The Price of Butcher's Meat

by Reginald Hill

  “Miss Sheldon, the chief nurse at the clinic, showed up just a couple of minutes after two, a bit worried in case she was too early. Then very shortly after, Miss Lee, the acupuncturist, then Dr. Feldenhammer, he’s in charge at the Avalon, and after that they came thick and fast. I’ve been trying to work out the exact order, like Sergeant Wield asked, but it’s not easy. In the end we just let new arrivals find their own way round to the garden because we were too busy making sure everyone got drinks and so on.”

  “We being you and who else? The Denhams?” suggested Pascoe.

  “Well, not really. Teddy and Esther got caught up with talking to people, you see, and of course Aunt Daphne had to say hello to everyone. She was in a much better mood now. Very relaxed, all jolly and good hostessy.”

  “So it was just you doing the work then?”

  Smile again, a bit rueful this time?

  “I suppose so. But very quickly, once people found where the drinks and nibbles were, they looked after themselves, so all I had to do was keep a general eye on things.”

  “Of course. Did that include the barbecue area?”

  The light died in her face, but it had to be mentioned sometime.

  “No. I don’t much care for meat, Mr. Pascoe, particularly in a form which displays its source so graphically. Ollie Hollis was in charge there.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He’s a gate man at the Hollis’s Ham breeding unit out at Denham Park. I think he’s a distant relative of Aunt Daphne’s first husband, who founded the business. Aunt Daphne often gets him…got him…to do odd jobs around the garden, and I think he used to help with the hog roast in Mr. Hollis’s day. It was an annual event then.”

  “And your aunt didn’t keep up the tradition? Why was that?”

  “I suppose because second husbands don’t much care to be reminded of their predecessors, and the annual hog roast was very much Mr. Hollis’s event.”

  Pascoe noted the care with which she put things. She was no one’s fool, this girl, he judged, and very far from a sycophantic companion. He doubted if much escaped her. Presently she was too close to the horror of the events to be pressed to a full and frank assessment of what made her “aunt” tick. Later, however, she could be very useful.

  “And when did you last see Lady Denham?” he asked.

  “Like I told Sergeant Wield, the last time I can be positive about was around three thirty, give or take. She was having a rather intense conversation with Mr. Godley…”

  “An argument, the sergeant said you said.”

  “Did I? Well, yes, maybe it was, but I wouldn’t like to say…”

  Frightened once more of seeming to point a finger?

  “Mr. Godley’s a healer, I understand,” said Pascoe. “I gather from what you say that Lady Denham wasn’t as keen on alternative therapists as Mr. Tom Parker?”

  “No, she wasn’t,” said Clara. “Frankly, I think Aunt Daphne would rather not have asked any of them to the hog roast, but as it was being paid for out of consortium funds, she didn’t really have a choice. Anyway, she was really very fond of Tom in her own way and wouldn’t offend him if she could help it.”

  “And you didn’t see her again after this?”

  “I don’t think so. But I was very busy, you see, helping Alan Hollis with the drink. You can leave people to help themselves to food, but unless you keep control of the bar, it gets chaotic. Alan couldn’t spare any of his staff from the pub—it’s the holiday season—so he needed all the help he could get. Then, when the storm started, we were working like mad to get the bar stuff into the house before it got washed away.”

  “That’s very helpful. Thank you,” said Pascoe. He studied his copy of the guest list again and went on, “I notice that the Tom Parkers have a Charlotte Heywood at the same local address. She another relative?”

  “No. A visiting friend,” she said. “Not a poor dependent like me.”

  She spoke with a touch of self-mockery.

  Pascoe smiled and said, “That’s not really how you see yourself, is it?”

  “I suspect it’s how I appear in some people’s eyes.”

  “But not perhaps for long,” he said, watching her carefully.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I just meant that, with your aunt’s tragic death, your dependency, or its appearance at least, has ceased. As for being poor, I know nothing of your circumstances, nor indeed how Lady Denham’s death might affect them.”

