'Why've you switched it off?' demanded Ursula. She looked wild and distraught, her gown sodden, her make-up smeared like an action painting by the driven rain. All her sexuality had gone, whereas even in the stress of the moment Pascoe had noted under the floodlight the amazing things dampness was doing to Jean Starkey's scarlet dress.
'If he looked down, all he'd be able to see was the glare,' said Pascoe. 'Like being on a stage. We don't want him to feel he's on a stage. I want him to be able to see us - and what he's likely to hit. And I don't want a crowd here either. Now tell me, has he said anything?'
'No, not a word.'
'But he's definitely up there?'
'Yes. We nearly caught up with him. He had to unlock the outer door of the church.'
'Where was the key to the tower?'
'Hanging up in the porch with all the other keys.'
'Is the outer door always locked?'
'It has been since last year, since Geoff's accident. But what's all this got to do with getting Peter down from there?' Ursula demanded angrily.
She was right, thought Pascoe guiltily. He must keep his eye on the rabbit for the moment and forget the goose.
He took the woman by the arm and led her unresisting to where Rawlinson was standing by the cross peering helplessly upwards.
'Listen,' he said. 'I think I know why he's up there, but I'm not sure what'll bring him down. You'd better tell me. Is it just the drink talking? I mean, when the rain and the cold sobers him up, will he come down of his own accord?'
Brother and sister exchanged glances.
'No,' said Ursula. 'Drinking's an escape. The soberer he gets, the worse it'll be.'
'I guessed so,' said Pascoe. 'Then you two had better talk to each other fast. Whatever you know, you've both got to know it, because he's got to know you both know it.'
Ursula managed to raise a wan smile.
'That's a lot of knowing.'
Pascoe regarded her seriously.
'Too much for you?'
She shook her head, then to her brother she said gently, 'Geoff, I'm a good guesser. And I'm Peter's wife.'
Rawlinson rubbed the rain off his face or it may have been tears. Then he began to talk rapidly, in a confessional manner.
'When he used to come and stay with us, we always shared a bed. Some time, it must have been in our early teens, I don't remember, but one summer when he came, well, we'd always played and wrestled before like boys do, only now puberty was well under way and we started exciting ourselves and each other with talk and pictures. For me, I believe for most adolescents if it happens, it was just a sort of marking time. I'd have been terrified to go near a real girl but that was always the image I had in my mind. Later, as I got older and started making dates with girls, I wanted to stop. It would have been earlier but for Peter; but in the end we did stop. We did our college training, settled down to our careers. I got married, John and Kate got married and finally Ursula
and Peter married. I was delighted. I liked him, we were close friends, our childhood was far behind us, then last year . . .'
'It was after the harvest supper, wasn't it?' interrupted Ursula with the certainty of revelation.
Rawlinson nodded glumly, unsurprised that she knew.
'Yes. We were clearing up together, alone. I was . . . unhappy. Well, that's my affair. I talked to Peter. He touched me. And what we did seemed natural, innocent almost. Till next day. I was so full of guilt it almost choked me. I couldn't believe it of myself. The only thing to do seemed to be to pretend it hadn't happened. I made sure I was never alone with Peter during the next couple of weeks. He made no sign that anything was between us, and when he told me about the owls in the tower, I didn't think twice about asking if I could go up there at night. The first three nights I was by myself, getting them accustomed to my presence. The fourth, that was the Friday, he came up with a flask of coffee for me. What happened then - well, all you need to know is the falling was pure accident. My own fault. I was stupid. But stupid or not, it did this . . .'
He slapped his damaged leg in anger and frustration.
'We've got to get him down,' he said desperately. 'Yes, I've blamed him for this and he knows it. But I never wished the same on him. Never!'
Pascoe was looking at the woman. She put her arm round her brother's shoulder.
'It's OK, Geoff. It's OK. I know, I know. Or at least I guessed.'It's OK.'
'And your husband, have you talked about it with him?' asked Pascoe.
