Deadheads

8

Pascoe was five minutes early for his appointment with Elgood. As he approached the office door, it opened and a man in a creased grey suit was ushered out by Miss Dominic who regarded Pascoe coldly, though whether on account of his earliness or because he'd used the lift he could not tell. The departing man headed virtuously for the stairs.

Creep, thought Pascoe and went in.

'You're early,' said Dick Elgood. 'I hope this means you're in a hurry. I know I am. I'm up to my eyes.'

'I'll try not to keep you long,' said Pascoe. 'Just a couple of questions.'

'Haven't you asked enough questions, for God's sake? Last time we spoke, I told you to drop the matter. But since then from all sides I hear you're still snooping around!'

Elgood sounded angry, but Pascoe thought he detected a note of anxiety as well. ‘I’ve got a job to do, Mr Elgood,' he said solemnly. Ellie had once remarked that the main perk of being a cop was that you could talk entirely in clichés and no one dared throw rotten eggs. 'It's not an easy job,' he continued, warming to his banalities, 'and it has this peculiarity. Once you start on something, you take it as far as you can until you're convinced that no crime's been committed. It doesn't matter who says yea or nay. You carry on regardless.'

'Is that right?' sneered Elgood. 'Even when it means setting your own wife on to spy on people?'

Pascoe sat upright, jerked out of his role-playing.

'You'd better explain that, Mr Elgood,' he said quietly.

'What's to explain?' said Elgood. 'Except if you're going to say it was coincidence that the day after I spoke to you at the station, your wife struck up an acquaintance with Mrs Aldermann.'

'I'm not sure I need say anything about that,' said Pascoe, 'except to wonder how you're so familiar with Mrs Aldermann's affairs.'

‘It's not only the police who hear things in a town this size,' answered Elgood challengingly.

He wants me to say what I know, thought Pascoe, still slightly off-balance as a result of the crack about Ellie. It could only mean Daphne Aldermann had mentioned her new acquaintance to Elgood. Damn. It must look suspicious, to say the least. Not that that bothered him, but the thought of the embarrassment to Ellie if the Aldermann woman took it wrong. . perhaps it had happened already; there'd been something in Ellie's manner last night;. a restraint … on the other hand, she had said she was having coffee with Daphne this morning, so. .

He shook the wisps of thought out of his head. Wisps. A good word for most of his thoughts on this case. Everything vague, nothing to grasp at.

Perhaps it was time to hit Elgood with a few facts.

'Let me tell you what we know to remove any temptation you may feel to lie,' he said. 'We know that the day before you spoke to me at the police station you met Mrs Daphne Aldermann in the top floor of the multi-storey car park. We know that she transferred from her car to yours and you drove away together. We know that she did not return to her car until approximately five hours later.'

'Your wife told you all this, did she?' said Elgood.

'No,' said Pascoe wearily. 'My wife has told me nothing about you. As far as I'm aware, she knows nothing about you. I may be wrong, of course. To get back on track, Mr Elgood, we have independent witnesses to your rendezvous with Mrs Aldermann in the car park. Are you denying it?'

Elgood shook his head, stood up and began to walk round the room with his graceful dancing step. He didn't look at all like Fred Astaire, yet there was in his simplest movement that same quality of lightness. He was immaculately suited in Oxford blue mohair with a striped claret and gold waistcoat with mother of pearl buttons.

'I'm not denying I met her. Why should I? My private life's my own affair, isn't it?'

‘It seems to me you made it mine when you complained that the husband of the woman you had this private rendezvous with was trying to kill you,' said Pascoe in exasperation. 'For God's sake, in simple terms of motive alone, it alters everything.'

'Because he's jealous?'

Elgood began to laugh. It sounded fifty per cent genuine.

'What's so funny?'

'You are, Pascoe,' said the little man. 'You keep on getting it wrong! Aldermann's not the jealous type, believe me. Any road, there was nowt to be jealous of. It was the first time me and Daphne had met, apart from a couple of lunch-time drinks where anyone could see us. Come between him and his precious roses, that might be a different matter!'

'Isn't that what you are doing, by blocking his advancement?' answered Pascoe, trying a different tack.

'Mebbe,' said Elgood, serious again. 'But that's for him to decide. Me, I'm just doing what's best for the firm. It'll all be sorted next Wednesday, by the time he gets back.'

'Back? From where?' asked Pascoe.

