Miss Pink Investigates series Box Set Part Two

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘You’re a lady with an acute sense of drama,’ Munster said. ‘What shot, and if she didn’t hear it, who did? Tye is dead and Trotter’s on the run. You mean there was another person up there in Sundance: an unbiased witness?’

  ‘That’s possible.’ Miss Pink looked surprised as she contemplated this for the first time. ‘But actually I was thinking of Irving Tye, who heard a shot, told Shelley, and ran out of the tent. And that was the last time she saw him. She didn’t hear a rifle shot.’

  ‘That would be the shot that killed the bear?’ Margie asked.

  ‘Presumably.’ Miss Pink saw that Flossie had approached and taken up her stance behind Wilbur.

  ‘So what happened to Shelley?’ Flossie asked.

  ‘She left the tent.’

  ‘Well, go on.’ Flossie gripped the back of Wilbur’s chair. ‘That’s not all.’

  Miss Pink looked blank. ‘She found her way out of Sundance, got lost—came down No Man Ridge to Trapper’s Cabin—’

  ‘That we know,’ Flossie said. ‘Why did she leave Irving Tye?’

  ‘Tye refused to go down. He had become demoralized. He wanted Shelley to go for help.’

  She regarded them with a trace of defiance and saw a dawning awareness in their eyes.

  ‘Christ!’ Munster breathed, and Glennell said scornfully: ‘Couldn’t she produce a better story than that?’

  ‘Can you suggest how she skinned the bear and got its pelt to the Sweetgrass road? It would weigh considerably more than she does.’

  At this point the reporters suddenly fell silent and, since no one else had been talking, the silence was complete, and a trifle sinister. No one uttered the word that they must all, with the possible exception of the Dorsetts, be formulating: collusion.

  It was Munster who broke the spell, addressing Miss Pink: ‘What I’d like to know is what you were doing at the Trotter place this morning. Why you wouldn’t stop when we arrived.’

  ‘Ah.’ She approved his perception and turned to Farrell. ‘Sim Logan is starting to get his cattle down tomorrow. We may and may not get the Trotters, so Sim sent us over to see how many riders you could muster.’

  ‘What did you make of all that?’ Seale asked as they drove away. Miss Pink was silent. ‘Oh, come on; you must have formed some impression.’

  ‘Impression, yes; nothing concrete.’ She regarded Seale’s profile and her voice became belligerent—for Miss Pink. ‘I thought Wilbur was frightened, Flossie protective, and Mildred cool. There.’

  Seale laughed shortly. ‘You’re on the defensive. What about Lee Farrell?’

  ‘Amused; as if he were orchestrating effects.’

  ‘Manipulating?’

  ‘No-o. Occasionally in there I did get the feeling of manipulation but I would say that Lee Farrell looked a little as if he were at the mercy of something himself.’ She said this slowly as if she were translating her thoughts. Her tone sharpened. ‘Of course they’re poor, the Farrells. They want the Press, they need the publicity, but that particular party was rather more than they bargained for, I imagine. I have an idea. Would you reckon that everyone in this canyon kills illegally?’

  ‘Game or men?’ Miss Pink slumped in her seat. Seale relented. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ she said. ‘About the game, I mean.’

  ‘Isn’t that Sim’s pick-up on the road?’

  ‘Yes. He must be coming back from Cow Camp. He’s been quick. What about the rest of these people: the Osborns, the Dorsetts?’

  ‘Earl Dorsett is a big blustering balloon and Charlene is a pipsqueak. As for George Osborn and his wife: they will be furious at what they’ve got themselves into—at least, he will be—but he has good manners and self-control. They seem to have accepted the situation. I have a feeling they’re not touched by it. They are hardly overcome by horror.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed that anyone is, but then Tye was no loss. Sim is stopping. He’s waiting for us.’

  Logan’s face was concerned as they drew abreast. He looked at Miss Pink, not Seale.

  ‘They’ve found Jed Trotter.’

  He did not need to say more. His sombre expression was enough.

  ‘How did he die?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘He was attacked by a bear. Billy found him, with the dogs. I want you to come back with me, before the police get there.’