  “Oh God,” she said incredulously. “You think I’m at all concerned about that?”

  “In the circumstances, it might be natural…”

  “Natural for you in your line of work, maybe,” she said.

  She sounded close to an angry outburst, but took a couple of deep breaths and when she spoke her voice was back under control.

  “Aunt Daphne had many faults, and there’ll be plenty of people keen to point them out. All I know is, she was kind to me, and she invited me to live with her when I needed someone to be kind to me. As to her will, whether she’s left me a lot or a little, or nothing, won’t make the slightest difference to how I grieve for her and remember her.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Pascoe, impressed, though not certain whether it was by the power of her emotion, or the power of her performance. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You haven’t,” she assured him. “Look, I’m as keen as you to see the monster who did this dreadful thing brought to justice. Obviously you’ll want to talk to anyone who might benefit from Aunt Daphne’s death. I should hate for you to waste time by having me on that list, that’s all.”

  “Very commendable,” murmured Pascoe. “Perhaps, having removed your own name from the list, you could suggest some names which ought to figure there?”

  She looked at him with an expression which was very much more lady-of-the-house than poor-relative and said, “Knowing how it feels to be under suspicion, you don’t imagine I’m going to point the finger at some other poor devil, do you?”

  “No? Then perhaps after all you’re not quite so keen as me to see the monster who did this dreadful thing brought to justice,” said Pascoe.

  He let her digest that for a moment, then went on, “Thanks for your help, anyway. Now, if Sir Edward and his sister are still around, I’d like a word with them, please.”

  She held his gaze steadily for a moment, then rose and led him farther down the corridor to a large oak door. She pushed it open and walked away without a word.

  Sulking, or just thinking? wondered Pascoe. More to Miss Brereton than meets the eye? And certainly what met the eye was very easy on it.

  He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and advanced through the open door.

  7

  The room he entered was of a different order from the rather poky computer room he’d just left. It was generously proportioned, with a ceiling high enough to take a crystal chandelier, though all that depended from an ornately sculpted boss was the kind of four-bulbed wooden cross-piece fitment you could buy in British Home Stores. The design on the boss and on the matching cornicing was picked out in gold leaf looking badly in need of renewal. Above a huge marble fireplace hung an oil painting of a man in hunting scarlet against a pastoral background across which ran a cry of hounds. The furniture looked old and rather shabby.

  There were two people in the room. Stretched out along a chaise longue was a young woman with a tall glass in her left hand. Dressed in baggy patched jeans and what Pascoe thought of as a sloppy Joe sweater, she still contrived to look incredibly elegant as she turned a cold gaze on him and said, “Who the hell are you?”

  “Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe, Mid-Yorkshire CID,” he proclaimed with deliberate sonority.

  The second occupant of the room, standing at a tall mahogany bureau with his back to the door, turned round and took a couple of rather aggressive steps forward. He was a fit, muscular young man who moved with athletic ease; very good looking in a slightly outmoded way,
this being an age that valued pallid angularity over square-cut five-o’clock shadow. His vigorously curly hair was becomingly disheveled and he wore designer fatigues and the kind of polo shirt that might actually have been worn by a man playing polo, or perhaps it was just a certain arrogance of mien that gave this impression. An expensive-looking watch hung loose on his left wrist as if the bracelet catch had broken, or maybe that was the way the upper set wore their baubles to display their indifference to wealth.

  He looked Pascoe up and down and said, “You the man in charge?”

  His tone was on the edge of brusque and very definitely patrician.

  Pascoe said, “Sir Edward Denham, I presume. And Miss Esther? These are sad circumstances in which to meet. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  His face solemn with sympathy, he held out his hand.

  Like Furtwängler fiddling with his baton in a vain effort to avoid being filmed shaking hands with Hitler, Denham attempted to fasten his watch, but Pascoe kept his hand steady and finally the man gave it a peremptory shake and muttered, “Thank you.”

