'A damn sight more than anyone else would have, from the sound of it. You've nowt to reproach yourself with.'
'Haven't I? All right, I've gone through the motions, but what's it amounted to? Nothing. A facade. At least Andy was open. Chuck them aside. They're an irrelevance. It's the Samaritans she should be writing to. If she wants police time, let her go out and commit an indictable offence! So on he boldly goes, passing by on the other side. While me, I pussyfoot down the middle of the road, a bit closer to the action maybe, but not getting close enough to actually do any good.
They had reached the Infirmary grounds. He ignored all signs diverting him to car parks, and drove straight up to the nurses' annexe. Leaving the car door wide open behind him, he rushed inside and bounded up the stairs, two at a time. Despite his efforts to keep pace, Wield was left behind. He had never seen Pascoe so agitated before. By thought association he recalled his recent comment that he had never seen Dalziel so obsessed before. One with punishment, the other with protection. The twin poles of policing. Pascoe, Dalziel, as far apart as you could get, but with a world in precarious balance between them . . . what the hell was he doing with a head full of philosophical waffle when he should be concentrating on (a) stopping Pascoe from making a fool of himself and (b) stopping himself from inducing a heart attack?
Breathless, he reached the second landing. Already he could hear Pascoe hammering on a door, calling, 'Mrs Waterson! Pamela! Are you in there?' Other doors had opened and heads were peering out. Pascoe seemed unaware of them. As Wield joined him, he said, 'We'll have to break it down. I know she's in there. I just know!'
And Wield, observing over Pascoe's shoulder the door handle beginning to turn, said, 'Yes, I believe you're right.'
The door was flung open. Pam Waterson stood there with a dressing-gown held tight around her body. Her eyes were bright with anger.
'What the hell's going on?' she demanded.
Pascoe turned and looked at her with an amazement too strong to be as yet compounded with relief. Indeed, to find his certainty proved so unarguably delusive amounted almost to a disappointment.
He said, 'Are you all right? I thought...’
'Yes, of course I'm all right.' She glanced along the corridor at the line of curious heads protruding from each doorway like a colonnade of caryatids. 'Come in and see for yourself if you must.'
This invitation puzzled Wield until he stepped into the flat and a man's voice said, 'Pam, what's going on?'
It was Ellison Marwood experiencing the difficulty of the newly awoken in pulling on a pair of trousers. Pam Waterson had obviously decided that inviting them in was the lesser of two perils when the other was the risk of Marwood displaying himself thus to that gauntlet of eyes.
'I'm sorry. It's nothing. I thought . . .'
Pascoe was doing a bad job, and Wield, who knew the value of presenting a stolid official face on occasions, said, 'We had reason to suspect that a woman as yet unknown to us might be at risk, and we wished to eliminate Mrs Waterson from our inquiries.'
This stiff formula calmed things down for a second while they prised some meaning from it.
'At risk from me?' demanded Marwood.
'Don't be daft,’ said the woman. 'You mean she's going to harm herself, don't you?'
'Yes, I'm sorry,' said Pascoe, still floundering.
'You haven't written any letters to the police, have you, Mrs Waterson?' said Wield, still playing it official.
'No, I haven't.
'Hey, this is outrageous, you know that?' intervened Marwood, putting on indignation with his clothes. 'What are you suggesting? What right do you think you've got, bursting in here and telling Pam she's some sort of nut case . . .'
'Be quiet, Ellison,' she said. 'They didn't burst in. And there have been times recently when I thought. . . well, never mind what I thought. But I haven't written any letters. And I'm going to be OK, believe me. Greg almost ruined my life when he was alive. I promise you, he's not going to finish the job now he's dead.'
She lit a cigarette and drew on it long and deep.
Marwood said, 'You said you'd give those things up.'
'No. That's what you said,' stated Pam Waterson. 'Which is not, and is never going to be, the same thing.'
It was time to go and let this little skirmish either explode into war or implode into bed.
'Come on, sir,' said Wield to Pascoe. 'Didn't you say you wanted to check Mrs Appleyard?'
