Asking for the Moon Read online

  bank's word for what happened, and most of that he claims to have forgotten! He says he'd only driven about half a mile when he came to the conclusion he must be out of his mind! He says he didn't really make a conscious decision, but somehow instead of heading for the M i, he found himself on the way home to Enfield. He can't recollect much about the drive, or getting into the flat, but he's pretty certain his wife wasn't there.'

  'If she was, he'd be the last person she'd be expecting to see,' said Dalziel. 'Think about that!'

  'I believe Inspector Dove has thought about it,' said Pascoe patiently. 'All Swithenbank does remember positively is waking up some time after five, lying on his bed and feeling rough. He had a shower and a coffee, felt better, tried to ring Nottingham to apologize for his lateness but couldn't get through, wrote his wife a note saying he'd been home, and set off up the Mi like the clappers. Like I say, there's no support for any of this. But one of the neighbours definitely saw him arrive back the following afternoon about five p.m. His wife isn't in and Swithenbank gets worried.'

  'Why? She never misses Dr Who, or what?'

  'His note was still there,' said Pascoe reprovingly. 'Untouched. He does nothing for an hour or two, then rings around some likely friends. Nothing. Finally late on Saturday night when she still hasn't returned, he contacts the police. And the wheels go into motion. Routine at first. There's a suitcase and some of his wife's clothes missing. So they check the possibilities. Friends, relatives, etc. - that's where we first came in. Her passport's still at home. A month later she's made no drawing upon her bank account. So now Willie Dove moves in hard.'

  'Started digging up the garden and chipping at the garage floor, did he?' said Dalziel.

  'He probably would have done except that they lived in a flat and he parked his car in the street,' said Pascoe. 'But he found nothing.'

  'So what's he think?'

  'He thinks Swithenbank's a clever bugger and has got the body safely stashed. He's kept on at him ever since, but nothing.'

  'So why's he think Swithenbank's the man?'

  'Intuition, I suppose.'

  Dalziel snorted in disgust.

  'Intuition! Evidence plus an admission, that's what makes detective work. I hope I never hear you using that word, Peter!'

  Pascoe smiled weakly and said, 'He's not making a big thing out of it. He just feels in his bones that some time between leaving the party and getting to Nottingham, Swithenbank did the deed and disposed of the body.'

  'What's wrong with the night before?' asked Dalziel. 'Put her in the boot. That'd explain his bit of depression that morning.'

  'So it would,' said Pascoe. 'Except. . .'

  'All right, clever bugger,' growled Dalziel. 'What's up?'

  'Except, she went to the hairdresser's on Friday morning. Last reported sighting,' said Pascoe.

  Dalziel was silent for a while.

  'I ought to thump hell out of you twice a day,' he said finally. 'I take it because you've said nowt much about it that this Nottingham visit was confirmed.'

  'Yes,' said Pascoe. 'Jake Starr, some science fiction writer. He was doing a bit on Jules Verne for Swithenbank's Masters of Literature series. He confirmed Swithenbank arrived a lot later than arranged, about eight p.m. They worked - and ate - till the early hours. Got up late the next morning. Swithenbank left after lunch. We know he was back in Enfield by five.'

  Dalziel pondered.

  'All we've got really is a cockney cop's feeling that he did it. Right?'

  'And the phone calls. And the letter and ear-ring.'

  Dalziel dismissed these with a two-fingered wave of his left hand.

  'This lass who turned up today. His fancy piece, you reckon?'

  'Could be,' said Pascoe cautiously.

  'Perhaps she's the other lass in the poem, that Psyche.'

  'I think Psyche represents the poetic soul,' said Pascoe.

  'Poetic arsehole,' said Dalziel scornfully. 'What's it say? -so I pacified Psyche and kissed her. That sounds like flesh and blood to me. Mind you, if she is his fancy woman, it's a funny thing to do, bringing her up to Wearton like that. It's like flaunting it a bit, wouldn't you say?'

  Pascoe indicated that he would say. Jean Starkey had been much occupying his mind since he left Wearton that morning. He had made a note of her car number and asked for it to be traced as soon as he got back to the station, but since vehicle licensing had been computerized, this process could now take several hours.