'No, not directly. It's a myth, isn't it, that everything's solved by bringing it out in the open? We have a kind of jokey relationship about sex. It's a delicate balance but we keep it, we keep it.'
She sounded desperate for reassurance.
'Something's upset the balance,' urged Pascoe gently.
'Yes, I know. Three or four months ago something, I don't
know what. And tonight. Perhaps it's something to do with you being at Boris's!'
She flashed this at him furiously as though delighted to have found a target.
'My God!' cried Rawlinson, who'd never taken his eyes off the tower. 'He's there!'
Pascoe screwed up his eyes against the now driving rain. The figure leaning over the parapet could have been part of the stonework, some graven saint, so still and indistinct it was.
'Peter! Peter!' screamed Ursula, cupping her hands in an effort to hurl her words skywards. So strong was the wind now that Pascoe doubted if anything but the thin edge of that cry sounded aloft the tower. His training told him he should already have summoned the fire brigade, at least got them on stand-by. But this story could destroy those concerned just as much as the fall could destroy Davenport.
A figure darted from the church porch. It was Swithenbank, excited but controlled.
'We've got the door open,' he said. 'What next?'
Pascoe thought rapidly.
'What's at the top of the stairs?' he demanded of Rawlinson.
'Another door out on to the tower.'
'Does it have a lock?'
'Just a hasp and a padlock.'
'So he can't lock it from above. OK. Mr Rawlinson, can you manage to move forward a bit, get on to the path right beneath Davenport? Ursula, give him a hand.'
Rawlinson clung heavily to his shoulder and limped into position.
'Now stand there the pair of you and bellow at him. He may not be able to hear, but keep on bellowing. I want him to see you two side by side. And I don't want him to be able to jump without risking landing on one of you. If he shifts position, follow him!'
Accompanied by Swithenbank, he dashed into the church
porch. Jean Starkey was there, so wet she might as well have been naked. By contrast Stella Rawlinson was relatively dry. She had found time to put on a raincoat and headscarf before coming out, though her patience had not stretched to moving at her lame husband's pace. Pascoe wondered how much she knew and what the knowledge was doing to her. She it was who carried the torch he had spotted in the distance. He took it from her hand without speaking and pushed his way past Kingsley, who was peering through the tower door with all the nervous excitement of a subaltern about to go over the top.
'You come second,' said Pascoe to Swithenbank. 'Keep three steps behind me. If I stop, you stop. No talking. I'll try to go through the door at the top quietly. If I can't, I'll go at a rush. Come quick then, I may need help.'
'What about me?' said Boris eagerly.
'Stay at the bottom,' ordered Pascoe. 'If he gets past us, stop him.'
It was an unlikely contingency, an unnecessary job. But he didn't want Boris's bulk creaking up those wooden stairs and past experience had taught him that the fewer men you had making an arrest in the dark, the less chance there was of ending up with each other.
The original staircase of the tower must have long since rotted away, but this one was quite antiquated enough. It consisted of five steep wooden steps to each narrow landing and when he gripped the banister, the newel post above
rocked so alarmingly in its joint that he ignored the rail thereafter and proceeded bent double to test the stairs by eye before weight. The air smelt musty and what little light came through the narrow windows was hardly reinforced by the dim glow of the torch. Soon Pascoe could see neither the floor he had left nor the roof he approached. He remembered a ghost story in which a girl counted three hundred steps going up a tower, but coming down soon found herself far beyond that figure without any sign of the bottom. Perhaps this was the way it ended for him, too. He flashed his torch downward
to seek reassurance in the presence of Swithenbank, but the sight of that narrow intense face with its high forehead, blank eyes and black moustache brought little comfort. For all he knew this man was a murderer. It was still very much a possibility. Though his theory that Rawlinson had been hurled from the tower because of what he had seen had proved a non-starter, that meant nothing. The rabbit could co-exist with the goose.
On the other hand, if Swithenbank were a murderer, he had been too successful so far to need to risk attempting to dispose of a suspicious policeman. Indeed, if one of Pascoe's other hypotheses proved true . . .
