Glancing up at the cathedral tower, he nodded appreciatively and moved on.
At No. 41 he leaned on the doorbell a measured second, then stepped back and waited.
In its previous posh manifestation he'd guess this street's doors had been opened by a uniformed maid, but nowadays domestic servants were pretty thin on the ground, if only because the kind of people who needed the work weren't prepared to kowtow to the kind of prats who needed the servants.
He recognized instantly the woman who opened the door, though it was fifteen years since they had met.
And Chloe Wulfstan's face showed that she recognized him.
'Mr. Dalziel,' she said.
Age hadn't changed her much. In fact she looked a lot younger than last time he'd seen her, but that wasn't so surprising. Then, the news of her daughter's disappearance not only drained the blood from her face but also melted the flesh from her bones. But he had never seen her cry, and somehow he knew that she hadn't cried in private either. All her energy had gone to holding herself together even at the expense of locking everything inside.
No point in mucking about.
He said, 'I'm sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Wulfstan. You'll have heard about this lass who's gone missing from Danby?'
'It was on the radio,' she said. 'And in this morning's paper. Is there any news?'
The voice was level, conventionally polite, as if he were the vicar being invited to take tea. Fifteen years back he recalled that she'd still retained a trace of the accent of her birth and upbringing on Heck Farm; educated, yes, but enough there to remind you that she was a Mid-Yorkshire lass. Now that had entirely gone. She could have been presenting Woman's Hour.
Over her shoulder he could see a hallway hung with prints of musical cartoons. Down a broad staircase drifted the tinkle of a piano and a woman's voice singing.
'When your mother dear to my door draws near, And my thoughts all center there to see her enter Not on her sweet face first off falls my gaze, But a little past her…'
There was the sound of discord, as if someone had banged a hand down on the piano keys, and a man's voice said, 'No, no. Too much too soon. At this point he is still trying to be matter of fact, still trying to be rational about his own irrational behavior.'
That voice. He thought he recognized it. Both voices, in fact. The woman's was the lass he'd heard singing on the radio at Pascoe's the previous morning. Same bloody set of songs too. His memory took him back to the first time he'd heard them… He wrenched it back to the other voice, the man's. That rather too perfect English. Surely it was the Turnip? Despite Wield's frequent reminders that Arne Krog was a Norwegian, not a Swede, Dalziel had persisted in his awful joke. Poncy sod had once dared correct his English, and Dalziel was an unforgiving God.
'Mr. Dalziel?' said Chloe Wulfstan.
He realized he hadn't answered her question.
'No. No news,' he said.
'I'm sorry for it,' she said. 'How are… no, I needn't ask.'
'How're the parents?' he concluded. 'Just like you'd expect. You'd likely know the mother. Came from Dendale. Elsie Coe afore she married.'
'Margaret Coe's girl? Oh, God. Margaret was very ill last year. Her recovery seemed a miracle. Now I wonder if it wasn't a curse. Is that a wicked thing to say, Mr. Dalziel?'
He shrugged impassively, denying the inclination rather than the qualification to judge.
She went on, in a curious reflective tone. 'I got used to thinking wicked things, you know. When I saw their sympathetic faces, women like Margaret Coe, I used to think, Inside you're really glad it's me, not you, glad it's my Mary who's gone, not your Elsie or…'
She stopped as if someone had alerted her to her hostessly duties and said, briskly, 'Is it Walter you want to see, Mr. Dalziel? He is here, but he's in the middle of a meeting about the music festival. They have to find a new location for the opening concert… but of course, you'd know that. I'm being very rude keeping you on the doorstep. Do step inside. I'll let him know you're here.'
He advanced into the hallway. It was a relief to be out of the sun's direct rays, but even with all the windows open, its heat walked in with him.
You'd have thought a bugger into solar power would have installed air-conditioning, grumbled Dalziel.
Chloe Wulfstan knocked gently on a door, opened it, and slipped inside.
In his brief glimpse into the room, which looked like an old-fashioned oak-paneled study, Dalziel saw three people, one full-face, one in profile, and one just the back of a head above an armchair. But it was the back of the head that he focused on. He felt something inside him tighten for a second, his stomach, his heart, it wasn't possible to be anatomically precise, but it was the kind of feeling he couldn't recollect having for a long long time.
The door opened again and Mrs. Wulfstan came out. The piano had started again upstairs.
'But a little past her, seeking something after, There where your own dear features would appear Lit with love and laughter…'
The woman in the chair had turned her head and was peering toward the doorway. Their gazes met. Then the door closed.
'If you can give him just a minute,' said Chloe Wulfstan apologetically. 'He should be able to bring the meeting to a close, then the other committee members won't have to hang around waiting for Walter to return. In here, if you please.'
She led him into a drawing room at the back of the house with French windows wide open onto a long garden whose lawn showed the effect of the drought.
'One is tempted, of course,' she said, following his gaze. 'But I'm afraid that we've all become water vigilantes, and if anyone thought our lawn was looking a little too green… Quite right, too, I suppose. But when I think that we gave up Dendale to provide a sure supply for the future… it makes you think, doesn't it?'
Her tone was now bright, polite, and light.
'It does that,' he said. 'Reservoir's right down. Do you ever go back to take a look, Mrs. Wulfstan?'
'No,' she said. 'I never do, Mr. Dalziel.'
He studied her for a moment, pulling at his heavy lower lip. It came across as a skeptical assessing stare, but in fact his eyes were seeing another face completely.
'Would you like a glass of something cold?' asked Chloe Wulfstan.
'What? Oh, aye, that 'ud be nice,' he said. 'By the by, there's a car outside, white Saab, got a visitor's parking disc…'
'That's Arne's. You remember Arne? Arne Krog, the singer. He's staying with us during the festival. And Inger. His accompanist. She's here too.'
'Well, she would be. Accompanying him,' said Dalziel. He smiled to show he was attempting a joke but she just looked faintly puzzled, then left the room.
Old habits die hard and Dalziel immediately started wandering round, glancing at the papers on an open bureau, trying the odd drawer, but his heart wasn't in it. Upstairs the piano had fallen silent again and there'd been another spate of raised voices. Suddenly the door burst open and a tall slim woman strode into the room. She was wearing black cotton trousers and a black T-shirt which accentuated the whiteness of her skin and the paleness of her long ash-blond hair. She stopped dead at sight of Dalziel and regarded him impassively out of slate-gray eyes that somehow looked ageless by comparison with the rest of her, which looked early twenties.
He put the voice and place together and said, 'How do, Miss Wulfstan. I'm Detective Superintendent Dalziel.'
If he'd expected his prescience to impress, he was disappointed. If anything she seemed amused, a faint smile touching her long still face like a sun-start on a mountain tarn.
'How do, Superintendent. You being tekken care of or have you just brok in?'
For a second he thought she was taking the piss by imitating his accent. Before he could decide between the put-down oblique (Throat sore from too much singing, luv?) and the put-down direct (Happen you'll make a nice grown-up woman when your mind catches up with your tits), another woman came into the room, blond also, but shorter, more solidly built, and about twenty years older.
