'Self,' interposed Sergeant Wield. His eyes met Pascoe's and the Inspector had to resist an urge to giggle, an urge he quelled by recollecting that a particularly unpleasant murder had occurred a few feet above his head not very long before.
The thought also made him feel guilty about his sense of grievance at being called out.
Am I getting callous, or what? he wondered.
'Go on, son,' he said to Hector.
'Well, sir, when I got here, I found Mrs Frostick and a lot of other people'
'Hold on. Who's Mrs Frostick?'
'Mrs Frostick is Mr Deeks's daughter, sir. Mr Deeks is the deceased, of this abode.'
Pascoe looked sharply at Hector, hoping to see the gleam of intelligent life in his eyes which would mean he was sending him up. But all was earnest blankness.
'And these other people? Who were they?'
'Neighbours mainly, I think, sir.'
'Think? You've got their names and addresses, haven't you?'
Hector's head sank a little further between his shoulders. Perhaps it was fully retractable, like a tortoise's.
'Some of them, sir,' he said. 'It was all a bit confused. A lot of people had come rushing in when Mrs Frostick called for help'
'Called? You mean, literally, called?'
Again the blank yearning after understanding.
Wield said, 'There is a telephone, as you saw, sir. But Mrs Frostick seems to have been a bit hysterical and after she found her father she ran out into the street, yelling and banging at neighbours' doors.'
'Neighbours' doors? Several doors? So there would have been several neighbours? And also anyone casually strolling by who might have been attracted by the commotion?'
'It's a nasty night, sir,' said Wield. 'Not many pedestrians, I shouldn't think.'
'No. Well, all these people, some of whose names you have, what were they doing?'
'Some of them were upstairs with the deceased'
'Was he, by then?'
'Sir?'
'Deceased.'
Another inch of retraction.
'He didn't look good, sir.'
'The murdered man did not look good,' murmured Pascoe, tasting the phrase with a kind of sad pleasure. 'So, some were upstairs. Some I presume were downstairs'
'Yes, sir. Comforting Mrs Frostick, making her cups of tea, and that sort of thing, sir.'
'In the living-room, was that?'
'Mrs Frostick was in the living-room,' said Hector, screwing up his face in search of preciseness. 'The tea was being made in the kitchen. That's where the oven is, so they'd have to make it there. Mr Deeks was on his bed, in his bedroom. There's only one bedroom, at the front. The other bedroom's the bathroom. Converted.'
Keen to spot glimmers of hope, Pascoe said with the same approval as if he'd been talking about Castle Howard, 'You've got the geography of the house sorted, then.'
The head emerged a little and Hector said, 'Yes, sir. Well, it's just like my Auntie Sheila's in Parish Road round the corner, except that she had a bathroom extension built out over the wash-house in the yard.'
'An extension? Excellent!' approved Pascoe. 'To return to Welfare Lane, what did you do when you got here?'
'Well, I had a look around, sir, then I went outside to call for assistance.'
'I see. You had a look around. And what did you see? I presume you saw something?'
The blank was shot through with agony now, the agony of not asking, 'Like what?' Pascoe looked at him wriggling, wished he could unhook him and throw him back, sighed and said, 'You say you went outside to call assistance.'
'Yes, sir. I thought reception would be better and it were a bit crowded in the house with all them people,' complained Hector.
Pascoe gave up. It was clear that like the useless lamp-post he resembled, the young constable was not going to cast any useful light.
'Thanks, Hector,' he said. 'That'll do for now. Stop on the front door, will you, and help keep the sightseers away. Oh, and I'll want a list of everyone you found in the house when you arrived. Heads of families will do where you didn't have time to make a comprehensive census.'
Looking puzzled, relieved, and also slightly disappointed, Hector departed.
Wield and Pascoe exchanged glances.
'Well, at least he was pretty quickly on the scene,' defended Pascoe, compensating for his final sarcasm.
'Yes, sir,' said Wield stolidly. 'He was just in the next street when the call went out. Having a cup of tea at his auntie's, I suspect.'
'You'd better tell me everything, Sergeant.'
And with the look of one who had been expecting to do no less ever since he found PC Hector on the scene, Wield began.
Dorothy Frostick, now being treated for shock in the hospital to which she had accompanied her father's body, had become alarmed when her attempts to telephone the old man had been unanswered earlier in the evening. On arrival at the house, she had discovered him in his bath, bruised and bleeding. Unable to lift him out singlehanded, she had run outside, half hysterical, and roused the neighbours to help.
Principal among these, Wield had ascertained on arrival, was Mrs Tracey Spillings of No. 27, next door, where she was presently attending the Inspector's pleasure, and pursuing her own in the shape of Dallas from the sound of it.
