She was coming down the steps from a BOAC Comet IV, a young woman in her early twenties, blooming with excitement as she set foot for the first time on European soil.
In her arms was little Pip, still sobbing from the earpopping descent. In front of her were James Westropp and his wife, Pam, who was carrying Emily, Pip's twin, also crying lustily. There'd been some debate as to whether John, Pam's son by her first marriage, should accompany them, but it had been decided that, aged six and newly started at school, it would be unfair to uproot him till James got his next foreign posting. So he'd stayed in the care of his aunt, Pam's sister, much to Cissy's relief. She got on well with the boy, but his resentment of his step-father made him a real handful and she had problems of her own which made two bawling infants quite enough to cope with in this new land.
'This is no way for English children to greet their native land,' said Westropp as they walked across the tarmac.
'English? Come on! They're at least half American,' protested Pam.
'Of course. And that's the half that's wailing. I thought I recognized the accent.'
Often they wisecracked this way like they were in a movie comedy, but Cissy's sensitive ear detected something sharper than wit in their exchanges.
In the terminal building she saw a sign dividing native sheep from alien goats and said to Pam, ‘I think I should join this line. I guess you'll be OK because you're married to an Englishman, so could you take Pip too?'
'What are you talking about, Cissy?' said her employer.
You don't think James is going to hang about while some clerk decides whether you've come to steal the Crown Jewels, do you?'
Westropp was talking to a man wearing a peaked cap white enough to serve Pam's morning croissants off.
He led them out of the main flow of arrivals into a palatial lounge where they were offered drinks while the brief formalities were gone through. As they prepared to move on, a voice cried, 'There you are! I wish they treated me like this. Pam, you look gorgeous. Jimmy, you look as if you've just been expelled for conduct unbecoming. Pip and Em, you are at last distinguishable one end from the other. And Cissy, the fairest nanny in the land!'
And Ralph Mickledore, six foot tall, broad-shouldered, tow-headed, with an infectious laugh and more energy than any other man Cissy had met, was upon them. Each greeting was punctuated with a kiss, leaving Pam smiling, Westropp grimacing, the twins bawling, and Cissie blushing.
'What on earth are you doing here, Mick?' asked Westropp.
Dark, slightly built, with a thin intelligent face and watchful eyes, he was as unlike his friend as possible. It must have been an attraction of opposites. And why not? Cissy knew all about such attractions.
'Welcoming my dearest friends home, of course, what else? I need to go back to Yorkshire tomorrow, so I thought this would be the best way to see you before you were hit by the dreaded jet-lag.'
'Now isn't that just too thoughtful of you,' said Pam. 'Here, you can carry your god-daughter for your pains.'
'No pain. Pure pleasure,' said Mickledore, taking the child. 'Welcome, young Em, to your true home. You too, Pip. And Cissy, this is your first time in God's Own Country, isn't it? That deserves another kiss. May your stay be long and happy.'
Well, it had been long anyway. And at first marvellously happy, though not without its surprises.
During the time she'd worked for the Westropps, she'd imagined she'd got to know them pretty well. She could have written a programme of their social life, a catalogue of their tastes in music, books and cuisine. But soon she came to realize that a true understanding of foreign fauna only comes with seeing them in their native habitat.
She had assumed wealth, but it was soon clear that by the standards of many in their circle, James Westropp was rather poor. Mickledore, for instance, spent money at a rate which made her blink. But Westropp's relative poverty didn't seem to matter. His friendship was obviously a currency stronger than mere dollars. Nor was it a matter of simple English class snobbery. Among their close acquaintance were people whom even Cissy's limited knowledge of London society classified as odd. And once when she overheard James say, 'God, she's such a common little woman, isn't she?' Cissy was puzzled to discover it wasn't some
nouvelle riche
climber he was referring to, but one of his own relatives a couple of dozen places, not to mention a religion, nearer the throne.
'Mick' Mickledore was proving an enigma too. After his first couple of visits to New York she had felt confident she knew him inside out. What you saw was what you got, always supposing your luck held. Now she began to realize there were depths to his character in every sense. The first time they went to stay at Mickledore Hall it was like meeting a new man. It was all a question of the way he focused his limitless energy, she decided. He wasted none of it on regrets or anticipations. In town the pleasures and pursuits of urban life occupied him wholly so that you'd never have believed this man could be content spending long periods working his Yorkshire estate. And in the country he gave the impression of a man who would prefer walking a mile in a blizzard to strolling a few yards along Piccadilly.
It wasn't surprising to find that his great sexual energy obeyed the same rules. He took his pleasure wherever he was. This did not mean he was incapable of true loyalty and affection, however. A woman might have to turn a blind eye for the best part of their life together, but a woman who was willing to do this stood a chance of making a successful long-term relationship with Mickledore. So Cissy assured herself and it was on this slender thread that she hung most of her hopes of lasting happiness.
But that was for the future. For the present she was content to snatch what joy she could and never hint of the dreams which filled her sleeping of a life in which all her lover's smiles were for her alone and where no rival survived to threaten her joyous peace.
She dreamt now, and as so often, the dream went beneath its own perfection into the imperfections on which it was based and she saw again the staring eyes, the streaming blood . . .
She cried out and burst into consciousness with a force that sat her upright.
But it was all wrong. She wasn't in the Westropps' Kensington apartment with Pip and Emily in the tiny nursery next door. And she wasn't in the narrow bed in the prison cell which had been her home for so many, many years . . .
