A Pinch of Snuff

‘Funny …?’ said Pascoe.

‘I tell her not to talk with strangers,’ explained Mrs Abbott.

‘’Cos there’s a lot of funny buggers about,’ completed Lorraine happily.

‘Well, I’m not one of them,’ said Pascoe. ‘I hope.’

He showed his warrant card, taking care to keep it masked from the few remaining mums.

‘You might well hope,’ said Mrs Abbott. ‘What’s up?’

‘May I walk along with you?’ he asked.

‘It’s a free street. Lorraine, don’t you run on the road now!’

‘It’s about a film you made,’ said Pascoe. ‘Droit de Seigneur.’

‘Oh aye. Which was that one?’

‘Can’t you remember?’

‘They don’t often have titles when we’re making them, not real titles, any road.’

Briefly Pascoe outlined the plot.

‘Oh, that one,’ said Mrs Abbott. ‘What’s up?’

‘It’s been suggested,’ said Pascoe, ‘that undue violence may have been used in some scenes.’

‘What?’

‘Especially in the scene where the squire beats you up, just before the US cavalry arrive.’

‘You sure you’re not mixing it up with the Big Big Horn?’ said Mrs Abbott.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Pascoe. ‘I was speaking figuratively. Before your boy-friend rescues you. You remember that sequence? Were you in fact struck?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Abbott. ‘It’s six months ago, of course. How do you mean, struck?’

‘Hit on the face. So hard that you’d bleed. Lose a few teeth even,’ said Pascoe, feeling as daft as she obviously thought he was.

‘You are one of them funny buggers,’ she said, laughing. ‘Do I look as if I’d let meself get beaten up for a picture? Here, can you see any scars? And take a look at them. Them’s all me own, I’ve taken good care on ’em.’

Pascoe looked at her un-made-up and unblemished face, then examined her teeth which, a couple of fillings apart, were in a very healthy state.

‘Yes, I see,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Abbott. You saw nothing at all during the making of the film that surprised you?’

‘You stop being surprised after a bit,’ she said. ‘But there was nowt unusual, if that’s what you mean. It’s all done with props and paint, love, didn’t you know?’

‘Even the sex?’ answered Pascoe sharply, stung by her irony.

‘Is that what it’s all about then?’ she said. ‘I might have known.’

‘No, really, it isn’t,’ assured Pascoe, adding, in an attempt to re-ingratiate himself, ‘I’ve been at your house by the way. I said I was a washing-machine salesman.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want to stir anything up,’ he said, feeling noble.

‘For crying out loud!’ said Mrs Abbott. ‘You don’t reckon I could do me job without Bert knowing?’

‘No, I suppose not,’ said Pascoe, discomfited.

‘Bloody right not,’ said Mrs Abbott. ‘And I’ll tell you something else for nothing. It’s a job. I get paid for it. And whatever I do, I do with lights on me, and a camera, and a lot of technicians about who don’t give a bugger, and you can see everything I do up there on the screen. I’m not like half these so-called real actresses who play the Virgin Mary all day, then screw themselves into another big part all night. Lorraine! I told you to keep off of that road!’

‘Well, thank you, Mrs Abbott,’ said Pascoe, glancing at his watch. ‘You’ve been most helpful. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

‘No trouble, love,’ said Mrs Abbott.

He dug into his pocket and produced a ten-pence piece which he gave to Lorraine ‘for sweeties’. She waited for her mother’s nod before accepting and Pascoe drove off feeling relieved that after all he had not been categorized as a ‘funny bugger’, and feeling also that at the moment Jack Shorter would top his own personal list.

He needn’t have worried about his meeting. It started late because of the non-arrival of one of the senior members and was almost immediately suspended because of the enforced departure of another. Reluctantly Pascoe found a phone and rang Ellie to say that his estimate of a seven o’clock homecoming had been optimistic.

‘Surprise,’ she said. ‘Will you eat there?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said.

‘I was hoping you’d take me out. You get better service with a policeman.’

‘Sorry,’ said Pascoe. ‘Better try an old boy-friend. See you!’

He replaced the receiver and went back to the conference room where Inspector Ray Crabtree of the local force told him they were scheduled to restart at seven.

‘Fancy a jar?’ asked Crabtree. He was a man of forty plus who had gone as far as he was likely to go in the force and had a nice line in comic bitterness which usually entertained Pascoe.

‘And a sandwich,’ said Pascoe.

‘Where do you fancy? Somewhere squalid or somewhere nice?’

