'If he said drop it, drop it,' said Dalziel. 'You seemed keen enough to get shut of the whole business the other day.'
'I'm sorry, sir,' said Pascoe. 'I know it's all a bit vague, but I just get the feeling that there's something here. All right, forget the alleged killings which are no longer alleged and which in any case seem to have been perfectly straightforward cases of accidental and of natural death. Curiously, in the one case where a bit of skulduggery could have been possible, that was the death of a man called Christopher Burke which opened up the way for Aldermann's full-time employment, Mr Elgood was emphatic it was accidental.'
'Burke? Oh aye, I recall. Fell off a ladder, didn't he? Broke his neck.'
'That's the one. Easier to arrange, I should've thought, than a heart attack or a car skidding on an empty road. But no, not that one, says Elgood.'
'And no, not the others either,' reminded Dalziel, sticking a pen down the side of his shoe to scratch his foot.
'But there has to be a reason why he came here in the first place. You did take him seriously yourself, sir,' said Pascoe accusingly.
'No,' answered Dalziel, who had now worked back upto his ankle. 'I asked you to take him seriously. He's dropped a few useful hints in the past and you shouldn't forget a man's record, good or bad, should you?'
'You mean he's one of your narks?' exclaimed Pascoe in amazement.
'Don't be daft, lad! Can you imagine meeting Dandy Dick on a park bench and slipping him a couple of quid for information received? No, it's just that once or twice, especially in the old days, he's settled a business dispute by dropping a hint about some shady deal the opposition was into. All's fair in love and business, Dick'd say. He'd screw anyone, any way!'
Dalziel spoke admiringly. His pen had now emerged from his sock and he'd pulled his trouser leg up so that he could continue the scratch up to his knee. He didn't seem to have noticed that the pen-top had remained in the sock and the felt tip was now adding a new royal blue line to the scrawl of varicose veins on his calf.
Pascoe said, 'You mean he used us to put the skids under his business rivals? The cunning sod!'
'Aye, he's that, right enough,' said Dalziel. 'Mebbe he's still playing that game, stirring things up to help himself. I'll have him if he is, though he's been quiet for a good bit now. I reckon when they got took over, the game became that much bigger and also he lost a bit of interest. You don't look after someone else's mansion the way you do your own house, do you?'
'He seemed to be looking after it fairly well when I saw him, and single-handed. The place didn't exactly look packed with senior management waiting for the union meeting to finish. Though I did see Aldermann, of course. Mind you, he looked to be packing it in for the day! I told you he gave me a rose, didn't I?'
'He wanted to give me a bunch,' said a voice from the doorway. It was Wield who had entered with his usual quietness.
'God, it's creeping Jesus,' said Dalziel, looking round. 'You want to get some hobnails in them boots of yours, Sergeant. But now you're here, just tell me again what you thought of Mr Aldermann when you called on him the other night.'
'Like I said in my report, sir, he was difficult to get to. Very self-contained, watchful almost, but not in a suspicious way. He came to life when he started showing me his roses, though.'
'You felt he could be more interested in his roses than his wife and family?' said Pascoe.
'There's men more interested in golf and greyhounds than their wives and families!' interjected Dalziel. 'That doesn't make them killers!'
Wield said, 'Not more interested in, perhaps, sir, but more passionate about, if that makes sense. He handles them with love. And when he deadheaded them, it was like watching a surgeon at work.'
'Aye, there's some of them buggers'd be better off using a pair of garden secateurs!' observed Dalziel, who tended to regard doctors as causes rather than curers of ill health.
'No, he uses a pruning knife,' said Wield, justifying his simile. 'It's a beauty, lovely shape, sharp as a scalpel.'
'I hope you're not suggesting that just because he's got a nice, sharp, shiny pruning knife, he's likely to go around slitting people's throats, Sergeant?' said Dalziel with heavy sarcasm.
'No, sir,' agreed Wield. 'That doesn't follow.'
'It's what you might call a non-secateur,' murmured Pascoe, adding hastily as he saw the look on Dalziel's face, 'and there was the cupboard full of poison, wasn't there?'
