“We’ve got the door open,” he said. “What next?”
Pascoe thought rapidly.
“What’s at the top of the stairs?” he demanded of Rawlinson.
“Another door out on to the tower.”
“Does it have a lock?”
“Just a hasp and a padlock.”
“So he can’t lock it from above. OK. Mr. Rawlinson, can you manage to move forward a bit, get on to the path right beneath Davenport? Ursula, give him a hand.”
Rawlinson clung heavily to his shoulder and limped into position.
“Now stand there the pair of you and bellow at him. He may not be able to hear, but keep on bellowing. I want him to see you two side by side. And I don’t want him to be able to jump without risking landing on one of you. If he shifts position, follow him!”
Accompanied by Swithenbank, he dashed into the church porch. Jean Starkey was there, so wet she might as well have been naked. By contrast Stella Rawlinson was relatively dry. She had found time to put on a raincoat and headscarf before coming out, though her patience had not stretched to moving at her lame husband’s pace. Pascoe wondered how much she knew and what the knowledge was doing to her. She it was who carried the torch he had spotted in the distance. He took it from her hand without speaking and pushed his way past Kingsley, who was peering through the tower door with all the nervous excitement of a subaltern about to go over the top.
“You come second,” said Pascoe to Swithenbank. “Keep three steps behind me. If I stop, you stop. No talking. I’ll try to go through the door at the top quietly. If I can’t, I’ll go at a rush. Come quick then, I may need help.”
“What about me?” said Boris eagerly.
“Stay at the bottom,” ordered Pascoe. “If he gets past us, stop him.”
It was an unlikely contingency, an unnecessary job. But he didn’t want Boris’s bulk creaking up those wooden stairs and past experience had taught him that the fewer men you had making an arrest in the dark, the less chance there was of ending up with each other.
The original staircase of the tower must have long since rotted away, but this one was quite antiquated enough. It consisted of five steep wooden steps to each narrow landing and when he gripped the banister, the newel post above rocked so alarmingly in its joint that he ignored the rail thereafter and proceeded bent double to test the stairs by eye before weight. The air smelt musty and what little light came through the narrow windows was hardly reinforced by the dim glow of the torch. Soon Pascoe could see neither the floor he had left nor the roof he approached. He remembered a ghost story in which a girl counted three hundred steps going up a tower, but coming down soon found herself far beyond that figure without any sign of the bottom. Perhaps this was the way it ended for him, too. He flashed his torch downward to seek reassurance in the presence of Swithenbank, but the sight of that narrow intense face with its high forehead, blank eyes and black moustache brought little comfort. For all he knew this man was a murderer. It was still very much a possibility. Though his theory that Rawlinson had been hurled from the tower because of what he had seen had proved a non-starter, that meant nothing. The rabbit could co-exist with the goose.
On the other hand, if Swithenbank were a murderer, he had been too successful so far to need to risk attempting to dispose of a suspicious policeman. Indeed, if one of Pascoe’s other hypotheses proved true …
But speculation was terminated by the sudden awareness that the next landing was the last. Ahead was the door leading to the top of the tower.
There was no latch on it, only an empty hasp with the discarded padlock lying on the floor.
Gently Pascoe pushed at the door. He felt a resistance and for a moment thought that Davenport must have wedged it shut from without. Then he realized that it was only the force of the wind which pressed against him, and as he pushed again that same wind, as if delighted to get a grip on what had so long resisted it, caught the partly opened door and flung it wide with a tremendous crash that almost tore its hinges out of their post.
The dark figure against the furthermost parapet started and turned.
Pascoe hurled himself forward. The figure placed one foot on the parapet and thrust itself upwards. What might have been a shriek from below or merely a new crescendo of wind cut through the air. Pascoe sprang to the parapet, gripped one of the castellations with his left hand and caught Davenport by the jacket pocket. He felt the material begin to tear but dared not release either handhold to try for a better grip.
Where the hell was Swithenbank?
