On Beulah Height dap-17

by Reginald Hill

  The original medieval street containing the seminary from which it derived its name had by the reign of Queen Anne fallen almost completely into disrepair and disrepute. The timbered buildings had developed such alarming lists and been so often patched and propped, they looked like a file of drunken veterans staggering home from a very hard war. No person of wealth or standing would have dreamt of occupying one, and they had declined to low taverns, verminous lodging houses, and brothels.

  That such a civic sore should pustulate within pissing distance of the cathedral was regarded by many good burghers as an offense against both God and man. But as a substantial number of the said good burghers actually owned the houses and shared in their profits, man delayed so long in providing a remedy that God grew impatient, and one dark September night, having first ensured the wind was in the right quarter, He tripped a drunken punk and her geriatric jo as they climbed the stairway to her reechy bed and sent their link flying like a meteor through a hole in the rotten boards down into the cellar, where it landed in an open cask of illicit brandy.

  The resultant fire left an ashen scar which for many years was regarded as lively evidence of the wrath of the living God, but when a combination of shantytown and Paddy's market looked to be developing there, the city fathers this time preempted the Deity by sweeping the area clean of undesirables and initiating a building program of dwellings fit for dignitaries of the church.

  It was these elegant residences that now lay before Dalziel's unimpressed eye. He knew little of medieval history and eighteenth-century fires, but he could look back to a period when the well-to-do had demonstrated their well-to-do-ness by migrating to the Green Belt, leaving the likes of Holyclerk Street to fragment into student flats and fly-by-night offices. But the Church had flexed its financial muscle (this was before its commissioners had demonstrated their inability to serve either God or Mammon by losing several millions), purchased and refurbished, then made a killing when a hugely successful tele-adaptation of the Barchester novels cast a romantic glow over cathedral closes and made living "within the bell" once more the thing.

  The sun was laying its golden blade right down the center of the street so there was no shade to be found. Dalziel thought of following the example of the owner of the white convertible parked in front of him which had been left with its top down and its expensive hi-fi equipment on open offer. Surely in these ecclesiastic surroundings such confidence was justified? He wound his window down an air-admitting fraction, walked a step or two away, remembered the church commissioners, and returned to wind the window up as far as it would go.

  This second passing of the white convertible registered that it was a Saab 900, the property of a national rental car company. He checked the resident's parking disc. It was marked temporary and the address on it was 41 Holyclerk Street. The Wulfstan house.

  Glancing up at the cathedral tower, he nodded appreciatively and moved on.

  At No. 41 he leaned on the doorbell a measured second, then stepped back and waited.

  In its previous posh manifestation he'd guess this street's doors had been opened by a uniformed maid, but nowadays domestic servants were pretty thin on the ground, if only because the kind of people who needed the work weren't prepared to kowtow to the kind of prats who needed the servants.

  He recognized instantly the woman who opened the door, though it was fifteen years since they had met.

  And Chloe Wulfstan's face showed that she recognized him.

  "Mr. Dalziel," she said.

  Age hadn't changed her much. In fact she looked a lot younger than last time he'd seen her, but that wasn't so surprising. Then, the news of her daughter's disappearance not only drained the blood from her face but also melted the flesh from her bones. But he had never seen her cry, and somehow he knew that she hadn't cried in private either. All her energy had gone to holding herself together even at the expense of locking everything inside.

  No point in mucking about.

  He said, "I'm sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Wulfstan. You'll have heard about this lass who's gone missing from Danby?"

  "It was on the radio," she said. "And in this morning's paper. Is there any news?"

  The voice was level, conventionally polite, as if he were the vicar being invited to take tea. Fifteen years back he recalled that she'd still retained a trace of the accent of her birth and upbringing on Heck Farm; educated, yes, but enough there to remind you that she was a Mid-Yorkshire lass. Now that had entirely gone. She could have been presenting Woman's Hour.

  Over her shoulder he could see a hallway hung with prints of musical cartoons. Down a broad staircase drifted the tinkle of a piano and a woman's voice singing.

