An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

Mark is only a corpse and a memory. His death is the novel’s central mystery, and the revelation that he was killed by his own father furthers the novel’s consideration of the conflicts between good and evil, children and parents, and virtue and greed.

Mark is presented as something of an enigma. Like other symbolic objects in the novel, Mark is whoever other people perceive him to be. Cordelia discovers the true story of his life and death in bits and pieces; along the way she is presented with interpretations of his personality and actions that reflect more on the person making the observation than on Mark himself.

Cordelia solves Mark’s murder by getting to know him. The clues he leaves behind allow her to discover his murder was not a suicide or a sexual experimentation gone wrong but a cold-blooded sacrifice to his father’s greed. Mark is a martyr to principle, and it is his own goodness and morality that gets him dead.

Bernie Pryde is a former police officer who opened a detective agency. He hires Cordelia first as a secretary and then promotes her to partner before he commits suicide after a diagnosis of cancer. Bernie never appears in the novel except as a corpse and in Cordelia’s memories. He is a pathetic character who was fired from the police and unsuccessful as a detective, and who left Cordelia nearly broke and basically homeless. But he is also a sympathetic character; he is a kind and generous surrogate father to Cordelia, and he trains her so well she succeeds without him.

Bernie’s last name asserts that despite his failings he was a man of principle and pride. He attributed much of the wisdom he passed on to Cordelia to his former supervisor Dalgliesh, but it’s possible some of that wisdom came from Bernie directly and he obscured that out of pride. Two of the novel’s key themes are that appearances can be deceptive and that there are two sides to everything. Bernie’s pride forced him to commit suicide (because he’s “seen what the treatment does to people and I’m not having any” [16]); it also gave him a reason to live after Dalgliesh took away the only job he ever wanted.

Sir Ronald is a semi-famous microbiologist who runs a large laboratory out of his own home. He has one son, Mark, and a secretary/mistress, Miss Leaming. He also employs Chris Lunn as a laboratory assistant/general aide. He hires Cordelia to investigate his son’s death on the pretense of discovering why Mark committed suicide. His real aim is to find out who interfered with Mark’s body after Sir Ronald killed him.

Sir Ronald has two sides: He murdered his own son but is an excellent father figure to Chris Lunn. Sir Ronald’s psychical appearance mirrors his transition from a respected and prosperous scientist to a madman murdered by the mother of his only child. A central question around Sir Ronald is why he hires a private detective to investigate his son’s death. Presumably he believed he was too clever to be caught by that investigation. He underestimates Cordelia, and she outwits his efforts to remove her from the case and uncovers his deceptions.

Sir Ronald is a peer of the realm, an exalted position, who worked his way up from humble beginnings. He is also a liar, a manipulator, a cheater, a bully, and a murderer. James uses these juxtapositions to underscore her theme that things are not always what they seem.

Elizabeth Leaming is Sir Ronald’s secretary/mistress and the unacknowledged mother of his only child. She is also his murderer. A complex figure, she is complicit in deceiving Mark about his parentage but cared for him deeply from afar. The suicide note she writes for him quotes William Blake and reflects her own liminal status—neither in heaven nor in hell but hung in an empty space somewhere in between.

Miss Leaming presents as mysterious and secretive; she is a cool and efficient secretary but appears at the end of the novel in a “long red dressing gown” (194)—red, the color of sex, blood, death, and hell. Miss Leaming murders Sir Ronald, acting as an agent of divine justice or retribution, and then offers her signed confession to Cordelia, signaling her willingness to be judged for her actions. As a mother, she fails and then avenges her son, reflecting the dual nature of parentage that recurs as a theme throughout the novel.

Dalgleish is a chief superintendent with New Scotland Yard, home of the Metropolitan Police. He is Bernie Pryde’s former superior and P.D. James’s most famous protagonist. He is heard but not seen until the last chapter. His presence gives this book authority while his absence allows Cordelia to step into the spotlight. Dalgliesh, like Cordelia, exists in a realm of moral ambiguity, which is the hallmark of the detective’s code. He is a police officer but thinks like a criminal. He knows that Cordelia is lying to him but allows her to get away with hiding the identity of a murderer. He is a loner, beholden only to his own moral code. He is careful, thorough, and brilliant, and when Cordelia beats (or ties) him at his own game, that victory cements her status as his equal—or perhaps even his better.