by Gwen Moffat
‘The head’s caught on something,’ he observed generally. ‘It happens to divers sometimes when farmers have dumped wire in deep water. This one wasn’t swimming though. We’ll have to get frogmen.’ He looked bleakly at Seale. ‘You were camping here?’
‘A few yards upstream.’
He scrubbed at his neck. ‘These midges are a curse. We’ll go somewhere comfortable. How about your cottage, Mr Lloyd?’
Before he could answer, Seale said pleasantly: ‘Yes, let’s all go and drink tea. The midges will only get worse, and this place is creepy.’
‘Just a moment.’
Pryce walked over to Cross and they conferred for a minute or two. When he came back he was rubbing his hands.
‘That’s fine. You two go up with Mr Cross. I’ll see you later.’
‘Are you—’ Lloyd began, but was checked by Seale who touched him lightly and said: ‘Come on, let’s go home before he changes his mind.’
She smiled at Pryce and Miss Pink and they walked across the meadow to the gate, accompanied by the two detectives.
‘Chirpy as a lark,’ Pryce said drily. ‘Go and do the necessary, Williams: frogmen, pictures—’ he squinted at the sky, ‘—plastic. There’ll be a dew tonight, shouldn’t wonder. Off you go.’
‘Frogmen tonight?’ Williams asked.
‘By all means. I want to know why that head’s trapped. Don’t you, ma’am?’ He eyed her keenly.
‘Is the body in contact with the cooker? Could it be lying on his arm?’
‘What makes you think the cooker went in afterwards?’
‘It was on the bank on Thursday afternoon. You can see from the bleached grass where it was resting.’
He beamed at her. ‘There could be some prints on it then. There should be some prints, although I doubt if there are any other than Evans’s.’ He brooded. ‘Mad way of killing yourself,’ he muttered, ‘but it’s been done before; can’t rule it out.’
‘What’s been done before?’
‘Well, I’ve never heard of the method being used in water, but there was a weird case in Liverpool where a fellow who lived at the top of a high-rise block of flats, tied himself to the fridge and threw it off the balcony.’
‘But then—What! You mean, he went after it! I can’t believe that.’
‘I said it was weird.’
She looked towards the pool.
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
He said, with surprising acumen—for him: ‘Can you bear to think of any suicide’s mind, just before the act?’ His tone changed. ‘What d’you think of that young fellow and the girl? And what were they doing down here when we arrived?’
She explained that Lloyd and Seale had thought there was something odd about her behaviour, sitting by the stream when she should have been dining at the Bridge. He looked sceptical. ‘The girl strikes me as straight,’ she said.
‘But a violent temper, eh?’
‘Not at all. Not a bit of it. If you’re thinking of the dog she brained with a frying pan, that showed quick reactions, it showed coolness not violence. She’s a climber and extremely fit. In my opinion she’s warm in her affections but cool enough when it comes to emergencies.’
She could hear her own words dragging slightly. She hoped Pryce couldn’t. It was merely that she was thinking of what she was saying while she said it.
‘How long has she known Lloyd?’
‘A few days.’
‘And they’re living together. All right, I know: liberated women and all that. How loyal would she be?’
She accepted this as rhetorical and held her tongue.
‘And Lloyd?’ Pryce ruminated. ‘What d’you make of him?’
‘A dedicated naturalist.’
‘Obsessive, perhaps.’
‘He’s not a man to suffer fools lightly. He treated Evans with contempt.’
‘But not Judson.’
It was the first time he had mentioned the name.
‘You’ve got a lot on your plate,’ she observed.
‘I’ve been talking to Ellen Evans, or rather, listening to her. On the Saturday morning when Judson left for Liverpool, he told Evans to go up and lean on Lloyd. Judson thought he’d shot the black Alsatian.’
She was silent, hesitating for too long. He went on, surprisingly: ‘And Anna Waring: what do you know about her?’
