Pascoe said as casually as he could, 'Fine. Well, in fact, Ellie's away visiting her mother for a couple of days. And Rosie too, of course. The old girl's been a bit under the weather. The strain of looking after Ellie's father. He's got Alzheimer's, remember? He's gone totally now, no memory, never speaks, incontinent, the works. So they got him into a home last month and now Ellie's gone down just to check her mum's coping…' He was talking too much. Dalziel said, 'OK, is she?' 'Yes. I think so. I mean, Ellie rang just to say they'd got there OK…' A message on his answering machine. 'Peter, we've arrived safely. Rosie sends her love. I'll ring again tomorrow.' He hadn't tried to ring back. 'Well, it's an ill wind,' said Dalziel.
'Lots of time on your hands now to catch up with what's going off. You must've seen that telly programme yon Yank, Waggs, made, a while back?
The one that caused the big stink?' Pascoe shook his head. 'Well, no great loss. Them TV twats get carried away. Funny angles, fancy music, all film festival stuff without the titties in the sand. I've got a video of it I'll show you some time, but best for background is this radio thing they did a couple of years back before they started this miscarriage of justice crap. I don't suppose you heard that either?'
He rummaged in a drawer, brought out an audio cassette. 'You listen to that. That was the truth for twenty-five years. Now they're telling us it's a load of lies.' Pascoe took the cassette and said, 'I gather you know Mr Hiller from way back.' 'Oh aye. He got dumped on us but Wally soon saw him off. I reckon that's how he's got on so well. Everyone he worked for'd be so keen to get shot of the bugger, they'd give him a glowing testimonial to get him on his way! Big mistake. You don't get rid of a snake by pushing it into someone else's garden. You keep it close where you can stamp on it.' 'It's a nice theory,' said Pascoe.
'But he must have some ability.' 'Too true. The ability to dig up whatever bones the Emmies have buried for him and come running back with them, wagging his tiny tail behind him.' 'I'm sorry?' said Pascoe, baffled. 'Emmies? I don't quite follow…' 'Emmies!' said Dalziel in exasperation. 'MI this, MI that. The funny buggers.' 'The Security Services, you mean? Come on, sir! Why the hell should Security be interested in Mickledore Hall?' Dalziel shook his head.
'You'd be better off sniffing glue than going to them colleges. Do they teach you nowt? Think about it! There was a government minister there that weekend. Partridge, Lord Partridge now. And the dead woman's husband was one of their own. And there was a Yank, Rampling, he's something important over in the States, and getting more important, by the sound of it. And there was Noddy Stamper, top industrialist. Sir Noddy now, Maggie gave him a knighthood soon as she got in, so you can see what he was made of. Just listen to the tape.
It's all there. Well, soon after it happened this long thin fellow, all sweet and pink, like a stick of Edinburgh Rock, turned up. Name of Sempernel, he said. Osbert Sempernel. Pimpernel, we called him, he were so hard to pin down. Said he was from the Home Office but I reckon if I could have snapped him in half, I'd have found dirty tricks printed all the way through. I saw him again this morning when I were watching the press conference on the box. Hanging around outside with Adolf. It all made sense.' 'Not to me,' said Pascoe, sceptically but not overly so. Dalziel's delusions had an X-certificate habit of fleshing themselves out into reality. 'Are you saying that Hiller will heap all the blame on Wally Tallantire just because this chap Sempernel tells him to?' 'Certainly. He'd hang his own granny if the orders came from high enough, especially if it meant getting up another rung of the ladder.' 'Adolf Eichmann rather than Adolf Hitler, then?' 'Both,' said Dalziel. 'And the bugger's taken a fancy to you, so mebbe you should start asking questions about yourself. Any road, you're to act as liaison. Now, you'll get nowt out of Adolf, but yon primped-up fancy pants might start yapping after a couple of port-and-lemons.' 'Stubbs? He seems a decent sort of chap.'
'SS was full of decent sorts of chap,' said Dalziel. 'You just keep your ears flapping.' 'You mean spy?' 'If that's what you like to call it.' Pascoe wrinkled his face in distaste and said, 'At least I should be glad there's not a war on. They shoot spies in wartime, don't they?' He left, closing the door quietly behind him. Dalziel reached into the drawer for his whisky, shaking his head sadly. Under his tutelage Pascoe had taken long strides towards becoming a good cop, mebbe even a great one. But if he didn't know there was always a war on, he still had a long way to go.
