‘That’s him,’ said Pascoe.
‘And you’re his boss, are you? I hope it’s not about pulling the alarm cord. It was an accident. Anyone could have done that,’ she said earnestly.
‘No,’ said Pascoe, puzzled, but determined not to be diverted. ‘It’s about your neighbour, Mr Parrinder.’
‘Oh yes. Poor Tap. Do they know when the funeral will be yet?’ she asked, her eyes filling with tears.
‘No, not yet. May I come in, Mrs Escott?’
‘What am I thinking of? Please do. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Pascoe, following her into the neat living-room which had the heating turned up to what he found was a rather uncomfortable level.
He sat down in an armchair in front of a low coffee table. Scattered across the table was a heap of loose change with perhaps a dozen piles of coins stacked alongside it, according to denomination. On the floor by the table was a pouch handbag of old soft leather.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ said Mrs Escott. ‘I don’t know how, but I always end up with so much change these days.’
‘Me too,’ said Pascoe. ‘It wears holes in my pockets. It’s the paper money I can’t keep hold of.’
She opened the handbag and started to sweep the money into it.
‘No, don’t,’ said Pascoe. ‘You were counting it up. You’ll have to start all over again.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, completing the job and letting the bag drop to the floor with a dull thud. ‘Now, please, Inspector. How can I help you with poor Tap?’
Pascoe took her over her story again.
‘And he was watching the racing on television?’ he asked.
‘That’s right,’ she said.
‘You’d watched races with Mr Parrinder, Tap, before?’ Pascoe continued.
‘Sometimes,’ she said.
‘And did he get excited when he watched? I mean, was he bothered about who won?’
‘Of course he was!’ she said sharply. ‘There’s not much point otherwise.’
‘Even when he hadn’t got a bet on?’
‘Oh yes. He’d pick the horse he would have backed and shout at that one. Of course, it was even more exciting if he had some money on.’
‘You were there from two till nearly half past three,’ he said. ‘So you’d see the two-ten and the two forty-five races.’
‘I expect so. I didn’t pay too much attention.’
‘Did he have any money on those?’
‘No.’ She was quite definite.
‘You’re sure?’ he pressed. ‘Even though you didn’t pay much attention?’
‘I paid a lot of attention to Tap,’ she reproved. ‘The horses he was shouting for didn’t even get a place, I recall, and he said what a good thing it was he hadn’t been able to get out and make a bet.’
Pascoe concealed his disappointment and said, ‘He always went out to make a bet, did he?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Never telephoned?’
‘I don’t think so. He always talked about the betting shop. I’ve never been in one myself and he used to laugh when I told him I had this picture of a sort of old-fashioned general store with assistants wearing white coats.’
She laughed at her own silliness and Pascoe laughed with her.
‘Well, thank you very much, Mrs Escott,’ he said, rising.
‘Have I been any help, Inspector?’ she asked earnestly.
‘Yes, very much,’ he said, with all the false sincerity of a man who has just seen the last remnants of a promising theory knocked down.
‘I’m so glad. Sometimes I forget things. It’s just old age, Mr Pascoe,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘But it can be so annoying.’
‘Your memory seems fine to me. Just one last test. You can’t remember the names of the horses he was shouting for on Friday, can you?’
His mind was toying with the absurd idea that Parrinder might have wished to keep his real selections secret from Mrs Escott and picked some rank outsider for his pretended support, though why he might have wanted to do this was as yet beyond even hypothesis. He had brought Parrinder’s paper with him and he took it out now, ready to prompt Mrs Escott if necessary by reading the runners.
But it wasn’t necessary. Her eyes lit up and she said triumphantly, ‘Yes, I can. The first one was a horse called Willie Wagtail. It was such a funny name it stuck in my mind. In the second race it was Glaramara.’
‘Well done,’ said Pascoe, looking down the list to check the betting forecasts.
He looked again. He went through the card for the whole afternoon. There were no such horses running that day.
