by Gwen Moffat
‘Perfect,’ Miss Pink agreed, ‘now that the midges have gone.’
‘Yes, they seem to disappear when darkness comes.’
Anna sat down with her back to the light. She shivered again.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘That man who came for sandwiches: he talked to you. What are they doing up there? Why sandwiches, for Heaven’s sake?’
‘They’re working. They need sustenance.’
Behind the open door the room was too quiet.
‘They’ve got the body out,’ Miss Pink went on. ‘It’s Evans.’
Anna swallowed. ‘Do they know how he died?’
‘There was a rope round his neck and the other end was tied to an old cooker.’
Anna’s chair grated on stone.
‘He killed himself?’
‘The post mortem will decide that.’
Anna said desperately: ‘So much has been happening while I was away.’
‘You came back yesterday morning,’ Miss Pink murmured. ‘Evans died last night.’
‘I never left the place. All last night I was serving, or I was with George. You can ask him.’
‘Surely you’re not worried about Evans?’ Miss Pink placed a slight emphasis on the name. ‘What did you come to ask me, Mrs Waring?’
The woman’s head jerked. It may have been that she had intended to look back into the room but she checked herself and her eyes remained fixed on the table.
‘I phoned Parc on Saturday afternoon.’
‘Pryce knows that.’ Miss Pink was casual.
‘Who is—? Oh, the superintendent. Gladys would have told him of course. It was nothing important.’
‘The police will want to know why you telephoned.’
‘Yes.’ Anna drew a shaky breath. ‘I’m going to put my cards on the table, Miss Pink. My husband knows what I’m going to tell you. Richard Judson and I are old friends; we were—quite close at one time. I had a flaming row with George on Saturday and walked out in a huff. I drove to Chester and I was still furious when I got there. I’d bought a bottle of whisky on the way and I booked in at the Blossoms. I drank too much Scotch and I telephoned Parc. I wanted Richard to come and join me in Chester.’
She stopped, defiant, breathing hard.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, that’s all. I couldn’t reach him. I left a message with Gladys for him to call me. He didn’t. I had a miserable weekend on my own and I came back on Monday. You know that part.’
‘Pryce would ask why you wanted Judson to join you.’
‘I was drunk, I tell you. I just wanted his company; I needed a drinking partner. George will tell you: I’m like that, I can’t bear to drink alone. It’s unhealthy.’
‘You’d made no arrangement to go away with Judson? I ask because I overheard your quarrel with your husband on Saturday morning.’
Anna hesitated, then: ‘We’d made no arrangement,’ she said firmly. ‘I was lying. I say those kind of things. I blow my top. Why? Do the police think I was with Richard at the weekend?’
‘I don’t know. Judson could hardly have been at the Blossoms if you say he wasn’t because that can be checked too easily. Did you go elsewhere?’
‘I stayed there both Saturday and Sunday.’
‘In the daytime? And can anyone say you were in your bedroom at night?’
‘What are you insinuating?’ Miss Pink said nothing. ‘Look, I didn’t see Richard Judson after Thursday evening. Thursday. Does that satisfy you?’
‘It isn’t me you have to satisfy. Can you prove it?’
Waring stepped out on the terrace. Anna twisted on her chair.
‘She doesn’t believe me!’
‘You amaze me. Take a grip on yourself. You’re scared daft. What have you got to lose?’
Miss Pink said: ‘Is that the truth? That you didn’t see him after Thursday?’
Anna nodded mutely.
Waring said: ‘I believe her. I know why she’s gone to pieces. Do you want me to tell Miss Pink? You’re not going to be able to stand up to the police—no way. You’ve told her the rest, what’s the odds? Tell her now before you tell Pryce, and she might be able to help.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Anna whispered.
‘Yeah, and I’m afraid you’ve got to go through with it. Come on, girl, get it over.’ He waited, but Anna’s hands were pressed to her face. He turned to Miss Pink.
‘You rattled her when you suggested she could have left the Blossoms on Sunday because she reckons she knows where Judson was: with Maggie Seale.’