But speculation was terminated by the sudden awareness that the next landing was the last. Ahead was the door leading to the top of the tower.
There was no latch on it, only an empty hasp with the discarded padlock lying on the floor.
Gently Pascoe pushed at the door. He felt a resistance and for a moment thought that Davenport must have wedged it shut from without. Then he realized that it was only the force of the wind which pressed against him, and as he pushed again that same wind, as if delighted to get a grip on what had so long resisted it, caught the partly opened door and flung it wide with a tremendous crash that almost tore its hinges out of their post.
The dark figure against the furthermost parapet started and turned.
Pascoe hurled himself forward. The figure placed one foot on the parapet and thrust itself upwards. What might have been a shriek from below or merely a new crescendo of wind cut through the air. Pascoe sprang to the parapet, gripped one of the castellations with his left hand and caught Davenport by the jacket pocket. He felt the material begin to tear but dared not release either handhold to try for a better grip.
Where the hell was Swithenbank?
He heard the steps behind him, glanced back, saw that intense, controlled stare, and for a long ghastly moment
wondered how he could have been so wrong about his own safety.
Then with a strength unpromised by his slight frame, Swithenbank caught Davenport by the shoulders and bore him easily backwards.
There was no resistance.
'I wouldn't have jumped,' he said mildly as they thrust him before them through the doorway. Pascoe half believed him but not enough to relax his grip as they clattered down the wooden stairs.
Once in the church porch he released him to Ursula's equally tight clasp and thought ruefully that of them all Davenport probably looked the least distraught, though what emotion it was that twisted Stella's face as she watched her husband talking earnestly to Davenport was hard to say.
'Is he all right?' asked Kingsley anxiously.
'I doubt it,' said Pascoe. 'We'll get him home, call a doctor and get him sedated. After that. . .'
He shrugged.
'Terrible, terrible,' said Kingsley. 'Look, Ursula won't want us all tramping around the rectory. Shall I take the main party back to Wear End to dry out? Oh, and there's the supper! It'll be ruined! And you can come on as soon as decently possible.' >
Pascoe sought for some way of saying that, as the matter was not official, a close friend would be more suitable company for the Davenports than an intrusive policeman, but nothing came to mind.
'All right,' he sighed.
And in any case, he was still curious to discover what it was that had sparked off Davenport's extraordinary behaviour.
He found out in the next ten seconds.
'All right everybody,' called Kingsley. 'Here's what we're going to do.'
But nobody was listening. Behind him the big church door, closed against the violent weather, was swinging slowly open.
Into the lighted porch stepped a dark-clad figure in a
dripping shapeless cap. In the crook of his arm was a shotgun.
Pascoe saw the glance of hatred that came from Davenport's eyes even before the newcomer spoke.
'Evening, Vicar,' said Arthur Lightfoot. 'Here we are again, then.'
CHAPTER IX
But see, amid the mimic rout A crawling shape intrude!
'How do, Inspector?' continued Arthur Lightfoot. 'Have you got him yet?'
'Got who?' asked Pascoe.
'T'chap who killed our Kate,' said Lightfoot.
'Mr Lightfoot, as I've explained, there's no real evidence that your sister's dead.'
'There's the ear-ring,' interrupted Kingsley. Pascoe regarded him curiously and wondered what his game was.
'Come on, Peter. Let's be getting you home. Whatever the rest of this lot think, you're in no fit state for a metaphysical discussion.'
It was Ursula who spoke but when she moved forward with her arm round her husband's waist, Lightfoot made no effort to step aside.
'Do you mind, Arthur!' she said clearly and savagely.
'Just hold on there, missus,' said Lightfoot. 'I asked Mr Detective here a question. No one sets foot out of here without I get an answer.'
'You've had your answer!' said Ursula. 'And in any case, you can't imagine my husband could have anything to do with Kate's disappearance.'
'I know what t'vicar can and can't do as well as any,' said
Lightfoot with a note of vicious mockery in his voice. 'And you too, missus, I know what you're capable of. AH on you, I know as much about all on you as'd fill a Sunday paper through till Friday.'
