The power of Dalziel’s gaze was now so intense that Pascoe thought, if I duck, birds in a direct line will be falling out of the sky for several miles.
“I’ve really no idea, Mr Pascoe,” said Kay. “Only Pal could tell us that, and I suspect the poor boy was so confused at the end, even he might not have been certain of his own motives.”
“No? Possibly you’re right. It’s just that I thought he might have given you some indication of how he was thinking when you saw him at Moscow House that same evening.”
She was excellent. Not by a flicker of the eyes, a tremor of any visible muscle, did she let him see if he’d registered a blow or not. He got more sense of reaction from his two colleagues whom he wasn’t looking at, Dalziel still and menacing as an unexploded mine left on a resort beach by the ebbing tide, Novello-who’d slipped back in at some point with the sugar bowl-just as still but completely rapt, mouth open, scone poised a couple of inches in front of it, like a freeze-frame in a telly ad.
“I didn’t see him at Moscow House that evening,” said Kay Kafka gravely.
“But you did go to Moscow House,” said Pascoe. “Before you turned up with your stepdaughter, I mean.”
“Yes, I did,” she replied, as if surprised there should ever have been any question about her earlier visit. “But I didn’t see Pal.”
The ease of the admission surprised him for a second but no more. She must guess he had strong evidence to put the accusation, so why deny it?
Perhaps she’d even been forewarned.
He put that thought from his mind and said, “You never mentioned this visit earlier?”
“If anybody had asked me to account for my movements, then of course I would have mentioned it. But if you didn’t think my movements were of interest, why should I?”
“That’s just a touch disingenuous, don’t you think, Mrs Kafka?” he said with a slight smile. “But, putting that question aside, let’s address some larger ones. Why did you go to Moscow House, and what happened when you were there?”
She relaxed slightly as if they’d passed some dangerous point and now she was on safer ground.
She said, “I went because Pal invited me to go. I arrived. The door was open. I went inside. I could find no sign of life. I came away.”
“I think a little more detail might be helpful, Mrs Kafka.”
“I’m afraid I can’t really recall any more detail at the moment, Mr Pascoe. But be sure, if and when it returns to me, I shall be assiduous in relaying it to you.”
She spoke with a calm courtesy. He admired the way that not once did her gaze move from him towards Dalziel, whom he estimated it would take very little to bring blundering in.
He said, “Nothing I’ve heard in the past couple of days suggests to me you were on very good terms with your stepson. So what was it, I wonder, that he said to make you agree to meet him in a deserted house on such a dark and dreary night?”
She laughed and said, “Really, Mr Pascoe, you make it sound like I had a rendezvous at Wuthering Heights at midnight. It wasn’t long after six o’clock in the evening and the house in question is one where I’d lived for several years. As for the weather, OK that was pretty gothic, but not desperately so, and in any case it could just as easily have been a bright moonlit night.”
“Even so, I can’t believe your stepson said, or wrote-how did he contact you, by the way?”
“He rang.”
“I see. Said, ‘Hi, Stepmomma, why don’t we meet at Moscow tonight and have a little chat about the good old days?’”
She said, “No, he didn’t say that.”
“So what did he say?”
“He said he wanted to talk about his father’s, my husband’s, death. He said he had things to tell me which I ought to know.”
Pascoe did dubiety well, head cocked lightly to the left, teeth pressed tight, lips stretched wide, nostrils flared to draw in an audible breath. He gave it the full Henry Irving now and said, “And that was enough to make you agree to meet him in a deserted house where I gather your previous one-to-one encounters had been, to say the least, distressing?”
Now she did look at Dalziel.
“You gave him the tape, Andy?”
The Fat Man nodded as if not trusting himself to speak, and she turned her attention back to Pascoe and said, “If you’ve listened to it, Mr Pascoe, you’ll understand pretty well all there is to know.”
“Yes, I’ve listened to it, as I’ve listened to almost everybody else who could throw any light on the life and times of the family Maciver. If not exactly dysfunctional, certainly not the most functional of families, wouldn’t you agree?”
He leaned forward and tried to stare her out. It wasn’t the cleverest move. Like the Fat Man said, never start a fight you’re not pretty sure of winning. And this was like taking on La Gioconda.
When she didn’t respond, he sat back and said, “OK. So what precisely happened when you went to Moscow House?”
“The front door was open. I went inside and called. There was no reply. I tried the light switch but the electricity was switched off. I noticed a stub of candle and a book of matches on the sill by the door. I lit the candle and called Pal’s name. There was no reply but I got a sense of…”
For the first time her fluency deserted her.
“Of what, Mrs Kafka?”
“Of a presence. I’m not sure. The mind can play tricks. And I thought I heard… something.”
“Something? Some particular thing?” pressed Pascoe.
“A piece of music… rather the ghost of a piece of music, so faint and distant it might have been from another world…”
“What kind of music.”
“Piano. Just a few notes. But I recognized them. It was “Of Foreign Lands and People” from Schumann’s Childhood Scenes. The first classical piece that Helen learned to play…”
“The piece on the record in the study, right? And the same piece Pal played to lure you into the music room ten years ago…”
“That’s right. And that’s where I went the other night. The music room.”
“Despite the fact that last time you were in there according to you Pal attacked you?” said Pascoe with the sceptical raise of his left eyebrow that he’d perfected in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Got something in your eye, Chief Inspector?” said Dalziel.
Kay smiled at him and said, “I’m sorry if I’m disappointing your expectations, Mr Pascoe, but I am not a gothic heroine. All I felt was curiosity. But the music-room door was locked and the key wouldn’t turn. So I went upstairs. I tried the study door. It was locked too. I stopped to look through the keyhole, but I couldn’t see anything.”
“Because it was dark inside or because the key was in the lock?” said Dalziel.
He might have known the old sod couldn’t keep quiet.
“I don’t know. All I know is I felt this weird joke had gone far enough. I went downstairs, put the candle back where I’d found it and left.”
“Anyone see you?”
“I saw a couple of women. Hookers, I think. One of them said something. I think she was asking if I were looking for sex. I walked back to where I’d left the car and drove round to my stepdaughter’s house. I always go there on a Wednesday evening when Jason is playing squash. Sorry, Andy. I should have told you all this before, but it didn’t seem relevant and, to be quite honest, the thought of getting close up to another Maciver suicide was more than I could bear.”
The change of focus to Dalziel was something Pascoe had been looking for, even before the Fat Man opened his mouth. She’d need to know if she still had him on board or not. He sat back and waited to see if Dalziel was going to take the next step or leave it to him.
His phone rang.
Shit!
He took it out and checked the display.
It was Wield.