'And did they charge you for the cream horn?' enquired Pascoe.
'I've no idea. Daphne picked up the tab.'
'Good. You stick to paying in the Market Caff. Let the idle rich cough up in the Chantry!'
'I don't think she's all that rich,' protested Ellie.
'Oh?' said Pascoe. 'Didn't you say her pa was loaded down with ecclesiastical gold, or something?'
Ellie poured more coffee and said, 'It was marital rather than ecclesiastical gold, I gather. Presumably Daphne got what was left over from the deserving poor after Pa's accident, but elitist expenses like school fees, not to mention the upkeep of that mansion, must all eat away at capital, I suppose. Though I presume Aldermann gets a pretty hefty wage packet.'
'Probably. On the other hand he seems to have had a pretty chequered career. There must have been times when he was living largely off capital.'
'Daphne didn't say much about his career,' said Ellie. 'But once the tearful moment was passed, courtesy of the brat, we swapped courtship stories quite happily.'
'Swapped?' said Pascoe, raising his eyebrows.
'Oh yes. In full frontal detail, naturally. Our Patrick was articled to a firm of accountants in Harrogate who looked after a couple of her father's church accounts. She'd popped in during her lunch-hour to pick up something for her pa and Patrick was the only person there. They chatted, lunched together, and it went on from there.'
'Her lunch-hour, you said? What was her job?'
'No job,' grinned Ellie. 'She was still at school. Sweet seventeen. Swish private school, of course, none of your common or garden comprehensives for Archdeacon Somerton's only daughter. All went fairly smoothly for a while. Why shouldn't it? She'd had other boyfriends. But things turned sour six months later on her eighteenth birthday when she announced she and Patrick were engaged to be married. There was opposition from Pa, more to the idea of an early marriage than to Patrick himself, I gather. But various elderly female relatives seem to have got in on the act. Of course, being eighteen, she was theoretically entitled to make her own decisions but you know how nasty things can be made for a kid that age. Then her father died. She obviously still feels guilty that they were at odds when he died. I think she always will.'
'But it didn't stop her marrying Patrick,' said Pascoe.
'This archdeacon Somerton, did you say? what did he die of?'
'The church killed him,' said Ellie dramatically.
'Overwork, you mean?'
'No. A coping stone fell off the belfry of St Mark's at Little Leven while he was inspecting it. It cracked his skull.'
Pascoe let out a long whistle.
'That's what I thought. Awful, but ironic,' said Ellie.
'I was thinking, fortuitous.'
'For Daphne, you mean? Come on!' protested Ellie.
'I meant for Patrick. People do seem to have a habit of shuffling off at his convenience, don't they? Come to think of it, this is the second one you've drawn my attention to. You're working well!'
'Now look!' protested Ellie. 'I just thought I was having a nice gossip about a friend, which as everyone knows is what friends are for, and no harm done. You said you thought all this business was a lot of nonsense, didn't you?'
'I did, and I do,' assured Pascoe. 'But you mean if you thought that anything you told me might help prove that someone Aldermann, say was a murderer, you wouldn't tell me?'
Ellie considered this.
'No,' she said doubtfully. 'But. . well, it makes me feel like a grass. What's worse, I don't even get paid!'
Suddenly Rose, whose protest had diminished to a somnolent mumbling, let out a high C followed by a cascade of sobs.
'Oh dear,' said Ellie. 'Now she really is unhappy.'
'Shall I go?' said Pascoe.
'No. Pour us a drink. I'll see to her. She's probably just mucked up another nappy.'
She left the room. Pascoe rose and poured two glasses of brandy. He took his to the open french window and looked out into his garden. No Rosemont, this, but a plot of well-clovered lawn, bordered with thripped and black-spotted roses and bounded by a sturdy beech hedge beyond which rolled open fields. When they bought the house, its situation had been nicely democratic, mid-way between the town and Ellie's college. Now the college's pleasant rural site was closing and when (or if) Ellie returned in September, it would be to a hideous mid-town building which she asserted made the police station look like the Yorkshire Hilton. Recently Pascoe had been wondering if it might not be sensible to look for a house in town too. It would save the time and expense of travel and be better for all the services necessary to a young man with a growing family.
'Oh dear,' said Ellie. 'Now she really is unhappy.'
'Shall I go?' said Pascoe.
'No. Pour us a drink. I'll see to her. She's probably just mucked up another nappy.'