He heard the steps behind him, glanced back, saw that intense, controlled stare, and for a long ghastly moment wondered how he could have been so wrong about his own safety.
Then with a strength unpromised by his slight frame, Swithenbank caught Davenport by the shoulders and bore him easily backwards.
There was no resistance.
“I wouldn’t have jumped,” he said mildly as they thrust him before them through the doorway. Pascoe half believed him but not enough to relax his grip as they clattered down the wooden stairs.
Once in the church porch he released him to Ursula’s equally tight clasp and thought ruefully that of them all Davenport probably looked the least distraught, though what emotion it was that twisted Stella’s face as she watched her husband talking earnestly to Davenport was hard to say.
“Is he all right?” asked Kingsley anxiously.
“I doubt it,” said Pascoe. “We’ll get him home, call a doctor and get him sedated. After that …”
He shrugged.
“Terrible, terrible,” said Kingsley. “Look, Ursula won’t want us all tramping around the rectory. Shall I take the main party back to Wear End to dry out? Oh, and there’s the supper! It’ll be ruined! And you can come on as soon as decently possible.”
Pascoe sought for some way of saying that, as the matter was not official, a close friend would be more suitable company for the Davenports than an intrusive policeman, but nothing came to mind.
“All right,” he sighed.
And in any case, he was still curious to discover what it was that had sparked off Davenport’s extraordinary behaviour.
He found out in the next ten seconds.
“All right everybody,” called Kingsley. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
But nobody was listening. Behind him the big church door, closed against the violent weather, was swinging slowly open.
Into the lighted porch stepped a dark-clad figure in a dripping shapeless cap. In the crook of his arm was a shotgun.
Pascoe saw the glance of hatred that came from Davenport’s eyes even before the newcomer spoke.
“Evening, Vicar,” said Arthur Lightfoot. “Here we are again, then.”
CHAPTER IX
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
“How do, Inspector?” continued Arthur Lightfoot. “Have you got him yet?”
“Got who?” asked Pascoe.
“T’chap who killed our Kate,” said Lightfoot.
“Mr. Lightfoot, as I’ve explained, there’s no real evidence that your sister’s dead.”
“There’s the ear-ring,” interrupted Kingsley. Pascoe regarded him curiously and wondered what his game was.
“Come on, Peter. Let’s be getting you home. Whatever the rest of this lot think, you’re in no fit state for a metaphysical discussion.”
It was Ursula who spoke but when she moved forward with her arm round her husband’s waist, Lightfoot made no effort to step aside.
“Do you mind, Arthur!” she said clearly and savagely.
“Just hold on there, missus,” said Lightfoot. “I asked Mr. Detective here a question. No one sets foot out of here without I get an answer.”
“You’ve had your answer!” said Ursula. “And in any case, you can’t imagine my husband could have anything to do with Kate’s disappearance.”
“I know what t’vicar can and can’t do as well as any,” s
aid Lightfoot with a note of vicious mockery in his voice. “And you too, missus, I know what you’re capable of. All on you, I know as much about all on you as’d fill a Sunday paper through till Friday.”
He raised his voice as he spoke and there was no mistaking the note of threat.
“There’s been notes, has there? And telephone calls, has there? And it’s you that’s been getting them, brother-in-law?”
“That’s right,” said Swithenbank calmly. “But …”
“Who’s she? What’s she to you?”
The barrel of the gun rose slowly and pointed at Jean Starkey.
“This is Miss Starkey. She’s a writer and …”
“I can see what she is,” said Lightfoot scornfully, his eyes running up and down the soaking clinging red dress. “I said, what’s she to you?”
“A friend.”
“A friend, is it? And our Kate not yet properly buried!”
“And what makes you so sure she’s dead?” burst out Swithenbank.
Lightfoot looked at him with a baring of the teeth which might have been a smile.
“I’ve seen her through glass and I’ve heard her in the night. Oh, she’s dead, she’s dead, never have doubt of that,”
A spasm of awful grief crossed his face.
“She shouldn’t have left, she shouldn’t have left,” he keened softly, almost to himself.