  Then, presumably as a step to regaining the social high ground, he barked, “Took your time getting here, didn’t you?”

  For a second Pascoe looked puzzled, then he smiled faintly, as if spotting an understandable error, and explained, “Getting here wasn’t a priority, sir. My sergeant is more than capable of setting the mechanics of the investigation in progress. I logged straight on to the central police computer. Nowadays it’s standard practice for chief investigators to acquaint themselves with the known background of significant witnesses before heading for the locus in quo.”

  He let the implications of this fiction sink in as he took a step past Denham and stared at the bureau. All its drawers were open and the desk was covered with papers, some of which had spilled onto the floor.

  “Have you lost something, sir?” he asked politely.

  “No!” said Denham. The watch was loose again. He gave up on it and thrust it into his pocket, so not a fashion statement. “Just checking for Auntie’s address book. There are a few people who need to be told the sad news before they hear it on the radio.”

  “Very thoughtful of you, sir,” said Pascoe. “Have you found it?”

  “Well no, actually—”

  “Never mind. Perhaps Miss Brereton will be able to help you. Meanwhile, if I could just get you to answer a few questions…?”

  Denham took a deep breath, then relaxed and said, “Sure. You’ve got a job to do, right? Take a seat, Pascoe. Care for a drink?”

  The baronet was bright enough to have decided the high hand was going to get him nowhere, thought Pascoe, but the sister still looked as if she’d have preferred to set the dogs on him. The thought took his gaze back to the portrait over the mantelshelf. The man looked slightly familiar. He was staring into the room with a rather quizzical superior gaze and the suggestion of a squint.

  “No, I’m okay,” he said. “Is that the late Mr. Hollis perhaps?”

  “Good lord, no,” said Denham. “That’s my uncle, Sir Henry. This is Hollis.”

  He went to a small ormolu table standing against the same wall as the bureau and picked up a silver photo frame that held the picture of a grizzle-haired man, his weather-beaten and heavily stubbled face glaring out with that narrow-eyed Yorkshire farmer expression that says clearer than words, There’s no bugger here getting the better of me!

  Sorry, Hog. Can’t win ’em all, thought Pascoe, not without sympathy. If anything of human consciousness survived, what must Hog Hollis feel to find himself gazing across his own drawing room to see pride of place given to his successor!

  He turned back to Sir Harry’s portrait, then glanced at Edward. No squint but the same superior expression.

  “Of course. Now I see the resemblance,” he said. “Fine portrait. Very…big.”

  “Should never have left Denham Park,” said the woman. “It’s a daub, you know.”

  “Oh surely not so bad as that,” said Pascoe.

  The woman gave him a look which would have been contemptuous if she’d thought him worth her contempt. But her brother laughed and said, “Bradley d’Aube, one of the Huddersfield school, very well thought of, and prices have shot up since he died ten years back. Well, it can go back to its rightful place now.”

  “It’s here on loan then, rather than part of the late Lady Denham’s estate?” said Pascoe innocently.

  Esther Denham yawned as if she found the observation too tedious to need a response, but her brother said smoothly, “Loan covers it, I think. My late aunt naturally wanted to have some memento of Uncle Harry when she returned here after his death and we raised no objection when she chose the portrait. But it was always understood it belonged in the park. Not a problem. Loan or legacy, either way it will come to me.”

  Well, well, thought Pascoe. Cards-on-the-table time, is it? Aimed at making me think no one so open can possibly have anything to hide.

  The clever move of a clever mind?

  Or maybe subtle sister, reckoning you’re not bright enough to deceive me, has advised you to play it this way.

  “As to that, I think we should wait and see,” said Pascoe. “Promises have been broken, wills have been changed. And perhaps, in order not to muddy the waters, and for your own protection, it might be as well to regard all papers and property in the hall as private until the legal formalities have been observed.”

  He let his gaze drift to the open bureau.

  Denham looked ready to revert to patrician indignation, but this time it was his sister who chose the conciliatory path.

