both began to feel our oats, you know how it is. We'd both drunk enough to be a bit reckless, so when she said
'I had another fit when I came out of her garage round the back of the house and saw the decorators' stuff, but she said they'd buggered off for the day and we'd be all right. So I went in. Since I was there anyway, there didn't seem any point in arguing the toss any more!
'To cut a long story short, we enjoyed ourselves for about an hour and I was just saying I ought to be getting back when we heard a noise outside. Well, we thought the decorators had come back. Before I could stop her, Mandy jumped off the bed and ran to the window. She's like that, never thinks, just acts on the spot. She pulled back the curtain and let out a huge shriek. No wonder. It were like a French farce, there was Chris, like a monkey on a stick, perched on a ladder and peering in!
'I can only guess what'd happened. Perhaps he saw us in town. Perhaps he'd been on to us for a while. Any road, he'd come home, parked his car up the street and walked to his house. He likely checked that Mandy's car was in the garage, then tried to get into the house, quiet like. But Mandy's a bit of an old hand at this game, I always reckoned, and she'd slipped the bolts home in the front and back doors, just to be on the safe side. Then, seeing her bedroom curtains drawn and the ladder standing there handy, he decides to climb up it! Jealousy's a funny thing, Mr Pascoe. These poetic fellows write about men climbing mountains for love. It took jealousy to get old Chris Burke up a ladder! He'd no head for heights and he wasn't a very nifty mover. Two left feet at the office dance, I'd noticed. Now the shock of seeing Mandy all of a sudden, like, standing there shrieking, stark naked, with me behind her, must have made him jump. The ladder toppled sideways and he went out of sight. I'll never forget that moment, Pascoe. Never.'
He shook his head at the memory, finished his coffee, diluted the lees with another shot of plum brandy and downed that also.
'We got down there straight away. He was stone dead. Mandy was hysterical and I wasn't much better myself. But finally I got her calmed down and we got dressed. Whatever we did, it wasn't going to help matters if we were discovered running around in the nude, was it? By now it was beginning to dawn on us just how awkward things were. Don't get me wrong, Pascoe. The man was dead and we were shocked and sorry. He was my colleague, her husband. But he wasn't a very likeable man, old Chris, not the kind of man you'd mourn for longer than was decent. Neither of us wanted him dead, but now it had happened, neither of us wanted to see ourselves all over the Sundays. The head of I.C.E.'s a Dutchman, a very good-living, religious sort of man. He'd not take kindly to having the Chairman of one of his subsidiaries featured in anything as titillating as this was likely to be. As for Mandy, already she was seeing headlines: DID HE FALL OR WAS HE PUSHED? That sort of thing.
'So when I suggested I should get out of the way, it wasn't just self-interest, you follow me? It was for both our sakes. No one had come round to the house or tried to ring, so presumably none of the neighbours had spotted anything. I got down in the back of the car, Mandy drove me back into town and then went home and discovered the body. Simple! We didn't attempt to alter the immediate circumstances of his death at all. He climbed a ladder, he fell off. We just altered the reasons a bit, that's all. No crime committed, no crime intended. Just a bit of diplomatic rearrangement.'
He looked at Pascoe as though in search of an acquiescent nod.
Pascoe said evenly, 'Everything you did from the moment you failed to call the police was criminal in fact, Mr Elgood. And Mrs Burke, of course, perjured herself at the inquest.'
'Does that count? Legally, I mean?' asked Elgood naively.
'It's a court of law like any other,' said Pascoe. 'And the law doesn't like being lied to. And it tends to regard the suborners of witnesses just as seriously.'
'Suborner?' said Elgood.
'I presume your assistance to Mrs Burke in setting up her business was an inducement to, or reward for, silence?'
'Bollocks!' exploded Elgood. 'No such thing. The bloody woman started talking marriage a couple of months later, so I dropped her pretty bloody quick! The market stall was just something that came up, a sort of farewell present, that was all, something to keep her busy. I've had practically nowt to do with her since.'
'But you did ring her and warn her in case I came round, didn't you?'
'Aye. And I was bloody right to, wasn't I?' grumbled Elgood. 'All right, Inspector, now you've got the story. So what happens next?'
'You wouldn't like to put it all in a written statement, would you?' asked Pascoe hopefully.
'Do I look bloody daft!' said Elgood. 'Listen, I've told you this so you can stop sniffing around, stirring things up. It's not a good time for trouble.'
'You mean your Dutch boss wouldn't like it?'
'A bit of scandal just now could seriously weaken my position,' said Elgood. 'Particularly when it's both juicy and comic.'
'Not to mention criminal,' said Pascoe. 'And this is why you choked me off when I came round to see you about the Aldermann business?'
'Partly,' said Elgood. 'But also, like I've said, because I realized I was just being stupid about that. Why do you keep niggling away at it, for God's sake, Pascoe? You haven’t really come across anything to make you suspicious, have you?'
'Your own behaviour has been enough for that, wouldn't you say, Mr Elgood?' said Pascoe, rising and proffering his hand. 'I'll have to talk over what you've just told me with my superiors, I'm afraid.'
'As long as you remember I've told you nowt,' said Elgood, shaking his hand. 'And Mandy Burke won't talk to you with a witness present either.'
'We'll see,' said Pascoe. 'Oh. One last thing before I go. What was it that Mrs Aldermann said to you that made you suspicious of her husband in the first place?'
Elgood shook his head sadly.
