Asking for the Moon Read online

  'Stella?' She raised her eyebrows.

  'Your sister-in-law, dear. There are depths beneath that unyielding surface.'

  'I'm glad to hear it. I wasn't conscious of a rebound,' she said evenly. 'Unless it was from Stella moving into the bungalow. I could hardly stay on, could I?'

  'I wish you'd stayed and the bungalow had moved,' grumbled Kingsley, walking across to the window and peering out.

  The lawn had that tousled unkempt look even the best kept grass gets on a dank October morning. He had the sense of peering down at a wild moorland from some craggy height. Away to the right ran an avenue of trees, while straight ahead was a tangle of neglected shrubbery which reinforced the impression of desolation till he raised his eyes a little and the cheerful red-brick of the Rawlinson bungalow some three hundred yards away re-established the scale of things.

  'Pa should never have sold your father that land,' said Kingsley with irritation. 'It ruins the view.'

  'I dare say Stella will think the same about little Willie if she's out in the garden,' said Ursula.

  'She should be so lucky,' said Kingsley. 'How do you think your brother is since his accident?'

  'You are an evil-minded bastard sometimes, Boris,' she said.

  'And you're the vicar's wife,' he mocked. 'Is it sermon on the mount time?'

  She rolled off the bed as he approached.

  'I think it's time to go home and have breakfast.'

  'Stay here,' he suggested. 'When's Peter due back from his concert?'

  'Not till this afternoon.'

  'Well then.'

  'But old mother Warnock is due here in half an hour.'

  'She'll devil us some kidneys. You can say you dropped in to invite me to address the Mothers' Union.'

  'Boris, dear, she'd stand up and denounce us before the first hymn next Sunday morning. No, I'll have a quick shower and be off.'

  She left the room before he could attempt to restrain her by force or persuasion.

  He did not appear too frustrated by her evasion but strolled round the room getting dressed. Unhappy at the selection of trousers in the large mahogany wardrobe which occupied half a wall opposite his bed, he took a key from a chest of drawers and unlocked a smaller oak wardrobe in the corner by the window. Here were hanging the heavier twills which the chill of the morning invited.

  Here also hung a woman's dress in white muslin with blue ribbons to gather it gently in beneath the bosom. On the shelf above was a wide-brimmed floppy hat in white linen trimmed with blue roses. He touched it lovingly, then caressed the soft material of the dress with his open hand.

  When he turned from re-locking the wardrobe Ursula was standing dripping wet in the bedroom doorway.

  'I couldn't find a towel,' she said.

  Til come and rub you dry,' he answered, smiling.

  Geoffrey Rawlinson let his binoculars rest on his chest, stood up, collapsed the seat of his shooting-stick and, leaning heavily on it so that he drilled a trail of holes across the lawn, he limped back to the bungalow.

  He heard the phone being replaced as he negotiated the high step into the kitchen, and a moment later his wife came into the room, snapping on the light so that he blinked as it came bouncing at him off chrome, tile and Formica. The changes Stella had made in the kitchen never ceased to amaze him. It was, he claimed, more automated than the War Room in the Pentagon. But even in high summer it still needed artificial light till the sun was high in the sky.

  'Children off to school?' he asked.

  'Yes. Please, Geoff, how many times do I have to ask you? Don't dig up the floor tiles with that thing!'

  'Sorry,' said Rawlinson. He leaned the shooting-stick against the waste-disposal unit and took up his heavy blackthorn walking stick which was hooked over the rack of the dishwasher. It had a thick rubber ferrule which squeaked against the floor as he walked towards his wife.

  'Who were you phoning?' he asked.

  'The butcher,' she said. 'Is she still over there?'

  'I've been looking at the birds,' he answered in tones of gentle reproach. 'That pair of whitethroats is still here. It's really incredibly late for them. I think one of them may have been injured and the other's waited for it. Touching, don't you think?'

  His wife regarded him without speaking. Her face had all the individual features of great beauty, but there was something too symmetrical, too inexpressive about them, as though they had been put on canvas by a painter of great technique but no talent.

  Rawlinson sighed.