‘With her where?’
‘He’s got a cottage. It’s on the moors east of here.’
The air on the terrace seemed to chill suddenly as if it had been displaced ahead of a storm.
‘Who else knows that?’
‘I didn’t know about it. Gladys Judson couldn’t have. His other women would know of course.’ The tone was cruel. He jerked his head at Anna. ‘She’s been there; that’s why she’s terrified; her fingerprints will be all over the place.’
Miss Pink said gently: ‘The relationship wasn’t a crime, Mrs Waring.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Waring said, but she understood very well, and she knew that Anna did too.
‘That lady should have been on the Force,’ Williams said, slowing to go round a sheep.
Pryce peered through the windscreen.
‘There’s another. They’re sleeping all along the road.’
‘The tarmac’s drier than the heather. It must be soaked with dew at this hour of the morning.’
‘Miss Pink is very able … and another thing—’ he yawned mightily, ‘—it won’t be the last time she sticks her oar in on this job. You mark my words. We could do worse than put her on to that girl.’
‘Seale? Pink’s got to be a genius to break that one down. Do you think they followed Judson out here: her and Lloyd? What would be the motive?’
‘Spare me. We don’t know that we’re going to find anything.’
The car crept through the darkness. The road was empty except for the sheep, and no light showed in the black wastes on either side. They’d driven over twelve miles from Dinas, their destination having been pinpointed by a sullen Anna Waring. Pryce had a map on his knees and was following the route with the aid of a failing torch.
‘The turning must be about a mile ahead,’ he said. ‘We come to a bridge soon—’
‘I can see the bridge in the bottom.’
‘Half a mile beyond, and the turning’s on the right.’
They crossed a small, hump-backed bridge and were suddenly enclosed by ranks of spruce. The road widened on the right and Williams slowed and turned. Gateposts showed either side of a cattle grid. The bars rattled and they were running along a graded track in the forest.
‘Mature trees,’ Pryce grunted. ‘He chose a nice, remote hideout.’
In less than a mile they saw a hut ahead, about the size of a small garage. Closed double doors faced them.
‘Swing her round,’ Pryce ordered. ‘See if anything shows in the headlights. No. Stop!’
Williams stamped on the brake.
‘Christ! I didn’t mean that sudden. You could have had me through the windscreen.’
‘You said stop.’
‘I was thinking of us destroying someone else’s tracks. Okay, leave her here. The place must be only a few yards away; we should see it against the stars. Douse the lights. Bring the big torch but don’t switch it on.’
They stood on the track, adjusting their vision to the night. An owl called in the forest. Something large rustled, then crashed in vegetation. Pryce’s torch flickered, then a powerful beam stabbed the darkness. Innumerable tiny lamps twinkled back at them.
‘Sheep,’ Williams said in disgust, switching off. ‘Who’d ever want to live out here?’
‘Now you’ve put paid to our night vision, you might as well keep the torch on. Shine it up the way.’
Glass reflected the light. They were abou
t thirty yards from a cottage.
‘I’m worried about tracks,’ Pryce repeated.
‘No one’s left any just here; it’s rock.’
Bedrock stretched like a pavement between them and the hut. They walked over and stopped at the double doors which were held closed by a bolt. There was no padlock. Williams ran the torch beam over the shabby planks and then he got down and stretched himself on the ground.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘There’s a cat-hole in the bottom of this board.’
He lay on his side, shining the torch through an opening.
‘Empty. No car. No corpse.’
‘Exactly. It’s a dead loss. Still, we won’t touch the doors. He could have been here, and if he was, probably he had someone with him.’
An earthy path led to the house. They kept to the grass at the side and stopped short of the front door. It was a shabby door with a thumb latch, a handle, and a plate that had not been painted for a long time. Below the plate was a large key-hole.
‘Have you got flashes with your camera?’ Pryce asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Go and get it, and the powder.’