  'Well, it all seems bloody thin to me,' said Dalziel, rising from his chair and scratching his left buttock preparatory to departure. 'Some old mate trying to stir things for Swithenbank. Did you check on his old acquaintance in the village?'

  'Didn't have a chance this morning,' said Pascoe. 'I had to be back here for a meeting at lunch-time. But I'll go back, I suppose, and have a word. Or send Sergeant Wield.'

  'That's it,' approved Dalziel. 'Delegate. You've got plenty to keep you occupied, I hope. Our problems. This is nowt but an "assist", after all.'

  'If Kate Swithenbank's lying in a hole near Wearton, it's more than an assist!' protested Pascoe.

  'If Jack the bloody Ripper's opening the batting for Yorkshire (and I sometimes think the buggers who are look old enough), it's still someone else's case,' said Dalziel. 'They'll be open in an hour. You can pay for my help with a pint."

  'Dear at half the price,' muttered Pascoe as the fat man lumbered from the room.

  He spent the next twenty minutes going over his notes on the background to the case. On the left-hand page of his notebook he had made a digest of the facts as he knew them.

  I

  The right-hand page was reserved for observations and comments and was woefully blank. He managed by an effort of will to break the blankness with a couple of question-marked words, but it was reaching beyond the limits even of that intuition which Dalziel so scorned and he hastily turned the page as though the fat man might be peering over his shoulder.

  He was now among the notes on Swithenbank's 'friends' in Wearton. The tedious business of chatting with each of them would have to be done some time. He wondered whether his conscience would permit him to send Sergeant Wield again. Perhaps, if only the woman Jean Starkey hadn't turned up. There was a false note there somehow. It could be, of course, that Swithenbank wasn't expecting her. He was cool enough to carry it off. Perhaps she was a bit on the side who felt it was time to claim a more central position. But there had been nothing in her manner to suggest that her arrival was an act of defiance. Another hyper-cool customer? Like calling to like? John Swithenbank. Jean Starkey. Same initials. Not something you could really comment on in a report, though Dalziel had once told him he could squeeze significance out of a marble tit. Jean Starkey. John Swithenbank. And . . . and . . . there was something there . .. the marble tit was yielding . . .

  'Excuse me, sir.'

  'Oh damn!' said Pascoe, roused from his reverie just on the brink of revelation.

  'Sorry, sir,' said Sergeant Wield. 'That car registration you wanted checked. They've broken all records. Here you are.'

  He placed a sheet of paper on the desk and withdrew.

  Pascoe looked down at it, unseeing at first, then the words hardened into focus.

  Miss Jean Starkey, 38A Chubb Court, Nottingham.

  'Well,' said Pascoe. 'Well.'

  The marble was like a wet bath sponge now.

  He picked up his telephone and rang the public library. That done, he asked his exchange to connect him with Inspector Dove at Enfield.

  'Hello, Peter. What's up? Don't say you've corralled our boy!'

  'Not yet,' said Pascoe. 'Look, Willie, that statement from the writer Swithenbank went to visit, Jake Starr. Who took it?'

  'Hold on. Let's have a look. Here we are. We did what we did with you lot, relied on Nottingham. Why? What's up?'

  'Do you know if anyone at Nottingham actually met Jake Starr?'

  'Hang about, there's a note here, can't read my own writing. No, i
n fact I don't think they did. I remember now. They spoke to his secretary, who said Starr was on his way to New York. But she remembered Swithenbank arriving and she was there on Saturday morning when he left. She got in touch with her boss who sent a statement confirming this and having Swithenbank in his sights till bedtime. The secretary was around most of the time too. So we didn't ask them to follow it up when this Starr fellow got back. Why?'

  'You don't happen to have a note of the secretary's name, do you?'

  'Yes. I've got a statement from her here. I'm sorry, Pete, we could have sent you photo-copies of all this stuff but knowing how much your boss hates paper, I thought the brief digest would do. Jean Starkey. Miss Jean Starkey. There we are. Now tell me what this is all about.'