  'I don't know. Just because you saw her walking down the

  old drive last night doesn't mean she was going to bed down with Boris.'

  'Don't be a fool,' she snapped. 'Peter's away singing, isn't he? And why else should she be skulking around out there on a nasty damp evening?'

  'You were,' he observed quietly.

  'I was in my own garden,' she said sharply. 'If she wanted to visit Wear End, she could easily drive round by the road. After all, she does have her own car, which is more than we can afford.'

  'It's her own money,' said Rawlinson.

  'It's the money you had to pay her for half of your own house,' retorted Stella.

  'We've been over all this before,' he said. 'I had to buy her out. And there was something left over from Father's will to pay for all this modernization.'

  He gestured at the kitchen.

  'While she lets her husband freeze in that draughty old rectory and spends all her money on cars and clothes!'

  'She has to live there too.'

  'Not when Peter's away she doesn't.'

  'Oh, for God's sake," he snapped. 'She's my sister, so leave it alone.'

  'And Peter's your cousin. And you're my husband. But what difference does that make to anything?' she yelled after him as he stumped out of the kitchen.

  An hour later she took him a cup of coffee in his study.

  The light was on above his draughtsman's drawing-board but he was sitting at his desk with his bird-watching journal. The writing was on the left-hand page. On the other he had sketched with a few deft strokes of a felt-tipped pen a pair of whitethroats in a sycamore tree. In the background loomed the bulk of Wear End House with its windows all shuttered.

  She put the coffee down by the drawing.

  'Are we going to Boris's tomorrow night?"

  'I suppose so.'

  'Will John be there?'

  'He's got the face for it.'

  'What do you mean?"

  'Oh, leave it alone, Stella!'

  'I think he deserves all our sympathy and support.'

  'Last time you said it was the biggest stroke of luck he'd had!'

  'I still think that!' she snapped. 'But the difference between thinking and saying is called civilized behaviour.'

  'OK. OK. Let's drop it,' he answered moodily. 'I must try to get some work done or we'll have nothing to put down the waste-disposal unit.'

  At the door she paused and said, 'I don't mean to nag, Geoff, but things . . .'

  'Yes, yes. I know.'

  'How's your leg this morning?'

  'The same. And better.'

  'How can that be?' she asked.

  'Nothing changes,' he said, reaching for his coffee, 'but you learn to live with pain."

  Arthur Lightfoot leaned on his hoe and watched the young woman in the telephone-box. Her Triumph Spitfire was parked with its nearside wheels on the -wedge of carefully tended grass which lay in front of the village war memorial. Lightfoot made no secret of his watching. Generations of his family had lived and laboured in Wearton and there was as little chance of a native turning from the close contemplation of a stranger as there was of the soldier on the memorial dropping his rifle.

  Lightfoot was a man whose face had been weathered to a leathery mask beneath an unkempt stack of gingery hair. His deep-sunk eyes rarely blinked and his mouth gave little sign

  of being fitted for human speech. To age him between thirty and fifty would have been difficult.

/>   What nature had done for the man, art had done for the woman. She had blonde hair, a good but not over emphatic figure and a face which happily confessed to twenty-five but left you guessing about thirty-five. It had a slightly preoccupied expression as she came out of the phone-box and took a couple of uncertain steps towards the car. Then, as if feeling Lightfoot's gaze upon her, she turned, looked back at him, and strode with sudden determination across the road.

  'Excuse me,' she said, then, her eyes caught by a double row of staked dahlias close by the side wall of the old stone cottage, she exclaimed, 'Aren't they lovely! Such colours for a murky day.'

  'Frost'll have 'em soon,' said Lightfoot.

  'Are they ... do you sell them?'

  Lightfoot made a gesture which took in the full extent of his smallholding.

  'I grow what I need,' he said. 'What I don't need, I sell.'

  He did not look like a man who needed many dahlias, so the woman said, 'May I buy some?'

  'Aye. Come in and take thy pick.'

  He held open the rickety gate for her and she walked along the row of blooms pointing to her choices which he cut with a fearsome clasp knife taken from his pocket. When she reached the angle of the cottage she stopped and said, 'I see you had a fire.'