'What? Oh yes.'
'Appleyard?' said Marwood, glad of a diversion which without dishonour might allow him to back off from the tobacco war. 'Shirley Appleyard, the Stringer girl? Is she on your list too? Well, tough tittie again, boys. Her mother was admitted late last night and last I saw, young Shirley was sitting by her bedside in Ward seventeen.'
They left. Pascoe needed to check, of course, but this time Wield had no difficulty in convincing him to take a less precipitate approach.
The ward sister told them that Mrs Stringer had been admitted for observation after collapsing the previous evening. So far no specific medical condition had been diagnosed beyond that covered by the vague term nervous exhaustion. Her daughter had brought her in, stayed till satisfied there was no immediate danger, gone home to look after her child, and returned that morning.
As they spoke the girl herself appeared. Her eyes took in Pascoe and Wield but she made no sign of recognition as she said to the nurse, 'She's sleeping again. I'll head home now. I've got a neighbour looking after Antony and I don't like to impose. But I'll be back later.'
'Fine,' said the nurse. 'Don't worry. She's in good hands.'
Shirley Appleyard nodded and walked away. The two policemen, taken by surprise, had to hurry to catch up with her.
'Mrs Appleyard, could we have a word?' said Pascoe.
'I thought we were done with you lot, till the trial anyway,' said the woman, still walking.
'Yes, I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about your mother too. I'm glad it doesn't sound too serious.'
'No? If she'd lost a leg, would that sound serious?'
'Yes, of course, but...’
'Well, she's lost something that's left a far bigger gap!'
She halted and swung round to confront Pascoe. For a moment she looked ready to explode in anger, then she took a deep breath and resumed control.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I shouldn't take it out on you. I'd no idea either. I was stupid and thought that once she got over the first shock, she'd really be able to relax and start enjoying life now Dad had gone. I thought I'd have the much bigger gap because Tony and me were young and I still had some daft romantic notions hidden away. Shows what I know, doesn't it? I tried to feel properly upset when I found out Tony were dead, but a sort of relief kept on breaking in; not relief that he was dead, I didn't want that, but relief that I didn't need to wonder what was going on any more. Mam, though, well, she'd had to put up with Dad for over twenty years, at least that's how I saw it. But it wasn't just putting up, there was a lot more to it than that. I never realized, and there I was telling her to buck up and enjoy life, like she'd just won first dividend on the pools, and all the time...’
She shook her head in self-rebuke.
'That's the way anyone would have seen it, believe me,' said Pascoe earnestly.
'It'd be nice to think so,' said the girl. 'But it's not true. I was moaning on about her yesterday to this old girl I met at the Kemble. That Chung asked me to do some poster-work, did you know that? And then I got on helping with other things like painting backcloths and so on. There were lots of other people there, she's really marvellous at getting people to help, and I mean, normally I'd not have done more than say hello to someone like this Mrs Horncastle, she's a Canon's wife and talks dead posh, but that doesn't matter when you're around Chung, and I found myself moaning on about Mam not being able to jolly herself up. She didn't say a lot but she must have had a word with Chung, 'cos next thing she's working alongside me and talking about Mam, and suddenly I was s
eeing things in a completely different way. Funny, isn't it? She only met her the once and she seemed to know more about her than I did! When I got home last night, I started talking to Mam, really talking to her, not at her, and suddenly she started talking back like I'd never heard before, on and on and on, just one great flood. Something like that's supposed to make you better, I always thought, getting it out of the system, that sort of thing. Only it wasn't like that. She went through the whole of their life together, good and bad, and it left her exhausted, more than exhausted, collapsed. I thought she'd had an attack and I rang the doctor and he got her in here. They say there's nowt specific, it's just that she's been hanging on, using all her strength just to hang on, and I never saw it, I never saw...’
There were tears in her eyes. Pascoe took her arm and squeezed it, helplessly. His distress seemed to act homeopathically on hers, for she recovered her composure almost instantly and said, 'Anyroad, what are you two after now?'
