by Gwen Moffat
‘But she didn’t make a scene.’
‘Well, Mrs MacNally was with her,’ Caradoc said.
Chapter Sixteen
Before the drive ran into Riffli’s yard, a cart track which was little more than two ruts struck off to the right. Miss Pink turned along this and, leaving her car hidden in the undergrowth, she continued through the woods on foot until there was only a screen of rhododendrons between herself and the cobbled yard.
The place was silent except for swallows twittering in the eaves. The kitchen windows were wide and a curtain hung over the sill. The back door was closed.
She took a deep breath and, stepping out of the shrubbery, advanced to the window. The kitchen was untenanted: a loaf on the table, butter in its opened pack, cheese, pickles, used cutlery. The untidiness was disturbing.
She entered the house without stealth and went along the passage. She opened the dairy door, switched on the light and crossed the flags to the freezer. Lifting the lid she contemplated the space above the jumbled packages. Incongruously, in the circumstances, the thought occurred to her that the Bowens lived well.
In the kitchen she surveyed the clutter, moving the greasy butter pack and some slices of bread to expose a crack in the wooden table. Like all cracks in old tables, and most unhygienically, it held a kind of dry black mud where the scrubbing brush didn’t penetrate.
She inspected the floor—gleaming dully from constant washing, the cooker, the walls, the legs of the table. She even stepped back to peer at the ceiling above the clothes rack. The rack was hung with the product of a day’s wash: linen, overalls, shirts, all neatly ironed and folded.
The room darkened. She glanced at the window and saw the sunlight go flitting through the trees, chased by shadow. Then she heard the sound of an engine. She went quickly along the passage and up the stairs to the landing where all the windows were open. Now she identified the engine as that of an aeroplane and sighed with relief.
She went through the rooms selectively, ignoring the one which was obviously Roderick’s, but spending quite a while on the bookshelves in that shared by Norman and Rachel. Then she passed Roderick’s room to the end of the corridor where, behind a closed door, she found the box-room.
There were rubbed leather cases and cabin trunks, ancient tennis racquets, stacks of pictures in tarnished frames—turned to the room as if someone had been looking at them and not turned them back. There were rusty skates, a side-saddle and an old-fashioned alpenstock, but there was also a wetsuit and a pair of metal skis. One would expect the old things to be in the farther reaches of the room, the modern equipment to hand. This wasn’t so. In a dim corner near the window was a gleam of colour, almost fluorescent. It was a nylon rucksack. She started to work her way through to the corner.
When she came out of the box-room she walked back to the landing and paused. Through the staircase window she caught sight of the fog stealing under the headland on the far side of the bay. The top of the window blocked the sky but the sea was grey in the cloud shadow. She hesitated—and on the ground floor a door closed, very quietly.
She went down the stairs and along the stone passage. Light at the end showed that the kitchen door was open, but that to the dairy was closed.
‘Mr Pryce!’ she called loudly and without urgency, ‘Come here. I left this door open—’ she depressed the thumb latch, ‘—Who closed it?’ Her tone was authoritative as she switched on the light.
The opening door encountered an obstacle. Carter stepped round the edge of it: a shocking sight with the light reflected from the steel of a chef’s knife in his hand.
‘It’s not the only one in Abersaint,’ she said emptily, unable to take her eyes off the wicked blade.
‘It’s the only one with blood on it.’ He looked past her. ‘Pryce isn’t here. You’re alone.’
‘I can’t see any blood.’
‘It’ll show under analysis.’
‘You’re guessing.’
He followed as she retreated to the front door and stepped out on the lawn. The air struck chill under the trees.
‘Why are they all protecting her?’ he asked. ‘Even you.’
She took the question at its face value. ‘The family is doing it out of loyalty; for my part, it’s a sense of justice. You know about that, but you’re blinded by grief.’
He flinched. ‘You never thought—’ he began, but she was tense, listening.
‘There’s a car coming.’
‘That’ll be the police.’
