Page 4

ONE

London, 1955

T he rain was lashing down, cold, grey rain that slicked the pavements, hammered at the windows and spat into ever-widening puddles. Rain dripped out of guttering and penetrated the brickwork. It felt as if it had rained all of May, and although June was just around the corner, there was no escaping it. Everyone was in a bad mood as they scurried along the pavements, still in their winter coats. The summer should have arrived by now, but it was as if the rain had beaten it back.

Atticus Pünd made his way down Harley Street, his hands in his pockets, drawing his trench coat closer to his body, trying to keep out the rain. It was a journey he had made several times since the shock of his diagnosis six weeks ago, and he was surprised how quickly everything had become familiar to him, even the certainty of his own death.

He had a brain tumour. Nothing could be done about it and in just a few months it would kill him. This visit to the doctor was little more than a formality. Dr Benson would examine him, ask questions about his physical well-being, his sleep, his appetite, his state of mind – and then send him home with a smile and a few words of comfort. The two of them had developed a strange rapport, something more than doctor and patient. They were partners in a process that was universal, beyond their comprehension, and one that neither of them could change.

Dr Benson’s clinic was on the ground floor of a tall, narrow building, identical to its neighbours on either side. Fifteen years ago, there would have been railings separating it from the street, but these had been removed along with all the other metal in London, repurposed for the war effort. It reminded Pünd of the times he had lived through, the world tearing itself apart, so many millions of deaths while he had languished behind the barbed wire of a Nazi concentration camp that he should not have survived. Even when Dr Benson had told him the bad news, Pünd had thought of himself as fortunate. He had never expected to live this long.

He reached the front door and rang the bell. Almost immediately, it was opened by a young woman whose face he recognised but whose name he had never learned. She was the clinic’s receptionist. She knew every patient who came to the building and remembered those who didn’t return.

‘Mr Pünd,’ she said, with a smile that suggested they were both delighted he was there. ‘What a beastly summer we’re having! Do come in.’

She showed him into the waiting room with its flock wallpaper, antique floor lamps and mahogany table on which rested the usual pile of magazines: Country Life , Punch and Reader’s Digest , none of them up to date. Four doctors shared the building and all of them had patients arriving at the same time. Pünd recognised a foreign-looking man sitting in the corner. From his appearance and his posture, he had to be ex-military. Sure enough, a nurse in a white coat came in a moment later.

‘Major Alcazar …’

The man stood up stiffly and followed her out.

Pünd took his place on a sofa and reached out for one of the magazines, not because he intended to read it, but because it prevented the two other people in the room from questioning him. He flicked it open and glanced at a picture of a country estate in Wiltshire. It reminded him of the case he had just solved in the village of Saxby-on-Avon. His last case, probably.

Outside, in the corridor, he heard a woman speaking, high-pitched and a little querulous, someone who was used to being obeyed.

‘I think I left it in the waiting room. It must have dropped out of my bag.’

Pünd had already recognised the voice before Lady Margaret Chalfont appeared in the doorway. There could be no mistaking it. Lady Chalfont spoke in the same way she lived her life: imperiously and with every intention of being noticed. The figure who now stood before him was a tiny bird of a woman who seemed to be shrinking even as she stood there, but who was fighting it with every inch of her being. She was in her mid-sixties, but illness had added ten years to that. Her hair, which had been dyed silver and mauve, was carefully coiffured to disguise how thin it had become, and she had dressed purposefully in bright colours with a green jacket, ballooning maroon trousers and an exotic headband missing only the feather, but none of this could disguise the truth of her condition. She was holding a Gucci clutch bag in one hand, a single glove in the other.

As she came into the room, she was already searching for its companion. Her eyes darted over to the sofa where Pünd had chosen to sit and he saw the expression on her face change as she noticed him.

‘My dear Mr Pünd! What a surprise. You are the last person I’d expect to see in this awful place. Are you ill?’

It was just like her to be so direct. Pünd rose to his feet. ‘I am waiting to see the doctor,’ he replied non-committally.

‘They don’t know anything!’ Lady Chalfont sighed. ‘They look you in the eye and tell you, take this pill and that pill and you’ll be fine, but you’re not. You never are. When the Grim Reaper comes calling, the doctors can only sit there, hiding behind their charts and their X-rays. Charlatans, the lot of them!’

