcastic Super; what wisdom, she wondered, would he have to comfort Bernie now.
    The policeman had made discreet telephone calls. He now prowled around the outer office, hardly bothering to hide his puzzled contempt at the shabby second-hand furniture, the battered filing cabinet with one drawer half-open to reveal teapot and mugs, the worn linoleum. Miss Sparshott, rigid at an ancient typewriter, gazed at him with fascinated distaste. At last he said: “Well, suppose you make yourselves a nice cup of tea while I wait for the police surgeon. There is somewhere to make tea?”
    “There’s a small pantry down the corridor which we share with the other tenants on this floor. But surely you don’t need a surgeon? Bernie’s dead!”
    “He’s not officially dead until a qualified medical practitioner says so.” He paused: “It’s just a precaution.”
    Against what, Cordelia wondered—judgement, damnation, decay? The policeman went back into the inner office. She followed him and asked softly: “Couldn’t you let Miss Sparshott go? She’s from a secretarial agency and we have to pay for her by the hour. She hasn’t done any work since I arrived and I doubt whether she will now.”
    He was, she saw, a little shocked by the apparent callousness of concerning herself with so mercenary a detail whilestanding within touching-distance of Bernie’s body, but he said willingly enough: “I’ll just have a word with her, then she can go. It isn’t a nice place for a woman.”
    His tone implied that it never had been.
    Afterwards, waiting in the outer office, Cordelia answered the inevitable questions.
    “No, I don’t know whether he was married. I’ve a feeling that he was divorced; he never talked about a wife. He lived at 15 Cremona Road, SE1. He let me have a bed-sitting room there but we didn’t see much of each other.”
    “I know Cremona Road; my aunt used to live there when I was a kid—one of those streets near the Imperial War Museum.”
    The fact that he knew the road seemed to reassure and humanize him. He ruminated happily for a moment.
    “When did you last see Mr. Pryde alive?”
    “Yesterday at about five o’clock when I left work early to do some shopping.”
    “Didn’t he come home last night?”
    “I heard him moving around but I didn’t see him. I have a gas ring in my room and I usually cook there unless I know he’s out. I didn’t hear him this morning which is unusual, but I thought he might be lying in. He does that occasionally when it’s his hospital morning.”
    “Was it his hospital morning today?”
    “No, he had an appointment last Wednesday but I thought that they might have asked him to come back. He must have left the house very late last night or before I woke early this morning. I didn’t hear him.”
    It was impossible to describe the almost obsessional delicacy with which they avoided each other, trying not to intrude, preserving the other’s privacy, listening for the sound offlushing cisterns, tiptoeing to ascertain whether the kitchen or bathroom was empty. They had taken infinite trouble not to be a nuisance to each other. Living in the same small terraced house they had hardly seen each other outside the office. She wondered whether Bernie had decided to kill himself in his office so that the little house would be uncontaminated and undisturbed.
    At last the office was empty and she was alone. The police surgeon had closed his bag and departed; Bernie’s body had been