'Yes, I know, it's in the historic area,' said Dalziel impatiently. 'Can I walk there?'
'Reckon you'll have to,' said the man, glancing at his watch.
The force of this remark didn't strike Dalziel till, after crossing a busy main road, he realized that ahead of him the buzz of traffic and the glare of street lights had vanished. Even more disturbing was the absence of tarmac from the road. There was lighting of a kind, but it was very dim. He began to wonder if he'd gone wrong. He knew from the movies what an American high-class neighbourhood looked like - a sort of cross between Ilkley and Babylon - and this didn't begin to fit the bill. He drew some reassurance from the sight of other people strolling around and he accelerated to overtake a couple.
'Excuse me,' he said.
They turned and he ceased to be reassured. The woman was wearing a long muslin dress and a mob cap, while the bearded man was dressed in knee-britches and a leather tunic. They smiled at him with the instant effulgence of doorstep evangelists, and the man said, 'How can we help you, stranger? I'm Caleb Fellowes and this is my wife, Mistress Edwina.'
Dalziel took a step back. America, he knew from his reading of the British tabloids, was full of way-out religions and he was not about to be kidnapped by the loonies or moonies or whatever they called themselves.
'Nay, it's all right, I can find me own way,' he said.
'Are you come late from England, sir?' inquired the woman. 'What news of the tea tax? How fares King George?'
'Dead,' said Dalziel. 'But his missus is still going strong.'
They looked at him blankly, then burst into laughter, which was a lot more reassuring than their welcoming smiles.
Fellowes said, 'What is it you're looking for, friend?'
'Place called Golden Grove,' said Dalziel, still uncertain.
'The Bellmain house? We're going that way. Why not walk along with us?'
He sounded so normal that Dalziel began to seek explanations other than religious nuttiness for the fancy dress.
'You going to a party?' he wondered. 'Or is it a film, mebbe?'
'You really don't know? No wonder you looked like you'd seen a ghost. You're in Colonial Williamsburg, friend, where everything's like it was two hundred years ago, round the time of the Declaration of Independence.'
'Does that mean I can get drunk for sixpence?' asked Dalziel.
'Hell no, more's the pity,' said Fellowes, drawing an indignant snort from his wife.
'And you actually live here?'
'My family's lived here almost as long as there's been a
here
,' said Fellowes proudly.
'How about the Bellmains?'
'The same, only they made more money. They had a big plantation down by the James River. Golden Grove it was called, which is how the house got its name. Golden Grove tobacco used to be one of the very best.' He spoke with the nostalgia of a recent apostate.
'Plantation? Like with slaves and all that?'
'Surely. 'Bout the same time as back in England they were still shoving five-year-old boys up chimneys to clean them.'
'Still do where I come from,' said Dalziel. 'A lot of these Bellmains, are there?'
'Nope. There's only Marilou left. And her kids, of course, but they're English and I guess they've got their father's name.'
'But there's a Mr Bellmain, isn't there?'
'Her second husband. From the sound of it, he ain't going to be around much longer.'
'Call' said his wife reprovingly.
'Local custom, is it? Man taking the wife's name?' asked Dalziel.
'No. Could be she felt she didn't have much luck first time she changed it, so this time round she felt she'd keep a hold of it.'
'Mebbe,' said Dalziel. 'Does she have to wear fancy dress too?'
'No,' said the man, smiling. 'She doesn't work for the Foundation, but naturally the house has got to fit in. That's Golden Grove there.'
It was larger and set further back than most of the others, constructed of warm red brick and framed by trees. A solitary upstairs light shone behind a curtained window.
'You planning to call now?' asked Fellowes.
'No,' said Dalziel. Til leave it till morning. It's a bit late. Good night. And thanks for your help.'
He walked away. It was a lie, of course. In his game, it didn't matter whether you called early or late as long as you were unexpected.
The truth was that for the first time, or mebbe the second, he didn't fancy the truth. What he did fancy was street lights and traffic, even New York style. He'd had his fill of the past. These eighteenth-century streets with their absence of any noise but a burst of frenetic fiddle- playing from a wooden tavern were far more disturbing than the darkest alleys of home.
Ahead the lights of cars passing along the boundary road signalled the return of the twentieth century. Behind . . . He glanced back and shuddered. It was like looking down the throat of Old Time. It was a dangerous business disturbing the past. That dark shape moving sideways at his glance to merge into the shadows, illusion? ghost? or a living presence watching in the night?
There was a time when he would have gone to find out.
Not tonight. Tomorrow would do. Tomorrow was another day. Who'd said that? Some tart in a movie. He remembered thinking it were a pretty daft thing to say and if some sod got paid cash for writing it, he should give up bobbying and sell his notebook to Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
Now it made sense. He began to walk even faster towards his hotel.
Towards tomorrow.
ELEVEN
'For as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in
the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning.'
Sergeant Wield said, 'You want your head looked.'
Pascoe was taken aback. It had bothered him from the start, keeping Wield in the dark, even with the argument that it was for his own good. Now that all his cards were on Trimble's table, he saw no reason not to bring the Sergeant up to date. While he hadn't expected fulsome thanks, he'd anticipated at least a gratified neutrality.
'Why so?' he said defensively. 'Look, OK, perhaps I was silly to let Andy involve me in sneaking around. But now it's all in the open, there can be a real investigation without having to worry that maybe someone's trying to fix the results.'
'I reckon you were better off sneaking,' said Wield grimly. 'Where've you been? It's not just results that get fixed, it's people.'
