Dalziel down the corridor. 'Why?'
'The rugby, Sergeant. Remember?'
'We're going to watch?' asked Pascoe, puzzled.
Dalziel sighed.
'I might watch. But the game you're concerned with is Arthur Evans. You heard what he said, his coach goes at twelve-forty-five. So you get round to his house at one. Have a chat. Stop a while. Who knows? Friend Connon might even turn up to keep you company. That'd be nice. You in your small corner, Gwen curled up on the mat and Connon taking his ease in Arthur's rocking chair.' The thought obviously amused him. They were out in the street now. Dalziel was well known, hailing and being hailed by nearly every second person they passed, it seemed to Pascoe. Though he noticed there were some who spoke to the superintendent and were completely ignored, while others looked as if they would have preferred to creep past unknown. Again there came to him a sense of how small a town of some eighty-five thousand people really was. 'Talking of chairs,' said Dalziel, 'there was a report from forensic, wasn't there, on that chair of Connon's? Nothing useful, I suppose?' Pascoe was never quite certain just how genuine his superior's casual contempt for science was. Had he really not even looked at the report? He felt tempted to find out by inventing a number of startling discoveries made through lab tests on the chair. But instead, as always, he thought, I'll play the game. 'No. Nothing. No indication that anyone had been killed in it or done anything else in it but sit in it. It went back to Connon's yesterday. He made them put it in the garden shed.' 'Did he now? Bit of degree work for you there, Pascoe! The psychology of the criminal.' They came to a halt at a busy road crossing. The town was full of Saturday morning shoppers, more than usual even; there was only one more Saturday before Christmas. 'Sir, what about Hurst and the letter? You mentioned last night…' 'Did I? No, I didn't, Sergeant. I'm not senile. Who did?'
Pascoe looked a little shamefaced.
'Well, Connon actually, on the phone. He asked if anything had been done.'
Dalziel slapped his inside pocket.
'It's here. I'll be seeing him before the match. Any other little reminders to me, Sergeant? Anything else I might have forgotten? No? Then what are we standing here for? Let's move on before some young copper picks us up for soliciting. Now, where did you say you were going to take me for that drink?' Jenny and Antony looked at each other, brown eyes unblinkingly fixed on blue, over the rims of their upraised pint pots. 'Umh,' said Antony appreciatively, putting his glass down and nodding his head, 'not bad at all. Unpretentious, with a pleasant touch of wit, should travel quite well. There is perhaps a slight tendency towards making one drunk.' They were sitting near a huge open fire in the lounge of a pub of that kind of indeterminate oldness which is the sign of constant use and development over many years. The fireplace was obviously very old indeed. It was large, and had once been larger. The table they sat at was wrought iron, with a bright brass guard-rail running round the top of it, more of a danger to glasses than anything else. In the ceiling there was visible what might have been an original oak cross-beam, but it had been unceremoniously distempered with the rest. T like it here,' said Antony. 'They have attempted neither to freeze the past, nor anticipate the future. Nor indeed to impress the present upon us with framed photographs of actors and actresses, cricketers and jockeys, the semi-famous sub-world, with duplicated scrawls of spurious well-wishings stamped across their corners.'
T just like the beer,' said Jenny.
'It was nice of your father to chase us off together as he did,' said Antony.
'He's a nice man.'
'Yes, I'm sure he is. Well, Jenny, now we have got over the initial emotionalism of our reunion, perhaps one or two points might be clarified for me. Your father has extended to me the hospitality of his house for as long as I care to take it, or until he grows sick of the sight of me. It did not escape my notice, however, that you were accompanied last night by a rather large, rather muddy man who, I gathered from hints dropped from various quarters, had been your escort that evening. Competition I do not mind. I thrive on it. But we Wilkeses were never dogs in mangers. A word will be enough.'
'Which word is that?' asked Jenny.
'If you don't know it, then I shan not teach you it. Good. I'm glad that's out of the way.'
'I didn't know it was.'
