In addition, Pascoe was having doubts about the adequacy of his German. It had been some years since he had used it and he was beginning to fear the old fluency had gone.
The next couple of minutes seemed to prove him right. The ‘cribs’ he had surrounded himself with were more of a nuisance than a help. The carefully looked-up words for ‘flight list’, ‘immigration officer’, ‘passport control’, even ‘avalanche’, seemed to present considerable difficulty to the man at the other end.
‘Wiedersagen bitte,’ said Pascoe for the fifth or sixth time.‘Ja. Ein Moment.’
He began ruffling through the pages of his English-German dictionary once more, unable to discover anything vaguely resembling the word he had just heard.
Finally there was a strange noise from the receiver which might have been a polite cough squeezed and contorted through several hundred miles of telephone cable.
‘Say, Sergeant, how would you like it if I tried my English out on you? It’s a vanity of mine and I’d appreciate the practice.’
The shame of the moment was almost lost in Pascoe’s surprise that the words were spoken with a strong American accent.
‘That would be fine,’ he said, with relief. He hoped the operator was not listening in.
The only difficulties now were minor variations of American usage soon overcome.
‘We checked out the airport and the hotel without much joy from either. No records of arrivals here are kept for so long and I can’t discover that anyone made a formal check that your Girling did in fact arrive that night. Why should they? If someone gets listed as dead, and they ain’t, you’d think they’d come running, wouldn’t you?’
‘What about the baggage?’
‘It seems the hotel bus was expecting a full load that night, both from the rail-station and the airport. It’s a distance of about fifty kilometres from Innsbruck to Osterwald. Some of the guests arrived both at the station and the airport well before midnight. We know this because when they realized they weren’t going to get on their way till well into the morning because of the delays in the English flights, some passengers insisted on hiring cars to take them or spending the night in Innsbruck and being picked up the following day. They were the lucky ones, the way things broke. Anyhow, they filled us in on the story at the time.’
‘Look, Lieutenant, could the coach-driver have picked up Miss Girling’s luggage without picking up Miss Girling?’
It was a silly question. It must have happened unless someone had dug Al out of an Austrian avalanche and smuggled her back to England to bury her under her own memorial.
‘Yeah. Why not? It’d be labelled. Do I gather you’ve got a corpse you think might be this dame?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You don’t say! Now your other questions. No, her passport wasn’t in the baggage removed from the wreck. It seemed likely she’d have it in her hand-luggage which would be with her in the coach. At least, that’s what was thought at the time. They got the driver’s body out and a list. Girling’s name was on it, and ticked off. But that might just have meant the luggage in the light of what you say. And that’s about it.’
‘Oh,’ said Pascoe. He was sure there was something else he ought to ask before cutting off finally (at least it seemed an act of finality) this connection.
‘Hey, you still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘At the hotel there was evidently another dame, a particular buddy of Girling’s. It seems a group of them, half a dozen or more, used to meet up for the winter sports every Christmas vacation, but this one was a special friend. And they usually travelled together, the manager thought.’
‘Did she now?’ said Pascoe with interest. ‘I don’t suppose …’
‘You want her name? Miss Jean Mayflower. Like an address? It’s old; she stopped coming after your girl bought it. 17, Friendly Villas, Doncaster, Yorkshire. Got it?’
‘Got it. Many thanks. I don’t suppose the hotel had any correspondence from Miss Girling herself?’
‘Oh no. I checked. All they had was a confirmatory note from her travel agent. He did all the arranging every year.’
‘I don’t suppose …’ said Pascoe again.
‘Hey, I like that “I don’t suppose”, I can use it. Wait. I’ve got an address. Super-Vacs Ltd, Harr-oh- gate, that make sense?’
‘Very much so, I can’t say how grateful we are.’
‘Think nothing of it. It breaks the routine. Let’s know how you make out, huh? I mean, if she ain’t at the bottom of that ravine, then that’s one less cadaver we’ve got lying about.’
