Hastily Pascoe sorted through the papers.
‘Well?’ demanded Dalziel.
‘I have it. I have it. Wallet containing …’
‘Stuff the wallet. Get on to the loose stuff.’
‘Handkerchief. Small change. Car keys …’
‘Stop there,’ said Dalziel. ‘All right, where was the car?’
‘Whose car?’ asked Pascoe blankly.
‘Burke’s car! I take it them houses just have single garages and driveways? Right, then. If Mrs Burke could back her car out at two-thirty, there wasn’t any other car in the drive was there? And if she could drive back into the garage at three-thirty, there still wasn’t, was there? So where was it?’
‘Somewhere else?’ offered Pascoe brightly.
‘Right! And why?’
‘Well, he was just popping in to collect something he’d forgotten, and didn’t think it was worth taking the car up the drive.’
‘Something he’d forgotten up a ladder?’ asked Dalziel.
‘Or he knew his wife might be going out later, so he parked on the road in order not to block her.’
‘He was a well-known considerate fellow, was he?’
‘Not from the sound of him,’ admitted Pascoe. ‘What do you suggest we do, sir? I mean, do you think it’s important?’
‘I can’t do your thinking for you, lad,’ said Dalziel heavily. ‘You talked to Dandy Dick yet?’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Pascoe patiently. ‘I did tell you.’
‘Oh aye. You lose track in this bloody place. It’s like a bloody ant-hill down here. I like streets where I know half the buggers I meet and I can understand most of what the rest of ’em say. I’ll be glad to get back even if it does mean putting up with you lot again. Keep in touch!’
‘I will,’ said Pascoe. ‘Enjoy your conference.’
The phone went down with a crash.
‘You know, he sounded quite homesick,’ said Pascoe to Wield.
‘It’s nice to know we’re missed,’ said Wield. ‘What do we do now?’
Pascoe glanced at his watch.
‘There’s only a couple of dozen things we could do,’ he said. ‘None of which should take more than a few hours by the time they got spread out. But on the other hand, I’m feeling a bit homesick too. I think I’ll just go home.’
Ellie seemed slightly distracted that evening, but he put it down to the spiritual shock of coming to grips with the stack of exam scripts which still littered the lounge, though it was harder to explain in the same terms her perceptible start when he observed casually, ‘I’m going to be getting a look at your mate, Daphne, at last.’
‘Why? What do you mean?’
‘Just that I’ll have to call round and have a word with them. We’ve had a tip that Rosemont is going to be done, that’s all. Probably nothing in it.’
‘It’s not just another excuse to get into the house and have a poke around, is it?’ she asked earnestly.
He regarded her with puzzled amusement.
‘You think like fat Andy, do you know that?’ he said. ‘No, it isn’t. It’s a genuine tip, come to us courtesy of young Sherlock Singh. How’s the marking going?’
‘Rosie got hold of a couple of the scripts, and chewed them,’ said Ellie gloomily. ‘God knows what the external examiner will think.’
‘He’ll put it down to rage,’ said Pascoe.
‘He could be right. How was your day? Anything new on the Elgood front?’ she said casually.
‘Not much. I’m seeing him tomorrow.’
‘Are you? Why?’ she asked sharply.
‘Just a couple of points to clear up. Is there some beer in the fridge? I just fancy one. What about you?’
‘No, thanks,’ she said. ‘Peter, you will remember that Daphne’s my friend.’
‘When I visit Rosemont, you mean?’ he said evasively. ‘I’ll be awfully polite, I promise.’
He went out of the lounge to the kitchen, leaving Ellie staring sightlessly at the pot of ferns in the fire grate.
‘Oh shit,’ she said.
8
INNOCENCE
(Bush. Vigorous, upright, flowers creamy white with a few pink flecks – sweetly perfumed.)
Pascoe was five minutes early for his appointment with Elgood. As he approached the office door, it opened and a man in a creased grey suit was ushered out by Miss Dominic who regarded Pascoe coldly, though whether on account of his earliness or because he’d used the lift he could not tell. The departing man headed virtuously for the stairs.