FIVE
‘I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.' Cissy Kohler lay on a patchwork quilt and thought: The way I feel, this ought to make me invisible. Bits and pieces of past lives, some hers, some not, stitched together in a show of wholeness. Through the chintz curtains she could see the branches of a wych elm swaying in the wind. In the room below she could hear voices but she didn't strain her ears, for she knew they couldn't be saying anything that mattered. 'Charming place,' said the tall man in the dark suit whose impeccable cut was a foil to a stringy tie which looked as if it had been dropped in a bowl of Brown Windsor and wrung out by hand. 'Yeah, very quaint,' said Jay Waggs. 'How can I help you, Mr Sempernel?'
'Belongs to Jacklin, I gather? Decent of him to let you have it.' 'I figure it'll be on his bill.' 'What? Oh, quite. These solicitors. But it's ideal. Good security. Just the one track down. And that wall behind. Perfect.' He was looking out of the window into the small rear garden. The cottage stood in the U-shaped nook which some peasant who knew his rights had indented in the twelve-foot boundary wall of an extensive country estate. 'Perfect,' agreed Waggs. 'The wall and the guard, they make Cissy feel really at home.' 'Ha-ha. Droll. Though the guard, as you call him, is of course positioned here to keep the media hounds out, not to keep Miss Kohler in.' 'So she's free to come and go.' 'But naturally. Within the limits of our agreement, of course, which I do not doubt that Mr Jacklin has spelt out in tedious detail.
Nevertheless, let me recap. Miss Kohler's early release – ‘ 'Early!' ‘Indeed. HM Government has agreed for humanitarian reasons to anticipate the proper legal process, but not without undertakings on your part. These are principally that Miss Kohler has agreed that neither she nor her advisers will make any public comment, nor publish any form of memoir of this unhappy business, without the approval of the authorities. In return for this undertaking, HM Government has indicated it will offer no resistance to any legitimate claim for compensation.' 'Big of them.' 'I think so. Also Miss Kohler has agreed to remain in this country until the completion of the official inquiry into the circumstances leading up to this unfortunate miscarriage.'
'Which could take years!' 'No. I assure you matters are moving fast.
Deputy Chief Constable Hiller whom you have met has the business in hand and we anticipate a speedy conclusion. Incidentally, Mr Hiller tells me that if by chance Miss Kohler had kept any written record of the events at Mickledore Hall, sight of it, on loan of course, might speed matters up and obviate the need of any further interview with her.'
Waggs laughed.
'Come on, Sempernel! You know there's no record. You guys went through her cell like a pack of rats before she got out.'
The long man smiled thinly.
'The papers seem to think she may have had some ally through whom such a memoir may have been smuggled out to a place of security.'
'Like me, you mean? Well, I don't deny that, given the chance, I'd have been glad to help. But I wasn't and I didn't.'
'I'm happy to accept your word on that, Mr Waggs,' said Sempernel.
'There are other possible sources of assistance, of course. She was after all inside for a long time, and could hardly avoid forming relationships. The unfortunate Miss Bush, for instance…'
'That was long before my time,' said Waggs. 'The only memoir I'm aware of is in Cissy's head and I don't know how easy it's going to be to pry that out.'
'No? You've met with quite a lot of success so far,' murmured Sempernel. 'Rest, quiet, and above all time are great healers. They are all at your disposal here. Enjoy them.'
He made for the door, stooping to avoid the sagging lintel.
Beneath it he paused, looking like Alice in the White Rabbit's house.
'One last thing,' he said, 'Jacklin has, I hope, made it clear that any grant of a Free Pardon will be in respect of the Mickledore Hall affair only. In respect of the killing of Daphne Bush, there is no doubt about Miss Kohler's culpability. Her release from that sentence is therefore merely under licence which may be revoked in the event of any breach of its terms. You follow me, Mr Waggs?'
'You mean you've got a string you can twitch whenever you feel like it? I follow.' 'Good.' Sempernel passed through the doorway and straightened up so that his face was visible only from the long nose down. I’ll say cheerio, then.' Protected from the Englishman's watery gaze, Waggs pushed his middle finger into the air as he said, 'Yeah.
