Asking For The Moon

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?'