‘Is the beer better somewhere squalid?’

‘No.’

‘Or the food cheaper?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice.’

‘Then somewhere nice.’

‘That’s a sharp mind you’ve got there, Pascoe,’ said Crabtree admiringly. ‘You’ll get on.’

‘Somewhere nice’ was the lounge bar of a large, plush and draughty hotel.

Crabtree ordered four halves of bitter.

‘And two rounds of ham, Cyril,’ he added. ‘Tell ’em it’s me and I like it cut with a blunt knife.’

‘They only serve halves in here,’ he said as they sat down. ‘Bloody daft. You’ve got to get them in twos. Wouldn’t do for Sitting Bull.’

‘Who?’

‘Dalziel. Your big chief. You know, I could have had his job.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Pascoe.

‘Oh yes. We were up before the same promotion board once. I thought I’d clinched it. They asked, are you as thick as Prince Philip? “Oh yes,” says I. “Twice as thick.”’

‘And what did Dalziel say?’

‘He said, “Who’s she”?’

The sandwiches arrived, filled with thick slices of succulent ham, and Pascoe understood the advantages of a blunt knife.

‘Do you know a company called Homeric Films?’ he asked for the sake of something to say.

Crabtree paused in his chewing.

‘Yes,’ he said after a moment and took another bite.

‘End of conversation, is it?’ said Pascoe.

‘You could ask if I’d seen any good films lately,’ said Crabtree.

‘All right. Have you?’

‘Yes, but none of ’em were made by Homeric. They’re a skin-flick bunch, but if you know enough to ask about them, you probably know as much as me.’

‘Why the pause for thought, then?’

‘I said you’d a sharp mind. Mebbe I was just chewing on a bit of gristle.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Pascoe, ‘that they have more sense here than to serve you gristle.’

‘True. No, truth is you just jumped in front of my train of thought. What’s your interest?’

‘No interest. They just cropped up apropos of something. What was your train of thought?’

Crabtree finished his first half and started on his second.

‘See in the corner to the left of the door?’ he said into his glass.

‘Yes,’ said Pascoe glancing across the room. Three people sat round a table in animated conversation. Two were men. They looked like brothers in their fifties, balding, fleshy. The third was a woman, gross beyond the wildest dreams of gluttony. Surely, thought Pascoe, no deficiency of diet could have produced those avalanches of flesh. She wore a kaftan made from enough shot silk to have pavilioned a whole family of Tartars in splendour, and girded quite a few of them into the bargain. Dalziel would love her. It is not enough (Pascoe paraphrased) to lose weight; a man must also have a friend who is grotesquely fat.

‘Homeric Films,’ said Crabtree. ‘They put me in mind.’

‘How?’ asked Pascoe but before Crabtree could answer, the huge woman rose and rolled across the room towards them.

‘Raymond, my sweet,’ she said genially. ‘How pleasant and how opportune. I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’

Pascoe stared in amazement. It was not just that on closer view he realized how much he’d underestimated the woman’s proportions. It was the voice. Seductive, amused, hinting at understanding, promising pleasure. He recognized it. He’d heard it on the phone that morning.

‘Inspector Pascoe,’ said Crabtree, rising. ‘I’d like you to meet Miss Latimer. Miss Latimer is managing director of Homeric Films.’

‘Why so formal, Ray? I’m Penelope to all Europe and just plain Penny to my friends. But soft awhile. Pascoe?’

‘We spoke this morning.’

‘So! When a girl says come up and see me, you let no grass grow!’

‘It’s an accident,’ said Pascoe unchivalrously. ‘But I’m glad to meet you.’

‘Join us, Penny?’ said Crabtree.

‘Just for a moment.’

She redistributed herself around a chair and smiled sweetly at Pascoe. She had a very sweet smile. Indeed, trapped in that flesh like a snowdrop in aspic, a small, pretty, girlish face seemed to be staring out.

‘Will you have a jar?’ asked Crabtree.

‘Gin with,’ said the woman.

‘It’s my shout,’ said Pascoe.

‘It’s my patch,’ said Crabtree, rising.

‘How’s the case, Inspector?’ asked Penny Latimer.

‘No case,’ said Pascoe. ‘People tell us things, we’ve got to look into them.’

‘And you’ve looked into Linda Abbott?’

‘Do you know her? Personally, I mean,’ countered Pascoe.

‘Only as an actress. Socially I know nothing, which was why we struck our little bargain, just in case. How were her teeth?’

