She froze, her hand on the window-latch, staring incredulously through the pane.
A thin, single-noted scream forced its way from the back of her throat.
Two men were lying on the dining-room floor in the positions indicated in the police photograph 'Al'. They had both received severe gunshot wounds, and had been bleeding copiously. The nature of the wounds and the strong cordite smell I had noticed in the air led me to assume the wounds had been caused by a shotgun fired at close range. The man lying beside the dining-table (position 'X' on the photograph) I recognized as Timothy Mansfield of Grover Court, London, NW2. The other man I was not able to recognize immediately as he had received the greater part of the gun-blast in the neck and lower face, but later I was able to confirm he was Charles Rushworth of the same address. I turned to prevent Miss Soper from following me into the room, but she was clearly disturbed by something she could see from the rear window. I looked out into the garden at the back of the house and saw the figure of a woman lying at the base of the sundial in the centre of the lawn (photograph 'C3') I could not recognize her from the window as her face was pressed to the grass. There had been a great deal of bleeding from the head.
'It's Rose,' said Ellie, not believing herself. 'There's been an accident.'
She made for the dining-room, seeking a way into the garden. Pascoe caught her by the shoulders.
'Telephone,' he said, his voice low, his mind racing. From the dining-room a narrow flight of stairs ran to the next floor. His ears were alert for any slight sound of movement above.
'Yes,' said Ellie. 'Doctor. No, ambulance is better, there was a hospital sign, do you remember?'
There was a telephone on the floor beside one of the two armchairs. She bent over it.
'No,' said Pascoe, taking her arm and pushing her towards the front door. 'We passed a phone box down the road. Use that. And get the police. Tell them they'll need an ambulance and a doctor.'
'Police?' repeated Ellie.
'Hurry,' said Pascoe urgently.
He heard the Riley start as he placed his foot carefully on the first stair. It creaked, the second even more so, and, abandoning stealth, he took the rest at a run, narrowly missing cracking his head against the ceiling cross-beam halfway up.
He went through the nearest door low and fast. A bedroom. Empty. Bed unslept in.
The next the same. Then a bathroom. A tiny junk-room. One more to go. Certain now the first floor was uninhabited, he still took no chances and entered as violently as before.
Looking down at the bed, his heart stood still. A pair of children's handcuffs lay across the two pillows. In one bracelet was a red rose. In the other a young nettle. On the bedhead above was pinned a paper banner.
It read Eloisa and Abelard, Welcome Home.
Pascoe felt the carapace of professionally he had withdrawn behind crack across. The room overlooked the rear of the house. He did not look out of the window but descended rapidly. With a great effort of will, he forced himself to confirm by touch what his eyes had told him, that the two men were dead.
Timmy used to play the guitar and when in funds gave presents of charming eccentricity to those he loved. Carlo (it was Carlo, the one eye which remained unscathed told him that) had a fiery temper, adored Westerns, demonstrated for civil rights, hated priests.
These were memories he didn't want. Even less did he want to kneel beside this woman, turn her gently over, see the ruin of soft flesh the shotgun blast had made in Rose Hopkins.
She was wearing a long silk evening gown. Even the rain and the dew had not dulled its iridescent sheen of purple and green like a pheasant's plumage. But her eyes were dull.
The sundial against which she lay had an inscription on its pedestal. He read it, desperately trying to rebuild his carapace.
Horas non numero nisi serenas.
I number only the sunny hours.
He was still cradling the dead woman in his arms when Ellie returned, closely followed by the first police car.
Chapter 2
'Dalziel here.'
'Hello, Andy. Derek Backhouse here.'
'So they said.' Dalziel's voice fell a long way short of enthusiasm. 'It's been a long time. And you must be after a bloody big favour, to be ringing on a Saturday morning.'
'No favour,' said Backhouse. 'I'm ringing from the station at Thornton Lacey. I've got one of your men here. A Sergeant Pascoe.'
Pascoe!' said Dalziel, livelier now. 'He's not been crapping in the street again, has he?'
'Sorry?'
'Joke,' sighed Dalziel. 'What's the problem?'
'Nothing really. He's down here visiting some old friends.'
'Sorry?'
'Joke,' sighed Dalziel. 'What's the problem?'
'Nothing really. He's down here visiting some old friends.'
'So?'
'So when he arrived this morning, three of the old friends were dead. Shotgun at close range.'
Now there was a long silence.
'Christ,' said Dalziel finally. Another silence.
'That's rough,' said Dalziel. 'I don't think he's got enough old friends left to spare three.'