'He's going off on Monday to that fancy school near Gloucester that his lad goes to. No wonder he's short of a bob or two, paying out on them places! I've brought the next board meeting forward till Wednesday, so he should be safely out of the way.'

He spoke with the satisfaction of absolute authority, but Pascoe was much struck by the disproportionate influence this (by all accounts) quiet, unassuming man Patrick Aldermann seemed to have over the lives and decisions of others.

'Out of the way? Yet you say you don't feel threatened?' he mused aloud.

'No. I want that forgotten,' said Elgood. 'How many times do I have to tell you? My private life's my private life. Keep out of it! I've seen you today, Mr Pascoe, to give you a last warning. Any more prying by you, or your men, or your missus for that matter, I'll treat as police harassment. And I'll go a long way over your head, aye, and over Andy Dalziel's too, to get it stopped. I've got friends in most high places, Mr Pascoe. So think on.'

Pascoe rose slowly.

'Friends,' he said. 'High places. Threats. Nasty sneers about my wife. I quite liked you when first we met, Mr Elgood. I thought you were. . natural. Unspoilt. An original. But suddenly the mould is beginning to look very familiar.'

To his credit, Elgood looked uncomfortable.

'Listen, Pascoe. About your wife, I meant no offence. The rest stands, but a man's wife's a different matter.'

'And you are something of an expert on the difference,' murmured Pascoe making for the door.

The telephone rang. Elgood snatched it up as though relieved at this reunion with the outside world.

'Yes?' he snapped, turning his back on Pascoe who opened the door. He felt his exit if not ignominious was at least undistinguished.

'Pascoe!' said Elgood. 'It's for you. Try to keep it short.'

It was Wield.

'Hoped I'd catch you, sir,' he said. 'I had a moment this morning, so I thought I'd knock off one or two of these little jobs from your list. First up was Mrs Burke's finances. Her husband left her comfortable, but not really comfortable enough for a motive. But I checked on that market stall of hers. The word is it's a little goldmine. More interesting though is how she got the lease in the first place. There was a bit of queue-jumping there, I gather. A bit of calling in of old favours.'

'I'm listening,' said Pascoe.

He listened for another three of four minutes, ignoring Elgood's terpsichorean expressions of impatience.

'Thanks, Sergeant,' he said finally and replaced the receiver.

'Finished, Inspector?' said Elgood. 'Perhaps I can have my office back, eh?'

For answer, Pascoe sank slowly on to the hard chair once more.

'Just one more question, Mr Elgood, if you don't mind,' he said.

'I do bloody mind!' exploded Elgood. 'Can't you take a bloody hint?'

'I'm quite good at hints,' said Pascoe. 'I've just had a couple. Mr Elgood, before I go, I'd like to discuss with you for a little while the precise nature of your relationship with Mrs Mandy Burke.'

While her husband was not being offered coffee by Dick Elgood, Ellie Pascoe was sitting drinking her second cup in the Chantry with only Rose for company.

Not by nature a nervous woman, she had approached this meeting with the trepidation of one who feels herself in the wrong with little clear idea of how she got in it and less of how she can get out of it. She would dearly have loved to talk things over with Peter, but that had been impossible without revealing the cause of her concern, which would have made her undeniably guilty of the treachery she stood accused of. Yet she had sensed something evasive in her husband's manner also which suggested to her that he already knew of the liaison between Daphne and Elgood.

Nervously she lit a cigarette. It was a silly and expensive habit but the body had its needs which were often as dangerous to deny as to satisfy.

She found herself beginning to hope Daphne would stand her up again. Not that it would put her any more in the right, but it would place Daphne just a little in the wrong. Rose, peevish at having only her introspective mother for company, was beginning to turn and twitter in search of a wider audience. Any moment now she would advertise her neglected state by a bellow which would set the tinted coiffures of the Chantry clientele a-bobbing their disapproval.

Time to go. Ellie stubbed out her cigarette and finished her coffee. The door opened. Daphne came in.

She looked untypically flustered and sank into her tweed-upholstered chair with a sigh of relief. Rose let out a gurgle of welcome.

'Sorry I'm late,' she said. 'Hello, Rosie. Yes, please, two coffees, I think. No, no scones.'

The waitress who, like all of her kind, leapt forward eagerly the instant Daphne appeared, went off to the kitchen.

'Nothing the matter, I hope?' said Ellie.

