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The Private Patient
The New Adam Dalgliesh Mystery
by P. D. James
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Cheverell Manor is a beautiful old house in Dorset, which its owner, the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell, uses as a private clinic. When the investigative journalist, Rhoda Gradwyn, arrives to have a disfiguring facial scar removed, she has every expectation of a successful operation and a peaceful week recuperating. But the clinic houses an implacable enemy and within hours of the operation Rhoda is murdered. Commander Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate a case complicated by old crimes and the dark secrets of the past. But Before Rhoda's murder is solved, a second horrific death adds to the complexities of one of Dalgliesh's most perplexing and fascinating cases.
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Praise for THE PRIVATE PATIENT
"No one is better than James at maintaining this tension between the cozy and the frightful."
—The Washington Post
"[James is] a master....Nothing is as it first appears."
—The Boston Globe
"[I]intricately plotted and suspenseful... James' clear-eyed, often sardonic prose describes rooms and people exactly as she sees them."
—Providence Journal
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An exerpt from THE PRIVATE PATIENT
Chapter 2
She was back in that small rear room, both kitchen and sitting room, in which she and her parents colluded in their lies and endured their voluntary exile from life. The front room, with its bay window, was for special occasions, for family celebrations never held and for visitors who never came, its silence smelling faintly of lavender furniture polish and stale air, an air so portentous that she tried never to breathe it. She was the only child of a frightened and ineffective mother and a
drunken father. That was how she had defined herself for more than thirty years and how she still defined herself. Her childhood and adolescence had been circumscribed by shame and guilt. Her father's periodic bouts of violence were unpredictable. No school friends could safely be brought home, no birthday or Christmas parties arranged and, since no invitations were ever given, none was received. The grammar school to which she went was single-sex and friendships between the girls were intense. A special mark of favour was to be invited to spend the night at a friend's house. No guest ever slept at 239 Laburnum Grove. The isolation didn't worry her. She knew herself to be more intelligent than her fellows and was able to persuade herself that she had no need of a companionship which would be intellectually unsatisfying and which she knew would never be offered.
It was eleven-thirty on a Friday, the night her father got paid, the worst day of the week. And now there came the sound she dreaded, the sharp closing of the front door. He came blundering in and she saw her mother move in front of the armchair, which Rhoda knew would awaken his fury. It was to be her father's chair. He had chosen it and paid for it, and it had been delivered that morning. Only after the van had left had her mother discovered it was the wrong colour. It would have to be changed, but there had been no time before the shop closed. She knew that her mother's querulous, apologetic, half-whining voice would enrage him, that her own sullen presence would help neither of them, but she couldn't go up to bed. The noise of what would happen beneath her room would be more terrifying than to be part of it. And now the room was full of him, his blundering body, the stink of him. Hearing his bellow of outrage, his ranting, she felt a sudden spurt of
fury, and with it came courage. She heard herself saying, "It isn't Mother's fault. The chair was wrapped up when the man left it. She couldn't see it was the wrong colour. They'll have to change it."
And then he turned on her. She couldn't recall the words. Perhaps at the time there had been no words, or she hadn't heard them. There was only the crack of the smashed bottle, like a pistol shot, the stink of whisky, a moment of searing pain which passed almost as soon as she felt it and the warm blood flowing from her cheek, dripping onto the seat of the chair, her mother's anguished cry. "Oh God, look what you've done, Rhoda. The blood! They'll never take it back now. They'll never change it."
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