'What a way you've got with language!' said Dalziel sarcastically. 'Garden weedkillers, that's what he's got. Which there's no evidence he's used to kill owt but weeds. And what did he do with Burke? Blow the stuff up his trouser leg while he was climbing that ladder?'
He'd finished scratching his leg and now he pulled his trouser down again without noticing the decoration on his calf. Wield met Pascoe's gaze. Pascoe had a sudden desire to giggle, but Wield's rocky impassivity stemmed the impulse.
'One reason,' said Dalziel. 'Give me one reason to waste any more time on this business.'
'Curiosity,' said Pascoe promptly.
'Curiosity? About what?'
'About how a man, who, as far as I can ascertain, has never shown much real aptitude for his chosen profession, should be at the edge of becoming financial director of a subsidiary of a large international company.'
'Christ, by that yardstick we should be curious about fifty per cent of directors, seventy per cent of politicians and ninety-five per cent of Chief Constables!' said Dalziel in disgust. 'Listen, this Aldermann sounds to me like Mr Average. Dull; ordinary; wife and two kids; nice house; loves to get home to his family and his rose-garden. He'll likely go to Corfu for his holidays and have his white-haired old mother to stay at Christmas. He has got a white-haired old mother, has he?'
'Mrs Penelope Highsmith,' said Pascoe promptly, glancing at his file. 'Flat 31, Woodfall House, Denbigh Square, London SW1. Age and colour of hair unknown.'
'Very good,' complimented Dalziel. 'Your information, I mean. Highsmith? Why not Aldermann? Did she marry again?'
'She wasn't married in the first place. Highsmith was her maiden name. Evidently she never let on who Patrick's father was and it was his own idea to take his great-uncle's name when he came of age.'
But Dalziel didn't seem to be much interested in this bit of family history.
'Highsmith?' he said. 'Penelope Highsmith? Used to live up here fifteen, twenty years back?'
'I presume so. At least, he went to school here.'
'Penny Highsmith! By God. Penny Highsmith!' Dalziel's face suddenly lit up, like sunshine breaking through at Elsinore.
'You knew Mrs Highsmith, sir?' enquired Pascoe.
'We met, if it's the same one. She used to come down to the Club odd Saturday nights when there was a dance on. I never knew she had a son, though. She was a real lively lass. Full of fun and bonny with it. A real live spark.'
Whose memory brought a lustful gleam to Dalziel's weary, cynical eyes as well as Elgood's twinkling, questing ones, thought Pascoe. She must have had something! 'The Club' of course, meant the local rugby football club. Pascoe's only connection with it had been a professional one some years before while he was still a sergeant. It was not a game nor an ambience that he much cared for, but the Superintendent had evidently played the game with some skill and (Pascoe guessed) a great deal of physicality in his younger days.
'It doesn't sound as if Patrick takes after her much,' said Pascoe. 'Perhaps he's more like his mysterious father.'
'Perhaps,' said Dalziel thoughtfully. 'I'll tell you what, you two. I'm off to this bloody conference tomorrow. And because like as not you'll do what you bloody well want in any case, soon as my back's turned, I'll give you the week I'm away to rummage round in. It doesn't mean you neglect owt else, but if you've a couple of spare moments here and there, well, it's up to you. All right?
Now bugger off. I've got things to do before I go home and get packed. Oh, you might leave me that file to glance at.'
It w
as either a small concession or a great volte-face, depending how you looked at it. Pascoe was not inclined to quibble.
'Have a nice time, sir,' he said, dropping the file on the desk.
Dalziel grunted, looking down at the untidy surface on his desk on which his spade-like hands were arranging and rearranging articles impatiently.
It was not until he was out in the corridor that it occurred to Pascoe that he was probably looking for the top of his felt tip pen.
10
MOONLIGHT
(Hybrid Musk.Cascades of white blossom, full of old-world charm.)
Daphne Aldermann had been openly amused to note that Ellie Pascoe and baby Rose were clearly as well known in the Chantry Coffee House as they were in the Market Caff. Ellie was unabashed.