Goodbye.' He watched from the window till he saw the lanky figure negotiate the muddy path, then he picked up the phone and dialled. 'Mr Jacklin, please. It's Jay Waggs. Jacklin? Hi. How're you doing? We're fine. Yeah, she's resting. Listen, Sempernel's been here. Lots of that slippery Whitehall stuff, but all he's doing is making sure my thick American mind understands the ground rules. Just thought I'd let you know. How are things your end? No change? That's good. Well, keep in touch. Ciao.' He listened for a while longer before putting the receiver down. It might be mere neurosis to imagine he heard significant clicks, but Sempernel struck him as a good man to be neurotic around. And if the phone, then why not everywhere? He went into the kitchen, blew a kiss at the kettle and switched it on. A few moments later he tapped on the bedroom door and entered with a cup of coffee. Cissy Kohler had sat up on the bed and was reading her Bible.
'Thought you might like this,' he said, ‘it's not home style, but near as I can get. How're you feeling?' She closed the book, laid it on her lap and took the cup. ‘I'm OK.' 'Sempernel was here.' 'Who?' 'The one like a straightened out hairpin. He was just checking we knew the rules.' She drank her coffee with her eyes closed as though taking in visions with the steam. He studied her face and wondered just how much of what was happening she really grasped. At least, if there were listening ears, it made role-play that much easier. He said, 'He was asking about your memoirs. Cissy.' She opened her eyes. 'Memoirs?'
'Yeah. There are these stories in the Press that you wrote up everything that happened at Mickledore Hall, everything that happened afterwards in jail. Somehow you got them smuggled out and they are waiting to be picked up somewhere.' He knew what the answer would be.
They'd had this conversation before. 'It's not true,' she said without heat. 'They're making it up.' ‘That's what I told him. But if there were any memoirs, Cissy, it'd make things a lot easier for me. The book, the film…' 'Which book? Which film?' She regarded him blankly. 'We'll talk about it later,' he said gently. 'It's early days. We'll talk when you're rested.' 'How long will we stay here, Jay?' she asked suddenly. 'You said we'd go home soon. You said – '
This was dangerous. He cut her off, saying, 'We will, Cissy, I promise. Just as soon as Mr Sempernel says it's OK. Don't you like it here?' She shook her head and said, 'Not much.' 'Why's that?' ' I don't know. It feels so old… so English…' 'Yeah. It shouldn't be for long. You rest now, OK?' Her cup was empty. He took it from her hands and she lay back on the patchwork quilt, with her hands crossed over the old leather Bible on her stomach. Her eyes were still open but he got no impression that they were seeing him. In fact he had a strange feeling that if he stayed here much longer he would stop seeing her. He turned and left the room.
SIX
'Now come and take your place in the circle, and let us sit quiet, and hear the echoes about which you have your theory.' Sod's Law. How many times on his way home late to a loving family and a hot dinner had he been waylaid by Dalziel and more or less frogmarched down to the Black Bull? This evening there was no sign of the Fat Man.
He met Wield on the stairs and said, 'Fancy a quick half?' 'Sorry, it's my karate night.' On the next landing he hesitated, then went down the corridor to the inquiry team's room. A mahogany plaque had been screwed to the door. On it in large black Roman was printed DEPUTY CHIEF CONSTABLE HILLER, with underneath in golden Gothic, K NOCK AND W AIT. Pascoe knocked and waited. Inspector Stubbs opened the door. Over his crepe-de-chine'd shoulder Pascoe could see the green flicker of computer screens. 'Thought you might like an intro to our local,' he said. 'The beer's good enough to make the meat pies seem almost edible.' 'Love it, but not tonight,' said Stubbs regretfully.
'Mr Hiller wants us to get all this stuff into the system before we knock off.' He opened the door wider to reveal Sergeant Proctor surrounded by what Pascoe assumed were the Mickledore Hall files.
"Evening, guv,' said the sergeant. 'Who does your filing, then – a grizzly bear?'
Stubbs frowned, but Pascoe, recalling the state of his own records if ever Dalziel got among them, could not take offence.
'Some other time, then,' he said.
There was nothing to stop him going to the Black Bull alone, but if he was going to be a solitary drinker, he might as well do it in the privacy of his own home.