‘Complete.’

‘Don’t sound so disappointed, dear. What now? Would you still like to see Gerry?’

‘I don’t know. Not unless I really have to. But you never know.’

‘You could spend an interesting day on the set,’ she said. ‘Really. I mean it. Do you good.’

‘How?’

‘For a start, it’d bore you to tears. You might find it distasteful but you wouldn’t find it illegal. And at the end of the day you might even agree that though it’s not your way of earning a living, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be somebody else’s.’

Pascoe downed his second half in one and said, ‘You’re very defensive.’

‘And I know it. You’re bloody aggressive, and I don’t think you do.’

‘I don’t mean to be,’ said Pascoe.

‘No. It’s your job. Like one of your cars stopping some kid on a flash motor-bike. His licence is in order, but he’s young, and he’s wearing fancy gear, and he doesn’t look humble, so he gets the full treatment. Finally, reluctantly, he gets sent on his way with a warning against breathing, and the Panda-car tracks him for the next ten miles.’

‘I grasp your analogy,’ said Pascoe.

‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ she answered. Their gazes locked and after a moment they started to laugh.

‘Watch her,’ said Crabtree plonking down a tray with a large gin, with whatever it was with, and another four halves. ‘She’ll have you starring in a remake of the Keystone Cops – naked.’

‘I doubt it,’ said the woman. ‘The Inspector don’t approve of us beautiful people. Not like you, Ray. Ray recognizes that police and film people have a lot in common. They exist because of human nature, not in spite of it. But Ray has slain the beast, ambition, and now takes comfort in the arms of the beauty, philosophy. You should try it, Inspector.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ was the smartest reply Pascoe could manage.

‘You do. And don’t forget my invitation. Homeric’s the company, Penelope’s the name. I’ll be weaving and watching for you, sailor. ’Bye, Ray. Thanks for the drink.’

She rose and returned to her companions.

‘Interesting woman,’ said Crabtree, regarding Pascoe with amusement.

‘Yes. Is she like that through choice or chance?’

‘Glandular, they tell me. Used to be a beauty. Now she has to live off eggs and spinach and no good it does her.’

‘Tough,’ said Pascoe. ‘Tell me, Ray, what’s a joint like Homeric doing in a nice town like this?’

Crabtree shrugged.

‘They have an office. They pay their rates. They give no offence. The only way that most people are going to know what their precise business is would be to see their films, or take part in one of them. Either way, you’re not going to complain. Things have changed since I was a callow constable, but one thing I’ve learned in my low-trajectory meteoric career: if it’s all right with top brass, it’s all right with me.’

‘But why come here at all? What’s wrong with the Big Smoke?’

‘Dear, dear,’ said Crabtree. ‘I bet you still think Soho’s full of opium dens and sinister Orientals. Up here it’s cheaper, healthier and the beer’s better. Do you never read the ads?’

‘Everyone’s talking smart today and putting me down,’ said Pascoe. ‘Time for another?’

‘Hang on,’ said Crabtree. ‘I’ll phone in.’

He returned with another four halves.

‘Plenty of time,’ he said. ‘It’s been put back again.’

‘When to?’

‘Next week.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Pascoe.

He regarded the half-pints dubiously, then went and rang Ellie again. There was no reply. Perhaps after all she had rung an old boy-friend.

‘Left you, has she?’ said Crabtree. ‘Wise girl. Now, what do you fancy – drown your sorrows or a bit of spare?’

He arrived home at midnight to find a strange car in his drive and a strange man drinking his whisky. Closer examination revealed it was not a strange man but one of Ellie’s colleagues, Arthur Halfdane, a historian and once a sort of rival for Ellie’s favours.

‘I didn’t recognize you,’ said Pascoe. ‘You look younger.’

‘Well thanks,’ said Halfdane in a mid-Atlantic drawl.

‘On second thoughts,’ said Pascoe belligerently, ‘you don’t look younger. It’s your clothes that look younger.’

Halfdane glanced down at his denim suit, looked ironically at Pascoe’s crumpled worsted, and smiled at Ellie.

‘Time to go, I think,’ he said, rising.

Perhaps I should punch him on the nose, thought Pascoe. Man alone with my wife at midnight … I’m entitled.

When Ellie returned from the front door Pascoe essayed a smile.

‘You’re drunk,’ she said.

‘I’ve had a couple.’

‘I thought you were at a meeting.’

