The phone shrilled like an owl in a haunted tower. Pascoe, startled as if he too had been dragged from deep sleep, grabbed it, said, 'Hello, this is…' and couldn't remember his number. 'Peter, are you all right?' It was Ellie's voice, close and concerned. 'Yes, fine. Hang on.' He switched off the tape. 'Sorry, I was listening to something. How's things? How's your mum? Your dad? Rosie?' 'Rosie's fine. I tried to ring earlier so she could have a talk to you, but I couldn't be bothered to talk to that bloody machine. She's asleep now.
If you ever get home early enough, maybe you could ring…' He could sense the effort not to sound reproving. He said, 'Of course I will, I promise. And your mum, how's she?' There was a silence. He said, 'Hello? You still there?' 'Yes. She's… Oh, Peter, I'm so worried…' 'Why? What's happened?' 'Nothing really… except.
.. Peter, I'm terrified it's all happening again. I thought it was just physical, you know, the strain of looking after Dad, and she's always had these circulatory problems, and the arthritis, and I thought that once things settled down… Well, in herself, physically I mean, she doesn't seem too bad… but she's started forgetting things… she'd forgotten we were coming though we'd just spoken on the phone that morning… and this morning I heard her calling Rosie Ellie…' That can happen to anyone,' said Pascoe confidently. 'I've done it myself. As for forgetting things like phone calls, if I don't make a note of everything instantly, that's it, gone for ever.' The silence again. Then: 'I hope you're right. Maybe I'm over-sensitive because of Dad.' That's right. Have you seen him?' 'I went today. I'd forgotten how awful it is, looking into a face you know, being looked at by eyes that don't know you… I came out feeling like… I don't know… like it was all my fault somehow.
..' 'For God's sake! How do you work that out?' demanded Pascoe, dismayed to hear such fragile uncertainty in her voice. 'I don't know … using them as an excuse, maybe… that's what I've done, isn't it? Saying I thought I should come down here for a few days because I wanted to make sure Mum was coping… doing the concerned daughter bit when all I was really looking for was a place to lie low … like getting out of something by saying you've got the 'flu, then really getting the 'flu like it was a judgement, only far worse.
.. not thinking about her at all really…' 'Well, let's think about her now, shall we?' said Pascoe sharply. Again silence, the longest yet. Her voice was calmer when she finally spoke. 'So I'm doing it again, you reckon? Getting in the spot-light instead of sticking to my bit part. Yes, you could be right.' 'Forget right,' said Pascoe. 'Only in this case, maybe you should just go for best-supporting-actress for a while. Look, why not get your mum to come up here for a while? Or I could steal a couple of days' leave and come down there.' She thought for a while, then said, 'No. Mum wouldn't come, I know that. Remember I tried to get her away after Dad went into the home and she wouldn't budge. She knows it's hopeless but she thinks she's got to stay close.' 'So, shall I come down?' 'Peter, believe me, I'm tempted, but I don't want to get things all mussed up together. I've used them once as an excuse to get away and I don't want to find I'm using them as an excuse again to step back…
Look, I know I'm putting this badly but we both know we've reached an edge, OK, so it's dangerous, but at least the view is clear… God, even my metaphors are… what's the opposite of euphemistic? Look, I'd better go now. I can promise Rosie you'll ring early enough to speak to her, can I?' 'Cross my heart and hope to die,' said Pascoe.
'Take care. Love to your mum. And Rosie. And you.' 'Peter, Christ, I'm a selfish cow, this has been all about me and I've not asked anything about you, how you're coping, what you're eating, all the wifely things. You're not living off those dreadful pies at the Black Bull, are you? You'll end up like Fat Andy. Incidentally, I see they've released that poor woman your mob fitted up nearly thirty years ago.
Plus ca change and all that.' 'Plus c a change,' echoed Pascoe. 'I'll prepare answers to satisfy your wifely curiosities next time. After I've finished eating this pie. Good night, love.' He put the phone down. His mind was wriggling with thoughts like an angler's bait tin.
