An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

Cordelia begins her investigation into Mark Callender’s suicide by interviewing his most recent employers at their estate, Summertrees: Major Markland; his wife, Mrs. Markland; and the Major’s sister, Miss Markland. Cordelia is aware that her youthful appearance makes them skeptical about her qualifications but explains that as a result she might be “more successful […] than the more usual type of private detective” (37). The Marklands ask why a private detective, not the police, and Cordelia explains that Sir Ronald isn’t disputing the fact of Mark’s suicide; he simply wants to understand the motivation for it, which “isn’t really [the police’s] kind of job” (37).

Cordelia learns that Mark responded to a help-wanted ad and must have realized the estate had a small, rustic cabin on the property before applying for the job. Major Markland admits he was surprised that a Cambridge student would want to become a gardener and live in a cabin without heat, hot water, or electricity, but he called Mark’s former tutor, who confirmed that Mark had dropped out of school, not been asked to leave because of improper behavior or scandal. Major Markland claims that this information was all he needed; he did not see it his place to inquire further. The Marklands agree Mark was hard-working and kept to himself, though Miss Markland bitterly says, “He was a drop-out. He dropped out of university, apparently he dropped out of his family obligations, finally he dropped out of life. Literally” (57).

Miss Markland takes Cordelia to see the cabin where Mark lived and died. Cordelia is struck by the “little oasis of order and beauty [Mark had] created out of chaos and neglect” (61). Miss Markland tells Cordelia that her fiancé, with whom she spent a lot of time at the cottage, was killed in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. She expresses strong emotions, saying:

“I don’t like your generation, Miss Gray. I don’t like your arrogance, your selfishness, your violence, the curious selectivity of your compassion. You pay for nothing with your own coin, not even for your ideals. You denigrate and destroy and never build. You invite punishment like rebellious children, then scream when you are punished. The men I knew, the men I was brought up with, were not like that” (65).

Cordelia is puzzled by Miss Markland’s vehemence but interrogates her gently, learning that Miss Markland found Mark’s body after he did not show up that morning to receive his assignment for the day. She discovered him barefoot wearing just a pair of workpants and describes the scene: a suicide note still in the typewriter, an unfinished cup of coffee on the table, and a pile of ashes in the fireplace, as if Mark had been burning a lot of papers before he killed himself.

Cordelia notices that Mark left a pitchfork stuck in the ground, just a few feet before he would have been finished turning over a row of earth. His gardening shoes were also casually discarded, and Cordelia thinks these things are at odds with Mark’s otherwise obsessive neatness. Miss Markland tells her that a woman she presumed was Mark’s girlfriend, whom she describes as foreign, probably French, and very rich, visited him the night before he died.

Cordelia is surprised when Miss Markland intuits that Cordelia plans to stay in the cabin but gives her permission, saying the other Marklands won’t notice and wouldn’t care if they did. Miss Markland leaves, and Cordelia examines first the outside and then the inside of the building, following the protocol Bernie drilled into her as received wisdom from Dalgliesh.

She determines that Mark was economical, tidy to the point of obsessive, and clean. She also discovers a crumpled-up page from a pornographic magazine in the yard; it is from the May edition, so it could have been there before Mark arrived. She finds several other oddities about the scene, including a cooked but untouched pan of stew and an open bottle of milk. She theorizes how Mark could have been obsessively tidy but killed himself with dinner on the stove. She wonders what to make of the visitor he had the night before his death. She discovers a blood donor’s card in his wallet, showing his blood type is “B rhesus negative” (70), and is moved by the fact that “no one, neither the Marklands nor the boy’s family or friends, had bothered to come back to clean up the pathetic leavings of his young life” (69). Despite her emotional reaction, Cordelia considers the facts and realizes that Mark may have been murdered.

Cordelia moves her things into the cottage, adding them to Mark’s personal effects—her toothbrush next to his, her towel beside his own. She hides away the spoiled food as potential evidence and secrets her gun in a tree. Cordelia drives into Cambridge to continue her investigation. She follows a logical path, making an appointment to see the sergeant in charge of the case then hunting down and reading through the public record of the inquest. She plans to find and interview Hugo and Sophie Trilling later in the day.

Cordelia wanders around Cambridge and reflects on her youthful belief she would attend this famous university. She is moved by its beauty and walks about in a “trance of happiness” (78). Cordelia’s itinerant revolutionary father first disregarded and then interrupted her education when he finally “discovered a need for his daughter;” she had to leave school at 16 to begin “her wandering life as a cook, nurse, messenger and general camp follower to Daddy and the comrades” (81). She thinks of a line from Blake: “Then saw I that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven” (82).

Cordelia leaves behind her wistful wanderings and goes to the police station, where she is surprised to learn that Sergeant Maskell was also put off by the incongruities at the scene of Mark’s death. He shows her the leather strap and explains how unlikely it was that Mark could have formed the knot that killed him. Cordelia probes him repeatedly, and he agrees there are irregularities but says firmly, “it isn’t what you suspect, it’s what you can prove that counts” (87). The evidence he had simply didn’t give him enough to point to a murder.

Cordelia asks if she can have the strap and the suicide note, and he agrees, saying, “no one else seems to want them” (87). When she sees the suicide note, Cordelia realizes two things are wrong about it. The first she keeps to herself, and the second is that it was typed by “an experienced typist” (88). Just as she is leaving the office, Maskell says to her:

“There’s one intriguing detail you may care to know. It looks as if he was with a woman some time during the day on which he died. The pathologist found the merest trace—a thin line only—of purple-red lipstick on his upper lip” (89).