Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

'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.