Detective Duos

by edited by Marcia Muller

  “You interest me strangely,” said Pascoe.

  “What about him and the Eliots' house?”

  “Oh, sod him and sod the Eliots! Decent people don't have ghosts!” exclaimed Ellie.

  “Or if they do, they call in priests, not policemen,” said Pascoe. “I quite agree. I said as much, remember ...?”

  “All right, all right. You please yourself, buster. I'm off to bed now with a hot–water bottle and a glass of milk. Clearly I must be in my dotage. Shall I ring you later?”

  “Best not,” said Pascoe. “I don't want to step out of my pentacle after midnight. See you in the morning.”

  “Must have taken an electric drill to get through a skirt like that,” said Dalziel, replacing the figurine with a bang. “No wonder the buggers got stuck into the sheep. Your missus checking up, was she?”

  “She just wanted to see how we were getting on,” said Pascoe.

  “Probably thinks we've got a couple of milkmaids with us,” said Dalziel, peering out into the night. “Some hope! I can't even see any sheep. It's like the grave out there.”

  He was right, thought Pascoe. When Stanstone Rigg had been a working farm, there must have always been the comforting sense of animal presence, even at night. Horses in the stable, cows in the byre, chickens in the hutch, dogs before the fire. But the Eliots hadn't bought the place because of any deep–rooted love of nature. In fact Giselle Eliot disliked animals so much she wouldn't even have a guard dog, preferring to rely on expensive electronics. Pascoe couldn't understand how George had got her even to consider living out here. It was nearly an hour's run from town in good conditions and Giselle was in no way cut out for country life, either physically or mentally. Slim, vivacious, sexy, she was a star–rocket in Yorkshire's sluggish jetset. How she and Ellie had become friends, Pascoe couldn't work out either.

  But she must have a gift for leaping unbridgeable gaps for George was a pretty unlikely partner, too.

  It was George who was responsible for Stanstone Rigg. By profession an accountant, and very much looking the part with his thin face, unblinking gaze, and a mouth that seemed constructed for the passage of bad news, his unlikely hobby was the renovation of old houses. In the past six years he had done two, first a Victorian terrace house in town, then an Edwardian villa in the suburbs. Both had quadrupled (at least) in value, but George claimed this was not the point and Pascoe believed him. Stanstone Rigg Farm was his most ambitious project to date, and it had been a marvellous success, except for its isolation, which was unchangeable. And its ghost. Which perhaps wasn't.

  It was just three days since Pascoe had first heard of it. Dalziel, who repaid hospitality in the proportion of three of Ellie's home–cooked dinners to one meal out had been entertaining the Pascoes at The Old Mill, a newly opened restaurant in town.

  “Jesus!” said the fat man when they examined the menu. “I wish they'd put them prices in French, too. They must give you Brigitte Bardot for afters!”

  “Would you like to take us somewhere else?” enquired Ellie sweetly. “A fish and chip shop, perhaps. Or a Chinese takeaway?”

  “No, no,” said Dalziel. “This is grand. Any road, I'll chalk what I can up to expenses. Keeping an eye on Fletcher.”

  “Who?”

  “The owner,” said Pascoe. “I didn't know he was on our list, sir.”

  “Well, he is and he isn't,” said Dalziel. “I got a funny telephone call a couple of weeks back. Suggested I might take a look at him, that's all. He's got his finger in plenty of pies.”

  “If I have the salmon to start with,” said Ellie, “it won't be removed as material evidence before I'm finished, will it?”

  Pascoe aimed a kick at her under the table but she had been expecting it and drawn her legs aside.

  Four courses later they had all eaten and drunk enough for a kind of mellow truce to have been established between Ellie and the fat man.

  “Look who's over there,” said Ellie suddenly.

  Pascoe looked. It was the Eliots, George dark–suited and still, Giselle ablaze in clinging orange silk. Another man, middle–aged but still athletically elegant in a military sort of way, was standing by their table. Giselle returned Ellie's wave and spoke to the man, who came across the room and addressed Pascoe.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Eliot wonder if you would care to join them for liqueurs,” he said.

