'Not quite,' said Pascoe. 'What I do have is a witness who saw Wulfstan assaulting Lorraine Chase on Sunday morning.'
No doubt about it this time, thought Novello. Dalziel was definitely gobsmacked. And angry.
'Now listen,' he finally got out. 'I'm making allowances, but if this is one of thy clever games-'
'No game, sir,' said Pascoe. 'Though I doubt if it would stand up in court. In fact, I'm absolutely certain I won't be letting this witness get anywhere near court. You see, it's Rosie.'
And the Fat Man was gobsmacked again. Twice in twenty seconds. Plus that earlier near miss. Novello's respect for Pascoe soared to new heights.
And her own mind was sparked by his example to make a connection.
'The earring,' she said, knowing she was right but not why.
Pascoe smiled at her and said, 'Her crucifix substitute, actually. She picnicked early Sunday morning at the viewpoint on the Highcross Moor road. She was looking through Derek Purlingstone's binoculars. And she saw her imaginary friend, Nina, get taken by the nix.'
'The nix?' said Dalziel, clearly still not convinced Pascoe's recent trauma hadn't pushed him over the edge.
'That's right. Nina is a little blond girl with pigtails, like this.' He reached into his car and produced the Eendale Press volume.
'And that's what the nix looks like. Remind you of anyone?'
Dalziel shook his head, still in denial. But Novello said, 'That photo in the Post…'
'Right,' said Pascoe. 'I showed Rosie that pageful of photos and she pointed straight at Wulfstan and said, there's the nix. I'm sure she saw him, sir.'
The Fat Man shook his head, more to clear it than express absolute doubt.
'Pete,' he said gently. 'The lass has been through a bad time. You too. Can do funny things to you. On t'other hand, she's the only one in your family I'd trust with two pigs at Paddy's Market. So there's no harm in checking it out.'
With a sudden renewal of energy, he strode down to the mere's edge where the divers were packing up their gear, spoke to Perriman, picked up the length of chain, and, dragging it behind him like Marley's ledgers, made for the Range Rover.
'Right,' he called. 'Pete, you travel with us. Esther Williams down there will fetch your car back to Danby. I'm not letting you out of my sight, else God knows how many more whences and thences you'll be plucking out of the air.'
'Where exactly are we headed, sir?' asked Pascoe, as he climbed into the front passenger seat.
'Where do you think? You like music, don't you? We're off to a concert. And I reckon if we shout Piss! Piss! loud enough we might just get some of them buggers to sing us an encore.'
'I think you mean Bis! Bis!' suggested Pascoe.
'I know what I mean,' said Andy Dalziel.
The opening concert of the twentieth Mid-Yorkshire Dales Summer Music Festival started late.
This was expected. Despite posters, local press announcements, and word of mouth, news of the change of venue hadn't reached everyone and several patrons had had to be redirected from St. George's Hall to the Beulah Chapel.
In the circumstances no one complained. In fact, commercially speaking, it was no bad thing, thought Arne Krog as he observed the throng of people examining the tapes and discs on sale at the foot of the chapel. There were half a dozen on which he figured, though only two on which he was the sole artist. His recording career had paralleled his performing career-a steady effulgence that rarely threatened to explode into stardom.
Elizabeth had only the one disc on offer, but it was the one attracting most attention. In the circumstances not surprising. The clever among them would buy half a dozen copies and get her to sign and date them. Fifteen years on they could be a collector's item. Whereas his voice would hardly even rank as forgotten because it had never really ranked as rememberable. He could smile ruefully at the thought. The trappings of stardom he had always envied, but the possession of the kind of voice that brought them he regarded as a gift of God, and therefore simply to be marveled at. So it didn't bother him that Elizabeth might be a star, only that her brightening might be at the expense of others' darkness.
But he still wasn't sure he'd been wise to hand that envelope to the detective. It had been a moment's impulse, unlikely to have been acted on had the man been that fat bastard, Dalziel!
He went into what would have been the vestry if the Beulahites had vestries. Elizabeth was in there, looking as calm as a frozen mere. Inger was going through her usual preperformance finger-suppling exercises. Walter was looking at his watch as though it had disobeyed a direct command.
'I think we must start,' he said.
'Fine,' said Krog. 'I'm ready. Inger?'
'Yes.'
They looked at Wulfstan. There had been a time when, as chairman of the committee, he had acted as a sort of MC, introducing the performers. But there had been something so unbending about his manner that in the end the experiment had been discontinued. 'Not so much a warm-up,' Krog had described it, 'as a chill-down.' Now it was his custom to signal to the regulars that things were about to start by simply joining Chloe on the front row.
Tonight, however, he said, 'I will stay with Elizabeth so she is not sitting here alone.'
The singer looked at him and smiled with a kind of distant compassion, like some classical goddess gazing down on the mortal coil from her Olympian tea table.
'No, I'll be fine. You go and sit with Chloe. She'll be expecting you.'
Wulfstan didn't argue. He simply left. He might not be much good on a stage but he certainly knew how to get off it.
In a broad American accent Krog said, 'Okay. Let's do it.'
He stood aside to let Inger go out before him.
'Good luck, Elizabeth,' he said. 'Or if you are superstitious, break a leg.'
She met his gaze with an expression blank beyond indifference and he turned away quickly.
The applause which had begun as Inger took her seat at the piano swelled at his appearance. Small audiences loved him. If he could have performed to the whole world, fifty or sixty at a time, in village halls on summer eves, he would have been an international favorite.
He smiled on them and they smiled back as he bade them welcome with easy charm. As he spoke, his eyes ran along the rows. Many he recognized from previous years, the Mid-Yorks culture vultures who came flapping down to feast, and be seen feasting, on these musical bar-snacks. Then there were the tourists, glad of an evening excursion from musty hotel lounges, or holiday cottages not half as comfortable as home. And scattered among them were other faces he remembered or half remembered, from those long-off days when he stayed at Heck and was a popular customer at the village shop and patron of the Holly Bush Inn.
Wasn't that Miss Lavery from the village school? And old Mr. Pontifex, who'd owned half the valley? And those wizened features at the back of the hall, didn't they belong to Joe Telford, the joiner, by whose gracious permission they were performing here tonight? And that couple there, she like patience on a monument, and he like the granite it was carved from, were not they the Hardcastles, Cedric and Molly?
His gaze came forward and met Chloe's in the front row, and his voice faltered. His instinct had been right. This was no occasion for the Mahler cycle. Elizabeth had wanted to end the concert with it, but at least his resistance had prevented that. He wanted the concert to end on an upbeat note with a rousing encore or two. No one would be calling for encores after the Kindertotenlieder. So finally she had agreed to end the first half with it. Now he saw even that as a mistake. God help us, they'd probably all go home!
But it wasn't possible to change now. All he could hope was that the Vaughan Williams Songs of Travel which sat ill with the Kindertotenlieder but which he'd chosen deliberately for that reason would act as a kind of advance antidote.
By the time he came to the ninth and final song, he knew he'd been wrong. Sometimes an audience creates its own atmosphere, let the artist do what he will. He could feel them turning from the masculine vigor and sturdy independence expressed in several of the songs, and immersing themselves in the fatalistic melancholy which he'd always regarded as their lesser component. Even this last song, I have trod the upward and the downward path, a