  "When your mother dear to my door draws near, And my thoughts all center there to see her enter Not on her sweet face first off falls my gaze, But a little past her…"

  There was the sound of discord, as if someone had banged a hand down on the piano keys, and a man's voice said, "No, no. Too much too soon. At this point he is still trying to be matter of fact, still trying to be rational about his own irrational behavior."

  That voice. He thought he recognized it. Both voices, in fact. The woman's was the lass he'd heard singing on the radio at Pascoe's the previous morning. Same bloody set of songs too. His memory took him back to the first time he'd heard them… He wrenched it back to the other voice, the man's. That rather too perfect English. Surely it was the Turnip? Despite Wield's frequent reminders that Arne Krog was a Norwegian, not a Swede, Dalziel had persisted in his awful joke. Poncy sod had once dared correct his English, and Dalziel was an unforgiving God.

  "Mr. Dalziel?" said Chloe Wulfstan.

  He realized he hadn't answered her question.

  "No. No news," he said.

  "I'm sorry for it," she said. "How are… no, I needn't ask."

  "How're the parents?" he concluded. "Just like you'd expect. You'd likely know the mother. Came from Dendale. Elsie Coe afore she married."

  "Margaret Coe's girl? Oh, God. Margaret was very ill last year. Her recovery seemed a miracle. Now I wonder if it wasn't a curse. Is that a wicked thing to say, Mr. Dalziel?"

  He shrugged impassively, denying the inclination rather than the qualification to judge.

  She went on, in a curious reflective tone. "I got used to thinking wicked things, you know. When I saw their sympathetic faces, women like Margaret Coe, I used to think, Inside you're really glad it's me, not you, glad it's my Mary who's gone, not your Elsie or…"

  She stopped as if someone had alerted her to her hostessly duties and said, briskly, "Is it Walter you want to see, Mr. Dalziel? He is here, but he's in the middle of a meeting about the music festival. They have to find a new location for the opening concert… but of course, you'd know that. I'm being very rude keeping you on the doorstep. Do step inside. I'll let him know you're here."

  He advanced into the hallway. It was a relief to be out of the sun's direct rays, but even with all the windows open, its heat walked in with him.

  You'd have thought a bugger into solar power would have installed air-conditioning, grumbled Dalziel.

  Chloe Wulfstan knocked gently on a door, opened it, and slipped inside.

  In his brief glimpse into the room, which looked like an old-fashioned oak-paneled study, Dalziel saw three people, one full-face, one in profile, and one just the back of a head above an armchair. But it was the back of the head that he focused on. He felt something inside him tighten for a second, his stomach, his heart, it wasn't possible to be anatomically precise, but it was the kind of feeling he couldn't recollect having for a long long time.

  The door opened again and Mrs. Wulfstan came out. The piano had started again upstairs.

  "But a little past her, seeking something after, There where your own dear features would appear Lit with love and laughter…"

  The woman in the chair had turned her head and was peering toward the doorway. Their gazes met. Then the door closed.

  "If you can give h
im just a minute," said Chloe Wulfstan apologetically. "He should be able to bring the meeting to a close, then the other committee members won't have to hang around waiting for Walter to return. In here, if you please."

  She led him into a drawing room at the back of the house with French windows wide open onto a long garden whose lawn showed the effect of the drought.

  "One is tempted, of course," she said, following his gaze. "But I'm afraid that we've all become water vigilantes, and if anyone thought our lawn was looking a little too green… Quite right, too, I suppose. But when I think that we gave up Dendale to provide a sure supply for the future… it makes you think, doesn't it?"

  Her tone was now bright, polite, and light.

  "It does that," he said. "Reservoir's right down. Do you ever go back to take a look, Mrs. Wulfstan?"

  "No," she said. "I never do, Mr. Dalziel."

  He studied her for a moment, pulling at his heavy lower lip. It came across as a skeptical assessing stare, but in fact his eyes were seeing another face completely.