He poured a long Scotch and took it out into the garden where he watched scallopedged clouds drift across the evening sky like thought bubbles in some divine cartoon, but he couldn't read the message. Old troubles, other people's troubles, were better than this. He went back inside, ran the cassette back a little, and started listening once more.
SEVEN
'It is extraordinary to me… that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is ever in the way.' '… and the door swung slowly open. 'Westropp had clearly feared the worst and the worst was what he found. His wife lay sprawled beside a fallen stool with a gaping hole in her ribcage. In front of her on the table was a shotgun. Properly speaking this table was a workbench, fitted with a vice. Mickledore liked to fill his own cartridges, do his own repairs. The others scarcely had time to register that a loop of wire had been passed through the trigger guard of the gun with its loose ends locked tight in the jaws of the vice before Mickledore had manhandled Westropp out of the room. '"Noddy, get the women out of here. Scott, take care of James. Tom, you come with me." 'And drawing Partridge after him, he went back into the gunroom and closed the door. 'We have a first-hand account of what took place then from Lord Partridge's memoirs. In A Pear Tree, published last month. 'The dislodged key was lying on the floor.
Mickledore stooped to pick it up. Partridge went to the workbench. On it lay a scrap of paper with a note scrawled on it in Pamela Westropp's unmistakable hand. 'It read:… it's no good – I can't take it – I'd rather destroy everything. 'The following exchange then took place. PARTRIDGE: Oh God, what a dreadful business. MICKLEDORE : Yes. Time for maximum discretion, I think. You know what the Press can make of an accident like this. PARTRIDGE: Accident? How can you call it an accident when… MICKLEDORE: (taking the note from him and putting it in his pocket) Because accidents are merely tragic, while suicides are scandalous, and we must protect James and his family, and I mean all of his family, from any hint of scandal. PARTRIDGE: But I am a Minister of the Crown… MICKLEDORE:
Exactly. And you've not been having such a good press lately, have you? Neither your Party nor the Palace will thank you for dumping another scandal on their doorstep. Look, I'm not suggesting anything truly illegal, just a little tidying up. You've seen nothing in here except a dead woman, right? Now you push off and do some phoning, you know the right people. Say Pam's been found dead, an accident you think, but you recommend maximum discretion. I'll take care of things in here. Go on. Get a move on. You know it's best. 'And off went Partridge. He claims he rang a colleague in London to ask for advice and the advice he received was to contact the police immediately, which was what he did. By the time Detective-Superintendent Tallantire arrived, the loop of wire had vanished like the note. 'We may never know just how much pressure was put on Tallantire to tread warily.
What we do know from his evidence at the trial is that he discounted the accident theory almost immediately. The gun was in perfect working order and it was physically almost impossible to contrive a situation in which Pamela could have fired it by accident as it lay across the workbench with its muzzle pressed against her chest. Then a sharp-eyed forensic man drew his attention to a slight scratch across the trigger and he himself found in the bench drawer a loop of wire with corrugations in its loose ends exactly matching the teeth of the vice.
'Now he concentrated all his attention on Mickledore and Partridge.
The others could get away with being vague about what they actually saw in their brief glimpse into the gunroom, but these two had been in there for some time. 'Tallantire applied pressure and Partridge quickly broke. The recent scandals had not performed the miracle of curing politicians of lying, but they were alert as they'd never been before to the perils of being caught in a lie. So he showed a modest confusion, apologized for an error of judgement and told the truth.
