Deadheads

8 BLUE MOON

(Hybrid tea. Richly-scented, lilac-blue blossoms, perhaps an acquired taste.)

When Pascoe arrived at the Perfecta plant early the following afternoon, he found it as silent as a Welsh Sunday.

He hung around a small foyer for a few minutes, coughing loudly as he pretended to examine a small display of lavatorial artefacts, many of them with the Elgoodware insignium. Finally an early-middle-aged woman in a severe black and white outfit arrived and said in a matching voice, ‘Mr Pascoe? I’m Bridget Dominic, Mr Elgood’s secretary. Would you follow me, please?’

Pascoe obeyed, feeling like a hen-pecked husband as he lengthened his stride to keep up with the swift-walking woman, a picture reinforced by the large plastic carrier bag he was carrying. After Dalziel’s hints of Dandy Dick’s sultanic habits, he found Miss Dominic a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps advancing age had brought Elgood into the realm of erotic discipline. Miss Dominic wasn’t a bad name for a good whipper.

They went up several flights of stairs (didn’t they have lifts?) and arrived at a door with Elgood’s name writ large on the frosted glass. This opened on to what was clearly Miss Dominic’s own office. Pascoe was surprised at its dinginess. He’d have expected Dandy Dick to put on a bit more of a display. Or perhaps it was simply a delayer, like a landscape gardener’s tortuous and narrow path before the trees open wide for the surprise view.

Miss Dominic knocked. The door was flung open. The view was a surprise.

Elgood, looking most undandified, stood there jacketless, with his waistcoat undone, his tie awry, his hair ruffled, and an amber-liquored glass in his hand.

For one moment Pascoe thought they must have caught him – how had Dalziel put it? – tupping a typist in his intray.

‘Come in, come in,’ said Elgood irritably. ‘Thank you, Miss Dominic.’

The secretary retreated. Elgood closed the door behind her and said, ‘Have a chair. Have a drink. And don’t say “not on duty”. It’s Lucozade. I like to keep my energy up. Sit down. Sit down.’

Pascoe sat down. The room was bigger and pleasanter than the outer office, but still no state apartment. Nice carpet; pretty curtains framing a pleasant view once the eye travelled beyond the industrialized foreground and the suburbanized middle-distance to the rich blue-green of the pastoral horizon; walls papered a bit like an Indian restaurant and hung with some rather gaudy stilllifes and a big photograph of a fiftyish-suited group formally arranged outside a works gate over which arched in letters of wrought iron the name Elgood.

Elgood poured Pascoe a Lucozade and sat himself behind an old-fashioned, very sturdy desk. There was a sheet of newspaper opened on it and on the paper a half-eaten pork pie.

‘Lunch,’ said Elgood, following his gaze. ‘You’ve eaten? Lucky man. You’ve come at a bloody inconvenient time, I tell you. I may have to chuck you out a bit rapid. On the other hand, I may be able to sit and rabbit on with you all day. You never can tell.’

‘About what?’ enquired Pascoe.

‘About workers’ meetings. We’re having to make cutbacks like everyone else. I had the shop stewards in on Wednesday to tell ’em how the Board sees things. They’ve spent two days deliberating and this lunch-hour they called a full-scale meeting in the works canteen. It’s still going on. So that’s it, plant and offices idle till they get through yakking.’

‘Your office staff are involved as well?’ said Pascoe, surprised.

‘Most of ’em. I don’t have two worlds here, Mr Pascoe, never have done. Same works, same perks, that’s always been my motto, though there’s a lot outside that don’t like it. But I’ve always got on well with the men who work for me. That’s why I’ve hung on here so long.’

Pascoe, though he had the feeling that this apparent forthrightness was just another version of Dandy Dick’s circumlocution which was aimed for some reason at skirting the topic of Aldermann, was interested enough to ask, ‘But I thought that would be part of the deal, when I.C.E. took you over.’

Elgood laughed.

‘Oh aye, it was part of the deal. But a company bent on a take-over’s a bit like a lad desperate to have it away – he’ll promise owt till the deal’s done, but once his wick’s dipped, it takes more than a happy memory to make him keep his word. But whenever anyone’s wanted shut of me, there’s been enough wise heads at I.C.E. to know that peace at Perfecta means money in their pockets, so I’ve stayed. The lads here know me, I know them. That’s why I’m here now. Instant availability, that’s what I offer them. While they’re down there talking, they know I’m up here waiting. But let’s get you out of the way, shall we? I’m beginning to think I’ve been a bit headstrong, to tell you the truth. I should’ve thought on before coming round to see you. The last thing I need at the moment is you lot poking around and stirring things up.’

