Ruling Passion

Chapter 7

The Culpeppers' house was an impressive structure. Built in traditional Cotswold stone, its lines and proportions were unequivocally though unobtrusively modern.

The gardens consisted principally of herbaceous borders and lawns running down to an encirclement of trees. Whether the Culpepper estate extended into the woods was not clear. The lawns themselves were beautifully kept. Only one of them, hooped for croquet, showed any signs of wear. Coming up the drive, Pascoe had glimpsed a bent figure in a bright orange coat slowly brushing away the leaves which the autumn wind had laid on one of the side lawns. A fluorescent gardener, he thought, and prepared himself for anything from a parlourmaid to a full-dress butler when he rang the bell. But it had been Culpepper himself, features etched with well-bred solicitude, who opened the door.

Pascoe could see that Ellie disliked him at once.

He recalled his own reaction to Marianne Culpepper and groaned inwardly at the thought of the evening ahead. Not that much social intercourse would be expected of them, surely. Or sexual either, he added to himself as they were shown into separate bedrooms. The bed at Brookside Cottage with its ornamental pillow came into his mind. Half the local police-force would have seen it. It was a good job he hadn't been having a bit on the side with the chief constable's wife.

The frivolity of the thought touched him with guilt. This was the way grief worked. It could only achieve complete victory for a comparatively short time. But it filled the mind with snares of guilt and self-disgust to catch at all thoughts and emotions fighting against it.

Ellie felt the same. She had raised her eyebrows humorously at his as Culpepper opened her bedroom door. But it was a brief flicker of light in dark sky.

The evening's prospects did not improve when Marianne Culpepper returned. Pascoe heard a car arrive as he was unpacking his over-night case and when he left his room a minute later to collect Ellie, he found her standing at the head of the stairs, unashamedly eavesdropping on a conversation below.

Culpepper's neutral tones were audible only as an indecipherable murmur, but his wife's elegantly vowelled voice carried perfectly. Pascoe was reminded of teenage visits to the local repertory theatre (now declined to bingo) where hopeful young actresses projected their lines to the most distant 'gods'.

Even half a conversation was enough to reveal that Marianne Culpepper had no knowledge whatsoever of her husband's invitation to Pascoe and Ellie. They exchanged rueful glances on the landing. Pascoe moved to the nearest door, opened it and slammed it shut. It might have been more politic to retreat for a while, but Pascoe found himself looking forward to putting all that good breeding below to the test.

'Let's go down, shall we?' he said in an exaggeratedly loud voice.

The Culpeppers presented a fairly united front as introductions took place.

'Didn't I see you in the village hall this morning?' asked Marianne of Pascoe. 'I didn't realize then. I thought you were just one of the policemen.'

Oh, I am, I am, thought Pascoe.

'Look,' the woman went on, 'I'm terrible sorry about your friends. I hardly knew them, the Hopkinses I mean, but they seemed very nice people.'

Everyone speaks as if we've lost them both, thought Pascoe. Perhaps we have.

'You'll be tired of expressions of sympathy I know. They become very wearing.' She paused as though communicating with herself only, then continued. 'Which brings me to this evening. You are very welcome indeed to our house, but Hartley and I have got our lines crossed somewhere. I've asked a couple of friends along to dinner and a few more people may drop in for drinks later. Please, it's up to you. If you'd rather duck out, have your meal early, and generally avoid the madding crowd, just say so. Don't be silly about it.'

The crossed lines cut both ways, Pascoe mixed his metaphors. Hartley knew as little of his wife's evening invitations as she did of his. Or did he?

'I think we'd like to join in,' said Ellie, rather to Pascoe's surprise, though it confirmed his own reaction. The reasons must be very different, however. 'If we're not going to be spectres at the feast, that is.'

'Not at all. Good, that's settled. It's just a cold collation on Saturdays, but I'd better go and get things organized before I change.'

She was wearing slacks and a chunky sweater and looked wind-blown, as if she had just returned from some fairly active outdoor activity.

'May I help?' asked Ellie.

'Why not?' she said with a smile. 'How are you at carving? Hartley's a near-vegetarian and doesn't take kindly to sawing up chunks of dead animals.'