  Pascoe looked at Dalziel enquiringly.

  “I'm in favour of owt that means some other bugger putting his hand in his pocket,” he said cheerfully.

  Giselle greeted them with delight and even George raised a welcoming smile.

  “Who was that dishy thing you sent after us?” asked Ellie after Dalziel had been introduced.

  “Dishy? Oh, you mean Giles. He will be pleased. Giles Fletcher. He owns this place.”

  “Oh my! We send the owner on errands, do we?” said Ellie. “It's great to see you, Giselle. It's been ages. When am I getting the estate agent's tour of the new house? You've promised us first refusal when George finds a new ruin, remember?”

  “I couldn't afford the ruin,” objected Pascoe. “Not even with George doing our income tax.”

  “Does a bit of the old tax fiddling, your firm?” enquired Dalziel genially.

  “I do a bit of work privately for friends,” said Eliot coldly. “But in my own time and at home.”

  “You'll need to work bloody hard to make a copper rich,” said Dalziel.

  “Just keep taking the bribes, dear,” said Ellie sweetly. “Now when can we move into Stanstone Farm, Giselle?”

  Giselle glanced at her husband, whose expression remained a blank.

  “Any time you like, darling,” she said. “To tell you the truth, it can't be soon enough. In fact, we're back in town.”

  “Good God!” said Ellie. “You haven't found another place already, George? That's pretty rapid even for you.”

  A waiter appeared with a tray on which were glasses and a selection of liqueur bottles.

  “Compliments of Mr. Fletcher,” he said.

  Dalziel examined the tray with distaste and beckoned the waiter close. For an incredulous moment Pascoe thought he was going to refuse the drinks on the grounds that police officers must be seen to be above all favour.

  “From Mr. Fletcher, eh?” said Dalziel.

  “Well, listen, lad, he wouldn't be best pleased if he knew you'd forgotten the single malt whisky, would he? Run along and fetch it. I'll look after pouring this lot.”

  Giselle looked at Dalziel with the round–eyed delight of a child seeing a walrus for the first time.

  “Cointreau for me please, Mr. Dalziel,” she said.

  He filled a glass to the brim and passed it to her with a hand steady as a rock.

  “Sup up, love,” he said, looking with open admiration down her cleavage. “Lots more where that comes from.”

  Pascoe, sensing that Ellie might be about to ram a pepper–mill up her host's nostrils, said hastily, “Nothing wrong with the building, I hope, George? Not the beetle or anything like that?”

  “I sorted all that out before we moved,” said Eliot. “No, nothing wrong at all.”

  His tone was neutral but Giselle responded as though to an attack.

  “It's all right, darling,” she said. “Everyone's guessed it's me. But it's not really. It's just that I think we've got a ghost.”

  According to Giselle, there were strange scratchings, shadows moving where there should be none, and sometimes as she walked from one room to another “a sense of emptiness as though for a moment you'd stepped into the space between two stars.”

  This poetic turn of phrase silenced everyone except Dalziel, who interrupted his attempts to scratch the sole of his foot with a bent coffee spoon and let out a raucous laugh.

  “What's that mean?” demanded Ellie.

  “Nowt,” said Dalziel. “I shouldn't worry, Mrs. Eliot. It's likely some randy yokel roaming about trying to get a peep at you. And who's to blame him?”

 
He underlined his compliment with a leer straight out of the old melodrama. Giselle patted his knee in acknowledgement.

  “What do you think, George?” asked Ellie.

  George admitted the scratchings but denied personal experience of the rest.

  “See how long he stays there by himself,” challenged Giselle.

  “I didn't buy it to stay there by myself,” said Eliot. “But I've spent the last couple of nights alone without damage.”

  “And you saw or heard nothing?” said Ellie.

  “There may have been some scratching. A rat perhaps. It's an old house. But it's only a house. I have to go down to London for a few days tomorrow. When I get back we'll start looking for somewhere else. Sooner or later I'd get the urge anyway.”

