'This is where he fell, Inspector, or Peter, may I call you Peter?' she said. 'This is the very spot.'
She pointed with all the dramatic style of those stately-home guides who point to the very spot, often marked by ineradicable bloodstains, where some unfortunate scion of the noble family now living off the entrance fees met his end. There was no bloodstain here, only a tray on which stood a glass and a jug of what looked like iced lemon squash.
At least, thought Pascoe, she had had the good taste not to cover 'the very spot' with the sun-bed from which his insistent finger on the front doorbell had at last summoned her.
Strangely, the news that he was a police officer had seemed to eradicate rather than exacerbate her annoyance at being disturbed. Modern middle-class attitudes to the police usually stimulated an instant expression of grave distrust followed by a demand for warrants to be flashed and business clearly stated before the threshold was crossed. Instead she'd flung open the door to him, invited him to walk through and had evinced neither surprise nor reluctance to talk when he had diffidently referred to her late husband.
'Shall we stay out here to chat?' she said. 'One can hardly afford to miss such divine weather, can one? There's a deckchair in the garage if you can find it. I'll get you a glass. I'm sure you're dying of thirst. Won't be a moment!'
With a promissory smile, she went back into the house. Pascoe took the chance of being alone to get his bearings. He recalled the High Grove estate vaguely from his own house-hunting days. It had just been completed and he and Ellie had taken a quick look, which was all they'd needed. Not that it was bad as such up-market development went. There were three types of detached property, arranged in groups of five as though the builder believed in the mysterious properties of the quincunx. The Burke house was a Chatsworth second only in size and luxury to the Blenheim. This particular group of Chatsworths backed on to a bunch of Hardwicks which were two- bed, two-recep (or three-bed, one-recep) bungalows. It had been a Hardwick that the Pascoes had been persuaded to examine, a pleasure denied the owners of the Chatsworths by a seven-foot-high length of pastel green composition screening (based, Pascoe recollected the agent's blurb, on an Italian cloister design), plus whatever vegetation had matured at the foot of the Chatsworths' longish lawns. Presumably, however, a man up a ladder would be visible from the bungalows.
He entered the garage through a side door. It held a Volvo estate, the back of which was packed with what he took to be wares intended for her market stall - straw mats, cane baskets, bead curtains, silk flowers, that kind of thing. Cardboard boxes containing similar items were piled up in the small area of space left by the Volvo's length. Among all this colonial cane, he found a good old English deckchair.
He was still wrestling it into submission when the Widow Burke returned with a tall glass which she proceeded to fill with the inviting-looking iced squash.
The chair suddenly fell into shape.
'Sit,' she commanded, handing him the glass.
He sat, and she removed the wraparound robe she must have wrapped around when summoned to the door, and subsided not ungracefully into her sunbed.
Without the robe, the question of her age became more accessible of inductive reasoning. This suntanned skin certainly did not cover the firm muscular flesh of youth, but neither had age scored and puckered the smooth veneer with its excoriating frosts. Beneath the narrow bikini-top, her breasts arched as much as they spread and the contour of her stomach was Cotswoldian rather than Pennine.
Mid-forties, Pascoe assessed. And well worth a second look.
She spotted the second look and smiled her understanding.
'Cheers,' she said.
'Cheers,' said Pascoe, taking a long pull at his lemon squash. It hit the back of his unprepared throat like lava and he spluttered eruptively. The basic dilutant was not water, but vodka. At least this provided some explanation of her manner.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I should have warned you. Is it true you're not allowed to drink on the job?'
'Only in moderation,' said Pascoe, placing the glass firmly on 'the very spot'.
'Me too,' she said, drinking, and eyeing him over the rim of the glass in what should have been an embarrassingly ludicrous parody of a 'twenties Hollywood vamp, but wasn't.
Pascoe said firmly, 'About Mr Burke.'
She said, is it the insurance company or has someone been making naughty phone calls?'
'Pardon?' said Pascoe.
'You must have some reason for wanting to talk about poor old Chris after all this time. I was just wondering if there was any way I could get it out of you.'
She laughed as she spoke, vodka-moist lips drawing back from good white teeth.
‘It's really just routine, Mrs Burke,' said Pascoe lamely.
'Mandy,' she said, if you're not going to be frank, you can at least be friendly. Don't think me callous, Peter, but I'm well over it now, you see. Life goes on. I'm all for life. Not everyone is, you know. It's a great jostling race, but all the fun's in keeping on running. They'll have to knock me off the track before I let anyone get past, but Chris now, he was just my age yet he acted like my father sometimes. Forty did it for him, he got to forty and somewhere in his mind a little clock went
'Yet he went running up a high ladder in the middle of the afternoon,' observed Pascoe, glancing up at the eaves. 'I shouldn't have fancied it.'
'That's because you're a mere youngster,' she said firmly. 'Checking up on workmen's part of the middle-age syndrome. Value for money. He had a good head for figures, Chris, but not much for heights.'
'Yes, he was an accountant, wasn't he?' said Pascoe, spotting the opening.
'That's right. Perfecta. They make bathroom fittings and such like,' she said. 'You should take a look in my