‘You seem unchanged, Lady Chalfont.’

‘An illusion, Mr Pünd. Anyway, “ Nichts ist hoher zu sch?tzen als der Wert des Tages ,” fn1 as Goethe so rightly said. And nothing has brightened up this one more than bumping into you.’

Pünd smiled. He had met Margaret Chalfont in Salisbury nine years ago, when she had been one of the main suspects in the murder of George Colindale, who had been poisoned at a New Year’s party to which they had both been invited. At that time, she had been single. Her husband – Henry Chalfont, the 6th Earl Chalfont – had been killed by a V-2 rocket in the last months of the war. Pünd recalled that there had been a son and a daughter, both married, and later he had spotted the arrival of a grandson, announced in The Times . He had liked Lady Chalfont immediately. She might be loud and outspoken, but she was also cultured, well meaning and, as it turned out, the one who had made the single observation that led Pünd to solve the case.

It seemed remarkable that they should have met now and in this place, and he was wondering what he should say next when his eye fell on something he had noticed the moment he had entered the room but which he had until now ignored. He leaned down and retrieved a single calf-leather glove from underneath the sofa where he had been sitting. Only the fingertips had been visible.

‘I believe this is what you are looking for, Lady Chalfont,’ he said.

She took it, beaming, and pressed it against its partner. ‘You really are a marvel, Mr Pünd. You don’t miss anything, do you!’

She was about to go on when there was a movement at the door and a much younger woman presented herself; not a nurse and quite possibly not a patient either. She looked uncomfortable, in a hurry to be out of there. She was very much stouter than Lady Chalfont, with the face of a woman who took herself seriously. She wore heavy glasses and her almost colourless hair was tied back in a bun. Her clothes, like her manner, were businesslike. There was something of the prison warden about her as she stood there, upright, in her ungainly leather shoes.

‘Have you found it, Mother?’ she asked impatiently, then stopped, seeing that she had company. Pünd bowed to her. So they were related! It was said that Lady Chalfont had been a great beauty in her youth, but her daughter looked nothing like her.

‘This gentleman found it for me, Judith. In fact, we’re old friends. This is Atticus Pünd. I’m sure you’ve heard me talking about him. He is quite probably the best detective in the world.’ She turned to Pünd and continued without taking a breath. ‘My daughter. Judith Lyttleton as she is now. She drove me here.’

‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Lyttleton,’ Pünd said.

‘Actually, it’s Dr Lyttleton,’ Judith replied with impatience rather than rancour, as if this was something she was used to explaining – which indeed it was. ‘I have a postgraduate degree in ethnology from University College, London. I’ve written several papers about Peru. You may have read them.’

‘I’m afraid I have not.’

Judith nodded, disappointed but unsurprised. ‘We really ought to be on our way, Mother. We must pick up the cases and get to the airport.’

‘We’re heading back to the South of France,’ Lady Chalfont explained. ‘My late husband, Henry, bought a house in the C?te d’Azur and I spend the whole summer there. I remarried, by the way. Did you know that?’

‘I did not,’ Pünd said.

‘Technically, I’m now Margaret Waysmith, but I’ve kept my old name. I like being Lady Chalfont. Why should I lose my title along with everything else?’

She had both her gloves and her daughter was waiting for her to leave. But something held her back. ‘It’s extraordinary I should have bumped into you today,’ she went on. ‘Something has happened that I would very much like to discuss with you.’

‘Mother …’ Judith said impatiently.

‘There’s no need to hurry me, dear. We’ve got plenty of time to catch the plane.’ She examined Pünd with eyes that were bright and intense. He could see her mind working as she came to her decision. ‘I wish to consult with you on a matter of the greatest urgency,’ she said. ‘Are you still at the same address?’

‘I regret that I am not taking on any new cases, Lady Chalfont.’

‘I shall write to you anyway. I believe that everything has a purpose, Mr Pünd, and you were sent here today for a reason. We were meant to meet. The truth is that there is nobody else in the world who could help me in my hour of need. Would you be so good as to give me your card?’

Pünd hesitated, then produced a business card, which he handed to her. She glanced at it before slipping it into her handbag.

‘Thank you, Mr Pünd. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to know that there’s someone I can trust and believe in. Even if you can offer me nothing more, I will appreciate your advice.’