But as his eye ranged over the racing page, it did pick up the name of Glaramara. He still had to search to locate it, but there it was, in the small print of the alsorans after the result of the 2.40 at Wincanton on Thursday afternoon. Willie Wagtail was an also-ran in the previous race on the same day.
He looked at the old lady’s smiling, happy face and said gently, ‘Yes, that’s very good, Mrs Escott. Thank you. By the way, you don’t happen to remember what the weather was like that afternoon when you watched television with Mr Parrinder, do you?’
‘Why, yes,’ she said, looking puzzled. ‘Friday, you mean? It was bright but blowy. I remember saying to Tap that the sun looked warm enough from inside but there’d be precious little warmth in it if you went out. But he did go out, didn’t he? And there was no need, no need at all. Especially not in the dark. It’s so frightening these days if you’re old, Mr Pascoe. All these muggings you hear about. I try never to be out after dark. Why did Tap go, Mr Pascoe? Why did he go?’
Pascoe folded the newspaper and put it in his pocket. His theory was coming back together, but he felt little joy in it.
‘I don’t know, Mrs Escott,’ he said quietly. ‘Thank you again for all your help. Thank you very much indeed.’
When Pascoe arrived at the Frostick house on Nethertown Road he was greeted by much the same sounds as had sped him on his way on Sunday. The argument died down as he rang the doorbell. An anxious-looking Mrs Frostick opened the door and ushered him into the living-room where he found Mr Frostick, red-faced and clench-fisted, glaring at a limb-entangled couple in an armchair. The tangle consisted of a young man in private soldier’s uniform whom Pascoe took to be Charley Frostick, with Andrea Gregory, in or out of a mini-skirt, coiled sinuously about his person. There was, Pascoe felt, more of provocation than passion in her pose. It was aimed at fuelling the wrath of Frostick Senior rather than the desires of Frostick Junior, who was looking both physically and mentally rather uncomfortable under the girl’s embrace.
The pause in debate lasted only until Frostick saw how unimportant the interrupter was. He nodded dismissively at Pascoe, then picked up the silver thread of his oratory with all the ease of a Cicero.
‘Bloody mad’s what I say, and bloody mad’s what I mean! That’s what you’ll be if you let her get you hitched. You’re just getting a start, you’ve your whole life ahead of you, your career, everything!’
‘He’s got me too,’ said the girl. ‘He wants me! We’re in love! And he’s old enough to make his own mind up, right, Charley?’
Charley looked miserable. Left to a man-to-man heart-to-heart discussion with his dad, he might well have been able to admit the sense of the elder Frostick’s viewpoint. But Andrea with a sharp sense of timing had made sure she precipitated the crisis before the young man could be forewarned, and now the father’s vehemence only served to provoke a macho I’ll-not-let-my-self-be-pushed-around response.
But at the same time Pascoe sensed even in Andrea’s stage-managing another dimension of play-acting which he didn’t quite understand.
‘Old enough!’ sneered Frostick. ‘He’ll need another hundred years till he’s old enough to deal with your sort, flashing everything you’ve got at him, that’s all you bloody know.’
‘Is that right? I’ve never noticed you looking away from whatever I’ve got
to flash, Mr Frostick,’ retorted the girl.
Then suddenly Charley was on his feet and Andrea was sprawling alone in the armchair.
‘Will you both belt up!’ commanded the young man. ‘I’ve not come home to get yelled at and ordered around by anyone. I get plenty of that in my job, and I’ll not put up with it here, all right? I’ve come home for me granda’s funeral, that’s what, and I think it’s time we were showing some respect.’
Even in his brief period away from home, some process of maturation had taken place which surprised the others, Pascoe could see. Andrea recovered quickest and said, ‘You tell him, Charley!’
Her fiancé spun round and said, ‘And that goes for you too, girl. He was good to me, was Granda. If it weren’t for him being so generous, you wouldn’t have that ring on your finger, so show some respect, will you?’
Andrea stood up. She was wearing less make-up today, perhaps in anticipation of the extra mobility of expression circumstances were likely to require. Rather than anger, what showed now was triumph. The explanation of that sense of play-acting was imminent, Pascoe realized.
