Free A Taste for Death by P. D. James

and opened the door. He said:
    'I'm Commander Dalgliesh. It's time we got you home, Darren. Your mother will be worried.' And surely the boy should be at school. The term must have started. But that, thank God, was hardly his concern.
    Darren, looking snlall and extremely disgruntled, was slumped in the front left-hand seat. He was an odd-looking child with an engaging monkey-like face, pale under the rash of freckles, snub-nosed and bright-eyed beneath the spiked almost colourless lashes. He and Sergeant Robins had obviously tried each other's patience to the limits, but
    he cheered up at the sight of Dalgliesh and enquired with childish belligerence:
    'You the boss man round here?'
    A little disconcerted, Dalgliesh replied cautiously: 'You could say that.'
    Darren looked round with bright suspicious eyes, then said:
    'She never did it, Miss Wharton. She's innercent.' Dalgliesh said, seriously:
    'No, we didn't think she did. You see, it needed more strength than an elderly lady or a boy could have. You're both in the clear.'
    'Yeah, that's all right then.' Dalgliesh said: 'You're fond of her?'
    'She's all right. She wants lookin' after, mind you. She's daft. She hasn't got the sense she was born with. I keep an eye on her, like.'
    'I think she relies on you. It was lucky you were together when you found the bodies. It must have been horrible for
    her.
    'Turned her up proper. She don't like blood, you see. That's why she won't have a coloured TV. She makes out she can't afford it. That's daft. She's always buying flowers for that BVM.'
    'BVM?' said Dalgliesh, his mind scurrying after some unrecognized make of car.
    Fat statue n the church. The lady m blue wth the candles in front of her. They're called BVMs. She's always puttin' flowers there and lightin' candies. Ten pee, they are. Five pee for the small ones.'
    His eyes shifted as ii: he had been lured on to dangerous ground. He added quickly:
    'I reckon she won't have a coloured TV 'cause she don't
    like the colour of blood.'
    Dalgliesh said:
    'I think you're probably right. You've been very helpful to us, Darren. And you're quite sure that you didn't go into that room, either of you?'
    47
    'Naw, I told yer. I was behind 'er all the time.' But the question had been unwelcome and for the first time some of his cockiness seemed to have drained from him. He slumped back in his seat and stared resentfully through the windscreen.
    Dalgliesh went back into the church and found Massing-ham.
    'I want you to go home with Darren. I've a feeling there's something he's keeping back. It might not be important but it would be helpful to have you there when he talks to his parents. You've got brothers, you know about small boys.'
    Massingham said, 'You want me to go now, sir?' 'Obviously.'
    Dalgliesh knew that the order was unwelcome. Massing-ham hated to leave a scene of crime even temporarily while the body was still there, and he would go the more unwill-ingly because Kate Miskin, back now from Campden Hill Square, was to stay. But if he had to go he would go alone. He ordered the police driver out of the car with unusual curtness and drove off at a speed which suggested that Darren was about to enjoy a gratifyingly exciting ride.
    Dalgliesh passed through the grille door into the body of the church, turning to close it gently behind him. But even so the soft clang rang sharply in the silence and echoed around him as he made his way down the nave. Behind him out of sight, but always present to the mind, was the apparatus of his trade; lights, cameras, equipment, a busy silence broken only by voices unhushed and con-fident in the presence of death. But here, guarded by the elegant whorls and bars of wrought iron, was another world as yet uncontaminated. The smell of incense strength-ened and he saw ahead a haze of gold where the gleaming mosaics of the apse stained the air and the great figure of Christ in glory, his wounded hands stretched out, glared down the nave with cavernous eyes.