a dilapidated pair of carpet slippers. ‘What was all that about?' he asked.
'Mr Wilson? Oh, one of our ladies was taken ill. A bad bout of indigestion was all it was, but she looked very poorly for a while. Another of our lady guests has a distant cousin in the undertaking business and at the slightest sign of decline, she's off to the telephone, presumably to assure the poor man that if he turns up here with a coffin, there'll be work for him to do!'
'And Mr Wilson?'
'He hates her. He's convinced that she's been in his room at night measuring him up.'
She laughed and Pascoe joined in.
'Don't get the impression we're all as odd as that, Mr Pascoe,' she said. 'Most of them here are just plain, straightforward people, whatever that means! But they're all at the time of life when the cracks begin to show. Usually it doesn't matter. Sometimes, though, it can be very painful.'
'Yes, I know,' said Pascoe soberly, thinking of Mrs Escott.
The news of her attempted suicide had been one of the things which had delayed his visit here. When Seymour had rung in from the hospital, he had felt incredibly guilty. It was irrational, he knew. He and Ellie had often discussed the putative right of individuals to determine when they died and though he was not quite so emphatic about it as Ellie, they generally agreed that such a right existed. So Mrs Escott, becoming aware that senility was creeping up on her, had decided to exit with dignity. Only, she hadn't exited. And Pascoe was left with the memory of the apparently content and cogent woman he had spoken to, happily unaware till his interference that she had managed to forget a whole day.
'I'm sorry to call so late,' he began.
Miss Day interrupted him with some exasperation.
'It's only eight-thirty, Mr Pascoe. We don't sound lightsout at nine, you know. This is neither a hospital, nor a nursery, nor an army barracks!'
'Sorry, sorry,' said Pascoe. 'What I really meant was that I hope old Mrs Spillings hasn't been creating because her things didn't turn up earlier.'
He held up the bag which Tracey Spillings had given him.
'No, not a word. She's settled in front of the telly and hasn't moved. Thanks, I'll see she gets it. Was that all, Mr Pascoe? You're just a messenger boy?'
'From each according to his ability, Miss Day,' murmured Pascoe.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I didn't mean to be rude. I know from old experience that when Tracey's around, people find themselves doing odd things!'
'Yes, she does rather take over, doesn't she?' grinned Pascoe. 'But while I'm here, I'd quite like a word with Mrs Warsop, if she's around.'
'Sorry, you've just missed her. She went out about half an hour ago. Can I help?'
Something about the way in which she made this offer caught Pascoe's attention. Years of playing the rapier to Dalziel's bludgeon in the interrogation room had developed in him a keen ear for the nuances of response. Often there was a rigid barrier between what a witness was willing to volunteer and what he was willing to reveal under questioning. The interviewer had to be alert to these tonal signals which said ask me this and I shall reply, but if you keep silent, so shall I.
He said, 'Is there somewhere we can talk for a moment?'
She led him into an office made homely by chintzy curtains, Constable reproductions, and a pair of wing- chairs set round a coffee table. It all smacked of a conscious care to put any of the residents who visited her here at their ease, a theory empirically confirmed when he sat down and found that the cushion was several inches higher than expected to facilitate sitting and rising for old limbs.
He guessed that Mrs Warsop's office would be designed on different lines.
'Miss Day,' he said, 'how long have you been doing this job?'
'At The Towers? Nearly a year now. I've been with the social service department a lot longer of course, since I left school in fact, if you count training periods. I was running one of the residential homes in town before this job fell vacant.'
'Were you asked to come here or did you apply?' wondered Pascoe, letting his instinct direct the questioning.
'Oh, I asked. It surprised some people, but I think it's a good thing to move around in any field, don't you? I know that you've got to stay in one job long enough to be able to do it right, but if you stay too long you risk becoming complacent, don't you agree?'
She spoke earnestly. Pascoe nodded, certain he was on the right track.
'Your predecessor here, had she been here a long time?'
'Miss Collins? Oh yes. Donkey's years! Much longer and she'd have been older than some of the residents!' she laughed.
'And Mrs Warsop?'
'Seven or eight years,' said Miss Day. 'I think she'd been bursar at some girls' boarding-school before, so in some ways it must have been a change for her too.'
'So you had to slot in with many old and well-established routines, I suppose?' said Pascoe.
'Yes. Well, you don't go rushing in like a mad thing, do you? You take your time, change what needs to be changed gradually.'
'Quite right,' approved Pascoe. 'You are in overall charge, are you? Or do you and Mrs Warsop rank equal in respect of your different areas?'
'No. On paper I'm in charge. But after eight years Mrs Warsop is naturally rather possessive of her side of things.'
'Possessive,' said Pascoe. 'Or protective, perhaps?'
'Protective?'
'Defensive. Miss Day, you and I are both public servants and both sensible of the need to tread carefully.' Pascoe hesitated, then plunged. 'Let me ask you a hypothetical question. If there were anything not quite right in the financial management of The Towers, would you be certain of your ability to detect it?'
The woman gave this careful thought.
'Sooner or later, yes,' she said. 'But probably later. And always at the risk of giving sufficient warning for any mismanagement to be halted and the tracks leading to it obliterated. I'll be honest, Mr Pascoe. I've got big plans or at least big hopes. I want to be helping to shape policy about our whole approach to caring for the elderly before I finish. So I've got to move carefully until I'm sure. And I'm far from sure. Look, can I be completely frank?'
Pascoe nodded. Words might be dangerous.
'I don't much like Mrs Warsop. I know it. I don't know why. I don't think it's anything to do with her being, well, gay, though that seems a silly word for her, but lesbian sounds sort of critical, I always feel. Anyway, I don't think that's it, though it might be part of it. There's none of us quite as liberal as we like to think, is there?'
'No,' said Pascoe, interested at this unsolicited (though as yet unsupported) confirmation of part of Andrea Gregory's Parthian malice.
'But that's irrelevant to her job here, of course. Though it might have been a bit of a strain in a girls' boarding-school. Miaow! Excuse me, Mr Pascoe. But when you’re like me, biggish, pushy, and unmarried in your late thirties, you get used to people regarding you as butch. Whereas once you get the Mrs tag, even if it's just a label left over from an eighteen-month marriage and a relieved divorce, society offers sympathy and assistance. All right. So men see you as an easy target, but at least they don't see you as a dangerous competitor!'
'To return to Mrs Warsop,' said Pascoe gently, feeling the time had come for a nudge before Betty Day talked herself out of talking. 'What you're saying is, you suspect a fiddle, but also suspect your own motives in suspecting. Right?'
She looked at him steadily for a moment and then nodded her head.
'You've hit it precisely,' she said. 'And you, Inspector. What's your interest in all this?'
'Just interest, so far,' he said. 'A long way from a formal investigation. A vague allegation, a supportive circumstance, and now your own gut-feeling, if you'll excuse the phrase. There's a long way to go, Miss Day. So, for starters, why not tell me about this possible fiddle?'
The approach to Paradise Hall was by no means as Gothic as that to The Towers but the white face and shadowed eyes of Stella Abbiss would not have been out of place in a Transylvanian castle.
