Ruling Passion

by Reginald Hill

  Simple as that, thought Pascoe, smiling ruefully at his loss of role. In times of stress, the weakness of others is a useful source of strength. Ellie’s self-possession was throwing him more and more into a confrontation with his own emotions, making him more and more of a policeman in order to retain his equilibrium.

  But what the hell was there to investigate here? He looked hopefully around the room.

  Ellie was at the door, reassuring Marianne that all her needs were catered for. She caught his eye and smiled briefly, then was gone. He felt a sense of relief, edged with guilt. With Ellie out of the way, there might be a chance to provoke some reactions. Pelman seemed the best bet. He had seemed much in favour of plain speaking on his arrival, though now he seemed content to turn the treadmill of social trivia with the rest. At the moment he was complaining about the cost of estate management.

  ‘You’re a working member of the community then?’ asked Pascoe brightly. ‘You don’t just sleep here.’

  The Bells and Hardistys exchanged a glance which told Pascoe he had been inept in his choice of words. John Bell seemed very amused, the others less so.

  ‘Yes, Mr Pascoe. I have a dairy herd and one of the biggest hen batteries in this part of the world. I work for my living.’

  A hint of sneering stress on ‘work’? Pascoe wasn’t sure.

  ‘So do we all,’ smiled Dr Hardisty, perhaps having felt it also. Pelman grunted and sipped his drink.

  ‘If you like what you’re doing, it’s not work,’ said Bell with mock sanctimoniousness.

  ‘Do you like your job?’ asked Sandra Bell suddenly. ‘What is it you do, Mr Pascoe?’

  Doesn’t she know? Or is she just trying out her claws? She seemed a nice woman, but Pascoe felt far from competent to judge.

  ‘I’m a policeman, Mrs Bell,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ Collapse of thin woman.

  ‘CID, aren’t you?’ said Pelman. ‘Tell me, what’s your professional prognosis in this case?’

  ‘Angus!’ protested Marianne.

  ‘He needn’t answer if he’d rather not,’ said Pelman, staring hard at Pascoe.

  ‘Another drink, anyone?’ said Hartley Culpepper.

  ‘Police procedure is quite simple in such matters,’ said Pascoe. ‘Three things mainly. The weapon is looked for. Absent persons who may be able to help are looked for. And a great number of people are interviewed, statements taken, information amassed. That’s about it. Nothing very dramatic. In the majority of murder cases, the police know who did it within twenty-four hours of being called in. Often sooner.’

  He scanned the group, poker-faced.

  ‘And in this case?’ asked Pelman, softly.

  ‘Who knows? I’m not on the investigating team,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’m just a witness. Like the rest of you perhaps.’

  ‘How important will finding the weapon be?’ asked Mrs Hardisty to fill the ensuing silence.

  ‘It’s finding who it belongs to that’s important in the case of a gun,’ explained Pascoe.

  Pelman laughed explosively, unhumorously.

  ‘That’s no problem. It belongs to me.’

  No one rushed to fill the silence this produced. But Pascoe had no doubts about the thoughts swimming goldfish-like behind the surprised eyes. A joke in bad taste? Some kind of confession? A simple misunderstanding?

  ‘Didn’t Backhouse tell you?’ asked Pelman.

  ‘I said I’m not one of the investigating team,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘No. Of course not. But it’s not a secret, is it? The thing is, when the superintendent spoke to me, one of the things he was interested in was my guns. Naturally. It had gone from my mind till I looked.’

  ‘What had?’ asked Marianne impatiently. ‘For God’s sake, this is serious, Angus. Don’t make a golf-club anecdote out of it.’

  Pelman took his scolding meekly and went on.

  ‘One of my guns was missing. I had lent it to Colin Hopkins a week or so ago and he hadn’t let me have it back. Not that there was any hurry. It wasn’t up to much and I have plenty of others.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Culpepper.

  ‘So you think it was your gun that was used …?’ Mrs Hardisty saw no need to finish her sentence.

  ‘It seems probable.’

  ‘Why did Colin want the gun?’ asked Pascoe, listening carefully to the timbre of his own voice. It was light, steady. He was doing remarkably well. The control was there. Fat Dalziel would be proud of him.