  'With pleasure,' said Pascoe. 'I've just been on to our library where they have useful things like a Writers' Who's Who. Jake Starr is a pseudonym. And no prizes for guessing that the real name is Jean Starkey. But there's more. Miss Starkey's a very personable blonde who at this very moment is in Wearton visiting Swithenbank. And it didn't look like business to me!'

  Dove whistled.

  'That leaves us with a bit of egg on our face, doesn't it?' he said cheerfully. 'Does it get us much further forward, though?'

  Try this,' said Pascoe. 'If somehow Swithenbank did contrive to have his missus in the boot when he drove north that afternoon, with Starkey alibi-ing him, he had all the time in the world to dispose of the body somewhere a long, long way from Enfield. Naturally he'd want somewhere as safe as possible. What if his childhood memories put him in mind of the perfect hiding-place up here?'

  'Hidden cave, secret passage, that sort of thing?' said Dove, making it sound like something out of Enid Blyton, much to Pascoe's irritation.

  'OK then. Where do you think she is?' he asked. 'Stuffed up the chimney in his flat?'

  'First place we looked,' laughed Dove. 'Thanks for ringing, Pete. It could be helpful and at least it gives you something better to do than chasing cows out of cornfields. Keep up the good work and let's know when he's planning to come back, then I'll see what a bit of real pressure can do. Anything else I can do for you?'

  He can do for me! thought Pascoe indignantly. As he flicked through the pages of his notebook, his eye fell on his question-marked words. Never mind what Dalziel said, everyone had one good intuitive guess coming and even Dalziel would reckon this was in a good cause.

  He made a mental choice, crossed out one of the words and said in a studiously casual voice, 'Just one thing. Kate Swithenbank's last reported sighting was at the hairdresser's. Did anyone ask what she had done there?'

  There was a pause and a rustling of papers.

  'It's not here if they did,' said Dove. 'Any particular reason?'

  'Just part of the steady plod us yokels go at,' said Pascoe. 'I don't really imagine that you lot have overlooked anything. Else.'

  'Get stuffed,' said Dove. Til see if I can find out. Cheers now.'

  'Cheers.'

  Pascoe sat back in his chair and felt pleased with himself. His social science degree enabled him to regard such phenomena as inter-regional rivalries with academic objectivity. On the other hand you couldn't get away from it, there was something very pleasant about getting one up on those smart-alec sods in London. Dalziel would, in his own phrase, be chuffed to buggery.

  There was still the problem of tactics. There was no question now of sending Sergeant Wield to Wearton. This was his affair, right to the bitter end. The question was when? And how?

  The answer came from the most unexpected source.

  His telephone rang and the constable on the exchange said a Mr Swithenbank would like to speak to him.

  'Put him on,' commanded Pascoe.

  'Inspector, glad to have caught you.'

  His voice sounded higher, lighter on the telephone.

  'I was just thinking about you, Mr Swithenbank.'

  'I'm flattered. And I about you. A thought struck me -you hinted a desire, or rather an intention, of talking about this business with my old acquaintance in the village. Are you still keen?'

  'It's on my schedule,' said Pascoe cautiously.

  'The thing is, Boris -Kingsley is having a little get-together at the Big House tomorrow evening. I was just going to ring him to make it OK to take Miss Starkey along with me. All my old chums will be there. So it occurred to me, if you'd like to take them all in one fell swoop, I'm sure Boris wouldn't mind. He's always had a taste for cheap fiction and a real life detective questioning his guests in the library would be right up his street.'

  Pascoe thought about it, felt the silence growing long enough to be significant and decided he didn't mind. After all, Swithenbank mustn't be allowed to think the law was so easily organizable.

  'Deep thoughts, Inspector,' said Swithenbank. 'Penny for them.'

  'Something about Greeks bearing gifts,' replied Pascoe. 'Yes, I think that might prove very useful, Mr Swithenbank. Thank you.'

  'Oh good. Why don't you call here about seven and then you can have a drink and a chat with Mother before we set out.'

  'Fine,' said Pascoe. "Bye.1

  'Cheeky bugger,' he said to the replaced telephone. You had to admire the man's nerve, he thought with a smile. Setting him up like Hercule Poirot.

