impression you've overheard it, he did not resume his seat but stood close to the doorway, apparently rapt in contemplation of a small oil painting darkened by age almost to indecipherability, until the door opened and he found himself looking at a pretty blonde carrying a large bunch of dahlias.
'Let me take those to the kitchen. Mother will be delighted. They're her favourite. Oh, this is Detective- Inspector Pascoe, my dear. Jean Starkey.'
Swithenbank removed the flowers and left Pascoe and the newcomer shaking hands.
With an expertise that Pascoe admired, the woman assessed the seating available and chose the comfortable armchair. Not liking the look of the cane chair Swithenbank had occupied, Pascoe perched gingerly on a chaise- longue which was even harder than it appeared.
'Are you an inhabitant of Wearton, too, Miss Starkey?'
She glanced down at her ringless left hand and smiled approval.
'Oh no. Like yourself, just visiting. At least I presume you're just visiting?'
'For the moment, yes.'
'Does that mean you may eventually settle here?' asked the woman, rounding her eyes.
'I think it means the Inspector doesn't consider 'visiting' adequately covers his possible return flanked by bloodhounds and armed with warrants,' said Swithenbank.
He came back into the room carrying a huge vase into which the dahlias had been tumbled with no pretence of aesthetic theory.
Placing them on a small table within reach of the big armchair he said, 'Do what you can with these, Jean dear. I've no talent for nature.'
Then, relaxing into the cane chair which seemed to have been made for a man of his size, he continued, 'Mr Pascoe is here about Kate's disappearance. No, there's been no news, but there's been a new outburst of anonymous activity. Phone calls to me and a letter to the police. By the way, Inspector, you never actually told me what was in the letter, did you? It must have been something pretty striking to get you off traffic duty. Could I see it? I might be able to help with the writing.'
'No writing, sir,' said Pascoe. 'Typewriter. Possibly a Remington International, quite old. You wouldn't know anyone who has such a machine?'
He included the woman in his query. She smiled and shook her head.
'But what did it say?' persisted Swithenbank.
'Not much. Let me sec. John Swithenbank knows where the other is. Yes, that's it.'
Swithenbank and Jean Starkey exchanged puzzled glances.
'I'm sorry, Inspector,' he said. 'It's like Ulalume to you. I don't get it.'
'No, no. I should apologize,' said Pascoe. 'I haven't been entirely open.'
He pulled an envelope out of his inside pocket and from it he took three colour prints which he passed over to Swithenbank. The prints showed from different angles a pendant ear-ring, a single pearl in a gold setting on a thin chain about an inch long.
'Do you recognize that, sir?' asked Pascoe.
Jean Starkey, unable to contain her curiosity, had risen to peer over Swithenbank's shoulder at the photographs. He glanced up at her and she put her hand on his shoulder either for her support or his comfort.
'Kate had a pair like that,' he said. 'But I couldn't be absolutely sure.'
'It matches the specification in your list of clothes and other items which disappeared with your wife.'
'Does it? It's a year ago. If you say it does, then clearly it does. This was with that cryptic note?'
'Not so cryptic after all,' said Jean Starkey.
'No,' said Swithenbank. 'No. I see now why you came hotfoot to Wearton, Inspector. This really does point the finger.'
'But it means nothing!' protested the woman.
He smiled up at her.
'I don't mean at me, dear. I mean at whoever sent it. If it is Kate's, that is. Could I have a look at the ear- ring itself, Inspector?'
'Eventually,' said Pascoe. 'Just now it's down at our laboratory for examination.'
'Examination? For what?'
Pascoe watched Swithenbank closely as he answered.
'I'm afraid, sir, that there were traces of blood on the fastening bar. As though the ear-ring had been torn from the ear by main force.'
CHAPTER III
Much I marvelled this ungainly Jowl to hear discourse so plainly.
'A poem,' said Dalziel.
'By Edgar Allan Poe,' said Pascoe.
'I didn't know he wrote poems as well.'
'As well as short stories, you mean?'
'As well as pictures,' said Dalziel. 'I've seen a lot of his stuff on the telly. Good for a laugh mainly, but sometimes he can give you a scare.'
Pascoe regarded the gross figure of his boss, Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel (pronounced Dee-ell, unless you wanted your head bitten off) and wondered whether the fat man was taking the piss. But he knew better than to ask.
'I've got it here,' he said, proffering a 'complete works' borrowed from the local library.
Dalziel put on his reading glasses which sat on his great shapeless nose like a space-probe on Mars. Carefully he read through the poem, his fleshy lips moving from time to time as he half voiced a passage.
When he had finished he rested the open book on the desk before him and said, 'Now that's something like a poem!'
'You liked it?' said Pascoe, surprised.
'Oh aye. It's got a bit of rhythm, a bit of rhyme, not like this modern stuff that doesn't even have commas.'
'Thank you, Dr Leavis,' murmured Pascoe, and went on hurriedly, 'But does it do us any good?'
'Depends,' said Dalziel, putting his hand inside his shirt to scratch his left rib cage. 'Was it meant to be general or specific?'
'Sorry?'
'If it's specific, listen.
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
You want to find yourself a bit of woodland round a pond and go over it with a couple of dogs and a frogman. What's the country like round there?'
'Like country,' said Pascoe dubiously. 'Wearton's a cluster of houses, pub and a*church in a bit of a valley, so I suppose there are plenty of woods and ponds thereabouts. But if it's that specific, Swithenbank would hardly have mentioned it to me, would he?'
'Mebbe not. Or mebbe he'd get a kick. Playing with a thick copper.'
'I didn't get that impression,' said Pascoe carefully.
Dalziel laughed, a Force Eight blast.
'More likely with me, eh? But he'd soon spot you're a clever bugger, the way you get your apostrophes in the right place. So if he has killed his missus and if this Ulalume poem does point in the right direction, he'd keep his mouth shut. Right? Unless he was bright enough to think we might have got a few calls ourselves.'
'Which we didn't,' said Pascoe. 'Just the letter.'
'And the ear-ring,' said Dalziel. 'Remind me again, lad. How'd we first get mixed up in this business?'
Pascoe opened the thin file he was carrying and glanced at the first sheet of paper in it.
'October twenty-fourth last year,' he said. 'Request for assistance from Enfield – that's where Swithenbank lives. Says he'd reported his wife missing on the fifteenth. They hadn't been able to get any kind of line on her