“I didn’t make her leave,” protested Swithenbank.
“Not you, you girt fool! Wearton. Her home. Me. It were you as caused all this. Like as not whoever wrote that letter knew the truth. It were you, weren’t it? Tell us where she’s hid, you owe her that. Tell us where she’s hid!”
Now the barrel was pointing straight at Swithenbank’s chest.
“I wish I knew, Arthur, believe me,” protested Swithenbank in tones of sweet reasonableness whose only effect was to bring the gun stabbing at his rib-case.
“Liar! I’ve watched you in this churchyard at dead of night. Is she laid here? Is she? I feel her close!”
Pascoe shivered with more than cold. The animal intensity of this man was terrifying beyond the reach of middle-class neurotics, or even suicidal vicars!
“I don’t know!” Swithenbank’s voice had the ghost of a tremor now, as though he was just beginning to admit the possibility that the trigger might be pulled.
“Tell him what you were doing here, Mr. Swithenbank,” Pascoe suggested. He could see no way to disarm the man without risking a reflexive tightening of that gnarled brown finger.
“I just thought, if Kate did come to Wearton, she might be here, somewhere, in the churchyard. I thought perhaps the tomb of the Aubrey-Beesons … we used to play round there as kids … once we went in … there was a key at Wear End, Boris got it … but there was another in the bunch of keys hanging in the porch here, only Peter had started locking the door, so I couldn’t get in.”
He was definitely gabbling now.
“You mean you thought that stupid poem might be true?” asked Ursula.
“Why not?” Swithenbank demanded.
“Why not indeed?” echoed Pascoe. “I mean, the man responsible for the telephone calls ought to know what precisely they signify, oughtn’t he?”
There was a moment of puzzled silence which involved Lightfoot, too, and Pascoe was glad to see that though the direction of the shotgun remained unchanged, the man took half a pace backwards and switched his unblinking gaze to the detective’s own face.
“What on earth can you mean, Inspector?” enquired Kingsley.
Swithenbank and Jean Starkey exchanged looks. She smiled fondly at him and nodded encouragingly, like a mother to a shy child.
“All right,” he said defiantly. “It’s true. There were no anonymous phone calls.”
“A couple,” corrected the woman. “I made them to John’s mother and his secretary. Just to provide a couple of independent ears.”
“And I sent the letter and the ear-ring,” said Swithenbank as though eager to claim his share of the credit.
“But the blood?” said Ursula.
“Cow’s. Probably off the weekend joint,” said Pascoe cheerfully. “We have very good laboratories.”
“Sod your laboratories,” said Lightfoot in angry bewilderment. “What’s going on?”
“Arthur, listen to me,” said Swithenbank. He spoke urgently, but he was back in full control. “I’m like you. I believe Kate’s dead. A year, no sign, it’s too much. The police think so, too. And they think I’m responsible, but I swear I’m not! But they’re fixated; result is, my life’s permeated with suspicion while the real murderer gets off scot free. They’re not even looking for him, just watching me!”
Willie Dove really got to him, thought Pascoe.
“But why this charade?” demanded Rawlinson.
“It was my idea,” said Jean Starkey defiantly. “I’m a writer. I used my imagination. We wanted something to stir the police out of their stupor and to get the killer worried at the same time.”
“But why up here?” retorted Rawlinson. “You know how much we loved Kate, John; some of us, that is. Why bring this trouble up here?”
His wife looked at him with disgust, then turned away.
“Because I believe this is where the trouble belongs, Geoff,” said Swithenbank. “Up here. In Wearton. Where else would Kate come? Where else might there be someone to meet her?”
“She lived with you in London for years!” protested Kingsley.
Swithenbank shook his head.
“I’ve checked and double-checked the possibilities there. Not many. She liked a quiet kind of life, Kate. Well, you all know that. No, I’m almost certain she came back here. And was not welcome. And got killed for her pains.”
“But who would kill her? And why?”