  Then his eyes fell on the still open volume of Poe and he pulled it towards him and read:

  And I cried - 'It was surely October On this very night of last year That I journeyed - I journeyed down here -That I brought a dread burden down here -

  He glanced at his desk calendar. Tomorrow was Saturday, 14 October.

  'Cheeky bugger,' he said again. But there was no humour in his voice this time.

  CHAPTER IV

  From childhood's hour I have not been As others were.

  I

  'And she caught him by his garment saying, Lie with me.'

  Peter Davenport was so engrossed in what he was writing that he had not heard his wife come into the study and he started violently as she grabbed his cardigan.

  Ursula laughed.

  'Wrong text, dear?' she said. 'It might produce a livelier sermon than some of your recent efforts.'

  'It might,' he agreed, smiling with an effort. 'I'm sorry, my dear, I'm just a bit busy and there might not be time later . . .'

  'For what? I should have listened when they told me a counter-tenor was a kind of eunuch.'

  She shivered violently and drew her thin silken robe more closely around her.

  'You'll catch your death. Here, take my cardigan.'

  'And he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out. No, you keep it. You must be frozen to the marrow sitting here. God, when are they going to do something about the heating in this place? Or flog it and put us in a nice cosy semi?'

  In the summer the big Victorian rectory was a source of delight to Ursula most of the time. Then she could enjoy the role of vicar's wife, enjoy supervising the annual garden party on the huge bumpy lawn, enjoy entertaining various ladies' committees in the cool, airy drawing-room, enjoy discussing with them the recipe for her famous seed cake (purchased at Fortnum and Mason's whenever she went to London), enjoy their resentment of her, their memory of her wild young days, their suspicion that their husbands still lusted after her. And on long warm summer evenings as hostess to more secular groups of friends, she enjoyed throwing open the french windows and leading them into the garden after dinner, walking barefoot across the lawn, laughing and talking and sometimes turning from vicar's wife to essential Eve and back again within the compass of a cloud's passage across the moon or the circumvention of a rhododendron bush.

  But when summer's date was done, the draughty old rectory quickly grew chill beyond the reach of its antiquated radiators or the economic flame at the back of its huge open fireplace. She was not altogether joking when she told Boris Kingsley she slept with him for warmth whenever Peter was

  away at one of his choir concerts, though in truth she had no more real idea of the reaso
n than she had of her reason for marrying her cousin eight years earlier. Perhaps she had needed to show Kate Lightfoot and John Swithenbank that their alliance meant nothing to her. But she lacked the temperament for self-analysis, managing to find even in the worst day something that made the next day seem worth waiting for. She knew there was something wrong between her and her husband, even had a notion of what that something was, but had no solution to offer for the problem other than to wait and see and enjoy herself as best she could along the way.

  Peter Davenport on the other hand believed he understood all too well his reasons for marrying Ursula and had long since recognized them as inadequate and selfish. But other more pressing matters had been occupying his mind and his conscience in recent months. Like Ursula, he had lived from day to day, but unlike her, he felt an impulsion to definitive, even desperate action, which he could not resist much longer.

  'I've got nothing to wear tonight,' she averred.

  He thought bitterly of the stuffed wardrobes upstairs, then dismissed the uncharitable thought. Ursula had been eager to put her inherited money into the common pool; he had resisted. He was glad he had. At least that couldn't be held against him.

  'It'll be very informal, surely,' he said.

  'Informal doesn't mean scruffy,' she retorted.

  'No, it doesn't,' he said. 'Lexicographers the world over would agree with you. Who's going to be there anyway?'

  'The usual lot,' she said. The usual conversations, the usual tedium.'

  'Isn't John going to be there?' he asked.

  She looked at him sharply.

  'What difference will that make?'

  'A breath of fresh air from the great outside world.'

  She laughed and said, 'You may be right. I was talking to Boris earlier. He hinted at a surprise but wouldn't say what.

  You know how he loves being mysterious. Perhaps Kate has come back from the . . . wherever she's been.'