Creep, thought Pascoe and went in.
‘You’re early,’ said Dick Elgood. ‘I hope this means you’re in a hurry. I know I am. I’m up to my eyes.’
‘I’ll try not to keep you long,’ said Pascoe. ‘Just a couple of questions.’
‘Haven’t you asked enough questions, for God’s sake? Last time we spoke, I told you to drop the matter. But since then from all sides I hear you’re still snooping around!’
Elgood sounded angry, but Pascoe thought he detected a note of anxiety as well.
‘I’ve got a job to do, Mr Elgood,’ he said solemnly. Ellie had once remarked that the main perk of being a cop was that you could talk entirely in clichés and no one dared throw rotten eggs. ‘It’s not an easy job,’ he continued, warming to his banalities, ‘and it has this peculiarity. Once you start on something, you take it as far as you can until you’re convinced that no crime’s been committed. It doesn’t matter who says yea or nay. You carry on regardless.’
‘Is that right?’ sneered Elgood. ‘Even when it means setting your own wife on to spy on people?’
Pascoe sat upright, jerked out of his role-playing.
‘You’d better explain that, Mr Elgood,’ he said quietly.
‘What’s to explain?’ said Elgood. ‘Except if you’re going to say it was coincidence that the day after I spoke to you at the station, your wife struck up an acquaintance with Mrs Aldermann.’
‘I’m not sure I need say anything about that,’ said Pascoe, ‘except to wonder how you’re so familiar with Mrs Aldermann’s affairs.’
‘It’s not only the police who hear things in a town this size,’ answered Elgood challengingly.
He wants me to say what I know, thought Pascoe, still slightly off-balance as a result of the crack about Ellie. It could only mean Daphne Aldermann had mentioned her new acquaintance to Elgood. Damn. It must look suspicious, to say the least. Not that that bothered him, but the thought of the embarrassment to Ellie if the Aldermann woman took it wrong … perhaps it had happened already; there’d been something in Ellie’s manner last night … a restraint … on the other hand, she had said she was having coffee with Daphne this morning, so …
He shook the wisps of thought out of his head. Wisps. A good word for most of his thoughts on this case. Everything vague, nothing to grasp at.
Perhaps it was time to hit Elgood with a few facts.
‘Let me tell you what we know to remove any temptation you may feel to lie,’ he said. ‘We know that the day before you spoke to me at the police station you met Mrs Daphne Aldermann in the top floor of the multi-storey car park. We know that she transferred from her car to yours and you drove away together. We know that she did not return to her car until approximately five hours later.’
‘Your wife told you all this, did she?’ said Elgood.
‘No,’ said Pascoe wearily. ‘My wife has told me nothing about you. As far as I’m aware, she knows nothing about you. I may be wrong, of course. To get back on track, Mr Elgood, we have independent witnesses to your rendezvous with Mrs Aldermann in the car park. Are you denying it?’
Elgood shook his head, stood up and began to walk round the room with his graceful dancing step. He didn’t look at all like Fred Astaire, yet there was in his simplest movement that same quality of rightness. He was immaculately suited in Oxford blue mohair with a striped claret and gold waistcoat with mother of pearl buttons.
‘I’m not denying I met
her. Why should I? My private life’s my own affair, isn’t it?’
‘It seems to me you made it mine when you complained that the husband of the woman you had this private rendezvous with was trying to kill you,’ said Pascoe in exasperation. ‘For God’s sake, in simple terms of motive alone, it alters everything.’
‘Because he’s jealous?’
Elgood began to laugh. It sounded fifty per cent genuine.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You are, Pascoe,’ said the little man. ‘You keep on getting it wrong! Aldermann’s not the jealous type, believe me. Any road, there was nowt to be jealous of. It was the first time me and Daphne had met, apart from a couple of lunch-time drinks where anyone could see us. Come between him and his precious roses, that might be a different matter!’
‘Isn’t that what you are doing, by blocking his advancement?’ answered Pascoe, trying a different tack.
