Free Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill Page B

lawns themselves were beautifully kept. Only one of  them, hooped for croquet, showed any signs of  wear. Coming up the drive, Pascoe had glimpsed a  bent figure in a bright orange coat slowly brushing away the leaves which the autumn wind had laid  on one of the side lawns. A fluorescent gardener,  he thought, and prepared himself for anything  from a parlourmaid to a full-dress butler when  he rang the bell. But it had been Culpepper himself, features etched with well-bred solicitude, who  opened the door.
    Pascoe could see that Ellie disliked him at once.
    He recalled his own reaction to Marianne Culpepper  and groaned inwardly at the thought of the evening  ahead. Not that much social intercourse would  be expected of them, surely. Or sexual either,  he added to himself as they were shown into  separate bedrooms. The bed at Brookside Cottage  with its ornamental pillow came into his mind.  Half the local police-force would have seen it. It was a good job he hadn't been having a bit on the  side with the chief constable's wife.
    The frivolity of the thought touched him with  guilt. This was the way grief worked. It could only  achieve complete victory for a comparatively short  time. But it filled the mind with snares of guilt and self-disgust to catch at all thoughts and emotions  fighting against it.
    Ellie felt the same. She had raised her eyebrows  humorously at his as Culpepper opened her bedroom door. But it was a brief flicker of light in  dark sky.
    The evening's prospects did not improve when  Marianne Culpepper returned. Pascoe heard a car  arrive as he was unpacking his over-night case  and when he left his room a minute later to collect Ellie, he found her standing at the head of the stairs, unashamedly eavesdropping on a  conversation below.
    Culpepper's neutral tones were audible only as  an indecipherable murmur, but his wife's elegantly vowelled voice carried perfectly. Pascoe was reminded of teenage visits to the local repertory theatre (now declined to bingo) where hopeful  young actresses projected their lines to the most  distant 'gods'.
    Even half a conversation was enough to reveal  that Marianne Culpepper had no knowledge whatsoever of her husband's invitation to Pascoe and  Ellie. They exchanged rueful glances on the landing. Pascoe moved to the nearest door, opened it  and slammed it shut. It might have been more  politic to retreat for a while, but Pascoe found  himself looking forward to putting all that good  breeding below to the test.
    'Let's go down, shall we?' he said in an exaggeratedly loud voice.
    The Culpeppers presented a fairly united front as introductions took place.
    'Didn't I see you in the village hall this morning?'  asked Marianne of Pascoe. 'I didn't realize then. I  thought you were just one of the policemen.'
    Oh, I am, I am, thought Pascoe.
    'Look,' the woman went on, 'I'm terrible sorry  about your friends. I hardly knew them, the Hopkinses I mean, but they seemed very nice  people.'
    Everyone speaks as if we've lost them both,  thought Pascoe. Perhaps we have.
    'You'll be tired of expressions of sympathy I  know. They become very wearing.' She paused  as though communicating with herself only, then  continued. 'Which brings me to this evening. You  are very welcome indeed to our house, but Hartley and I have got our lines crossed somewhere. I've  asked a couple of friends along to dinner and a few  more people may drop in for drinks later. Please,  it's up to you. If you'd rather duck out, have  your meal early, and generally avoid the madding  crowd, just say so. Don't be silly about it.'
    The crossed lines cut both ways, Pascoe mixed  his metaphors. Hartley knew as little of his wife's  evening invitations as she did of his. Or did he?
    'I think we'd like to join in,' said Ellie, rather to Pascoe's surprise, though it confirmed his own  reaction. The reasons must be very different, however. 'If we're not going to be