It was Ursula who spoke, her husband’s needs momentarily forgotten.
Swithenbank smiled humourlessly.
“Killing’s not so difficult, Ursula dear. We’ve been pretty close a couple of times tonight, haven’t we? You know what Kate was like. Simple, direct, impulsive. Insensitive. If she was sick of me, of our life in London, and wanted to come back to Wearton, she’d just set off. Suppose she has a choice here. Arthur in his cottage or a lover, someone she’s been sleeping with on and off for years, perhaps. A man who thinks she takes it as casually as he does, a bit of sensual titillation when the chance offers. A man who doesn’t want a scandal, certainly doesn’t want a permanent relationship. She goes to him, rather than Arthur. Obvious choice it seems, till this man laughs at her, tells her to go back to London. She wouldn’t make a fuss, not Kate. She’d get up quietly and say she was going. But not back to London, no; back to her brother.”
Arthur Lightfoot groaned from the depths of his being. The others regarded him uneasily, except for Swithenbank, who went relentlessly on.
“Angry husbands are one thing, but the prospect of an angry Arthur was quite another. Look at him, for God’s sake! And so, one thing leads to another …”
“But not to murder!” protested Ursula. “It makes no sense!”
But her words were subsumed by Lightfoot’s groan which had swollen to a cry of rage.
“It’s sense to me!” he cried. “And there’s only one here that fits the bill. The stud, him as has covered every mare hereabouts. Like father, like fucking son!”
Oh God. Here we go again, thought Pascoe as the black barrel rose once more and this time came to a halt against Boris Kingsley’s ample belly.
To his surprise, Kingsley showed not the slightest sign of fear.
“Come off it, Lightfoot,” he sneered. “You’re not going to fire that thing. That’s not your way. A bit of sneaky poaching of another man’s game. Or even dirtier ways of getting your hands on another man’s money. That’s all you’re good for. So put that thing away.”
“Did you kill my sister?” demanded Lightfoot.
“Oh go to hell!”
“And whoever did kill her, she probably asked for it!” hiss
ed Stella Rawlinson with a venom that shocked even Lightfoot into silence for a moment.
“Listen who’s talking!” he rejoined eventually. But before he could elaborate Swithenbank said in his most casual voice, “Yet it’s a question which needs answering, Boris.”
Now everyone was quiet. Lightfoot had stepped further into the porch, leaving the door unguarded, but Ursula made no effort to shepherd her husband through it, nor from the expression of rapt attention on his face would he have allowed himself to be removed if she’d tried.
Strange therapy! thought Pascoe.
“What do you mean, John?” asked Kingsley courteously.
Swithenbank was standing under the arch of the doorway up to the tower and the light from the single small bulb that lit the porch scarcely reached him so that his voice came drifting out of the shadows.
“It’s an odd place, Wearton, Mr. Pascoe,” he said. “You try to escape it but it comes after you. And I was foolish enough to take one of the oddest pieces of it away with me! On, don’t be shocked, friends. Even among your outstanding oddities, Kate stood supreme! And when she left me, I knew that sooner or later she’d come back here, as long as she was alive, that is.”
“Or dead.”
Arthur Lightfoot spoke so solemnly that no one dared even by expression to show disbelief.
Swithenbank ignored him.
“You know what I did when Jean and I first started brooding on schemes to start our rabbit?”
“Goose,” muttered Pascoe to himself.
“I wrote down the names of everyone here, you excepted, of course, Inspector. And I started to cross out those who I couldn’t bring myself to believe capable of killing Kate. Do you know, I sat for an hour and hadn’t crossed out a name!”
“Oh, come on, John,” said Ursula.
“Not even yours, dear,” he said regretfully. “So I made a league table instead. And do you know, Boris, however I constructed it, you kept on coming out on top!”
“Well, you know me, John,” said Kingsley. “Always a winner.”
“Shut up!” snapped Lightfoot, prodding him with the gun.
This had gone far enough, thought Pascoe. This lunatic could accidentally fire that thing at any moment.
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