  "Would you like a glass of something cold?" asked Chloe Wulfstan.

  "What? Oh, aye, that 'ud be nice," he said. "By the by, there's a car outside, white Saab, got a visitor's parking disc…"

  "That's Arne's. You remember Arne? Arne Krog, the singer. He's staying with us during the festival. And Inger. His accompanist. She's here too."

  "Well, she would be. Accompanying him," said Dalziel. He smiled to show he was attempting a joke but she just looked faintly puzzled, then left the room.

  Old habits die hard and Dalziel immediately started wandering round, glancing at the papers on an open bureau, trying the odd drawer, but his heart wasn't in it. Upstairs the piano had fallen silent again and there'd been another spate of raised voices. Suddenly the door burst open and a tall slim woman strode into the room. She was wearing black cotton trousers and a black T-shirt which accentuated the whiteness of her skin and the paleness of her long ash-blond hair. She stopped dead at sight of Dalziel and regarded him impassively out of slate-gray eyes that somehow looked ageless by comparison with the rest of her, which looked early twenties.

  He put the voice and place together and said, "How do, Miss Wulfstan. I'm Detective Superintendent Dalziel."

  If he'd expected his prescience to impress, he was disappointed. If anything she seemed amused, a faint smile touching her long still face like a sun-start on a mountain tarn.

  "How do, Superintendent. You being tekken care of or have you just brok in?"

  For a second he thought she was taking the piss by imitating his accent. Before he could decide between the put-down oblique (Throat sore from too much singing, luv?) and the put-down direct (Happen you'll make a nice grown-up woman when your mind catches up with your tits), another woman came into the room, blond also, but shorter, more solidly built, and about twenty years older.

  She said, "Are we finished? If so, I shall go and sunbathe."

  "Not much point asking me, luv. You'd best ask the lord and master. Him that knows it all!"

  The Yorkshire accent remained in place. So, not a piss-taking exercise after all. Dalziel felt grateful he hadn't spoken, but only mildly. Embarrassment didn't rate high on his list of pains and punishments.

  "Arne will help as long as you want help," replied the other woman.

  This one was Inger Sandel, the pianist. She'd put on a bit of weight in fifteen years and he might not have recognized the face. But the voice, with its flat Scandinavian accent, triggered his memory. Not that she'd spoken much all those years back. It had nothing to do with use of a foreign language. In fact, the accent apart, her English was excellent. It was simply that she never said more than the situation warranted. Perhaps she saved her expressive energies up for her playing, but even here she had opted for being an accompanist. In his head, the voice belonging to the face glimpsed through the open door said, "In lieder recitals, the pianist and the singer are equal partners." But to Andy Dalziel an accompanist was still someone who thumped a guiding rhythm while the boys in the bar roared out their love of Annie Laurie or their loathing of Adolf Hitler.

  "Help!" exclaimed Elizabeth Wulfstan. "You call nonstop carping help, do you?"

  There was little heat in her voice. She made it sound like a real question.

  "I think you are lucky to have someone with Arne's experience to advise you," said Inger, very matter-of-fact.

  "You reckon? Well, if he's so fucking good, why's he not singing at La fucking Scala?"

  "Because Mid-Yorkshire is so much cooler than Milano at this time of year, or at least it used to be," said Arne Krog, timing his arrival with a perfection Dalziel guessed came from listening in the hallway for a good cue. Wanker. But there was no denying the Turnip had aged well. Bit heavier all round, but still the same easy movement, the same regular good-looking features with that faint trace of private amusement round the mouth which had once pissed Dalziel off.

  At sight of the fat detective now, however, the face became entirely serious and he advanced with hand outstretched, saying, "Mr. Dalziel, how are you? It's been a long time."

  They shook hands.

  "Nice to see you, too, Mr. Krog," said Dalziel. "I'm only sorry about the circumstances. You'll likely have heard there's a little lass been missing from Danby since yesterday morning? We're talking to possible witnesses."