‘Here, if it’s this old ring you’re worried about, you take the bloody thing,’ she said viciously, pulling it off and chucking it at the young man. ‘I’ve got better things to do than go and live in some crummy married quarters with a private!’
Charley was dumb-stricken but his father, unable to believe this turn of fortune, said, ‘You’ve changed your tune! What’s happened? Found yourself some money, have you?’
‘You could say that. I’ve got myself a job,’ she said. ‘A good job. Out at Haycroft Grange, that’s that big house out beyond Pedgely Bank.’
‘Haycroft Grange! What’ll you be doing there?’ demanded Charley.
‘Helping out,’ said the girl. ‘Serving at table, and so on. There’s a lot of important people gets there.’
‘You mean, domestic service? You’ll be a maid?’ said Frostick in disbelief.
‘I’ll be assistant to the housekeeper,’ retorted Andrea. ‘And I get my own room and a colour telly too. You reckon nowt to me, don’t you, Mr Frostick? Well, let me tell you this, I only did my job at Paradise Hall so well that one of the customers there noticed me and it was him that got me this job.’
‘You didn’t say owt about this on Sunday!’ said Frostick.
‘I didn’t know I was going till last night,’ said Andrea.
‘I get it!’ said Frostick. ‘So now you’ve got yourself fixed up, you don’t need to shove yourself off on Charley here any more. Christ, Charley lad, I hope you can see what a lucky escape you’ve had.’
‘Oh shut up, Dad!’ the young man burst out. With a last glance, part accusing, part amazed, at Andrea he turned away and rushed from the room. They heard his footsteps going upstairs.
‘See you then, Mr Frostick,’ said the girl, with a provocative pout. She left too. Pascoe said, ‘Excuse me,’ and followed her.
He caught up with her just outside the front door.
‘You know who I am, Miss Gregory,’ he said, with a smile which won a response compounded equally of distrust and dislike.
‘Yeah, what do you want?’
‘This job you’ve got, was it Major Kassell who got it for you by any chance?’
‘That’s right. What about it?’
It wasn’t so much aggressiveness, he decided, as an inability to respond other than in terms of her own self-interest. What about it, indeed? So Major Kassell, knowing they were short-staffed out at Haycroft Grange, had suggested to this girl that she might care to apply. But why, for God’s sake? Pascoe could imagine the kind of waitress she was. Her one talent was probably provoking men. Takes a big tip to get a big tip.
He said, ‘Listen, love, I just want a few answers, that’s all. I’ll get ‘em here, or I’ll come up to Haycroft Grange for them if you prefer.’
The threat was mild but effective. She responded instantly.
‘Yes, it was him, the Major. He gets in a lot to Paradise Hall. Said to me a week or two back, if ever I needed a job, they were always looking for staff at Haycroft Grange. Well, I thought, no wonder, stuck out there in the middle of nowhere. I mean, Paradise Hall was bad enough but at least there was the bus or you could thumb a lift.’
‘What made you change your mind?’ asked Pascoe.
‘I needed a job, didn’t I? Anyway, he told me there was regular transport laid on for the staff. So I thought, why not give it a whirl? I’m starting tomorrow so I can get to know the ropes before the next lot of guests come at the weekend. That’s what it is mainly, see, these rich men coming up for the shooting.’
She spoke with real respect. No wonder Kassell had hired her! The rich would get real service. But what did that make Kassell? Added to the information supplied by Sergeant Myers, it made him a lot less than a perfectly respectable witness. Not that it mattered too much now that Mrs Warsop had changed her mind.
‘On Friday night, did you notice the other people with Major Kassell?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘There was that bookie, Charlesworth. He gets in a lot. And this big fat bloke, pissed out of his mind. He looked a real villain! Is that who you’re after?’
‘No, no,’ prevaricated Pascoe hastily. ‘Just a general question. I was really just interested in the restaurant and the clientele generally.’
