Novello watched with mild amusement as this figure creaked towards her, then with heightened interest as the machine scraped to a halt, and finally with active alarm as the dismounted woman began to open the Pascoes’ gate.
It was hard to leave the car with dignity, but practise had enabled her to emerge from it with speed. The woman saw her coming and paused by the open gate. It occurred to Novello that if any, or all, of the carriers contained a deadly weapon, she was presenting a pretty unmissable target. A low ornamental wall to her right offered the only real cover and she flinched towards it as the old woman dipped her hand into one of the bags. But all she came out with was a large magnifying glass which she raised to her eyes, the better to study the approaching DC.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ said Novello, pulling out her ID. ‘Detective Constable Novello, Mid-Yorkshire CID. Do you mind telling me who you are and what you’re doing here?’
‘If you experience difficulty in answering these questions yourself, then perhaps you have strayed into the wrong employment, my girl,’ said the woman, in a voice rich with the kind of orotundity Novello only ever heard when she chanced on some ancient actress being interviewed on the telly.
She’ll probably turn out to be the DCI’s gran, she thought, but she persisted. ‘Please, madam. If you could just answer the question.’
‘Very well. I am Serafina Macallum, founder and life president of the Liberata Trust, and I am here to attend, nay, to chair, a meeting of our local group. For the record, and I assume we are being recorded though where the necessary apparatus might be concealed in such a deshabille as yours I cannot imagine, I would like to say that though long resigned to having my phone tapped and my mail interfered with, I had not thought that this so-called democracy of ours had degenerated to such open interference with the free movement of its citizens twice in the space of fifteen minutes.’
‘Twice?’ wondered Novello.
‘When I left my vehicle in the car park of the Gateway public house, I was accosted by a child in uniform under the pretext that he wished to know if I had been there earlier in the day.’
That figured. She’d heard that the landlord of the Gateway had spotted a white Mercedes parked there about midday with a driver fitting Daphne Aldermann’s description of the perp. Wield would have made sure someone went back there to check if any of this evening’s customers had been there at lunchtime and seen or heard anything.
‘And were you?’ asked Novello.
‘Certainly not. You think I do not have better things to do with my time than frequent public houses?’
‘But you’re parked there now,’ said Novello reasonably. ‘Incidentally, why didn’t you just keep on driving and park in the street here?’
‘I drive, reluctantly, on the main highways and some rural byways. But when I reach the environs of the town, I prefer the greater freedom of pedal power, and in addition I do not care to pollute other people’s living space.’
Stark staring, thought Novello. But that doesn’t stop her being the DCI’s gran. In fact, it might be a necessary qualification.
On the other hand, she didn’t have La Pascoe down as being religious which was all that Liberata suggested to her. Still, these days you never could tell.
‘This Liberata thing, that’s as in St Wilgefortis?’ she enquired.
The old woman looked at her sharply, then said, ‘It is good to see how thoroughly your masters brief you.’
‘Not masters. Mistresses. I went to a convent school. For a while anyway. The nuns were very keen to hammer home the important things like the lives of the saints. I’ve still got the broken knuckles to prove it.’
Why am I telling this old bat the story of my schooldays? she wondered. I’ll be telling her why I got thrown out next.
She said abruptly, ‘So Mrs Pascoe’s expecting you?’
‘Of course she is, though no doubt to maximize the harassment, you will wish to go through the motions of ascertaining that for yourself.’
She was right there, thought Novello, following the bicycle up the drive.
She rang the bell while Miss Macallum disengaged her bags from her bike. They were full of cardboard files, clipboards, sheets of newspaper, and other varieties of stationery. Novello noted with amusement that supermarket names printed on the bags had been scored over with a black marker pen.
Catching her gaze, Miss Macallum said, ‘I see no reason why the moguls of Mammon should make me the instrument of their aggrandizement.’
The door opened and Ellie Pascoe appeared.
Her expression gave Novello the information she required without need of question, and more besides.
Yes, Miss Macallum was telling the truth about the meeting, but Ellie Pascoe had forgotten all about it and found the prospect as appealing as a day-old hard-fried egg, an image which came to Novello’s mind as this was the only edible substance she’d found in her flat that morning when she started to prepare breakfast.
She risked a wry sympathetic smile and wished she hadn’t bothered. La P. gave her the cold cut, then her face blossomed into a welcoming smile as she said, ‘Feenie, good to see you. Come on in. Let me help you with your bags.’
Novello waited till the door was closing before saying, ‘Will there be many others, Mrs Pascoe?’
‘Three, maybe four. All women. And I’d prefer it if you didn’t march them all up to the door.’
‘I need to check them out,’ said Novello. ‘Maybe you could give a little signal before you let them in, just to confirm you know them?’
‘A signal?’ said Ellie, with an intonation normally reserved for A handbag? ‘What had you in mind?’
‘Nothing complicated. Just a little wave maybe.’
Ellie nodded and closed the door.
‘You do know how to wave, don’t you, Mrs Pascoe?’ said Novello to the woodwork.
Over the next ten minutes four more women arrived, all looking disappointingly normal after Feenie Macallum. The first three were admitted with a perfunctorily dismissive gesture of La P.’s hand. Only with the fourth was there a hesitation. Then the bag lady appeared behind La P. and spoke, the hand fluttered, the newcomer stepped inside and the door closed.
Novello settled down to pass the remainder of her stag with dreams of her stag to come, but about twenty minutes later she saw the DCI’s car turn into the drive. Pascoe got out and came back through the gateway towards her and she slid out of the Uno once more.
She saw him clocking her legs and the gear, but guessed he’d be too politically correct, or at least too polite, to comment.
‘Hi, Shirley,’ he said. ‘Anything happening?’
‘Yeah. Some kind of prayer meeting, I think.’
She told him about the Liberata Trust. He smiled as if she’d said something funny, but she also saw him repress the cold-fried-egg reaction. Not in front of the servants.
He said, ‘How long have you been here?’
‘Took over from Dennis at four.’
‘Good. I appreciate it.’
He gave her the Pascoe smile. Does he think we won’t be claiming the overtime? she wondered. But then he rubbed his hand across his face and suddenly looked very tired, very vulnerable, and Novello felt a pang of sympathy, but recalling his