'Are you interested in porcelain?' asked Culpepper when the two men were alone.

'I know little about it,' answered Pascoe cautiously. More therapy? he wondered. From Dalziel's burglars to Culpepper's culture. I must appear all things to all men.

'My own knowledge is very limited,’ said Culpepper modestly. 'Come and see my few pieces.'

He rose, led Pascoe across the entrance hall and unlocked a solid-looking oak door. When he opened it, Pascoe was surprised to see a metal grille, rather like the expanding doors used in old-fashioned lifts. Culpepper inserted another key and the grille slid back of its own accord.

Whether the value of the collection justified these elaborate precautions Pascoe could not say. The pieces were magnificently displayed. There were no windows in the room and the walls were broken by a series of different sized niches which held the porcelain. Each niche had its own light, controlled separately so that it was possible to centre the attention completely on each of the pieces in turn. The only free-standing pieces were two large capped urns which occupied plinths in the middle of the room. They were decorated in the Chinese style but Culpepper assured Pascoe that they were late eighteenth-century English imitations.

'Out of place here, really,' he said. 'But they were the first things I ever bought when I discovered I had enough money to start buying.'

'How much is it all worth?' was all Pascoe could find to say.

'Oh, several thousands,' said Culpepper vaguely. 'Much of it is not what the experts might call first-rate. But to me it is irreplaceable and therefore invaluable.'

He led the way out, crashing the grille door locked behind him.

'Valuable or not, I wish more people would take the precautions you do with their property,' said Pascoe, thinking of the ease with which his current burglar had been helping himself to small fortune. This time last night he had been working on the case. It seemed barely credible.

Dinner went quite well. Ellie and Marianne seemed to have taken to each other, though Pascoe would not have seen either as the other's 'type'. The guests, John and Sandra Bell, were a pleasant enough couple in their mid-thirties, he extrovert, outspoken, nearly hearty; she pretty, much quieter but far from subdued. The name touched a chord in Pascoe's mind. But it was only when the conversation, carefully vetted and censored for his and Ellie's benefit, came round to the local water pollution controversy that he recalled noticing Bell's name in the Amenities Committee minutes. He was a staunch down-streamer, and complained bitterly that the village brook was being polluted upstream by careless management of the cesspool drainage which many of the local properties still relied on. Culpepper, eating an egg mayonnaise with green salad, pushed his plate away from him with an expression of distaste.

'John, please,' said Mrs Bell. 'You're making Hartley nauseous and must be boring his visitors stiff.'

'I'm sorry,’ said Bell, grinning at Ellie. 'Forgive me. It's all right for the idle rich on this side of the village. They can be objective. But that stream runs at the bottom of my garden and I've got a young son. He catches enough without getting typhoid. But never fear. I have a plan. The next Amenities Committee meeting may get a surprise.'

He winked conspiratorially as Marianne began clearing away the plates.

The first after-dinner guest arrived as they were drinking their coffee. Marianne let him in. There was a perceptible interval before she returned with Angus Pelman. Pascoe assumed the time was spent in warning the man about the strangers in the house.

Pelman made no attempt to avoid the subject of the killings.

'Any news of Hopkins?' he asked brusquely after being introduced.

'I think not,' intervened Culpepper diplomatically. 'I wonder, Miss Soper, if you would care to see my collection of porcelain?'

'Oh, blast your porcelain, Hartley. Miss Soper isn't a child to have her mind diverted by a bag of sweets.'

Culpepper turned away and busied himself removing the foil cap from a fresh bottle of scotch. One two-thirds full stood in full view on the sideboard. Marianne glanced over at him with a faint pucker of worry between the eyes.

'We're all shocked by what's happened,' Pelman continued. 'They were nice people, our neighbours, members of our community.'

'Which not everybody made them particularly welcome to,' murmured Culpepper. 'Let me freshen your drink, Mr Pascoe.'

'Meaning?' demanded Pelman.

'That business at the Eagle, for a start,' replied Culpepper.

'That was between JP and the Hopkinses,' intervened Bell. 'Nothing to do with anyone else. They were well out of it. It's a much better pint at the Anne, and cheaper too.'

He grinned amiably, the pourer of oil on troubled waters.