Mickledore showed no confusion, made no ap
ology, but freely admitted his attempts to make the death look accidental and suggested that a patriot and a gentleman could have done no other. 'Tallantire ignored the slur and asked for the note. A brief comparison with other examples of her writing convinced him it was in her hand. 'A lesser man, faced with a body in a locked room, a suicide note, a device for firing a shotgun with its muzzle pressed against the chest, plus any amount of testimony to the dead woman's unnaturally agitated state of mind that evening, might easily have bowed out at this stage, probably congratulating himself on his skill in so soon detecting an upper class attempt to close ranks and pervert the course of justice. 'But not Tallantire. It is not clear at what point he became genuinely suspicious. Lord Partridge suggests that initially Tallantire's refusal to accept the obvious was due to no more than one of those instant mutual antipathies that spring up between people. He theorizes that Mickledore saw Tallantire as a plodding boor without an original thought in his head, and that the latter regarded the former as an upper class twit who imagined that his background and breeding put him above the law. 'If this theory is right, then Mickledore's was the larger error. And he compounded it by trying to pressurize the police into doing their work with maximum speed and minimum inconvenience to his household and guests. 'Only a fool tries to hurry a mule or a Yorkshireman. 'Tallantire dug his heels in and insisted on interviewing in detail every adult in the Hall. 'The guests, all of whom had rooms along the same corridor, gave him very little. James Westropp, Jessica Partridge and my mother had all gone quickly to sleep. The two women recollected hearing the midnight chimes, but Westropp had been too fatigued for even that noise to penetrate his slumbers. Downstairs, Partridge and Mickledore had played billiards equally undisturbed, while Rampling had been chatting to America and my father had been strolling the grounds. 'Tallantire moved up to the second floor. Here, directly above the guests on the first floor, the children and their nannies were housed, while to the rear of the house the Gilchrists, butler and housekeeper, had their flat. 'Cissy Kohler was unable to help. Indeed she was in a state of such agitation that she was hardly able to speak without tears starting to her eyes, a condition attributed by most to her closeness to the bereaved twins.
By contrast, Miss Marsh was her usual calm self. Her nose was badly bruised and when Tallantire opened the interview by commenting upon it, she explained that something had woken her in the night, a noise, and thinking it might be one of the children, she had jumped out of bed in the dark. Unfortunately in her newly awoken state she had forgotten she wasn't in her room at Haysgarth, the Partridge family home, and walked straight into a wardrobe. As her room was almost directly over the gunroom, the time and nature of this noise became important. All she could say was that it was a single, not a continuous or repeated sound, it hadn't originated so far as she could ascertain from the children, and it was not long before the midnight chimes sounded. 'The Gilchrists had heard nothing and the butler made it clear that in his opinion things had been better arranged in the old days when no policeman under the rank of Chief Constable would have been allowed in the Hall through the front door. 'The other live-in servants, Mrs Partington, the cook, and Jenny Jones and Elsbeth Lowrie, the two maids, all of whom had their quarters on the top floor, were less superior but just as helpful. Jones, a well-starched angular girl, contrived to give the impression that she knew more than she was going to tell, but Tallantire was inclined to put this down to a kind of asexual teasing to make herself interesting. 'All this had eaten deep into Sunday. One can imagine the damage-limitation efforts that were going on along the Westminster-Buckingham Palace axis. So far the media had been kept completely in the dark. The Sunday papers were of course full of Stephen Ward's death and didn't miss this chance to rehash the whole sorry story and its attendant rumours. The most sensational of these related to the identities of what had come to be known as The Man in the Mask and The Man with No Head. The former was a figure who, naked except for a leather mask, acted as a waiter at pre-orgiastic banquets and invited guests to punish him if his service didn't come up to scratch. The latter referred to a photograph of a naked man from which the head had been deleted. Along with most of his colleagues, Thomas Partridge had been posited by the gutter press as a candidate for both roles, and he was very keen to distance himself from this new scandal as soon as possible. So when the police returned on Monday morning, the Partridge family were all packed up and ready to leave. 'That would not be possible, Tallantire told him. Not until he had interviewed the children. 'Partridge exploded. He was a formidable man when roused and his dressing-down of Tallantire was audible all over the Hall. But Tallantire was adamant. He, we now know, had been ordered to wrap this affair up before the Bank Holiday was over, and he wasn't going to let it go till he was sure he'd covered every possible angle. 'The row was at its height with the outcome still in doubt when one of Tallantire's minions appeared and whispered something in his master's ear that made the Superintendent leave the room with the scantiest of apologies. 'His gut feeling that there was more here than met the eye had made Tallantire grasp at straws.
