She shuddered. Pascoe looked around the room and noticed that the dahlias had been removed.
'But you didn't find Kate frightening, too?' he said.
'Only in the sense that what we don't know frightens us,' she said. 'Perhaps there is nothing to know. Perhaps that's the truth of it, that underneath she's just an ordinary dull little girl. Marriage is abrasive, Mr Pascoe. John would find out the truth of her sooner or later.'
'And . . . ?' *
'And if what he found bothered him so much that he wanted rid of her, he would ring his solicitor! One of the things I envy your generation is that divorce is there for the asking. Any other reaction is unthinkable!'
'I'm afraid that not everyone would agree with you,' said Pascoe.
This woman was certainly not absurd, he had long decided. And she was only as amusing as she wanted to be. Most important of all, despite the apparent freedom with which she poured out her impressions of her daughter-in-law and others, Pascoe suspected that they were measured with a most exact and knowing eye.
'Meaning what?'
'You took a phone call for your son yesterday morning.'
'Did I?'
'A woman's voice. Don't you remember?'
'The funny name. Is that the one you mean?'
'Yes, that's right,' said Pascoe. 'Ulalume. You didn't recognize the voice?'
'No,' she replied. 'I don't think so, though I am a little deaf, especially on the phone. It's easier when you can observe the lips. I certainly didn't recognize the name.'
'Was there anything distinctive you can recall about the voice?' persisted Pascoe
'Not really. As I say, I'm a little deaf and the line wasn't very good. It sounded terribly distant.'
'What exactly did this woman say?' asked Pascoe.
'Hardly anything, that I can recall,' said the woman. 'I gave our number, she said John Swithenbank, I said who's calling? She said Ulalume, is that right? I said who? She didn't say anything else so I went and got John. What does all this signify, Inspector?'
Quickly Pascoe explained, reasoning that if Swithenbank didn't want his mother to know, he shouldn't have left her to be interrogated alone.
'I don't like the sound of this,' she said sharply when he'd finished.
'No?' he said.
'Someone's trying to make trouble. There were one or two nasty calls a year ago when the news first got out. People in the village and round about - old maids with nothing better to do, I usually guessed their names and that made them ring off pretty quickly! But this sounds more organized, as if someone's been thinking about it. Not just an impulse like some old biddy filling the gap between Crown Court and Coronation Street.'
'That's very astute of you,' complimented Pascoe. 'Any ideas?'
'I can't fathom the precise aim,' said Mrs Swithenbank, 'but I should be surprised if she, or he, were a thousand miles away from you tonight.'
She glanced at her watch and pursed her lips impatiently.
'I hope John isn't going to keep you waiting much longer, Inspector. There's a film I particularly want to see on the television and he promised to have you on the way before it started.'
Taken aback by the sudden change in the objects of her concern, Pascoe downed his untouched drink in one to demonstrate his readiness to be off and said, 'Perhaps it's Miss' Starkey who's holding him up.'
'That wouldn't surprise me,' she said significantly.
Not quite certain whether she was really underlining the double entendre, Pascoe asked if she had known Miss Starkey long.
'I never saw her before in my life. I came home last evening and there she was. I was then consulted about whether she could stay or not, but not in a manner which admitted the possibility of refusal.'
'Despite which, you didn't refuse?' said Pascoe, tongue in cheek.
She glanced at him sharply, then smiled.
'No, I didn't.'
'A business colleague of your son's, perhaps?' said Pascoe casually.
'I'm glad you don't even pretend to believe that!' said the woman. 'No, I imagine she's precisely what she appears to be. His mistress.'
'Here by invitation?' said Pascoe, with doubt bordering on incredulity in his voice.
'No, Inspector. Not by invitation, but certainly by design,' said a new voice.
Jean Starkey was standing by the half-open door, amusedly self-conscious of the dramatic effect of both her timing and her appearance. She wore a scarlet dress of some soft elastic fabric which clung so close that the finest of underwear must have thrown up its contours. None could be seen to break the curving lines of her body and when she moved forward into the room muscle and sinew rippled the scarlet surface like a visual aid in an anatomy class.
Pascoe sighed and she smiled her appreciation.
'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, eer
ily, 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?'
&nb
sp; 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.'
Asking for the Moon Page 11
