'Listen,' he said. 'I think I know why he's up there, but I'm not sure what'll bring him down. You'd better tell me. Is it just the drink talking? I mean, when the rain and the cold sobers him up, will he come down of his own accord?'
Brother and sister exchanged glances.
'No,' said Ursula. 'Drinking's an escape. The soberer he gets, the worse it'll be.'
'I guessed so,' said Pascoe. 'Then you two had better talk to each other fast. Whatever you know, you've both got to know it, because he's got to know you both know it.'
Ursula managed to raise a wan smile.
'That's a lot of knowing.'
Pascoe regarded her seriously.
'Too much for you?'
She shook her head, then to her brother she said gently, 'Geoff, I'm a good guesser. And I'm Peter's wife.'
Rawlinson rubbed the rain off his face or it may have been tears. Then he began to talk rapidly, in a confessional manner.
'When he used to come and stay with us, we always shared a bed. Some time, it must have been in our early teens, I don't remember, but one summer when he came, well, we'd always played and wrestled before like boys do, only now puberty was well under way and we started exciting ourselves and each other with talk and pictures. For me, I believe for most adolescents if it happens, it was just a sort of marking time. I'd have been terrified to go near a real girl but that was always the image I had in my mind. Later, as I got older and started making dates with girls, I wanted to stop. It would have been earlier but for Peter; but in the end we did stop. We did our college training, settled down to our careers. I got married, John and Kate got married and finally Ursula and Peter married. I was delighted. I liked him, we were close friends, our childhood was far behind us, then last year…'
'It was after the harvest supper, wasn't it?' interrupted Ursula with the certainty of revelation.
Rawlinson nodded glumly, unsurprised that she knew.
'Yes. We were clearing up together, alone. I was… unhappy. Well, that's my affair. I talked to Peter. He touched me. And what we did seemed natural, innocent almost. Till next day. I was so full of guilt it almost choked me. I couldn't believe it of myself. The only thing to do seemed to be to pretend it hadn't happened. I made sure I was never alone with Peter during the next couple of weeks. He made no sign that anything was between us, and when he told me about the owls in the tower, I didn't think twice about asking if I could go up there at night. The first three nights I was by myself, getting them accustomed to my presence. The fourth, that was the Friday, he came up with a flask of coffee for me. What happened then – well, all you need to know is the falling was pure accident. My own fault. I was stupid. But stupid or not, it did this…'
He slapped his damaged leg in anger and frustration.
'We've got to get him down,' he said desperately. 'Yes, I've blamed him for this and he knows it. But I never wished the same on him. Never!'
Pascoe was looking at the woman. She put her arm round her brother's shoulder.
'It's OK, Geoff. It's OK. I know, I know. Or at least I guessed.'It's OK.'
'And your husband, have you talked about it with him?' asked Pascoe.
'No, not directly. It's a myth, isn't it, that everything's solved by bringing it out in the open? We have a kind of jokey relationship about sex. It's a delicate balance but we keep it, we keep it.'
She sounded desperate for reassurance.
'Something's upset the balance,' urged Pascoe gently.
'Yes, I know. Three or four months ago something, I don't know what. And tonight. Perhaps it's something to do with you being at Boris's!'
She flashed this at him furiously as though delighted to have found a target.
'My God!' cried Rawlinson, who'd never taken his eyes off the tower. 'He's there!'
Pascoe screwed up his eyes against the now driving rain. The figure leaning over the parapet could have been part of the stonework, some graven saint, so still and indistinct it was.
'Peter! Peter!' screamed Ursula, cupping her hands in an effort to hurl her words skywards. So strong was the wind now that Pascoe doubted if anything but the thin edge of that cry sounded aloft the tower. His training told him he should already have summoned the fire brigade, at least got them on stand-by. But this story could destroy those concerned just as much as the fall could destroy Davenport.
A figure darted from the church porch. It was Swithenbank, excited but controlled.
'We've got the door open,' he said. 'What next?'
Pascoe thought rapidly.
'What's at the top of the stairs?' he demanded of Rawlinson.
'Another door out on to the tower.'
'Does it have a lock?'
'Just a hasp and a padlock.'
'So he can't lock it from above. OK. Mr Rawlinson, can you manage to move forward a bit, get on to the path right beneath Davenport? Ursula, give him a hand.'
Rawlinson clung heavily to his shoulder and limped into position.
'Now stand there the pair of you and bellow at him. He may not be able to hear, but keep on bellowing. I want him to see you two side by side. And I don't want him to be able to jump without risking landing on one of you. If he shifts position, follow him!'
Accompanied by Swithenbank, he dashed into the church porch. Jean Starkey was there, so wet she might as well have been naked. By contrast Stella Rawlinson was relatively dry. She had found time to put on a raincoat and headscarf before coming out, though her patience had not stretched to moving at her lame husband's pace. Pascoe wondered how much she knew and what the knowledge was doing to her. She it was who carried the torch he had spotted in the distance. He took it from her hand without speaking and pushed his way past Kingsley, who was peering through the tower door with all the nervous excitement of a subaltern about to go over the top.
'You come second,' said Pascoe to Swithenbank. 'Keep three steps behind me. If I stop, you stop. No talking. I'll try to go through the door at the top quietly. If I can't, I'll go at a rush. Come quick then, I may need help.'
'What about me?' said Boris eagerly.
'Stay at the bottom,' ordered Pascoe. 'If he gets past us, stop him.'
It was an unlikely contingency, an unnecessary job. But he didn't want Boris's bulk creaking up those wooden stairs and past experience had taught him that the fewer men you had making an arrest in the dark, the less chance there was of ending up with each other.
The original staircase of the tower must have long since rotted away, but this one was quite antiquated enough. It consisted of five steep wooden steps to each narrow landing and when he gripped the banister, the newel post above rocked so alarmingly in its joint that he ignored the rail thereafter and proceeded bent double to test the stairs by eye before weight. The air smelt musty and what little light came through the narrow windows was hardly reinforced by the dim glow of the torch. Soon Pascoe could see neither the floor he had left nor the roof he approached. He remembered a ghost story in which a girl counted three hundred steps going up a tower, but coming down soon found herself far beyond that figure without any sign of the bottom. Perhaps this was the way it ended for him, too. He flashed his torch downward to seek reassurance in the presence of Swithenbank, but the sight of that narrow intense face with its high forehead, blank eyes and black moustache brought little comfort. For all he knew this man was a murderer. It was still very much a possibility. Though his theory that Rawlinson had been hurled from the tower because of what he had seen had proved a non-starter, that meant nothing. The rabbit could co-exist with the goose.
On the other hand, if Swithenbank were a murderer, he had been too successful so far to need to risk attempting to dispose of a suspicious policeman. Indeed, if one of Pascoe's other hypotheses proved true…
But speculation was terminated by the sudden awareness that the next landing was the last. Ahead was the door leading to the top of the tower.
There was no latch on it, only an empty hasp with the discarded padlock lying on the floor.
Gently Pascoe pushed at the door. He felt a resistance and for a moment thought that Davenport must have wedged it shut from without. Then he realized that it was only the force of the wind which pressed against him, and as he pushed again that same wind, as if delighted to get a grip on what had so long resisted it, caught the partly