‘Mebbe,’ said Elgood, serious again. ‘But that’s for him to decide. Me, I’m just doing what’s best for the firm. It’ll all be sorted next Wednesday, by the time he gets back.’
‘Back? From where?’ asked Pascoe.
‘He’s going off on Monday to that fancy school near Gloucester that his lad goes to. No wonder he’s short of a bob or two, paying out on them places! I’ve brought the next board meeting forward till Wednesday, so he should be safely out of the way.’
He spoke with the satisfaction of absolute authority, but Pascoe was much struck by the disproportionate influence this (by all accounts) quiet, unassuming man Patrick Aldermann seemed to have over the lives and decisions of others.
‘Out of the way? Yet you say you don’t feel threatened?’ he mused aloud.
‘No. I want that forgotten,’ said Elgood. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? My private life’s my private life. Keep out of it! I’ve seen you today, Mr Pascoe, to give you a last warning. Any more prying by you, or your men, or your missus for that matter, I’ll treat as police harassment. And I’ll go a long way over your head, aye, and over Andy Dalziel’s too, to get it stopped. I’ve got friends in most high places, Mr Pascoe. So think on.’
Pascoe rose slowly.
‘Friends,’ he said. ‘High places. Threats. Nasty sneers about my wife. I quite liked you when first we met, Mr Elgood. I thought you were … natural. Unspoilt. An original. But suddenly the mould is beginning to look very familiar.’
To his credit, Elgood looked uncomfortable.
‘Listen, Pascoe. About your wife, I meant no offence. The rest stands, but a man’s wife’s a different matter.’
‘And you are something of an expert on the difference,’ murmured Pascoe making for the door.
The telephone rang. Elgood snatched it up as though relieved at this reunion with the outside world.
‘Yes?’ he snapped, turning his back on Pascoe who opened the door. He felt his exit if not ignominious was at least undistinguished.
‘Pascoe!’ said Elgood. ‘It’s for you. Try to keep it short.’
It was Wield.
‘Hoped I’d catch you, sir,’ he said. ‘I had a moment this morning, so I thought I’d knock off one or two of these little jobs from your list. First up was Mrs Burke’s finances. Her husband left her comfortable, but not really comfortable enough for a motive. But I checked on that market stall of hers. The word is it’s a little goldmine. More interesting though is how she got the lease in the first place. There was a bit of queue-jumping there, I gather. A bit of calling in of old favours.’
‘I’m listening,’ said Pascoe.
He listened for another three or four minutes, ignoring Elgood’s terpsichorean expressions of impatience.
‘Thanks, Sergeant,’ he said finally and replaced the receiver.
‘Finished, Inspector?’ said Elgood. ‘Perhaps I can have my office back, eh?’
For answer, Pascoe sank slowly on to the hard chair once more.
‘Just one more question, Mr Elgood, if you don’t mind,’ he said.
‘I do bloody mind!’ exploded Elgood. ‘Can’t you take a bloody hint?’
‘I’m quite good at hints,’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ve just had a couple. Mr Elgood, before I go, I’d like to discuss with you for a little while the precise nature of your relationship with Mrs Mandy Burke.’
While her husband was not being offered coffee by Dick Elgood, Ellie Pascoe was sitting drinking her second cup in the Chantry with only Rose for company.
Not by nature a nervous woman, she had approached this meeting with the trepidation of one who feels herself in the wrong with little clear idea of how she got in it and less of how she can get out of it. She would dearly have loved to talk things over with Peter, but that had been impossible without revealing the cause of her concern, which would have made her undeniably guilty of the treachery she stood accused of. Yet she had sensed something evasive in her husband’s manner also which suggested to her that he already knew of the liaison between Daphne and Elgood.
Nervously she lit a cigarette. It was a silly and expensive habit but the body had its needs which were often as dangerous to deny as to satisfy.
She found herself beginning to hope Daphne would stand her up again. Not that it would put her any more in the right, but it would place Daphne just a little in the wrong. Rose, peevish at having only her introspective mother for company, was beginning to turn and twitter in search of a wider audience. Any moment now she would advertise her neglected state by a bellow which would set the tinted coiffures of the Chantry clientele a-bobbing their disapproval.
