Asking for the Moon (14 page)

'Very nice,' he said. 'It's very . . . becoming.'

'I changed it at my son's behest,' she said. 'He didn't care for my last colour, did you, John?'

'It seemed inappropriate,' said Swithenbank.

'And this?' said his mother, striking a little pose with her left hand behind her head. 'Is this appropriate?'

'If not to your age, at least to your genus,' he said drily. 'I'll leave you to it, Inspector, and put the finishing touches to my own coiffure. Mother, Mr Pascoe might like a drink.'

'What would we do without our children to teach us manners?' wondered Mrs Swithenbank. 'Scotch, Inspector?'

'Please. Some water. Your daughter-in-law went to the hairdresser's on the day she disappeared.'

It was not quite the way he had intended to open the interview but Mrs Swithenbank was not quite the woman he had expected. She took the transition with the ease of a steeplechaser spotting that the ground fell away on the other side of the hedge.

'Did she now? That would be a year ago today, you mean, Inspector?'

'That's right. Though it was a Friday last year.'

'Yes, I've always found that rather confusing. Though it's nice to have one's birthday shifting around, it's easier to miss. Not that birthdays bother me yet. I had John young, of course. And he looks older than he is. Here's your drink, Mr Pascoe. Do you find me absurd?'

'I don't think so,' said Pascoe gravely.

'Not just a trifle?'

He considered.

'No,' he said. 'Amusing, yes. But not absurd.'

'Good. Neither do I. What did Kate have done at the hairdresser's?'

'Shampoo. Cut. And she bought a wig.'

Dove had phoned through with the information at lunch-time, admitting as cheerfully as ever that perhaps a year earlier they should have been asking questions about a frizzy blonde as well as a straight brunette.

Pascoe was not one to kick a man when he was down but he had no qualms about applying the boot to someone as reluctant to fall as Dove.

'This could knock your Swithenbank fixation into little pieces, Willie,' he had said. 'She could have got to the other end of the country without being noticed.'

'And stopped unnoticed? Bollocks,' Dove had replied. 'All it means is she could have left the flat without being spotted and been picked up somewhere else by Swithenbank, who knocked her off on his way north. Keep at it, Pete. You're doing good. For a provincial!'

'Did your daughter-in-law habitually wear wigs?' he now asked Mrs Swithenbank.

'Never to my knowledge. She had longish straight hair. Reddish brown, a rather unusual colour. She hadn't changed the style much since she was a girl. She wasn't a one for following fashions, not in her clothes either. Always the same kind of dress, whites and creams, soft materials, loose-fitting - she hated constraint of any kind. But she always managed to look right. What colour was the wig, by the way?'

'Platinum blonde.'

'Never,' said Mrs Swithenbank emphatically. 'I can't imagine that . . . unless you mean she could be walking around somewhere
-disguised
as a blonde.'

'Any idea why she might do that?' enquired Pascoe.

'She was a strange girl in many ways,' answered the woman slowly. 'There was something about her - a kind of feyness. There were three girls in John's gang, Kate, Ursula Rawlinson and Stella Foxley. Kate was the ugly duckling. The other two ... I gather you'll be meeting them tonight so perhaps I shouldn't anticipate your reactions . . .'

'A kind thought,' said Pascoe, 'but I'll just be chatting. It's not an identity parade! Please go on.'

'You'd have thought the other two would have walked away with all the boys. Ursula was a big well-made girl, full of life - still is! Stella - well, she was pretty too, but in a rather stiff kind of way. It was strange; before the village

drama group folded up, she used to appear in nearly every production and on the stage she really came to life, but off it she's always been . . . no, perhaps the competition she offered was a lot less stiff, but she was still much prettier! And Ursula! As I say, she was the belle. Little Kate Lightfoot with her skinny body and big frightened eyes, she faded away alongside her. Yet..."

'Yes?' prompted Pascoe.

'You know how it is when you're young, Mr Pascoe. There's always a lot of chopping and changing of boyfriends and girl-friends in any group. I used to think Ursula called the tune, passing on her discarded beaux to Kate or stealing hers if the fancy took her. But eventually I began to wonder if the reverse weren't true!'

'And what did you decide?'

'Nothing,' said Mrs Swithenbank, sipping her scotch. 'Kate always did things too quietly to give the game away. She moved around like a ghost! And Ursula, though she might behave as if her brains were in her brassiere, had far too much sense to make a fuss,'

'Were you surprised when your son married Kate?' asked Pascoe.

She looked at him reprovingly as though the question were too impudent to be answered, but when Pascoe put on his rueful look, she said, 'John had already been working for Colbridge's in London for two years.
He
seemed to be breaking links with his Wearton friends, though if he had got engaged to Ursula, I should not have been surprised. In fact I might even have been pleased. She has many good solid qualities. I sometimes think she may have regretted her marriage, too.'

'As your son regretted his?' said Pascoe.

'As I regretted it, Inspector,' she said acidly. 'John has never by word or sign indicated that he had any regrets. And I can't give you any good reason for my own regrets, except perhaps the unhappiness of this past year. I never knew my daughter-in-law well enough to understand her. I tried, but

I couldn't get close to her. I even started buying flowers and vegetables from her brother after the marriage, to sort of integrate the families, and
that
required an effort of will, I tell you. Have you met him? He's real Yorkshire peasant stock with something a little sinister besides. His family were all farm labourers, good for nothing, but, God knows how, he bettered himself and runs a smallholding in the village. I stopped going there a couple of months after Kate disappeared. I couldn't bear the way he looked at me.'

She shuddered. Pascoe looked around the room and noticed that the dahlias had been removed.

'But you didn't find Kate frightening, too?' he said.