  The body lay about half a mile from the Trotter place, diagonally above it on the slope of the hillside. It lay on its back, the arms flung wide, the head lolling grotesquely on one shoulder: the right shoulder because there had been a powerful blow to the left side of the skull. Jed had been wearing only a shirt, jeans and boots; at least, that was what the remaining rags indicated. With the exception of the boots, the clothing was tom to shreds. The lacerations were appalling, particularly to the throat and abdomen.

  ‘Lift his shoulders,’ Miss Pink said.

  Logan and Seale did so while the Trotters watched without expression.

  ‘Ease him back,’ she ordered, having looked carefully at what lay beneath the body. She felt through the matted hair above the left ear and stood up.

  Billy asked: ‘How did he die?’

  ‘The blow to the head. It was instantaneous.’

  ‘That wasn’t true,’ Logan said as, all three in the front of his pickup, they returned to the road. ‘You said it to spare their feelings. And I doubt if either of them believed you; they’ve seen enough bodies to know better, even if it was only dead animals.’

  ‘Then why did he ask me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe to find out if you’d seen the same thing as them.’

  ‘What is this?’ Seale demanded. ‘And why did you want Mel to see the body before the police did, Sim?’

  ‘I thought it might be a good idea.’ He was vague. She turned to Miss Pink who said: ‘His clothes were not torn underneath, and the blood had drained to the back. He died in that place.’

  ‘You mean he was killed there. So why did Sim say you lied when you told Billy he died instantaneously?’

  ‘He wasn’t killed by the blow to the head. His ear is lacerated but the skull isn’t fractured. He died from the mauling. The cause of death was shock and haemorrhage.’

  ‘Oh, I see why you lied. But then, if they didn’t believe you …’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Miss Pink was staring through the windscreen. ‘I don’t know.’

  Seale said: ‘I suppose, if you left the body in that place, the bear would come back and feed on it tonight. Would that be ethical? I mean, it could save other lives.’ No one responded. ‘Mel?’ she pressed.

  ‘What?’

  Seale was bewildered by this lack of interest but she persisted. ‘Would it be ethical to use a human body as bait?’

  ‘Bait for what?’

  ‘Jesus!’ She turned on Logan. ‘Are you thinking straight?’

  ‘I guess so, Seale. More or less.’

  ‘Something’s going on here. What did I miss?’ No one spoke. Seale asked carefully: ‘Did the grizzly kill Jed or did it just finish him off?’

  Miss Pink roused herself. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s the third time you said that in as many minutes. Weren’t those bear marks on him? Those claw marks? What else could they be?’

  Miss Pink said: ‘Oh, yes. Those wounds were made by a bear’s claws, weren’t they, Sim?’

  Logan agreed with her. Seale said: ‘You reckon it was a repetition of Tye’s death: the bear only completed the job, is that it?’

  Logan said: ‘I’m going to call the police, and then there’s these posts to go to Cow Camp. I was on my way there when young Billy waved me down. We’ll go together to Cow Camp, Seale. And Melinda, will you call Otis Lenhart and tell him we start gathering tomorrow?’

  As she climbed down from the pick-up Miss Pink paused, looking at the bed of the truck. Logan waited for her to close the door.

  ‘These tyres,’ she said. ‘Would they be for Archie Burg’s pickup?’

  ‘That’s r
ight. He had two punctures. Seale brought them down in the trailer on Monday after you got the cows out of Loon. Why?’

  ‘Only that it means Archie’s been immobile for at least two days.’

  Logan smiled grimly. ‘So you’re suspecting everybody? I suppose you’re right to do that but you’re wrong about Archie being immobile. He had horses at Cow Camp and a pack saddle. In fact, he was the nearest person to Sundance.’

  ‘The nearest that you know of. But if he had the best opportunity to get into Sundance unobserved, how did he get the pelt out on the Sweetgrass road? He didn’t ride twenty miles along the highway leading a pack-horse.’

  Chapter 13

  ‘So why come to me? I was nowhere near Sundance the day Tye was killed.’ Lenhart was full of belligerence as he sat behind the wheel of an empty wagon, waiting for the combine to come round the field. There was a shotgun on the seat beside him. Both he and Miss Pink avoided looking at it.

