She paused to draw breath. She was tall, well-made and attractive in a Betjeman tennis girl kind of way. As she spoke she ran her fingers through her short unruly auburn hair. Breathlessness suited her. Early twenties, Pascoe guessed, and with the kind of accent which hadn’t been picked up at the local comp. She was dressed, perhaps fittingly but not too becomingly, in a white silk blouse and a long black skirt. She looked tailor-made for jodhpurs, a silk headsquare and a Barbour.
“I’m DCI Pascoe,” he said. “And you are…?”
“Sorry, silly of me, I’m babbling on and half of what I say can’t mean a thing. I’m Dolly Upshott. I work here. Partly shop assistant, I suppose, but I help with the accounts, that sort of thing, and I’m in charge when Pal’s off on a buying expedition. Please, can you tell me anything about what happened?”
“And this David you mentioned is…?” said Pascoe, who’d learned from his great master that the easiest way to avoid a question was to ask another.
“My brother. He’s the vicar at St Cuthbert’s, that’s Cothersley parish church.”
Which was where the Macivers lived, in a house with the unpromising name of Casa Alba. Cothersley was one of Mid-Yorkshire’s more exclusive dormer villages. The Kafkas’ address was Cothersley Hall. Family togetherness? Didn’t seem likely from what he’d gathered about internal relationships last night. Also it was interesting that the brash American incomers should occupy the Hall while Maciver with his local connections and his antique-dealer background should live in a house that sounded like a rental villa on the Costa del Golf.
“And he’s gone to comfort Mrs Maciver? Very pastoral. Were they active churchgoers then?”
“No, not really. But they are… were… very supportive of church events, fetes, shows, that sort of thing, and very generous when it came to appeals.”
What Ellie called the Squire Syndrome. Well-heeled townies going to live in the sticks and acting like eighteenth-century lords of the manor.
“Miss Upshott,” said Pascoe, cutting to the chase, “the reason I called was to see if you or anyone else working in the shop could throw any light on Mr Maciver’s state of mind yesterday.”
“There’s only me,” said the woman. “He seemed fine when last I saw him. I left early, middle of the afternoon. It was St Cuthbert’s feast day, you see, and David, my brother, has a special service for the kids from the village school, it’s not really a service, their teacher brings them over and David shows them our stained-glass windows and tells them some stories about St Cuthbert which are illustrated there. He’s very good, actually, the children love it. And I like to help… Sorry, you don’t want to hear this, do you? I’m rattling on. Sorry.”
“That’s OK,” said Pascoe with a smile. She was very easy to smile at. Or with. “So you don’t know when Mr Maciver left the shop?”
“Late on, I should think. Wednesday’s his squash night, you see, and he doesn’t care to go home and have a meal before he plays so usually he’ll stay behind here and get on with some paperwork then go straight to the club… but what happened yesterday I don’t know, of course, because…”
Her voice broke. She looked rather wildly around the shop. Perhaps, thought Pascoe, she was imagining how it might have been if he’d killed himself here and she’d come in this morning and found him.
Comfort, he guessed, would be counterproductive. The English middle classes paid good money to have their daughters trained to be sensible and practical. That was their default mode. Just press the right key.
“So you help with the accounts?” he said. “How was the business doing?”
“Fine,” she said. “We’ve been ticking over nicely through the winter and now with the tourist season coming on, we were looking to do very well indeed.”
“Good. You might like to get your books in order in case we need to take a look. But I shouldn’t hang around too long. The press might come sniffing around and you don’t want to be bothered with that. Many thanks for your help.”
She said, “Please, Mr Pascoe. Before you go, can’t you tell me anything about… you know. Pal was well liked in the village… it would be such a help…”
Pascoe said carefully, “All I can say is that it appears Mr Maciver died from gunshot wounds. It’s early days, but at the moment we have no reason to believe there was anyone else involved. I’m sorry.”
She said, “Thank you.”
Unhappiness made her look like a forlorn teenager. Perhaps that’s what she was emotionally, a kid who’d had a crush on her charismatic boss.
He turned to the door, letting his eyes run over the stock on display. That was a nice art nouveau vase over there. Would Ellie’s discount be still in place now that Pal was dead…?
Come on! he chided himself. This was a step beyond professional objectivity into personal insensitivity. But it was a nice vase.
Tony Kafka sat on the train and watched England roll by, mile after dull mile.
He’d been here… how long? Fifteen, sixteen years?
Too long.
He knew plenty of Americans who loved it here. Given the chance, they’d drone on for ever about the easier pace of life, the greater sense of security, the depth of history, the cultural richness, the educational values, the beautiful landscape. If you pointed out that you had as much chance of being mugged in London as New York, that back home there was some sign they were getting through the drug culture that the Brits were just beginning to get into, that you could pick up the fucking Lake District and drop it in the Grand Canyon and not notice the difference, they’d start talking about the human scale of things, small is beautiful, that kind of crap. But if you let yourself be drawn into argument and started cataloguing the strikes against the UK-the lousy transport services, the god-awful hotels, the deadly food, the shitty weather-after a while one of them would be sure to say, “If that’s the way you feel, why not get on a plane and head west?”
And that was a killer blow. Nothing to do then but smile weakly and abandon the field. He had no answer to give, or rather no answer he cared to give.
He’d come to do a job. After five years that job had been completed, everything in place and running smooth as silk. Nothing to stop him dropping the lot into the capacious lap of his supremely efficient deputy, Tom Hoblitt.
They’d wanted him back home then. There was a great future there for the taking. And he’d been ready. Then…
“More coffee, sir?”
The steward was there, polite and attentive. This morning the service had been excellent and the train was on schedule. Wasn’t that always the way of it? Give yourself plenty of time to take account of the usual delays and you got a straight run through. Cut things fine and you could guarantee trouble. Like life.
He drank his coffee, which wasn’t bad either, and relapsed once more into his thoughts.
Kay. That’s why he’d stayed on. But put simply like that, he’d get nothing but incomprehension. If she’d been a Brit it might have been a reason, he could hear them say. But she was American, so why on earth …?
Then he’d need to explain it wasn’t so simple. His relationship with Kay had never been simple.
Look after people, that was the message drummed into him by his father. Look after people, especially if they’re kids. How many times had he heard his father tell the tale of how he’d been found wandering lost, not even speaking the language, and this great country had taken him in, and found him a home, and given him a flag and an education? As a kid he’d never tired of hearing the story. Later, growing up and feeling rebellious, he’d dared to question it, not directly but by implication, saying, “Yeah, you owe them, I see that, but you’ve paid back, you gave them a couple of years of your life in the war. In fact you almost gave them all of your goddam life.”
And his father had said, “You know why I didn’t? I was lying there, bleeding to death, and this sergeant, he was an Arkansas redneck, never said a good word to me before this, but he never said a good word to anyone so that was no special treatment, he picked me up and slung me over his shoulder and carried me out of there. I was dangling over his shoulder so I saw the bullet that hit him, smelt the burnt cloth where it went through his tunic, saw the blood spurt out and stream down his back. He walked another fifty yards after that, laid me down as gentle as if I’d been a hatful of eggs. Then he sat down and died. A redneck from Arkansas did that. Because I was a soldier. Because I was an American. Because I needed help. So don’t talk to me about paying back. I’ll never pay back, not if I live for ever.”
