to another outburst. 'She's left me,' said Evans with difficulty, mouthing the words in an exaggerated way as if examining them in disbelief as they came out.
'Left you? How do you know she's left you?' asked
Pascoe, still suspicious that he might be listening to the self-deceiving euphemism of murder. Evans reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, crumpled as though it had been thrust deeply and desperately out of sight.
Pascoe came carefully forward and took it.
'Dear Arthur,' he read, 'I am leaving you. Our marriage has been at an end for some time as far as I am concerned. I am sorry, but there's nothing else to be done. Please forgive me. Gwen.' What the hell do I say? Pascoe asked himself. Oh, Bruiser, I wish you were here. Evans sobbed drily, gulping in great mouthfuls of air, and rocked back and forward against the mantelpiece which was lined with Christmas cards. One rocked and fell. He looked up then and became aware of the others. Soundlessly, he swept his forearm down the whole length of the mantelpiece, scattering cards and ornaments alike.
Pascoe touched his arm.
'Come and sit down,' he said. For a moment it looked as if Evans might resist, then he let himself be led to the sofa where he sat down quietly with his head between his hands and began to cry. Pascoe left him and ran lightly upstairs. It was his business to make sure that Gwen Evans was not still here. Arthur had obviously had the same idea. Every door was open, even wardrobes and cupboards, and all the lights were on. He looked into the wardrobes and through the drawers in the dressing-table and tallboy. She had packed well. Hardly a feminine article remained. The same in the bathroom. Only, there on its side on top of the medicine chest was an unstoppered bottle. He picked it up. It was empty. He read the label, then turned and ran downstairs three at a time. Arthur Evans was still on the sofa, only now he was sitting limp with his head resting against the arm. His eyes were closed and his breathing noisy. Pascoe turned back to the hall, picked up the telephone and dialled.
'Ambulance,' he said. 'Quick.'
'How was I to know,' said Pascoe defensively, 'that there were only two tablets in the bottle? Anyway he must have had about half a bottle of whisky.' 'You do not pump out a man's stomach because he's drunk half a bottle of scotch,' said Dalziel. 'If you did, half the top men in this town would be swallowing rubber tubes every weekend. Christ, your common sense should have told you. Evans isn't your romantic suicide type, he's your find-'em-and-mash-'em type. He'll have you on his list now.' 'I hope they've gone a long way,' said Pascoe. 'They seem to have taken everything. Felstead's landlady says he told her that he definitely wouldn't be coming back. They're almost certainly in his car. Is it worth sending out a call?'
Dalziel shook his head emphatically.
'Nothing whatsoever to do with us, Sergeant. If a woman runs away from her husband that's their business. Our only concern is if and when Arthur catches up with them. I can't see him sitting down for a quiet civilized three-cornered discussion.' Like you did? wondered Pascoe. Some hope! You and Evans are brothers under the thick skin. 'What did he say about meeting Mary Connon, that's the important thing,' went on Dalziel. Pascoe tried to stop himself stiffening to a seated attention position and couldn't quite manage it. 'Nothing,' he said. That is, I didn't actually ask him. I mean, how could I? The occasion didn't arise.' He wished his voice didn't sound quite so childishly defensive in his own ears, but Dalziel seemed happy enough with his explanation. 'It'll keep,' he said. 'Nothing's so important that it won't keep. Or if it is, and you keep it too long, it stops being important, and that's much the same thing. Look at the time! There's nothing more for us here. Come on!' He stood up and took his coat from the chair over which it had been casually thrown. 'Well, help me on with it, lad,' he said to Pascoe. 'And hurry up. The most dangerous moment of a policeman's life is the time between getting his coat on and getting out of the station. You never know what's just coming in through the door.' Just coming in through the door at that very minute was Detective-Constable Edwards. He was very wet. 'Where've you been, then?' asked the desk-sergeant aggressively. 'Out,' said Edwards with a nerve sharpened by cold and more than an hour in the company of Mrs Kathy Grogan. 'Is the super still in?' Entry to the Grogan household had not been easy. Mrs Grogan had wisely taken note of the many warnings issued to householders, especially the elderly living on their own, to examine carefully the credentials of all callers before admitting them. It took Edwards's warrant card, two library tickets, a pay-slip and a snapshot of himself and his fiancee on the beach at Scarborough to win him admittance. The snapshot was the clincher. The girl, Mrs Grogan told him, had the look of her late sister. Once her doubts had been satisfied and the door unchained and unbolted, her attitude was one of reproachful expectancy. 'So you've come at last,' she said. 'You take your time don't you?'
