Read Online The Murder Room by P. D. James - Free Book Online

emotions—surprise, disbelief, self-pity and anger. He looked like an actor trying out facial expressions in front of a mirror. I wondered how on earth I could have fancied him.”
    â€œBut you did.”
    â€œOh yes, that wasn’t the problem.”
    â€œHe thought you loved him.”
    â€œNo he didn’t. He thought I found him as fascinating as he found himself and that I wouldn’t be able to resist marrying him if he condescended to ask me.”
    Clara laughed. “Careful, Emma, that sounds like bitterness.”
    â€œNo, only honesty. Neither of us has anything to be proud of. We used each other. He was my defence. I was Giles’s girl; that made me untouchable. The primacy of the dominant male is accepted even in the academic jungle. I was left in peace to concentrate on what really mattered—my work. It wasn’t admirable but it wasn’t dishonest. I never told him I loved him. I’ve never spoken those words to anyone.”
    â€œAnd now you want to speak them and to hear them, and from a police officer and a poet of all people. I suppose the poet is the more understandable. But what sort of life would you have? How much time have you spent together since that first meeting? Seven dates arranged, four actually achieved. Adam Dalgliesh might be happy to be at the call of the Home Secretary, the Commissioner and the senior officials at the Home Office, but I don’t see why you should be. His life is in London, yours is here.”
    Emma said, “It isn’t only Adam. I had to cancel once.”
    â€œFour dates, apart from that disorienting business when you first met. Murder is hardly an orthodox introduction. You can’t possibly know him.”
    â€œI can know enough. I can’t know everything, no one can. Loving him doesn’t give me the right to walk in and out of his mind as if it were my room at college. He’s the most private person I’ve ever met. But I know the things about him that matter.”
    But did she? Emma asked herself. He was intimate with those dark crevices of the human mind where horrors lurked which she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Not even that appalling scene in the church at St. Anselm’s had shown her the worst that human beings could do to each other. She knew about those horrors from literature; he explored them daily in his work. Sometimes, waking from sleep in the early hours, the vision she had of him was of the dark face masked, the hands smooth and impersonal in the sleek latex gloves. What hadn’t those hands touched? She rehearsed the questions she wondered if she would ever be able to ask: Why do you do it? Is it necessary to your poetry? Why did you choose this job? Or did it choose you?
    She said, “There’s this woman detective who works with him. Kate Miskin. She’s on his team. I watched them together. All right, he was her senior, she called him sir, but there was a companionship, an intimacy which seemed to exclude everyone who wasn’t a police officer. That’s his world. I’m not part of it. I won’t ever be.”
    â€œI don’t know why you should want to be. It’s a pretty murky world, and he’s not part of yours.”
    â€œBut he could be. He’s a poet. He understands my world. We can talk about it—we
do
talk about it. But we don’t talk about his. I haven’t even been in his flat. I know he lives in Queenhithe above the Thames, but I haven’t seen it. I can only imagine it. That’s part of his world too. If ever he asks me there I know everything will be all right, that he wants me to be part of his life.”
    â€œPerhaps he’ll ask you next Friday night. When are you thinking of coming up, by the way?”
    â€œI thought I’d take an afternoon train and arrive at Putney at about six if you’ll be home by then. Adam says he’ll call for me at eight-fifteen, if that’s all right by