'Not really. It's just that I was coming straight into town after dropping Diana at St Helena's, but I realized I'd forgotten my purse, so I had to drive home for it. Not that that would have made me so late, but when I got back to the house, there was a car in the drive and a man wandering round the side of the house. I asked him what he wanted and he said he was from the Water Board and he was just trying to locate the house's main stop-cock. When I asked him why, he said that our water-rate bill hadn't been paid and he'd called round to say that if it wasn't paid instantly, proceedings for recovery would be taken, and not finding anyone at home, he thought he would locate the stop-cock in case it became necessary to cut the water off!'

'Good Lord!' said Ellie. 'What did you say?'

'I sent him away with a flea in his ear, of course. I would have rung Patrick, but he's gone off to London today, won't be back till Saturday morning. I poked around in his desk and found the water bill. Sure enough, it wasn't paid, but that can't give them the right to wander round at will, can it?'

'Depends on how many threatening letters you've had,' said Ellie. 'This man, did he show you any authority?'

'A badge or something, you mean? No. He didn't get the chance.'

'And he was driving a car, you say, not one of those blue and white vans?'

'No. An old Ford Escort. What's the point of all these police-type questions, Ellie?' demanded Daphne.

'Something Peter said last night,' answered Ellie. 'Look, I really shouldn't be saying this, but in the circumstances. . And he's going to be coming round to see you in any case. There's been quite a lot of break-in's recently at medium to big houses, a bit isolated, and they've had a tip that Rosemont's on the list.'

'What!'

'Yes, but Peter thinks there's a good chance there'll be nothing in it. Only it struck me, this chap you saw this morning might have been casing the place.'

Daphne looked so alarmed that Ellie was sorry she'd spoken.

'It's probably nothing,' she said hastily. 'I'll get Peter to check, if you like.'

'Yes, yes, I would like,' said Daphne.

After a moment's silence, she added, 'I suppose all this came up when you were giving your husband a blow-by-blow account of my visit yesterday?'

'No, I didn't tell him you'd been, nor anything of what you said,' said Ellie evenly.

'Cross your heart?' said Daphne, faintly mocking.

'And Guide's Honour. But he did say he was going to see Mr Elgood this morning. I don't know why, but if it turns out to have anything to do with you, please believe me, Daphne, I haven't told him.'

Their gazes met and locked for a moment.

Then Daphne smiled wanly and said, 'I believe you. I thought a lot about things last night and it struck me that the picture of you as a police spy was almost as ridiculous as you wearing a funny hat at the Tory Conference.'

'Thanks,' said Ellie.

'I'm usually pretty good at first impressions,' continued Daphne, 'and my first impression was that you were likely to be honest to the point of embarrassment, perhaps even tedium.'

'Thanks, again,' said Ellie. 'I'm not sure that my gratitude is going to last out if you continue on those lines, though. And don't get carried away. Remember, I confessed to having chatted about you with Peter. I may not be your dyed-in-the-wool agent provocateur, but I'm not your sea-green incorruptible either.'

'You're the best I've got,' said Daphne, finishing her coffee. 'Look, if you've got the time, I'd like to talk with you about Dick and me, and Patrick too. What happened, and everything.'

'Are you sure you want to?' asked Ellie, troubled.

'Can't I trust you?'

'Not unless you can trust me,' said Ellie. 'All right. Shoot.'

'Not here,' said Daphne. 'If Special Branch haven't bugged this place for your sake, the WI certainly have for mine. Let's stroll around, if that's all right.'

A slight head movement brought the eager waitress.

'My turn, I think,' said Daphne, opened her handbag. Then her composure vanished.

'Oh damn!' she said. 'With all that fuss, I forgot to pick up my purse anyway. Ellie, would you mind?'

'You can always tell the very rich,' said Ellie opening her bag. 'They never carry money.'

Daphne laughed, but the waitress on her behalf was clearly not amused.

Elgood caved in quite suddenly. Pascoe was surprised. Even by using the old trick of implying much greater knowledge than he had, he hadn't been able to sound very knowledgeable. If Elgood had simply stuck to his first story that his intercession on Mandy Burke's part in the matter of the market lease had been a simple act of charity to ensure that the widow of a former employee didn’t fall on hard times, Pascoe might well have ended up believing him.

All that he had besides was the business of the car not being parked in the drive and his own recollection of Elgood's defensively aggressive response when he had tried to associate Burke's death with those of Eagles and Bulmer.

