Asking for the Moon (10 page)

'Yes?'

'Mrs Swithenbank doesn't like people parking on her lawn either.'

Angrily she got into the car, bumped off the grass strip in front of the war memorial, and accelerated violently away.

Arthur Lightfoot watched her out of sight. Turning to his wheelbarrow, he tossed in a couple of weeds prior to pushing the barrow towards his compost pit and tipping the contents on to its steaming surface.

'Feeding time,' he said. 'Feeding time.'

. . . /
wake and sigh

And sleep to dream till day

Of the truth that gold can never buy.

Pascoe relaxed in a commodious chintz-covered armchair whose springs emitted distant sighs and clangings like an old ship rolling at its moorings on a still night. He looked, and felt, extremely comfortable, but the watchful eyes were triangulating the man in front of him.

Swithenbank was a slightly built man, almost small, but with an air of control and composure which created a greater sense
of presence
than another six inches might have done. He had black hair obviously carefully tended by a good barber. Sorry,
hair stylist,
corrected Pascoe, whose own hairdresser was very much a barber, still more a butcher according to Ellie, his wife. Ellie would also have used Swithenbank's clothes as the occasion of more unflattering comparisons. Pascoe was smart in an off-the-peg chain store kind of way, while there was something about the other man's thin-knit pale blue roll-collar sweater that proclaimed without the need of a label that it was an exclusive Italian design and cost forty-five pounds.

Show me a poor publisher and I'll show you a fool, as Dr Johnson may have, ought to have, said, thought Pascoe, forcing his attention from the exquisitely cut slacks back to the man's features. Broad forehead, long straight nose, thick but neatly trimmed black moustache, small, very white teeth, which glinted beneath the dark brush as the man made ready to speak.

'Let's not beat about the bush, Inspector,' said Swithenbank.

'What bush would that be?' enquired Pascoe politely.

'You said you were here about Kate, my wife. Have you found her?'

'No,' said Pascoe.

'Thank God!'

'I'm sorry?' said Pascoe.

'I thought you were going to tell me you'd found her body.'

'No. Not yet, sir.'

Swithenbank looked at him sharply.

'Not yet. But you sound as if you expect to.'

'I didn't intend to,' said Pascoe.

Suddenly Swithenbank smiled and the atmosphere became much more relaxed, as if he had operated a switch. A man of considerable charm, thought Pascoe. He didn't trust men of considerable charm very much.

'So we're really at square one, no further forward than twelve months ago. You think Kate's dead though you've got no proof. And I, of course, remain Number One suspect.'

'It's a position we unimaginative policemen always reserve for husbands,' replied Pascoe, content to fall in with the new lightness of manner.

'But my ratiocinative powers tell me there must be more, Inspector. Visits from your colleague, Inspector Dove of the Enfield constabulary, I have come to expect. I think he believes, not without cause, that ultimately the threat of his company could bring a man to confess to anything. But I'm sure it takes more than mere suspicion to get a Yorkshire

policeman into motion. Am I beating anywhere nearer the bush, Inspector?'

'The bush is burning, but it is not consumed,' said Pascoe with a smile.

'A Biblical policeman!' exclaimed Swithenbank.

'Just carry on with the still small voice,' said Pascoe, beginning to enjoy the game.

'Now you disappoint me,' said Swithenbank. 'Wasn't it Elijah who got the still small voice? While, of course, Moses it was who talked to the trees.'

'Both agents of the truth,' said Pascoe. 'You were saying?'

'It's my guess, then, that something has stimulated your interest in me. A tip of some kind. Phone calls perhaps? Or anonymous letters? Am I right or am I right?'

'You're right,' said Pascoe. 'That's really very sharp of you, sir. Yes, there's been a letter. And, oddly enough, it came to us here in Yorkshire.'

'Why "oddly"?'

'It's just that it's a year since your wife disappeared and we've had nothing about you before. Except through official channels, I mean. All the usual post-disappearance "tips" went to your local station at Enfield — or straight to Scotland Yard. We contacted Enfield about this letter, of course.'

'And the omniscient Inspector Dove told you I was presently visiting Wearton!'