‘It was cancelled,’ he said. ‘I rang you. You were out. So I made a night of it.’

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘Difference was, my companion was a man,’ said Pascoe heavily.

‘No difference,’ said Ellie. ‘So was mine.’

‘Oh,’ said Pascoe, a little nonplussed. ‘Have a good evening, did you?’

‘Yes. Very sexy.’

‘What?’

‘Sexy. We went to see your dirty film. Our interest was socio-historical, of course.’

‘He took you to the Calli?’ said Pascoe indignantly. ‘Well, bugger me!’

‘It was all right,’ said Ellie sweetly. ‘Full of respectable people. You know who I saw there? Mr Godfrey Blengdale, no less. So it must be all right.’

‘He shouldn’t have taken you,’ said Pascoe, feeling absurd and incoherent and nevertheless right.

‘Get it straight, Peter,’ said Ellie coldly. ‘Dalziel may have got you trained like a retriever, but I still make my own decisions.’

‘Oh yes,’ sneered Pascoe. ‘It’s working in that elephants’ graveyard that does it. All that rational discourse where the failed intellectuals go to die. The sooner they close that stately pleasure-dome down and dump you back in reality, the better!’

‘You’ve got the infection,’ she said sadly. ‘Work in a leper colony and in the end you start falling to bits.’

‘Schweitzer worked with lepers,’ countered Pascoe.

‘Yes. And he was a fascist too.’

He looked at her hopelessly. There were other planets somewhere with life-forms he had more chance of understanding and making understand.

‘It’s your failures I put in gaol,’ he said.

‘So, blame education, is that it? All right, but how can it work with kids when intelligent adults can still be so thick!’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said. He suddenly saw in his mind’s eye the girl in the film. The face fell apart under the massive blow. It might all be special effects but the reality beneath the image was valid none the less. If only it could be explained …

‘There is still, well, evil,’ he essayed.

‘Oh God. Religion, is it, now? The last refuge of egocentricity. I’m off to bed. I’m driving down to Lincolnshire tomorrow, so I should prefer to pass the night undisturbed.’

She stalked from the room.

‘So should I,’ shouted Pascoe after her.

Their wishes went unanswered.

At five o’clock in the morning he was roused from the unmade-up spare bed by Ellie pulling his hair and demanding that he answer the bloody telephone.

It was the station.

There had been a break-in at Wilkinson House, premises of the Calliope Kinema Club. The proprietor had been attacked and injured. Mr Dalziel wondered if Mr Pascoe, in view of his special interest in the place, would care to watch over the investigation.

‘Tell him,’ said Pascoe. ‘Tell him to …’

‘Yes?’ prompted the voice.

‘Tell him I’m on my way.’

Chapter 5

The Calli was a wreck.

As far as Pascoe could make out, person or persons unknown had entered by forcing the basement area door which fronted on to Upper Maltgate. They had then proceeded to wreck the house and beat up Gilbert Haggard, not necessarily in that order. That would be established when Haggard was fit enough to talk. A not very efficient attempt to start a fire had produced a lot of smoke, but fortunately very little flame, and a Panda patrol checking shop doorways on Maltgate had spotted the fumes escaping from a first-floor window.

When they entered the house, they had found Haggard on the second-floor landing, badly beaten round the face and abdomen. A combination of the blows and fumes had rendered him unconscious.

Pascoe wandered disconsolately around the house accompanied by a taciturn Sergeant Wield and an apologetic Fire Officer.

‘Was there any need to pump so much water into the place?’ asked Pascoe. ‘My men say there was next to no fire.’

‘Can’t be too careful, not where there’s inflammable material like film about,’ said the FO, smiling wanly at the staircase which was still running like the brook Kerith. ‘Sorry if we’ve dampened any clues.’

‘Clues!’ said Pascoe. ‘I’ll need frogmen to bring up clues from this lot. Where did the fire start?’

‘In a store room on the first floor. There’s a couple of filing cabinets in there, and that’s where they kept their cans of film as well. Someone scattered everything all over the place, then had the bright idea of dropping a match into it on their way out.’

‘Can we get in there without a bathysphere?’ asked Pascoe.

The FO didn’t answer but led the way upstairs.

There was a sound of movement inside the storage room and Pascoe expected to find either a policeman or a fireman bent on completing the destruction his colleagues had begun. Instead in the cone of light from a bare bulb which had miraculously survived the visiting firemen, he found Maurice Arany.