'Well, isn't it?' 'Of course, you fool. Didn't you get a good look at him? I was after information, that's all.'
'Information?'
Quickly Jenny explained about Ted Morgan. At least it started off as a quick explanation, but almost without noticing, she was soon telling Antony everything she had felt or feared in the past week. He listened gravely without interrupting her. When she finished, he went to the bar and refilled their glasses. 'There are evidently some very nasty people in this little town of yours,' he said reflectively. 'And some very nice ones,' said Jenny with instinctive indignation.
He grinned at her and took her hand.
'But what goes on on the terraces seems to be very simple and almost harmless compared with that Rugby Club of yours.' The look of strain which had been missing from Jenny's face most of the morning returned. 'You think it's all something to do with the Club too, do you? Daddy does, I'm sure. And I think fat Dalziel does too. Oh, I wish it was something simple, some burglar, a tramp or something, who broke in and did it. It would still be as horrid, but it'd end there at least. Instead of which it seems to be going on and on and I'm finding myself going round playing at stupid amateur detectives. And what it's doing to Daddy, I just don't know.' 'Hey, cool it, baby.' The shock of hearing such an expression in the accents of Hollywood gangsterese come from Antony's lips pulled her up sharply. He was smiling at her, but there was concern in his eyes.
'Thanks,' she said. 'I was going on a bit.'
'Nonsense,' he said. 'Of course you're concerned about everything. But there's nothing wrong with playing games to ease your concern, whether it's playing detective or playing rugby. That's what games are, recreational. They give us a space in the business of life to re-create ourselves. Don't you think I would teach R.E. extremely well? And talking of detectives, aren't those two gentlemen, who have just come in like Laurel and Hardy, of that ilk?' They were Dalziel and Pascoe. They looked around the room. 'See that? AH good detectives look around the room,' murmured Antony. Jenny giggled and kicked his ankle. Dalziel saw them and waved. Pascoe glanced over and nodded almost imperceptibly. 'You know,' said Antony, 'I think that Laurel there fancies you.' 'Don't be silly,' replied Jenny, feeling the fringe of a blush caressing her cheek. 'Silly? Am I then so esoteric in my taste as to be the only man in the world who fancies you?' Jenny finished her second pint with a swallow that reminded Pascoe, who was watching her surreptitiously through the bar mirror, of Jacko Roberts. 'Come on,' she said. 'I've got to get home and make the dinner.'
'Right,' he said. 'And this afternoon?'
'Well,' she said, 'I wondered if you'd mind going out with Daddy. Get him off to the rugby match or something.'
'Of course. But what are you going to do?'
'I want to clear out their, his, bedroom. Of Mummy's things, I mean. I've been meaning to do it, he doesn't seem to have the will, and it's more my job, I think. All her clothes and everything. I must do it now. He's been sleeping in the spare room, you see, but when you turned up last night, he moved back in. I think that's why he was up so early this morning.'
'I'm sorry,' said Antony. 'I didn't realize.'
'Why should you? Anyway, I'd like to do it. I know he's been through her papers and that, not that there was much. But the police asked, in case there was anything there to help. So if I can get rid of the rest…' 'Of course. Well, let's be on our way. I haven't really tasted your cooking yet, have I? I mean, I did in fact make my own breakfast. Not at all what I am used to.' Jenny grinned, that wide, slightly toothy grin which she tried so hard to avoid, and which filled her whole face with an animation and glow that turned Antony's heart upside down. He laughed back at her and they left the pub hand in hand. Dalziel looked meaningfully at Pascoe, but said nothing. Pascoe felt the cold beer fill his mouth and listened to the landlord's radio distantly above playing 'White Christmas'.
It was twelve o'clock.
Time for another,' he said. Gwen Evans wasn't being very helpful. At least, not in any sense that had any bearing on the case. But Pascoe found her a great deal of help in restoring his rather worn manly pride. She was not a coquette, he had decided. She did not deliberately set out to make herself interesting to men. There was nothing