'Right,' said Pascoe. 'And as
we
received the letter and you are in
our
area . . . well, here / am.'

'And a pleasant change it makes from your cockney cousins,' said Swithenbank, 'If I may say so.'

'Thank you kindly,' said Pascoe. 'And if I may say, you seem somehow less surprised or taken aback by all this than I would have expected.'

'I work as an editor for Colbridge the publishers. A condition of service is not being surprised. By anything! But you are very sharp, Inspector. In a manner of speaking, I've been prepared for your visit. Or at least its first cause.'

'You've had a letter too?' guessed Pascoe. 'Splendid. We must compare notes.'

Swithenbank smiled and shook his head.

'Alas, no letter. Just phone calls. They started in London about a fortnight ago, three direct, a couple which just got as far as my secretary and the woman who cleans my flat. So I decided to come up here.'

'Why? What did they say?'

'Always the same thing. And again this morning, twice. My mother answered the phone. First time the line was dead by the time I got to it. But she heard the message. And the second time, just as you arrived, I heard the voice myself. Exactly the same as before. Just a woman's name, twice repeated.
Ulalunu.'

'Ula . . . ?'

'Ulalume.'

'And the voice was female?' said Pascoe, perplexed.

Swithenbank shrugged and said, 'Probably. It's an eerie wailing kind of tone. Possibly a male falsetto.'

'And when you spoke sternly in reply?'

'Ah. Of course, you came to the door then, didn't you? The line went dead. End of message.'

'Message?' said Pascoe. 'I'm clearly missing something. There's a message here, is there? Just what does Ulalume signify, Mr Swithenbank?'

The other leaned back in his chair, put the tips of his fingers together beneath his chin and recited.

'And we passed to the end of the vista But were stopped by the door of a tomb -By the door of a legended tomb; And I said - "What is written, sweet sister, On the door of this legended tomb?" She replied - "Ulalume - Ulalume -'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!'"

'Remarkable,' said Pascoe. 'I'm impressed. But not much wiser.'

'It's a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Ulalume was a nymph, the dead love of the poet who inadvertently returns to the place where he had entombed her a year earlier.

And I cried - "It was surely October On this very night of last year That I journeyed - I journeyed down here -That I brought a dread burden down here -Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber, This misty mid-region of Weir."

I can do you
The Raven
and
Annabel Lee,
too, if you like.'

'October,' said Pascoe. 'Weir. Wearton. So that's what brought you up here! What an apt choice of poem!'

'Had I killed my wife and brought her to Wearton to bury her last October, it might indeed seem so,' said Swithenbank coldly.

'Indeed,' said Pascoe, catching the man's style. 'But that's not quite what I meant. The reference was aptly chosen in that you understood it instantly. To me it meant nothing. Just chance?'

Swithenbank shook his head thoughtfully.

'No, not chance. Among other things I do for my firm, I edit a series called
Masters of Literature.
Slim volumes, a bit of biography, a bit of lit. crit.; nothing anyone's going to get a Ph.D. for, but useful to sixth-formers and the undergrad. in a hurry. I've done a couple myself, including one on Poe, accompanied by a selection of his poems and stories.'

'I see,' said Pascoe. 'Would this be generally known?"

'It didn't make any best-seller list,' said Swithenbank.

'But people in Wearton could know? Your mother might do a spot of quiet boasting. My son, the author.'

'I think when I'm away she tries to pretend I'm still at college,' said Swithenbank. 'But yes, some of my old friends would know. The only true test of an old friend is whether he buys your books! Boris Kingsley certainly bought a copy - he asked me to sign it.'

'Boris . . . ?'

'Kingsley. He lives at the Big House, Wear End House, that is.'

'I see,' said Pascoe. 'Any other particular friends?'

Swithenbank laughed, not very mirthfully.

'I gather that friends come a close second to husbands as popular suspects.'

'For anonymous letters, yes,' said Pascoe.

'I'm sure you're wrong, but let me see. Of my own close circle there remain, besides Boris, Geoffrey Rawlinson. His wife, Stella, nee Foxley - big farmers locally. Geoff's sister, Ursula. And Ursula's husband who also happens to be their cousin, Peter Davenport, who also happens to be our vicar!'

