this than I would have expected.'
'I work as an editor for Colbridge the publishers. A condition of service is not being surprised. By anything! But you are very sharp, Inspector. In a manner of speaking, I've been prepared for your visit. Or at least its first cause.'
'You've had a letter too?' guessed Pascoe. 'Splendid. We must compare notes.'
Swithenbank smiled and shook his head.
'Alas, no letter. Just phone calls. They started in London about a fortnight ago, three direct, a couple which just got as far as my secretary and the woman who cleans my flat. So I decided to come up here.'
'Why? What did they say?'
'Always the same thing. And again this morning, twice. My mother answered the phone. First time the line was dead by the time I got to it. But she heard the message. And the second time, just as you arrived, I heard the voice myself. Exactly the same as before. Just a woman's name, twice repeated. Ulalunu.'
'Ula…?'
'Ulalume.'
'And the voice was female?' said Pascoe, perplexed.
Swithenbank shrugged and said, 'Probably. It's an eerie wailing kind of tone. Possibly a male falsetto.'
'And when you spoke sternly in reply?'
'Ah. Of course, you came to the door then, didn't you? The line went dead. End of message.'
'Message?' said Pascoe. 'I'm clearly missing something. There's a message here, is there? Just what does Ulalume signify, Mr Swithenbank?'
The other leaned back in his chair, put the tips of his fingers together beneath his chin and recited.
'And we passed to the end of the vista But were stopped by the door of a tomb -By the door of a legended tomb; And I said – 'What is written, sweet sister, On the door of this legended tomb?' She replied – 'Ulalume – Ulalume -'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!''
'Remarkable,' said Pascoe. 'I'm impressed. But not much wiser.'
'It's a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Ulalume was a nymph, the dead love of the poet who inadvertently returns to the place where he had entombed her a year earlier.
And I cried – 'It was surely October On this very night of last year That I journeyed – I journeyed down here -That I brought a dread burden down here -Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber, This misty mid-region of Weir.'
I can do you The Raven and Annabel Lee, too, if you like.'
'October,' said Pascoe. 'Weir. Wearton. So that's what brought you up here! What an apt choice of poem!'
'Had I killed my wife and brought her to Wearton to bury her last October, it might indeed seem so,' said Swithenbank coldly.
'Indeed,' said Pascoe, catching the man's style. 'But that's not quite what I meant. The reference was aptly chosen in that you understood it instantly. To me it meant nothing. Just chance?'
Swithenbank shook his head thoughtfully.
'No, not chance. Among other things I do for my firm, I edit a series called Masters of Literature. Slim volumes, a bit of biography, a bit of lit. crit.; nothing anyone's going to get a Ph. D. for, but useful to sixth-formers and the undergrad. in a hurry. I've done a couple myself, including one on Poe, accompanied by a selection of his poems and stories.'
'I see,' said Pascoe. 'Would this be generally known?'
'It didn't make any best-seller list,' said Swithenbank.
'But people in Wearton could know? Your mother might do a spot of quiet boasting. My son, the author.'
'I think when I'm away she tries to pretend I'm still at college,' said Swithenbank. 'But yes, some of my old friends would know. The only true test of an old friend is whether he buys your books! Boris Kingsley certainly bought a copy – he asked me to sign it.'
'Boris…?'
'Kingsley. He lives at the Big House, Wear End House, that is.'
'I see,' said Pascoe. 'Any other particular friends?'
Swithenbank laughed, not very mirthfully.
'I gather that friends come a close second to husbands as popular suspects.'
'For anonymous letters, yes,' said Pascoe.
'I'm sure you're wrong, but let me see. Of my own close circle there remain, besides Boris, Geoffrey Rawlinson. His wife, Stella, nee Foxley – big farmers locally. Geoff's sister, Ursula. And Ursula's husband who also happens to be their cousin, Peter Davenport, who also happens to be our vicar!'
'I see,' said Pascoe. 'A close circle, this?'
'To the point of inbreeding,' said Swithenbank cheerfully. 'As good local families, we're probably all related somewhere. Except Boris. They've only been here since the end of the last century.'
'So you all grew up together?'
'Oh yes. Except Peter. His branch of the family lived in Leeds, but he used to spend nearly all his holidays here. Surprised us all when he went into Holy Orders.'
'Why?'
'No one you've stolen apples with can seem quite good enough to be a priest, can they?' said Swithenbank.
'So apart from you, all your circle have remained in Wear-ton?' said Pascoe.
'I suppose so. Except Ursula and Peter, of course. They married while he was still a curate somewhere near Wakefield. When was that? – about eight years ago, yes, I'd married the previous year – of course, I'd been working in London for nearly two years by then…'
'So you'd be twenty-three, twenty-four?'
'So I would. The others fell in rapid succession. First Geoff and Stella, then, almost immediately, Ursula and Peter. It wasn't till three years after that that Peter came to Wearton as vicar. Too young for some of the natives but the local connection helped.'
'But Mr Kingsley didn't marry?'
'No. He looked after his parents up at the Big House. They weren't all that old, but were both in poor health. His mother went about eighteen months ago, his father last spring.'
'And that's the lot? Of your friends, I mean?'
'Yes, I think so. There's Kate's brother, I suppose. Arthur. Arthur Lightfoot. He was several years older and several ages less couth; certainly not one of the charmed circle that made Wearton the Port Said of the north a dozen years ago. But you'd better prick him down on your interview list.'
'Interview list?'
'I presume it's more than idle curiosity that's making you ask these questions, Inspector!' he said acidly.
The doorbell rang. Its chime would not have disgraced a cathedral.
'Your mother?' wondered Pascoe. 'I should like to talk to her.'
'Never gets home till five on Fridays,' said Swithenbank.
The bell rang again. Swithenbank made no move.
'Your mother was mistaken about the bell,' observed Pascoe. 'It seems to be working very well.'
'She hates to be disturbed,' said Swithenbank, 'so she disconnects it. The first thing I do when I come up here is repair it.'
Again the bell.
'You certainly know your business,' said Pascoe admiringly. 'Yes, I'd certainly say it was repaired. It's just the tone you miss, not the function, I gather?'
Swithenbank rose.
'It never does to appear too available,' he said, leaving the room.
He pulled the door shut behind him. Pascoe immediately jumped up and moved as quietly to the door as the creaky floorboards would permit, but he needn't have bothered about sound getting out as the woodwork and walls were obviously thick enough to prevent anything less raucous than the bell getting in.
Working on the Dalziel principle that the next best thing to overhearing a conversation is to give the
