E-Book, Englisch, Band 9, 624 Seiten
James Original Sin
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-24869-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
The classic locked-room murder mystery from the 'Queen of English crime' (Guardian)
E-Book, Englisch, Band 9, 624 Seiten
Reihe: Inspector Adam Dalgliesh Mystery
ISBN: 978-0-571-24869-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
P. D. James (1920-2014) was a bestselling and internationally acclaimed crime writer best known for her books starring poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh. She wrote nineteen novels as well as several short story collections and works of non-fiction. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages, and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Among many international prizes, awards and honours, she received the highest honours in both British and American crime writing: the CWA Diamond Dagger for a lifetime contribution to the genre, and the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award. She was inducted into the Crime Writing Hall of Fame in 2008. Beyond her writing, she worked in the National Health Service and then in the Home Office for over thirty years, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department, and made use of all this experience in her novels. She served as president of the Society of Authors for sixteen years, and was a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1983 she was awarded an OBE, and she was made a life peer in 1991. She died in 2014.
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For a temporary shorthand-typist to be present at the discovery of a corpse on the first day of a new assignment, if not unique, is sufficiently rare to prevent its being regarded as an occupational hazard. Certainly Mandy Price, aged nineteen years two months, and the acknowledged star of Mrs Crealey’s Nonesuch Secretarial Agency, set out on the morning of Tuesday, 14 September for her interview at the Peverell Press with no more apprehension than she usually felt at the start of a new job, an apprehension which was never acute and was rooted less in any anxiety whether she would satisfy the expectations of the prospective employer than in whether the employer would satisfy hers. She had learned of the job the previous Friday when she called in at the agency at six o’clock to collect her pay after a boring two-week stint with a director who regarded a secretary as a status symbol but had no idea how to use her skills, and she was ready for something new and preferably exciting although perhaps not as exciting as it was subsequently to prove.
Mrs Crealey, for whom Mandy had worked for the past three years, conducted her agency from a couple of rooms above a newsagent and tobacconist’s shop off the Whitechapel Road, a situation which, she was fond of pointing out to her girls and clients, was convenient both for the City and for the towering offices of Docklands. Neither had so far produced much in the way of business, but while other agencies foundered in the waves of recession Mrs Crealey’s small and underprovisioned ship was still, if precariously, afloat. Except for the help of one of her girls when no outside work was available, she ran the agency single-handed. The outer room was her office in which she propitiated clients, interviewed new girls and assigned the next week’s work. The inner was her personal sanctum, furnished with a divan bed on which she occasionally spent the night in defiance of the terms of the lease, a drinks cabinet and refrigerator, a cupboard which opened to reveal a minute kitchen, a large television set and two easy chairs set in front of a gas fire in which a lurid red light rotated behind artificial logs. She referred to her room as the ‘cosy’, and Mandy was one of the few girls who were admitted to its privacies.
It was probably the cosy which kept Mandy faithful to the agency, although she would never have openly admitted to a need which would have seemed to her both childish and embarrassing. Her mother had left home when she was six and she herself had been hardly able to wait for her sixteenth birthday when she could get away from a father whose idea of parenthood had gone little further than the provision of two meals a day, which she was expected to cook, and her clothes. For the last year she had rented one room in a terraced house in Stratford East where she lived in acrimonious camaraderie with three young friends, the main cause of dispute being Mandy’s insistence that her Yamaha motor bike should be parked in the narrow hall. But it was the cosy in Whitechapel Road, the mingled smells of wine and takeaway Chinese food, the hiss of the gas fire, the two deep and battered armchairs in which she could curl up and sleep which represented all Mandy had ever known of the comfort and security of a home.
Mrs Crealey, sherry bottle in one hand and a scrap of jotting pad in the other, munched at her cigarette holder until she had manoeuvred it to the corner of her mouth where, as usual, it hung in defiance of gravity, and squinted at her almost indecipherable handwriting through immense horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘It’s a new client, Mandy, the Peverell Press. I’ve looked them up in the publishers’ directory. They’re one of the oldest – perhaps the oldest – publishing firms in the country, founded in 1792. Their place is on the river. The Peverell Press, Innocent House, Innocent Walk, Wapping. You must have seen Innocent House if you’ve taken a boat trip to Greenwich. Looks like a bloody great Venetian palace. They do have a launch, apparently, to collect staff from Charing Cross pier, but that’ll be no help to you, living in Stratford. It’s your side of the Thames, though, which will help with the journey. I suppose you’d better take a taxi. Mind you get them to pay before you leave.’