Plus, of course, Elgood's reputation as a Lothario, Mrs Burke's lively manner, and above all her easy reception of his questioning as though perhaps she had been forewarned.

But the strongest suspicions are straw to the fire of a respectable citizen's indignation, and Pascoe was ready to retreat at the first digit of the Chief Constable's number.

He pressed his insinuations. The receiver was lifted, the finger poised.

Then Elgood said wearily, 'To hell with it. What am I doing? I'm acting like a bloody criminal and I've done nowt. I'll be calling for my lawyer next.'

He sat down behind his desk and pressed a button on his intercom.

'Miss Dominic,' he said. 'Let's have some coffee, love. Aye, for two.'

He looked his age suddenly. Sixty and tired. But he managed a wan smile as he spoke.

'You, Pascoe,' he said, 'I've got you worked out. You'll not leave this alone, will you? Christ, I started something when I talked to you, didn't I. Andy Dalziel's not daft. I could chuck you out of here and you'd be right off round to talk to Mandy Burke again. Right? Of course it's bloody right. Well, listen. I don't want that. Not that I've done anything criminal, you understand, but I don't want any aggro, not just at the moment. So what I'm going to tell you now is to get things straight and get you out of my hair. And it's off the record. Right?'

The efficient Miss Dominic entered with two cups of coffee on a tray. She set it on the desk, glanced assessingly at Pascoe, and left.

Pascoe said, 'It's not in my power to give you that assurance, sir. Not in advance.'

Elgood opened a drawer, produced a bottle of almost colourless liquid and poured a shot into each of the coffee cups.

'Plum brandy,' he said. 'You can hardly smell it. All right. You decide when you like. Me, I'll just deny everything! But this is what happened. Yes, you're dead right. I was having a thing with Mandy Burke. She'd been down to my cottage a couple of times. She was keen, you follow me? Too much for poor old Chris Burke.

'Well, we met by accident that lunch-time. I'd been having a business lunch in the White Rose, I recall. There was me, and our sales director, and Patrick Aldermann was there as well for some reason, and a couple of chaps from the Council. It wasn't a big deal, fitments for a new old folk's home or something, but these Council lads like their pound of flesh in the form of best fillet steak. Afterwards the others all went off, but I slipped into the bar to wash the talk out of my throat. And who should be there but Mandy. We had a quick one together and I think we both began to feel our oats, you know how it is. We'd both drunk enough to be a bit reckless, so when she said How about a little ride? I said, Why not? and we went out to the car park and got in her car. I thought she'd be heading for some nice quiet country lane, but no, she just pointed the car homewards. I sobered up pretty quick when I realized where we were going, I tell you! But there was no stopping her, so all I could do was crouch low in the car and hope I wasn't spotted!

'I had another fit when I came out of her garage round the back of the house and saw the decorators' stuff, but she said they'd buggered off for the day and we'd be all right. So I went in. Since I was there anyway, there didn't seem any point in arguing the toss any more!

'To cut a long story short, we enjoyed ourselves for about an hour and I was just saying I ought to be getting back when we heard a noise outside. Well, we thought the decorators had come back. Before I could stop her, Mandy jumped off the bed and ran to the window. She's like that, never thinks, just acts on the spot. She pulled back the curtain and let out a huge shriek. No wonder. It were like a French farce, there was Chris, like a monkey on a stick, perched on a ladder and peering in!

'I can only guess what'd happened. Perhaps he saw us in town. Perhaps he'd been on to us for a while. Any road, he'd come home, parked his car up the street and walked to his house. He likely checked that Mandy's car was in the garage, then tried to get into the house, quiet like. But Mandy's a bit of an old hand at this game, I always reckoned, and she'd slipped the bolts home in the front and back doors, just to be on the safe side. Then, seeing her bedroom curtains drawn and the ladder standing there handy, he decides to climb up it! Jealousy's a funny thing, Mr Pascoe. These poetic fellows write about men climbing mountains for love. It took jealousy to get old Chris Burke up a ladder! He'd no head for heights and he wasn't a very nifty mover. Two left feet at the office dance, I'd noticed. Now the shock of seeing Mandy all of a sudden, like, standing there shrieking, stark naked, with me behind her, must have made him jump. The ladder toppled sideways and he went out of sight. I'll never forget that moment, Pascoe. Never.'

He shook his head at the memory, finished his coffee, diluted the lees with another shot of plum brandy and downed that also.

