Ruling Passion

Chapter 5

The first thing Pascoe did on reaching Brookside Cottage this time was to search the place. Lounge, dining-room and scorch-marked kitchen; then upstairs through the bedrooms, bathroom and junk-room. When he was satisfied that he was alone, he returned to the lounge and began to run his eye along the bookshelves. What he wanted wasn't there, and he turned away in disappointment and stood thoughtfully looking around.

'The bureau!' he said aloud. It was a nice piece of furniture and when he found it was locked he felt some compunction about breaking into it. But one thing he had learned from Dalziel was that once you launched yourself on a course of action, you followed it through with force and determination to no matter how bitter an end.

The lock yielded easily to the knife borrowed from the kitchen. He nodded in satisfaction as be picked up the book and pushed back on the writing-paper ledge. Quickly he thumbed through it and nodded again. It was always nice to be right. He'd learned that from Dalziel too. Or perhaps what the fat man had said was that it was nice to be always right. He was an egotistical bastard. But Pascoe wished he were here now.

He sat down for a while and applied his mind to the problem. It wasn't a problem at all really, he finally admitted. The facts as he saw them suggested a theory. It was a theory. It was a theory he could easily test. It would also be easy to pick up the phone and ring Backhouse, but that wasn't the way. Not this time.

With a sigh he rose and went out into the garden. He stood beside the sundial for a moment and looked down. The carpet in the dining-room still had the dark, disfiguring stains on it, but out here rain and dew and sunlight and the cycle of growth had left no trace on the thrusting green shoots.

His shadow was on the dial and he stood aside to see where the point of the gnomon fell, but an edge of white cloud trailed across the sun momentarily and he did not wait until it cleared. Instead he went down to the stream and with little difficulty leapt across it into Pelman's woods. The water was slow-moving and not very deep, but beautifully clear for all that. Long water-grasses wavered in it, pointing downstream, and he followed their directions. For twenty or thirty yards it was possible to walk parallel with the stream, but then the trees began to close in on either side, and the tangle of briar and whin forced him either to move farther out into the woods or to descend the banks of the stream itself. Unhesitatingly he chose the latter.

At first he attempted to stay dry-shod by treading carefully along a narrow margin, but this soon disappeared and after the first immersion of his feet he bothered no more but trod boldly on.

Soon the end of his journey was in sight, the ridge of land which carried the track up from the road to Pelman's house. The culvert which carried the stream under the track was visible as a dark semi-circle above the water's surface which sparkled in even the few rays of sunshine penetrating the vault of trees.

Pascoe stopped about thirty yards away. A tremendous lethargy seemed to have gripped his leg-muscles, as though the stream had bathed his feet in some slow poison. The woods were full of noises which asserted themselves now that the splashing of his progress down the stream had ceased. Birds called sharply, musically, warningly, languorously; leaves rustled in the breeze, still a rich sound though the parchment edge of autumn was beginning to be heard; a bee murmured by; and somewhere in front of him he heard, or imagined he heard, the buzzing of many flies.

Then came a sound he hadn't imagined. Something moved among the trees to his left. He crouched low against the bank and remembered walking up the lane to Culpepper's, hearing the Passage of his pursuer through the night.

Cautiously he raised his head above the level of the bank and glimpsed a figure moving slowly towards the stream. Too quick a glimpse for identification, but long enough to recognize the object the man carried before him, carefully, like in a Holy Day procession.

A shotgun.

Pascoe began to move. It was foolish. It was bound to cause noise. But it was beyond him to lie quietly against the bank while the gun-bearer approached. After a few steps, he realized that even the little care he was exercising was just a waste of time. The noise he was making sounded tremendous, like a herd of cows splashing through a ford. He began to run in real earnest.

'Who's there?' called a voice.

He had to get out of the water-course. The trees on the voice's side were thinner, but he didn't fancy clambering up there. Instead he tore at the sallows which grew like a fence on the other side and pulled himself up.

'Stop!' commanded the voice.

If, thought Pascoe, if once I can get a few nice trees between me and him, if once I can head him down to the road, if once I can get back to the village, that'll be it; no lone investigations for me, I swear it, God, make a bargain, please, if once…

Behind him the shotgun spoke, a curiously undramatic noise, something whipped along the side of his head, he turned and slid slowly back down the bank into the water.

On the opposite bank, about thirty yards upstream, the smoking gun in his hands, was Angus Pelman.

Was that one barrel of two? wondered Pascoe. Will he have to reload?

But it didn't matter. For gloriously, wonderfully, there were other voices in the woods and Backhouse appeared behind Pelman, and Ellie came leaping into the water towards him with love and terror in her face.

Curiously, he did not feel too bad till they told him that he had been hit by a small branch splintered from a tree by the shotgun blast. It was then he recalled what he was doing here.

'If you go on up to the culvert,' he told Backhouse slowly and clearly, 'and look inside, I think you'll find Colin's body.'

Then he knelt on the soft cushion of rich leaf mould and was very sick.

'You know,' said Dr Hardisty, 'dressing your wounds is becoming a habit.'

'Yes,' said Pascoe.

'I'm normally a very discreet kind of man, minding my own business,' continued the doctor. 'But do you mind me, on this occasion asking what the hell's going on?'

