A pinch of snuff

Wield smiled.

'Then you too are Miss Andover,' Pascoe stated brightly.

'Oh no,' said the woman, shocked. 'I am Miss Alice Andover. This is Miss Andover.'

She indicated the figure of (Pascoe presumed) her elder sister descending the gloomy staircase.

The sisters were dressed alike in long flowered skirts which might have been antiques or the latest thing off C amp; A's racks. From the starched fronts of their plain white blouses depended the receivers of two rather old-fashioned hearing aids. Annabelle, however, was several inches the taller and wore her even whiter hair in a simple page-boy cut while her sister had hers pulled back into a severe bun. Her face had probably never been as pretty as her sister's, but she had an alert intelligent expression missing from the younger woman's.

'My dear,' said Alice, 'this is Mr Wield, as you know, but I'm afraid the other gentleman has not been presented.'

'My fault entirely,' said Pascoe, entering into the spirit of the thing. 'Perhaps I may be allowed to break with convention and present myself?'

'Whoever you are,' said Miss Annabelle, 'there's no need to treat us both like half-wits even if m'sister asks for it. Alice, stop being a stupid cow, will you, dear? She saw Greer Garson in Pride and Prejudice on the box the other week and she's not been the same since. Let's go in here.'

She led the way into a bright Habitat-furnished sitting-room with the largest colour television set Pascoe had ever seen lowering from one corner.

'Well?' said Miss Andover impatiently, taking up a stance in front of the fireplace and lighting a Park Drive. 'As you're with the sergeant, I presume you're a cop, and from the way he's hanging back behind you, you must have some rank. Unless you're a princess and he's just married you.'

The quip amused her so much that she laughed till she coughed.

Pascoe waited till she'd finished both activities and introduced himself in a brusque twentieth- century fashion.

'The house next door, Dr Haggard's house, was broken into last night and a deal of damage done. I wondered if either of you heard anything?'

Miss Alice gasped in fright and seemed to shrink into herself but her sister just whistled in surprise, then shook her head, pointing to her hearing aid.

'An advantage of this thing is that I need hear only what I want to. It's very useful at night and when I'm with extremely boring people.'

'So you heard nothing?' persisted Pascoe.

'I've said so.'

'Miss Alice?'

'Oh no. I switched off too,' said Alice, evidently retrieved to the present moment by her sister's command.

'Which side of the house do you sleep?' asked Pascoe, causing a time-slip in Miss Alice who put her hand to her mouth in horror at his indelicacy.

'First floor on the Wilkinson House side,' said Miss Annabelle. 'Alice is at the back, I'm at the front.'

'It's a very large house,' said Pascoe. 'May I have a look upstairs just to get an impression of where you'd be in relation to next door?'

'By all means,' said Miss Annabelle. 'Follow me.'

They set off in procession up the gloomy stairs, the older woman leading, the two men close behind and the younger sister trailing.

On the first floor they halted and Miss Annabelle flung open doors.

'These are our bedrooms. Mine here and that's Alice's. As you can see, they abut on to Wilkinson House, but we weren't disturbed. Over there are another couple of rooms, used to be our parents' bedroom and dressing-room. We don't use them now. Bathroom, boxroom. We use this as a sewing-room or rather Alice does. Me, I was never a hand with the needle. But Alice is an expert. Makes all our clothes in here. Gets the best light, you see.'

Pascoe peered in. The room was full of material, some of it draped around a dressmaker's dummy. On a smooth polished table stood an ancient foot-operated sewing machine and a work basket with all the tools of the art, needles, cotton reels, buttons, pinking shears, edging tape, everything.

'A hive of industry,’ he said brightly. 'It's a big house. You live here alone?'

'Not quite,' said Miss Annabelle and flinging back her head she cried, 'Una! Duessa! Medina! Acrasia! Archimago! Satyrane! Guyon! Britomart!'

A moment later the room was filled with cats. They were all Siamese, of various ages and pointings, but all possessing in common an extremely loud voice.

'Apart from these, we live alone,' said Miss Annabelle. 'Do you want to go higher?'

'If I may.'

They set off again.

'Careful,’ said Miss Annabelle. 'The carpet's a bit tatty here. Well, here we are. Nothing much to see. These were servants' rooms. Empty now. The age of the servant is past, I fear.'

'And this one?'

'Ah, yes. That's our old nursery.'

She pushed open the door. Spring sunlight fell through a dusty casement window into the long, quiet room, bringing life and colour once more to the shabby old-fashioned wallpaper with a design of rather menacing fairies. Everything was still there. A rocking-horse, white and scarlet piebald. An antique play-pen. A four-feet-high doll's house with detachable front, which Pascoe was certain would be worth a small fortune in an antique shop. A stack of picture books. A gaggle of dolls.

'Makes you wonder what on earth happened, doesn't it?' said Miss Annabelle.

Pascoe glanced round. Miss Alice was hanging back, not even looking through the door. He felt a pang of desperate pity for her. The past must call her like a drug, but she was trying to turn away from it, probably because there were strangers present.

'Well, thank you very much,' he said, walking from the room into the corridor once again. 'Now, let me get my bearings. Wilkinson House is there, right? Now, let me see.'

There was a narrow corridor between the two servants' bedrooms. At the end was a door. He approached it and turned the handle, but it was locked.

'Now I bet that goes into Mr Haggard's kitchen,' he said half to himself. 'How interesting.'

'Right you are,' said Miss Annabelle. 'It's been there years. It was very useful when I helped out in the school. How's Dr Haggard taking it, by the way?'

Pascoe looked at Wield realizing he had not mentioned Haggard's injuries. Wield's face was impassive.

'I'm sorry,' said Pascoe. 'I should have said. Dr Haggard was attacked. He's in hospital.'

Miss Alice screamed and even Miss Annabelle looked shaken.

'We'll be seeing him at the hospital soon. We'll take him your best wishes, ladies,' said Wield, suddenly genial like a beacon on Skiddaw.

'Please do,' said Miss Annabelle while her sister, clinging to her for comfort, nodded accord.

'We will, we will,' said Pascoe. 'I'm sure he'll feel all the better for knowing that you were not disturbed by the unpleasantness.'

Which unlikely hypothesis was never to be put to the test.

For when they reached the Infirmary they discovered that Haggard was dead.

Chapter 6

'Dead?' said Dalziel. 'Oh shit!'

Pascoe waited patiently to see if this was an expression of grief or something else.

'Last thing I need's a murder enquiry,’ continued the fat man. 'Bloody doctors. Couldn't they have injected him or connected him to something?'

'He'd been very badly beaten. His face was a mess. Nose broken, teeth loosened. Several ribs smashed. Evidently it was internal haemorrhaging that killed him, probably caused by a kick in the gut. They thought they'd got it under control, but his heart packed in.'

'Heart, eh?'

For a moment Dalziel looked uneasy.

'Yes,' said Pascoe. 'And there was one other injury. Or perhaps I should say six. He'd been caned. Very hard. On the backside. They counted the weals.'

'Six of the best!' said Dalziel. 'Well, well.'

'They made the jokes too,’ said Pascoe. 'The doctor told me that there was no way of time-tabling the various injuries outside of saying they all occurred at least an hour before he was admitted and not earlier than six hours before that.'