Pryce didn’t wait for the sergeant’s return but walked round the cottage, playing his weak beam on the walls. It was a square, double-fronted house with four windows at the front: two up, two down, none in the gable-ends, and at the rear, two small glazed openings. Those at the front were draped with fine net curtains but the ones at the back were bare. Nevertheless, all his torch could pick out there was a container of detergent on a window sill and an empty stone sink in one room; in the other: a slate shelf on which was an old-fashioned enamel bread bin and a stack of tinned food. When he returned, Williams was dusting the latch of the front door.
‘Nothing,’ Williams said. ‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘Like that stolen Volvo. It’s been wiped. Now, that’s highly significant. No one, no innocent person is going to wipe his prints off a cottage door.’
As he spoke he depressed the thumb latch gingerly.
The door opened. The only sound was a faint gasp from Williams.
Pryce was dumbfounded. They’d known that the cottage had to be investigated but neither had dared to hope that they’d get any help from it; they’d conditioned themselves on the drive to thinking that the cottage was a red herring. The lack of prints on the door could be sinister but their minds had not fully adjusted to that development when the door opened, almost, it might seem, of its own accord. They were shaken. Suddenly, even for old and hardened police officers, the situation was full of menace. Neither of them was armed.
Williams was checked by Pryce’s hand on his arm. He felt himself relieved of the heavy torch and pushed aside. With his toe, Pryce kicked open the door and it crashed against a wall. The beam showed them a passage, then swung sideways to reveal a room where another door hit plaster, and two chintzy, over-stuffed chairs leapt into prominence with that air of disapproval implicit in some inanimate objects discovered in extraordinary circumstances. Trying to peer round Pryce’s bulk, Williams found himself shoved back as the superintendent turned to the other room. For the third time Pryce kicked and Williams winced in anticipation of the impact of a door against a wall.
It didn’t come. There was merely the thud of Pryce’s shoe on wood.
Williams was the slower of the two. In amazement he saw gross old Pryce, outlined against the light—but the torch held high—saw him fling himself forward, crouching, the torch directed momentarily at the eye level of a standing man, and then the beam dropped.
‘Ah!’ Pryce said—not with satisfaction or relief but as a signal. There was no strain in the sound, rather, it indicated the end of tension. Williams stepped into the room and as he moved he caught an unpleasant smell, compounded of sweat and warmth and grubby nylon: the smell of his own fear.
The first thing he saw in the pool of light on the floor was the sole of a shoe.
‘Yes,’ said Pryce. ‘Here it is.’
The man lay on his back, his legs somewhat bent, both arms outflung as if welcoming them. By his side, the stock close to his hip, the barrel pointing to the back of the door, was a shot gun. On a low table in front of an empty grate stood a glass with about three ounces of pale brown liquid in the bottom, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker, two-thirds empty.
‘Did you know him?’ Williams asked, as they stood taking it in.
‘I knew Judson; his own mother wouldn’t recognise this fellow. Who’s going to identify him, I’d like to know?’
‘His missis. She doesn’t have to see his face.’
‘Man! He hasn’t got a face!’
‘He put the barrel in his mouth?’
‘Either that or someone put it pretty close.’
‘If he’d worked through two-thirds of that bottle he could be in the right mood; it could have been suicide. He hasn’t drunk much though, not for a drinking man. What about accident? You know: handling the gun, thinking about suicide, and it goes off?’
Pryce said wistfully: ‘I’d give a month’s pay to know whose prints are on that gun.’
Williams started to disencumber himself of camera straps.
‘Not you,’ Pryce said. ‘That thumb latch was different; we couldn’t get in without it, but this gun is for the experts.’ His voice dropped. ‘What’s the use? It’ll have been wiped.’
‘Why couldn’t it have been like I said: suicide or accident, or a bit of both—like the chap had the death wish?’
‘You’re tired.’ Pryce was full of solicitude, but feigned. He went on brightly: ‘Who stole the bloody car? Get on the radio for the mob. Walk clear of the walls and that path. We’re not touching a thing in this place until it’s been printed, every inch of it.’
‘How d’you know there’s not another stiff upstairs?’ Pryce hesitated. ‘He used the place for women,’ Williams pressed.