She exhaled sharply. ‘I had been going to ask you why Judson left Evans to intimidate Lloyd but I assume that was because he thought the dog was dead so it couldn’t do any harm, and he wasn’t going to give up his weekend to quarrel about a dead dog. He had more important things on his mind. But it wasn’t business, was it, not at the weekend?’ She rubbed midges from her face. ‘I overheard a conversation.…’ She told him about Anna’s quarrel with her husband before she left for Chester.
He was interested but not surprised.
‘She telephoned Parc when she arrived in Chester and spoke to Ellen, and to Gladys Judson. Left a number and a message for Judson to call her. Bit cheeky, that, but apparently she was drunk. Mrs Judson still has the number. It belongs to the Blossoms.’
‘That’s where she said she was. She returned on Monday.’
‘And hadn’t seen Judson?’
‘She’d hardly mention it to me if she had.’
‘People tell you all kinds of things, ma’am. Here’s Mr Roberts at last: released from his Good Neighbour act at the mansion. You’re going to be very late for your dinner. I’ve been keeping you. Think of me under the midges when you’re tucking into your beef Strogonoff. I’m on a diet.’
They were strolling towards the gate where Ted was waiting, talking to Williams.
‘It doesn’t seem to interfere with your good humour,’ she said tartly, aware that she had been dismissed.
He stopped and turned a bland face towards her.
‘But this is an interesting case. Don’t you think so?’
‘One case? Only one?’
He shrugged carelessly. ‘We’ve got two bodies—if you include a shot dog—and I reckon he should be included. Now all we have to do is find Judson. I’m joking, of course.’
She ignored the last part. ‘Do you think Judson is alive?’
He didn’t answer immediately and he wouldn’t answer directly. His good humour ebbed away. At last he said: ‘It’s that stolen car that bothers me.’
They had reached the road. Ted nodded but he didn’t speak until they were out of hearing of the detectives when he remarked flatly: ‘Lloyd’s in it up to the neck.’
‘He was shocked when he saw the body.’
‘Shocked, afraid or guilty? Can you tell the difference?’
‘Seale wouldn’t connive at murder. And as she says: either they’re both in it, or neither of them. They were together all the time.’
‘So whom do you favour?’
‘No,’ she countered firmly. ‘I’m not naming someone and then finding the facts to fit the culprit.’
‘You’re going to get the facts though.’
He was sly. She said nothing.
‘You’re going to try, aren’t you?’ he pressed.
‘I trust Seale,’ she said stoutly. ‘And I know her type better than Pryce does. He hasn’t a clue.’
‘You’ve got a formidable adversary there, in Pryce.’
Her face was set. ‘I’ve got nothing to lose. But think of those young people!’
‘Don’t go over the top, Melinda.’
‘You think it was Lloyd? And Seale?’
‘We don’t know yet how Evans died.’
‘Don’t be evasive.’
They walked on, Miss Pink deeply shocked, but aware of a devil of doubt in her mind. She respected Ted’s judgement and she was fond of him. They saw a lot of youngsters: at the adventure centre of which they were both directors, in the courts; she would have said that their minds worked the same way and yet here they appeared to be set on a collision course. Was it possible that Seale and Lloyd were superl
ative actors?
‘If it’s not them,’ she said, ‘then someone else is very clever. It’s a local job, isn’t it?’
They were quiet for some time, both trying to view the situation objectively: an easier task for him.
‘We don’t know anything,’ he said at length. ‘How Evans died, what’s happened to Judson, why his car was stolen. We have no idea of the connecting links, if any.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘Perhaps the answer is to find Judson.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I’m going home. That surprises you? I’ve no place here; I’m retired and I’ve nothing to do with police work. Gladys has her own lawyer—if he’s needed. And so far as you and I are concerned, I’ll be an embarrassment to you. If you need me, I’m at the end of the telephone.’
‘Tell me why—if it turns out that Evans was murdered—why you think that those two children did it.’
‘Oh come, Melinda! Children! Lloyd’s a climber too. The pair of them take their lives in their hands every time they go on rock. With no capital punishment—’
‘Life imprisonment would be worse for either of them—’
‘Psychopaths don’t consider the consequences—’
‘No, I won’t have that—’
Flushed and angry she stopped and faced him.
‘Don’t let’s quarrel, Mel. We’ve never quarrelled. And someone’s watching us from the terrace.’