Time to go. Ellie stubbed out her cigarette and finished her coffee. The door opened. Daphne came in.
She looked untypically flustered and sank into her tweed-upholstered chair with a sigh of relief. Rose let out a gurgle of welcome.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘Hello, Rosie. Yes, please, two coffees, I think. No, no scones.’
The waitress who, like all of her kind, leapt forward eagerly the instant Daphne appeared, went off to the kitchen.
‘Nothing the matter, I hope?’ said Ellie.
‘Not really. It’s just that I was coming straight into town after dropping Diana at St Helena’s, but I realized I’d forgotten my purse, so I had to drive home for it. Not that that would have made me so late, but when I got back to the house, there was a car in the drive and a man wandering round the side of the house. I asked him what he wanted and he said he was from the Water Board and he was just trying to locate the house’s main stop-cock. When I asked him why, he said that our water-rate bill hadn’t been paid and he’d called round to say that if it wasn’t paid instantly, proceedings for recovery would be taken, and not finding anyone at home, he thought he would locate the stop-cock in case it became necessary to cut the water off!’
‘Good Lord!’ said Ellie. ‘What did you say?’
‘I sent him away with a flea in his ear, of course. I would have rung Patrick, but he’s gone off to London today, won’t be back till Saturday morning. I poked around in his desk and found the water bill. Sure enough, it wasn’t paid, but that can’t give them the right to wander round at will, can it?’
‘Depends on how many threatening letters you’ve had,’ said Ellie. ‘This man, did he show you any authority?’
‘A badge or something, you mean? No. He didn’t get the chance.’
‘And he was driving a car, you say, not one of those blue and white vans?’
‘No. An old Ford Escort. What’s the point of all these police-type questions, Ellie?’ demanded Daphne.
‘Something Peter said last night,’ answered Ellie. ‘Look, I really shouldn’t be saying this, but in the circumstances … And he’s going to be coming round to see you in any case. There’s been quite a lot of break-ins recently at medium to big houses, a bit isolated, and they’ve had a tip that Rosemont’s on the list.’
‘What!’
‘Yes, but Peter thinks there’s a good chance there’ll be nothing in it. Only it struck me, this chap you s
aw this morning might have been casing the place.’
Daphne looked so alarmed that Ellie was sorry she’d spoken.
‘It’s probably nothing,’ she said hastily. ‘I’ll get Peter to check, if you like.’
‘Yes, yes, I would like,’ said Daphne.
After a moment’s silence, she added, ‘I suppose all this came up when you were giving your husband a blow-by-blow account of my visit yesterday?’
‘No, I didn’t tell him you’d been, nor anything of what you said,’ said Ellie evenly.
‘Cross your heart?’ said Daphne, faintly mocking.
‘And Guide’s Honour. But he did say he was going to see Mr Elgood this morning. I don’t know why, but if it turns out to have anything to do with you, please believe me, Daphne, I haven’t told him.’
Their gazes met and locked for a moment.
Then Daphne smiled wanly and said, ‘I believe you. I thought a lot about things last night and it struck me that the picture of you as a police spy was almost as ridiculous as you wearing a funny hat at the Tory Conference.’
‘Thanks,’ said Ellie.
‘I’m usually pretty good at first impressions,’ continued Daphne, ‘and my first impression was that you were likely to be honest to the point of embarrassment, perhaps even tedium.’
‘Thanks, again,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m not sure that my gratitude is going to last out if you continue on those lines, though. And don’t get carried away. Remember, I confessed to having chatted about you with Peter. I may not be your dyed-in-the-wool agent provocateur, but I’m not your sea-green incorruptible either.’
‘You’re the best I’ve got,’ said Daphne, finishing her coffee. ‘Look, if you’ve got the time, I’d like to talk with you about Dick and me, and Patrick too. What happened, and everything.’
‘Are you sure you want to?’ asked Ellie, troubled.
‘Can’t I trust you?’
‘Not unless you can trust me,’ said Ellie. ‘All right. Shoot.’
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