‘Are you specially interested in portraits, Inspector?’
‘No. She just caught my eye. That serious, rather solemn posing expression, yet you get a sense she’s amused, almost on the brink of a wink, so to speak.’
‘What?’ Halavant came to stand alongside him. ‘Yes … yes … perhaps …’
He turned away abruptly and said, ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t offer you any hospitality, but having just got back, I have things to do … so if we could get this business sorted …’
Clearly the tour was over. Time to be a policeman again.
‘What business would that be, sir?’ said Pascoe courteously.
‘The false alarm last night, of course.’
‘Perhaps you could tell me about it, sir.’
‘What can I tell you that you don’t know?’ he said in some irritation, tugging at an old-fashioned bell-pull by the fireplace. ‘I rang Mrs Bayle last night to confirm what time I’d be back today, and she filled me in … ah, Mrs Bayle. This incident last night. Tell us what happened.’
The woman, who had appeared with silent speed and, to Pascoe’s relief, without Fop, said, ‘Bell rang at nine o’clock. I looked through the peephole and when I saw it were him, I opened the door …’
‘Him?’ interjected Pascoe.
‘Him. The constable. Mr Bendish.’
‘Ah,’ said Pascoe noncommittally, but he felt Halavant’s curious gaze on him and guessed he was beginning to suspect something odd here.
Mrs Bayle took the ‘ah’ as an instruction to proceed.
‘I asked what he wanted and he said there’d been a report of a man hanging about, looking suspicious, and had I noticed anything. I said no I hadn’t and good night. But he said he’d better take a look inside just to be sure as it were more than his job was worth, and likely mine too, if Mr Halavant came back and found something missing, and he’d been on the doorstep.’
This sudden flood of words was, Pascoe guessed, a pre-emptive justification of having allowed someone across the threshold in her master’s absence.
‘What happened then?’
‘He took a look around. Everything were in order, so he left.’
‘And you yourself felt no cause for concern?’
She hesitated and said, ‘Well, after he’d gone, I thought mebbe I heard summat outside, more like a nightbird than owt to worry about, but I sent Fop out for a run just in case.’
Pascoe shuddered at the thought and Halavant came in with, ‘And naturally there was nothing. And if there had been, my extremely expensive, police-recommended state-of-the-art security system would have alerted the neighbourhood. Mr Pascoe, forgive me but I get a distinct impression that most of what you’ve just heard is new to you. Now why should that be?’
It was time to come clean, or at least a little less muddied.
‘You’re right, sir,’ he said. ‘To tell the truth, I only stopped to admire your lovely house, and things just went on from there.’
Halavant smiled and said, ‘I wondered why such a senior officer was spending time on a false alarm. Are you in fact in the area on business …?’
‘I’m on my way to Enscombe to have a word with Constable Bendish, so no doubt I’ll get the full story then,’ said Pascoe, seeing no reason to fuel rumour. ‘You know him, do you, sir? Settled in all right, has he? Old village communities can be difficult.’
‘I think you’ll find Enscombe pretty unique,’ said Halavant ambiguously, as well as solecistically. ‘If your visit is in any sense an efficiency check, I would say from what I know of the young man that his devotion to duty has been puritanical, and his eye for the depth of a tyre tread is phenomenal.’
As he spoke he had been gently urging Pascoe to the front door. Pascoe’s mind was full of interesting speculations, but as the door opened and he looked down the long length of unprotected driveway to the distant gates, they were all swept aside by the single basic question: was Fop loose?
He tried to find a way to phrase it that wouldn’t make him sound like a quivering wimp, but the door clunked solidly shut before he could speak.
He set off at high speed, grew ashamed, forced himself to stop and admire a blossoming pear, then strolled to the safety of his car with studied ease.
Once seated and driving, normal service was renewed and all the speculations came flooding back. A puritanical devotion to duty, Halavant said. All the evidence certainly pointed that way. He came off duty at twelve noon yesterday. Twice since then – once when remonstrating with the Hells Angel, and again last night at Scarletts – he had been seen in uniform doing his job. Curious.
He got Control on his radio, asking them to check with CID and with Filmer’s Section Office whether there’d been any report last night of intruders in the grounds of Scarletts, then set off towards Enscombe once more.
His call sign crackled just as he reached the beginnings of the village and he pulled up in front of a steep-roofed single-storey building inscribed Village Hall and Reading Room to acknowledge. Next moment Andrew Dalziel’s voice filled the car like thunder.
‘What’s all this about an incident?’
Pascoe explained.
‘Well, there’s nowt on anyone’s records,’ said Dalziel.
‘That’s a bit odd, don’t you think, sir?’
‘No, I don’t. The lad’s off duty, remember? Gets called out, finds it’s a wind-up, he’s not going to waste more of his own time putting in a report, is he? In fact, it probably decides him to make himself scarce for the rest of his time off. He’ll likely turn up later, all apologetic about not letting Filmer know where he was. End of story.’
‘From what Halavant told me he sounds a lot more conscientious than that,’ said Pascoe. ‘What about the stains in the car?’
‘Seems they’re blood all right, they’re checking the group. But I can think of a dozen explanations, none of ’em sinister. And another thing. You can scratch the assault by the mad Hells Angel. Wieldy’ll tell you all about it. Try not to laugh.’
‘He’s coming out here too, is he?’ said Pascoe, surprised.
‘Someone had to ferry Filmer and Digweed back,’ said Dalziel defensively. ‘Any road, two heads should get this lot sorted out in no time, especially when one on ’em would frighten a confession out of a village pump. But take care, the pair of you. Don’t stir things up. We’ll look right Herberts if we blow this up into a dogs and divers job and it turns out young Bendish is banging the vicar’s wife and has just shagged himself unconscious in the vestry!’
‘Thank you for that, sir. Any other advice?’ said Pascoe.
‘Don’t get on your high horse! Listen, you want local colour, try Thomas Wapshare at the