Pascoe glanced at Wield then said, 'Nothing. Really, there was just a medical query to clear up, that's all, then someone told us about your mother
'Is that it? Then I'll be off. I don't want to get stuck in the crowds. I'd have thought you two would have been out cheering your boss.'
Pascoe grinned and said, 'Oh, we do that all the time. Aren't you going to watch, especially now you're involved?'
She shook her head and said, 'Later perhaps, but not today. Though I could have had a ringside seat. This Mrs Horncastle invited me to go along and sit in her bedroom window overlooking the close. The wagons will pass right outside, she said, and we would have been just on a level with Mr Dalziel. Not every day you get to be on a level with God, is it? I might have gone, but not with Mam coming in here. Look, I'll have to rush. See you.'
She hurried away, a young woman vital and strong, with a capacity to love and bear, and a will to survive the most devastating wreck of her hopes.
'You didn't ask about the letters,' said Wield.
'I think I did,' said Pascoe. 'But listen, did you hear what she said about Mrs Horncastle?'
'The Canon's wife? Aye, she said she offered her a seat in her bedroom. I never thought of the Super being so high he could peer into folks' bedroom windows. I bet he gives some poor sods a nasty shock!'
Pascoe didn't smile. He said, 'In that last letter it said something about looking out at Dalziel as he passed, didn't it?'
'Yes, I think it did,' said Wield. 'But it was just a manner of speaking, wasn't it? And even if it wasn't, we can't really check on everyone who's got a house overlooking the procession route, can we?'
'We can check on Mrs Horncastle.'
Wield looked at Pascoe as though he thought he had finally gone mad.
'Look,' he said. 'I can see this is bothering you, but we can't just go around bursting in on folk to see if they're about to top themselves. All right, these two, there was mebbe some real cause for concern, but this Canon's wife . . . How well do you know her anyway?'
'I've only met her a couple of times,' admitted Pascoe. 'But it sticks out like a sore thumb that she's not a happy woman.'
'That covers a hell of a lot of people,' said Wield. 'And if she's so miserable she's going to top herself after the Super rides by, why'd she invite young Shirley up to share the view?'
'So she wouldn't be able to do it,' said Pascoe. 'It fits with what Pottle said, a sort of gamble. And she was at the ball and didn't get asked to dance. And she's in a position to know the religious calendar inside out and she laughed like a drain when I told her Dalziel was short-listed for God and there was that dream about her dog...’
They were almost at the trot again as they headed for the main exit from the Infirmary. Wield gasped, 'I don't understand half what you're on about . . .'
'If you bothered to read the file, perhaps you would,' barked Pascoe in a reprimand as unfair as any ever hurled by Dalziel at a shell-shocked subordinate.
Wield registered, assessed, forgave, and, once back in the car, he turned to the beginning of the file and began a slow analytical examination of the letters.
He was interrupted after only half a minute.
'That paper of yours, does it have a pageant timetable?'
'I think so. Yes, here it is. Let's see . . . the first wagon, that's Mr Dalziel's, should be leaving the market place now and heading towards the close, due there in about fifteen minutes.'
'Right,' said Pascoe, and Wield returned to the Dark Lady.
They made good progress through quiet back streets, but as they neared the close, holiday crowds and traffic diverted from the pageant route began to clog their way. Finally they were halted by an irritated uniformed policeman who stooped to the window and said, 'Can't you bloody well read? It's all closed to traffic up ahead till the pageant's passed. You'll have to back up and . . .'
He finally became aware that what Pascoe was waving at him wasn't a driving licence.
'Sorry, sir,' he said. 'Didn't recognize you. Thing is, the road ahead's . . .'
'Just get us through!' grated Pascoe.
A few moments later by dislodging angry sightseers from hard won vantage-points, the constable got them through on to the actual pageant route. Away to his left Pascoe glimpsed the head of the procession. Chung might have held back on the Nubian slaves, but otherwise she'd gone the whole hog in search of God's plenty. Dalziel's wagon must be a good ten minutes behind, which meant it wouldn't be passing between the cathedral and the Canon's house for almost half an hour. He relaxed a little.
