Asking for the Moon (21 page)

'Liar! I've watched you in this churchyard at dead of night. Is she laid here? Is she? I feel her close!'

Pascoe shivered with more than cold. The animal intensity of this man was terrifying beyond the reach of middle-class neurotics, or even suicidal vicars!

'I don't know!' Swithenbank's voice had the ghost of a tremor now, as though he was just beginning to admit the possibility that the trigger might be pulled.

'Tell him what you were doing here, Mr Swithenbank,' Pascoe suggested. He could see no way to disarm the man without risking a reflexive tightening of that gnarled brown finger.

'I just thought, if Kate did come to Wearton, she might be here, somewhere, in the churchyard. I thought perhaps the tomb of the Aubrey-Beesons ... we used to play round there as kids . . . once we went in ... there was a key at Wear End, Boris got it ... but there was another in the bunch of keys hanging in the porch here, only Peter had started locking the door, so I couldn't get in.'

He was definitely gabbling now.

'You mean you thought that stupid poem might be true?' asked Ursula.

'Why not?' Swithenbank demanded.

'Why not indeed?' echoed Pascoe. 'I mean, the man responsible for the telephone calls ought to know what precisely they signify, oughtn't he?'

There was a moment of puzzled silence which involved Lightfoot, too, and Pascoe was glad to see that though the direction of the shotgun remained unchanged, the man took half a pace backwards and switched his unblinking gaze to the detective's own face.

'What on earth can you mean, Inspector?' enquired Kingsley.

Swithenbank and Jean Starkey exchanged looks. She smiled fondly at him and nodded encouragingly, like a mother to a shy child.

'All right,' he said defiantly. 'It's true. There were no anonymous phone calls.'

'A couple,' corrected the woman. 'I made them to John's mother and his secretary. Just to provide a couple of independent ears.'

'And I sent the letter and the ear-ring,' said Swithenbank as though eager to claim his share of the credit.

'But the blood?' said Ursula.

'Cow's. Probably off the weekend joint,' said Pascoe cheerfully. 'We have very good laboratories.'

'Sod your laboratories,' said Lightfoot in angry bewilderment. 'What's going on?'

'Arthur, listen to me,' said Swithenbank. He spoke urgently, but he was back in full control. 'I'm like you. I believe Kate's dead. A year, no sign, it's too much. The police think so, too. And they think I'm responsible, but I swear I'm not! But they're fixated; result is, my life's permeated with suspicion while the real murderer gets off scot free. They're not even looking for him, just watching me!'

Willie Dove really got to him, thought Pascoe.

'But why this charade?' demanded Rawlinson.

'It was my idea,' said Jean Starkey defiantly. 'I'm a writer.
I used my imagination. We wanted something to stir the
police out of their stupor and to get the killer worried at the
same time.' ,

'But why up here?' retorted Rawlinson. 'You know how much we loved Kate, John; some of us, that is. Why bring this trouble up here?'

His wife looked at him with disgust, then turned away.

'Because I believe this is where the trouble belongs, Geoff,' said Swithenbank. 'Up here. In Wearton. Where else would Kate come? Where else might there be someone to meet her?'

'She lived with you in London for years!' protested Kingsley.

Swithenbank shook his head.

'I've checked and double-checked the possibilities there. Not many. She liked a quiet kind of life, Kate. Well, you all know that. No, I'm almost certain she came back here. And. was not welcome. And got killed for her pains.'

'But who would kill her? And why?'

It was Ursula who spoke, her husband's needs momentarily forgotten.

Swithenbank smiled humourlessly.

