Good Morning, Midnight. Reginald Hill
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when you could argue a patriotic case – my enemy’s enemy is my friend so treat them all the same then sit back and watch them knock hell out of each other – but no longer. Hawk or dove, republican or democrat, every good American knows there’s a line in the sand and anyone who sends weapons across this line had better be sure which way they’re going to be pointing. The Ashur-Proffitt motive is no longer enough. It’s time we asked these guys just whose side they think they’re on.
She sat back and thought of Tony, of his admission that he felt foreign here. Could it be that now that the twins were born, he thought she might be persuadable to up sticks and head west? Funny that it should come to this, that he whose own father had been born God knows where should be the one who spoke of being a good American and going home, while she whose forebears, from what she knew of them, had been good Americans for at least a couple of centuries, could not bring to mind a single place in the States – save for one tiny plot covering a very few square feet – that exerted any kind of emotional pull. OK, so she agreed, home was a holy thing, but to her this was home, all the more holy since last night. Tony would have to understand that.
The script had vanished to be replaced by a screen saver – the Stars and Stripes rippling in a strong breeze.
She switched it off, leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Tony was right. She didn’t need much sleep and she’d perfected the art of dropping off at will for a pre-programmed period. This time she gave herself forty minutes.
When she woke, the sun was up and the mist was rising. She stood up, undid her robe, let it slide to the floor, and dived into the pool. Her slim naked body entered the water with barely a splash and what trace of her entry there was had almost vanished by the time she broke the surface two-thirds of a length away.
She swam six lengths with a long graceful breast stroke. Her exit from the pool was more conventional than her husband’s but in its own way just as athletic.
She slipped into her robe. The legend on the back didn’t amuse her but it amused Tony and his bad jokes were a small price to pay for all he’d done for her. But some stuff she needed to deal with herself. Like last night. Something had happened that she didn’t understand. If she could work it out and defend herself against it, she would. But if it turned out to be part of that darkness against which there was no defence, so what? She’d dealt with darkness before.
In any case, it was trivial alongside the thing that had happened that she did understand. The birth of Helen’s twins. Most dawns were false but you enjoyed the light even if you knew it was illusory.
Whistling ‘Of Foreign Lands and People’ from Schumann’s Childhood Scenes she walked back through the door into the house.
By ten o clock that morning, with the curtaining mist raised by a triumphant sun and the brisk breeze that cued the wild daffodils to dance at Blacklow Cottage rattling the slats on his office blinds, Pascoe was far less certain about his uncertainties.
Dalziel had no doubts. His last words had been, ‘Tidy this up, Pete, then dump the lot on Paddy Ireland’s desk. Suicides are Uniformed’s business.’
He was right, of course, except that his idea of tidiness wasn’t the same as Pascoe’s, which was why on his way to work he diverted to the cathedral precinct where Archimagus Antiques was situated.
The closed sign was still displayed in the shop door, but when he peered through the window he saw someone moving within. He banged on the window. A woman appeared, mouthed ‘Closed’ and pointed at the sign. Pascoe in return pressed his warrant against the glass. She nodded instantly and opened the door.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she began even before he stepped inside. ‘It was on the news, you see, and I didn’t know if I should come in or not, but David said he thought I should, not to do business, but just in case someone from the police wanted to ask questions, which you clearly do, so he was right, and he’d have come with me but he felt he ought to go round to see poor Sue-Lynn, and I would have gone with him only it seemed better for me to come here.’
She paused to draw breath. She was tall, well made and attractive in a Betjeman tennis girl kind of way. As she spoke she ran her fingers through her short unruly auburn hair. Breathlessness suited her. Early twenties, Pascoe guessed, and with the kind of accent which hadn’t been picked up at the local comp. She was dressed, perhaps fittingly but not too becomingly, in a white silk blouse and a long black skirt. She looked tailor-made for jodhpurs, a silk headsquare and a Barbour.
‘I’m DCI Pascoe,’ he said. ‘And you are …?’
‘Sorry, silly of me, I’m babbling on and half of what I say can’t mean a thing. I’m Dolly Upshott. I work here. Partly shop assistant, I suppose, but I help with the accounts, that sort of thing, and I’m in charge when Pal’s off on a buying expedition. Please, can you tell me anything about what happened?’
‘And this David you mentioned is …?’ said Pascoe, who’d learned from his great master that the easiest way to avoid a question was to ask another.
‘My brother. He’s the vicar at St Cuthbert’s, that’s Cothersley parish church.’
Which was where the Macivers lived, in a house with the unpromising name of Casa Alba. Cothersley was one of Mid-Yorkshire’s more exclusive dormer villages. The Kafkas’ address was Cothersley Hall. Family togetherness? Didn’t seem likely from what he’d gathered about internal relationships last night. Also it was interesting that the brash American incomers should occupy the Hall while Maciver with his local connections and his antique-dealer background should live in a house that sounded like a rental villa on the Costa del Golf.
‘And he’s gone to comfort Mrs Maciver? Very pastoral. Were they active churchgoers then?’
‘No, not really. But they are … were … very supportive of church events, fêtes, shows, that sort of thing, and very generous when it came to appeals.’
What Ellie called the Squire Syndrome. Well-heeled townies going to live in the sticks and acting like eighteenth-century lords of the manor.
‘Miss Upshott,’ said Pascoe, cutting to the chase, ‘the reason I called was to see if you or anyone else working in the shop could throw any light on Mr Maciver’s state of mind yesterday.’
‘There’s only me,’ said the woman. ‘He seemed fine when last I saw him. I left early, middle of the afternoon. It was St Cuthbert’s feast day, you see, and David, my brother, has a special service for the kids from the village school, it’s not really a service, their teacher brings them over and David shows them our stained-glass windows and tells them some stories about St Cuthbert which are illustrated there. He’s very good, actually, the children love it. And I like to help … Sorry, you don’t want to hear this, do you? I’m rattling on. Sorry.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Pascoe with a smile. She was very easy to smile at. Or with. ‘So you don’t know when Mr Maciver left the shop?’
‘Late on, I should think. Wednesday’s his squash night, you see, and he doesn’t care to go home and have a meal before he plays so usually he’ll stay behind here and get on with some paperwork then go straight to the club … but what happened yesterday I don’t know, of course, because …’
Her voice broke. She looked rather wildly around the shop. Perhaps, thought Pascoe, she was imagining how it might have been if he’d killed himself here and she’d come in this morning and found him.
Comfort, he guessed, would be counter-productive. The English middle classes paid good money to have their daughters trained to be sensible and practical. That was their default mode. Just press the right key.
‘So