The Private Patient
The Private Patient
CONTENTS
Title Page
Author’s Note
BOOK ONE
21 November–14 December: London, Dorset
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
BOOK TWO
15 December: London, Dorset
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
BOOK THREE
16–18 December: London, Dorset, Midlands, Dorset
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
BOOK FOUR
19–21 December: London, Dorset
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
BOOK FIVE
Spring: Dorset, Cambridge
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
A Note About the Author
Also by P. D. James
Copyright
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dorset is notable for the history and variety of its manor houses, but travellers to that beautiful county will not find Cheverell Manor among them. The Manor and all connected with it, and the deplorable events which take place there, exist only in the imagination of the author and of her readers and have no connection with any person past or present, living or dead.
P. D. James
BOOK ONE
21 November–14 December
London, Dorset
1
On November the twenty-first, the day of her forty-seventh birthday, and three weeks and two days before she was murdered, Rhoda Gradwyn went to Harley Street to keep a first appointment with her plastic surgeon, and there in a consulting room designed, so it appeared, to inspire confidence and allay apprehension, made the decision which would lead inexorably to her death. Later that day she was to lunch at The Ivy. The timing of the two appointments was fortuitous. Mr. Chandler-Powell had no earlier date to offer and the luncheon later with Robin Boyton, booked for twelve-forty-five, had been arranged two months previously; one did not expect to get a table at The Ivy on impulse. She regarded neither appointment as a birthday celebration. This detail of her private life, like much else, was never mentioned. She doubted whether Robin had discovered her date of birth or would much care if he had. She knew herself to be a respected, even distinguished journalist, but she hardly expected her name to appear in the Times list of VIP birthdays.
She was due at Harley Street at eleven-fifteen. Usually with a London appointment she preferred to walk at least part of the way, but today she had ordered a taxi for ten-thirty. The journey from the City shouldn’t take three-quarters of an hour, but the London traffic was unpredictable. She was entering a world that was strange to her and had no wish to jeopardise her relationship with her surgeon by arriving late for this their first meeting.