'Killing's not so difficult, Ursula dear. We've been pretty close a couple of times tonight, haven't we? You know what Kate was like. Simple, direct, impulsive. Insensitive. If she was sick of me, of our life in London, and wanted to come back to Wearton, she'd just set off. Suppose she has a choice here. Arthur in his cottage or a lover, someone she's been sleeping with on and off for years, perhaps. A man who thinks she takes it as casually as he does, a bit of sensual titillation when the chance offers. A man who doesn't want a scandal, certainly doesn't want a permanent relationship. She goes to him, rather than Arthur. Obvious choice it seems, till this man laughs at her, tells her to go back to London. She wouldn't make a fuss, not Kate. She'd get up quietly and say she was going. But not back-to London, no; back to her brother.'

Arthur Lightfoot groaned from the depths of his being. The others regarded him uneasily, except for Swithenbank, who went relentlessly on.

'Angry husbands are one thing, but the prospect of an angry Arthur was quite another. Look at him, for God's sake! And so, one thing leads to another . . .'

'But not to murder!' protested Ursula. 'It makes no sense!'

But her words were subsumed by Lightfoot's groan which had swollen to a cry of rage.

'It's sense to me!' he cried. 'And there's only one here that fits the bill. The stud, him as has covered every mare hereabouts. Like father, like fucking son!'

Oh God. Here we go again, thought Pascoe as the black barrel rose once more and this time came to a halt against Boris Kingsley's ample belly.

To his surprise, Kingsley showed not the slightest sign of fear.

'Come off it, Lightfoot,' he sneered. 'You're not going to

fire that thing. That's not your way, A bit of sneaky poaching of another man's game. Or even dirtier ways of getting your hands on another man's money. That's all you're good for. So put that thing away.'

'Did you kill my sister?' demanded Lightfoot.

'Oh go to hell!'

'And whoever did kill her, she probably asked for it!' hissed Stella Rawlinson with a venom that shocked even Lightfoot into silence for a moment.

'Listen who's talking!' he rejoined eventually. But before he could elaborate Swithenbank said in his most casual voice, 'Yet it's a question which needs answering, Boris.'

Now everyone was quiet. Lightfoot had stepped further into the porch, leaving the door unguarded, but Ursula made no effort to shepherd her husband through it, nor from the expression of rapt attention on his face would he have allowed himself to be removed if she'd tried.

Strange therapy! thought Pascoe.

'What do you mean, John?' asked Kingsley courteously.

Swithenbank was standing under the arch of the doorway up to the tower and the light from the single small bulb that lit the porch scarcely reached him so that his voice came drifting out of the shadows.

'It's an odd place, Wearton, Mr Pascoe,' he said. 'You try to escape it but it comes after you. And I was foolish enough to take one of the oddest pieces of it away with me! Oh, don't be shocked, friends. Even among your outstanding oddities, Kate stood supreme! And when she left me, I knew that sooner or later she'd come back here, as long as she was alive, that is.'

'Or dead.'

Arthur Lightfoot spoke so solemnly that no one dared even by expression to show disbelief.

Swithenbank ignored him.

'You know what I did when Jean and I first started brooding on schemes to start our rabbit?'

'Goose,' muttered Pascoe to himself.

'I wrote down the names of everyone here, you excepted, of course, Inspector. And I started to cross out those who I couldn't bring myself to believe capable of killing Kate. Do you know, I sat for an hour and hadn't crossed out a name!'

'Oh, come on, John,' said Ursula.

'Not even yours, dear,' he said regretfully. 'So I made a league table instead. And do you know, Boris, however I constructed it, you kept on coming out on top!'

'Well, you know me, John,' said Kingsley. 'Always a winner.'

'Shut up!' snapped Lightfoot, prodding him with the gun.

This had gone far enough, thought Pascoe. This lunatic could accidentally fire that thing at any moment.

He coughed gently and was flattered to note that he immediately had everyone's attention. He also had for the first time a full frontal of Lightfoot's shotgun. He reached out, took the barrel fastidiously between thumb and forefinger and moved it aside.

'Mr Lightfoot,' he said quietly. 'If that weapon is pointed once more at anyone here, and most especially at me, I shall arrest you instantly for threatening behaviour. Lower it and break it!'