  "And you have come to see me?" said Krog, nodding as if in confirmation of something half expected. "Yes, of course, I was at Danby yesterday, but I do not think I can be of help. But, please, ask your questions. Perhaps I saw something and did not realize the significance."

  Dalziel was unimpressed by this openness. Leaving your car in full view near a crime scene could as easily be evidence of impulse as innocence, and while you might keep quiet initially in the hope you hadn't been spotted, once you got a hint that you had, you got your admission in quick.

  He said, "Happen you did. You parked on the edge of Ligg Common, right?"

  He'd made an instant decision to question him in front of the other two. That made it more casual, less threatening. Also it provided an audience who knew him a lot better than Dalziel did, and while there was little chance of such a seasoned performer getting stage fright, if he resorted to any bits of stage business, they might notice and react.

  Neither of the women offered to leave the room, nor did they disguise their interest in what the men were saying.

  "That's right."

  "Why?"

  Many people would have shown, or pretended, puzzlement, obliging him to be more precise. Krog didn't.

  "I felt restless yesterday morning, hemmed in by the heat and the city. So I went for a drive in the country. I felt like a walk, somewhere where the air was fresh and I could be alone, so that if I opened my lungs and sang a few scales, I would frighten nobody except perhaps the sheep. I chose Danby because I know the countryside round there. I have sung often in St. Michael's Hall during previous festivals and I always like to take a stroll by myself before I perform."

  That was pretty comprehensive, thought Dalziel.

  He glanced at Elizabeth Wulfstan. Something about her that bothered him. Mebbe it was just those old eyes in that young face.

  He said, "How about you, luv? Do you like a walk afore you perform?"

  She shook her head.

  "Not me. On wi' the motley and over the plonk," she said.

  "And you, miss?"

  This to Sandel.

  "No. I take exercise for necessity, not for recreation," she said.

  He returned his attention to Krog.

  "So where did your walk take you?"

  "Across the common, to the right-the east, that would be? I'm not so hot on points of the compass."

  "Aye. East. Not up the beck path, then?"

  "No. I had thought of going up the beck, but when I got out of the car and realized how warm it was, I decided to head in this other direction. There is farmland over there, with trees-no big woods, just some copses, but at l
east they provide some shade. The little girl went up the beck path, did she? I wish now I had done so too. Perhaps if I had…"

  Chloe Wulfstan had come back into the room, bearing Dalziel's cold drink. As she handed it to him, behind her back Krog made a little gesture of the head, inviting Dalziel to continue his interrogation out of her presence.

  Ignoring the gesture, Dalziel sipped the freshly pressed lemonade and said, "That's grand, luv. So you saw nowt, Mr. Krog?"

  "Of course I saw sky and earth and trees, and I heard birds and sheep and insects. But I did not see or hear any other person that I recall. I'm sorry."

  "That's okay. You'd see the Neb, too, of course."

  "What?"

  First time he didn't appear fully briefed.

  "The Neb. Being on the other side of the valley, you'd not be able to avoid looking over at it, I'd have thought. You didn't think of strolling up there along the Corpse Road, say, and taking a look down into Dendale?"

  He was still speaking over Mrs. Wulfstan's shoulder. Her eyes were fixed unblinkingly on his face.

  "No, I did not," said Krog angrily. "I have told you what I did, Mr. Dalziel. If you have any more questions to ask, I think that common courtesy, if not common decency, requires that you ask them elsewhere."

  "By gum, I reckon tha talks better English than a lot of us natives, Mr. Krog," said Dalziel. He caught Elizabeth Wulfstan's eye as he spoke and fluttered a gentle wink her way. That got him that faint brief smile again.

  Chloe Wulfstan said, "If you're done here, Superintendent, Walter's meeting is over. He thought you might prefer to talk to him in private, so if you care to go into the study…"

  "Thanks, luv," said Dalziel. He finished his lemonade, handed her the glass, nodded pleasantly at the other two women, and went out of the door.