'I see,' said Pascoe. 'A close circle, this?'

'To the point of inbreeding,' said Swithenbank cheerfully. 'As good local families, we're probably all related somewhere. Except Boris. They've only been here since the end of the last century.'

'So you all grew up together?'

'Oh yes. Except Peter. His branch of the family lived in Leeds, but he used to spend nearly all his holidays here. Surprised us all when he went into Holy Orders.'

'Why?'

'No one you've stolen apples with can seem quite good enough to be a priest, can they?' said Swithenbank.

'So apart from you, all your circle have remained in Wear-ton?' said Pascoe.

'I suppose so. Except Ursula and Peter, of course. They married while he was still a curate somewhere near Wakefield. When was that? - about eight years ago, yes, I'd married the previous year - of course, I'd been working in London for nearly two years by then . . .'

'So you'd be twenty-three, twenty-four?'

'So I would. The others fell in rapid succession. First Geoff and Stella, then, almost immediately, Ursula and Peter. It wasn't till three years after that that Peter came to Wearton

as vicar. Too young for some of the natives but the local connection helped.'

'But Mr Kingsley didn't marry?'

'No. He looked after his parents up at the Big House. They weren't all that old, but were both in poor health. His mother went about eighteen months ago, his father last spring.'

'And that's the lot? Of your friends, I mean?'

'Yes, I think so. There's Kate's brother, I suppose. Arthur. Arthur Lightfoot. He was several years older and several ages less couth; certainly not one of the charmed circle that made Wearton the Port Said of the north a dozen years ago. But you'd better prick him down on your interview list.'

'Interview list?'

'I presume it's more than idle curiosity that's making you ask these questions, Inspector!' he said acidly.

The doorbell rang. Its chime would not have disgraced a cathedral.

'Your mother?' wondered Pascoe. 'I should like to talk to her.'

'Never gets home till five on Fridays,' said Swithenbank.

The bell rang again. Swithenbank made no move.

'Your mother was mistaken about the bell,' observed Pascoe. 'It seems to be working very well.'

'She hates to be disturbed,' said Swithenbank, 'so she disconnects it. The first thing I do when I come up here is repair it.'

Again the bell.

'You certainly know your business,' said Pascoe admiringly. 'Yes, I'd certainly say it was repaired. It's just the
tone
you miss, not the function, I gather?'

Swithenbank rose.

'It never does to appear too available,' he said, leaving the room.

He pulled the door shut behind him. Pascoe immediately jumped up and moved as quietly to the door as the creaky floorboards would permit, but he needn't have bothered about sound getting out as the woodwork and walls were

obviously thick enough to prevent anything less raucous than the bell getting in.

Working on the Dalziel principle that the next best thing to overhearing a conversation is to give the impression you've overheard it, he did not resume his seat but stood close to the doorway, apparently rapt in contemplation of a small oil painting darkened by age almost to indecipherability, until the door opened and he found himself looking at a pretty blonde carrying a large bunch of dahlias.

'Let me take those to the kitchen. Mother will be delighted. They're her favourite. Oh, this is Detective-Inspector Pascoe, my dear. Jean Starkey.'

Swithenbank removed the flowers and left Pascoe and the newcomer shaking hands.

With an expertise that Pascoe admired, the woman assessed the seating available and chose the comfortable armchair. Not liking the look of the cane chair Swithenbank had occupied, Pascoe perched gingerly on a chaise-longue which was even harder than it appeared.

'Are you an inhabitant of Wearton, too, Miss Starkey?'

She glanced down at her ringless left hand and smiled approval.

'Oh no. Like yourself, just visiting. At least I presume you're just visiting?'

'For the moment, yes.'

'Does that mean you may eventually settle here?' asked the woman, rounding her eyes.

'I think it means the Inspector doesn't consider "visiting" adequately covers his possible return flanked by bloodhounds and armed with warrants,' said Swithenbank.

He came back into the room carrying a huge vase into which the dahlias had been tumbled with no pretence of aesthetic theory.

Placing them on a small table within reach of the big armchair he said, 'Do what you can with these, Jean dear. I've no talent for nature.'

Then, relaxing into the cane chair which seemed to have