‘I will. Goodbye.’
‘OK. Gruss Gott.’
Oh, I will, I will, thought Pascoe as he heard the receiver go down 900 miles away. Public money well spent!
‘Are you finished?’ asked the cool, efficient, female voice.
‘Oh no,’ said Pascoe in a husky, passionate whisper. ‘We’re just starting.’
The line went dead. He replaced the receiver with a smile.
Perhaps things were beginning to break for him after all.
Sandra Firth had been a grievous disappointment. Something somewhere had gone wrong. She had carried on for a while in the cool, self-possessed manner in which she had started, but after offering a brief outline of her own background and position in the college, there had been a hiatus.
Finally Dalziel had tried his earlier bluntness once again.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Sandra, Miss Firth, whatever you want me to call you, if you’ve got something to say, then say it. If you haven’t, then we’re wasting each other’s time.’
‘I just wanted to find out,’ she began. ‘I mean I was a friend of Anita’s …’
‘So you said. Were you with her last night?’
‘No!’ she said sharply. ‘I mean, when?’
‘Any time?’
‘No.’
‘Wasn’t there a party on somewhere?’
Pascoe had mentioned the emptiness of the bar to him earlier.
‘No.’ Again very sharply.
‘Nowhere? You surprise me. I thought there were always parties!’
‘Not that I was at, I meant.’
Exasperated, Dalziel struck the desk with the flat of his hand.
‘Is there anything you do know about these murders?’
‘Murders?’ She stressed the plural.
‘That’s right. There’s been two.’
She looked at him frightened.
‘Your friend, Miss Sewell.And Miss Girling, the late principal.’
‘Oh, that.’ She laughed, relieved.
‘Doesn’t that matter?’ he asked.
‘No. I didn’t mean that. I mean, we didn’t know her, so it didn’t bother me when the name came up. It was interesting really, rather than tragic.’
‘When the name came up,’ echoed Dalziel. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing really,’ she said.
‘Why were so many students certain it was Miss Girling’s body?’ persisted Dalziel.
‘No reason. Oh, it was nothing. Coincidence, I expect. It’s just that some of us - them - play around with the wine glass thing. And the letters. Or a Ouija board.’
‘You mean, you had a seance? Asked the bloody spirits?’ asked Dalziel incredulously.
‘That’s right. Not really a seance, just a bit of fun.’
‘And it - this thing - told you it was Miss Girling?’
‘Yes,’ she said defiantly. ‘It spelt it out quite plainly.’
‘Well,’ laughed Dalziel. ‘You’d better ask it about your friend!’
Something about her silence made him lean forward and peer closely into her face.
‘You’re going to, aren’t you?’ he said gently. Then with greater violence, ‘Aren’t you?’
‘I don’t know. We might!’
‘My God,’ he said sadly. ‘To think of the money that’s being spent on educating your tiny minds.’
She stood up, bre
asts swinging disturbingly.
‘Thanks for seeing me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be off now. I have a lecture.’
‘You didn’t do it, did you?’ he said shaking his head.
‘Do what?’ She looked frightened.
‘Tell me what you wanted to tell me. Or ask me what you wanted to ask. Why not? I’m sorry if I’ve put you off. Why not sit down, lass, and let’s try again?’
For a second he thought she was going to agree but after only a perfunctory knock, the door burst open and Kent strode in, his face awash with good tidings.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘But we’ve come up with something, a chap who was out along the dunes last night and saw something which could be relevant.’
Through the open door, Dalziel saw a white-haired man, with a sun-darkened face in which a pair of bright blue eyes flickered and darted glances of alert interest at the scene before him.
‘It’s a Mr Lapping,’ continued Kent, but Dalziel raised his hand in a silencing gesture.
‘If you could just hang on a moment, Inspector,’ he said with suspicious gentleness. ‘I’m rather busy …’
‘No. Don’t bother about me,’ said Sandra. ‘I’m finished, and I have to go anyway. Goodbye.’
