He was very young, thought Pascoe, which probably meant the beard was an attempt at instant ageing. He'd either been very ill and lost a lot of weight or he shopped at Oxfam. As for the brolly. .
'Gift from my last. Curate there. Jolly lot,' said the vicar, following his gaze. 'And you?'
Mr Jingle seemed an unlikely role model, so Pascoe guessed that his abbreviated conversational style was devotional rather than literary in origin, deriving perhaps from a sense of the transience of things. Did he carry it over into his services? Dearly beloved. Gathered in the presence. Do you take. Pronounce you man.
'Pascoe,' he said. 'Peter Pascoe. I'm on an ancestor hunt. We came from round here a couple of generations back. I've found some gravestones with the name on. Latest was Samuel Pascoe, died April 1898, aged thirty-six. I was wondering if there were any records of births, marriages, deaths …'
His style was obviously too circumlocutory for the Reverend Wood who cut in, 'This way. Back to seventeenth. Before that, Civil War.'
Pascoe followed him down the aisle. It was a gloomy little church, with everything in it, font, altar, pulpit, pews, seeming disproportionately large, and the three stained-glass windows, with their central depiction of St Laurence on the gridiron flanked by two other exceedingly grisly martyrdoms, did little to uplift his soul.
The vestry was better in that there was a bright electric light and no memento mori other than a box file of church records which Wood placed before him.
'Photocopied,' he explained. 'Originals safely stowed. 'Ninety-eight, you said?'
He worked as rapidly as he spoke and in no time at all, or at least considerably less than Pascoe would have taken unaided, he found himself looking at an entry recording the death and burial of Samuel Pascoe in 1898. The entrant had been a conscientious man and there was the bonus of other information not included on the headstone. Sam Pascoe had died from injuries sustained in an accident at Grindal's Mill and he had left behind a widow, Ada, and a son, Peter. That just about clinched it, though it left unsolved the mystery of the name changes. But even as the thought passed through his mind, quick-fire Wood who had been riffling through the record sheets like the wild west wind came up with part of the answer.
'Here we are, to Saml. and Ada Pascoe, 13 Miter Lane, Kirkton, a son, Peter, July 15th 1892. Swithin's Day. Wonder, did it rain? Not the first. Little note. 7.4.11. Leap forward. Yes. Wedding. Peter Pascoe of this, to Alice Clark spinster of.'
Clark. It made sense. Alice Pascoe, out of. . what? shame? fear? pride?.. had reverted to her maiden name and passed it on to her daughter, Ada. Who by coincidence had married someone called Pascoe and so restored the family name. Coincidence? He recalled what Dalziel said about coincidence. 'No such bloody thing. If it happens to you, it's good detection. If it happens to someone in the frame, it's a bloody lie.' It didn't really apply here except in general terms. Don't trust coincidence.
Wood hadn't finished.
'Fast forward. 13.12.12. To Peter and Alice Pascoe a daughter, Ada. What's this. Same month. To Stephen and Mary Pascoe a son, Stephen George Colin. Where'd they come from? Back nine.. whoa! No need. Jump gun. August 28th. Stephen Pascoe, 13 Miter Lane to Mary Quiggins, 3 High Street. Cut it fine. A connection? Miter Lane. Common family groupings.'
'Possibly. I don't know. Miter Lane, does it still exist?'
'Name does. But blocks of flats. Sixties. Ghastly. No Pascoes I know of.'
'Any Clarks?'
'Can't recall any. But Quiggins. Unusual name. There's old Mrs Quiggins still lives with her daughter in High Street. Still at Number 3, I think. Original. Just over from church. Across cobbles. All that's left. Any use?'
'You've been most helpful,' said Pascoe. 'Just one thing, you said something about not the first, a little note …?'
'That's right. Someone else interested. Pencil. Keeping track. Look. Naughty but only copies so no harm. Other relative?'
'Most probably,' said Pascoe. 'Thanks again. I think it's stopped raining.'
'Good. Brolly down. Old parishioners touchy.'
It occurred to Pascoe that he might be wiser to change his umbrella rather than rely on the sun in his efforts to avoid giving offence. But he knew better than to come between a vicar and his God.
Outside, the cobbles were glistening blackly, like a still from an old French movie. This too was a salient, it occurred to him, this stretch of the old High Street and the church, a piece of the past bulging into the present, overlooked on all sides and rammed up hard against that impregnable defensive wall of the ALBA complex. He crossed the street carefully and looked for Number 3.
The woman who came to the door looked as if she'd fallen on hard times, or more precisely as if hard times had fallen on her, leaving her bent and misshapen under their weight. Her torso formed a right angle with her spavined legs and she supported her body weight on a thick blackthorn stick. Twisting her head to one side so that one bright, suspicious eye glared up at Pascoe from waist level, she said, 'We've had it, we've got it, we don't want it,' and prepared to close the door, evidently feeling that this rubric covered all possible contingencies.
'Mrs Quiggins?' said Pascoe quickly. 'I wonder if I might have a word.'
'Mother, who is it?' demanded another female voice from within.
'It's only the tallyman.. I've sent him packing,' screeched the angulated woman whose bent body gave Pascoe a clear view into the parlour which opened direct onto the street. From a door in direct line with the street door and which his acquaintance with the topography of such houses told him probably led into the kitchen, a second woman emerged, younger in the sense that she was fiftyish to the other woman's indeterminate antiquity and still solidly upright, but with an unmistakable familial resemblance in the way her unblinking two eyes fixed him as she said, 'Mother, come out of the way,' giving Pascoe the impression she wasn't so much clearing the air for apology as the decks for action.
'Miss Quiggins?' he said.
'Who's asking?'
It was time for a quick decision. Friendly stranger seeking information about his family, or impersonal cop making impersonal enquiries?
He would have preferred to stay with the truth but instinct told him that boyish charm was no route to the inner counsels of this unwelcoming pair.
He produced his warrant card, flashed it — too quick he hoped for them to register his name — and said, 'Police. We're trying to trace a family called Pascoe used to live in this area. The vicar said you might be able to help.'
'Did he? What the hell does he know?' said the younger woman scornfully.
'He brings me fags,' said Mrs Quiggins, looking at Pascoe with hopeful greed.
Dalziel would have produced a packet instantly. Pascoe smiled apologetically and said, 'So, can you help us, Miss Quiggins?'
'Mrs Lyall. Was Miss Quiggins a long time back.'
There was a note of nostalgia in her voice which suggested the altered state had not been altogether to her taste.
'So, Mrs Lyall, about these Pascoes, do you know anyone of that name?' said Pascoe crisply.
Mrs Lyall had moved her mother out of the way by main force, and now her bulk filled the door in a manner which suggested he was not about to be invited in.
'No one round here of that name,' she said authoritatively. 'What've they done?'
'Just helping with enquiries,' said Pascoe dislocatively.
'Well, we can't. Sorry.'
The door began to close. Then the old woman, presumably pissed off at being pulled out of the front line, cried invisibly, 'What's he saying? Pascoes? Is he asking about them bloody Pascoes?'
'Oh give it a rest, Mother!' yelled Mrs Lyall over her shoulder. And to Pascoe she said, 'She wanders. Pay no heed.'