the truth, I've been quite delighted with the class of person I've met in the flats, quite delighted!'
After another cup of tea, Seymour finally got down to extracting firm answers to his questions.
She had last spoken to Parrinder on Friday morning.
'He'd been a little under the weather for the past few days, just a cold, but he hadn't gone out. I called to ask him if he wanted anything from the shops when I went out later as I usually do on Friday. He said no, he was still all right.'
'Still?'
'Yes. I'd looked in from time to time earlier in the week. I offered to collect his pension but he said he might as well let it stand as he had plenty of stuff in his fridge to keep him going.'
'Did he say anything about going out later?' asked Seymour.
'Oh no. I'd have certainly told him what I thought if he'd even hinted it. It was so nasty, even I put off my shopping till Saturday, after all. He was standing looking out of his window as we talked and I remember saying to him I might change my mind and not go till Saturday if it didn't get any better and he said something about yes, but it makes the ground nice and heavy, doesn't it? As if that was a good thing! And then he goes out in it without telling anyone. But he was such an independent man. Independence! It's your greatest fault and your greatest virtue, you men. You have to do things your own way, Mr Seymour. Your own way. There's no denying you!'
She smiled coyly at him and Seymour finished his tea and took his leave, promising to call in again if ever he were passing.
He almost gave the demented Mrs Escott a miss, but he had a fairly strongly developed sense of duty and also knew that those omissions which the sharp eye of Sergeant Wield didn't spot, the milder but no less perceptive gaze of Inspector Pascoe would surely pick up.
Mrs Escott was even more of a relief than Mrs Campbell. Instead of some wild woman of the woods, with mad eyes and unkempt hair, he found himself in the presence of a very ordinary-looking, rather dumpy lady with neat grey hair whose only sign of disturbance was that her soft brown eyes filled with tears when she discovered his mission.
She bustled around making a pot of tea which Seymour didn't really want but guessed was a therapeutic response. He placed himself so that he could see into the tiny kitchen and check that she actually lit the gas. Everything was carried out swiftly and efficiently and the tea tasted fine, no salt instead of sugar, or any other mad substitution. His expression of gratitude must have been slightly overdone for he caught her looking at him as if she suspected he was slightly odd, a disconcerting reversal.
She was able to fill in a little more of Parrinder's Friday timetable. She had called in to see him at about two o'clock that afternoon. He was watching some racing on the television and she had made a cup of tea and they had sat together and talked for about an hour. He had made no mention of any plans for going out later, but that didn't surprise her. Not that he was a secretive man, but he was certainly one who made his own decisions independent of anyone else.
'Did he drink a lot?' wondered Seymour.
'Oh no,' she said. 'He liked a drop of rum when he could afford it, but he wasn't what you would call a drinker.'
Seymour made notes. It was beginning to seem possible that Parrinder had met his 'accident' as he was heading across the recreation ground on his way into town later that evening rather than on his return, though the latter was by no means ruled out. It had been ten o'clock when Mr Cox found him. Presumably he had been lying there for some time for the wet and the cold to strike home with such deadly effect. It would have been dark by five o'clock on such a dreary day and very few pedestrians would have been out and about in such a place in such conditions.
'Mr Seymour,' said Mrs Escott in her rather gentle voice which had a great deal of the West Country beneath its patina of Yorkshire vowels and usages. 'All these questions – was Mr Parrinder attacked by someone? When I heard about it this morning, they just said he'd fallen and broken something.'
For a woman whose mind was failing, she was sharp enough to be the first to ask the question direct, thought Seymour.
'We don't know,' he said, adding reassuringly, 'But don't you worry about it. Maybe it was just an accident. That's what I'm trying to find out.'
'That recreation ground,' she said, her eyes filling again. 'It's a dreadful place when it's dark. All those muggings you read about. I won't go near the place, I don't even like it much in daylight either. Poor Tap, poor Tap.'
J
The double dose of tea had got to Seymour and he asked permission to use the bathroom.
'Yes, of course,' said the woman, directing him, and drying her tears at the same time.
Seymour went in. It was a ground-floor flat and Mrs Escott, not trusting to frosted glass to protect her privacy, also had heavy curtains drawn so that the room was in deep gloom. Seymour reached out, grasped the light cord and pulled.
No light came on, at least not in here, and distantly he heard a double-noted bell begin to clamour an urgent summons.
'Oh shit,' he said.
Chapter 10
'Oh my country! How I love my country!'
George Headingley had had a mixed morning.
He just missed Arnie Charlesworth, learning at his main betting shop that the bookie was on his way to a race meeting at Newcastle.
The DCC had passed Major Kassell's name on to him and he had rung Sir William Pledger's mansion, Haycroft Grange, which was about ten miles out of town, to learn that he'd just missed Kassell too. The good news was that he was coming into town, to the local airport to be precise, to meet a plane.
The plane in question turned out to be a Cessna Utililiner, the property of Van Bellen International, which was bringing some of Sir William's weekend shooting guests from the Continent. The plane had already landed and there seemed to be quite a lot of activity around it as Headingley drove towards the clubhouse of the local gliding club which was the only building on the site with any possible pretensions to being a passenger terminal.
To his surprise, there was a familiar figure standing at the side of the clubhouse, beating his arms against his sides to keep the blood circulating in the cold November air. It was Inspector Ernie Cruikshank, dowager of the uniformed branch, who usually had to be bribed to expose himself to the open air before May was out.
'Ernie, what the hell are you doing here?' asked Headingley,
'Same as you, likely,' said Cruikshank gloomily.
'I hope not,' said Headingley. 'What's going off, then?'
'Don't you know? It's your boss who set it up! Special request from Customs and Excise. For some reason best known to themselves, they're giving yon plane a right going-over and they asked if we could provide a presence in case we were needed. I ask you, bloody Saturday morning too, with them Rovers hooligans piling into town off every train for the match this afternoon, not to mention your precious poof Pascoe helping himself to my lads for his bloody murder inquiry!'
Headingley smiled, guessing that Cruikshank had opted for the outside duty which he felt entailed minimum exposure. The reference to Pascoe was best ignored. Cruikshank made little effort to conceal his opinion that the young DI was a jumped-up, supercilious, intellectual twit.
He pressed for further information and learned that Pledger had got a special dispensation for his company plane to land here during the shooting season.
'Cost him a bit to get it made OK, they reckon,' said Cruikshank. 'Normally it's nowt but gliders here and the odd light plane.'
'Well, that's hardly a heavy plane,' said Headingley judiciously, looking at the Cessna.
'Bit bigger than they normally have here,' said Cruikshank with the defensiveness of one whose expertise had
