Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder’s Reviews > Death in Holy Orders: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery > Status Update

“You have, Commander, something of the air of a man who feels that he is at last making progress. Some might say, About time. Let us hope it doesn’t all end in the Slough of Despond.”

She said, “I had a boyfriend, a librarian who tried to get me to enjoy Henry James. By the time I’d got to the end of a sentence I’d forgotten how it began. Remember that criticism, some writers bite off more than they can chew; Henry James chews more than he’s bitten off?”

[literary criticism from Detective Inspector Kate Miskin]

Six lines of verse came into his mind and he took a page of paper, ripped it in half and wrote them down:

Epitaph for a Dead Poet
Buried at last who was so wise,
Six foot by three in clay he lies.
Where no hands reach, where no lips move,
Where no voice importunes his love.
How odd he cannot know nor see
This last fine self-sufficiency.

I suppose even Dalgliesh doesn’t seriously suspect any of our fathers-in-God, although he’s probably keeping them in mind, particularly if he remembers his Pascal. ‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.’

The thought sparked off another, even more disgracefully irreverent thought. What would Lady Macbeth have said to Duncan’s widow had that lady come to Inverness Castle to view the body? “A deplorable affair, madam, which my husband and I deeply regret. It was a most successful visit until then. We did all we could to make His Majesty comfortable.”

there came to him a conviction that was as powerful as it was seemingly irrational: that the three deaths were connected. The apparent suicide, the certified natural death, the brutal murder—there was a cord which connected them. Its strength might be tenuous and its path convoluted, but when he had traced it, it would lead him to the heart of the mystery.

“Who hath done this thing?” He would discover the answer, and when he did, this time he would also find the proof, this time he would not close the file knowing the identity of the culprit, the motive and the means, but powerless to make an arrest. The burden of that past failure was still heavy upon him, but with this case it would at last be lifted.

Was part of the attraction of his job the illusion it gave that death was a mystery that could be solved, and that with the solution all the unruly passions of life, all doubts and all fears, could be folded away like a garment?

Dalgliesh reflected that to have a suspect taking an active part in the investigation was a novelty he could well dispense with. The situation would need careful handling.

Years of working as a detective had inured his body to the discomforts of a variety of couches and, provided he had a bedside light or a torch for the brief period of reading which was necessary for him before sleep came, his mind could usually let go of the day as easily as did his tired limbs.