She nodded and walked round the side of the house to the shrubbery. They saw a car pass the end of the tunnel and heard it stop in the yard. Doors slammed. A fist hammered on wood. A man shouted.
They moved forward and parted the leaves to see two uniformed men taking pick axes and shovels from the boot of a car. Miss Pink and Carter looked at each other with hard smiles.
She climbed the wooded bank behind the coach-house where the fog was caught in the branches: a strange dry fog, very thin at this altitude; now and again the sun managed to break through and then it was as hot as an oven. Below her, she saw Carter cross the yard and enter the house carrying the knife.
Traversing the fields she found herself in a fluid world of alternating cloud and colour. Trails like white smoke drifted along the banks and through gateways and between them the grass was brilliant and the cattle gaudy: red and white, black and white yellow—then a wave rolled by and the beasts became grazing ghosts. Above it all, untouched and radiant, the mountain brooded with the angles of the fort etched against a gentian sky.
The land was so still and the cloud so mobile that distinction was blurred in the mind, even in the eye, and Miss Pink had the feeling, as the mist passed and the gaunt rock showed above bracken on shadowless slopes, that there was movement on the scree.
Then she was wrapped in cloud again and the cromlech crouched like a malignant being beside the path and she, who had never found ancient monuments anything else but interesting, edged past it like a wary colt.
Even the banks were moving, the earth banks friezed with flowers, but this, she thought, was rabbits, deceived by the gloom, come out for what they fancied was the evening feed. There was a smell too: a tang of scorching, but that would have been present throughout the summer as the cliff grass shrivelled in the heat; there was no wonder that the smell of it should drift inland on a south-west wind. Actually there was no wind, only the suggestion of air currents and that was suggested because the fog moved—yet it seemed to move of its own volition.
She had passed the cattle and was crossing the last field when things like big lizards came streaking through the fog, one to each side of her, staying just on the edge of her vision, curving behind her to merge and approach as one animal. As she turned to face them she distinguished two pairs of pricked ears and she wondered why dogs should be creeping with flat bellies as if they were shepherding when there was only herself in sight.
They advanced with closed mouths and without sound, making no overt threat, but their intention was clear. She turned aside and walked at right angles to her previous line, the dogs guiding her as they would guide a sheep. She came to a gate and the collies sank to the ground while she opened it. On the other side the Pritchards waited, grinning toothily.
‘I smelled your smoke.’ She addressed Mrs Pritchard who was holding the ubiquitous cigarette between stained fingers. ‘I thought someone had started a fire. What do you want from me?’
Avril said: ‘Mr Roderick and the rest of them is at Pentref.’
‘And you want me to join them. Why?’
‘She said so.’ Mrs Pritchard pulled on her cigarette and her fingers trembled.
‘Why should Rachel want me at Pentref? Is she there too?’
They made small movements of indecision. ‘That’s right,’ Avril said. ‘She’s there with the others.’
‘All the others?’ Miss Pink stared at Pritchard who wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘And the police,’ she pressed. ‘Where are
they?’
‘They’re searching the top,’ Mrs Pritchard said eagerly.
‘Moving which way?’
Her husband motioned from west to east. If this were correct the police were moving away from Pentref, away from the Bowens—but not all the Bowens. Someone was not at Pentref.
She said firmly, in a tone that brooked no argument: ‘There are others coming along behind me; go back and guide them through the fields.’
‘But them don’t need guiding,’ Avril protested. Her mother pulled the girl’s sleeve and the three of them moved away, the dogs at their heels.
Miss Pink went in the opposite direction, towards the cliffs where the air felt fresher and hinted of space. She heard voices before she saw anyone and she stood still beside a stunted thorn, straining her ears and watching. Figures loomed, moved, faded. Men grumbled prosaically and sticks thrashed the gorse. She heard Pryce cry savagely: ‘What the hell’s the use of that, man! Part the bushes carefully; if you beat them down, you’re only covering up what we’re looking for.’