  ‘I didn’t mention Sundance,’ she said. ‘Sim asked me to find out if you would be coming on the drive tomorrow.’

  ‘You could have called.’

  ‘I could but I wouldn’t have spoken to you.’

  ‘You didn’t know that.’

  Miss Pink sat stolidly in her saddle and Lenhart fidgeted with his hands. ‘You got an interest in this,’ he blurted.

  ‘We all have.’

  ‘But you’re only a visitor!’

  Miss Pink did not respond. Across the huge field the combine reached the far corner and turned.

  ‘I got no time to talk,’ Lenhart said desperately. She looked at him, and past him to the gun. ‘You wouldn’t use that for eagles,’ she said.

  ‘I use whatever’s to hand for vermin.’

  The chestnut rested a hind leg, sinking, twisting its rider’s back. She said, with asperity she hadn’t intended: ‘You didn’t have a shotgun with you last Sunday.’

  ‘No, I didn’t! I was moving cattle, dammit! The wife’ll have told you that already; you come from the house. I was up to Wapiti from eight o’clock until late in the afternoon of Sunday.’

  ‘I know. It’s common knowledge.’

  ‘Then what are you trying to do? You think you can break me down, like the police do?’

  ‘Not at all. Yours is such a weak story that is has to be true.’

  He gaped. ‘Weak? It’s where I were. All day—’

  ‘Alone.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He was suddenly quiet, deflated. ‘And nothing I can say or do is going to turn up someone who saw me. I never seen a soul all day; I heard people but I didn’t see them, and they didn’t see me. And the police don’t believe me. Why don’t they go after Jed Trotter? Whole family’s more vicious’n a nest of rattlesnakes. Should be run off the land. Varmints.’

  Miss Pink was frowning. ‘You heard people on Wapiti? Heard what?’

  ‘I didn’t say they was on Wapiti. I was. The shots came from way south of me. They could have been on the south end of Wapiti, or in Hell Roaring.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘You believe me?’

  ‘Are you making it up?’

  ‘Okay. I heard the shots Sunday morning, some time before noon. I was on top of the ridge then so it had to be after nine o’clock. I heard two lots of shooting before noon.’

  ‘Could you have heard someone shooting in Sundance Basin?’

  ‘No way. Sundance would be all of fifteen miles distant, and the south end of Wapiti—Logan’s lease—is higher than mine; it would block off sound. That shooting were more like on Wapiti, and I’d say on the east side, down towards Hell Roaring.’

  ‘Sunday,’ she murmured. ‘Why didn’t Joe and Gale mention it? They were on Wapiti Sunday, trying to get over the ridge after they realized they were coming down the wrong creek.’ Lenhart said nothing. At the end of the oats the combine turned and started towards them, so far away that they could hear no sound of its engine, only see a smudge of dust on the edge of the standing grain.

  ‘Did you discuss it with them?’ Miss Pink pressed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What—Who did you think was firing those shots?’

  He shrugged. ‘Two people. There were two rifles firing.’ He snorted in derision. ‘Not Joe or Gale; they never handled a gun in their lives.’

  ‘What about Frank Patent?’

  ‘Frank? Hunting? You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m serious. Has he never been hunting?’

  ‘Never. He wouldn’t know which end of a gun was which.’

  ‘All the same, he could have been in Sundance that day.’

  ‘He could have been but I doubt it, or he’d have been dead too. So would Shelley, if she hadn’t run. You know that; we all know it. Irving Tye was killed because he saw something he shouldn’t, not because he were threatening someone like the police thinks.’ Miss Pink raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, that’s one theory,’ he amended, and stirred himself, glancing down the field. ‘I gotta get into position, get this lot loaded and take it in—’

  At the approach of the combine the chestnut stood to attention and pricked his ears.

  ‘Can Frank Patent ride?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘About as well as he can handle a gun. Never been on a horse in his life. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘I’m thinking that the man who killed Tye was a hunter, a superlative horseman with well-trained animals. They had to be close by when he killed the bear and skinned it. He put the fresh pelt on one of them, and presumably they weren’t far away when he killed Tye. Those were steady horses, Mr Lenhart.’