  The lounge door burst open and he whirled like a startled cat, slopping his whisky over the rim of his glass.

  In the door stood a tall, angular woman of some considerable age. Her skin was brown and creased like a tortoise’s neck, but her eyes were bright and alert. The nylon overall she wore was the luminous orange of a road-worker’s safety jacket, clashing horridly with her dark violet slacks and fluffy red slippers. This, thought Pascoe with surprise, must be the gardener.

  ‘There’s a man upstairs,’ she said in a flat south Lancashire accent.

  ‘It’s all right, Mother,’ said Culpepper in a reassuring tone. ‘We have guests.’

  ‘I’m not blind,’ said the old woman scornfully.

  ‘To stay, I mean. Mr Pascoe here. Pascoe, I’d like you to meet my mother, who does us the honour of living with us.’

  ‘You could put it like that,’ said the woman, staring at Pascoe with a marked lack of enthusiasm. ‘It wasn’t him.’

  ‘Wasn’t …?’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Then it was probably Miss Soper, our other guest,’ said Culpepper triumphantly.

  ‘It was a man,’ she insisted.

  Marianne Culpepper slid open a panel in an elegant walnut cabinet to reveal the contents of an expensive-looking hi-fi system.

  ‘The new Drew Spade album came this morning,’ she said brightly. ‘Shall we listen? I haven’t heard it myself yet, so I can’t say what it’s like.’

  Another diversionary tactic. What a snarled-up lot of people they were! And the sound which began to thump out of the speakers was hardly music-for-the-bereaved, either. But it wasn’t quite loud enough to prevent Pascoe from hearing the rest of the exchange between Culpepper and his mother.

  ‘No, it must have been Miss Soper,’ said Hartley.

  ‘Please your bloody self,’ answered the old woman, shrugging her still broad shoulders. ‘I’m off to my bed. I only hope I’m not murdered in it.’

  The remark acted on Pascoe like an electrical impulse. He handed his glass to Culpepper, pushed between the man and his mother without apology and ran lightly up the stairs.

  It was absurd. Probably the old woman had indeed just caught a glimpse of Ellie. But she seemed sensible enough. Something of a burden, perhaps, to Culpepper and his wife, but that was none of his business. To an investigating officer, everything is his business. One of Dalziel’s dicta.

  He pushed open Ellie’s door quietly. She was sitting up in bed with the lights on, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, unsurprised.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Back in a sec.’

  His own door was slightly ajar. The room was in darkness. The door moved easily at his touch and he stepped swiftly inside, trying to recall where the light-switch was.

  His groping hand could not make contact with it, but he knew someone was there in the room with him. The image of a shotgun rose suddenly in his mind and he abandoned his search for the switch, moving noiselessly away from the line of light spilling in from the landing. As he dropped on one knee beside the wardrobe, he heard a noise. The curtains moved and the clear autumn sky leaned its pinholes of light against the glass till a figure blotted them out. Everything went still again.

  Pascoe spoke.

  ‘Colin?’ he said uncertainly.

  He stood up.

  ‘Colin? It’s Peter, Peter Pascoe. Is that you, Colin?’

  He was by the small bedside table now. His hands plunged down on the lamp which stood there. The ball of his thumb
caught the switch and the soft light blossomed into the room.

  The figure by the window spoke.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Mr Pascoe,’ he said compassionately. ‘It’s not Colin.’

  ‘So I see,’ said Pascoe, looking steadily at the man before him. ‘What are you doing in my room, Mr Davenant?’

  Chapter 8

  ‘Oh, there you are, Anton,’ said Marianne Culpepper from the doorway. ‘What on earth are you doing in here?’

  ‘ Forgive me, darlings,’ said Davenant moving away from the window. ‘I am quite, quite lost. That little room you put me in downstairs was super, Marianne, except that it didn’t seem to contain a loo. And while I’m sure a house of such distinction has loos all over the place, I could find none downstairs, though I did peer through a kind of grid thing at a room full of po-shaped objects.’

  ‘You mistook my room for a bathroom?’ said Pascoe with carefully measured incredulity.