They were approaching the hotel. A slim figure with blonde hair had paused before entering the river room. They were too far away to see her expression.
‘Anna Waring—’ Miss Pink began, and stopped.
She ate her solitary meal without tasting it. She did not consider that she had a closed mind, that she was incapable of entertaining doubt, but she was making a mistake now—although she was unaware of it.
She was preoccupied with Seale; she thought she had judged the girl correctly and, examining her own resentment at Ted’s opposition, she assumed that the resentment arose from his charge against her judgement, that he thought her loyalty excessive. In fact, her doubt arose less from partisanship than from empathy. As Seale said: you did not kill an ignorant oaf like Evans, unless—
At that point she heard through the open windows and far distant, the report of a firearm. It was unremarkable on a summer’s evening when the rabbits would be coming out to feed, and yet it had come on cue. She blinked in amazement at the concoction of cream and walnuts on her plate and thought: I can’t eat this, it’s gorgeous—Evans knew when the dog was killed, did he know who killed it? If he was murdered, obviously someone had to murder him. Who shot that dog?
She pushed open the baize door and surveyed the occupants of the kitchen: a large, diffident lady uncertain of her welcome.
‘I have to compliment you again,’ she told Lucy Banks. ‘The coffee mousse was out of this world.’ She rattled on, dissecting the dinner, apologising profusely for being late, noting, without appearing to do so, a lad standing inside the back door whom she’d remarked at Seale’s slide show: a slim youth with short hair and bright eyes.
‘Taking on extra staff?’ she asked gaily.
Lucy snorted. ‘That’s my boy, Bart.’
Most attractive, Miss Pink thought, but a devilish grin.
‘He has his supper here,’ Lucy explained. ‘And that’s all we ever see of him. He’s like a cat: comes in for his food and then vanishes. Treats us like a hotel.’
‘A good hotel,’ Bart said.
Lucy’s eyes were soft. ‘He’s my dustbin; he eats all the leftovers.’
‘Why not?’ the boy said. ‘You cooked ’em.’
‘Flattery’ll get you nowhere. Away out of my kitchen before we sweep you up. Go on—I’ll be twenty minutes. He’s waiting for me to drive him home,’ she said as he walked out. ‘He’s tired; he’s been climbing all day.’
‘He’s got the body for it,’ Miss Pink said, with the authority of age and her sex. ‘He’ll be a hard man.’
Lucy sparkled at her. ‘He’s a grand boy, takes after his—He doesn’t take after me, not physically.’ She looked down the front of her overall, no longer white at the end of the day. ‘You’d think with all the exercise I get running round this place, I’d run off the fat, but look at me! Always sampling, that’s the trouble. They say cooks never eat their own food but I’m the exception that breaks the rule.’ She sighed. ‘I do love my grub.’
‘Too much cream,’ Miss Pink murmured, adding hastily: ‘No criticism—except that I can’t resist it either. I’ll have to spend a week at a health farm after this holiday.’
She went out, along the passage, through the hall and into the cool evening. The sun was almost gone. She strolled down the lane towards the bridge where two figures stood in one of the embrasures: Bart and the boy from the Post Office, Dewi Owen.
‘To keep pace with a meal like that,’ she said dreamily, ‘one needs a midnight start and a traverse of the Matterhorn.’
‘What do you know about the Matterhorn?’ Bart’s surprise made him uncouth.
‘Up the Z’mutt,’ she went on, staring entranced at the water below the parapet, ‘and down the Italian ridge. Up the Furggen and down the Hornli. You don’t know how lucky you are; you’ve got it all ahead of you.’
‘Oh, boy!’ Dewi breathed. ‘The four ridges in one day. Who ever did that?’
‘Be your age,’ Bart said. ‘The lady means coming back over the Furggen the next day. You don’t climb, miss?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘You done the Furggen?’ Dewi’s voice squeaked on the word. She didn’t miss Bart’s surreptitious nudge.
‘A long time ago,’ she admitted.
‘With guides?’
‘No, but with an expert companion.’
