'It was a Saturday in March. Second Saturday in the month, I seem to recall. It was a real March day, cloudy one minute, clear the next, and blowing a gale all the time.'
This accorded precisely in both date and meteorology with what Pascoe had read in the coroner's report. The windy conditions, it was theorized, had been in part responsible for the falling masonry.
'Mr Capstick wasn't at home that day, I gather?'
'No.'
'But you were?'
'Yes.'
'Was there anyone else here?'
Silence. He took another bite. And another.
'Yes. That young fellow who did the roses was here, I recall,' said Mrs Unger.
In his excitement Pascoe finished the scone and did not hesitate to take another when the old woman flickered her eyes at his empty plate.
'Did the roses, you say? That would be Mr . . .?'
He bit.
'Aldermann, his name was. He had a way with flowers, I'll give him that.'
But not with Mrs Unger. Pascoe guessed that Patrick had not been fed with buttered scones.
'What precisely was he doing?' he asked.
'Pruning and planting. March is the time for it, so they say. I told him Mr Capstick was away and he said never mind, he'd do a bit of pruning and planting. I let him into the garden and left him to it.'
'What time did he leave, can you recall?'
'About four o'clock. It started raining cats and dogs; it came sideways in that wind. He shouted that he was off and off he went.'
The Reverend's corpse had been discovered by the local vicar at four forty-five on his return from the reception of a wedding he'd officiated at earlier in the afternoon. He had arranged to rendezvous with Oliver Somerton at four P.M., but had been delayed.
Reading between the lines, Pascoe guessed that the reception had been a lively and well-liquored affair.
Finishing his second scone, he said, 'Could I take a look around the garden?'
Silently she led him out of the room, through the conservatory in which Capstick had been placed like some delicate Eastern plant, and into the garden.
'Thank you,' he said.
He walked swiftly across the lawn towards the thicket of boundary-marking shrubs over which rose the tower of St Mark's. There were rhododendrons here in full bloom, their colours vying with the richness of two or three lilac trees, but their scent unable to compete with the heaviness of half a dozen clumps of lavender which had been allowed to spread widely. Indeed, the whole of the shrubbery looked as if it had been left untended for several seasons now and the little path which wound its way through the bushes was overhung by their branches. Pascoe shouldered his way through till he arrived at a small gate in the cypress hedge. It was hinged to a rotting post by a circlet of wire which rain and dew had rusted to an autumnal brown. Beyond stretched the rough untended grass of an old graveyard, broken by stones whose inscriptions were eroded and obscured by time and weather and the tiny scrabbling fingers of innumerable lichens.
He forced the gate open with difficulty. Clearly the Capstick household used other routes to heaven. Treading with apologetic lightness across the graves of Little Leven's ancient dead, he made his way to the church and, after a small effort of recall, found himself at the spot where the Reverend Oliver Somerton had been struck down by a piece of consecrated stone. Uneasily he peered up at the tower, but all looked secure enough now. He presumed the Archdeacon's death had given a boost to the restoration fund if nothing else.
Here at this side of the church he was quite out of sight of the main gate and the tiny village beyond. The only sign of habitation was the roof of Capstick's house and those of his immediate neighbours, unless of course one counted the tombstones. Looking at them rising from the gentle ripple of the long grass, Pascoe realized he had no sense of neglect. The old gave way to the new always, and death did not stop the process. Men died and life went on in the space they vacated. For a while their remains were marked by clean, smooth obelisks with sharp-edged lettering, and it was right that the grass around these should be razed and flowers laid at their feet. But as the new became old and the survivors in their turn came to rest, it was also right that the old stones should be absorbed into the landscape as surely as the remains they marked were absorbed into the deep, dark strata of the earth.
Something whizzed past his head and hit the flagged path beside him. Startled, he stepped back and looked up. High above, a beaked head cocked itself to one side as though resetting its aim.
'Thanks for the thought anyway,' said Pascoe, looking at the white splash on the flagstone and recalling that it was supposed to be lucky to be hit by a bird-dropping. He glanced at his watch. It was time to go. There were other scenes of death to be visited, other metaphysical meditations to be meditated, miles to go before he could sleep. Miles to go.
By the time he reached No. 12, The High Grove, the home of Mrs Mandy Burke, widow of Christopher Burke, one-time assistant to the Chief Accountant of Perfecta Ltd, Pascoe was no longer in the meditative mood. For a start Mrs Unger's scones, impervious even to a lunchtime pint of best Yorkshire bitter, lay heavy on his stomach. Next, the pink and white lozenges of ornamental stone which formed the patio on which Mr Burke had met his end were in no wise as atmospheric as the worn grey flags where the Archdeacon had been struck down, nor did the pebble-dashed rear wall of No. 12 with its puce-painted window-frames soar into the imagination in quite the same way as the dark tower of St Mark's Church.
And finally, instead of the quiet company of the ancient dead, Pascoe was entertained by the presence of the Widow Burke whose antiquity was unassessable beneath the cosmetic art of mid-Yorkshire's best beauticians, but whose quickness was never in doubt.
