'Best not,' said Pascoe. 'I don't want to step out of my pentacle after midnight. See you in the morning.'
'Must have taken an electric drill to get through a skirt like that,' said Dalziel, replacing the figurine with a bang. "No wonder the buggers got stuck into the sheep. Your missus checking up, was she?'
'She just wanted to see how we were getting on,' said Pascoe.
'Probably thinks we've got a couple of milkmaids with us,' said Dalziel, peering out into the night. 'Some hope! I can't even see any sheep. It's like the grave out there.'
He was right, thought Pascoe. When Stanstone Rigg had been a working farm, there must have always been the comforting sense of animal presence, even at night. Horses in the stable, cows in the byre, chickens in the hutch, dogs before the fire. But the Eliots hadn't bought the place because of any deep-rooted love of nature. In fact Giselle Eliot disliked animals so much she wouldn't even have a guard dog, preferring to rely on expensive electronics. Pascoe couldn't understand how George had got her even to consider living out here. It was nearly an hour's run from town in good conditions and Giselle was in no way cut out for country life, either physically or mentally. Slim, vivacious, sexy, she was a star-rocket in Yorkshire's sluggish jet-set. How she and Ellie had become friends, Pascoe couldn't work out either.
But she must have a gift for leaping unbridgeable gaps for George was a pretty unlikely partner, too.
It was George who was responsible for Stanstone Rigg- By profession an accountant, and very much looking the part with his thin face, unblinking gaze, and a mouth that seemed constructed for the passage of bad news, his unlikely hobby was the renovation of old houses. In the past six years he had done two, first a Victorian terrace house in town, then an Edwardian villa in the suburbs. Both had quadrupled (at least) in value, but George claimed this was not the point and Pascoe believed him. Stanstone Rigg Farm was his most ambitious project to date, and it had been a marvellous success, except for its isolation, which was unchangeable.
And its ghost. Which perhaps wasn't.
It was just three days since Pascoe had first heard of it. Dalziel, who repaid hospitality in the proportion of three of Ellie's home-cooked dinners to one meal out had been entertaining the Pascoes at The Old Mill, a newly opened restaurant in town.
'Jesus!' said the fat man when they examined the menu. 'I wish they'd put them prices in French, too. They must give you Brigitte Bardot for afters!'
'Would you like to take us somewhere else?' enquired Ellie sweetly. 'A fish and chip shop, perhaps. Or a Chinese takeaway?'
'No, no,' said Dalziel. 'This is grand. Any road, I'll chalk what I can up to expenses. Keeping an eye on Fletcher.'
'Who?'
'The owner,' said Pascoe. 'I didn't know he was on our list, sir.'
'Well, he is and he isn't,' said Dalziel. 'I got a funny telephone call a couple of weeks back. Suggested I might take a look at him, that's all. He's got his finger in plenty of pies.'
'If I have the salmon to start with,' said Ellie, 'it won't be removed as material evidence before I'm finished, will it?'
Pascoe aimed a kick at her under the table but she had been expecting it and drawn her legs aside.
Four courses later they had all eaten and drunk enough for a kind of mellow truce to have been established between Ellie and the fat man.
'Look who's over there,' said Ellie suddenly.
Pascoe looked. It was the Eliots, George dark-suited and still, Giselle ablaze in clinging orange silk. Another man, middle-aged but still athletically elegant in a military sort of way, was standing by their table. Giselle returned Ellie's wave and spoke to the man, who came across the room and addressed Pascoe.
'Mr and Mrs Eliot wonder if you would care to join them for liqueurs,' he said.
Pascoe looked at Dalziel enquiringly.
'I'm in favour of owt that means some other bugger putting his hand in his pocket,' he said cheerfully.
Giselle greeted them with delight and even George raised a welcoming smile.
'Who was that dishy thing you sent after us?' asked Ellie after Dalziel had been introduced.
'Dishy? Oh, you mean Giles. He will be pleased. Giles Fletcher. He owns this place."
'Oh my! We send the owner on errands, do we?' said Ellie. "It's great to see you, Giselle. It's been ages. When am I getting the estate agent's tour of the new house? You've promised us first refusal when George finds a new ruin, remember?'
'I couldn't afford the ruin,' objected Pascoe. 'Not even with George doing our income tax.'
'Does a bit of the old tax fiddling, your firm?' enquired Dalziel genially.
'I do a bit of work privately for friends,' said Eliot coldly. 'But in my own time and at home.'
'You'll need to work bloody hard to make a copper rich,' said Dalziel.
'Just keep taking the bribes, dear,' said Ellie sweetly. 'Now when can we move into Stanstone Farm, Giselle?'
Giselle glanced at her husband, whose expression remained a blank.
'Any time you like, darling,' she said. 'To tell you the truth, it can't be soon enough. In fact, we're back in town.'
'Good God!' said Ellie. 'You haven't found another place already, George? That's pretty rapid even for you.'
A waiter appeared with a tray on which were glasses and a selection of liqueur bottles.
'Compliments of Mr Fletcher,' he said.
Dalziel examined the tray with distaste and beckoned the waiter close. For an incredulous moment Pascoe thought he was going to refuse the drinks on the grounds that police officers must be seen to be above all favour.
'From Mr Fletcher, eh?' said Dalziel. 'Well, listen, lad, he wouldn't be best pleased if he knew you'd forgotten the single malt whisky, would he? Run along and fetch it. I'll look after pouring this lot.'
Giselle looked at Dalziel with the round-eyed delight of a child seeing a walrus for the first time.
'Cointreau for me please, Mr Daziel,' she said.
He filled a glass to the brim and passed it to her with a hand steady as a rock.
'Sup up, love,' he said, looking with open admiration down her cleavage. 'Lots more where that comes from.'
Pascoe, sensing that Ellie might be about to ram a pepper-mill up her host's nostrils, said hastily, 'Nothing wrong with the building, I hope, George? Not the beetle or anything like that? ^1
'I sorted all that out before we moved,' said Eliot. 'No, nothing wrong at all.'
His tone was neutral but Giselle responded as though to an attack.
'It's all right, darling,' she said. 'Everyone's guessed it's me. But it's not really. It's just that I think we've got a ghost.'
According to Giselle, there were strange scratchings, shadows moving where there should be none, and sometimes as she walked from one room to another 'a sense of emptiness as though for a moment you'd stepped into the space between two stars'.
This poetic turn of phrase silenced everyone except Dalziel, who interrupted his attempts to scratch the sole of his foot with a bent coffee spoon and let out a raucous laugh.
'What's that mean?' demanded Ellie.
'Nowt,' said Dalziel. 'I shouldn't worry, Mrs Eliot. It's likely some randy yokel roaming about trying to get a peep at you. And who's to blame him?'
He underlined his compliment with a leer straight out of the old melodrama. Giselle patted his knee in acknowledgement.
'What do you think, George?' asked Ellie.
George admitted the scratchings but denied personal experience of the rest.
'See how long he stays there by himself,' challenged Giselle.
'I didn't buy it to stay there by myself,' said Eliot. 'But I've spent the last couple of nights alone without damage.'