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‘Hello,’ said Pascoe. ‘Busy?’
She rested her book against the typewriter on her desk and said, ‘Can I help you?’
She was rather square-featured and plumply built, had straight brown hair, almost shoulder length, wore no discernible make-up and spoke in a husky contralto voice with a strong local accent.
Pascoe picked up the book and examined the illustration which showed a terrified young woman whose bodice was undoubtedly ripped fleeing from a burning house in whose doorway stood a Munster-like figure.
‘I don’t remember that bit,’ he said.
‘Makes you want to read the book,’ she explained. ‘More than them bloody teachers ever did.’
It was a point, perhaps two.
He put the book down on the typewriter and looked around. He found he was shivering slightly. The house had been warm and he’d taken off his topcoat, but here, despite a double-barred electric wall heater, the atmosphere was still dank and chilly. The woman at the desk on second inspection proved to be less plump than he’d thought. She had insulated herself with at least two sweaters and a cardigan.
‘It’s a bit nippy in here,’ he said, touching the whitewashed wall. The stones were probably three feet thick and colder on the inside than on the out. ‘With all that room in the house, you’d have thought Mr Swain would have had his office in there rather than out here.’
‘Mrs Swain wouldn’t have it,’ said the woman.
‘Did he tell you that?’
She considered.
‘No,’ she said.
‘How do you know, then?’
She considered once more, then said indifferently, ‘Don’t know, but I know.’
Pascoe sorted this out. Surprisingly it made sense.
‘How long have you been working here, Miss … I’m sorry …?’
‘Shirley Appleyard. And it’s Mrs.’
‘Sorry. You look so young,’ he said with full flarch. It was like shining a torch into a black hole.
‘I’m nineteen,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here two years.’
‘Do you like it?’
She shrugged and said, ‘It’s a job. Better than nowt, these days.’
‘Yes, they’re hard to come by,’ said Pascoe, switching to the sympathetic concerned approach. ‘You did well, there was probably a lot of competition.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I got it because me dad’s Mr Swain’s partner.’
‘Mr Stringer, you mean? That’s handy,’ said Pascoe.
‘You mean I should give thanks to God for being so lucky? Don’t worry, I get told that at least twice a day and three times on Sundays.’
She spoke with a dull indifference worse than resentment. Pascoe, as always curious beyond professional need, said, ‘I met your father this morning. He seemed a little out of sorts …’
‘You mean he didn’t strike you as being full of Christian charity?’ she said with an ironic grimace. ‘He’s not that kind of Christian. Didn’t you notice the chapel over from the church as you came through the village? Red brick. That’s Dad. All the way through.’
Pascoe smiled and said, ‘You live in the village still? With your parents?’
‘Aye. Holly Cottage. That’s it you can see at the corner of the field.’
Pascoe looked out of the window. Visible through the open end of the yard was a small cottage about fifty yards away.
‘You’ve not far to come,’ he said. ‘Your husband lives there too, does he?’
‘He’s away working, if it’s any of your business,’ she retorted with sudden anger. ‘And what’s all this to do with Mrs Swain getting shot?’
‘Shot? Now where did you hear that?’ wondered Pascoe. The media so far hadn’t got past the general story of a shooting in Hambleton Road, and he was reluctant to think that Seymour had been indiscreet on his earlier visit.
‘Dad rang up this morning to say there’d been some bother, something about Mrs Swain and a shooting, he didn’t seem very clear, but he was just ringing to tell me to say nowt if anyone got on to me at work and started asking questions about the Swains.’
‘Excluding the police, of course,’ smiled Pascoe.
‘He didn’t say that,’ she answered without returning his smile. ‘So she has been shot, then? Dead?’
Pascoe said carefully, ‘There has been a shooting, yes. And yes, I’m afraid Mrs Swain is dead. And I hope, despite your father, you’ll feel able to answer a couple of questions, Mrs Appleyard.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as, what did you reckon to Mrs Swain?’ said Pascoe.
‘She were all right,’ said Shirley Appleyard. ‘Bit stuck up, but always polite enough when we met.’
‘She seemed a nice-looking woman from her photos,’ said Pascoe. He was thinking of the wedding album they’d found in the house, and trying not to think of the bloody ruin on the official police pictures.
‘Not bad,’ said the girl. ‘And she knew how to make the best of herself. Clothes and jewels and make-up, I mean. Nothing flashy, but you could tell just by looking it cost an arm and a leg.’
The labels in the clothes brought from Hambleton Road confirmed this. And there’d been an engagement ring and a matching pendant which, if the stones were real, must have cost a few thousand at the least.
‘When did you last see her?’ he asked.
‘Week last Friday. I bumped into her in the yard. She said ta-ra.’
‘Just that?’