  “But it's such a shame! After all your work, you deserve to relax for a while,” said Ellie. “Isn't there anything you can do?”

  “Exorcism,” said Pascoe. “Bell, book and candle.”

  “In my experience,” said Dalziel, who had been consuming the malt whisky at a rate which had caused the waiter to summon his workmates to view the spectacle, “there's three main causes of ghosts.” He paused for effect and more alcohol.

  “Can't you arrest him, or something?” Ellie hissed at Pascoe.

  “One: bad cooking,” the fat man continued. “Two: bad ventilation. Three: bad conscience.”

  “George installed air–conditioning himself,” said Pascoe.

  “And Giselle's a super cook,” said Ellie.

  “Well then,” said Dalziel. “I'm sure your conscience is as quiet as mine, love. So that leaves your randy yokel. Tell you what. Bugger your priests. What you need is a professional eye checking on things.” “You mean a psychic investigator?” said Giselle.

  “Like hell!” laughed Ellie. “He means get the village bobby to stroll around the place with his truncheon at the ready.”

  “A policeman? But I don't really see what he could do,” said Giselle, leaning towards Dalziel and looking earnestly into his lowered eyes.

  “No, hold on a minute,” cried Ellie with bright malice. “The Superintendent could be right. A formal investigation. But the village flatfoot's no use. You've got the best police brains in the county rubbing your thighs, Giselle. Why not send for them?”

  Which was how it started. Dalziel, to Pascoe's amazement, had greeted the suggestion with ponderous enthusiasm. Giselle had reacted with a mixture of high spirits and high seriousness, apparently regarding the project as both an opportunity for vindication and a lark. George had sat like Switzerland, neutral and dull. Ellie had been smilingly baffled to see her bluff so swiftly called. And Pascoe had kicked her ankle savagely when he heard plans being made for himself and Dalziel to spend the following Friday night waiting for ghosts at Stanstone Farm.

  As he told her the next day, had he realized that Dalziel's enthusiasm was going to survive the sober light of morning, he'd have followed up his kick with a karate chop.

  Ellie had tried to appear unrepentant.

  “You know why it's called Stanstone, do you?” she asked. “Standing stone. Get it? There must have been a stone circle there at some time. Primitive worship, human sacrifice, that sort of thing. Probably the original stones were used in the building of the house. That'd explain a lot, wouldn't it?”

  “No,” said Pascoe coldly. “That would explain very little. It would certainly not explain why I am about to lose a night's sleep, nor why you who usually threaten me with divorce or assault whenever my rest is disturbed to fight real crime should have arranged it.”

  But arranged it had been and it was small comfort for Pascoe now to know that Ellie was missing him.

  Dalziel seemed determined to enjoy himself, however.

  “Let's get our bearings, shall we?” he said. Replenishing his glass, he set out on a tour of the house.

  “Well wired up,” he said as his expert eye spotted the discreet evidence of the sophisticated alarm system. “Must have cost a fortune.”

  “It did. I put him in touch with our crime prevention squad and evidently he wanted nothing but the best,” said Pascoe.

  “What's he got that's so precious?” wondered Dalziel.

  “All this stuff's pretty valuable, I guess,” said Pascoe, making a gesture which took in the pictures and ornaments of the master bedroom in which they were standing. “But it's really for Giselle's sake. This was her first time out in the sticks and it's a pretty lonely place. Not that it's done much good.”

  “Aye,” said Dalziel, opening a drawer and pulling out a fine silk underslip. “A good–looking woman could get nervous in a place like this.”

  “You reckon that's what this is all about, sir?” said Pascoe. “A slight case of hysteria?”