He heard his phone ringing as he parked the car but it had stopped by the time he got into the house and there was no message on his machine. He checked through his mail in search of Ellie's hand.
Nothing.
He poured himself a beer and sat down to read the paper. Good news was obviously no news. His glass was empty. He went to fill it, opened instead a can of soup and cut a hunk of bread. This he ate standing at the kitchen table. Then he went into the garden, pulled up a few weeds, wandered back into the house, poured another beer, switched on the television, and watched the end of a documentary on homelessness.
Twice he got up to check that the phone was working.
Finally he remembered Dalziel's tape.
He switched off the TV and put the cassette into his tape deck, pressed the start button and sat back to listen.
An announcer's voice first, blandly BBC.
'And now the last in our series The Golden Age of Murder in which crime writer William Stamper has been positing that the Golden Age of crime fiction, usually regarded as artificial, unrealistic, and escapist, may have had closer links with real life than the critics allow.
'So far he has examined crimes from each of the first five decades of the century. Now finally we arrive at the 'sixties and a case in which we will see that William Stamper has a very special interest.
The Mickledore Hall murder.' Now came music, sort of intellectually eerie. Bartok perhaps. Then a male voice, light, dry, with an occasional flattened vowel giving a hint of northern upbringing…
‘It was the best of crimes, it was the worst of crimes, it was born of love, it was spawned by greed; it was completely unplanned, it was coldly premeditated; it was an open-and-shut case, it was a locked-room mystery; it was the act of a guileless girl, it was the work of a scheming scoundrel; it was the end of an era, it was the start of an era; a man with the face of a laughing boy reigned in Washington, a man with the features of a lugubrious hound ruled in Westminster; an ex-Marine got a job at a Dallas book repository, an ex-Minister of War lost a job in politics; a group known as the Beatles made their first million, a group known as the Great Train Robbers made their first two million; it was the time when those who had fought to save the world began to surrender it to those they had fought to save it for; Dixon of Dock Green was giving way to Z-Cars, Bond to Smiley, the Monsignors to the Maharishis, Matt Dillon to Bob Dylan, l.s.d. to LSD, as the sunset glow of the old Golden Age imploded into the psychedelic dawn of the new Age of Glitz. 'It was the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-three, and it is altogether fitting that this crime of which we speak should have been committed in one of Yorkshire's great country houses, Mickledore Hall, and that its denouement should have taken place in that most traditional of settings, the Old Library. ‘If a Hollywood designer were asked to build a set for such a scene in an Agatha Christie film, it
would probably turn out something like the library of Mickledore Hall. ‘Imagine a desk the size of a ping-pong table standing on a carpet the size of a badminton court. Scattered around are various chairs, stylistically unrelated except in so far as their upholstery has the faded look of the coat of a very old terrier. One wall is embrasured with three deep window bays hung with dusty velvet curtains, while the other three are lined with towering bureaux behind whose lozenged bars rot a thousand books, untouched by little save time, for the Mickledores were never famed for their intellectuality.
‘In nineteen sixty-three the incumbent baronet seemed cast in the traditional mould of Mickledore men, tall, blond, handsome, athletic, with an exuberant manner that might in a lesser man have been called hearty. 'Yet there was another side to Ralph Mickledore – Mick to his friends – as evidenced perhaps by his close friendship with that most unhearty of men, James Westropp. At his trial, the defence projected him as the perfect type of English eccentricity, a country squire who ran his estate as if the twentieth century hadn't arrived, with Shire horses pulling his ploughs, a water-mill grinding his grain, and poachers offered the choice of a Mickledore boot up the bum or a Mickledore beak on the Bench. ‘It was, however, a very different picture that the prosecution inked in. Victorian values might be the order of the day at the Hall, but away from Yorkshire, Sir Ralph came across as a Restoration roue. Nightclubs, casinos, racetracks, the grey area where the haut-monde overlapped with the demi-monde, here was his urban habitat. The gap between his two lifestyles was presented not as harmless eccentricity but as black hypocrisy. And by the end of nineteen sixty-three, juries were very ready to think the worst of their social superiors, though, as we shall see, it was not this cynicism alone which helped confer on Ralph Mickledore the unenviable distinction of being the last man to hang in Mid-Yorkshire.
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