'We got down there straight away. He was stone dead. Mandy was hysterical and I wasn't much better myself. But finally I got her calmed down and we got dressed. Whatever we did, it wasn't going to help matters if we were discovered running around in the nude, was it? By now it was beginning to dawn on us just how awkward things were. Don't get me wrong, Pascoe. The man was dead and we were shocked and sorry. He was my colleague, her husband. But he wasn't a very likeable man, old Chris, not the kind of man you'd mourn for longer than was decent. Neither of us wanted him dead, but now it had happened, neither of us wanted to see ourselves all over the Sundays. The head of I.C.E.'s a Dutchman, a very good-living, religious sort of man. He'd not take kindly to having the Chairman of one of his subsidiaries featured in anything as titillating as this was likely to be. As for Mandy, already she was seeing headlines: DID HE FALL OR WAS HE PUSHED? That sort of thing.

'So when I suggested I should get out of the way, it wasn't just self-interest, you follow me? It was for both our sakes. No one had come round to the house or tried to ring, so presumably none of the neighbours had spotted anything. I got down in the back of the car, Mandy drove me back into town and then went home and discovered the body. Simple! We didn't attempt to alter the immediate circumstances of his death at all. He climbed a ladder, he fell off. We just altered the reasons a bit, that's all. No crime committed, no crime intended. Just a bit of diplomatic rearrangement.'

He looked at Pascoe as though in search of an acquiescent nod.

Pascoe said evenly, 'Everything you did from the moment you failed to call the police was criminal in fact, Mr Elgood. And Mrs Burke, of course, perjured herself at the inquest.'

'Does that count? Legally, I mean?' asked Elgood naively.

'It's a court of law like any other,' said Pascoe. 'And the law doesn't like being lied to. And it tends to regard the suborners of witnesses just as seriously.'

'Suborner?' said Elgood.

'I presume your assistance to Mrs Burke in setting up her business was an inducement to, or reward for, silence?'

'Bollocks!' exploded Elgood. 'No such thing. The bloody woman started talking marriage a couple of months later, so I dropped her pretty bloody quick! The market stall was just something that came up, a sort of farewell present, that was all, something to keep her busy. I've had practically nowt to do with her since.'

'But you did ring her and warn her in case I came round, didn't you?'

'Aye. And I was bloody right to, wasn't I?' grumbled Elgood. 'All right, Inspector, now you've got the story. So what happens next?'

'You wouldn't like to put it all in a written statement, would you?' asked Pascoe hopefully.

'Do I look bloody daft!' said Elgood. 'Listen, I've told you this so you can stop sniffing around, stirring things up. It's not a good time for trouble.'

'You mean your Dutch boss wouldn't like it?'

'A bit of scandal just now could seriously weaken my position,' said Elgood. 'Particularly when it's both juicy and comic.'

'Not to mention criminal,' said Pascoe. 'And this is why you choked me off when I came round to see you about the Aldermann business?'

'Partly,' said Elgood. 'But also, like I've said, because I realized I was just being stupid about that. Why do you keep niggling away at it, for God's sake, Pascoe? You haven’t really come across anything to make you suspicious, have you?'

'Your own behaviour has been enough for that, wouldn't you say, Mr Elgood?' said Pascoe, rising and proffering his hand. 'I'll have to talk over what you've just told me with my superiors, I'm afraid.'

'As long as you remember I've told you nowt,' said Elgood, shaking his hand. 'And Mandy Burke won't talk to you with a witness present either.'

'We'll see,' said Pascoe. 'Oh. One last thing before I go. What was it that Mrs Aldermann said to you that made you suspicious of her husband in the first place?'

Elgood shook his head sadly.

'Nothing. I've told you. Nothing. Just leave it, Pascoe. Please.'

'He was attentive. Interested. Amusing. All in a rather old-fashioned way. Old too, yes, but old-fashioned is how it struck me. Not fuddy-duddy. Certainly not that! But playing to rules that pre-dated this modern permissive make-your-choice-you're-a-free-agent stuff. Very sexy with it? Six inches shorter and thirty years older than me — I would never have believed it possible! I suppose, perhaps, I wanted a father-figure, but that's no excuse. And I did drink a lot of wine that lunch-time. But even that usually makes me sleepy rather than randy!'

Daphne laughed, then put her hand over her mouth, half in embarrassment as though she'd started laughing in church.