They drifted past, so indistinct that she couldn’t tell which one was Pryce. When they had disappeared from sight she followed cautiously, her distance from them determined by the sound of their voices. Below, on the right, the unseen sea lay under the terrible slope but the police kept well back from the edge, combing the heath where the gorse bushes stood huge and misshapen and not like gorse at all.
Ahead she heard sharp exclamations as the searchers came to the top of the funnel where the strip of safe ground fined down to a few inches on the outside of the new fence. She saw shadows lift and drop and realised that they were climbing the stile to reach the enclosed field.
She let them go and then moved forward. The heath stopped on the edge of space and although there was an abyss beneath her she had the feeling that it wasn’t empty.
Now she could hear the whisper of the sea and very distantly a soft chuckle that might have been a bird or possibly a motor muffled in the fog. There were other sounds: the click of a stone in the funnel, the thud of a rabbit’s leg on turf. The gorse was moving, but that was impossible for nothing could move gorse except a gale—perhaps someone had left a gate open and one of the cows was on the cliff top. She wondered why the gulls were so quiet.
She felt somnolent, almost apathetic, drained. She had no sense of involvement in anything that was happening, but was anything happening? Surely only a vivid imagination allied with the incidence of the fog hinted that all along the cliffs something was holding its breath. But something was happening; there was an increase in sound, in the distinction of separate sounds. There were sharper tones and, visually, sharper outlines. She looked up and saw the cloud move; she looked back across the funnel and saw a figure, the profile turned, not towards Miss Pink, but inland.
A bird called, the rabbits kicked, thud, thud, thud: rhythmical, approaching—not rabbits but running feet beating the hard-packed earth, and in front of the feet came the sound of stumbling, of tearing gasps.
Wire sang as a heavy body struck the fence. Something ran along the inside of the wire, found the stile, climbed it clumsily and stood on the brink of the funnel, staring downwards, grasping the fence with one hand.
The running feet had halted. Shapes showed in the field, spaced at intervals and stationary. The figure released the wire, crouched, and started to creep crabwise down the funnel, fingers tearing at the grass like the claws of a desperate cat. Above, the others advanced, still in that careful formation and, without pausing, they started down the funnel.
They passed from sight and out of the depths came a scream, then a man’s shout of alarm, and then the long slithering sound, decreasing as it descended, of something that did not thud and bound like a rock but retained contact with the grass. There was a moment’s silence, then all the gulls rose crying out of the cove.
Cloud rolled up the funnel and Miss Pink stared down at a whirl of birds. The slopes weren’t empty; a few yards below, Norman Kemp stood on the black scree tip, his shoulders hunched to his ears, his hands clutching at his face. There was no one else in the depression and no one on either side except, on her own level across the gap, that other figure, watching her husband as if she were unable to do anything else.
She walked round the rim. ‘Who went down the gully?’ she asked.
‘Didn’t you see? It was Iris.’
People came crashing through the gorse. They heard Pryce cry testily: ‘Well, I heard it!’
They turned to face the police but as Pryce approached, red-faced and angry, their attention was jerked back to Norman who was shouting from below.
‘What’s he say?’ Pryce glared at the gesticulating figure, hating every aspect of this: the dangerous ground, the wild panic of the birds, the boat in which the occupants were adding to the confusion, waving and pointing at the cliffs.
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Who screamed?’
‘It was Iris MacNally,’ Miss Pink told him. She looked into Rachel’s cool eyes. ‘She was running in front of the rescue team. She couldn’t have realised how steep the ground is here and she started down the gully.’
Pryce stared at her blankly. ‘The rescue team isn’t here yet.’
Rachel said smoothly: ‘The fog’s deceptive; it was the cattle chasing her. Iris is terrified of cows.’
Miss Pink looked away. Pryce said: ‘What’s he doing down there?’
Norman was scrambling up the side of the funnel. He stumbled through the anthills and threw himself on Pryce.
‘Do something!’ he shouted. ‘For Christ’s sake, do something!’
