Asking For The Moon

'And stopped unnoticed? Bollocks,' Dove had replied. 'All it means is she could have left the flat without being spotted and been picked up somewhere else by Swithenbank, who knocked her off on his way north. Keep at it, Pete. You're doing good. For a provincial!'

'Did your daughter-in-law habitually wear wigs?' he now asked Mrs Swithenbank.

'Never to my knowledge. She had longish straight hair. Reddish brown, a rather unusual colour. She hadn't changed the style much since she was a girl. She wasn't a one for following fashions, not in her clothes either. Always the same kind of dress, whites and creams, soft materials, loose-fitting – she hated constraint of any kind. But she always managed to look right. What colour was the wig, by the way?'

'Platinum blonde.'

'Never,' said Mrs Swithenbank emphatically. 'I can't imagine that

… unless you mean she could be walking around somewhere -disguised as a blonde.'

'Any idea why she might do that?' enquired Pascoe.

'She was a strange girl in many ways,' answered the woman slowly. 'There was something about her – a kind of feyness. There were three girls in John's gang, Kate, Ursula Rawlinson and Stella Foxley. Kate was the ugly duckling. The other two… I gather you'll be meeting them tonight so perhaps I shouldn't anticipate your reactions…'

'A kind thought,' said Pascoe, 'but I'll just be chatting. It's not an identity parade! Please go on.'

'You'd have thought the other two would have walked away with all the boys. Ursula was a big well-made girl, full of life – still is! Stella – well, she was pretty too, but in a rather stiff kind of way. It was strange; before the village drama group folded up, she used to appear in nearly every production and on the stage she really came to life, but off it she's always been… no, perhaps the competition she offered was a lot less stiff, but she was still much prettier! And Ursula! As I say, she was the belle. Little Kate Lightfoot with her skinny body and big frightened eyes, she faded away alongside her. Yet…"

'Yes?' prompted Pascoe.

'You know how it is when you're young, Mr Pascoe. There's always a lot of chopping and changing of boyfriends and girl-friends in any group. I used to think Ursula called the tune, passing on her discarded beaux to Kate or stealing hers if the fancy took her. But eventually I began to wonder if the reverse weren't true!'

'And what did you decide?'

'Nothing,' said Mrs Swithenbank, sipping her scotch. 'Kate always did things too quietly to give the game away. She moved around like a ghost! And Ursula, though she might behave as if her brains were in her brassiere, had far too much sense to make a fuss,'

'Were you surprised when your son married Kate?' asked Pascoe.

She looked at him reprovingly as though the question were too impudent to be answered, but when Pascoe put on his rueful look, she said, 'John had already been working for Colbridge's in London for two years. He seemed to be breaking links with his Wearton friends, though if he had got engaged to Ursula, I should not have been surprised. In fact I might even have been pleased. She has many good solid qualities. I sometimes think she may have regretted her marriage, too.'

'As your son regretted his?' said Pascoe.

'As I regretted it, Inspector,' she said acidly. 'John has never by word or sign indicated that he had any regrets. And I can't give you any good reason for my own regrets, except perhaps the unhappiness of this past year. I never knew my daughter-in-law well enough to understand her. I tried, but

I couldn't get close to her. I even started buying flowers and vegetables from her brother after the marriage, to sort of integrate the families, and that required an effort of will, I tell you. Have you met him? He's real Yorkshire peasant stock with something a little sinister besides. His family were all farm labourers, good for nothing, but, God knows how, he bettered himself and runs a smallholding in the village. I stopped going there a couple of months after Kate disappeared. I couldn't bear the way he looked at me.'

She shuddered. Pascoe looked around the room and noticed that the dahlias had been removed.

'But you didn't find Kate frightening, too?' he said.

'Only in the sense that what we don't know frightens us,' she said. 'Perhaps there is nothing to know. Perhaps that's the truth of it, that underneath she's just an ordinary dull little girl. Marriage is abrasive, Mr Pascoe. John would find out the truth of her sooner or later.'

'And…?'*

'And if what he found bothered him so much that he wanted rid of her, he would ring his solicitor! One of the things I envy your generation is that divorce is there for the asking. Any other reaction is unthinkable!'

'I'm afraid that not everyone would agree with you,' said Pascoe.

This woman was certainly not absurd, he had long decided. And she was only as amusing as she wanted to be. Most important of all, despite the apparent freedom with which she poured out her impressions of her daughter-in-law and others, Pascoe suspected that they were measured with a most exact and knowing eye.

'Meaning what?'

'You took a phone call for your son yesterday morning.'

'Did I?'

'A woman's voice. Don't you remember?'

'The funny name. Is that the one you mean?'

'Yes, that's right,' said Pascoe. 'Ulalume. You didn't recognize the voice?'

'No,' she replied. 'I don't think so, though I am a little deaf, especially on the phone. It's easier when you can observe the lips. I certainly didn't recognize the name.'

'Was there anything distinctive you can recall about the voice?' persisted Pascoe

'Not really. As I say, I'm a little deaf and the line wasn't very good. It sounded terribly distant.'

'What exactly did this woman say?' asked Pascoe.

'Hardly anything, that I can recall,' said the woman. 'I gave our number, she said John Swithenbank, I said who's call ing? She said Ulalume, is that right? I said who? She didn't say anything else so I went and got John. What does all this signify, Inspector?'

Quickly Pascoe explained, reasoning that if Swithenbank didn't want his mother to know, he shouldn't have left her to be interrogated alone.

'I don't like the sound of this,' she said sharply when he'd finished.

'No?' he said.

'Someone's trying to make trouble. There were one or two nasty calls a year ago when the news first got out. People in the village and round about – old maids with nothing better to do, I usually guessed their names and that made them ring off pretty quickly! But this sounds more organized, as if someone's been thinking about it. Not just an impulse like some old biddy filling the gap between Crown Court and Coronation Street.'

'That's very astute of you,' complimented Pascoe. 'Any ideas?'

'I can't fathom the precise aim,' said Mrs Swithenbank, 'but I should be surprised if she, or he, were a thousand miles away from you tonight.'

She glanced at her watch and pursed her lips impatiently.

'I hope John isn't going to keep you waiting much longer, Inspector. There's a film I particularly want to see on the television and he promised to have you on the way before it started.'

Taken aback by the sudden change in the objects of her concern, Pascoe downed his untouched drink in one to demonstrate his readiness to be off and said, 'Perhaps it's Miss' Starkey who's holding him up.'

'That wouldn't surprise me,' she said significantly.

Not quite certain whether she was really underlining the double entendre, Pascoe asked if she had known Miss Starkey long.

'I never saw her before in my life. I came home last evening and there she was. I was then consulted about whether she could stay or not, but not in a manner which admitted the possibility of refusal.'

'Despite which, you didn't refuse?' said Pascoe, tongue in cheek.

She glanced at him sharply, then smiled.