Interviewing the children was one of these. Jenny Jones was another.
Just in case there was more to her knowingness than the desire of drabness to be colourful, he had sent his most personable young officer to talk to her again. 'He had struck gold. Resentment, envy, moral outrage, or just a desire to please, had made Jones reveal that her fellow maid, Elsbeth Lowrie, had had one of the guests in her room that night. Nor was this the first time such a thing had happened, and it wasn't right that she, Jenny, had to do the brunt of the work while Elsbeth was in Mickledore's employ simply because she was no better than she ought to be. 'Elsbeth, a shapely blonde girl who looked like every wicked squire's vision of a healthy young milkmaid, had seen no reason to tell the police the truth on Sunday, but she saw even less to keep on lying today. She freely admitted that from time to time she entertained some of Mickledore's guests, but only those she fancied, and not for money, that wouldn't be right, though she did acknowledge that her pay packet often contained what she ingenuously described as "a kind of Christmas bonus", a phrase which won her the caption A Christmas Cracker in some tabloid photographs. 'Her guest on Saturday night had been none other than the Right Honourable Thomas Partridge, MP. He had come to her just before midnight (that clock again) and left possibly an hour later, she couldn't be certain. 'Like a good politician, Partridge did not deny the undeniable, apologized sweetly for his recent ill temper, and offered full cooperation of himself and his family in return for the exercise of maximum discretion.
'Tallantire like a good Yorkshireman said nowt, and instructed his officers to start interviewing the children. 'We, as you may imagine, were fascinated by all these comings and goings. My sister Wendy and I had formed a close alliance with the two elder Partridge girls. Their brother, Tommy, newly entangled in the weeds of pubescence, regarded us scornfully as noisy kids, and the other children were of course not yet of an age to enjoy the delights of midnight feasts and doctors-and-nurses. But four children between seven and nine is the nucleus of an intelligence service far more efficient than MI5 and there was little that we missed, though much we couldn't understand.
'We four were interviewed by a male detective with a WPC by his side.
She, I think, would have preferred to see us one at a time but he was the better psychologist and knew you were likely to get much more out of a relaxed and mutually disputatious group. Also the fact that there were four of us made it easier for him to shut our mothers out, though I doubt if he'd get away with that nowadays. 'I can't remember his name, but his face remains clear, broad and hard, with eyes like rifle sights and a mouth like Moby Dick's. But when he spoke it was very gently. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes, reached them towards me and said, "Smoke?" and I was his forever. I wanted to take one but didn't quite dare and he said, "Later, mebbe. I always fancy a bull's-eye myself this time in the morning." And he took out a huge bag of bull's-eyes and passed
these round instead. 'After that we were old friends. The girls clearly thought he was wonderful, but it was me he spoke to mainly, very man to man, always glancing at me to confirm anything they said. It was easy to tell him that we hadn't been sleeping as we should have been, but instead had gathered in the room Wendy and I shared for a midnight feast. "And did you hear or see owt?" he asked. By this time I'd have gladly made something up to please him, but as it turned out, the truth was enough. Yes, we'd heard a noise and I'd peeped out through the door, fearing that one of the two nannies was on to us, and at first I thought that my fears were right for I saw Cecily Kohler hurrying down the corridor towards me, but she went right past, presumably to her own room, for I heard a door open and shut. Which end of the corridor was she coming from? he wanted to know. The end where the side stairway was, I told him. And how did she look? "Sort of pale and seasick," I remember saying. "Oh, and she had blood on her hands." 'I tossed that in almost casually. To an eight-year-old, all adult behaviour is in a sense incomprehensible.
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