'Even at court they never go in for more than a year's public mourning,' she said. 'I decided that it was time Wear-ton became aware of my existence. So here I am.'
'And John?' said Mrs Swithenbank.
'Took me in his stride,' said Jean Starkey. 'He usually leads – don't misunderstand me – but he's not hung up about it. He recognizes a useful initiative when it sticks out before his eyes.'
'You certainly do that,' said Mrs Swithenbank.
'Mourning,' said Pascoe. 'That's for the dead, Miss Starkey.'
'Marriages die, too, Inspector,' she replied. 'I don't know where Kate is now, but the point is, if she were to come through that door now, it would make not one jot of difference.'
They all looked at the door, which she had left ajar. Footsteps were heard coming down the stairs. They got nearer, moving without undue haste, and suddenly Pascoe felt tension in the room.
Then the telephone rang.
The door was closed reducing the telephone to a distant vibration of the air. A moment later this, too, was shut off and as Pascoe had already discovered, the walls shut out human speech.
'You need good hearing in this house,' said Pascoe conversationally.
'The Swithenbanks don't miss very much,' said the old woman. 'I do hope you enjoy the party tonight, Miss Starkey. You mustn't mind if John's friends stare a little at first. Remember that while he's been away getting acquainted with the big wide world, they've been stuck here in tiny old Wearton.'
'I'll make allowances,' smiled Jean Starkey.
The door opened and Swithenbank came in. He was wearing cream slacks, a cream jacket and a golden shirt with a huge collar and no tie. Pascoe felt very conscious that his own suit had come from C and A, but sought revenge in telling himself that the other man looked like an advert for the Milk Marketing Board.
'All ready?' enquired Swithenbank. 'We're rather late, I'm afraid. But we can always compensate by coming away early.
Good night, Mother. Don't bolt the door if you go to bed, will you?'
'No,' she said. 'Who was on the phone, dear?'
Swithenbank smiled.
'Just a friend,' he said, holding the door open for Jean Starkey and Pascoe.
'Who was it, John?' insisted his mother.
'I told you,' said Swithenbank. 'A friend. The same one as rang yesterday morning, remember? She told me she was lonely and impatient. She said her name was Ulalume.'
CHAPTER VI
And travellers, now, within that valley, Through red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody.
It was only a short drive to Wear End or the Big House as Pascoe now found himself thinking of it. It didn't look that big, he thought as he got out of the car, but certainly over-large for one man's occupation. Several windows were lit up and in their light and that of a rusty ornamental lantern hung in the portico, his assessing eye picked out signs of decay and neglect – blistered paint, flaking stone, a broken shutter and a narrow crack which zig-zagged up the facade till it disappeared in the dark shadow under the pediment. All the best Gothic decor! sneered Pascoe to reassure himself of his own indifference to the atmosphere, then felt his hair prickle on his neck as distantly, eerily, somewhere in the darkness a woman's voice cried, 'John! Oh Johnny!'
Swithenbank stopped in his tracks and all three of them peered in the direction of the noise. The night sky was clouded and the darkness made thicker by the electric glow above their heads. At first all Pascoe could do was separate the trees from their fractionally lighter background. There seemed to be a double row of them running away in symmetry with the sweep of the drive that had brought them from the roadway. They swayed and soughed in the slight but chilling wind and as his night vision improved Pascoe became aware of another movement. Between the trees something white fluttered and billowed and came towards them with a kind of ponderous bounding gait. Two sounds accompanied it, that breathless female cry of 'John!' and a most unfeminine tread of galloping feet.
Then the oncomer was off grass and on to gravel and with more relief than he would have cared to admit, Pascoe saw it was a woman running with the skirts of her full white satin evening dress kilted up to reveal a pair of muddy Wellington boots.
A final spurt took her into Swithenbank's arms with a force that anyone not a gentleman might have staggered under. Dalziel, for instance, thought Pascoe, would probably have stepped aside and let her hit the front door. But the slight figure of Swithenbank bore the brunt without flinching and as Pascoe got a better concept of the new arrival under the lantern light, he observed that it was a brunt worth bearing.