‘Here, it’s not old Abbiss you’re after?’ said the girl, with sudden malice. ‘I could tell you a thing or two about his fiddles. You want to be looking at him and that old dyke from The Towers, that’s what you want to be doing.’
‘From The Towers?’ said Pascoe, suddenly alert. ‘You mean Mrs Warsop?’
‘That’s right. She brings her little fancy girls along, rubs knees with them under the table, it makes me sick!’ said Andrea viciously.
‘Bad tipper, is she?’ said Pascoe disapprovingly.
‘Tip? Her? You never see her money. Signs her bill, like she was important. But Abbiss, he never sees her money either.’
‘What are you trying to tell me, Andrea?’ said Pascoe gently.
But the girl had gone full circle and was now back to her original instinctive distrust.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’ve said nothing. It’s nothing to do with me any more. I’m off now.’
She stepped over the fence into her own garden. From the house a plaintive wail arose.
‘Teeny! Where’s my biscuits?’
‘Thank Christ I’ll be away from that!’ she said half to herself.
‘I’ll see you again some time, Andrea,’ promised Pascoe.
‘Will you?’ she said, turning on him a crooked, not unattractive smile. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps,’ agreed Pascoe. ‘Perhaps.’
Chapter 20
‘All my possessions for one moment of time!’
Dennis Seymour was inclined to regard this consultation with Arnie Charlesworth as a slight on his own detective resources. Having spent several hours trudging round all the possible, and some pretty improbable, betting shops, he resented the implication that Charlesworth could cover the same ground with a few telephone calls. Worst of all would be, of course, if Charlesworth proved to have succeeded where he had failed.
No. He corrected this. It’d be a blow to his amour-propre, but the worst thing of all would be if this investigation which he had begun to regard as very much his own should finally grind to a halt.
Charlesworth lived in the highest of a quartet of flats carved out of a tall Victorian terraced house near the town centre. It was somehow curiously depersonalized, feeling more like a hotel suite than a permanent residence. The only personal touches were a set of racing prints on one of the lounge walls and a framed photograph of a group of young men in rugby kit, with one of them holding a large cup.
When Seymour introduced himself at the door, Charlesworth had regarded him with cold assessing eyes before letting him in. Not a man you could get close to, thought Seymour. There was something reserved and watching about
him, a mind calculating the odds and at the same time sardonically amused at the absurdity of the race.
‘Drink?’ said Charlesworth.
‘I could manage a beer,’ said Seymour, sitting on a rather hard armchair.
Charlesworth poured him a lager. He took nothing himself.
‘Cheers,’ said Seymour, taking a sip. ‘Did you have any luck, sir?’
‘Luck?’ said Charlesworth as though it were not a word he was acquainted with. ‘In the whole of this city there was only one bet placed which linked those three horses last Friday, and that was for a hundred pounds, and the punter concerned is well known by name and in person.’
‘Ah,’ said Seymour. ‘No luck then.’
‘How old are you, son?’ asked Charlesworth.
It was an unexpected question, but Charlesworth was not the kind of man whose unexpected questions could be ignored.
‘Twenty-three,’ said Seymour.
‘And you like your work?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ambitious?’
‘Yes, sir.’
What was all this about? wondered Seymour. Was he being sounded out for a bribe? The story of Dalziel’s troubles, suitably embellished, was all over the station by now. According to this, the bookie had the fat man in his pocket; was he now looking to invest in the future?
If so, should not Seymour perhaps be flattered by being singled out as a prospective high-flier?
‘I had a son,’ said Charlesworth abruptly.
‘Sir?’
‘He was twenty-three when he died. Nearly. Another week and he’d have been twenty-three.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Seymour helplessly. He finished his beer and made as if to rise, but something in Charlesworth’s hard, set face told him that he was not yet excused.
‘You interested in racing? Apart from professionally, that is?’ asked Charlesworth.
‘Well, yes. I like to go when I get the chance. And I like a bet,’ said Seymour, glad to re-enter the realm of casual conversation, even if it might lead to some kind of offer which he hoped he’d have the strength and the sense to refuse.
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