Head bowed so that her hair covered her face, she walked quickly from the room, past the old man who turned to look at her with undisguised interest.
What was she going to tell me? wondered Dalziel. If only that fool Kent hadn’t come in … But it was more than just the interruption, he felt. It was the content of the interruption, perhaps …
‘Will you see Mr Lapping now?’ asked Kent. There was little choice. The old man had wandered into the room and was peering around with interest. Round his neck hung a large pair of binoculars.
Dalziel sighed inwardly, wondering what Kent had let him in for.
But two minutes later as the old man described what he had seen the previous night, all his little half-formed plans for tearing Kent limb from limb had disappeared.
Harold Lapping told his tale with great gusto, not disguising his whole-hearted enjoyment of the show he had so unexpectedly stumbled upon.
‘Ah’d niver seen owt like it. Niver in all me days. Some on ‘em had paps as’d have made World Cup footballs!’
He paused, bright-eyed in reminiscence then his expression became sombre.
‘But when ah heard about that lassie …’
He shook his head distressfully.
‘Ah niver thowt, niver … when they all ran … it seemed a joke, someone walking by the shore … like meself.’
He paused as though to study the implications of his last remark.
‘Like meself,’ he repeated sadly. ‘I expect he were.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Dalziel in his kindly tone, cursing Kent once again for an unthinking fool. What kind of checking on this old man had he done? Was there enough strength in those thin arms to hold a well-built young woman face down in the sand till she choked? Enough desire in that seventy-year-old body to drive him to such a deed?
‘You saw someone?’ he asked, breaking the silence which was beginning to run on too long.
‘Ay. Just a glimpse through the glasses. Just afore they all ran. Just an outline.’
‘Well?’ said Dalziel.
‘Nay. It’s no good,’ said the old man sadly. ‘It was just an outline, like ah telt him.’
He nodded at Kent who smiled encouragingly.
‘The hat,’ said Kent.
‘Oh ay.The hat. This fellow that ah saw, or it might’ve bin a woman, wore a hat. A …’
He made a gesture over his head.
‘Pork pie,’ said Kent. ‘We did some drawings, didn’t we, Mr Lapping? A pork pie hat.’
That was that. A mysterious figure in a pork pie hat disturbing what sounded like a Roman orgy. It might mean something or nothing. It was very intriguing whatever it meant.
‘Mr Lapping,’ said Dalziel as Kent led the old man off to have his statement typewritten and signed. ‘Would you recognize any of those taking part in this dance?’
Lapping thought a moment.
‘One perhaps,’ he said. ‘The one in the middle by herself. Ah had a good glimpse of her. But none of t’ithers.’
He turned once more before he left, his original lively smile arcing across his face.
‘Not their faces, anyway, mister. Not their faces.’
You know, said Dalziel to himself when alone, you could make a name for yourself. You could have the identity parade of the century.
The thought made him happier than anything else he had heard that day. And there was still the educated, efficient Sergeant Pascoe’s report to come in.
Pascoe was also feeling happy as he pushed open the door of Super-Vacs (You Take The Trip We Take The Trouble) Ltd. (Prop. Gregory Aird.)
After his abortive trip to the airport he had felt uneasy at the prospect of confronting Dalziel with nothing but negatives. Particularly when they did not remove even one of the many possibilities concerning the movements of Miss Girling and/or her corpse.
‘Elimination is the better part of detection,’ Dalziel on occasion uttered with the smugness of a man specially selected to proclaim an eternal truth.
All Pascoe had eliminated by his journey to the airport had been some public time and public money. But his continental telephone call had opened up new possibilities. He had instigated enquiries in Doncaster as to the present whereabouts of Miss Jean Mayflower, while he himself drove into Harrogate. The bright sunshine and a comfortable intuition that somewhere in the old records of Super-Vacs Ltd would be useful and revealing information revived in him a pleasure in his work based on a conviction of its positive social usefulness. He had once told Dalziel in an unguarded moment that it was his social conscience which had brought him into the police when many more comfortable careers were open to him.