He raised his voice as he spoke and there was no mistaking the note of threat.
'There's been notes, has there? And telephone calls, has there? And it's you that's been getting them, brother-in-law?'
That's right,' said Swithenbank calmly. 'But. . .'
'Who's she? What's she to you?'
The barrel of the gun rose slowly and pointed at Jean Starkey.
'This is Miss Starkey. She's a writer and . . .'
'I can see what she is,' said Lightfoot scornfully, his eyes running up and down the soaking clinging red dress. 'I said, what's she to you?'
'A friend.'
'A friend, is it? And our Kate not yet properly buried!'
'What makes you so sure she's dead?' burst out Swithenbank.
Lightfoot looked at him with a baring of the teeth which might have been a smile.
'I've seen her through glass and I've heard her in the night. Oh, she's dead, she's" dead, never have doubt of that.'
A spasm of awful grief crossed his face.
'She shouldn't have left, she shouldn't have left,' he keened softly, almost to himself.
'I didn't make her leave,' protested Swithenbank.
'Not you, you girt fool! Wearton. Her home. Me. It were you as caused all this. Like as not whoever wrote that letter knew the truth. It were you, weren't it? Tell us where she's hid, you owe her that. Tell us where she's hid!'
Now the barrel was pointing straight at Swithenbank's chest.
'I wish I knew, Arthur, believe me,' protested Swithenbank in tones of sweet reasonableness whose only effect was to bring the gun stabbing at his rib-case.
'Liar! I've watched you in this churchyard at dead of night. Is she laid here? Is she? I feel her close!'
Pascoe shivered with more than cold. The animal intensity of this man was terrifying beyond the reach of middle-class neurotics, or even suicidal vicars!
'I don't know!' Swithenbank's voice had the ghost of a tremor now, as though he was just beginning to admit the possibility that the trigger might be pulled.
'Tell him what you were doing here, Mr Swithenbank,' Pascoe suggested. He could see no way to disarm t
he man without risking a reflexive tightening of that gnarled brown finger.
'I just thought, if Kate did come to Wearton, she might be here, somewhere, in the churchyard. I thought perhaps the tomb of the Aubrey-Beesons ... we used to play round there as kids . . . once we went in ... there was a key at Wear End, Boris got it ... but there was another in the bunch of keys hanging in the porch here, only Peter had started locking the door, so I couldn't get in.'
He was definitely gabbling now.
'You mean you thought that stupid poem might be true?' asked Ursula.
'Why not?' Swithenbank demanded.
'Why not indeed?' echoed Pascoe. 'I mean, the man responsible for the telephone calls ought to know what precisely they signify, oughtn't he?'
There was a moment of puzzled silence which involved Lightfoot, too, and Pascoe was glad to see that though the direction of the shotgun remained unchanged, the man took half a pace backwards and switched his unblinking gaze to the detective's own face.
'What on earth can you mean, Inspector?' enquired Kingsley.
Swithenbank and Jean Starkey exchanged looks. She smiled fondly at him and nodded encouragingly, like a mother to a shy child.
'All right,' he said defiantly. 'It's true. There were no anonymous phone calls.'
'A couple,' corrected the woman. 'I made them to John's mother and his secretary. Just to provide a couple of independent ears.'
'And I sent the letter and the ear-ring,' said Swithenbank as though eager to claim his share of the credit.
'But the blood?' said Ursula.
'Cow's. Probably off the weekend joint,' said Pascoe cheerfully. 'We have very good laboratories.'
'Sod your laboratories,' said Lightfoot in angry bewilderment. 'What's going on?'
'Arthur, listen to me,' said Swithenbank. He spoke urgently, but he was back in full control. 'I'm like you. I believe Kate's dead. A year, no sign, it's too much. The police think so, too. And they think I'm responsible, but I swear I'm not! But they're fixated; result is, my life's permeated with suspicion while the real murderer gets off scot free. They're not even looking for him, just watching me!'
Asking for the Moon Page 15
