Reginald Hill: A pinch of snuff

There was no reply. Pascoe stood by the phone and wondered. If Emma Shorter had left just this afternoon, you'd have thought there'd be someone in the house this evening.

'Thanks,' he said to the receptionist and went out to his car.

He wanted to go home. He felt almost desperate for home. But instead he swung west in a wide arc which eventually took him by a series of social degrees from houses that reflected the dignity of labour to villas that proclaimed the delight of wealth, and ultimately to Acornboar Mount.

Shorter's lawn was beginning to burn where Clint had sprayed the weed-killer, but the dentist's water treatment had blurred the edges of the word so that it was almost illegible.

There were two cars in the drive, Shorter's Rover and a battered Mini.

Pascoe put his finger to the door bell and leaned on it till he heard footsteps in the hall.

'For God's sake… oh, it's you,' said Shorter ungraciously.

'Sorry, Jack, but if you can't hear your phone, I thought I'd better make sure you heard your door bell,' said Pascoe. 'Can I come in?'

Shorter looked less than enthusiastic, but Pascoe was moving forward with a policeman's majestic instancy and it would have taken a physical barrier to prevent him.

'In here, is it? Great,' said Pascoe, pushing open the lounge door.

Emma Shorter, pale-faced but with something more of her calm self-possession and elegant grooming than the last time Pascoe had seen her, sat in one of the tubular steel chairs. At the other side of the room looking both physically and mentally uncomfortable, Alison Parfitt perched on the edge of the hanging basket. She was wearing a red raincoat with the belt pulled tight in a casual knot to reveal the generous curves of her bust and behind. And to counter the somewhat over-studied calm of the other woman's demeanour, the young nurse had a determined set of the jaw and shoulders which gave promise that her unease would not make her an easy target.

'Peter!' said Emma. 'Come in. Do you know Miss Parfitt, John's nurse? We were just going to have a sherry. Won't you join us?'

'Come on, love!' exclaimed Shorter. 'Yes, he knows Alison. And he'll know a bloody sight more besides. They'll have been conning my private life pretty thoroughly, so we don't need to make up stories to preserve the decencies. All right, Peter. Here we are, nicely mounted for your detective microscope. There's my wife who's had such a nasty shock to her standards and values that she took an overdose. Though I suspect it was an even nastier shock for her to realize just how much of an overdose she'd taken. Next here's my mistress, come to have things out in the open and stake her claim. And finally, there's me. On the edge of professional ruin, gaol even. But I must be all right deep down inside, else why should these two virtuous ladies squabble over me?'

How odd, thought Pascoe. I hadn't noticed. Of the three of them, it's Shorter who's by far in the worst condition.

'I'm not squabbling, my dear,' observed Emma. 'I invited Miss Parfitt round here to talk sensibly about our plans, not to compete for you.'

'You knew about… this, then?' said Pascoe.

'About them all, even when I haven't been able to put names to them,' said Emma Shorter. 'I'd adjusted my life to include them, I suppose. This other thing was just too much. I couldn't fit it in. I suppose that's why I took the pills. John is right, but only partially so – his usual degree of success. I meant to kill myself. But I regained consciousness while they were doing all kinds of unpleasant things in an effort to revive me, and when I realized from what I could pick up that there was a real chance they wouldn't succeed, then I suddenly felt frightened. And angry! But you know what I felt in the end? When I opened my eyes yesterday morning and knew that they'd succeeded and saw John sitting all baggy-eyed at the end of the bed?

'I felt vastly amused! I was too exhausted to laugh out loud, but I laughed inside. And I've been laughing inside ever since. I'd almost done him the biggest favour of his life, but it hadn't come off and the poor dear would just have to keep a stiff upper lip and hide his disappointment!'

'Perhaps,' said Shorter grimly, 'perhaps I won't bother.'

'What about you, Alison?' asked Pascoe gently. 'What do you feel about all this?'

'I love him,' said the girl, adding angrily in response to Emma's small but eloquent raising of her eyebrows, 'Yes, I do. And I love him enough to stand by him. That's what loving means.'

'Is it, now?' murmured Emma Shorter. 'I suppose it is. Well, I'm about to sit by him from now on. I've decided to leave things in the hands of the law. If he gets convicted, I shall divorce him. Otherwise I see no reason why we shouldn't continue our charade, except that from now on he will know I know it's a charade.'

She is ashamed, thought Pascoe. Ashamed that she could do what she did. Odd. And Alison on the other hand is rather proud of herself. She's seeing herself as the heroine of the hour. Here am I, little me, declaring my love for and loyalty to this worthless man, in his own house in front of his wife. It's like something out of…

'It's like something out of Noel Coward!' said Shorter desperately. 'I think I'd rather be in gaol!'

'That's your best bet too, my dear,' said his wife to Alison. 'Then I'll divorce him. Why not turn witness for the prosecution?'

'I'll stick by him whatever happens,' swore Alison. 'Whatever!'

Oh dear, thought Pascoe.

He coughed gently. It was time to change their lives.

'I just dropped in to tell you, Jack, that there probably won't be any charges now. That's unofficial, OK? But I reckon you're in the clear.'

He left them in a silence unbroken by the popping of champagne corks, the ring of merry laughter, the tears of joyous relief. He left them in a three-cornered trap in a thirty-thousand-pound house in a three-quarter-acre garden with a four-letter word burned on the lawn.

Perhaps like sea-side rock it went all the way through.

'I'm home,' he said.

'Not before time,' said Ellie. She gave him a big kiss, then stepped back and regarded him with a kind of twisted smile which could only be described as a smirk.

'Good day?' she asked.

'Mixed,' he said. 'No. Good really, only it's knocked me out a bit. Shorter's off the hook.'

'What?'

'Yes. No case. I'll tell you all about it later.'

'Good,' she said without conviction. 'Are you still going to go to him?'

'As a dentist you mean? I don't know. I suppose so. After all, he knows my fantasies.'

'Yes. I dare say Ms Lacewing can make a pretty good guess at them too.'

'Good lord,' he said. 'Can one liberated woman be jealous of another?'

'Of course not. But being liberated, I'll thump her on the nose if I catch her making eyes at you again.'

'Making eyes?' said Pascoe, astounded.

'That's what it comes down to,' said Ellie. 'I know a rival when I see one.'

'Do you? You know, perhaps I've been wrong about that girl. Ask her round to dinner some night. Preferably some night when you've got a committee meeting.'

'Ha ha.'

'Which reminds me,' said Pascoe, accepting gratefully the drink which Ellie offered him. She must be a mind-reader, he thought, as he assessed that its length and strength were just what he needed. He sank half of it in a swallow.

'Reminds you what?'

'Your committee. It shouldn't be such hard going. I think God Blengdale's going to have other things on his plate.'

Ellie laughed.

'Haven't you heard? It's out of God's hands.'

'What is!'

'The whole business. He just wanted to bring us into town, release the site for his nasty Country Club. Well, on the news tonight they read out a list of colleges which the Department of Education want to close completely as surplus to requirements. And lo! there we are at the top.'