Dying Fall

Stephanie.
    ‘Treating him?’
    Stephanie looks at him in surprise and concern.
    ‘Didn’t you know? Pendragon had a brain tumour. Inoperable apparently. He thought that he only had a few months left to live.’
    Cathbad leaves the solicitors’ office in a daze. This revelation sheds a new light on Pendragon’s suicide. And, in retrospect, the headaches and the herbal infusions are also explained. Did the tumour contribute to Pendragon’s feelings of persecution and isolation? Or was he, simply, afraid of dying? Did he ask Dame Alice for help, wonders Cathbad, remembering the garden and the raven in the apple tree. It’s possible that Pendragon acted not out of fear but out of a desire to be master of his own fate. But then Cathbad remembers his friend’s contorted face as he cut him down from the beam. If he’d wanted an easy death he would have taken a gentle poison handpicked from the hedgerows. He would have lain down in Dame Alice’s herb garden and waited for nightfall. No, that’s not the way it happened.
    He is so preoccupied that he gets tangled in Thing’s lead and has to stop to extricate himself. As he does so he sees, above a shop, a name that looks vaguely familiar. R. Wade and Sons, Estate Agents.
    ‘Come on, Thing,’ he says. ‘We’ve got another call to make.’
    *
    Halfway through the morning Sandy Macleod gets an unexpected visitor.
    ‘Lady to see you, boss,’ says the duty sergeant.
    ‘Lady?’ says Sandy, heaving himself up from his chair. ‘I don’t know any ladies.’
    ‘This is definitely a lady,’ says the sergeant.
    And the sergeant is right. Pippa Henry, sitting in the reception area wearing a black dress, white cardigan and pearls, looks every inch a lady. In fact, Sandy muses, ushering her through the swing doors with a low ironical bow, it’s almost
too
good a performance. Who wears a black dress and pearls on an August morning in Blackpool? She looks like that woman in that film, what was it called? Something about Tiffany’s. Bev would know.
    Anyway, it’s distinctly interesting, her coming to call like this, all dressed up. It means she wants to impress him, maybe even influence him. Why?
    ‘Coffee?’ he asks, showing her into his office.
    ‘That would be lovely.’
    That’s what you think, Sandy tells her silently. He dispatches a WPC for coffee and Kit Kats.
    ‘So,’ he says, sitting opposite and pushing some papers onto the floor. ‘You wanted to see me.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Pippa Henry looks straight at him. She’s really a very good-looking woman, thinks Sandy. Mid-forties probably, there are fine lines around her mouth and eyes but the overall impression is shiny and expensive. Her dark gold hair is in a bun and she sits up very straight, without fidgeting, a rare thing in a woman. Poise, thinks Sandy, that’s what she has. Poise. He leans forward and sniffs. Chanel number 5. He might have guessed. Pippa recoils slightly.
    Sandy smiles encouragingly. ‘What did you want to see me about, Mrs Henry?’
    Pippa smooths her skirt over her knees. ‘I wanted to tell you about Dan Golding,’ she says.
    ‘What about him?’
    Pippa smiles, revealing small white teeth. ‘I think you already know, Detective Chief Inspector. I was having an affair with Dan.’
    ‘Why would I know that?’
    ‘You’ve found his computer with all his emails and everything. Everyone knows that.’
    ‘Do they?’
    Sandy wonders how everyone knows. Could Ruth Galloway have been talking? Nelson seems to trust her with all his secrets but Sandy wonders whether they were wise to give her free rein to look through Golding’s files. She could easily have blabbed to one of the Pendleacademics. Apparently she met that Guy chap the other day. Anyway, nothing on a computer stays private for long. Tim is actually with the forensic-data recovery people now, probing the mysteries of the hard drive.
    Sandy arranges his expression to one of polite interest and smiles encouragingly at Pippa. The coffee is brought in and Pippa sips hers with a grimace.
    ‘Great stuff,’ says Sandy, taking a slurp. ‘Kit Kat?’
    ‘No thank you. Anyway, I thought I should come and see you. My husband doesn’t know about … about Dan.’
    I wouldn’t be too sure about that, thinks Sandy. In his experience, husbands always know, though they might not want to admit it, even to themselves. He thinks of the nervous figure bouncing around the deluxe windmill. Clayton Henry seems to have so many problems