‘Give me that torch. And don’t move!’
He went up the carpeted stairs and shone the beam into a room containing a double bed, neatly made up, a wardrobe, a smart wicker chair that looked new, and a small chest of drawers. He eyed the wardrobe thoughtfully, then turned and looked in the other room. It held nothing more than a bare mattress on a single bed.
For their own satisfaction they looked in the scullery and pantry at the back, and the cupboard under the stairs. There was no lavatory.
‘That’s that,’ Pryce said. ‘Unless there’s a corpse in that wardrobe upstairs, we’ve got just one—and I’m not looking in the wardrobe. It’ll be covered with prints.… And probably not one of them any use to us.’
Chapter 11
In Dinas village at least one person was sleeping well. Exhausted by the events of the day Miss Pink was blissfully unaware that more dark things were being uncovered, that others lay awake into the small hours after long and unstisfactory discussions and recriminations. When the sun rose to burn off the river mists, resistance was a little higher than it had been a short time ago, but it was still low, and faces betrayed the fruitless speculations of that restless night.
In the Post Office Noreen Owen’s cheeks looked pasty and her eyes were uneasy as she returned her customer’s greeting.
Miss Pink bought stamps and then, first idly, then with apparent interest, twirled the revolving stand of local views, choosing cards carefully and taking her time about it. A few cars went by on the main road, otherwise there was no sound but the squeak of the stand. When she had paid for her purchases, she looked towards the doorway at the end of the counter. She could see one wall of a room and a sideboard bearing framed photographs and a bowl of fruit.
‘I’d like a word with Dewi,’ she said firmly.
‘He’s not here.’
‘He hasn’t gone out; I heard his voice.’
Mrs Owen winced and her eyes were shifty. Everyone waited. There was a stir in the back room and Sydney Owen appeared in the doorway, blocking it.
Miss Pink raised her voice.
‘Don’t go, Dewi; it concerns Joss Lloyd and Miss Seale.’
Owen asked threateningly; ‘What have you got to say to the lad?’ He didn’t move.
‘Can I come in?’ she asked. ‘It would be better to talk where there’s no fear of interruption.’
Mrs Owen looked as if she were about to burst into tears. She heaved a sigh that would have been ostentatious but for her anguished eyes.
‘You go in,’ she said. ‘I’ll close the street door. We’ll hear the bell if anyone comes.’
Owen stood aside reluctantly and Miss Pink walked into a cosy family room where Dewi sat at a polished table, his face a mask of stupidity. As she entered, he got to his feet clumsily, kicking his chair, and went to stand by the window.
‘Please sit down,’ Mrs Owen said, dredging up the remnants of her manners. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea.’
‘No,’ Owen growled. ‘Stay where you are. We don’t give her no tea.’
Miss Pink sat down. She looked both concerned and kind.
‘The police have taken Lloyd and Seale to the Station for questioning,’ she told Dewi. ‘They found Mr Judson’s body, you see.’
‘Where?’ Owen barked.
‘Oh, no!’
The exclamation from the mother sounded resigned, as if she had been waiting for, and dreading, this very information. Her eyes were on her son.
‘And Lloyd has admitted shooting the black Alsatian,’ Miss Pink went on. ‘You weren’t on Craig yr Ysfa on Sunday, Dewi,’ she added calmly.
‘I were!’ The denial was glib.
She shook her head. ‘You got the position of the sun wrong on the top pitch of Pinnacle Wall.’
‘What’s she talking about?’ Owen shouted. ‘On Sunday you were climbing.’
‘It weren’t the only route we done,’ Dewi said tightly, ignoring his father. ‘We done—another.’
‘Which one?’ He didn’t reply. ‘Grimmett? Sodom? Gomorrah?’
‘No, them’s too hard for us.’
‘Amphitheatre Arena.’
‘We’d have romped up that in no time. It were Great Gully.’
She fixed him with a stern eye. ‘Who was shooting up at the head of the combe on Friday afternoon?’