'Who's JP?' asked Ellie.

'Palfrey, the owner of the Eagle and Child,' said Marianne Culpepper.

'Who, blameworthy though he is, should not be allowed all the blame,' said her husband blandly. 'And there were other things besides. Eh, Pelman?'

There was a ring at the front door bell.

'Hartley, would you answer that?' said Marianne, separating the antagonists. She tried to consolidate the forced armistice by-changing the conversation and Pelman seemed much readier to accept this from her.

'If this weather keeps up, we'll get some good riding tomorrow. Are you going out, John?'

'No such luck. I haven't reached Hartley's stage of executive elevation yet. I still have to bring my work home with me. Besides, Sandra says riding gives you a big bum.'

'John!' protested his wife. But she met Marianne's quizzical gaze with the unruffled smile of one whose own buttocks were as compact as a boy's.

'What is your job, Mr Bell?' asked Pascoe, trying to sound unlike a policeman. Nowadays he was never sure when he succeeded.

'I'm sales director of Nuplax, the kitchen utensil people. In Banbury.'

'That sounds very high-powered.'

'Oh, it'll do. But it's small time compared with Hartley. He's a top finance man with the Nordrill group.'

Pascoe looked impressed to conceal his ignorance. Nordrill he had heard of. An up-and-coming oil and mining consortium often in the news. But just what such a job meant in terms of responsibility and reward he could not conceive.

'That must be worth a few bob,' he said knowingly.

'It keeps him comfortable. Eh, Marianne?'

Bell's gesture included the woman as well as the unostentatious luxury of the room. Marianne smiled, but with little humour.

'I didn't realize Nordrill were centred in the Midlands,' said Ellie.

'Oh, they're not. But London's no distance with a decent car and a pied-a-terre if you don't fancy the drive back.'

Lucky old Hartley, thought Pascoe.

Lucky old Hartley re-entered accompanied by Dr Hardisty who, from the length of time they had taken, must have been giving as well as receiving information. With him was his wife, either younger or better preserved, with the brisk movements and reassuring smile that Pascoe associated with the nursing profession. It seemed a probable guess.

They hardly had time to express anxiety over Ellie's well-being and regret over Rose's death, at the same time studiously avoiding any reference to Colin, before the bell rang once more. This time Marianne went and after the inevitable delay, reappeared by herself.

'Hartley,' she said quietly. 'Do you have a moment?'

Culpepper left the room. Pascoe wandered over to the sideboard and freshened his drink generously. He was a firm believer in the social maxim from each according to his ability and there was evidence of a great deal of ability here.

Bell joined him.

'Does Palfrey do most of the social liquor trade round here?' Pascoe asked, holding the bottle of scotch like a conversation piece.

'Christ, no!' said Bell with his likeable grin. 'The odd bottle when you're stuck, perhaps. But who's going to pay his prices when you can get the same stuff for 15p less in town? Don't let our outward affluence deceive you, Mr Pascoe. Hartley may have an antique superior wine-merchant tucked away in the City, but the rest of us still push trolleys round the supermarkets.'

'Big of you to refuse to take advantage of your wealth,' said Pascoe, softening the comment with his own likeable grin. He had no desire to antagonize Bell. And he did want to talk about Palfrey. Why, he wasn't sure. Personal antipathy? Well, he had no official standing in this case, so the presence of personal prejudice could for once be ignored.

'How does Palfrey fit into the local scheme of things?' he went on. But his policeman's voice must have sounded through.

'You're very interested in old JP,' commented Bell curiously. 'Is it because of the row? If so, I really don't think I should comment. Not during a casual chat in a friend's house.'

Being without official standing clearly cut both ways. Pascoe tried another smile. It didn't feel quite as likeable as the last.

'Why JP?' he asked. 'Just his initials?'

Or is there some bloody masonic oath which prevents you from answering that?

Bell laughed.

'Yes, they are his initials.' He glanced around and dropped his voice. 'But they do service for other things besides. He's got ambitions to get on to the bench. God help all petty offenders if that happens! But they really stem from our vicar. He's a nice little Welshman, just one step out of the coalmine. He recalls in the old days in his village, a local copper-smelting firm hired a man to go around the streets every morning with two great buckets on a yoke. Everyone would empty their jerries into them!'