‘The boat’s there,’ Pryce countered. ‘We can’t do anything up here, man. That’s her only chance: the boat.’
But Norman seemed unable to reason. He turned on his wife. ‘You! Go down there—’ He broke off and his eyes darkened momentarily. ‘You pushed her,’ he said softly. Miss Pink moved to Rachel’s side. The girl was expressionless.
‘Shout to them!’ He was raving again, this time at Miss Pink. ‘Look! They’re holding off! They’re watching her drown.’ He waved frantically towards the sea, screaming: ‘Go in! Go in and pull her out!’
‘They can’t, Norman,’ Rachel said quietly.
‘What!’
‘There’s wire under the water; it’s holding her down.’
He gave a choked cry and lurched forward. Pryce made a grab at him, jerking his head at his men.
‘Help me get him into the field. You go first,’ he said grimly to Rachel. ‘Williams!’
The sergeant stepped forward and waited for Rachel to precede him to the stile. As Miss Pink followed and held back for Williams to edge along the grass clutching the fence, she saw the Bowens and Samuel coming along the heath from the west, Roderick hobbling ahead.
‘What’s happening over there?’ he barked. ‘What’s the trouble with that boat?’
No one answered; they were all occupied with reaching the safety of the field. From the inland side of it Carter and the Pritchards were hurrying towards them. No one said anything; it was as if each person waited for someone else to break the silence. Then Carter came up and for him only one person existed. He stared at Rachel with cold hatred.
‘There’s blood in the kitchen,’ he said.
Rachel sighed. Pryce exclaimed: ‘My men didn’t tell you that.’
‘They didn’t have to.’
Norman broke in quickly: ‘It was an accident. The clothes rack fell down. He was struggling and she had the knife in her hand. He was blackmailing her. And she—’
‘She was with me!’ Doreen confronted him, whitefaced. ‘She’s been protecting you all along, she’d have done anything for you; she even confessed—’
Norman drew a shuddering breath. ‘Crazy,’ he breathed: ‘Stark, bloody crazy. I wasn’t even Sandra’s lover.’ He turned to Pryce eagerly: ‘It was only a quarrel between two girls; she hit her with the first thing that came to hand. It was manslaughter, wasn’t it? She’ll get off. It w
as the same thing with Jakey: a sudden uncontrollable impulse. She’s on drugs, you see: drugs and drink, that’s what it was. It was all a series of tragic mistakes; I never realised how far it had gone in her mind. I could have stopped Jakey’s death that evening if I’d been quick enough.’
Miss Pink glanced at Rachel. The girl’s eyelids drooped.
‘But why are you so adamant,’ she asked curiously. ‘Rachel can’t testify against you, and Iris is dead.’
He grinned horribly and tossed back his yellow hair with a reflex gesture. ‘That,’ he said, with a catch in his breath, ‘I’ll find hard to forgive.’
‘But surely the person who wanted to kill Iris would be the person who tortured her?’ His eyes were suddenly blank, searching hers. ‘Stretched out on the kitchen table,’ she said, ‘covered with burns, and the poker in the fire.’
He’d seen the trap and he smiled boyishly. ‘That was an hallucination. The drugs, you know.’
Miss Pink withdrew her hand from her pocket and extended it towards him. He looked at what lay on her palm, shrank back, turned and charged the men behind him, between him and the stile.
‘Stop him!’ Pryce shouted.
They held him. At sight of their appalled faces he shrieked: ‘It wasn’t me, I swear it! It was her idea from the beginning: the fire, and Jakey—she didn’t plan Jakey, that was unexpected, but she killed him all right. I just took the body. . . .’ His eye fell on Roderick. ‘Even you! She put the branch there; she meant you to be killed. It was the money; she’d do anything for money.’
Roderick made a gesture of disgust. ‘You’re mad. The money was hers. It’s all to come to her. Yer can’t even tell a good lie.’
‘He’s not lying,’ Miss Pink said. ‘He’s talking about Iris.’
Chapter Seventeen