They were embarrassed. Miss Pink, solid, heavy, and to them, immeasurably ancient, gave them a little leeway.
‘We were lucky on that double traverse,’ she admitted. ‘We had perfect conditions on both days and we were on form. The Z’mutt’s difficulties are mainly route finding on the west face, beyond the Nose. No problem if the rocks are clear of snow. On the Furggen the hairy bit is the last few hundred feet, where it steepens under the summit. There, it’s loose rock.’ She shivered. She remembered the Furggen.
‘Are you climbing here?’ Bart asked.
‘Just pottering,’ she said vaguely. ‘What routes are you doing?’
‘We only got bicycles,’ he told her. ‘So we can’t go far. We’ve been on the Moelwyns this afternoon. Just a few Severes,’ he added carelessly.
‘Ah. Working up?’
‘Well—’ he was disconcerted, ‘—we can cope with most Severes now, can’t we?’ Dewi nodded eagerly, his round eyes on Miss Pink. ‘We done Bent today, and Slack, and Gilfach.’
‘Slack,’ she repeated. ‘That long reach over the bulge.… You’ll be out all the time, making the most of the weather before it breaks.’
‘S’right,’ Dewi said.
‘We was camping at the weekend,’ Bart told her. ‘Did a great route, didn’t we?’
‘Oh boy!’ exclaimed Dewi.
‘Pitched the tent under Craig yr Ysfa. We done Pinnacle Wall.’
‘But that’s a serious climb!’
‘It’s only Severe,’ Bart said. ‘Great route, wasn’t it, mate?’
‘Which part did you like best?’ asked Miss Pink.
‘Oh, the crack—’
‘You led that,’ Dewi put in. ‘Me, I liked that top pitch, where you step off the flake and go up the wall on them great big holds and all space below. Dark it were, like a pit, and us in the sun on the top pitch. I led that bit.’
‘Craig yr Ysfa must have been crowded over the weekend,’ she remarked idly.
They glanced at each other. ‘We didn’t have any bother,’ Bart said. ‘Not like in the Alps where you got to queue for climbs. You didn’t have that in your day, miss.’
A vehicle came down the lane and turned across the bridge.
‘What are they doing up there?’ Dewi asked.
‘Haven’t you heard? They’ve found a body in the stream.’
‘We heard,’ Bart said. ‘They don’t know if it’s Evans yet.’
‘A strange way to commit suicide.’
‘Evans?’ Dewi was squeaky again. ‘Ol’ Evans done himself in?’
‘They’ll know when they get him out,’ Miss Pink said, adding, as if to herself: ‘Could it be connected with Judson’s disappearance?’
The sun had gone now and under the looming trees, their faces were dark, their eyes deep holes. The silence was palpable.
‘Or his stolen car,’ she said.
She heard no sound but Dewi’s shoulders sank a fraction as he exhaled.
‘People were camping close to the car park where the Volvo was abandoned,’ she said, and waited. After a moment she went on: ‘He didn’t go far that Saturday afternoon.’
Still there was no response.
‘Bar-ty!’ came a call from the back of the hotel. ‘Bart! I’m going home.’
‘That’s me mum!’ It was childlike. ‘I gotta go.’
They sprang to life. ‘See you,’ Dewi flung back as they trotted up the lane. She watched them go. They should have responded, she thought; they should have made some comment. They’re quick, but not quick enough; they’re too young. They knew Pinnacle Wall—but that was awfully late in the day to be climbing on it; surely in midsummer it must be evening when only the top pitch is left in the sun?
Chapter 10
The river room was empty but the door to the terrace had not been closed. Anna and George Waring stood behind the bar and looked out at the light on the paving stones. Waring spoke softly.
‘Do I have to do it?’
Anna shivered. ‘Don’t crowd me. I’m going—but that woman terrifies me. She’s watching all the time.’
‘Go on; don’t leave it any longer. She’ll be going to bed any minute now.’
Anna stepped out from behind the bar and walked stiffly across the room to the terrace.
‘Oh, you’re still here!’ she exclaimed as she caught sight of a figure on the seat by the little iron table. ‘Isn’t it a lovely night?’
