Reginald Hill - Asking For The Moon

'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.

Good night, Mother. Don't bolt the door if you go to bed, will you?'

'No,' she said. 'Who was on the phone, dear?'

Swithenbank smiled.

'Just a friend,' he said, holding the door open for Jean Starkey and Pascoe.

'Who was it, John?' insisted his mother.

'I told you,' said Swithenbank. 'A friend. The same one as rang yesterday morning, remember? She told me she was lonely and impatient. She said her name was Ulalume.'

And travellers, now, within that valley, Through red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody.

It was only a short drive to Wear End or the Big House as Pascoe now found himself thinking of it. It didn't look that big, he thought as he got out of the car, but certainly over-large for one man's occupation. Several windows were lit up and in their light and that of a rusty ornamental lantern hung in the portico, his assessing eye picked out signs of decay and neglect – blistered paint, flaking stone, a broken shutter and a narrow crack which zig-zagged up the facade till it disappeared in the dark shadow under the pediment. All the best Gothic decor! sneered Pascoe to reassure himself of his own indifference to the atmosphere, then felt his hair prickle on his neck as distantly, eerily, somewhere in the darkness a woman's voice cried, 'John! Oh Johnny!'

Swithenbank stopped in his tracks and all three of them peered in the direction of the noise. The night sky was clouded and the darkness made thicker by the electric glow above their heads. At first all Pascoe could do was separate the trees from their fractionally lighter background. There seemed to be a double row of them running away in symmetry with the sweep of the drive that had brought them from the roadway. They swayed and soughed in the slight but chilling wind and as his night vision improved Pascoe became aware of another movement. Between the trees something white fluttered and billowed and came towards them with a kind of ponderous bounding gait. Two sounds accompanied it, that breathless female cry of 'John!' and a most unfeminine tread of galloping feet.

Then the oncomer was off grass and on to gravel and with more relief than he would have cared to admit, Pascoe saw it was a woman running with the skirts of her full white satin evening dress kilted up to reveal a pair of muddy Wellington boots.

A final spurt took her into Swithenbank's arms with a force that anyone not a gentleman might have staggered under. Dalziel, for instance, thought Pascoe, would probably have stepped aside and let her hit the front door. But the slight figure of Swithenbank bore the brunt without flinching and as Pascoe got a better concept of the new arrival under the lantern light, he observed that it was a brunt worth bearing.

This was most probably that Ursula whose considerable charms Mrs Swithenbank wished had conquered her son, a theory confirmed as the said son now asked with incongruous politeness, 'How are you, Ursula?'

'Johnny! Why have you been hiding from us? I'm so pleased you've come tonight. I can't tell you how disappointed I would have been!'

Over his shoulder her eyes were drinking in Pascoe and Jean Starkey with unconcealed curiosity while behind her another figure came out from between the trees, a tall thin man with a flop of dark hair over pale defeated eyes. He wore a dark overcoat and, like a disingenuous Prince Charming, carried in either hand a silver shoe.

'Hello, John,' he said.

'Hello, Peter. Cured many souls lately?'

'Not many. And you – edited any good poems lately?'

'Not much since Poe,' said Swithenbank.

'Oh, let's get inside where I can see you properly. Has anyone rung? Boris! Boris! Don't let your guests hang about in the cold!'

Ursula opened the front door as she spoke and entered with the familiarity of old acquaintance. The others followed. Davenport, Pascoe noticed, seemed as uninterested in the identity of the newcomers as his wife was curious. She had now seated herself at the foot of a flight of stairs which ran up from the centre of the small but pleasantly proportioned hall. Pulling back her skirt above her knees, she thrust forward what, even accoutred as it was, appeared to be a very elegant leg and said, 'Johnny, dear, help me off with my wellies.'

A fastidious expression skimmed his face, but he obediently seized the proffered boot by heel and toe and began to lever it free.

'Oh, you've started the fun without me, you naughty children, and it's my party, too!'

A balding, portly man, nautical in a brass-buttoned blazer, advanced upon them, his face shining with sweat and bonhomie.

'John! How are you? So elusive! I must have spent a fortune trying to ring you. Even tonight, I began to get so worried!'

'We're not the latest, Boris,' replied Swithenbank, glancing at the woman on the stairs.

'Oh, the poor parson and his starving wife, you can always rely on them to turn up for supper,' said Kingsley dismissively. 'Ursula, Peter, welcome aboard. Good concert the other night, I hope? And last but not least, these must be…'

He shot an interrogative glance at Swithenbank, who said sardonically, 'Surely you can tell which is which.'

Kingsley laughed. He really was doing the jovial host bit, thought Pascoe. A trifle hysterically perhaps?

'Miss Starkey! Jean. Any dear friend of dear John's is wel r r come here. And Detective-Inspector Pascoe! Or should I call you mister?'

'As you will,' said Pascoe, who was wondering whether the look of shock on Ursula Davenport's face was caused by the revelation of his job or Starkey's status. Her husband seemed indifferent to both bits of information and Pascoe, seeing him now under the more revealing lights of the hall, began to suspect that he was held very lightly together by drink.

'Ursula, you know your way around, show Jean where to put her things while we go forward and prepare some drinks for you.'

As they went along the hall towards an open door out of which came a hubbub of voices raised to combat James Last on the stereo, Kingsley seized Pascoe by the elbow and slowing him down a little murmured, 'I don't know how you'd like to work, Inspector, but most of these people will be going within the hour. Only those you want to see, or so I believe, that is the Rawlinsons, the Davenports and, of course, myself, will be staying on for a bite of supper. Perhaps you'd like to start by having a couple of drinks and getting a general impression of our local community, leaving the close grilling to later? Less embarrassing, too. I'll just say you're an old chum!'

Pascoe nodded agreement, wondering what it was that made a man he could imagine getting wrathfully indignant if the police tried to breathalyze him so eagerly cooperative.

There were about twenty people in the room, mostly dressed with the relative informality of the age, though none was quite so fashionably casual as Swithenbank. Pascoe observed him as he said his hellos to people before settling quietly against the mantelpiece with a drink, his eyes on the door. A couple approached him, a man with a curious limping gait and a woman wearing the kind of drab black dress in which nineteenth-century governesses hoped to avoid arousing either the envy of their mistress or the lust of their master. Swithenbank greeted her with a non-contact kiss, him with a pre-fifteen-rounds handshake and spoke animatedly, saying in a voice suddenly audible right through the room, 'No, glad to be back would hardly be accurate.'