'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.'
"Right again,' said Dalziel with almost paternal pride. ‘Go on.'
'Go on where? I need ten times more information to make the next jump. Look, I can offer you hypotheses which put Tallantire in the clear and hypotheses which paint him black as a miner's snot-rag, and I can probably do you most points in between. OK, there's definitely something odd going on, but it may not be the kind of oddness you're looking for. Have you thought of that?'
Dalziel poured more whisky.
'Be a good little hostess,' he said, 'and fetch my case in from the hall.'
Pascoe had been trying to forget about the case.
'What's in it?' he asked uneasily.
Dalziel laughed and said, 'You're scared mebbe I've come to spend the night! Calm down, your reputation's safe. It's Wally's papers. I stowed them in the left luggage and I've just picked them up now when I came off my train.'
Not bothering to hide his relief, Pascoe got the case.
Dalziel opened it and arranged its contents in three untidy piles on the floor.
'I did a quick sort out before I stashed it,' he said. Wally was a bugger for order on the job, but when it came to his own stuff, he kept things in a right tip.'
'Reminds me of someone,' murmured Pascoe.
'Aye, there's some mucky buggers about,' agreed Dalziel. 'This lot here's letters, bills, that kind of stuff. Nowt there for us. This pile's some stuff he was putting together on his old cases. He were thinking of writing his memoirs when he retired. Well, he never made it.'
'What happened exactly?' asked Pascoe.
'The usual,' said Dalziel. 'Heart attack. He carried far too much weight, I were always on at him about it. He'd been down to London, died in the train back. He were in a carriage by himself and went on to Newcastle before anyone noticed. I thought of him today as I travelled back.'
Amusement at the idea of Dalziel warning anyone about the dangers of obesity mingled with sympathy at the note of genuine regret.
'I'm sorry,' he said.
'No need to be,' said Dalziel briskly. 'Well, not much. Wally would have hated retirement. Writing his memoirs was just his way of trying to spin things out a bit longer, I reckon. I doubt it would have come to owt.'
'Anything much on the Mickledore case?'
'Aye, some interesting stuff. One thing I don't have, but, is his notebook. He was a great scribbler on the job, was Wally. Used to say his own notebook was the only bedside reading he ever wanted. Man who noted everything could solve everything. I hope Adolf and his vultures didn't get their claws on it, else it'll be long gone. But this is what Adolf would give his left bollock to get hold of.'
He handed Pascoe a handwritten sheet.
I am Cecily Kohler from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. For the past two and a half years I have been working as nanny to the Westropp family. On the night of August 3, 1963. I went into the gunroom at Mickledore Hall where Mrs Pam Westropp was cleaning a shotgun. Something happened, I don't know what, but it went off accidentally and killed her.
It was unsigned.
'Whose writing is this?' asked Pascoe.
'Wally's. This too,' said Dalziel, passing another sheet.
I am Cecily Kohler from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I am an American citizen employed by the Westropps to look after their children. I liked my job except that I didn't much care for Pam Westropp who was always picking on me. We had a fight about something in the gunroom and a gun went off, killing her.
'What the hell is all this?' demanded Pascoe.
Dalziel passed another sheet.
I am Cecily Kohler from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Mr James Westropp is very nice but his wife was funny, always up and down and the children never knew where they were with her. So in the end for their sake I decided to kill her in the gunroom and fix things so it would look like an accident.
'And this,' said Dalziel.
I am Cecily Kohler from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 1 hated my employer because she was always up and down, like she was on drugs, and neglected the children. Also she slept around. So I decided to kill her and arrange things so it would look like suicide.
'Just one more,' said Dalziel.
This one was different, not an original but a photocopy and written in a different, much less precise hand.
I am Cecily Kohler, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. For the past two and a half years / have been working as nanny to the Westropp family. It was through my job that I met Ralph Mickledore when he visited the Westropps in the States. We became lovers and because of this, though I'd never planned to work abroad, I decided to accompany the family when they returned to England. I liked my job except that I didn't much care for Pam Westropp. Her husband is very nice but she was up and down, like she was on drugs or something. Sometimes she'd not come near the children for days, then she'd be all over them, interfering with my work, and close to smothering them with hugs and kisses, but soon as one of them needed a diaper changed or brought their feed back, she'd get tired of them and push them back at me, like it was my fault. Also she slept around. I knew that Ralph had been with her, I think she threw herself at him, and when she found out he was going to get married, she threatened to tell everyone about everything, and it would have ruined everything, for me as well as Ralph, so I suggested we should kill her. It was my idea, I would have done it myself only I needed his help to make it look like suicide. She really deserved it and the only thing I'm sorry for is little Emily. I took the children out in the canoe so I could drop the key in the lake, I mean the key Mick had fixed so it wouldn't open the gunroom door. Then I thought I'd hide because I was frightened of talking to the police again. I wasn't thinking straight after what I'd done, the longer I stayed under the willows, the more confused I got, the light on the water, the wind in the trees all seemed to get in my mind somehow. I'll never forgive myself for what happened to Em. There's no punishment they can give me to get me right for that.
Signed: Cecily Kohler, August 5, 1963.
'This is her actual confession?' said Pascoe. 'Written by herself? So what about the others, in Tallantire's hand?'
'You're the clever cunt. What do you make of them?'
'I know what Mr Hiller would make of them. Tallantire drafting confession after confession, using them to beat away at the girl till it didn't seem a matter of whether she would confess, but merely of which version she would choose. And all the time using her guilt at the kid's death to turn the screw. In the end, when he's got her word perfect, he says, OK, write it and
sign it. It's like filming Monroe. When she got it right, it was a take, sod everything else!'
'I don't like the way your mind's running on lasses with big knockers,' said Dalziel reprovingly. 'So that's how you see it, eh? Good. Now you know why I didn't want Adolf getting his hand on this lot.'
'Look, sir,' said Pascoe unhappily, 'I know I said I'd help, but if something comes up suggesting there may have been irregularities . . .'
'You can put that tender conscience back in the pickle jar,' growled Dalziel. 'I'll tell you why Wally took so long getting Kohler to cough. It weren't because he was grilling the lass till she didn't know her arse from her elbow. No, the trouble was she were ready to sign anything from the start! So long as it didn't incriminate Mickledore, that is. That's all that Wally wanted, to stop her protecting her lover. Her guilt was never in doubt, but she couldn't have done it by herself - '
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