They were back at the Crowthers'. Pascoe had not the least desire to talk further to the doctor, and he shot an appealing glance at Ellie who politely but firmly took the man to the door.

'You did that well,' Pascoe said.

'I know,' she said.

They spoke no more for a while. They had stayed in the woods until one of Backhouse's men armed with a torch had penetrated the dark barrel of the culvert. When his shout of mingled discovery and aversion had reached them, they had gone away and let themselves be driven back to the village.

'How did you know?' asked Ellie finally.

'I began to wonder. There were lots of things, lots of "ifs". If Colin didn't commit suicide, then someone wanted us to think he did. If someone wanted that, then presumably it was to direct suspicion from the real murderer. If it was worth planting the car and the note, then Colin must be dead. If Colin was dead, then his body must be hidden somewhere. And so on. Today when you said that those quotations came from Eloisa to Abelard I was suddenly certain. It was one of Colin's gags. Rather, it was going to be. You didn't see the bedroom, did you?'

'No,' said Ellie.

Briefly Pascoe described it, the pillow decoration, the sign.

'He'd been going to add something else. And with his passion for aptness, he picked on Pope's poem. I found a complete Pope in the bureau. All the lines in the so-called suicide note had been marked. Just listen to the stuff! Soft intercourse. I come, I come! He best can paint 'em who can feel'em most. Not the outpourings of despair, but all lovely dirty double meanings! Probably they did it together, Rose and Colin; Timmy and Carlo too. But he never got any further than jotting a few things down.'

'Why?'

'Oh, nothing dramatic. Dinner perhaps. Or they got a bit drunk. Something. Later of course, it happened.'

She was trembling, he realized. He stood up, felt dizzy for a second, then crossed to her and put his arms around her.

'But why, Peter?' she demanded. 'Why?'

'Perhaps Pelman will tell us that,' he answered.

'You might have been killed too,' she said.

'Perhaps. But I had to go up that stream. I kept on remembering that fellow, Bell, going on and on about the water, about something polluting the stream. He said things had suddenly got much worse in the past few days. And I thought of the heat and the time it takes for… well, it filled my mind and I had to see.'

He laughed uneasily and without humour.

'You know, in a way, I'm glad I was interrupted before I reached the culvert.'

'I'm glad Pelman was interrupted before he reached you,' said Ellie. 'Backhouse asked where you were after the inquest and seemed very keen to get after you. He must have suspected something.'

'What happened at the inquest, by the way?' inquired Pascoe.

'What?' said Ellie. 'Of course, you won't have heard. They brought a verdict of murder against Colin.'

Sometime later Pascoe was standing looking down at the water-ravaged face of Colin Hopkins. Curiously he felt very little, as if the day's events had been successfully cathartic.

'Yes,' he replied to Backhouse's question. 'Yes. I can identify him. Colin Hopkins.'

'Fine,' said Backhouse, and the concealing sheet was drawn over the face once more.

'This makes French look a little foolish,' said Pascoe as they left the mortuary. He felt the need to nurture his normality with a little idle chatter. Something was over. His interest now would be professional. And distant. He was ready to go home.

'Yes,' said Backhouse. He was rather withdrawn, even for him. Pascoe felt there was something he wanted to say, but was equally certain that it was not going to be said.

Perhaps he wants to thank me for my help, he thought. But he knew it wasn't that. And he wondered again why the man wasn't himself interrogating Pelman.

'You'll keep me in touch, sir?' he asked.

'Of course. Though you will remember you are just a witness, Inspector? Congratulations on your promotion, by the way.'

'Thank you.'

'We'll go back to the station now and you can sign your statement. You're heading back to Yorkshire straightaway?'

'Yes. Miss Soper too. We're driving in convoy. Unless you want me to stay for anything else?'

'No. I don't think so.'

They drove back slowly through the busy streets, a strong contrast with the quiet thoroughfares of Thornton Lacey.

Ellie was waiting in Backhouse's office at the station. A constable appeared with his typewritten statement, handed it to him and murmured something in Backhouse's ear. The superintendent left the room as Pascoe quickly scanned through the statement and signed it.

'Ready, love?' he said.

'Ready,' said Ellie. He took her hand.

At the door they met Backhouse looking perturbed.

'Goodbye, sir,' said Pascoe. 'We're on our way.'

'Inspector,' said Backhouse, 'I'm afraid I've got some rather strange and disturbing news for you. I've just been checking on a rumour which one of my sergeants had picked up. Do you know a man called Burne-Jones?'

'I know of him,' said Pascoe.

'Well, Mr Dalziel has been arrested for assaulting him and breaking his jaw!'

'Poor old Dalziel,' said Ellie as they headed to the car-park. 'Do you think he's flipped at last? Oh, Peter.'

'Yes?'

'Something I remembered. It got submerged in all this and it's probably irrelevant anyway. You said something about a diabetic? Well, Etherege, when he came and talked to us in the Jockey that day, he was holding a bottle of tonic water specially prepared for diabetics. Could it be important?'

Pascoe stopped and turned back to the police station.

'It might,' he said. 'I'd better get them to pass the word. Better to be safe than sorry!'