This was most probably that Ursula whose considerable charms Mrs Swithenbank wished had conquered her son, a theory confirmed as the said son now asked with incongruous politeness, 'How are you, Ursula?'
'Johnny! Why have you been hiding from us? I'm so pleased you've come tonight. I can't tell you how disappointed I would have been!'
Over his shoulder her eyes were drinking in Pascoe and Jean Starkey with unconcealed curiosity while behind her another figure came out from between the trees, a tall thin man with a flop of dark hair over pale defeated eyes. He wore a dark overcoat and, like a disingenuous Prince Charming, carried in either hand a silver shoe.
'Hello, John,' he said.
'Hello, Peter. Cured many souls lately?'
'Not many. And you – edited any good poems lately?'
'Not much since Poe,' said Swithenbank.
'Oh, let's get inside where I can see you properly. Has anyone rung? Boris! Boris! Don't let your guests hang about in the cold!'
Ursula opened the front door as she spoke and entered with the familiarity of old acquaintance. The others followed. Davenport, Pascoe noticed, seemed as uninterested in the identity of the newcomers as his wife was curious. She had now seated herself at the foot of a flight of stairs which ran up from the centre of the small but pleasantly proportioned hall. Pulling back her skirt above her knees, she thrust forward what, even accoutred as it was, appeared to be a very elegant leg and said, 'Johnny, dear, help me off with my wellies.'
A fastidious expression skimmed his face, but he obediently seized the proffered boot by heel and toe and began to lever it free.
'Oh, you've started the fun without me, you naughty children, and it's my party, too!'
A balding, portly man, nautical in a brass-buttoned blazer, advanced upon them, his face shining with sweat and bonhomie.
'John! How are you? So elusive! I must have spent a fortune trying to ring you. Even tonight, I began to get so worried!'
'We're not the latest, Boris,' replied Swithenbank, glancing at the woman on the stairs.
'Oh, the poor parson and his starving wife, you can always rely on them to turn up for supper,' said Kingsley dismissively. 'Ursula, Peter, welcome aboard. Good concert the other night, I hope? And last but not least, these must be…'
He shot an interrogative glance at Swithenbank, who said sardonically, 'Surely you can tell which is which.'
Kingsley laughed. He really was doing the jovial host bit, thought Pascoe. A trifle hysterically perhaps?
'Miss Starkey! Jean. Any dear friend of dear John's is wel r r come here. And Detective-Inspector Pascoe! Or should I call you mister?'
'As you will,' said Pascoe, who was wondering whether the look of shock on Ursula Davenport's face was caused by the revelation of his job or Starkey's status. Her husband seemed indifferent to both bits of information and Pascoe, seeing him now under the more revealing lights of the hall, began to suspect that he was held very lightly together by drink.
'Ursula, you know your way around, show Jean where to put her things while we go forward and prepare some drinks for you.'
As they went along the hall towards an open door out of which came a hubbub of voices raised to combat James Last on the stereo, Kingsley seized Pascoe by the elbow and slowing him down a little murmured, 'I don't know how you'd like to work, Inspector, but most of these people will
be going within the hour. Only those you want to see, or so I believe, that is the Rawlinsons, the Davenports and, of course, myself, will be staying on for a bite of supper. Perhaps you'd like to start by having a couple of drinks and getting a general impression of our local community, leaving the close grilling to later? Less embarrassing, too. I'll just say you're an old chum!'
Pascoe nodded agreement, wondering what it was that made a man he could imagine getting wrathfully indignant if the police tried to breathalyze him so eagerly cooperative.
There were about twenty people in the room, mostly dressed with the relative informality of the age, though none was quite so fashionably casual as Swithenbank. Pascoe observed him as he said his hellos to people before settling quietly against the mantelpiece with a drink, his eyes on the door. A couple approached him, a man with a curious limping gait and a woman wearing the kind of drab black dress in which nineteenth-century governesses hoped to avoid arousing either the envy of their mistress or the lust of their master. Swithenbank greeted her with a non-contact kiss, him with a pre-fifteen-rounds handshake and spoke animatedly, saying in a voice suddenly audible right through the room, 'No, glad to be back would hardly be accurate.'
