'Why aren't you in bed?' demanded Ellie.
'I've just got up for a moment,' lied Pascoe. 'Listen, love. Dalziel said that one of the things you lost tonight was a pendant. Would that be the one I bought in Birkham?'
'Yes, I'm afraid it was,' said Ellie. 'Why do you ask?'
'I'm not sure,' said Pascoe.
'There's something rattling round your nasty suspicious mind,' said Ellie – 'Hang on. There's something I can tell you about it which might or might not help. That bit of rock certainly wasn't a local pebble like the chubby fellow in the shop said. One of the geologists at college was admiring it. I think he fancies me. Anyway he said it was some kind of bloodstone probably originating from South America. Which makes the local craftsman angle a bit fishy! They probably came in a job lot from Buenos Aires!'
'You are beautiful,' said Pascoe. 'Beautiful! I love you!'
'You must have been hit harder than you think,' said Dalziel. 'Let's get this straight. You reckon that Mrs Cottingley's collection of bits of stone has been passed to Etherege who polishes 'em, sticks 'em in a bracelet or whatever, and flogs them in his shop?'
'Why not? It'd make a perfect outlet for unidentifiable stuff. Or nearly unidentifiable.'
'Unidentifiable,' grunted Dalziel. 'You can't identify a lump of rock.'
'You can say wherever else it was picked up, it wasn't Yorkshire!'
'You might be able to, if you had it! And this is why you think your lass was attacked? For the pendant?'
'It's possible.'
'You've been watching too much telly,' said Dalziel. In the background, Pascoe could hear Dalziel's own television set blaring away, but diplomatically he said nothing.
'Well,' resumed Dalziel. 'If you're thinking it was Etherege as robbed your girl, you'd better think again.'
'I never said
'Because I called at his shop when I was on my way to meet Miss Soper. I had those stamps. Sturgeon wasn't able to say yea or nay about them, so I thought as I was passing I'd have a look in. Anyway, he wasn't there, but an old bird who looks after his house for him told me he was at a sale in Durham somewhere, not expected back till late.'
'It was just an idea,' said Pascoe dispiritedly. All their bright ideas seemed to be leading nowhere in this case. Dalziel's suggestion about a kennels being the source of information about empty houses had proved fruitless too. It was in fact true that all the people robbed had owned animals, but a variety of kennels were used and in at least one case, Lewis's, the dog had been away on holiday with the family.
'Get some sleep,' advised Dalziel. 'I'll see you tomorrow.'
He replaced the receiver and stood in thought for a moment. The television raged in the neighbouring room, but the house still sounded empty. His stomach rumbled, reminding him of the inroads Grainger's diet was making on his flesh.
Pascoe's a good lad, he thought. He has his daft moments, but who doesn't? Most of what he said was worth thinking about. He looked at his watch. It was only quarter to ten. Worth a call.
Chapter 4
Thornton Lacey was lovely in the morning sunlight, and surprisingly quiet. Ellie glanced at her watch as she drove down the High Street. She was too late for the nine o'clock captains of industry. She realized she had been externalizing her own feelings of tension at the imminent inquest and had somehow expected the place to be as nervously taut as a Western Frontier town before the big shoot-out.
Pascoe met her outside Crowther's house and greeted her with a satisfyingly passionate kiss – satisfying not because she felt much like bed at the moment but as a reassurance of his physical well-being. For all that, he looked pale, and she examined the dressing on the back of his head as though it could tell her something about the nature of the wound beneath.
'I'm all right,' said Pascoe, who had in fact slept well until about six o'clock, when he had woken with his mind chaotic with thoughts which he had only begun to put into some kind of order. He had long since acquired the habit (most suggestively amusing to Ellie) of setting out his notebook and pencil on his bedside table every night so that intuitions of the night should not be sacrificed to indolence. It rested in his pocket now.
He led Ellie into the house.
'How about you?' he asked. 'That was an odd business.'
'Too true, I'm fine. Fat Dalziel had pumped so much gin into me that I slept like a log. He's quite a kind old sod, really. He rang me up again later to check that I was OK.'
'Did he now? About quarter to ten?'
'That's right,' said Ellie surprisingly. 'Why do you ask?'
Pascoe began to laugh. It was a good sound so Ellie did not interrupt it, puzzled though she was.
'It's the thought of old Uncle Andy phoning about your health!' he explained. 'It's always business with that one.'
Quickly he described his own telephone conversation with Dalziel the previous night. Ellie was less than rapturous about the implied theory.
'You mean Etherege is a fence?'
'In a small way.'
'And he jumped me last night just to get that pendant back?'
'Well, not Etherege,' admitted Pascoe. 'He's probably got an alibi.'
'Ah, I see! A good friend of his, you mean, who just happened to think he'd do his mate a handy turn by putting a bag on my head and shutting me in a broom cupboard? All for an old pebble?'
'The pebble's the key,' said Pascoe, hastily retreating from the uncertain ground Ellie was challenging him on. Quickly he told her about Mrs Cottingley's collection of stones.
'Perfectly safe, really,' he concluded. 'But if you were the first to buy one and he then realized, as he did, that you were a copper's moll, it's the kind of thing that might niggle. So when he sees you cavorting with Detective- Superintendent Fat Dalziel, he decides to act on the spur of the moment.'
'Who? Not Etherege, you say. Who then?'
'Yes. There's the rub, I'm afraid,' said Pascoe thoughtfully. 'Who else would be sufficiently concerned? Only one answer. The guy who did the robberies. Which would mean he was in the Jockey last night.'
He laughed.
'Pity Dalziel didn't think of that. He could have lined all the customers up and made them pee in a kettle.'
'What?'
'Don't you remember I told you what this villain did? Well, we had the stuff tested and it turns out he's a diabetic. A slender lead, but a lead.'
'And he's also the man who murdered that estate agent? Lewis?'
'Probably.'
Ellie shuddered at the memory of the gloomy corridor in the Jockey. Something else connected with the Jockey which she ought to tell Pascoe nearly surfaced for a moment, then was gone.
'Perhaps I was lucky,' she said.
'Perhaps,' said Pascoe, putting his arm round her shoulder. 'I think it's nearly time to go.'
Dalziel felt lucky as he drove out to Birkham. If Pascoe were right and Etherege was doing a bit of fencing, Andrew Dalziel was the man to lean on him. He could be sympathetic. People are bound to take advantage of a man in your position. Promissory. You tell us what you know and I'll see you all right. A nod's as good as a wink, eh? Threatening. There's a murder involved here, you know. Withholding information can get you ten years.
But first he had to establish that this wasn't just something dreamed up by a man who'd been knocked on the head. He'd play the customer to start with. Have a look round. Size up the man.
He was quite looking forward to it.
It was about time he had a break. There was all that stolen property unrecovered, a murder unsolved,
