Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder’s Reviews > The Murder Room > Status Update

You’re a writer, aren’t you, a poet? It isn’t enough for you to meddle in other people’s lives, to get them arrested, to see them sent to prison, their lives broken. You have to understand them, get into their minds, use them as your raw material. But you can’t use me. You haven’t the right.

I remembered some words I’d read written by a philosopher, I think Roger Scruton. ‘The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.’

He was, after all, a poet with a writer’s interest in the fabric of other lives. His poetry was a mystery to her. The man who had produced A Case to Answer and Other Poems bore no relation to the senior detective she served under with a passionate commitment.

Dalgliesh thought, Hasn’t it always been like this? People tell me things. I don’t need to probe or question, they tell. It had begun when he was a young detective sergeant and then it had surprised and intrigued him, feeding his poetry, bringing the half-shameful realization that for a detective it would be a useful gift.

She thought of faces as being either softly moulded or carved. His was carved. It was a handsome authoritative face and the dark eyes that looked into hers were kindly. He had an attractive voice, and voices had always been important to her. And then she remembered Muriel’s words. The police believe nothing, that’s the way they’re trained to think.

He had no great interest in technology, requiring only that it should work efficiently. If a machine broke down he replaced it with a different model since money was less important than saving time and avoiding the frustration of argument. The telephone he hated. It was in the hall and he seldom answered it, preferring to listen to the recorded messages every evening.