Читать книгу Midnight Fugue - Reginald Hill - Страница 21

Ellie Pascoe studied the baby carefully.

It was, so far as she could see, unexceptionable. Two eyes, brown, not quite focused; a squashed-up rather pug-like nose; a broad head crossed by a few strands of fairish hair; rosy cheeks and a dampish mouth from which emerged gurgles of what was presumably contentment; the usual number of limbs which waved spasmodically in the air like those of a bouleversed beetle.

Ellie had friends who, confronted by such a phenomenon, would have dissolved into raptures of hyperbolical praise punctuated by enough cooing to deafen a dovecote.

It was an art she lacked. Yet, recalling how much she had adored her own baby, and seeing the pride and joy shining on the faces of the infant’s parents, she did her best.

‘Isn’t she adorable!’ she cried. ‘What a darling. Goo goo goo goo goo.’

The parents, Alicia Wintershine and Ed Muir, seemed to find her performance acceptable, but she could feel the critical gaze of her husband and daughter at her back and did not doubt she was being marked out of ten for style and content.

She got a small revenge by turning and saying, ‘Rosie, isn’t she lovely! So pretty. Not like you, dear. You were the weirdest-looking little thing.’

‘Thanks a bunch, Mum,’ said her daughter, advancing and greeting the baby like an old friend. ‘Have you got her doing scales yet, Ali?’

Alicia Wintershine was Rosie Pascoe’s clarinet tutor. At some point in their relationship she had moved from being Miss Wintershine, musical dominatrix, to my friend Ali. Ellie Pascoe took this as a mark of her daughter’s progress on the instrument. Her husband, less convinced of Rosie’s virtuosity, had enquired a little sourly whether dear old Ali gave a discount to her friends. But when he finally met the tutor and discovered she bore no resemblance to her lean, polished instrument but was softly rounded with big brown eyes, billows of chestnut hair, sexy lips and a laugh to match, all bundled in a package that looked ten years younger than her admitted thirty, he proved himself a reasonable man by admitting that his daughter could sometimes get as many as half a dozen consecutive notes in any given melody right, and in any case there were worse things a young girl could be putting in her mouth than a clarinet reed.

Ellie watched this softening of her husband’s attitude with some amusement. He for his part was equally amused when, despite her spirited defence in public debate of the proposition that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, she set about putting eligible young bachelors of her acquaintance in the nubile Miss Wintershine’s way. Accused of attempted matchmaking, she of course denied it hotly but was caught out by her response to Peter’s casual offer to trawl the corridors of Police HQ in search of possible candidates.

‘A copper!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Do you think I could live with myself if I got another woman hitched to a copper? No, they come below estate agents and company directors, and only slightly above Tory politicians and pimps on my list.’

‘So you do have a list!’ said Pascoe triumphantly.

In the event, Ellie’s efforts had been rendered redundant just over a year ago when Rosie came home from a lesson to say that Ali had got herself a fellow and she’d met him and he looked very nice. This news was confirmed later the same Saturday morning when Ali rang up to apologize. It turned out that Rosie’s encounter with the new fellow had taken place on the landing of Miss Wintershine’s house on St Margaret Street when Ed Muir, the fellow in question, had emerged from the bathroom wearing nothing but one of Ali’s Funky Beethoven T-shirts.

It wouldn’t happen again, Ali assured Ellie. You mean he’s just passing through? enquired Ellie. Oh no, said Ali, he’s here to stay, I hope. I’d love you to meet him.

And he had stayed. And Ellie had met him. And reported that he was a nice guy, quiet but bright with it, catering manager at the Arts Centre where the Mid-Yorkshire Sinfonietta, of which Ali was a leading member, gave frequent concerts.

‘That was how they met,’ said Ellie. ‘I really like what I’ve seen of him.’

‘Which is not as much as Rosie, I hope,’ said Pascoe.

If ever Rosie glimpsed him déshabillé again, she kept as quiet about it as she had the first time.

Now here they were, a year later, guests at the christening. Pascoe had had to park a good quarter mile from St Margaret’s and as they hurried past the Wintershine house, which was just fifty yards from the church, the door opened and the christening party emerged. Like the Magi, the Pascoe trio had turned aside for a brief moment of adoration.

This done, they went ahead and took their seats well to the rear of the fairly crowded church.

‘Jesus,’ said Pascoe. ‘The whole of the orchestra must have been invited.’

‘Not everyone will be a guest,’ said Ellie. ‘There’ll be the usual parishioners along for the morning service.’

‘Yes? That should account for six at least,’ said Pascoe. ‘And we’re going on to the Keldale afterwards? Must be costing a fortune. You’d have thought a catering manager could have knocked up a nice little buffet in their back garden.’

‘It’s their first child!’ said Ellie. ‘You could see how excited they were. There are some things you don’t even expect a copper to look for a discount on!’

‘Sshh!’ commanded Rosie, sitting between them. ’Can’t you two behave yourselves? You’re in church, remember!