‘What specific bit of poking did you have in mind?’ asked Pascoe politely.

‘Nothing specific,’ said Elgood in irritation. ‘But coming round here like this. And I bet you’ve been asking questions. You haven’t been asking Aldermann questions, have you? I hope to God you had enough sense not to do that!’

‘No, I haven’t asked Mr Aldermann any questions,’ said Pascoe. ‘Though I did in fact send someone round to his house, but it was on another matter entirely, please believe me. But I must say he reported nothing suspicious.’

Pascoe half expected an angry outburst at this revelation of his oblique approach to Aldermann but Elgood merely responded with heavy sarcasm, ‘What did he expect, bloodstains on the carpet?’

Pascoe ignored this and proceeded, ‘I’ve also looked carefully at such reports as exist on the deaths of your Mr Eagles and Mr Bulmer. There doesn’t appear to be an untoward circumstance in either case.’

‘No?’ Elgood sounded almost relieved. ‘Well, I was mebbe a bit upset the other day. You can get things out of proportion, can’t you? I’ve had a lot on my mind recently.’

Perversely, Elgood’s apparent desire to drop the matter provoked Pascoe into pressing on. He dumped the plastic bag on the desk.

‘I’ve got your lamp here, sir. Our technical staff checked it out. A worn connection caused the trouble.’

‘Bloody lousy workmanship, as usual,’ grumbled Elgood.

‘It could have been worn deliberately,’ said Pascoe. ‘By rubbing it against the edge of a desk, for instance.’

‘Was there any sign of that?’

‘No,’ admitted Pascoe. ‘But no positive evidence it didn’t happen either. Similarly with your garage door. The spring had gone and the whole counterweight system was therefore out of operation. Wear and tear, metal fatigue, or …’

‘Or what, Inspector?’ said Elgood irritably. ‘Is there owt or is there nowt?’

Pascoe shrugged and said enigmatically. ‘Nowt. Either way.’

Elgood rose and wandered across the room, glancing at his watch. He came to a halt in front of the photograph of the group at the works gate.

‘So I’ve made a bit of a charley of myself,’ he said. ‘Well, it happens to everyone, I suppose.’

‘Not very often to you, I shouldn’t have thought,’ said Pascoe.

‘Not often,’ agreed Elgood. ‘Once in a blue moon, though, a man’s entitled to act a bit daft. Well, I’ve had my turn, and I hope it’ll see me out. Thanks for calling, Inspector.’

He turned to face Pascoe, but the Inspector did not take his cue to depart.

‘There was one other thing,’ he said. ‘Something which seemed to have a better chance of fitting in with your notion that Mr Aldermann was shoving people out of his way rather recklessly. You had a Mr Burke working here once, didn’t you?’

‘Chris Burke? Aye. What about him?’

Elgood’s face was thrust forward attentively, bright eyes alert.

‘If I understand it right, Aldermann came here in the first instance on a part-time basis?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘And would never have joined the staff full time if a vacancy hadn’t occurred, the vacancy being caused by the death of Mr Burke who was assistant to Mr Eagles, your Chief Accountant?’

‘So?’

‘So,’ said Pascoe. ‘Here’s another death that helped advance Mr Aldermann.’

‘Don’t be bloody daft! That was four years ago!’ said Elgood.

‘There’s no time-limit on criminal inclination,’ Pascoe pontificated. ‘And the circumstances of Mr Burke’s death look far more suspicious than either Mr Eagles’s or Mr Bulmer’s.’

‘What circumstances?’

‘I understand he fell off a ladder and broke his neck.’

‘And that’s suspicious? Christ, you do scrape around, you lot, don’t you? Look, Inspector, I’m sorry you’ve been bothered. I just got a daft bee in my bonnet, that’s all. I’m sorry. It’ll have given Andy Dalziel a good laugh, any road, so it hasn’t been an entire waste. Now I really am a bit busy, so if you don’t mind …’

Pascoe rose. He’d got what he’d hoped for, the withdrawing of the complaint if complaint there’d been, but he wasn’t as happy as he’d expected. He went to shake Elgood’s proffered hand. Over the small man’s shoulder, the faces in the photo grinned derisively at him. Even without the legend inscribed at the bottom, it was easy to pick out Dandy Dick. Dapper, spruce, smiling broadly he stood at the group’s centre, exuding confidence.

Then another name in the legend caught Pascoe’s eye.

‘I see there’s someone called Aldermann,’ he said. ‘Any connection?’

He worked out which it was. A slightly built man with a black moustache and a rather melancholy expression (even though smiling) who reminded Pascoe of Neville Chamberlain.