  ‘Not in the least. I tried the door in my search, though, peered in, realized my mistake of course and then forgot all else as across the window, outlined against the evening sky, swooped Asio otus.’

  ‘What?’ said Marianne.

  ‘The long-eared owl, my dear. I may have been mistaken, but I think not. Those ears! I forgot everything. One call of nature gave way to a greater, and I darted across the room to watch his flight. Glorious! Then someone approached. I froze into quietness, but alas! I was discovered. Forgive us our trespasses, I pray you.’

  He smiled sweetly at Pascoe, who put on the all-is-explained face he often used when faced with a blatant liar.

  ‘You’ve got him then,’ said Mrs Culpepper, senior, in a triumphant tone. She peered curiously over her daughter-in-law’s shoulder. ‘He’s a funny-looking devil.’

  ‘Hush!’ said Marianne. ‘This is Mr Davenant, Mother. An old friend of mine.’

  The plot thickens, thought Pascoe. And with the dramatic metaphor came a sense of staging, of something being not quite real.

  ‘From London, is it?’ said the old woman, as if wanting the worst to be confirmed.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Marianne.

  ‘I thought so.’ She left, nodding triumphantly.

  ‘Darling,’ cried Culpepper up the stairs. ‘John and Sandra are going.’

  ‘Sorry to rush, but Eric’s got a chill and we don’t like to leave the sitter too long,’ came Sandra Bell’s voice.

  Marianne looked uncertainly at Pascoe and Davenant, then turned and went down. Davenant made to follow her.

  ‘I didn’t realize you had friends in the neighbourhood,’ said Pascoe, sitting on the bed.

  ‘Why should you? I didn’t realize you had either. What I mean is, I didn’t understand your odd behaviour in the pub till I found out later who you were.’

  ‘Oh. Have you known the Culpeppers long?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘Not long. In fact, hardly at all. Dear Marianne was putting it on a bit, for the old dragon’s sake, I fancy, when she called me an old friend! No. In fact …’ he hesitated and peered assessingly at Pascoe.

  ‘In fact,’ he went on, ‘if I’m an old friend of anyone, it’s of your old friends.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Pascoe. Then, amazed, ‘You mean of Colin and Rose’s?’

  ‘Yes. Well, more of Timmy and Carlo’s really,’ answered Davenant. ‘Though I knew Rose and Colin well also.’

  Pascoe stood up and closed the bedroom door.

  ‘You’d better tell me exactly what you’re doing here, Mr Davenant,’ he said. Despite all his efforts he could not keep a threat out of his voice.

  Davenant’s story was simple. In Oxford, collecting material for an article on English provincial cooking, he had heard the news of the murders at mid-morning. As soon as he recognized the names, he had set out for Thornton Lacey.

  ‘I was all of a tremble, I promise you. I could hardly point the car straight. But I had to come, you understand. By the time I got here, I’d settled down a trifle. It struck me that I would be foolish to appear as a friend of those murdered.’

  ‘What made you think that?’ demanded Pascoe.

  ‘You’re involved in the grief then. People don’t talk to you as they would otherwise. You must have found that too.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ admitted Pascoe grudgingly.

  ‘I wanted to be able to ask questions. Poke my nose in. Be a journalist. Just as you must be dying to be a policeman. I wanted to find out everything I could about this awful business. So I invented that silly story about my editor putting me on the job.’

  ‘You did it very well,’ murmured Pascoe.

  ‘Thank you kindly. I decided I’d like to talk with you when I found out who you were. They told me you were staying up here. As soon as they mentioned the name Culpepper, I thought, Good Lord! Hartley! I’ve met him several times in town at mutual acquaintances’, and I knew he lived in the country out here somewhere, but I’d quite forgotten it was Thornton Lacey. In other circumstances, a delicious coincidence.’

  ‘Delicious. So they shut you away downstairs?’

  ‘Until the other guests had gone, yes. It seemed easier. These villages are full of eagle eyes and tattle-tales.’

  ‘And long-eared owls.’

  ‘What? Oh yes. I wonder where the chappie’s gone.’

  He turned to the window once more and stared out into the star-filled night.