'I like it here,' she said. 'The coffee's better for one thing.'
'That compensates for the people, does it?' Daphne attacked, glancing round at the clientele which was largely middle-aged and middle-class females with hats and voices to match.
'I didn't say I liked them,' said Ellie. 'People en masse generally get up my nose. But with this lot I can feel irritated without feeling guilty.'
'Whereas getting annoyed at the disgusting habits and awful taste of hoi-polloi brings on an attack of conscience? I see.'
'I wouldn't have put it quite like that,' said Ellie. 'But clearly you understand the principle.'
'It's one you become familiar with when you're brought up in a parsonage,' said Daphne. 'Local ladies squabbling about who did the flowers was infuriating, but no worse than the deserving poor banging on the door just as Daddy was sitting down to his evening meal.'
'Was your sympathy with your father for being disturbed or your mother for having her cooking spoilt?' asked Ellie casually. Daphne smiled and said, 'Catch question. You want me to say how male-centred our house was! I'm afraid I can't help you. You see, my mother died when I was thirteen and thereafter I was very much in charge of the house. We had a woman-who-did, but her cuisine was based mainly on chips and brown sauce, so more often than not it was my cooking that was being spoilt. I used to get furious.'
'And feel guilty?'
'Only when the disturber turned out to be really deserving.'
'Or really poor,' said Ellie. 'It shows up the inadequacies of State care when people can still be forced to beg for handouts from the Church.'
To her surprise Daphne laughed out loud.
'Oh, come on,' she said. 'It wouldn't matter what the State did, there's always going to be people beating a path to the door of a rich parson well known to be a soft touch. It's called human nature, dear.'
Ellie decided to ignore the ideological challenge and said, 'A rich parson? I thought the virtue of poverty was one the Church forced its employees to embrace?'
'So it does. Fortunately it doesn't force them to embrace poor wives also. The money was Mummy's, you see.'
Her voice had a wistful note as at some remembered sadness. Ellie said brightly, 'At least it would mean your father could afford a decent housekeeper when you got yourself married.'
Her effort at cheerfulness failed miserably.
'No. Daddy was dead by then too,' said Daphne, tears starting to her eyes. 'It was awful. He was doing so well, he'd become Archdeacon, you see, and he was responsible among other things for checking on church structures in the diocese when there was any question of restoration work and appeals, that sort of thing. He'd gone out to St Mark's at Little Leven. It was in a really bad state, it seems. And a stone fell from the belfry while he was examining it and killed him.'
'How awful,' said Ellie, genuinely moved. 'I'm so sorry. That must have been a terrible thing to bear.'
Her hand hovered over Daphne's. She wasn't sure if physical contact would comfort the woman or merely precipitate a flood of tears and she hated herself for her uncertainty. Fortunately Rose, far removed from adult inadequacies, was ready with a diversion. A passing waitress stooping over the high chair to goo-goo her admiration brought a plateful of cakes within reach of the little girl and she plunged her tiny fist into the mouth of a cream horn with great accuracy and equal enthusiasm.
Daphne's distress disappeared in the ensuing confusion and Ellie happily sat back and let her take control, only interfering when she started to wipe Rose's hand with a napkin.
'Let her lick it off,' she said. 'It'll save on her next feed.'
It was nearly midday when the two women left the coffee house.
'Which way are you going?' asked Ellie.
'Back to the car. I'm on top of the precinct.'
'Me too. Forty p and vertigo just for parking your car. It's a mad world,' said Ellie.
They made their way back to the main shopping precinct. The youths were still lounging around outside the Job Centre and the old people sitting on the benches round the fountain. Ellie had an unpleasant fantasy that what the youngsters were really doing was forming a queue, forty years long, for a place on one of those benches.
They travelled up on the lift together. The shoppers ‘car park was on the roof of the covered section of the precinct. It was joined by a bridge over the inner ring road to the multi-storey by the bus station. They found that their cars were parked quite close together.
'At least there doesn't seem to be any damage this time,' said Daphne after a cursory inspection of her gleaming paintwork.