'She says the old boy was alive, just, when they got him out of the bath, but reckons he was beyond recall by the time the ambulance got here. The hospital say he was dead on arrival. Mr Longbottom's been alerted to do the PM in the morning. I didn't think we need bother Dr Rackfell; the duty man at the City General should be able to give us all the preliminary details. Oh, and someone either rang the Post or Sam Ruddlesdin was listening in. He turned up shortly after I did. Asked a few questions, then set off for the hospital, I think.'
Longbottom was the Chief Pathologist at the City General, Rackfell was the police surgeon on call that night, and Ruddlesdin was the Evening Post's chief reporter.
'You've got everything sewn up so nicely, Sergeant, I don't see why you needed to bother me either,' said Pascoe rather grumpily. 'Now there's no one at home at No. 23, you say? Why didn't whoever it was try there, I wonder? Well, let's go and see your Mrs Spillings at 27 and let this lot have a bit of space to move in.'
This lot were the forensic team and the photographer who were beginning to move methodically through the tiny house.
'Incidentally, why did you bother me?' wondered Pascoe as he led the way out of the front door, ignoring PC Hector's vain attempt to stand straight at attention. 'Mr Headingley busy, is he? And Mr Dalziel out of reach?'
George Headingley was the CID Inspector on duty that night. And Superintendent Andy Dalziel would certainly have expected to be informed instantly of any murder on his patch.
'I'm not sure what's going on, sir,' said Wield in a low voice as they walked towards No. 27. 'Something seems to have come up at the hospital.'
'Something to do with this case, you mean?'
'I don't think so, sir,' said Wield. 'What happened was, Hector buzzed in about this lot, said that the ambulance was just arriving to take Mr Deeks away. It sounded at the time as if the old fellow was still alive, so Mr Headingley said he'd go down to the hospital to see what was what and asked me to get things started down here.'
They'd covered the few yards to 27, but Wield did not offer to knock and the two men sheltered from the driving rain as best they could in the lee of a puce-glossed doorway.
'He contacted me about half an hour later, maybe more. Told me Deeks was dead and Mrs Frostick was under sedation. Then he said something had come up and it'd be best if I could get hold of you as he was going to be occupied with this other thing. I asked if he wanted me to try to get hold of Mr Dalziel too, but he said no, there was no need for that, no need at all. He was being very cagey, said he'd explain things to you later. Anyway, that's how I came to be disturbing your evening.'
'You could have told me this on the phone!' protested Pascoe. 'It might have made me a fraction less bad-tempered.'
'Thought you'd prefer to start off with a clear mind,' said Wield.
He was right, of course. Anything that could make a good, solid, down-to-earth copper like George Headingley slide out from under a murder inquiry must be serious. Already Pascoe's mind was spiralling off into the inane of speculation. He only hoped he could drag it back to earth and hold it there till he got this investigation properly under way.
He needn't have worried. Ballast was at hand.
The fluorescent door was flung open, revealing a brightly lit living-room where the full volume of a television set competed vainly with a clamorous wallpaper whose main motif was the display ritual of birds of paradise in a tropical jungle. Lowering his eyes, Pascoe met the glower of a short but enormously broad woman in a nylon overall which seemed to have been glossed from the same pot as the doorway.
'Are you buggers too shy to knock, or what?' she demanded. 'I didn't rudd that step just so's a pair of petrified coppers could stamp their hobnails on it. Are you coming in? I haven't got all bloody night, even if you have!'
The mysterious behaviour of George Headingley was quite forgotten. Meekly Pascoe followed Sergeant Wield into the house.
Chapter 3
'Die, my dear doctor that's the last thing I shall do.'
The mysterious behaviour of George Headingley had its roots in what had happened out on the Paradise Road earlier that evening; or perhaps even in what had happened during Dr John Sowden's medical training a few years before, for Dr Sowden's ethical attitudes had matured much more rapidly than his clinical knowledge.
As a second year student, he was already proclaiming a doctor's first duty was to his patient, not to some semi-religious philosophical abstraction. He found no difficulty with abortion; the mother was his patient, not the foetus. And at the other end of existence, the only difficulty he found with euthanasia was its illegality, but he would certainly not strive officiously to keep alive patients who ought to be switched off.
These were the pragmatic points of view which deserved to be maintained by a modern young doctor. Somewhere within their clinically rigid framework, there should have been a space perfectly tailored to contain the death of Philip Cater Westerman, to whom surgery could at best have given only a couple of years of probably bedridden life. Yet in some peculiarly illogical way, even though he had done everything possible for the man, which in all truth was precious little, it was to Dr Sowden as if the thought that Westerman would be better off dead had somehow transplanted itself into action. Incredibly, he felt guilty! Another few minutes and he would have been dead on arrival like the other two. But because he had technically entered into his care for those last few minutes of life, he, Dr Sowden, prospective snapper-off of life-support systems and generous dispenser of terminal tranquillizers, felt guilty. Or responsible. Or resentful. Or something.