She looked with terror at the stranger by her side, flinching from the touch of his fingers on her arm.
He said, 'Cissy, you OK? Sorry to wake you, but we're beginning our descent. You'll need to fasten your belt.'
She turned her head away from him, looked out of the window. Far below like an effect in a child's pop-up book, she saw a prickle of skyscrapers.
'There it is, Ciss,' said Jay Waggs. 'The land of the brave, the home of the free.'
'I hope they'll let me in,' said Cissy Kohler.
SEVEN
‘I am anxious to have your opinion ... on a very
curious case . . .'
At six that evening with still no sign of Dalziel, Pascoe went home.
As soon as he got into the house, he picked up the phone and dialled his mother-in-law's number.
Ellie answered almost immediately.
'How's it going?' he asked.
'I found her standing in the kitchen this morning looking into the recess where the central heating boiler is. She looked completely confused.'
'So she'd heard the boiler make a funny noise. They all do!'
'No! She was close to being terrified, Peter. Then I remembered. When I was a kid, before they got the old kitchen extended, that used to be the larder. She had a milk jug in her hand. She'd gone to the larder to get a bottle of milk.'
'Conditioning's hard to alter. I still switch the wipers on every time I want to turn right, and I've had this car for three years.'
'You're as helpful as the doctor,' snapped Ellie.
'You've spoken to her doctor?'
'This afternoon. Complete waste of time. Old Doc Myers retired soon after they put Dad in the Home. Now there's this thing that looks like a schoolgirl and talks like she's addressing a class of infants.'
'Oh dear,' said Pascoe. 'And what did she say?'
'She said that I must expect a certain degree of vagueness in the old, adding in passing that Mum must have left it pretty late to have me, as if any problem with her health was likely to be my fault. She told me Mum was being treated for various specific physical conditions none of which were immediately life-threatening, but that at present, as my experience with Dad should have taught me, senile dementia was untreatable. In other words,
tough."
'Perhaps it's just that she'd prefer to make her own diagnosis,' suggested Pascoe.
'You were there? Funny, I didn't notice.'
It was time to move on.
‘Is Rosie there?' he asked.
'I'll get her.'
It was a joy to hear his daughter's voice say, 'Hello, Daddy,' and a relief to detect nothing but delight at the novelty of staying in her grandmother's house. When Ellie came back on, he said, 'Sounds as if she's enjoying herself.'
'That's what grannies are for. How are you?'
'Oh, I'm fine. Andy's been away today, so I wasn't force-fed any meat pies. I'm just about to treat myself to one of your vegetable casseroles from the freezer.'
'What a good boy you are,' said Ellie. 'Where's our fat friend at, then?'
Pascoe hesitated. He doubted if Ellie would approve of Dalziel's quest to prove that Wally Tallantire was in the right, and he was certain she would think him crazy both personally and professionally for his complicity. The doorbell rang.
'Hang on,' he said. 'Someone's at the door."
'No, I'll ring off,' said Ellie. 'I'd better get Rosie to bed. We'll talk tomorrow, OK?'
'Fine. Good night, then."
He put the phone down. It was like two fighters relieved to accept a draw. Except that the guilt he was already feeling at his relief left him well behind on points.
The bell was ringing again, a long impatient peal, and he knew before he opened the door whose great finger was trying to drill the bellpush through the jamb.
"Evening,' said Dalziel. He was carrying an old blue suitcase and looked like the kind of brush salesman even a medieval Stylite might have found it hard to deny. 'I rang the zoo and they said you'd escaped early.'
'Early?' Pascoe heard himself almost screaming. 'And where the hell have you been all day?'
'Christ, Peter, you remind me what it was like being married. You need a drink.'
They were in the lounge now with Dalziel taking a bottle of Scotch out of the sideboard and pouring two sturdy stoupfuls.
'That's better,' he said as he emptied one of the glasses. 'You need to take out a small mortgage for a glass this size down among the Cockneys. How'd it go this morning?'
Recriminations were wasted breath. Pascoe described his morning, while Dalziel listened intently, at the same time absent-mindedly drinking the second Scotch.
'Well, well,' he said when Pascoe finished. 'The more I hear of Nanny Marsh, the more I like her. Screwed by the lord, sacked by the lady, does she end up in a workhouse for fallen women? No way! She parks her fanny in a luxury flat, rent free, in Harrogate! How'd she strike you, lad?'
'Like a little old retired nanny most of the time, except that now and then I got a sense of someone else peeping out and having a not very friendly laugh at me. There's something not quite right in all this . . .'
'You're never satisfied, are you? Have another whisky.'
'I've not had one yet,' said Pascoe. 'Perhaps I should pour while you tell me about your day?'
He decanted two decent measures while Dalziel started to describe his adventures in darkest Essex.
'So what do you make of that, sunshine?' he asked when he'd done.
'This fellow in the car was security, you say?' asked Pascoe.
'He had one of them identification cards that tell you nowt,' agreed Dalziel.
'Then this means this is even more serious than we thought!'
'Not than I thought,' said Dalziel grimly. 'Way I see it is, Waggs dug up summat that gave him the leverage to get Kohler out . . .'
'Something that provoked her to want to get out,' interjected Pascoe. 'She'd shown precious little enthusiasm before.'
'Aye, you're right. So a deal's done, part of which is that she stays put here, so they set a watch on her, only she does a runner . .
"There has to be a time factor,' said Pascoe. 'They couldn't be planning to sit on her forever.'