‘She didn’t actually say ta-ra,’ said the girl impatiently. ‘It were something like, we’d likely not see each other before she went off that weekend, so goodbye.’
‘I thought she was just going on a trip. Didn’t that sound a bit final to you, as if she didn’t think she’d be coming back?’
‘Mebbe,’ said Shirley Appleyard. ‘Or mebbe she just didn’t expect to find me here when she came back.’
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘Business weren’t good. Once this job for you lot’s done, there’s nowt else on the books. So it could be she reckoned the whole thing would have folded by then.’
‘But she had money, didn’t she?’ prompted Pascoe.
‘Oh aye, but not to pour into this sort of thing.’ She gestured at the yard. ‘She were generous enough by all accounts with things like art and music, wildlife and restoration funds, you know, all the posh sort of things where you meet the top people. I don’t think she’d have been sorry to stop being a builder’s wife.’
‘Well, she’s managed that,’ said Pascoe. ‘Did she strike you as a moody kind of person: you know, on top of the world sometimes, then down in the dumps a bit later?’
His effort to put the question casually failed completely.
‘Drugs, you mean,’ said the girl. ‘Is that what you’re looking for?’
Pascoe thought of reading the Riot Act, of lying through his teeth, then decided that neither of these courses was going to get him anywhere.
‘Would it surprise you?’ he asked.
‘Why should it?’ she asked. ‘People’ll do owt for a bit of pleasure these days. But Mrs Swain, I’d not have said she was more up and down than most, though with her money, she’d be able to afford a steady enough supply for it not to show, wouldn’t she?’
It was a reasonable answer. The more he talked to this girl, the more he felt the need for a sharp mental reprimand. On first sight he’d been ready to categorize her as being as lumpy mentally as she looked physically. Now he realized he’d been very wrong on both counts.
He said, ‘From what you say, Mrs Swain wouldn’t have much to do with the day-to-day running of the business?’
‘Nowt at all.’
He went on, ‘Might she bump into any of your customers, though?’
‘Not in a big room she wouldn’t. There were never that many.’
Pascoe laughed out loud and this natural response was far more effective than his earlier hackneyed attempt at charm, for the girl gave him her first smile.
‘A Mr Gregory Waterson, for instance?’ he went on. ‘Do you know if she ever met him?’
‘Him who had the studio conversion? Oh yes, she met him.’
‘You saw them together?’
‘He came here a couple of times about the job. Once neither Mr Swain nor Dad were around, but he met Mrs Swain in the yard and went into the house with her.’
‘Oh?’
‘Not what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘Not that I reckon he didn’t try his hand.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I’d been roughing out some figures for him and I went to the house myself to give him them and I got the impression he’d been coming on strong and Mrs Swain had told him where to get off.’
‘I see. Did you get the impression he’d persist?’
‘Oh aye. Thought he were God’s gift.’
‘But you didn’t agree with his estimate?’
She shrugged. ‘Funny kind of gift for God to make, I’d say.’
‘But a matter of taste perhaps? Would Mrs Swain perhaps be more interested than she let herself show at first?’
‘How should I know that?’ she asked scornfully.
‘Sorry,’ repeated Pascoe. ‘But as an observer, how would you say things were generally between the Swains?’
Again she shrugged.
‘It was a marriage,’ she said. ‘Anything’s possible.’
Pascoe laughed and said, ‘That’s a touch cynical, isn’t it? If you don’t believe in the power of true love, I think you’ve got the wrong book.’
She picked up her discarded Jane Eyre.
‘You mean it ends happy?’ she said. She sounded disappointed.
‘Afraid so. You’ll need to try men for unhappy endings,’ said Pascoe with gentle mockery. ‘Try Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Or Anna Karenina. Now they’re really miserable!’
He grinned as he spoke and was rewarded with a second faint smile.
‘What’s the rest of this building used for?’ he asked.
‘Down below, you mean? That was the old byre and stables, I think. Now it’s used for garages and to store stuff they don’t like to leave out in the wet.’
‘Is it open? I’d like to take a look.’
‘It’ll be locked. Dad doesn’t trust anybody.’
She picked up a bunch of keys, rose and led the way down the outside stair. She was right. All the doors were padlocked. She stood and watched as Pascoe poked around in a desultory fashion. He had little hope that he was going to find a barrowful of dope out here, and if it were hidden by the thimbleful, it would take a trained dog to sniff it out.
Finished, he walked out into the yard again.
‘Same kind of stuff over there?’ he asked, looking at the barn on the far side.
‘No. That’s empty.’
‘Better have a glance all the same.’
Again she was right. The stone floor was swept clean. He looked up into the rafters, screwing his eyes up against the darkness. He thought he saw a movement. There were certainly patches of darker darkness against the dull grey of the slates.
‘Bats,’ said the girl.
‘What?’
