'You're a working member of the community then?' asked Pascoe brightly. 'You don't just sleep here.'
The Bells and Hardistys exchanged a glance which told Pascoe he had been inept in his choice of words. John Bell seemed very amused, the others less so.
'Yes, Mr Pascoe. I have a dairy herd and one of the biggest hen batteries in this part of the world. I work for my living.'
A hint of sneering stress on 'work'? Pascoe wasn't sure.
'So do we all,' smiled Dr Hardisty, perhaps having felt it also. Pelman grunted and sipped his drink.
'If you like what you're doing, it's not work,' said Bell with mock sanctimoniousness.
'Do you like your job?' asked Sandra Bell suddenly. 'What is it you do, Mr Pascoe?'
Doesn't she know? Or is she just trying out her claws? She seemed a nice woman, but Pascoe felt far from competent to judge.
'I'm a policeman, Mrs Bell,' he said.
'Oh.' Collapse of thin woman.
'CID, aren't you?' said Pelman. 'Tell me, what's your professional prognosis in this case?'
'Angus!' protested Marianne.
'He needn't answer if he'd rather not,' said Pelman, staring hard at Pascoe.
'Another drink, anyone?' said Hartley Culpepper.
'Police procedure is quite simple in such matters,' said Pascoe. 'Three things mainly. The weapon is looked for. Absent persons who may be able to help are looked for. And a great number of people are interviewed, statements taken, information amassed. That's about it. Nothing very dramatic. In the majority of murder cases, the police know who did it within twenty-four hours of being called in. Often sooner.'
He scanned the group, poker-faced.
'And in this case?' asked Pelman, softly.
'Who knows? I'm not on the investigating team,' said Pascoe. 'I'm just a witness. Like the rest of you perhaps.'
'How important will finding the weapon be?' asked Mrs Hardisty to fill the ensuing silence.
'It's finding who it belongs to that's important in the case of a gun,' explained Pascoe.
Pelman laughed explosively, unhumorously.
'That's no problem. It belongs to me.'
No one rushed to fill the silence this produced. But Pascoe had no doubts about the thoughts swimming goldfish-like behind the surprised eyes. A joke in bad taste? Some kind of confession? A simple misunderstanding?
'Didn't Backhouse tell you?' asked Pelman.
'I said I'm not one of the investigating team,' said Pascoe.
'No. Of course not. But it's not a secret, is it? The thing is, when the superintendent spoke to me, one of the things he was interested in was my guns. Naturally. It had gone from my mind till I looked.'
'What had?' asked Marianne impatiently. 'For God's sake, this is serious, Angus. Don't make a golf-club anecdote out of it.'
Pelman took his scolding meekly and went on.
'One of my guns was missing. I had lent it to Colin Hopkins a week or so ago and he hadn't let me have it back. Not that there was any hurry. It wasn't up to much and I have plenty of others.'
'No doubt,' said Culpepper.
'So you think it was your gun that was used…?' Mrs Hardisty saw no need to finish her sentence.
'It seems probable.'
'Why did Colin want the gun?' asked Pascoe, listening carefully to the timbre of his own voice.
It was light, steady. He was doing remarkably well. The control was there. Fat Dalziel would be proud of him.
The lounge door burst open and he whirled like a startled cat, slopping his whisky over the rim of his glass.
In the door stood a tall, angular woman of some considerable age. Her skin was brown and creased like a tortoise's neck, but her eyes were bright and alert. The nylonoverall she wore was the luminous orange of a road- worker's safety jacket, clashing horridly with her dark violet slacks and fluffy red slippers. This, thought Pascoe with surprise, must be the gardener.
There's a man upstairs,' she said in a flat south Lancashire accent.
'It's all right, Mother,' said Culpepper in a reassuring tone. 'We have guests.'
'I'm not blind,' said the old woman scornfully.
'To stay, I mean. Mr Pascoe here. Pascoe, I'd like you to meet my mother, who does us the honour of living with us.'
'You could put it like that,' said the woman, staring at Pascoe with a marked lack of enthusiasm. 'It wasn't him.'
'Wasn't…?'
'Upstairs.'
'Then it was probably Miss Soper, our other guest,' said Culpepper triumphantly.
'It was a man,' she insisted.
Marianne Culpepper slid open a panel in an elegant walnut cabinet to reveal the contents of an expensive- looking hi-fi system.
The new Drew Spade album came this morning,’ she said brightly. 'Shall we listen? I haven't heard it myself yet, so I can't say what it's like.'
Another diversionary tactic. What a snarled-up lot of people they were! And the sound which began to thump out of the speakers was hardly music-for-the-bereaved, either. But it wasn't quite loud enough to prevent Pascoe from hearing the rest of the exchange between Culpepper and his mother.
'No, it must have been Miss Soper,’ said Hartley.
'Please your bloody self,' answered the old woman, shrugging her still broad shoulders. 'I'm off to my bed. I only hope I'm not murdered in it.'
The remark acted on Pascoe like an electrical impulse. He handed his glass to Culpepper, pushed between the man and his mother without apology and ran lightly up the stairs.
It was absurd. Probably the old woman had indeed just caught a glimpse of Ellie. But she seemed sensible enough. Something of a burden, perhaps, to Culpepper and his wife, but that was none of his business. To an investigating officer, everything is his business. One of Dalziel's dicta.
He pushed open Ellie's door quietly. She was sitting up in bed with the lights on, smoking a cigarette.
'Hi,' she said, unsurprised.
'Hi,' he said. 'Back in a sec.'
His own door was slightly ajar. The room was in darkness. The door moved easily at his touch and he stepped swiftly inside, trying to recall where the light-switch was.
His groping hand could not make contact with it, but he knew someone was there in the room with him. The image of a shotgun rose suddenly in his mind and he abandoned his search for the switch, moving noiselessly away from the line of light spilling in from the landing. As he dropped on one knee beside the wardrobe, he heard a noise. The curtains moved and the clear autumn sky leaned its pinholes of light against the glass till a figure blotted them out. Everything went still again.
Pascoe spoke.
'Colin?' he said uncertainly.
He stood up.
'Colin? It's Peter, Peter Pascoe. Is that you, Colin?'
He was by the small bedside table now. His hands plunged down on the lamp which stood there. The ball of his thumb caught the switch and the soft light blossomed into the room.
The figure by the window spoke.
'No, I'm sorry, Mr Pascoe,’ he said compassionately. 'It's not Colin.'
'So I see,' said Pascoe, looking steadily at the man before him. 'What are you doing in my room, Mr Davenant?'
