Asking For The Moon

'What dress?'

'The white muslin dress and the big straw hat. Kate's favourite gear, wasn't it? How does it come about that you've got a woman's dress hidden in a locked wardrobe in your house?'

Now the audience's attention was engaged once more. Kingsley made no effort to deny it but asked indignantly, 'How does it come about you know what I've got locked up in my house!'

'It's true, then?' said Lightfoot, who had been smoulderingly subdued for the past few minutes.

'Why shouldn't it be true?'

Whether because of Pascoe's threat or out of personal preference, Lightfoot didn't try to use his gun this time but jumped forward and seized Kingsley one-handed by the throat, bearing him back against the opened door which lay against the wall. No one seemed inclined to interfere, not even when the enraged assailant started using the fat man's head as a knocker to punctuate his demands, 'Where-is-she? Where-is-she?'

It was constabulary duty time once more. Pascoe stepped. forward and said, 'That's enough.'

When Lightfoot showed no sign of agreeing, Pascoe punched him in the kidneys and stepped swiftly back. The blow was a light one and Lightfoot swung round as much in surprise as pain. Kingsley, released, staggered out of the church holding his throat, but he could have suffered no real damage for he was able to scream, Til tell you why I've got the clothes! It's Kate's ghost, you superstitious cretin! Do you really think anything would come back from the grave to an animal like you in that sty of a cottage?'

He even managed a derisive laugh but it stuttered off into a fit of coughing.

'You'd better explain yourself, I think, Mr Kingsley,' said Pascoe, putting himself between the fat man and Lightfoot.

Ah! what demon has tempted me here? Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber -This misty mid-region of Weir -Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

CHAPTER X

Thank Heaven! the crisis -The danger is past.

'It was like the last act of Hamlet Meets Dracula,' said Pascoe.

Some things were far too serious for anything but flippancy.

'And they're both dead?' repeated Inspector Dove at the other end of the line.

'He died instantly. Well, he would, his head was mostly missing.'

Pascoe remembered his promise that he would see that Lightfoot got what was coming to him.

'He doesn't sound much of a miss,' said Dove cynically.

'He was a blackmailer twice over,' agreed Pascoe. 'Though now he's dead, Davenport won't need to talk and Kingsley's backtracking like mad. There'll be more tight mouths around Wearton than at a lemon-suckers' convention. Not that it matters. My guess is that Stella Rawlinson played the ghost. She hated the Lightfoots, and Kingsley may or may not have been screwing her into the bargain.'

'Into what?"

'Oh, for God's sake! ^1

Pascoe found that he was sick of the jokes and the lightness. It was eight-thirty in the morning. He had got home at three but been unable to sleep. Dalziel had observed his arrival at the station with nothing more expressive than an upward roll of his eyes, then suggested that even southern pansies should be awake by this time and he might as well put Dove in the picture.

'I'm sorry,' said Dove.

'So am I,' said Pascoe. 'I'm a bit knackered. It's all turned out so badly. This Lightfoot, he seems to have been a nasty bit of work all round. But he loved his sister. God, even that sounds like the cue for a crack! – and it shouldn't have come to this. Not for anyone. He was the only one she asked for in the ambulance. Arthur, Arthur, all the time.'

'And she said nothing else before she died?'

'Not a thing. The only people she'd spoken to were Swithenbank's mother and Kingsley's housekeeper. She must have gone straight to Arthur's cottage when she arrived. We found her stuff there. Arthur was out, of course. She rang Swithenbank. His mother answered. She was flabbergasted naturally, told her about the party, asked where she'd been but got no answer. Kate went up to Wear End, learned from the housekeeper that everyone had taken off towards the church, so she set off after them along the old drive.'

'Where the hell had she been?' asked Dove in exasperation. 'You say you found some things of hers at Lightfoot's. Any clue there?'

'Nothing obvious,' said Pascoe wearily. 'At first glance it looks about the same as that list of things she took when she left Swithenbank last year. But it doesn't matter much now, does it?'

'I suppose not. Well, we were dead wrong about Swithenbank. Thank God I stopped this side of pulling his floorboards up! Still, you can't win 'em all.'

'No,' said Pascoe.

'Cheer up, Pete, for God's sake! You sound like it's all down to you. It was just an "assist", remember? You can't legislate for maniacs!'

'I know. I just feel that if I'd handled things differently…'

Dalziel had come into the room with a sheet of paper in his hand and when he heard Pascoe's remark, the eyes rolled again. It was like a lesson with the globes in an eighteenth-century schoolroom.

'Pete, it wasn't your job to find out where she'd gone. That was our job, it's down to us. Like I say, OK, we missed out. I feel bad about it, but not too bad. I mean, Christ, she came back and we still don't know where the hell she's been! It's our fault. How could you be expected to work it out if we couldn't? Can't!'

'Too bloody true!' bellowed Dalziel, who had come close enough to eavesdrop on Dove's resonant voice.

'What's that, Pete? Someone there with you?'

'Mr Dalziel's just come in,' said Pascoe hastily. 'I'll keep in touch.'

'You do that, old son. I'm avid for the next instalment. I used to think it was just a joke about you lot north of Watford having bat-ears and little bushy tails, but now I'm not so sure. Love to Andy-Pandy! Cheerio now!'

Pascoe put down the phone.

'I don't know what he's got to be cheerful about,' said Dalziel malevolently. 'Or what you've got to be miserable about either.'

'Two people dead,' said Pascoe. 'That's what.'

'And that's your fault?'

'Not court-of-law my fault. Not even court-of-enquiry my fault,' said Pascoe. 'It's just that, I don't know, I suppose… I was enjoying it! Secretly, deep inside, I was enjoying it. Big house, interviews in the library, chasing up to the churchyard, stopping the vicar from jumping, uncovering all kinds of guilty secrets – you know I was thinking, gleefully almost, wait till I get back and tell them about this! They'll never believe it!'

'I believe it,' said Dalziel. 'And I'd have done much the same in your shoes. You did it right. The only thing you couldn't know was that she was alive. That's what you call a paradox, you philosophers with degrees and O levels, isn't it? If you'd known she was alive, she'd be alive! But you didn't. You couldn't!'

'Someone should have done,' said Pascoe. 'They should have looked harder.'

'Too true,' said Dalziel with grim satisfaction. 'Cases like these, you follow up every line. One line they didn't follow.'

'What?'

Dalziel scratched his backside on the corner of the desk, a frequent preliminary to one of his deductive tours de force, which one of his more scurrilous colleagues had categorized as the anal-lytical approach.

'What was Swithenbank doing on the day his missus disappeared?'

'The Friday, you mean?'

'Aye.'

Pascoe opened his notebook at the page on which he'd first started jotting down notes on the Swithenbank case.

'He was at a farewell party at lunch-time.'

'Who for?'

'One of his assistants.'

'Name?'

'I've no idea,' said Pascoe.

'Cunliffe. David Cunliffe,' said Dalziel triumphantly. 'Thought you'd have known that.'

'It wasn't in any of the papers Enfield sent me,' said Pascoe defensively.