Judith Lyttleton looked more uncomfortable than ever. She glanced at her mother, and for a moment their eyes were locked and something – perhaps an unspoken warning – was exchanged between them. Then the two of them swept out of the room. Pünd heard the front door open and close.

The nurse reappeared. ‘The doctor will see you now, Mr Pünd.’

She led Pünd down a corridor that had already become familiar and through a door at the far end. Dr Benson was waiting for him, sitting behind his desk in his stuffy office with the radiators turned up too high. It had been six weeks since the examination that had told both men the worst news possible and now their meeting was brisk and businesslike. Dr Benson took Pünd’s pulse and blood pressure, listened to his heart and examined his eyes. Then came the questions.

‘How are the headaches?’

‘They come, but not too often. And the pills that you prescribed are very effective.’

‘Are you sleeping well?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Appetite?’

‘I am eating less, I think, but I would have said it is by choice. My assistant has complimented me on my loss of weight.’

‘Have you told him yet?’

Pünd shook his head. ‘He knows I am not well. He has seen the various medicines. But I have not told him the full seriousness of the situation.’

‘You’re worried he’ll leave you?’

‘No, Doctor. Not at all. But James is a sensitive young man. It is better, I think, to keep the worst from him. He is also helping me continue with the book I am writing. It is my hope that The Landscape of Criminal Investigation will one day take its place in the British Library, the Criminal Records Office and anywhere else it may help future investigations.’

Dr Benson nodded and reached for his pipe. He did not light it. ‘Well, Mr Pünd, you’re doing very well. Much better than I had expected. You can call me any time, of course, but I don’t think we need to meet again until next month.’

Pünd smiled to himself. He had recognised the moment when Dr Benson reached for his pipe. It was his way of announcing that the meeting was over, and he liked to end with a note of optimism. Next week. Next month. Next time. He always looked to the future, reassuring his patients that they still had one.

But Pünd did not move. ‘I wonder if I may ask you something,’ he said. ‘Just now, before I came into your office, I met an old friend, Lady Margaret Chalfont.’

‘You know her?’

‘Indeed so. We met on an earlier case of mine. I was sorry to see her here and wondered if you could tell me something of her condition.’

‘I’m not sure I should share information about my patients, Mr Pünd. Why do you ask?’

‘Because Lady Chalfont has requested my assistance in a matter she described as urgent, and because although we only spoke for a few moments, it seemed to me that she was afraid.’

‘Afraid of dying?’

‘Perhaps. But not as a result of her illness.’

Dr Benson considered. ‘Well, as it’s you, Mr Pünd, I can’t see any harm in telling you, in confidence, that Lady Chalfont is suffering from mitral stenosis. This is a narrowing of the mitral valve which controls the flow of blood to the heart, and regrettably I have had to inform her that, given her advanced age, I do not believe surgery is worth the risk. I’m afraid she has limited time.’

‘How limited?’

‘Hard to say. But months rather than years.’

Pünd nodded. It had been typical of Lady Chalfont to be so defiant, scornful of doctors and modern medicine, having been told there was nothing they could do for her. ‘Thank you, Dr Benson.’

He got to his feet.

‘Has she asked you to join her in the South of France?’ the doctor asked.

‘She did not go so far.’

‘That’s a pity. I understand she has a very beautiful house on the coast at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. I would have said it would do you good, a week in the Mediterranean sun. This blasted weather here in England makes even the healthiest and fittest of us feel run-down.’ He looked at his window and the water buffeting the glass. ‘I’ve never seen so much rain. Perhaps you should think about it anyway!’

Pünd considered what Dr Benson had said. It had never occurred to him that he might travel again, at least not further than the south-west of England, where his most recent case had taken him. But why not? It was not just a question of feeling the warm sunshine on his skin one last time. There was something else.

He remembered the way the mother and the daughter had looked at each other just before they left. Lady Chalfont had already spoken of urgency, the need for help, but it was Judith Lyttleton who had attracted Pünd’s attention.

From the moment she had heard his name and understood who he was, Judith had wanted to get her mother out of the room and away from him. She had heard Lady Chalfont asking him for help, but she had made no comment herself, as if it had nothing to do with her.

The doctor of ethnology hadn’t just been uncomfortable about the meeting.

She had been afraid.