‘With our Patrick, you mean?’ said Elgood. ‘Yes, that’s Eddie Aldermann. He’d be, let me see, his great-uncle. A good lad was Eddie. I got into a bit of a tangle in them early days and someone put me on to Eddie and he got it sorted and after that he managed all my finance. He was a genius with figures. Could have been a millionaire, I reckon. Would have been if his missus had her way.’

‘Oh. How was that?’

Elgood’s desire to be rid of him seemed to have weakened now he was into the past. The only period of history which really fascinates most people, Pascoe had often remarked, is that commencing with their own childhood and ending about ten years ago.

‘Flo Aldermann was a pushy woman. Eddie would have been happy enough working for a steady wage and getting home in plenty of time to look after his patch of garden, but Flo wanted more than that. And she was right, in a way. He had the talent, he made the money. A man should use his talents. The trouble was, he had more than one talent. The other was with gardens, roses in particular. And Flo over-reached herself when she pushed him into buying that house of theirs, Rosemont. It was too big for ’em and had been badly neglected, but she wanted it, so Eddie spent thousands doing it up. But the gardens needed doing up too, and that’s where Flo got caught. Eddie wasn’t an obstinate man except when it came to his gardening. Now instead of a quarter-acre he had four or five. He dug his heels in, and his spade too, likely. This came first from now on. Well, they were very comfortable, very comfortable indeed, but it was the gardens at Rosemont as robbed Flo of her million, I reckon.’

‘And Patrick inherited the estate? They had no children of their own?’

‘No. Flo wasn’t the mothering kind. It was her niece, Penny Highsmith, that inherited. Nice lass, Penny. Bonny lass.’

Elgood’s eyes gleamed with a connoisseur’s enthusiasm.

‘And Patrick inherited when she died?’ said Pascoe.

‘No,’ said Elgood in exasperation. ‘Penny’s Patrick’s mother. She’s still living down in London somewhere.’

Now Pascoe was really puzzled.

‘You say she was Mrs Aldermann’s niece. And her name’s Highsmith? And she’s still alive? But Patrick owns Rosemont and he’s called Aldermann?’

‘Oh aye, it does sound a bit odd, I reckon. She split up the estate when he came of age, so I gather. She missed London and the bright lights, he wanted to stay up here, I suppose. So he got the house and she went off with the rest and set herself up down south.’

‘And the name?’

‘He changed it, by deed poll, soon as he came of age. He thought the sun shone out of Eddie’s arsehole, so it seems. Wanted to follow his example in every way. It came of not having a father of his own, I expect. Well, he managed it so far as Rosemont goes, from what I’ve seen. He’s got a real touch with the roses, I’ll give him that. But he doesn’t come within a light-year of being the accountant old Eddie was.’

‘Yet you took him on at Perfecta?’

Now they were back on the old track again, Elgood immediately began to show signs of his old impatience to end the interview.

‘Why not? It was a gesture for old times’ sake. He needed a job. I saw no harm in pushing a bit of work his way. There’s room for a bit of sentiment in business, Mr Pascoe.’

‘You mean he was out of work? An accountant?’ said Pascoe who placed accountants with doctors, undertakers and whores in the class of the perpetually employed.

‘He was with some firm in Harrogate for a bit, but he fell out with them and left. There was some talk of a bit of bother, but Yorkshire’s a grand place for smoke with not much fire, so there was likely nothing in it. He’d been working private for a couple of years when I took him on. I reckon he’d been living on capital, myself, and doing most of his work in those bloody gardens of his!’

‘But you kept him on? Promoted him in fact?’

Elgood shook his head angrily and said, ‘Not really. In fact he was just on the point of getting the push. We had to start cutting back because of the recession. We’re still at it, which is why I’m hanging around here waiting for this bloody meeting to finish. We got shot of all our part-timers for a start, from the factory through to the executive level. Aldermann was finished. Then Chris Burke died. Our policy, again at all levels, was to offer part-timers a full-time job if there was a vacancy. Aldermann was the only one who could do Burke’s job, obvious. So he got it.’

‘And he’s not done it very well?’

‘He muddles through,’ said Elgood. ‘But his heart’s not in it. But he can be a charmer too, and he’s not without friends at court. There’s a few on my board think he’s the bee’s knees.’

The intercom buzzed. He answered it.

Miss Dominic’s voice said, ‘The meeting’s over, Mr Elgood.’

‘Right. Thanks.’

To Pascoe’s surprise, Elgood started tidying up, rolling down his sleeves, fastening his tie, buttoning his waistcoat, putting on his jacket. He had assumed that the dishevelled look was specially prepared for encounters with the work force.

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