Backhouse made a moue of distaste at the callousness of the comment, though he thought he detected a hint of real concern in the intonation. But he might have been mistaken.
'Anyway,' said Backhouse, 'I'm just interested in confirming that he and Miss Soper didn't arrive till this morning.'
'She's with him, is she?' grunted Dalziel.
'You know her?'
'Vaguely. Hey listen, my lad, you're not thinking Pascoe had anything to do with this, are you?'
'Just checking, Andy. He says he got held up on a case last night.'
'Too true, he did. He wasn't best pleased, but he's a dutiful lad. He was here till about nine-thirty. Then we had a drink till closing. That suit you?'
'I think so. We haven't had the PM yet, but the doctor was very certain it happened last evening. I wasn't really concerned about the sergeant, but I wanted to be sure. He may be a great help to us.'
'Now watch it!' said Dalziel threateningly. 'We've got work to do here too, you know. Nothing glamorous like a multi-murder, but someone's got to catch thieves. And I need Pascoe. He's due back Monday. I'll expect him Monday.'
'We do have experienced detectives of our own,' said Backhouse drily. 'No, the way he can help is with his knowledge of the missing man.'
'Missing man?'
'Didn't I say? We're one light. The host, the man whose cottage it is, Colin Hopkins. Your sergeant's special mate.'
I see,' said Dalziel. 'You reckon him for it, then?'
'I'd like to talk with him,' said Backhouse cautiously.
I bet!! Anyway, what you're saying is you want Pascoe to help pin this on his mate? You're asking a bit much, aren't you?'
'It was his friends who died,' said Backhouse quietly.
'Well, he's a good lad. Is he there? I'd better have a word.'
What kind of grudging condolence did he propose? wondered Backhouse.
'He's with Miss Soper at the moment. She is badly shocked.'
'Later then. But I want him Monday. Right? I'll look for you on the telly!'
Bloody old woman, thought Dalziel as he replaced the receiver. He scratched the back of his left calf methodically from top to bottom, but derived no relief. The itches you scratch are internal, someone senior enough to dare had once told him. He looked with distaste at the mound of files on his desk. Suddenly they seemed trivial. Stupid twats who spent good money on pretty ornaments, then didn't take the trouble to look after them properly. Somewhere in that lot there was a pattern, a flawed system. There was always a flaw. A man lay at the bottom of that pile and they'd find him in the end. But today, this moment, it seemed trivial.
It was a rare feeling for him. He wasn't a man who took his work lightly. But now he stood up and went in search of someone to drink a cup of tea with and talk about football or politics.
The enormity of what had happened had not struck Ellie for some time after her return to the cottage. She had not gone into the building but made her way along the side of the white-washed garage into the garden. At the bottom of the dew-damp lawn, audible though not visible, ran a stream in a deep cutting, shaded by alders and sallows. The murmuring water, the morning-fresh garden unheated yet by the lemon sunlight, the flight of a white-browed blackbird from a richly laden apple-tree, all helped to make unreal the tableau formed by the man on his knees by the dead woman at the foot of the sundial. Only the gnomon of the dial, cutting the fragrant air like a shark's fin, seemed to be of menace.
Something shone, brighter than dewdrops, in the grass around the body. Pieces of broken glass. Her first concern was intimate, domestic. Pascoe's trousers might be torn or, worse, his knees cut.
She knew, and had known since she first looked from the window, that Rose was dead. Calling for an ambulance was a gesture, the drowning swimmer's last clutch at the crest of the wave that will sink him. The ugliness of it, visible now as Pascoe laid the woman on the grass once more, was the greater shock. But even that she assimilated for the moment as she turned back to the cottage, looking for the others. Pascoe stopped her before she went in through the open french window.
But it had been too late to stop her seeing what lay inside.
The police-station at Thornton Lacey was merely the front ground-floor section of the pleasant detached house in which Constable John Crowther and his wife lived and which they would give up with great reluctance when Crowther reached retiring age in a couple of years. Neither he nor his wife was particularly impressed by the arrival of major crime in their little backwater. There was nothing in it for the constable except trouble. At this late stage in his career, not even personal solution of the crime and apprehension of the criminal could bring him promotion. But he was a conscientious man and, unasked, was already preparing for the superintendent a resume of all local information he felt might be pertinent.
His wife, a craggy woman whose outward semblance belied her good-heartedness, took one look at Ellie on her arrival at the station and led her into the kitchen for tea and sympathy. Ellie had deteriorated rapidly under the treatment (a necessary process, well understood by Mrs Crowther) and by the time Pascoe came away from Backhouse, she had been given a mild sedative by the doctor and removed to a bedroom.