He laughed so heartily that the others stopped talking and turned to look. Like a disturbance at a funeral, thought Pascoe, surprised to find himself feeling embarrassed.

They used the stuff in some process at the copper-works,' explained Bell. 'Anyway, this man was known familiarly as Jim Piss! And the vicar, after his first taste of the bitter at the Eagle when Palfrey took over, told the story. The name stuck, but for politeness's sake, it became JP.'

Very droll, thought Pascoe. But it took him no further forward. He wasn't even very sure in which direction forward lay.

The Culpeppers were in the room again, he observed. But there had been no noticeable addition to the company. Which might or might not be odd.

Ellie was talking to the Hardistys and looking desperate. Pascoe could see why. Medical solicitude emanated from them almost visibly. He appproached to effect a rescue, but it proved unnecessary.

'Please excuse me,' she said to the medical twosome. 'I think I'll have an early night.'

Simple as that, thought Pascoe, smiling ruefully at his loss of role. In times of stress, the weakness of others is a useful source of strength. Ellie's self-possession was throwing him more and more into a confrontation with his own emotions, making him more and more of a policeman in order to retain his equilibrium.

But what the hell was there to investigate here? He looked hopefully around the room.

Ellie was at the door, reassuring Marianne that all her needs were catered for. She caught his eye and smiled briefly, then was gone. He felt a sense of relief, edged with guilt. With Ellie out of the way, there might be a chance to provoke some reactions. Pelman seemed the best bet. He had seemed much in favour of plain speaking on his arrival, though now he seemed content to turn the treadmill of social trivia with the rest. At the moment he was complaining about the cost of estate management.

'You're a working member of the community then?' asked Pascoe brightly. 'You don't just sleep here.'

The Bells and Hardistys exchanged a glance which told Pascoe he had been inept in his choice of words. John Bell seemed very amused, the others less so.

'Yes, Mr Pascoe. I have a dairy herd and one of the biggest hen batteries in this part of the world. I work for my living.'

A hint of sneering stress on 'work'? Pascoe wasn't sure.

'So do we all,' smiled Dr Hardisty, perhaps having felt it also. Pelman grunted and sipped his drink.

'If you like what you're doing, it's not work,' said Bell with mock sanctimoniousness.

'Do you like your job?' asked Sandra Bell suddenly. 'What is it you do, Mr Pascoe?'

Doesn't she know? Or is she just trying out her claws? She seemed a nice woman, but Pascoe felt far from competent to judge.

'I'm a policeman, Mrs Bell,' he said.

'Oh.' Collapse of thin woman.

'CID, aren't you?' said Pelman. 'Tell me, what's your professional prognosis in this case?'

'Angus!' protested Marianne.

'He needn't answer if he'd rather not,' said Pelman, staring hard at Pascoe.

'Another drink, anyone?' said Hartley Culpepper.

'Police procedure is quite simple in such matters,' said Pascoe. 'Three things mainly. The weapon is looked for. Absent persons who may be able to help are looked for. And a great number of people are interviewed, statements taken, information amassed. That's about it. Nothing very dramatic. In the majority of murder cases, the police know who did it within twenty-four hours of being called in. Often sooner.'

He scanned the group, poker-faced.

'And in this case?' asked Pelman, softly.

'Who knows? I'm not on the investigating team,' said Pascoe. 'I'm just a witness. Like the rest of you perhaps.'

'How important will finding the weapon be?' asked Mrs Hardisty to fill the ensuing silence.

'It's finding who it belongs to that's important in the case of a gun,' explained Pascoe.

Pelman laughed explosively, unhumorously.

'That's no problem. It belongs to me.'

No one rushed to fill the silence this produced. But Pascoe had no doubts about the thoughts swimming goldfish-like behind the surprised eyes. A joke in bad taste? Some kind of confession? A simple misunderstanding?

'Didn't Backhouse tell you?' asked Pelman.

'I said I'm not one of the investigating team,' said Pascoe.

'No. Of course not. But it's not a secret, is it? The thing is, when the superintendent spoke to me, one of the things he was interested in was my guns. Naturally. It had gone from my mind till I looked.'