  The ground behind the cottage was scorched and blackened and a pile of charred rubbish looking like the remnants of several outbuildings had been shovelled together alongside a wired pen which housed three pigs.

  'Aye,' he said.

  'Not too much damage, I hope,' she said, looking at the back of the cottage which also bore the mark of great heat. The window-frames looked as if they'd been recently replaced and reglazed.

  'Enough. Nought that money won't mend. Are you done choosing?'

  'I think so. Perhaps another pink one. They are gorgeous. Is it good soil?'

  'Soil's what you make it,' he answered. 'Many a barrow-load of manure and many a barrowload of compost I've poured into this soil. See there!'

  He pointed to where a broad pit which seemed to be full of decaying vegetable matter was sending coils of vapour into the dank autumn air.

  'Hot as a curate's dreams in there,' he averred, watching her closely.

  She glanced at him, amused by the odd expression.

  'It doesn't look very appetizing,' she said. 'What's in it?'

  'Everything,' he said. 'What pigs won't eat yon pit gobbles up. Dustmen get slim pickings from Arthur Lightfoot.'

  His sudden enthusiasm made her uneasy and she was glad to hear the rickety gate shut behind her.

  'That your car?' asked Lightfoot as she regained the footpath.

  'Yes.'

  'Ah.'

  He didn't offer to say more so she asked, 'Could you tell me the way to a house called The Pines? I've got a vague idea, but I might as well hit it first time.'

  'Swithenbank's house?'

  That's right.'

  'Them dahlias for Mrs Swithenbank?'

  'As a matter of fact, they are.'

  'She's not fond of dahlias, Mrs Swithenbank,' said Lightfoot. 'She says they're a wormy sort of flower.'

  'I'm sorry for it,' said the woman, irritation in her voice now. 'Can you tell me where the house is or not?'

  'Second turn left, second house on the left,' said Lightfoot.

  'Thank you.'

  When she reached the car, he called after her, 'Hey!'

  She laid the flowers on the passenger seat before turning.

  'Yes?'

  'Mrs Swithenbank doesn't like people parking on her lawn either.'

  Angrily she got into the car, bumped off the grass strip in front of the war memorial, and accelerated violently away.

  Arthur Lightfoot watched her out of sight. Turning to his wheelbarrow, he tossed in a couple of weeds prior to pushing the barrow towards his compost pit and tipping the contents on to its steaming surface.

  'Feeding time,' he said. 'Feeding time.'

  CHAPTER II

  . . . / wake and sigh

  And sleep to dream till day

  Of the truth that gold can never buy.

  Pascoe relaxed in a commodious chintz-covered armchair whose springs emitted distant sighs and clangings like an old ship rolling at its moorings on a still night. He looked, and felt, extremely comfortable, but the watchful eyes were triangulating the man in front of him.

  Swithenbank was a slightly built man, almost small, but with an air of control and composure which created a greater sense of presence than another six inches might have done. He had black hair obviously carefully tended by a good barber. Sorry, hair stylist, corrected Pascoe, whose own hairdresser was very much a barber, still more a butcher according to Ellie, his wife. Ellie would also have used Swithenbank's clothes as the occasion of more unflattering comparisons. Pascoe was smart in an off-the-peg chain store kind of way, while there was something about the other man's thin-knit pale blue roll-collar sweater that proclaimed without the need of a label that it was an exclusive Italian design and cost forty-five pounds.

  Show me a poor publisher and I'll show you a fool, as Dr Johnson may have, ought to have, said, thought Pascoe, forcing his attention from the exquisitely cut slacks back to the man's features. Broad forehead, long straight nose, thick but neatly trimmed black moustache, small, very white teeth, which glinted beneath the dark brush as the man made ready to speak.

  'Let's not beat about the bush, Inspector,' said Swithenbank.

  'What bush would that be?' enquired Pascoe politely.

  'You said you were here about Kate, my wife. Have you found her?'

  'No,' said Pascoe.

  'Thank God!'

  'I'm sorry?' said Pascoe.

