command.
'Which side of the house do you sleep?' asked Pascoe, causing a time-slip in Miss Alice who put her hand to her mouth in horror at his indelicacy.
'First floor on the Wilkinson House side,' said Miss Annabelle. 'Alice is at the back, I'm at the front.'
'It's a very large house,' said Pascoe. 'May I have a look upstairs just to get an impression of where you'd be in relation to next door?'
'By all means,' said Miss Annabelle. 'Follow me.'
They set off in procession up the gloomy stairs, the older woman leading, the two men close behind and the younger sister trailing.
On the first floor they halted and Miss Annabelle flung open doors.
'These are our bedrooms. Mine here and that's Alice's. As you can see, they abut on to Wilkinson House, but we weren't disturbed. Over there are another couple of rooms, used to be our parents' bedroom and dressing-room. We don't use them now. Bathroom, boxroom. We use this as a sewing-room or rather Alice does. Me, I was never a hand with the needle. But Alice is an expert. Makes all our clothes in here. Gets the best light, you see.'
Pascoe peered in. The room was full of material, some of it draped around a dressmaker's dummy. On a smooth polished table stood an ancient foot-operated sewing machine and a work basket with all the tools of the art, needles, cotton reels, buttons, pinking shears, edging tape, everything.
'A hive of industry,’ he said brightly. 'It's a big house. You live here alone?'
'Not quite,' said Miss Annabelle and flinging back her head she cried, 'Una! Duessa! Medina! Acrasia! Archimago! Satyrane! Guyon! Britomart!'
A moment later the room was filled with cats. They were all Siamese, of various ages and pointings, but all possessing in common an extremely loud voice.
'Apart from these, we live alone,' said Miss Annabelle. 'Do you want to go higher?'
'If I may.'
They set off again.
'Careful,’ said Miss Annabelle. 'The carpet's a bit tatty here. Well, here we are. Nothing much to see. These were servants' rooms. Empty now. The age of the servant is past, I fear.'
'And this one?'
'Ah, yes. That's our old nursery.'
She pushed open the door. Spring sunlight fell through a dusty casement window into the long, quiet room, bringing life and colour once more to the shabby old-fashioned wallpaper with a design of rather menacing fairies. Everything was still there. A rocking-horse, white and scarlet piebald. An antique play-pen. A four-feet-high doll's house with detachable front, which Pascoe was certain would be worth a small fortune in an antique shop. A stack of picture books. A gaggle of dolls.
'Makes you wonder what on earth happened, doesn't it?' said Miss Annabelle.
Pascoe glanced round. Miss Alice was hanging back, not even looking through the door. He felt a pang of desperate pity for her. The past must call her like a drug, but she was trying to turn away from it, probably because there were strangers present.
'Well, thank you very much,' he said, walking from the room into the corridor once again. 'Now, let me get my bearings. Wilkinson House is there, right? Now, let me see.'
There was a narrow corridor between the two servants' bedrooms. At the end was a door. He approached it and turned the handle, but it was locked.
'Now I bet that goes into Mr Haggard's kitchen,' he said half to himself. 'How interesting.'
'Right you are,' said Miss Annabelle. 'It's been there years. It was very useful when I helped out in the school. How's Dr Haggard taking it, by the way?'
Pascoe looked at Wield realizing he had not mentioned Haggard's injuries. Wield's face was impassive.
'I'm sorry,' said Pascoe. 'I should have said. Dr Haggard was attacked. He's in hospital.'
Miss Alice screamed and even Miss Annabelle looked shaken.
'We'll be seeing him at the hospital soon. We'll take him your best wishes, ladies,' said Wield, suddenly genial like a beacon on Skiddaw.
'Please do,' said Miss Annabelle while her sister, clinging to her for comfort, nodded accord.
'We will, we will,' said Pascoe. 'I'm sure he'll feel all the better for knowing that you were not disturbed by the unpleasantness.'
Which unlikely hypothesis was never to be put to the test.
For when they reached the Infirmary they discovered that Haggard was dead.
Chapter 6
'Dead?' said Dalziel. 'Oh shit!'
Pascoe waited patiently to see if this was an expression of grief or something else.
'Last thing I need's a murder enquiry,’ continued the fat man. 'Bloody doctors. Couldn't they have injected him or connected him to something?'
'He'd been very badly beaten. His face was a mess. Nose broken, teeth loosened. Several ribs smashed. Evidently it was internal haemorrhaging that killed him, probably caused by a kick in the gut. They thought they'd got it under control, but his heart packed in.'
'Heart, eh?'
For a moment Dalziel looked uneasy.
'Yes,' said Pascoe. 'And there was one other injury. Or perhaps I should say six. He'd been caned. Very hard. On the backside. They counted the weals.'
'Six of the best!' said Dalziel. 'Well, well.'
'They made the jokes too,’ said Pascoe. 'The doctor told me that there was no way of time-tabling the various injuries outside of saying they all occurred at least an hour before he was admitted and not earlier than six hours before that.'
'That's about as helpful as most of what they tell us,’ sneered Dalziel.
'I think he was suggesting that the caning and the beating-up may not have been done at the same time or for the same reason.'
'Haggard's got a kink, you mean? Christ, I don't need any wog medicine man to tell me that – he was one of your erudite Asians, I suppose? They usually are after midnight.'
'You mean, something's known about Haggard?'
Dalziel grinned like an advert for Jaws.
'In this town something's known about every bugger,' he said. 'If I could get half the sods I drink with in the Rugby Club bar into CID, the crime rate'd be halved tomorrow. Or into gaol for that matter.'
'I know I'm a soccer man,' said Pascoe, 'but if you could see your way…'
Dalziel settled back in his chair and scratched his right groin sensuously.
'I'd have thought you and Wield, being so interested in the Calli, would have known all there was to know about Gilbert,' he said in ponderous satire. 'He was an interesting fellow. Like you, Peter.'
'Like me?' said Pascoe, alarmed.
'Educated, I mean. University. A real university, though. Oxford. And a real subject. Classics.'
Having seen his own university and discipline dismissed as illusory, or at best mimic, Pascoe felt a need to re-establish himself.
'Was he a real doctor too? I mean, he wasn't brown or yellow or black, which puts him halfway there already, doesn't it?'
'A Doctor of Philosophy, oh yes,' said Dalziel, delighted at having provoked a response. 'You ever thought of trying it?'
'Taking a research degree?' said Pascoe in surprise.
'No. I meant philosophy,' said Dalziel. 'It helps you keep your temper, they tell me. Well, he did a spell in the Foreign Office. He was out in Africa or West India, somewhere hot and black. Then he went to Europe, Vienna, I