‘Mr Arany,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I own half of this,’ said Arany sharply, indicating the sodden debris through which he appeared to have been picking.

‘I don’t like the look of your half,’ said Pascoe. ‘You got here quickly.’

Arany considered.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You got here slowly. I live quite close by. I have a flat above Trimble’s, the bakers, on Lower Maltgate.’

‘Who called you?’ asked Pascoe.

‘No one. I am a poor sleeper. I was awake when I heard the fire-engine going up the street. I looked out, became aware they were stopping by the Square, so I dressed and came out to investigate. After the firemen had finished, I came in. No one stopped me. Should they have done so?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Pascoe. ‘I should have thought you would be more concerned with Mr Haggard’s health than checking on damage here.’

‘I saw him being put in the ambulance. He looked all right,’ said Arany indifferently. ‘I tried to ring through a moment ago. The phones seem not to be working.’

‘Check that,’ Pascoe said to Wield. ‘See what’s wrong with them. Probably an excess of moisture.’

Turning back to Arany, he said, ‘It would be useful, Mr Arany, if you could check if there’s anything missing from the house.’

‘That’s what I’m doing,’ said Arany, dropping the goulash of charred paper and shrivelled celluloid he held in his hands. ‘Of course, I cannot answer for Gilbert’s apartments. But on this floor and in the club rooms, I think I can help.’

‘Well, start here,’ said Pascoe. ‘Anything missing?’

‘Who can tell? So much is burned. We kept old files of business correspondence here. Nothing of importance.’

‘And the films?’

‘And the films. Yes, they are finished. Still, the insurance will cover that.’

‘Someone’s going to be disappointed,’ said Pascoe, looking at the mess. ‘They won’t show those again.’

‘There are plenty of prints,’ said Arany carelessly. ‘I’ll go and check the other rooms.’

He went out as the sergeant returned. Wield waited till he was gone before saying, ‘The phone wire was cut, sir.’

‘Inside or out?’

‘Inside. By the phone in the study. Both the other phones in the house are extensions.’

‘Let’s look upstairs,’ said Pascoe.

Haggard had been found lying outside his bedroom door which was two doors down the landing from the study. In between was a living-room which had been comfortably if shabbily furnished with two chintz-covered armchairs and a solid dining table. Now the chairs lay on their sides with the upholstery slashed. The table’s surface was scarred and a corner cabinet had been dragged off the wall.

‘What’s through there?’ asked Pascoe, pointing at a door in the far wall.

‘Kitchen,’ said Wield, pushing it open.

It was a long narrow room, obviously created by walling off the bottom five feet of the living-room at some time in the not-too-distant past. The furnishings were bright and modern. Pascoe walked around opening cupboards. One was locked, a full-size door which looked as if it might lead into a pantry.

‘Notice anything odd?’ he asked in his best Holmesian fashion.

‘They didn’t smash anything in here,’ said Wield promptly.

‘All right, all right. There’s no need to be so clever,’ said Pascoe. ‘Probably they just didn’t have time.’

The bedroom was in a mess too, but it was the study which really caught his attention, perhaps because he had seen it before the onslaught.

Everything that could be cut, slashed, broken or overturned had been. Only the heavier items of furniture remained unmoved, though drawers had been dragged from the desk and the display cabinet had been overturned. Pascoe’s attention was caught particularly by the shredded curtains and he examined them thoughtfully for a long time.

‘Anything, sir?’ asked Wield.

‘Something, perhaps, but I really don’t know what. They must have made some noise. Who lives next door?’

‘Just two old ladies and their cats. They sleep on the floor below, I think, and they’re both as deaf as toads. They’ve lived there all their lives, and they’re both in their seventies now. I gather the vigilantes were dead keen to recruit them for their anti-Calli campaign, but it was no go.’

‘Didn’t they mind the Club, then?’

‘They are, or were, very thick with Haggard. The elder, Miss Annabelle Andover, acted as a part-time matron while the school was on the go, and I get the impression that he’s been at pains to keep up the connection. You know, chicken for the cats, that kind of thing. If it ever did come to a court case, it’d be useful for him to be able to prove his immediate neighbours didn’t object to the Club.’

‘Which they don’t? It’s a bit different from a school!’

‘I can’t really say, sir,’ said Wield. ‘Old ladies, old-fashioned ideas, you’d say. But you never know.’

‘Well, we’d better have a chat in case they did notice anything. But at a decent hour. Let’s check on Haggard first. Then I reckon we’ve earned some breakfast.’