Asking For The Moon by Reginald Hill

Author:Reginald Hill [Hill, Reginald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1996-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VI

And travellers, now, within that valley,

Through red-litten windows see

Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody.

It was only a short drive to Wear End or the Big House as Pascoe now found himself thinking of it. It didn’t look that big, he thought as he got out of the car, but certainly overlarge for one man’s occupation. Several windows were lit up and in their light and that of a rusty ornamental lantern hung in the portico, his assessing eye picked out signs of decay and neglect – blistered paint, flaking stone, a broken shutter and a narrow crack which zig-zagged up the façade till it disappeared in the dark shadow under the pediment. All the best Gothic decor! sneered Pascoe to reassure himself of his own indifference to the atmosphere, then felt his hair prickle on his neck as distantly, eerily, somewhere in the darkness a woman’s voice cried, ‘John! Oh Johnny!’

Swithenbank stopped in his tracks and all three of them peered in the direction of the noise. The night sky was clouded and the darkness made thicker by the electric glow above their heads. At first all Pascoe could do was separate the trees from their fractionally lighter background. There seemed to be a double row of them running away in symmetry with the sweep of the drive that had brought them from the roadway. They swayed and soughed in the slight but chilling wind and as his night vision improved Pascoe became aware of another movement. Between the trees something white fluttered and billowed and came towards them with a kind of ponderous bounding gait. Two sounds accompanied it, that breathless female cry of ‘John!’ and a most unfeminine tread of galloping feet.

Then the oncomer was off grass and on to gravel and with more relief than he would have cared to admit, Pascoe saw it was a woman running with the skirts of her full white satin evening dress kilted up to reveal a pair of muddy wellington boots.

A final spurt took her into Swithenbank’s arms with a force that anyone not a gentleman might have staggered under. Dalziel, for instance, thought Pascoe, would probably have stepped aside and let her hit the front door. But the slight figure of Swithenbank bore the brunt without flinching and as Pascoe got a better concept of the new arrival under the lantern light, he observed that it was a brunt worth bearing.

This was most probably that Ursula whose considerable charms Mrs Swithenbank wished had conquered her son, a theory confirmed as the said son now asked with incongruous politeness, ‘How are you, Ursula?’

‘Johnny! Why have you been hiding from us? I’m so pleased you’ve come tonight. I can’t tell you how disappointed I would have been!’

Over his shoulder her eyes were drinking in Pascoe and Jean Starkey with unconcealed curiosity while behind her another figure came out from between the trees, a tall thin man with a flop of dark hair over pale defeated eyes. He wore a dark overcoat and, like a disingenuous Prince Charming, carried in either hand a silver shoe.

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