The reason for this sudden clarity was that the end of a James Last track had coincided with an almost total cessation of social chit-chat. Even as Pascoe turned, the hubbub resumed, but cause of the hiatus was there for all to see. Jean and Ursula had made their entrance together. It was neck and neck which was the more eye-catching – Ursula voluptuous in virginal white or Jean outrageous in clinging scarlet. Either alone was worth a man's regard. Together the effect was a golden-days-of-Hollywood dream.
Swithenbank abandoned the limping man and the governess and advanced smiling on Jean.
'Darling,' he said, 'come and meet a few people.'
Ursula came and stood by Pascoe.
'If you don't want people to know you're a policeman,' she said, 'you shouldn't hang around so close to the drink. But pour me a gin as you're here.'
Pascoe obeyed. When he turned from the sideboard, the lame man was talking to Ursula.
'Who is that woman?' he demanded, sounding very angry. 'What the hell is John playing at?'
'Everyone's entitled to friends, dear brother,' she answered.
'You know what I mean, Ursula. It's not decent, not here in Wearton.'
'Because of Kate, you mean? A man's got to make up his own mind what's decent, Geoff. Wouldn't you agree, Mr Pascoe?'
'He might consult the feelings of those close to him,' said Pascoe provocatively, though what exactly he was provoking he did not know. 'It's Mr Rawlinson, isn't it?'
The man turned away without reply and limped back to the woman in black, who hadn't moved from the fireplace.
'His wife?' asked Pascoe.
That's right. Stella. Not that she twinkles much.'
'What happened to his leg?'
'An accident. He fell out of our belfry.'
'What?
'You heard right. Geoff's a great one for watching birds. He draws them, too, he's got a beautiful touch. Wouldn't you say Geoff's got a beautiful touch, dear?'
Her husband, who was refilling his glass from the gin bottle, shot her a glance of bewilderment, not at her remark, Pascoe judged, but at something much more general. It bothered Pascoe; vicars were paid to be certain, not bewildered.
'Well,' continued Ursula as her husband wandered away, 'Peter, my husband, he's the vicar, gave Geoff permission to go up the tower and make observations, take pictures, whatever these bird-men do. And one dark autumn night about a year ago, he fell!'
'Good God! What happened?'
She shrugged, a movement worth watching.
'He couldn't remember a thing. It was a frosty night and I reckon knowing my brother that he'd be balancing on a gargoyle or something to get a better view. And then he slipped, I suppose. Fortunately Peter went out at midnight just to check whether Geoff wanted coffee or a drink before we went to bed. He found Geoff unconscious. Luckily he'd missed the tombstones and landed on grass but he was pretty badly smashed up.'
'As a matter of interest, when precisely was this, Mrs Davenport?'
'I told you. A year ago. In fact I'd say, precisely a year ago. It was a Friday night and it was the weekend Kate Swithenbank went missing. Not that we knew about that till later. Is that why you're here, Inspector?'
'Sh! Sh!'
It was Kingsley who had stolen up behind them.
'We can't have everyone knowing the police are in our midst. Most of these people are respectable law-abiding tax-evaders and as such deserve to have their sensibilities protected.'
'Then what shall I call you?' said Ursula.
'Try his name,' urged Kingsley. 'I'm Boris. This, as you've probably gathered, or if you've been bold, grasped, is Ursula.'
'Peter,' said Pascoe.
'Peter. It's my fate to meet Peters. The rocks on which I foundered,' said Ursula lightly. 'Where is my revered husband, by the way?'
'Being all parochial in the corner. Circulate, circulate; you'll have plenty of time, too much perhaps, for close confabulation later.'
From the far side of the room there came a little scream.
'Oh lor,' said Kingsley. 'It'll be the colonel up to his Wimbledon tricks.'
But when he got across there with Pascoe not far behind, it turned out to be the colonel's lady, who claimed to have seen a face at the window.
'It peered at me through the hydrangea bush,' she claimed.
'No need to worry, dear lady,' Kingsley assured her. 'It was probably one of the local peasants, drawn by rumours of wild festivity and your great beauty.'
