'Hello, love,' said Pascoe, stepping into the hall-way. 'Come on in.'
Ellie entered, still looking puzzled, and followed him into a comfortable sitting-room furnished in a period-less old-fashioned style.
'What are you doing here?' she asked. 'Or more important, what are we doing here? This isn't a subtle way of setting the scene for a marriage-proposal, is it? Because if this is your idea of home, I refuse!'
'It's not bad,' protested Pascoe. 'Very cosy.'
'So it's cosy! It also reeks of a-woman's-place-is-in-the-home. You've got a very Victorian paterfamilias look about you.'
'There are worse fates,' said Pascoe.
'What are we doing here, Peter?'
'Looking for cats. Or rather a cat. I've got the other two locked in the kitchen. Let me explain.'
'I wish you would.'
Pascoe had called to see Mavis Sturgeon in hospital. She was confined to bed, but much more alert now. Her main concern had naturally been for her husband, but she seemed ready to accept assurances that he was all right, but too weak to be visited even had she been fit. Pascoe had delicately probed to see if there were anything she could tell him, but the names of Cowley and Atkinson meant nothing to her. Lewis she had read about in the paper and she had an idea he was a member of the Liberal Club which Edgar had belonged to for more than forty years. She confirmed that her husband had been withdrawn and irritable for the past week or more, following a period of unexplained high spirits and excitement.
'I was worried about his retirement at first,' she said. 'He missed the business a lot. But then he seemed to come round, start taking an interest in things. I thought that… I thought…'
She blinked back tears. Pascoe intervened swiftly.
'Do you know where he might have been going today?' he asked.
'No. That's what makes it so odd. He'd no reason at all to be on that road. I've never liked that road, never. Always accidents, always something.'
Pascoe had risen to go, making an automatic promise to do anything he could to help and being surprised to find himself instantly put to the test.
'It's her cats. The neighbours will feed them, she knows, but she'd be happier if they went into their usual kennels. So I said I'd take them. And as it's no job for a singlehanded man, I left the message for you.'
'Thanks a lot.'
'Why did you ring me earlier?' asked Pascoe casually.
'Oh, nothing. I just felt like a chat,' she replied.
'I gather you had one with Dalziel.'
'We talked.'
'What did he say?'
'He advised me of my constitutional rights. And duties. And suggested strongly that a woman's place was around the home. Particularly the bedroom.'
'Did he?'
'Yes.'
'Let's find that cat, shall we?'
Ellie took a china ashtray from the mantelpiece and rattled it energetically against the wall. Ten seconds later a sleek ginger shape slid casually from beneath the chair on the arm of which Pascoe was squatting. The animal purred as Ellie picked him up.
'Well done, St Francis. What's the secret?'
'Make a sound like a rattling food-dish and these creatures will come from miles away. Otherwise, if they don't feel like it, you can coax and threaten all night without results.'
'They remind me of you.'
'That'll cost you a steak.'
'See what I mean?'
This slightly unreal, consciously superficial relationship was maintained all the way to the kennels which conveniently turned out to be the ones behind the Jockey at Birkham.
A man was unloading trays of meat and made-up pet food from a blue van as they came out of the office. His van proclaimed that he was Jim Jones, Purveyor of High Class Pet Food.
'Does it make you hungry?' asked Pascoe.
'No. But I am.'
He glanced at his watch. It was just on six-thirty.
'Not too early? Then let's be first in the Jockey. You don't deliver there as well, do you?' he added jocularly to the petfood man who had stood aside to let them past.
He didn't answer, but merely stared unblinkingly at Pascoe and shook his head. Take a joke seriously and you take the wind out of anybody's sails, thought Pascoe, disconcerted. It was one of Dalziel's favourite tricks.
They weren't the first in the pub, but were the first to order their steaks. Ellie drank her lager thirstily, then sat toying with the pebble pendant Pascoe had bought her.
'Peter,' she said, 'when I talked to Dalziel he warned me about putting you on the spot.'
'He did what?'
'You know. He said that I should be careful about sharing information with you as a friend that might possibly cause you difficulties as a policeman. If Colin got in touch with me, for instance, wanting help.'
'Has he?' asked Pascoe flatly, staring into his glass.
'No, he hasn't. But it made me think, what he said. I've been worrying at it ever since. He's wrong, you know. I've just decided that. Fat Dalziel is wrong.'
'Put it in writing,' said Pascoe with a smile.
'Hell, I'm not gone on the complete honesty bit. Some things are better kept quiet. But not for the reasons that Dalziel gave. Not so that you can grow up into a nice fat superintendent like he is.'
'I agree,' said Pascoe. 'That's not at all a good reason for not telling me something. Though I'll want to look more closely at these other things that are better kept quiet.'
'You might be shocked!' she said lightly. 'The real reason I rang you this afternoon was something rather odd. After you dropped me in town I didn't make straight back to college. I had nothing on there and anyway I felt like being among a lot of people after this morning. So I shopped for a couple of hours. Then, about four it must have been, I set off back. I came through Birkham, of course, and stopped to have another wander round the antique shop. But it was shut.'
'Not a very keen trader, our Mr Etherege,' commented Pascoe. 'Who, by the way, has just come into the bar.'
Etherege seemed to be well known and entered immediately into a cheerful exchange of greetings with the landlord and other drinkers.
'Anyway,' said Ellie, 'I was just getting back into the car, when another car pulled up behind me. I thought I recognized it, bright red Citroen. Out jumps Anton Davenant, greets me warmly and says he is just on his way to see me at college.'
'Interesting,' said Pascoe. 'What the hell did he want that he couldn't have got when we met him this morning?'
'I wondered that too. The only thing I could think of was your absence!'
'Flattering. OK. What did he say?'
'I'm not really sure. He seemed to be feeling his way, if you know what I mean. He talked about Colin and the others, particularly Timmy. Evidently he met him when Timmy was working at the Common Market HQ in Brussels and Davenant was doing some kind of gastronomic architectural Grand Tour.'
'Then Timmy comes back and takes up with Carlo again. Interesting.'
'I thought so too. I began to wonder whether he was in fact in the district completely by accident.'
'That,’ said Pascoe, 'is the kind of nasty thought only policemen are supposed to have.'
'Dalziel would be pleased. But I did begin to wonder after a while if Colin might have been in touch with him and he was sounding me out to see whether a policeman's paramour was to be trusted.'
'And was she?'