  He exhaled heavily, reached for the ignition switch and stopped, his hand arrested in mid-motion.

  ‘You ask the wife whether I had a pack-horse with me last Sunday.’

  ‘You didn’t have one.’

  ‘You ask her already?’

  ‘No, but it’s obvious.’ She turned as the combine approached, and the chestnut took off as if he were coming out of a starting gate. He would have a phobia about large machines.

  The group of people strolling across Lenhart’s home pasture were equally dubious about galloping horses. As Miss Pink came pounding along the trail, three of them scattered to the side and only one waited, unconcerned, between the ruts. Easing the chestnut to a walk she was put in mind of that quartet on the south slope of the Silvertips: the same number of people, but forming a different pattern now because its components had changed. Then Tye had been the odd one out, acting the macho man in front of a trio; today it was Shelley who stood confidently in the path of the horse while the others kept a prudent distance. Miss Pink thought with satisfaction that three of these people could never be considered as suspects, and wasn’t the fourth, Shelley, ruled out because she had no horse in Sundance?

  Shelley said: ‘You’ve been talking to Otis.’

  ‘Sim wants him for the drive tomorrow.’ Miss Pink greeted the others and said spontaneously: ‘How well you all look.’

  Shelley crossed the track and stood beside her husband. ‘We’re starting over,’ she said. ‘We’re sorry for what happened but there’s nothing can be done about it. Now we’re concentrating on Joe and Gale getting married.’ She smiled gently. She was still wearing dark glasses and Miss Pink thought that if her behaviour was a little extreme it was justified in view of her traumatic experiences in Sundance. She said, ‘There was a question I wanted to ask you, Joe and Gale. Did you hear anyone shooting last Sunday when you were on Wapiti?’

  ‘Sure,’ Bullard said. ‘Very faintly, in the distance. We tried shouting but they were too far away.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘It was in the morning,’ Gale said. ‘We only heard them once and then it was like they went away and left us on our own.’ She shivered.

  ‘Twice,’ Bullard corrected. ‘We heard them twice, with about an hour between.’

  ‘Do you think it was one rifle?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘Or two?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Bullard said. ‘I’ve never used
a gun. Why?’

  ‘It’s just that Otis was talking about it.’ Her glance strayed to Frank Patent who, she noticed, had lost his drawn look and was quite good-looking in an innocuous fashion. Catching her eye, he said: ‘Can I talk to you for a moment?’

  The others drifted down the track with the courtesy Americans exhibit in the face of unexpected behaviour. Miss Pink dismounted. Patent said: ‘I was after Tye, you know.’

  ‘Yes? I realized that something was wrong when I met you on Wolverine: that you had a problem.’

  ‘I followed them—’ suddenly he was back in his intense mood, ‘—but I never caught up with them.’

  ‘I know you didn’t kill him—’

  ‘I meant to.’

  ‘And you’re sorry you didn’t. Now, if you feel you must do some good, you could tell me where you were last Sunday, because you might have heard something, seen a strange vehicle—’

  ‘What for? Why are you asking me this?’

  ‘You could have seen something that would help to identify the killer.’ Her voice died as she waited for what she realized was a predictable response.

  ‘Hell! I wouldn’t lift a finger to nail him.’

  She sighed. ‘Yes, I see your point—’

  ‘But as it happens, I never saw anyone in the back country except that guy at your Cow Camp on Monday morning. I camped in the forest Saturday night and I went up Cougar early Sunday by the hiker’s trail on the other side of the creek, and into Loon Basin, but it was snowing and there was no sign of them.’

  ‘I saw you drive down the canyon on Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘I went down to Prosper for groceries. Monday I stopped by Logan’s Cow Camp and the man told me Shelley and the rest were lost. I thought Sundance Basin might be a good place to look for them, same as you, so I followed you up there. You know the rest.’

  ‘Were you well acquainted with Tye?’

  ‘Well enough. I knew him in Chicago.’

  ‘Why would he fire his pistol? There were three rounds fired.’

  ‘How would I know?’ He was astonished at the question.