In fact, she almost had. She and Ellie were sitting on a bench set on a small green formed where a crescent of red-and-cream bricked almshouses reached its arms out possessively as if to embrace a little age-blackened tall-steepled church, built in 1669 to replace one destroyed three years earlier when a local lunatic, jealous of Yorkshire's good name, had decided to start a fire which would be to London's as a pitch-link to a taper. The fire had gone no further than the medieval church. God had sent his rain to put it out, the City Fathers had rebuilt in a more Protestant mould in thanksgiving, and two hundred years later their Victorian successors had added charity to piety in the form of the almshouses.

It formed a pleasant quiet backwater within a hundred yards of the city's main shopping streams, too quiet for some of the old people who lived in the crescent (now an official civic sheltered-housing project), who complained, half-jocularly, that it was a bit too convenient for the boneyard most of them could see from their sitting-room windows.

'Are things bad with you and Patrick?' asked Ellie.

'No. Or rather I don't know. I never thought about it until recently. We seemed to move along in such a tranquil state. Patrick's so unworried about things. You know that feeling, when you're sitting in the sun at a table in some Italian square and you've had a couple of glasses of wine, and you feel perfectly at one with the world? Well, Patrick seems to be like that permanently!'

'That doesn't sound a bad way to be,' said Ellie.

'To be, perhaps. To live with is different. It's all right when you're in the moment too. But moments like that pass. A breeze comes up, you get a little chilly, there's the dishes to wash, you're woken up in the night by your daughter's bad cough, your period comes, you're reminded in a hundred different ways that life is movement. And yet there he is, your helpmeet, your husband, back there somewhere, quite content, quite still! After a while it stops being an irritant, it becomes a worry.'

'And you ease your worry by jumping into bed with a sixty-year-old Don Juan?' said Ellie.

'I thought you'd be more help than this,' said Daphne accusingly.

'Sorry, sorry, sorry.'

'And perhaps we should get it straight. I didn't jump. I moved hesitantly, uncertainly. It was stupid, but you know what put me in Dick's way to start with? My desire to talk about Patrick! I wanted to know how things were at work. I'd detected signs of a change in recent weeks, a sort of suppressed excitement, or unease, I couldn't tell which, he never shared it with me. I'd begun to wonder if his contentment mightn't all be a front and perhaps things were seriously wrong somewhere in his life. I see now it must have looked like manna from heaven to Dick. I didn't know to start with, of course, that he'd already decided to block Patrick's promotion to the board! We met for drinks a couple of times, usually at lunch-time. He never put a foot wrong. A hand occasionally, just brushing me half accidentally, or a sympathetic squeeze of the arm, or the knee. I knew there was desire there too, don't mistake me. I didn't mind it. I suppose I even responded to it. But it was still innocent.'

Ellie's ears pricked at the choice of word, but she had sense enough not to make it an issue..

'To do Dick justice,' Daphne continued, 'he never made a direct proposition, though perhaps he was clearing the decks, so to speak, the Friday before I went to the cottage when we had a lunch-time drink together and he suddenly spelt it out that he was actively opposing Patrick's elevation to the board. He said he was sorry if I'd been relying on this financially, but I had to understand, he didn't think Patrick was the man for the job. I brooded about this all Saturday. I'd never really thought of our having money problems. I vaguely knew how large our expenses were. And I suppose I vaguely wondered how Patrick managed to get by with no apparent trouble on what I assumed couldn't be a huge salary. But that Sunday, when I'd been more than usually irritated by that secret-happy manner of his, I let fly. I still wasn't really worried, you understand. I knew there'd be some investment income, from Patrick's own capital and also from the money I'd inherited from Daddy. Patrick had taken charge of it when we married and tied it up, so I thought, in some long-term high-yield investment. All I wanted was to pierce his shell, to get some kind of response out of him.

'Well, I got more than I bargained for.

'He told me without batting an eyelid that my little inheritance hadn't existed as such for seven or eight years. It had just been eaten away by necessary capital expenditure! I couldn't believe it! I asked about his own money. There'd been some other money left to him by some old client at Capstick's. He told me that had gone too and that in fact as far as capital went, we had precious little to fall back on. And he admitted that even with his salary as Chief Accountant since Mr Eagles died, it was difficult to make ends meet. You have to understand he spoke with no anxiety whatsoever!