  'I thought you were going to tell me you'd found her body.'

  'No. Not yet, sir.'

  Swithenbank looked at him sharply.

  'Not yet. But you sound as if you expect to.'

  'I didn't intend to,' said Pascoe.

  Suddenly Swithenbank smiled and the atmosphere became much more relaxed, as if he had operated a switch. A man of considerable charm, thought Pascoe. He didn't trust men of considerable charm very much.

  'So we're really at square one, no further forward than twelve months ago. You think Kate's dead though you've got no proof. And I, of course, remain Number One suspect.'

  'It's a position we unimaginative policemen always reserve for husbands,' replied Pascoe, content to fall in with the new lightness of manner.

  'But my ratiocinative powers tell me there must be more, Inspector. Visits from your colleague, Inspector Dove of the Enfield constabulary, I have come to expect. I think he believes, not without cause, that ultimately the threat of his company could bring a man to confess to anything. But I'm sure it takes more than mere suspicion to get a Yorkshire

  policeman into motion. Am I beating anywhere nearer the bush, Inspector?'

  'The bush is burning, but it is not consumed,' said Pascoe with a smile.

  'A Biblical policeman!' exclaimed Swithenbank.

  'Just carry on with the still small voice,' said Pascoe, beginning to enjoy the game.

  'Now you disappoint me,' said Swithenbank. 'Wasn't it Elijah who got the still small voice? While, of course, Moses it was who talked to the trees.'

  'Both agents of the truth,' said Pascoe. 'You were saying?'

  'It's my guess, then, that something has stimulated your interest in me. A tip of some kind. Phone calls perhaps? Or anonymous letters? Am I right or am I right?'

  'You're right,' said Pascoe. 'That's really very sharp of you, sir. Yes, there's been a letter. And, oddly enough, it came to us here in Yorkshire.'

  'Why "oddly"?'

  'It's just that it's a year since your wife disappeared and we've had nothing about you before. Except through official channels, I mean. All the usual post-disappearance "tips" went to your local station at Enfield — or straight to Scotland Yard. We contacted Enfield about this letter, of course.'

  'And the omniscient Inspector Dove told you I was pre
sently visiting Wearton!'

  'Right,' said Pascoe. 'And as we received the letter and you are in our area . . . well, here / am.'

  'And a pleasant change it makes from your cockney cousins,' said Swithenbank, 'If I may say so.'

  'Thank you kindly,' said Pascoe. 'And if I may say, you seem somehow less surprised or taken aback by all this than I would have expected.'

  'I work as an editor for Colbridge the publishers. A condition of service is not being surprised. By anything! But you are very sharp, Inspector. In a manner of speaking, I've been prepared for your visit. Or at least its first cause.'

  'You've had a letter too?' guessed Pascoe. 'Splendid. We must compare notes.'

  Swithenbank smiled and shook his head.

  'Alas, no letter. Just phone calls. They started in London about a fortnight ago, three direct, a couple which just got as far as my secretary and the woman who cleans my flat. So I decided to come up here.'

  'Why? What did they say?'

  'Always the same thing. And again this morning, twice. My mother answered the phone. First time the line was dead by the time I got to it. But she heard the message. And the second time, just as you arrived, I heard the voice myself. Exactly the same as before. Just a woman's name, twice repeated. Ulalunu.'

  'Ula . . . ?'

  'Ulalume.'

  'And the voice was female?' said Pascoe, perplexed.

  Swithenbank shrugged and said, 'Probably. It's an eerie wailing kind of tone. Possibly a male falsetto.'

  'And when you spoke sternly in reply?'

  'Ah. Of course, you came to the door then, didn't you? The line went dead. End of message.'

  'Message?' said Pascoe. 'I'm clearly missing something. There's a message here, is there? Just what does Ulalume signify, Mr Swithenbank?'

  The other leaned back in his chair, put the tips of his fingers together beneath his chin and recited.

  'And we passed to the end of the vista But were stopped by the door of a tomb -By the door of a legended tomb; And I said - "What is written, sweet sister, On the door of this legended tomb?" She replied - "Ulalume - Ulalume -'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!'"