  “Mebbe,” said Dalziel. They went into the next room, which

  Eliot had turned into a study. Only the calculating machine on the desk reminded them of the man's profession. The glass–fronted bookcase contained rows of books relating to his hobby in all its aspects from architectural histories to do–it–yourself tracts on concrete mixing. An old grandmother clock stood in a corner, and hanging on the wall opposite the bookcase was a nearly lifesize painting of a pre–Raphaelite maiden being pensive in a grove. She was naked but her long hair and the dappled shadowings of the trees preserved her modesty. For a fraction of a second it seemed to Pascoe as if the shadows on her flesh shifted as though a breeze had touched the branches above.

  “Asking for it,” declared Dalziel.

  “What?”

  “Rheumatics or rape,” said Dalziel. “Let's check the kitchen. My belly's empty as a football.”

  Giselle, who had driven out during the day to light the fire and make ready for their arrival, had anticipated Dalziel's gut. On the kitchen table lay a pile of sandwiches covered by a sheet of kitchen paper on which she had scribbled an invitation for them to help themselves to whatever they fancied.

  Underneath she had written in capitals BE CAREFUL and underlined it twice.

  “Nice thought,” said Dalziel, grabbing a couple of the sandwiches. “Bring the plate through to the living–room and we'll eat in comfort.” Back in front of the fire with his glass filled once again, Dalziel relaxed in a deep armchair. Pascoe poured himself a drink and looked out of the window again.

  “For God's sake, lad, sit down!” commanded Dalziel. “You're worse than a bloody spook, creeping around like that.”

  “Sorry,” said Pascoe.

  “Sup your drink and eat a sandwich. It'll soon be midnight. That's zero hour, isn't it? Right, get your strength up. Keep your nerves down.”

  “I'm not nervous!” protested Pascoe.

  “No? Don't believe in ghosts, then?”

  “Hardly at all,” said Pascoe.

  “Quite right. Detective–inspectors with university degrees shouldn't believe in ghosts. But tired old superintendents with less schooling than a pit pony, there's a different matter.”

  “Come off it!” said Pascoe. “You're the biggest unbeliever I know!”

  “That may be, that may be,” said Dalziel, sinking lower into his chair. “But sometimes, lad, sometimes ...”

  His voice sank away. The room was lit only by a dark–shaded table lamp and the glow from the fire threw deep shadows across the large contours of Dalziel's face. It might have been some eighteenth–century Yorkshire farmer sitting there, thought Pascoe. Shrewd; brutish; in his day a solid ram of a man, but now rotting to ruin through his own excesses and too much rough weather.

  In the fireplace a log fell. Pascoe started. The red glow ran up Dalziel's face like a flush of passion up an Easter Island statue.

  “I knew a ghost saved a marriage once,” he said ruminatively. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Oh Jesus! thought Pascoe. It's ghost stories round the fire now, is it? He remained obstinately silent.

  “My first case, I suppose you'd call it. Start of a meteoric career.”

  “Meteors fall. And burn out,” said Pascoe
. “Sir.”

  “You're a sharp bugger, Peter,” said Dalziel admiringly. “Always the quick answer. I bet you were just the same when you were eighteen. Still at school, eh? Not like me. I was a right Constable Plod I tell you. Untried. Untutored. Hardly knew one end of my truncheon from t'other. When I heard that shriek I just froze.”

  “Which shriek?” asked Pascoe resignedly. On cue there came a piercing wail from the dark outside, quickly cut off. He half rose, caught Dalziel's amused eye, and subsided, reaching for the whisky decanter.

  “Easy on that stuff,” admonished Dalziel with all the righteousness of a temperance preacher. “Enjoy your supper, like yon owl. Where was I? Oh aye. I was on night patrol. None of your Panda–cars in those days. You did it –all on foot. And I was standing just inside this little alleyway. It was a dark narrow passage running between hufflebotham's woolmill on the one side and a little terrace of back–to–backs on the other. It's all gone now, all gone. There's a car park there now. A bloody car park! Any road, the thing about this alley was, it were a dead end. There was a kind of buttress sticking out of the mill wall, might have been the chimneystack, I'm not sure, but the back–to–backs had been built flush up against it so there was no way through. No way at all.”