must have been hell for him.'
'That depends on what the previous year was like, doesn't it?' said his wife. 'Let's have a drink, shall we? It might warm us up.'
'All right. What time do we have to go?'
'Half seven, something like that,' she said vaguely. 'I thought we'd walk it. Along the old drive.'
'What on earth for?' he protested strongly. 'It looks like rain. And it'll ruin your shoes.'
'I just feel like the exercise. Besides, it's traditional. Vicars and their ladies must have taken that route when summoned to the Big House for a couple of centuries at least.'
'Perhaps. It's not a pleasant walk. At this time of year, I mean.'
He shivered and she regarded him curiously.
'Shouldn't a vicar know how to put ghosts in their places?' she mocked.*
'What do you mean?'
'Joke,' she said. 'Though come to think of it, sometimes there does seem a rather excessive amount of noise and movement in the churchyard. Not just foxes and owls, I mean, though some of it's so overgrown it could hide a tiger. You really ought to insist that something's done about it, Peter.'
'Yes, yes. I'll have a word,' he said. 'Let's have that drink.'
He poured the gin with a generous hand and was pouring himself another before his wife had done more than dampen her full red lips on her first.
'My name's Pascoe. I'm a police inspector. Could I have a word with you, Mr Lightfoot?'
Arthur Lightfoot viewed him silently, then went back into the cottage as though indifferent whether Pascoe followed or not.
Reckoning that if he waited for invitations round here, he was likely to become a fixture, Pascoe went in, closed the door behind him, pursued Lightfoot into a square, sparsely furnished living-room and sat down.
The room occupied the breadth of the building and Pascoe could see that the uncurtained windows at the back were new and the plaster on the wall had been recently refurbished.
'You had a fire?' he said conversationally.
'What do you want, mister?'
Pascoe sighed. One of the more distressing things about his job was the frequency with which he met Yorkshiremen who made Dalziel sound like something from Castiglione's Book of the Courtier.
'It's about your sister, Kate. I've got no news of her, you understand,' he added hastily for fear of creating a false optimism.
He needn't have worried.
'I need no news of our Kate,' said Lightfoot.
'I don't understand. You mean you don't want to hear anything about your sister?'
It was a genuine semantic problem. Lightfoot's face showed a recognizable expression for a moment. It was one of contempt.
'I mean I need no news. She's dead. I need no bobby to come telling me that.'
'Well, if you know that, you know more than I do,' rejoined Pascoe. 'What makes you so sure?'
'A man knows such things.'
Oh God, that awful intuition again. No, not intuition, superstition. This was a medieval peasant who stood before him, but without any feudal inhibitions.
'We can't be sure,' insisted Pascoe gently. 'Not till… well, not till we've seen her.'
'I've seen her.'
'What?
'What do you know, mister? Nowt!'
Lightfoot spoke angrily. It was clearly only the gentler responses that were missing from his make-up.
'I've heard her voice in the black of night and I've risen from my bed and I've seen her blown this way and that in the night wind,' proclaimed Lightfoot with terrifying intensity.
Pascoe began to regret that he had sat down as the man loomed over him describing his lunatic visions. Looking for an excuse to get to his feet, he spotted a framed photograph on the mantelpiece.
'Is this your sister, Mr Lightfoot?' he asked, rising and edging past the man. The picture showed a slim girl in a white dress and a wide-brimmed floppy hat from beneath which a pair of disproportionately large eyes looked uncertainly at the photographer. Like a startled rabbit, thought Pascoe unkindly. The background to the picture was a house which could have been The Pines, but identification was not helped by the fact that the print had been torn in half, presumably to remove someone standing alongside the girl.
Lightfoot snatched the frame from his hands, a rudeness perhaps more native than aggressive.
'What do you want?' he demanded once more.
'I'm on my way to see your brother-in-law,' answered Pascoe, deciding that the more direct he was, the quicker he could make his exit. 'There have been some phone calls, and a letter, suggesting that he knows more about your sister's disappearance than he's letting on. We're eager to find the person who's been making these suggestions.'
'So you single me out!' said Lightfoot accusingly.
'No,' said Pascoe. 'I was in Wearton yesterday, and I spoke to Mr Swithenbank then, but I didn't have time to contact anyone else. Later on tonight I'm going to see a variety of people at Wear End, Mr Kingsley's house. I thought I'd drop in on you en route, that's all.'
'You guessed I wouldn't be at t'party then?' said Lightfoot.
Pascoe looked uncomfortable and Lightfoot laughed like a tree cracking in a strong wind.
'Yon bugger wouldn't invite me to suck in the air on his land,' he said.
'Mr Kingsley doesn't care for your company?' said Pascoe redundantly.
'He cares for nowt but his own flesh,' said Lightfoot. 'Like father, like son.'
He replaced the photograph on the mantelpiece with a thump that defied Pascoe to touch it again.
'Is it your brother-in-law that's been torn off the picture?' enquired Pascoe.
'I wanted none of his face around my house,' said Lightfoot.
'Why's that?'
'No reason.'
'Do you not like him either?'
'They're all the same, them lot,' said Lightfoot. 'Kate'd be still living to this day likely if she hadn't got mixed up with them.'
'Surely they were her friends,' protested Pascoe.
'Friends! What need of friends when there's family? Are you done, Mr Detective? There's others have to work late hours besides t'police.'
On the doorstep Pascoe turned and said, 'Have you made any calls to Mr Swithenbank or sent the police a letter, Mr Lightfoot?'
'That's direct,' said Lightfoot. 'I wondered if you'd get round to asking. The answer's no, I haven't. If I knew definite who'd harmed her, I…'
'You'd what?'
'I'd know, wouldn't I? Do you question Swithenbank so direct?'
'If the occasion demands,' said Pascoe.
'Then ask him this. What was he doing skulking around the churchyard at midnight night before last? You ask him.'
'All right,' said Pascoe. 'As a matter of interest, what were you doing skulking round the churchyard, Mr Lightfoot?'
The door was shut hard in his face. Pascoe whistled with relief as he strolled through the gate and got into his car. There was something frightening about Lightfoot in a primal kind of way. A man who had commerce with ghosts must be frightening! Though a man so certain of his sister's death might have other reasons for his certainty, and that was more frightening still.
Behind him in the comfortless cottage Lightfoot returned to the job which Pascoe's arrival had interrupted. Seated at the kitchen table, he oiled and polished the separated parts of his shotgun till he was satisfied. Then he reassembled it and sat motionless for a long time while outside the light faded, rooks beat their way homeward to