Beside him Wield was deeply immersed in the letter file. There were things here that were bothering him and he was beginning to share something of Pascoe's sense of urgency, but he kept it under control. This was a time for cold analysis. Pointless two of them going off half-cocked.
As they passed through the gateless gateway of the close, they were greeted by ironic cheers from the pressing crowds who, expecting God on top of a machine, were amused to be offered a pair of mere mortals in a dusty Sierra. Once more an angry policeman intercepted them, but this one recognized them before he opened his mouth.
'Park this somewhere nice and safe, lad,' ordered Pascoe, climbing out. 'I'll be in Canon Horncastle's house. Come on, Wieldy.'
Clutching the file and his newspaper, Wield found himself once more in pursuit of Pascoe who was shouldering his way through the crowd like an All Black in sight of the line. He caught up with him at the forbidding entrance to a dark narrow house right opposite the Great Tower of the Cathedral.
'Peter,' he said. 'There's something....’
But the door was already opening in response to Pascoe's imperious knocking, and a dark clad figure confronted them with the amazed scorn of a Victorian butler finding trade on his front step.
'What on earth is the meaning of this din?' demanded Canon Horncastle.
'Police,' said Pascoe. 'May we come in?'
As his request was spoken over his shoulder, it seemed to Wield a little redundant. The Canon thought so too, for his thin face flushed like pack ice during a seal hunt and he cried, 'How dare you force your way into my house like this!'
'I'd like to speak to your wife, sir,' said Pascoe.
'My wife!' exclaimed Horncastle as though Pascoe had made an indecent suggestion. 'I assure you of this, Inspector or whatever you are, you will not speak to my wife without a considerably more detailed account of your reasons than you have yet given me.'
‘Thank you for being so protective, Eustace, but I think I'm of an age to make my own decisions.'
The voice came from the head of a brown varnished stairway rising out of the gloomy hall which despite the warmth of the day outside contrived to be damp and chilly. The woman was silhouetted against the light of a landing window and for all Wield could see, she might indeed have been clutching a poison bottle in one hand while with the other she pressed a dagger through her bloodstained nightgown into her ravaged heart. Such Gothic notions seemed entirely appropriate to this sepulchral house and its cadavero
us master, but in the event as she descended she proved to be wearing a light grey twinset and a tweedy skirt and carrying nothing more sinister than a pair of spectacles.
Pascoe advanced to meet her. For the third time in the space of less than an hour he was faced with the delicate task of finding out if the woman he was speaking to was on the point of killing herself. With Pam Waterson, he had put the question more or less direct. With Shirley Appleyard he had let his own observations give him the answer. What would be his approach this time? Wield asked himself.
'Could we have a word alone, Mrs Horncastle?' he asked.
'No, you could not.' It was the Canon, his voice thin and dangerous. 'Anything you have to say to my wife will be said in front of me.'
Pascoe scratched his ear and looked interrogatively at the woman. He had no doubt that the Canon opposed the ordination of women and probably didn't much care to see them hatless in church, but this attempt at domestic domination was straight out of Trollope! Surely Victorian values stopped somewhere short of this?
But the woman surprised him.
'Eustace is of course right, Mr Pascoe,' she said quietly. 'There is nothing which can be said to me nor anything which I might say in reply that I would wish to keep from his ears.'
This was either total submission or . . . could it be total war? He looked into her calm features, but found no clue there. Suddenly, however, he was ninety per cent certain she was not his Dark Lady, but he couldn't back off without the missing tenth.
He said, 'Mrs Horncastle, have you ever written any letters to Chief Superintendent Dalziel?'
'No,' she said. 'I have not.'
Her voice carried conviction. But she would say that, wouldn't she? He had to press on.
'These letters were unsigned,' he said.
She saw his drift immediately and half smiled. 'I see you think my association with the Church might have turned me Jesuitical. But no, when I say I have never written to Mr Dalziel, I mean I have never written to him using my own name, or anyone else's name or no name at all. Does that satisfy you?'
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