'They'd need to wash mine before they could scratch it,' said Ellie. 'Was this where you were when you got vandalized?'
'No, I was over the bridge in the multi-storey,' said Daphne.
'I suppose it's much quieter over there,' observed Ellie. 'On this side you've got shoppers coming and going all the time.'
'I suppose so,' said Daphne, unlocking her car. 'You need to be a policeman's wife to think of things like that, though.'
'Do you? How disappointing. I thought I'd worked it out all by myself with my little woman's mind,' said Ellie rather more acidly than she'd intended. 'Next Monday then?'
'I'll look forward to it,' said Daphne, getting into her car. She closed the door and wound down the window.
'Look,' she said, 'it is your turn and I really don't mind the Market Caff.'
But Ellie laughed and said, 'No, the Chantry's fine. And if the brat's going to make a habit of smashing her way into other people's food, it's as well to keep her out of range of hot meat pies. Ciao!'
She watched as the Polo moved away. Daphne was a neat, confident driver.
And then she set about the complicated business of persuading Rose, who now that she was deprived of her audience of admirers was showing signs of recalcitrance, to let herself be fastened into the baby seat in the rear of the Mini.
She was still, or rather again, recalcitrant at eleven o'clock that night. Her distant protests were making Pascoe uneasy but Ellie whose ear was now finely tuned to Rose's various wavelengths diagnosed prima donna bloodymindedness and made him sit still and enjoy his coffee.
They'd eaten late. Pascoe had been delayed by the news of another robbery. A local family returning from holiday to their small country house had discovered that despite police-approved locks and burglar alarms, they had been burgled. There had been much indignation. Fortunately there was none waiting for him at home. Cold beef, an Italian salad and a bottle of Soave had not been spoilt by his lateness. Indeed it was the kind of meal which gained something from being consumed with the mild summer evening darkening outside the open french window. Ellie described her day in the kind of detail she tended to despise in other at-home mothers. But stories about her Rosie really were amusing, she assured herself only half ironically
'And did they charge you for the cream horn?' enquired Pascoe.
'I've no idea. Daphne picked up the tab.'
'Good. You stick to paying in the Market Caff. Let the idle rich cough up in the Chantry!'
'I don't think she's all that rich,' protested Ellie.
'Oh?' said Pascoe. 'Didn't you say her pa was loaded down with ecclesiastical g
old, or something?'
Ellie poured more coffee and said, 'It was marital rather than ecclesiastical gold, I gather. Presumably Daphne got what was left over from the deserving poor after Pa's accident, but elitist expenses like school fees, not to mention the upkeep of that mansion, must all eat away at capital, I suppose. Though I presume Aldermann gets a pretty hefty wage packet.'
'Probably. On the other hand he seems to have had a pretty chequered career. There must have been times when he was living largely off capital.'
'Daphne didn't say much about his career,' said Ellie. 'But once the tearful moment was passed, courtesy of the brat, we swapped courtship stories quite happily.'
'Swapped?' said Pascoe, raising his eyebrows.
'Oh yes. In full frontal detail, naturally. Our Patrick was articled to a firm of accountants in Harrogate who looked after a couple of her father's church accounts. She'd popped in during her lunch-hour to pick up something for her pa and Patrick was the only person there. They chatted, lunched together, and it went on from there.'
'Her lunch-hour, you said? What was her job?'
'No job,' grinned Ellie. 'She was still at school. Sweet seventeen. Swish private school, of course, none of your common or garden comprehensives for Archdeacon Somerton's only daughter. All went fairly smoothly for a while. Why shouldn't it? She'd had other boyfriends. But things turned sour six months later on her eighteenth birthday when she announced she and Patrick were engaged to be married. There was opposition from Pa, more to the idea of an early marriage than to Patrick himself, I gather. But various elderly female relatives seem to have got in on the act. Of course, being eighteen, she was theoretically entitled to make her own decisions but you know how nasty things can be made for a kid that age. Then her father died. She obviously still feels guilty that they were at odds when he died. I think she always will.'
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