'There was a man. I think he was carrying a gun,' insisted the woman.
'I shall organize a p^sse,' promised Kingsley and moved away.
'Silly ass,' said her grey-haired companion, presumably the colonel. 'Soft at the centre. He'll end up like his father. Time we were off, old girl.'
He glowered suddenly at Pascoe to show he resented his eavesdropping. Pascoe smiled embarrassedly and turned away to find himself confronting Peter Davenport, who had obtained a larger glass for his gin.
'What are you after?' he demanded, his light tenor voice scraping falsetto. 'How can the law help? Your law, I mean?'
'What other law is there?' responded Pascoe, thinking to steer the exchange into areas which might sound conventionally theological to those around.
But instead of the hoped-for sermon, Davenport's reply was to laugh shrilly, drawing the attention of everyone in the room and, shaking his head, to say, 'What indeed? What indeed?' before turning abruptly away and making for the bottle-laden sideboard. Geoffrey Rawlinson, his face full of concern, tried to interrupt his progress but was shouldered aside.
Thank God it's not my problem, thought Pascoe as he observed Kingsley join the vicar at the sideboard and talk animatedly to him with his hand resting familiarly on his shoulder.
A few moments later, Kingsley was taking the same liberty with his own person.
'Mr Pascoe, Peter, I wonder if I could ask for your help?'
Pascoe shook his head firmly.
'Not if it involves arresting drunken vicars or chasing gunmen through the shrubbery.'
'No, please. I'm seriously concerned about Peter, the other one I mean. I've never seen him hit the booze like this before, and there are those here quite capable of sending anonymous letters to the bishop.'
'I dare say. But what do you want me to do about it?' asked Pascoe, who was beginning to feel as if he'd strayed on the set of a 1940s British film comedy.
'Just have a word. Something's bothering him and he seems to want to talk to you.'
'He could have fooled me.'
'No, really,' insisted Kingsley. 'If I put you in the library and tell him you'd like a chat, I'm sure he'd go. And it'd be a real favour to the dear chap getting him out of here before he starts falling in the fireplace.'
The library! thought Pascoe. They really are
bent on making a little Poirot out of me!
'If you think it would help…' he said.
'I'm sure of it.'
Pascoe cast a last look about the room before he left. Swithenbank, his hand resting familiarly on Jean Starkey's back, just above the swell of her buttocks, was talking animatedly in the centre of a much amused group; Ursula was being serious with Stella Rawlinson, whose husband was standing apart by himself with all the animation of a pillar of salt. The colonel and his lady, hovering to pay their dues to their host, were watching the Reverend Davenport mixing himself a gin and tonic without much tonic. Rather to Pascoe's surprise, their expressions were more regretful than disapproving. Seen it all too often in the mess, Pascoe guessed. Damn shame. Good man. Damn shame.
Was it? and was he? And did whatever was burning up inside Davenport have anything to do with the Swithenbank case?
The library was a disappointment – an ugly square room with a single wall lined with glass-encased books that looked as if they'd been bought by the yard. In the opposite wall an electric fire had been placed in the fireplace but its dry heat did nothing to dissipate the stale smell of long disuse. Encircling the fireplace were a chesterfield and a pair of upright armchairs in hard red leather. Before the room's solitary window was a large desk with a chair on either side of it. Kingsley gestured ambiguously, saying, 'Please, sit down,' and Pascoe suspected he was being watched with amusement to see whether he would opt for the formal or informal set-up.
'Thank you,' he said, peering through the glass front of one of the bookcases at a series of leather-bound collections of The Gentleman's Magazine for the years preceding the First World War.
'Help yourself, do,' said Kingsley, referring, Pascoe hoped, to the decanters and glasses which stood on a pair of small wine tables rather than to the contents of his bookshelves.
'Right,' said Pascoe.
Kingsley left and Pascoe immediately poured himself a large scotch and tried to recall what the hell he was doing here. It all seemed very unreal. Kate Swithenbank, possibly -probably – dead somewhere; that was the thing to hang on to. Alcoholic vicars with voluptuous wives were probably totally irrelevant. He wasn't sure whether even this Ulalume business meant anything.
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