‘Well, bugger me,’ was the fat man’s only comment at the time. But a week or two later Pascoe had found himself ‘on loan’ to a neighbouring force who were drafting in extra men to help control an Anti-Racial-Discrimination demonstration. It had been very unpleasant for a few hours.
‘How’s your social conscience?’ Dalziel had asked him on his return, but did not stay for an answer. Then, as in the last couple of days, the academic life had seemed very attractive.
Now as he pushed through the plate-glass doors, the lives of those in places like the college seemed pale, thinly-spread, lukewarm by comparison with his own purposeful existence.
The young man behind the counter looked with pleasure on the sergeant and smiled welcomingly, obviously seeing in his demeanour a customer ready, willing and eager to be satisfied.
‘Good afternoon, sir. How may we help you?’
Pascoe felt in his wallet for his warrant card.
‘I’m interested in ski-ing holidays,’ he said. ‘At Christmas.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the young man. ‘I am sure we’ll be able to …’
He stopped in puzzlement as Pascoe held out his card for inspection.
‘I’m a police officer,’ he said. ‘I’m interested in ski-ing holidays five years ago.’
‘Oh,’ said the young man, taking a step backwards. ‘I don’t know … please wait a minute.’
He turned and went through a door behind him which obviously led into an inner office. Pascoe heard a half-whispered exchange but could not catch what was said. The young man reappeared followed by a slightly older man, smartly dressed, his hair beautifully set in shining undulations, who stretched out his hand to Pascoe with a slice-of-melon smile.
‘How do you do? I’m Gregory Aird. I didn’t catch … ?’
‘Pascoe, sir. Sergeant Pascoe. I wonder if I might have a few minutes of your time?’
‘By all means. Step in, Sergeant, do.’
The inner office was sparsely furnished. A desk, a couple of chairs, a filing cabinet and a small safe.
Pascoe took this in at a glance and felt uneasy.
There seemed little space here for long-term storage of old records.
‘How can I help you?’ said Aird, putting on the serious, co-operative look Pascoe usually associated with the desire to make a good impression in court.
‘You can tell me first of all how far back your records go, Mr Aird.’
‘To the beginning.To when it all started, my dear fellow. To the day I took possession.’
Pascoe felt relieved.
‘I’m interested in a woman who booked a ski-ing holiday through you. It wouldn’t be the first time, you understand; it was something she did every Christmas, but I believe your firm handled the arrangements.’
‘Aha,’ said Aird. ‘Well, let’s see. Let’s see.’
He jumped up and strode across to the filing cabinet which he unlocked.
‘Now,’ he said opening a drawer.
‘I’m interested in her flight number,’ said Pascoe, delighted by this display of efficiency. ‘And I wondered if for instance it was a charter flight, you might not have had a courier who would have made his own check list at the airport. It’s a Miss Alison Girling. And the date was Christmas 1966.’
Aird’s reaction was surprising. He crashed the drawer shut with a flick of his fingers and returned to his seat, shaking his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t help you there.’
‘Why not, sir?’ asked Pascoe, half-suspecting the answer.
‘I’ve only been here three years,’ said Aird. ‘Since March ‘68. You’re before my time, Inspector.’
‘Sergeant. But you said …’
‘Ah. I see your difficulty. No. The Super-Vacs you want went out of business in ‘67. No scandal, nothing like that, you understand. The parent firm in Leeds folded up, so their half-dozen branches went too.’
‘But the name?’
‘As I said, there was no scandal. No dissatisfied customers, not here anyway. So when I became interested in the premises for my own agency, well, among other things I found stored here enough stationery for four or five years. All with the Super-Vacs heading, of course. So I just kept the name.’
He smiled again, brilliantly, apologetically.
‘What about the rest of the stuff that was here? Files, records, that kind of thing?’
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