'Only in the sense that what we don't know frightens us,' she said. 'Perhaps there
is
nothing to know. Perhaps that's the truth of it, that underneath she's just an ordinary dull little girl. Marriage is abrasive, Mr Pascoe. John would find out the truth of her sooner or later.'

'And . . . ?' *

'And if what he found bothered him so much that he wanted rid of her, he would ring his solicitor! One of the things I envy your generation is that divorce is there for the asking. Any other reaction is unthinkable!'

'I'm afraid that not everyone would agree with you,' said Pascoe.

This woman was certainly not absurd, he had long decided. And she was only as amusing as she wanted to be. Most important of all, despite the apparent freedom with which she poured out her impressions of her daughter-in-law and others, Pascoe suspected that they were measured with a most exact and knowing eye.

'Meaning what?'

'You took a phone call for your son yesterday morning.'

'Did I?'

'A woman's voice. Don't you remember?'

'The funny name. Is that the one you mean?'

'Yes, that's right,' said Pascoe. 'Ulalume. You didn't recognize the voice?'

'No,' she replied. 'I don't think so, though I am a little deaf, especially on the phone. It's easier when you can observe the lips. I certainly didn't recognize the name.'

'Was there anything distinctive you can recall about the voice?' persisted Pascoe

'Not really. As I say, I'm a little deaf and the line wasn't very good. It sounded terribly distant.'

'What exactly did this woman say?' asked Pascoe.

'Hardly anything, that I can recall,' said the woman. 'I gave our number, she
said John Swithenbank,
I said
who's call
ing? She said
Ulalume,
is that right? I said
who?
She didn't say anything else so I went and got John. What does all this signify, Inspector?'

Quickly Pascoe explained, reasoning that if Swithenbank didn't want his mother to know, he shouldn't have left her to be interrogated alone.

'I don't like the sound of this,' she said sharply when he'd finished.

'No?' he said.

'Someone's trying to make trouble. There were one or two nasty calls a year ago when the news first got out. People in the village and round about - old maids with nothing better to do, I usually guessed their names and that made them ring off pretty quickly! But this sounds more organized, as if someone's been thinking about it. Not just an impulse like some old biddy filling the gap between
Crown Court
and
Coronation Street.'

'That's very astute of you,' complimented Pascoe. 'Any ideas?'

'I can't fathom the precise aim,' said Mrs Swithenbank, 'but I should be surprised if she, or he, were a thousand miles away from you tonight.'

She glanced at her watch and pursed her lips impatiently.

'I hope John isn't going to keep you waiting much longer, Inspector. There's a film I particularly want to see on the television and he promised to have you on the way before it started.'

Taken aback by the sudden change in the objects of her concern, Pascoe downed his untouched drink in one to demonstrate his readiness to be off and said, 'Perhaps it's Miss' Starkey who's holding him up.'

'That
wouldn't surprise me,' she said significantly.

Not quite certain whether she was really underlining the
double entendre,
Pascoe asked if she had known Miss Starkey long.

'I never saw her before in my life. I came home last evening and there she was. I was then consulted about whether she could stay or not, but not in a manner which admitted the possibility of refusal.'

'Despite which, you didn't refuse?' said Pascoe, tongue in cheek.

She glanced at him sharply, then smiled.

'No, I didn't.'

'A business colleague of your son's, perhaps?' said Pascoe casually.

'I'm glad you don't even pretend to believe that!' said the woman. 'No, I imagine she's precisely what she appears to be. His mistress.'

'Here by invitation?' said Pascoe, with doubt bordering on incredulity in his voice.

'No, Inspector. Not by invitation, but certainly by design,' said a new voice.

Jean Starkey was standing by the half-open door, amusedly self-conscious of the dramatic effect of both her timing and her appearance. She wore a scarlet dress of some soft elastic fabric which clung so close that the finest of underwear must have thrown up its contours. None could be seen to break the curving lines of her body and when she moved forward into the room muscle and sinew rippled the scarlet surface like a visual aid in an anatomy class.

Pascoe sighed and she smiled her appreciation.

'Even at court they never go in for more than a year's public mourning,' she said. 'I decided that it was time Wear-ton became aware of my existence. So here I am.'

'And John?' said Mrs Swithenbank.

'Took me in his stride,' said Jean Starkey. 'He usually leads - don't misunderstand me - but he's not hung up about it. He recognizes a useful initiative when it sticks out before his eyes.'

'You certainly do that,' said Mrs Swithenbank.

'Mourning,'
said Pascoe. 'That's for the dead, Miss Starkey.'

'Marriages die, too, Inspector,' she replied. 'I don't know where Kate is now, but the point is, if she were to come through that door now, it would make not one jot of difference.'

They all looked at the door, which she had left ajar. Footsteps were heard coming down the stairs. They got nearer, moving without undue haste, and suddenly Pascoe felt tension in the room.

Then the telephone rang.

The door was closed reducing the telephone to a distant vibration of the air. A moment later this, too, was shut off and as Pascoe had already discovered, the walls shut out human speech.

'You need good hearing in this house,' said Pascoe conversationally.

'The Swithenbanks don't miss very much,' said the old woman. 'I do hope you enjoy the party tonight, Miss Starkey. You mustn't mind if John's friends stare a little at first. Remember that while he's been away getting acquainted with the big wide world, they've been stuck here in tiny old Wearton.'

'I'll make allowances,' smiled Jean Starkey.

The door opened and Swithenbank came in. He was wearing cream slacks, a cream jacket and a golden shirt with a huge collar and no tie. Pascoe felt very conscious that his own suit had come from C and A, but sought revenge in telling himself that the other man looked like an advert for the Milk Marketing Board.

'All ready?' enquired Swithenbank. 'We're rather late, I'm afraid. But we can always compensate by coming away early.