Rough Cider

learned my trade with him. He was God to me.”

Remembering Superintendent Judd, I commented, “He put the fear of God into me.”

Voss brought his hands together in a reverential gesture with the fingers interlocking. “The finest nicker the West Country ever produced.”

“Always managed to pin it on someone?”

The wistful expression twitched into a scowl. “Remember where you are, sunny Jim.”

I checked my watch ostentatiously. “I’m not likely to forget.”

With a grave stare he warned me, “You don’t appear to understand how serious this is. I’d better acquaint you with the facts. That fire up at the Crescent. On the face of it you’d think it was a straight case of a tipsy woman chucking a cigarette into a waste bin and sending the place up in flames. Not so simple. The lads from the fire service found Sally Ashenfelter lying in the living room where the fire started. Evidence of heavy smoking and heavy drinking, yes. Fire appears to have started in a waste bin, yes. But things were stacked around that bin, Dr. Sinclair. Flammable things. Bits of wooden furniture, magazines, some African ornaments carved in ebony, a cigar box-”

“It was arson, you mean?” I cut in.

“Murder,” said Voss, watching me interestedly, waiting to see me squirm after he’d put the boot in. He’d learned his trade from Superintendent Judd.

I said automatically as my mind raced through the implications. “This is certain?”

“It has to be confirmed, but I’m satisfied with what I saw up there.”

“You don’t think she might have moved those things herself?”

“Suicide?” He shook his head. “She was awash with vodka. Paralytic.” He glanced towards the policeman in the corner. “Did you ever hear of anyone killing themselves like that?”

I didn’t turn my head to check the response.

Voss picked up the pencil again and prodded the air with it to punctuate his next speech. “How about the other thing? Someone visits the lady, knowing she’s an alcoholic, gets her drinking vodka until she’s out to the world, then makes a bonfire of the furniture, drops a cigarette into the bin, and leaves. How’s that for a hypothesis?”

I said, “Don’t ask me. You’re the detective.”

The pencil snapped in his hand.

For a moment I thought he was going to reach across the desk and grab me, but he took a deep breath and said with a show of self-control that strained him to the limit, “All right, my friend, I’ll ask you this instead. What were you doing in Bath today?”

“Waiting in the Pump Room most of the time. I’d arranged to meet Sally Ashenfelter at three.”

“Again? You said you saw her on Sunday.”

“Not for long. She was, em… indisposed before the end of the visit.”

“Smashed out of her mind?”

“A fair description,” I admitted.

“So you knew about Sally’s drinking?” The image of the rugby forward was right for Voss; he was all intimidation and thrust.

“So did half of Somerset, I imagine,” I said, gathering it and booting it back. “Alcoholics aren’t known for their discretion.” Encouraged, I said, “I wouldn’t have waited in the Pump Room for practically an hour and a half if I’d known she was at the bottle this morning.”

Voss didn’t seem particularly impressed. “What time did you arrive in Bath?”

“About two-thirty.”

“Where were you at one-thirty?”

“On the road from Reading.”

“Did you stop anywhere? Petrol? A spot of lunch?”

“No. I drove straight here.”

“And before that?”

“I was at home, preparing a lecture.”

Voss eased back in his chair and took a long, speculative look at me. “We’ll have to take your word for that, won’t we? The fire was started between one and two, when you say you were on the road.” The disbelief he managed to put into that word, say, was an obvious taunt.

I refused to rise to it.

When it had sunk in that I was unwilling to respond, he said, “You’d better tell me what was behind this meeting with Mrs. Ashenfelter.”

Tricky. He wouldn’t be overjoyed to hear doubts raised about his idol Judd’s most triumphant case. I stalled a little. “There was nothing sinister in it, I can assure you, Inspector. Just that she said enough before she started on the vodkas on Sunday to make me think it would be profitable to speak to her again. I had the feeling she’d have more to say if her husband wasn’t listening, so I phoned her up and arranged to meet.”

His eyes narrowed. “More to say about what?”

I answered offhandedly, “Nothing in particular.”

“I want a better answer than that,” said Voss, gritting his teeth.

“Really,” I insisted, “it wouldn’t have mattered what she talked about.” I’d decided that diversionary tactics were necessary here, and to be convincing I needed to let Inspector Voss flounder a little first.

He warned me, “You’d better not play silly buggers with me.

I said with high seriousness, “I’m trying to explain that what Mrs. Ashenfelter said was of less importance to me than how she said it.” The mystification written across his features was gratifying, but I sensed that it might have been dangerous to prolong it, so I added, “She’s a Somerset woman, lived in the county all her life, and uses dialect words that I first heard twenty years ago, long before I trained as a medieval historian. I don’t specialize in philology”-kidology, more like, I thought in passing-“but there are obvious points of contact.” Watching the indecision in his eyes, I decided that the tutorial method was more appropriate here than a lecture. “Now you, as a Somerset man, must have heard of the word dimpsy, for example, for twilight.”

Voss gave a guarded nod.

I said, “Did you know it’s straight from the Anglo-Saxon dimse? Fascinating, isn’t it, to find the word surviving in the dialect? Just one example of the sort of thing I had ambitions of exploring with Sally Ashenfelter’s help.”

Voss said in a voice that was not yet convinced but more than halfway there, “You’re telling me you arranged to meet her to talk about words?”

“Precisely,” I said encouragingly. “I can give you other examples if you like.” My mind ran rapidly through the few I’d retained. It was a long time since I’d compiled those lists for Duke.

“Don’t bother,” he told me.

“Someone has to,” I persisted, playing the zealous academic with all the conviction at my command. “Many of these old expressions will be irretrievably lost if no one cares about them, Inspector.” I launched into an impassioned appeal for the collection and preservation of sound archives.

He cut me off in mid-sentence. “I haven’t time to listen to you rabbiting on about words. I’m investigating a suspected murder.” But for all his bluster he’d lost his grip on the interview. He wasn’t in Judd’s class. His next question was more of an appeal than a demand. “Is there anything else you can tell me that might assist me in my inquiries?”

I let him wait. If I played this right, I could be out of here in a few minutes. I screwed up my face and rubbed my chin thoughtfully. Finally, I said, “It may be unimportant, but when I phoned Sally to arrange a meeting, she said she couldn’t see me in the morning because someone was coming.”

He seized on it. “She was expecting someone? Who?”

“She didn’t say.”

“A man?”

“I’ve no idea. All she told me was that someone was coming in the morning and she couldn’t put them off.”

He got up from his chair to pace the room, beating his fist repeatedly into the palm of his left hand. “A visitor.