“Sorry,’ he said. She smiled and massaged herself voluptuously. He felt his self-possession crack.
Well, sometimes it may be worth it, he emended cautiously.
When he reached Landor’s room, it was empty. He took the lists Dalziel had requested of him from his case and laid them neatly on the desk.
Then he stood back to view the effect. Dissatisfied, he readjusted them minutely to attain perfect symmetry.
“You’ll make someone a lovely housekeeper,’ said Dalziel from the door.
Five witty answers and several bluntly obscene ones ran through Pascoe’s mind, but he used none of them, merely bowing Dalziel with as much irony as he dared to the desk.
“What’s this lot then? Lot of bloody names. No good till we know who got the chop, are they?” This might help,’ said Pascoe, delicately touching the central list.
“Let’s see then. Persons reported missing between… well, you tell me, eh? There might be long words I’d have trouble with.”
It would be nice to think the sneers derived from an affectionate respect. Or perhaps not. Dalziel, according to oral tradition, had destroyed whatever lay between him and his wife despite, or because of, his almost canine affection for her. That had been before Pascoe met him. He had learned the hard way just how much of Dalziel’s invitations to familiarity to accept.
Now he picked up the list and gave it an unnecessary glance. It didn’t do to appear too efficient.
“Only two real possibilities so far, sir,’ he said. ‘. Alice Widgett, aged thirty-three, housewife. Last seen leaving her home on August 27, destination unknown. She left a tatie-pot in the oven and two children watching television.
“Secondly, Mary Parish. Widow. Aged forty-five. She’s the nearest. Lived all alone on the outskirts of Coultram. She had a dental appointment at 3 p.m. on November 9th. She left home at 2.15, but never reached the dentist.”
That’s what I feel like, too,’ said Dalziel, sticking a nicotine-stained forefinger into his mouth and sucking noisily. ‘ reason for disappearing I know. Well, the dentist’s a help. He’s still around?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll take details of the jaw along as soon as we get them from the lab.”
“Who are taking their bloody time. Why no one else? It looks a fair list.”
“Yes. Some of them are men, of course.”
“Why? We know the sex, don’t we? Even I can tell the difference between a male and a female skeleton.”
“Of course,’ said Pascoe soothingly. ‘ just thought it would be useful to know which men felt it necessary to disappear quietly about that time. And the other six women were either seen boarding trains or long-distance buses, or some subsequent contact has taken place, a postcard, a telephone call. This doesn’t cut them out altogether, of course.” “Worse bloody luck,’ said Dalziel gloomily. ‘ you got someone contacting parents, family, friends, again?” “No,’ said Pascoe. ‘ didn’t seem necessary. I’ll get their files of course.”
“On which you’ll find nothing’s been done for five years. Naturally. We can’t spend our precious bloody time chasing around after runaway adults. But you’ll probably find half the sods have turned up again and no one’s thought to tell us. They usually don’t.”
I’ll get on to it right away,’ said Pascoe.
“By the way. Did they have red hair?”
“Mary Parish did. And the other’s described as auburn.”
“It might help. But then she might have come from a thousand miles away.” “A central European, you mean?’ asked Pascoe against his better judgement. “That would narrow things down.”
Dalziel squinted at him calculatingly for a moment.
“Shove off,’ he said. ”ve all got work to do.”
“Hey!’ he called after him. ‘ about that hint of yours? Get anything there?”
He backed up the double entendre with a toothy leer. Pascoe answered straight.
“Not much. I’m seeing her tonight for a drink. All in the line of duty, of course. She hasn’t been here long enough to know much. I did gather they’re having a bit of excitement at the moment. Some lecturer’s been knocking off a student and there’s a bit of a rumpus.”
“Who?”
“A fellow called Fallowfield. Biologist.”
That figures. Was he here five years ago?”
He answered the question himself by running his gaze quickly down the list before him.
“No. Then he’s of no interest. Dirty sod. Though it must be a temptation. There’s a lot of it around. I think I’ll take a walk and see what’s going on. You can stop here. You’ll need the phone.”
Jauntily he left the room. Pascoe had to close the door behind him. He jerked two fingers at the solid oak panels.
When he turned round he found two students solemnly staring at him through the large open window. They nodded approvingly, each tapped the side of his nose with the forefinger, and they went on their way.
Despite the heat, Pascoe closed the window before he started his telephoning.
Chapter 5
Who taught the raven in a drought to throw pebbles into a hollow tree, where she espied water, that the water might rise so as she could come to it?
Sam Fallowfield sat in a deckchair in front of his cottage which looked down over the shingle to the level sands and the very distant sea. When the tide went out here, it kept on going till an onlooker could have doubts whether it ever meant to return. The cottage was solidly built of massive blocks of dark grey stone. It had been whitewashed at some stage but the salt and sand-laden winter gales had long ago stripped away this poor embellishment. It was an end cottage of a block of four, each of which had a small garden at the front and a shared cobbled yard behind.
The other three were used only as holiday bases, one by the owner of the block only, while the other two were rented out by the week during the summer. Fallowfield alone lived there all the year round and had done so for the past five years ever since arriving at Holm Coultram.
It was early evening. Soon the holiday-makers, temporarily his neighbours, would be returning from whatever exciting expedition they had so noisily launched that morning. But for the moment he had the place to himself. One or two featureless figures were distantly visible in pursuit of the sea. And away to his right a thin flag fluttered on an elevated plateau to mark the outermost boundary of the golf course. The college was completely out of sight more than half a mile inland.
It was a situation to make a man as indifferent to society as Fallowfield sigh with contentment.
He sighed.
“That sounds as if it comes from the heart, Sam,’ said a voice behind him.
“Come and sit down, Henry,’ he said without looking round. ”ll find a beer and another chair behind the door.”
Gratefully Henry Saltecombe lowered himself in the deckchair which he erected with a deftness unpromised by his podgy hands.
“Hope I’m not obtruding, my dear fellow, but I felt like a constitutional before driving back to the bosom of my family.”
Henry had a pleasant detached house on a modern estate about eight miles down the coast. It overflowed with four children, a dog, a cat, and his wife. He loved them all dearly but was rarely in a hurry to return home to them. He had married late when the habit of peace and solitude had long since moulded itself comfortably around
