are not so very different from it.’
‘You’ve got all today’s calls on tape, you say,’ said Ellie. ‘What you want is a language expert to listen to them.’
‘Good thinking,’ said Pascoe, who’d already made the suggestion to Dalziel but wasn’t about to be a clever-sticks. ‘Anyone in mind?’
‘Well, there’s Dicky Gladmann and Drew Urquhart at the College. They impress their students by working out regional and social backgrounds by voice analysis.’
‘And are they right?’
‘One hundred per cent usually, I gather. But I think they probably check the records first. Still, they’re certainly incomprehensible enough to be good linguists.’
Pascoe finished his pie, drew breath and started in on the apple crumble, also warmed up.
She wants me to get fat too! he suddenly thought.
‘I’ll give them a try. Though they’re probably enjoying their little vacation in Acapulco,’ he said. ‘By the way, you never said, how did la Lacewing respond to your theory about the medium message?’
‘Thought it was a load of crap,’ said Ellie moodily.
‘Did she now? Well well. Let me have the transcript back, won’t you?’
‘Yes. And she got pretty close to embarrassing me by talking about you being in charge of the case.’
‘That embarrasses you?’
‘Of course not. No, I mean she was trying to put down some loud-mouthed, fellow called Middlefield, he’s a JP or something, thinks all murdered women are ipso facto whores. I tell you what was interesting, though. I gathered the fellow he was talking to was the manager of the bank where that other girl worked. The one on the tape. Or not.’
‘Brenda Sorby. Now that is interesting,’ said Pascoe.
Later as they lay in bed, Ellie said drowsily. ‘This poor woman at the fairground. You say she was Rosetta Stanhope’s niece?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then maybe she’ll get in touch with her. I mean, they must have been close.’
‘Maybe,’ said Pascoe. ‘We’ll call you in if it happens.’
She dug her elbow in his ribs and soon her breath steadied into the regularity of sleep.
Pascoe found sleep difficult, however, and when it did come, it came in fits and starts and flowed shallowly over a rocky bed. Ellie was partly responsible by putting the thought of Pauline Stanhope into his mind, but she would have been there anyway. He always slept badly the night before attending a post-mortem and tomorrow he was due at the City Mortuary at nine A.M. to attend the last forensic rites on the body of Pauline Stanhope.
The police pathologist was a swift, economical worker who never took refuge in the kind of ghoulish heartiness with which some of his colleagues sought to make their jobs tolerable. Pascoe was glad of this. He liked to enter an almost trance-like state of professional objectivity on these occasions and had already offended the Mortuary Superintendent and the nervous new Coroner’s Officer by his brusque response to their efforts at socialization.
The pathologist examined the neck first before asking the Superintendent to remove the clothes which were then separately packaged and sent on their way to the laboratory. After a further careful examination of the naked body, turning it over on the slab so that nothing was missed, the pathologist was ready to make the median incision. As the scalpel slipped through the white skin, the Coroner’s Officer swayed slightly. This was his first time, Pascoe had gathered from the man’s nervy conversation with the Mortuary Superintendent. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a notebook, and tapped the man on the shoulder.
‘Borrow your pen a moment?’ he asked brusquely.
‘Yes, of course,’ said the man.
Pascoe scribbled a few notes, then returned the implement.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You’d better have it back. Your need’s greater than mine. Your boss is a stickler for detail in all these forms, isn’t he?’
The man managed a pale grin, then began writing at a furious rate.
After a while Pascoe took his own pen from his pocket and followed suit.
There was another disturbance, more obvious this time, about thirty minutes later.
Voices were heard distantly upraised. After a while the door opened and a porter came in and spoke quietly to the Mortuary Superintendent who relayed the information to Pascoe.
‘There’s a woman outside with a man. She says she’s the girl’s aunt and she’s making a fuss about seeing the body.’
Pascoe looked at the cadaver on the examination table. The sternum and frontal ribs had been removed and the omentum cut away so that heart, lungs and intestine were visible.
The pathologist continued with his work, undisturbed by the interruption.
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