'What had?' asked Marianne impatiently. 'For God's sake, this is serious, Angus. Don't make a golf-club anecdote out of it.'

Pelman took his scolding meekly and went on.

'One of my guns was missing. I had lent it to Colin Hopkins a week or so ago and he hadn't let me have it back. Not that there was any hurry. It wasn't up to much and I have plenty of others.'

'No doubt,' said Culpepper.

'So you think it was your gun that was used…?' Mrs Hardisty saw no need to finish her sentence.

'It seems probable.'

'Why did Colin want the gun?' asked Pascoe, listening carefully to the timbre of his own voice.

It was light, steady. He was doing remarkably well. The control was there. Fat Dalziel would be proud of him.

The lounge door burst open and he whirled like a startled cat, slopping his whisky over the rim of his glass.

In the door stood a tall, angular woman of some considerable age. Her skin was brown and creased like a tortoise's neck, but her eyes were bright and alert. The nylonoverall she wore was the luminous orange of a road-worker's safety jacket, clashing horridly with her dark violet slacks and fluffy red slippers. This, thought Pascoe with surprise, must be the gardener.

There's a man upstairs,' she said in a flat south Lancashire accent.

'It's all right, Mother,' said Culpepper in a reassuring tone. 'We have guests.'

'I'm not blind,' said the old woman scornfully.

'To stay, I mean. Mr Pascoe here. Pascoe, I'd like you to meet my mother, who does us the honour of living with us.'

'You could put it like that,' said the woman, staring at Pascoe with a marked lack of enthusiasm. 'It wasn't him.'

'Wasn't…?'

'Upstairs.'

'Then it was probably Miss Soper, our other guest,' said Culpepper triumphantly.

'It was a man,' she insisted.

Marianne Culpepper slid open a panel in an elegant walnut cabinet to reveal the contents of an expensive-looking hi-fi system.

The new Drew Spade album came this morning,’ she said brightly. 'Shall we listen? I haven't heard it myself yet, so I can't say what it's like.'

Another diversionary tactic. What a snarled-up lot of people they were! And the sound which began to thump out of the speakers was hardly music-for-the-bereaved, either. But it wasn't quite loud enough to prevent Pascoe from hearing the rest of the exchange between Culpepper and his mother.

'No, it must have been Miss Soper,’ said Hartley.

'Please your bloody self,' answered the old woman, shrugging her still broad shoulders. 'I'm off to my bed. I only hope I'm not murdered in it.'

The remark acted on Pascoe like an electrical impulse. He handed his glass to Culpepper, pushed between the man and his mother without apology and ran lightly up the stairs.

It was absurd. Probably the old woman had indeed just caught a glimpse of Ellie. But she seemed sensible enough. Something of a burden, perhaps, to Culpepper and his wife, but that was none of his business. To an investigating officer, everything is his business. One of Dalziel's dicta.

He pushed open Ellie's door quietly. She was sitting up in bed with the lights on, smoking a cigarette.

'Hi,' she said, unsurprised.

'Hi,' he said. 'Back in a sec.'

His own door was slightly ajar. The room was in darkness. The door moved easily at his touch and he stepped swiftly inside, trying to recall where the light-switch was.

His groping hand could not make contact with it, but he knew someone was there in the room with him. The image of a shotgun rose suddenly in his mind and he abandoned his search for the switch, moving noiselessly away from the line of light spilling in from the landing. As he dropped on one knee beside the wardrobe, he heard a noise. The curtains moved and the clear autumn sky leaned its pinholes of light against the glass till a figure blotted them out. Everything went still again.

Pascoe spoke.

'Colin?' he said uncertainly.

He stood up.

'Colin? It's Peter, Peter Pascoe. Is that you, Colin?'

He was by the small bedside table now. His hands plunged down on the lamp which stood there. The ball of his thumb caught the switch and the soft light blossomed into the room.

The figure by the window spoke.

'No, I'm sorry, Mr Pascoe,’ he said compassionately. 'It's not Colin.'

'So I see,' said Pascoe, looking steadily at the man before him. 'What are you doing in my room, Mr Davenant?'