  ‘Autumn,’ he said. ‘Always a sad time. I’m sorry now that I came and disturbed you. Perhaps I should go.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘With your late pugilistic opponent,’ said Davenant, turning and smiling. ‘At the Eagle. If I start walking now, I’ll be in time for a nightcap in the bar.’

  ‘You walked here? Let me drive you back,’ offered Pascoe.

  ‘How kind you are. But no. I really like to walk. And perhaps Asio otus will appear for me again.’

  ‘Then I’ll walk with you,’ said Pascoe. ‘The air will help me to sleep. And I too would like a sight of your owl.’

  To his surprise Pascoe found that he really was enjoying the walk after the first few minutes. There were things about his companion which he did not yet understand and a large part of his purpose in accompanying him had been to probe deeper. But the night was not made for chatter, idle or serious, and even the sound of their footsteps in the gravel of Culpepper’s drive seemed an intrusion. It ran before them, white as an Alaskan river, and when they finally stepped off it on to the darker surface of the lane which led down to the road, they both hesitated as though uncertain of their footing. The night sounds gradually took control: a breeze in the trees; something rustling through the grass; a distant chatter, suddenly ending, then a long, wavering note which caught at the nerve-ends.

  ‘There!’ said Davenant. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Your owl?’

  ‘Probably. Or it may just be a tawny owl. They’re more common. Listen.’

  The note came again. Pascoe felt as if the Indians might be about to attack.

  ‘I think it is a tawny,’ said Davenant. ‘Sweet things in their way, but not the same.’

  They set off walking again.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Pascoe when they reached the road, ‘what did Palfrey have to say about Colin before I interrupted him? Or after.’

  They had turned right towards the village. Left would have taken them towards Brookside Cottage.

  ‘Now you’re interested!’ said Davenant. ‘Well now, he was far from complimentary, you understand. I had met Colin through Timmy and Carlo and was not so deeply involved with him as you. Also, of course, I had set out to make him talk. So I didn’t react like you.’

  ‘No need to apologize,’ said Pascoe. ‘I was stupid.’

  ‘Perhaps. Our emotions deserve an outing from time to time. Things had started going wrong fairly early in his acquaintance with the Hopkinses. According to his highly coloured version, very attractive, alas, to some of my fellows of the Press, Colin was an unbalanced, exhibitionistic
Marxist. Marxist, by the way, is something pretty ultimate in the Palfrey insult book. He would rather put his handsome teenage son into the tender care of someone like myself than entrust him to a Marxist.’

  ‘Specifically, what did he tell you?’ inquired Pascoe.

  ‘Little enough, though I’ve gleaned a much more detailed version of the story from other sources. It seems that he tried the public-school-and-Sandhurst condescension bit first of all with the parvenus. When this didn’t wash and he saw that Rose and Colin were accepted by those he, Palfrey, liked to be accepted by, he tried the all-chums-in-the-jolly-old-mess line. They didn’t take all that kindly to that either, but being nice they tolerated it until one night he turned out a couple of rather noisy kids who’d strayed in by accident. He made the mistake of appealing to Rose for moral support. She stood up, declared that she’d always thought the beer was off but now she knew the full reason why he was called Jim Piss, and marched out. Palfrey said something about an ill-bred bitch; Colin – on his way after Rose – stopped long enough to pour the remnants of his drink over Palfrey’s head. They never came back. After such a splendid exit, who could?’

  ‘But that wasn’t an end to it,’ surmised Pascoe.

  ‘By no means. Absence made the heart grow harder. Palfrey pursued them with calumny and slander and tried to spread rumours about their immorality, political extremism and, worst of all to the middle-class ear, economic unsoundness. Colin and Rose had plenty of friends, but there are always ears willing to listen in a place like this.’

  ‘And …?’ inquired Pascoe after they had walked another fifty yards in silence.

  ‘And nothing. There’s an end. Though I am told that Colin was seen coming out of the Eagle just before opening time on Friday morning and that Palfrey was rather quieter than usual with his lunch-time regulars.’

  And Colin wrote a letter to Palfrey that afternoon. What the hell could have been in it? Backhouse would know. But would he know the background? Of course he would! Just as he, Pascoe, would have done if he’d managed to read all Crowther’s notes!

  They reached the village without saying much more. Outside the Eagle and Child they paused.