This echoed his own earlier fears too closely to be comfortable.
'Openness is our best protection,' he proclaimed.
'You've been pulling too many Christmas crackers,' said Wield. 'What I can't understand is why Fat Andy's got himself so het up. He knows the way things work.'
'Loyalty to Wally Tallantire,' said Pascoe. 'I explained all that.'
'So you did. Dalziel defending the dead. He'll be into table-rapping next.'
This echo of Pottle's speculation about the Fat Man's motive was disturbing. Was he naive in accepting simple loyalty to a dead colleague as sufficient?
Anyway, it no longer mattered. Did it?
He got down to some work.
About five in the afternoon, there was a tap at the door and Stubbs came in.
'Hi,' said Pascoe, smiling a welcome. 'We never got that drink.'
'No. Busy busy busy. You know how it is.'
'Any chance this evening? They'll be open in an hour.'
'Maybe.' Stubbs was examining his reflection in the glass of a Chagall print. 'Christ, this hard water plays hell with your hair.'
He had something on his mind. He'd get round to it sooner or later.
Pascoe said, 'You want the name of my barber?'
Stubbs turned his gaze on Pascoe's head, dropped it slowly to his chain store suit, and said, 'Know how old you are? Same age as me, only a fortnight in it. I punched up your record on the screen.'
'So?'
'So nothing. Maybe the older look's the way to get on round here.'
'You've got to be inconspicuous,' said Pascoe mildly.
'Like your boss? He wears a suit but he's about as inconspicuous as a rapist in a nunnery.'
To say whatever he wanted to say, he needed to provoke a reaction.
Pascoe said, 'How come you were looking at my record? That's supposed to be confidential.'
'Not once you started sticking your nose into our business.'
'Now hold on,' said Pascoe. 'All right, so I might have got out of line a bit, but that's all sorted between me and Mr Hiller now.'
'Sorted for you maybe,' said Stubbs. 'Listen, I can't stand people who fart and run. Couple of things you ought to get straight about Geoff Hiller. First is, he's dead straight. OK, he'd win no prizes in a charm school, though maybe he'd come out ahead of your Mr Dalziel. But he doesn't work to orders. He got picked for this job because anyone who knows him knows he wouldn't try to cover up police incompetence.'
'And if he found there was something more than police incompetence being covered up?'
'He wouldn't back off from that either,' said Stubbs. 'That's what I mean. You and your boss have gone creeping around behind Geoff's back. Now it's starting to look as if something really nasty might turn up, where are you? Safe in your pits while Geoff's out there in the open, taking the flak.'
'What flak?'
‘I don't know. But that's how I know it's coming. He's loyal to his troops. When the heavy shit starts flying he gets us out of the way. You've started something, you and that fat bastard, and I just wanted to be sure you knew what you'd done.'
'Now hang about!' said Pascoe, genuinely provoked now. But Stubbs wasn't in the mood for hanging about. The door shut behind him with a bang.
‘Shit,' said Pascoe. He tried to argue with himself that whatever hole Hiller found himself in, he would have reached anyway, unless he hadn't managed to dig up what Dalziel had managed to dig up, in which case it was just as well the Fat Man had gone sneaking about. But still he felt guilty.
Finally he reached for the phone and dialled.
‘Hello? I would like to speak to Lord Partridge, please. Tell him it's Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe.'
There was a long pause. He pictured his lordship debating whether noble disdain or
noblesse oblige
was the more profitable reaction.
'Partridge here. How nice to hear from you, Mr Pascoe. How can I help you?'
'You've heard about Miss Marsh?'
'Yes indeed. Dreadfully sad. Still, time and tide wait for no one, not even Scottish nannies.'
'But they do have considerable control over other natural forces. Conception, for instance. The pathologist's report states conclusively that she never had a child. Not even an abortion. Was never pregnant.'
Now the pause felt as if it might last forever.
'Now what makes you think I might be interested in that rather esoteric piece of information, Mr Pascoe?' said Partridge at last in a level voice.
'I recall you talking about your interest in law and order,' said Pascoe. 'I presume that Miss Marsh, in pursuit of both verisimilitude and profit, presented you with some form of medical bill. An abortion clinic, was it? Or did she go the whole hog and claim to have had the child? That would up the ante considerably. Now you, my lord, are not a simple man, ready to dole out cash on the evidence of a few figures on the back of a fag packet. You would need to see a properly receipted account, and in order to get that, Miss Marsh would have needed an accomplice, possibly a nurse or a clerical worker in the relevant medical establishment. Surely as a big law and order man, you want to see this person brought to justice?'
He could hear himself speaking in the measured reasonable voice Dalziel accused him of always using as his flights of fancy spiralled into the inane. He finished and waited for Partridge to shoot him back to earth with anger, amazement, threats of phoning the Chief Constable, petitioning Parliament, bringing back the cat. What the hell! It was worth it just to know that the old bugger knew that he knew. Also the realization that he'd been doling out cash all these years on the basis of a phantom pregnancy would probably haunt him forever!
He heard a sound at the other end of the line. The splutterings of inarticulate rage perhaps? It increased in volume. Now there was no mistaking it. Not rage, but laughter. And not the forced laughter of a man trying to put a good face on things, but the wholehearted laughter that came from relief and genuine amusement.
'Mr Pascoe, I thank you. It was a great kindness, in the midst of your busy life, to find time to ring me. Many thanks. If you're ever up this way again, do call in. We'll always be glad to see you. Goodbye now.'