'I demanded to know how we could go on living at the rate we did. He said that, yes, it was hard, but he had every confidence in the future. In fact, things should be looking up very soon now. I screamed at him that if he imagined he was just going to walk on to the Perfecta board, he had another think coming. He looked puzzled and said that getting on the board would be nice and he could see no real obstacle, but even if he didn't, it wouldn't be the end of the world. I was furious now, furious and a bit frightened. I asked him how the hell he, an accountant, could justify continuing to live in a house as large as Rosemont with all those gardens to maintain when we could solve our problems of income and capital at a blow by selling up and moving to somewhere more manageable.

'That got to him at last. It must have been the mention of selling Rosemont that did it. Not that he got angry or anything. He just went on very earnestly about how something had always come up in the past to maintain his position at Rosemont and that he had every reason to believe all future obstacles would fade away with similar ease.

'I was sick at heart. All this meant to me was that he'd conned himself into believing the seat on the board was his. I rang Dick. I had to talk to him, I said. He suggested we should spend next day together. We arranged to meet in the car park. I'd heard stories about his seaside cottage, of course, but I didn't see this as a lovers' tryst. I was frightened by what seemed to me to be Patrick's lack of balance. Also, of course, I was bloody furious that he'd spent all my money without a by-your-leave!

'So Monday morning came, I met Dick, we headed for the coast.'

She fell silent. Two old ladies circumambulating the green paused to admire Rose noisily, and to deplore silently this upstart occupation of their personal bench.

'At what stage,' enquired Ellie casually, 'did it seem better for your financial deliberations to be carried on in bed.'

The two old women moved on, one indignantly, one reluctantly.

'I don't know. It just happened. I suppose I drank a lot. I know I talked a lot. It was funny; as I talked, I began to see what Patrick had meant. Things had tended to fall his way, if you looked back. He could almost be forgiven for his stupid optimism. I started off by wanting to complain about him, yet I ended up half defending him!'

'But not yourself?'

'Evidently not. I don't recollect much about getting undressed. I remember the actual event all right. Well, he was, after all, the only other man I'd ever been with. It was quite pleasant, I suppose, but it felt very different. I mean felt physically, that is. He was very bony. Even his muscles felt hard and knotted and bony. And he seemed very big, you know, there. I'm no expert, but he did seem to be disproportionately large.'

'Big for his size, you mean?' said Ellie.

Daphne giggled.

'Yes, that's it, exactly. Afterwards he said it had been great, but I'm not sure he really meant it. I don't think his mind was really on it either. I'd worried him, I realize now. I'd no idea! Somehow he got the idea I was warning him that Patrick contrived to dispose of everyone who got in his way! So he went running off to the police like a terrified hamster! It's laughable, really. These men who call us neurotic and fanciful, give them half the chance and they're standing on their executive desks, screaming at imaginary mice!'

'You're learning,' approved Ellie. 'They're a laugh a minute.'

'Not quite so frequent, perhaps, when they're policemen, and they start chasing the mice,' said Daphne.

There followed a long silence in which they studied the blurred and mildewed tombstones visible through the green-painted railings that had been put up when the churchyard wall had been declared dangerous. The tombstones themselves looked well decayed, their ranks crooked, their heights irregular and their stances awry and stooping, like a rabble of aged veterans drawn up on a last parade.

'Well?' said Daphne.

'Well what?' said Ellie. 'I don't particularly want to attack Peter for doing his job. And if I defend him, I might seem to be implying that your husband may have a case to answer. You see my dilemma?'

'Not really. Surely Peter can't really think Patrick may have a case to answer? I haven't met this husband of yours, but he sounds a pleasant rational man.'

'I haven't met this husband of yours either,' evaded Ellie. 'You'll have a chance to meet mine soon. He'll want to see you and Patrick before you go off next Monday.'

'Well, it'll have to be lunch-time on Saturday at the earliest,' said Daphne.

'I'll tell him. Come on, Rosie, time we were moving. I suspect we're preventing these two old dears from enjoying their daily contemplation of last things.'

She rose, feeling like a coward, but not knowing what else to say or do, and organized the baby into her papoose-basket.

As they moved away, the two old women took over the bench with the speed of legal tenants moving in behind the bailiffs.

'I always thought it was the young who took the place of the old,' said Daphne, not resisting Ellie's flight.

'Never believe it,' said Ellie. 'We're turning into a geriatric society. The old are fighting back. They have the great advantage of an irresistible recruitment programme. It's called living.'

They walked away together, two tall women, one dark, one fair, in a state of friendship which they both knew might well turn out also to be a state of truce.