‘That’s OK, I’ll use the bike.’
‘Just as you like. They want you there on Tuesday at ten o’clock.’
Mrs Crealey was about to suggest that, with this prestigious new client, a certain formality of dress might be appropriate, but desisted. Mandy was amenable to some suggestions about work or behaviour but never about the eccentric and occasionally bizarre creations with which she expressed her essentially confident and ebullient personality.
She asked: ‘Why Tuesday? Don’t they work Mondays?’
‘Don’t ask me. All I know is that the girl who rang said Tuesday. Perhaps Miss Etienne can’t see you until then. She’s one of the directors and she wants to interview you personally. Miss Claudia Etienne. I’ve written it all down.’
Mandy said: ‘What’s the big deal then? Why have I got to be interviewed by the boss?’
‘One of the bosses. They’re particular who they get, I suppose. They asked for the best and I’m sending the best. Of course they may be looking for someone permanent, and want to try her out first. Don’t let them persuade you to stay on, Mandy, will you?’
‘Have I ever?’
Accepting a glass of sweet sherry and curling into one of the easy chairs, Mandy studied the paper. It was certainly odd to be interviewed by a prospective employer before beginning a new job even when, as now, the client was new to the agency. The usual procedure was well understood by all parties. The harassed employer telephoned Mrs Crealey for a temporary shorthand-typist, imploring her this time to send a girl who was literate and whose typing speed at least approximated to the standard claimed. Mrs Crealey, promising miracles of punctuality, efficiency and conscientiousness, dispatched whichever of her girls was free and could be cajoled into giving the job a try, hoping that this time the expectations of client and worker might actually coincide. Subsequent complaints were countered by Mrs Crealey’s invariably plaintive response: ‘I can’t understand it. She’s got the highest reports from other employers. I’m always being asked for Sharon.’
The client, made to feel that the disaster was somehow his or her fault, replaced the receiver with a sigh, urged, encouraged, endured until the mutual agony was over and the permanent member of staff returned to a flattering welcome. Mrs Crealey took her commission, more modest than was charged by most agencies, which probably accounted for her continued existence in business, and the transaction was over until the next epidemic of flu or the summer holidays provoked another triumph of hope over experience.
Mrs Crealey said: ‘You can take Monday off, Mandy, on full pay of course. And better type out your qualifications and experience. Put “Curriculum Vitae” at the top, that always looks impressive.’
Mandy’s curriculum vitae, and Mandy herself – despite her eccentric appearance – never failed to impress. For this she had to thank her English teacher, Mrs Chilcroft. Mrs Chilcroft, facing her class of recalcitrant eleven-year-olds, had said: ‘You are going to learn to write your own language simply, accurately and with some elegance, and to speak it so that you aren’t disadvantaged the moment you open your mouths. If any of you has ambitions above marrying at sixteen and rearing children in a council flat you’ll need language. If you’ve no ambitions beyond being supported by a man or the State you’ll need it even more, if only to get the better of the local authority Social Services department and the DSS. But learn it you will.’
Mandy could never decide whether she hated or admired Mrs Chilcroft, but under her inspired if unconventional teaching she had learned to speak English, to write, to spell and to use it confidently and with some grace. Most of the time this was an accomplishment she preferred to pretend she hadn’t achieved. She thought, although she never articulated the heresy, that there was little point in being at home in Mrs Chilcroft’s world if she ceased to be accepted in her own. Her literacy was there to be used when necessary, a commercial and occasionally a social asset, to which Mandy added high shorthand-typing speeds and a facility with various types of word processor. Mandy knew herself to be highly employable, but remained faithful to Mrs Crealey. Apart from the cosy there were obvious advantages in being regarded as indispensable; one could be sure of getting the pick of the jobs. Her male employers occasionally tried to persuade her to take a permanent post, some of them offering inducements which had little to do with annual increments, luncheon vouchers or generous pension contributions. Mandy remained with the Nonesuch Agency, her fidelity rooted in more than material considerations. She occasionally felt for her employer an almost adult compassion. Mrs Crealey’s troubles principally arose from her conviction of the perfidy of men combined with an inability to do without them. Apart from this uncomfortable dichotomy, her life was dominated by a fight to retain the few girls in her stable who were employable, and her war of attrition against her ex-husband, the tax inspector, her bank manager and her office landlord. In all...