The man gave him a look full of hatred, but obeyed, and Davenport, as though the action held some personal symbolism for him, suddenly stepped away from Ursula and in best vicarial tones said, 'Please, everybody, hasn't this gone far enough? You're all soaking and it's mainly my fault. I don't want pneumonia on my conscience as well. You're all welcome to dry out at the rectory. Mr Pascoe, I'd like a private word with you later, if it's convenient.'

He was looking at Lightfoot as he spoke these last words and it was the smallholder whose hitherto unblinking gaze shifted first.

Pascoe made an educated guess at what Davenport was going to tell him. He'd lay odds that a year ago Lightfoot, out on a poaching trip perhaps, had witnessed Rawlinson's fall from the tower. He had kept out of sight when the vicar

descended - he would hardly want to draw the local bobby's attention to himself- and his curiosity had later been whetted by the discrepancy between what he had seen and the official version. But he'd done nothing about it till the summer when he needed money after the fire. With Kingsley senior's death, his old source had dried up, but a visit to the vicarage, a few dark hints of deep knowledge (he had the perfect manner for it), and he had found a new supply of funds to tap. What precisely he did know hardly mattered. He emanated evil intent like few men Pascoe had met.

He made a mental vow that whatever else came out of this extraordinary evening, Arthur Lightfoot was going to get what was coming to him.

But there were still many other questions to be answered. Obviously Swithenbank had deliberately angled his campaign towards Kingsley, with how much justification was not yet clear. Perhaps he just had a 'feeling'. Like Willie Dove had a feeling! Or perhaps he knew more than he had yet said. There was still the dress to be explained. He suddenly felt very tired.

There had been a general movement to the doorway. Outside the wind still gusted fitfully but for the moment the rain seemed to have stopped. Not that that mattered, Pascoe thought ruefully. He was so damp that nothing short of total immersion could aggravate his condition.

'Hold on a moment. I don't think we're finished here yet!'

It was Jean Starkey and her words were greeted with a groan of exasperation in which Pascoe joined. He guessed what she was going to say, but he judged that the moment for dramatic revelation was past. What had been an atmosphere of high emotion in a Gothic setting had now become one of damp and discomfort in a draughty church porch. The time had come for warmth and whisky, followed by some hard questioning in a police interview room. He wanted to save his knowledge of the woman's dress in Kingsley's bedroom till then.

But the woman insisted.

'Tell us about the dress, Boris. You haven't told us about the dress.'

'What dress?'

'The white muslin dress and the big straw hat. Kate's favourite gear, wasn't it? How does it come about that you've got a woman's dress hidden in a locked wardrobe in your house?'

Now the audience's attention was engaged once more. Kingsley made no effort to deny it but asked indignantly, 'How does it come about you know what I've got locked up in my house!'

'It's true, then?' said Lightfoot, who had been smoulderingly subdued for the past few minutes.

'Why shouldn't it be true?'

Whether because of Pascoe's threat or out of personal preference, Lightfoot didn't try to use his gun this time but jumped forward and seized Kingsley one-handed by the throat, bearing him back against the opened door which lay against the wall. No one seemed inclined to interfere, not even when the enraged assailant started using the fat man's head as a knocker to punctuate his demands, 'Where-is-she? Where-is-she?'

It was constabulary duty time once more. Pascoe stepped . forward and said, 'That's enough.'

When Lightfoot showed no sign of agreeing, Pascoe punched him in the kidneys and stepped swiftly back. The blow was a light one and Lightfoot swung round as much in surprise as pain. Kingsley, released, staggered out of the church holding his throat, but he could have suffered no real damage for he was able to scream, Til tell you why I've got the clothes! It's Kate's ghost, you superstitious cretin! Do you really think anything would come back from the grave to an animal like you in that sty of a cottage?'

He even managed a derisive laugh but it stuttered off into a fit of coughing.

'You'd better explain yourself, I think, Mr Kingsley,' said Pascoe, putting himself between the fat man and Lightfoot.