'Pardon?' he said.
'Come along in, then. It's draughty out here. Gets right under my skirts if you'll excuse the expression. If I've written to the Council once about that front door, I've written fifty times. I told her next door you'd be coming, but I didn't think you'd be so long about it. If this is what you're like when you are anxious I wouldn't like to wait for you when you're not.' The small living-room she took him into was made even smaller by the amount of stuff she had in there. Every ledge and shelf was crowded with ornaments of one kind or another, most of them bearing some civic inscription ranging geographically from 'A gift from Peebles' to 'A souvenir of Ilfracombe'. Mrs Grogan, Edwards decided, was strongly attached to the past. He knew very well the dangers of any allusions to any of these articles, but the mere unavoidable act of looking at them was more than enough for his hostess. He reckoned he had done well to get away with two cups of tea and forty minutes of reminiscence before an opening arose to thrust in a question. 'Mrs Grogan,' he said, 'you said before that you thought we were anxious to see you…'
'No,' she said. 'You said that.'
'Did I?' he asked, half ready to believe anything.
'Yes. Here. Look, I'll show you.'
She dived into a pile of newspapers which lay in an untidy stack beneath her chair and after a short search, triumphantly produced a neatly folded paper which she handed to Edwards. He looked down at it and found himself reading an account of Mary Connon's death. Mrs Grogan's gnarled and knuckle-swollen finger was interposed between his eyes and the paper. The meticulously clear and polished nail came to rest on a line near the end of the story. The police are anxious to interview anyone who may have walked or driven along Boundary Drive between seven and nine on the night in question.' 'But that means,' Edwards began to explain, then pulled himself up with a smile. 'I'm sorry we've taken so long to get round to you, Mrs Grogan, but we've been very busy. Now, I understand then that you did take a walk down Boundary Drive on that night?' 'Oh yes. Of course I did. I always do. I go to my nephew's for tea on Saturday afternoons and if the weather's not too bad I get off the bus in Glenfair Road and walk down the Drive. It saves me threepence on the fare that way. My nephew thinks I stay on the bus right into the estate, but I don't always. It would worry him if he knew. This won't have to come out in court, will it?'
'We'll try to keep it quiet,' Edwards assured her.
'Well, I'd just got opposite that poor woman's house, and I glanced up at it. I always look at the houses as I walk by them. It's really interesting. And then I saw the man.'
'The man.'
'Yes. I saw him quite clearly. A man.'
'Mr Connon?' suggested Edwards.
'Oh no. Not him. I saw his picture in the paper. It wasn't him. Someone quite different.' 'Evans,' interjected Dalziel when Edwards reached this part of his story.
'Probably,' agreed Pascoe gloomily.
'Evans?' asked Edwards. 'Yes. Arthur Evans. He was round there that night. I've talked to him about it.' 'Oh, I see,' said Edwards disappointedly. 'I didn't know. I suppose you asked him, sir, what he was doing up the tree?' 'Up the tree? Up what tree?' said Pascoe, his interest revived. 'No. We didn't ask him that, Constable,' said Dalziel. 'Do go on.' Edwards finished his story rapidly. Mrs Grogan had seen a man half way up the sycamore tree in the Connons' front garden. Despite the darkness and the distance, she claimed she saw him quite distinctly and, taking Edwards to her own window, she gave him a convincing demonstration of the excellence of her eyesight.
'What did you do then?' asked Edwards.
'What should I do? Nothing, of course. It's none of my business. I always look at the houses as I walk past, and I see a lot of things odder than that, but it's not my business, is it? No, it wasn't until I read about the murder in the paper that I thought any more about it. And when it said you were anxious to see me, I've been waiting ever since. I've even missed going out a couple of nights.' 'I'm sorry,' said Edwards gently. 'Next time why don't you come down to see us, to hurry us along a bit? Ask for Mr Dalziel if you do.'