She left the room. Pascoe rose and poured two glasses of brandy. He took his to the open french window and looked out into his garden. No Rosemont, this, but a plot of well-clovered lawn, bordered with thripped and black-spotted roses and bounded by a sturdy beech hedge beyond which rolled open fields. When they bought the house, its situation had been nicely democratic, mid-way between the town and Ellie's college. Now the college's pleasant rural site was closing and when (or if) Ellie returned in September, it would be to a hideous mid-town building which she asserted made the police station look like the Yorkshire Hilton. Recently Pascoe had been wondering if it might not be sensible to look for a house in town too. It would save the time and expense of travel and be better for all the services necessary to a young man with a growing family.
But on evenings like this, with the air balmy and a broad-faced moon peering down from a still pale sky, he could imagine nowhere better. No, he didn't really want to live closer to his work. It was bad enough not being able to get it out of his mind without being within dropinnable distance of the station. Even here and now, brandy in hand and beauty in view, he found his mind idly playing with the circumstances of the Reverend Somerton's tragic death. A stone from a tower. Like the hammer of God! It would all be fully documented in the coroner's records, of course. And there couldn't have been anything suspicious. .
Ellie returned, nursing a still sobbing baby.
'There, there,' she said. 'She's not wet. She seemed a bit frightened. Perhaps she had a bad dream.'
'A bad dream! What on earth can she have to dream about at her age?' laughed Pascoe. 'Here, give her to me.'
He took the child and rocked her in his arms. The sobs continued.
'Perhaps you really have been dreaming,' he said. 'Here, I feel a quote coming on. "A" level English, selections from Coleridge. He was always going on about his son. And once, when he awoke in most distressed mood that doesn't scan, does it? Then something about an inner pain having made up that strange thing, an infant's dream. He was right, wasn't he? What a strange thing an infant's dream must be. If only you could tell us about it, Rosie.'
'More to the point, what did Coleridge do about it?'
Pascoe grinned and stepped out of the french window and raised his daughter skywards.
'Peter! What on earth are you doing?' cried Ellie in alarm.
'What Coleridge did. Showing her the moon.'
'He should have been locked up! And you too. She'll catch her death. Give her here.'
'No. Wait,' said Pascoe. 'Listen.'
And as they listened the baby's sobs began to change in key from minor to major till they were unmistakably gurgles of delight and she waved her small fists high towards the hanging moon.
'Eat your heart out, Dr Spock,' said Pascoe. 'Me and Coleridge, we've got it made.'
And Ellie, standing at the open window watching and listening to her daughter's and husband's delight, suddenly found herself wondering why she should feel it as pain.
11
(Bush. Vigorous, yellow flower shading to pink, ample foliage, scent faint.)
From the top floor of the car park, Shaheed Singh had a splendid view over the city. The morning sun etched in every detail and he amused himself by picking out familiar landmarks from this unfamiliar viewpoint.
Not in fact that it was totally unfamiliar. The city's main bus station lay at the foot of the multi-storey. From it a pedestrian underpass ran beneath the busy ring road to the town centre, on the fringe of which stood the comprehensive where Singh had been educated. Sometimes for a change he and his mates had eschewed the underpass and ridden the elevators to this top level, walked thence across the bridge to the shopping precinct roof-top car park and descended into one of the big stores. There had of course been delays for skylarking, rarely anything more serious than leaning over the bridge parapet and gobbing spit balls on to the cars far below, though occasionally a breakaway group had headed for Woolworths for a spot of shoplifting. Usually Singh had opted out of this, not so much on moral grounds as because, in a city which didn't have a huge Asian community, he always felt he was the one likely to be spotted and remembered.
When he'd joined the police cadets he'd felt at first that this quality of easy distinction might work to his advantage, but he'd soon changed his mind. The instinctive prejudice and the sheer bloody ignorance hed encountered had shaken him deeply. On several occasions only his deep-rooted stubbornness had kept him going, the same stubbornness which had resisted all his father's attempts to persuade him to work in the family business. Now it had become focused on Sergeant Wield. The CID were an enviable elite. The unspeakable Dalziel and the high-flying Pascoe were probably hardly aware of his existence. But Wield was, and Wield obviously rated him as useless. His coldly scornful attitude when he took him along to Rosemont, and indeed on every occasion that they met, made this quite clear. To make Wield admit he was wrong had become the boy's main ambition.
And this was why he was here now when he should have been with PC Wedderburn learning the arts of traffic control. The good-natured Wedderburn had readily let him beg off for fifteen minutes on personal grounds, but the fifteen minutes were already up and his clever idea had come to nothing. There'd been a couple of kids who'd got out of the lift five minutes before, but they hadn't dallied as they made their way across the bridge to the precinct roof-top car park which already looked half full. The multi-storey on the other hand filled from the bottom up and on the top floor there were still only about ten cars parked.
Singh glanced at his watch. He was late already. He was going to have to salve PC Wedderburn's ire with gallons of tea and acres of bacon butties. So much for self-promotion to the CID.