  “Told you not to go poking about, Teddy,” she said. “That’s what we pay the police for. Come on. Let’s go home.”

  Exit left, leaving the grateful plod spluttering his appreciation, thought Pascoe.

  “If I could have a word first,” he said as the woman swung her legs off the chaise.

  “Another word? I think I’m worded out, Inspector,” she said. “You do know we’ve written our statements and given them to one of your people, I forget his name, the one with the interesting face.”

  She drawled the adjective in a way that made it sound more abusive than abuse.

  “Yes, I know,” said Pascoe. “And very helpful too. Impressions close to the event are always valuable. But sometimes, as time passes, things surface which the first effort of recall failed to trawl up.”

  Esther Denham stood up, shaking her head.

  “Sorry, nothing like that,” she said.

  The sloppy Joe was so big it hung loose on her, with the sleeves dangling a good six inches beneath her hands. But the knit was wide enough for Pascoe to be uncomfortably aware that she was braless beneath it.

  He was standing between her and the door and when he made no attempt to move, she yawned widely in his face, then said, “Look, if you’re going to keep us hanging around, is it okay if I get another drink, or does that come under muddying the waters too?”

  “So long as you don’t take the bottle,” said Pascoe, who decided he would be happy to dislike this young woman when he was sure that making him dislike her wasn’t simply a distraction tactic.

  She smiled faintly and moved across the room to a long sideboard on which stood a vodka bottle and an ice bucket. Her left hand wriggled sexily out of the long sleeve, dropped a couple of cubes into a glass, and covered them with vodka.

  Her brother watched her uneasily. He didn’t have a drink. Keeping his head clear?

  “And you, sir?” said Pascoe. “Anything occur since you gave your statement?”

  “Not really,” said Edward. “Last sightings of poor Aunt Daphne are clearly going to be of the essence and I’ve been racking my brain to see if I can come up with anything significant in our brief final exchange.”

  “Just let your mind go blank, sir,” advised Pascoe, provoking a satirical snort from the sister. “See if anything pops up.”

  Denham closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head.

>   “No. As I told Sergeant Wield, last time I saw her was quite early on. Some of the children who were there wanted to have a swim from the private beach and I volunteered to help keep an eye on them. I hung around there for a while, then, realizing there were more adults than was really necessary, I thought I’d rejoin the party. Always hate to miss my share of a good bubbly and Auntie had really pushed the boat out for a change.”

  “So you didn’t notice Lady Denham when you got back.”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “What about you, Miss Denham?”

  “Oh, I glimpsed her from time to time. Noticed her backing poor old Lester Feldenhammer into a corner. Probably inviting him to examine her private parts.”

  “Ess, for God’s sake!” protested Denham. “She’s only been dead a few hours.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Pascoe. “I’m missing something here. This is Dr. Feldenhammer from the Avalon you’re referring to, is it?”

  “Right. Come on, Teddy, do you imagine the police aren’t going to winkle it out? That’s your speciality isn’t it, Inspector, winkling?”

  “Chief Inspector, if we are to be precise, Miss Denham. Any assistance you can give me with my winkling would be much appreciated.”

  She laughed and for the first time looked at him as if he were possibly something more than a disregardable footman.

  “No big secret,” she said. “Get chatting to anyone down at the Hope and Anchor and they’ll tell you that Auntie had set her sights on Feldenhammer.”

  “You’re saying there was a romantic relationship between Lady Denham and Dr. Feldenhammer?”

  Esther Denham laughed again.

  “Not quite how I’d put it. Daphne liked men. Liked in every sense. But she liked her social standing too, so no Lady Chatterley stuff. Wouldn’t have cared to be caught making hay with a well-hung peasant. What she wanted was a consort who could service her both socially and sexually. Hollis, her first husband, brought her wealth and local influence; Uncle Harry, her second, brought her social standing and, because she had a mind like a calculating machine, a lot more profit than he ever managed from the Denham estate. Since his death, she’d been casting around for a successor to scratch all her itches.”