Lady With a Cool Eye

by Gwen Moffat

  “Women still get murdered for it, but they’re silly women: the kind that’s murder-prone. It’s a hell of a risk for a woman to run, with some men. And she laughed at him!”

  “No,” Miss Pink said, “there’s something that doesn’t fit. The characters are right and the situation would be in character for both of them, but there’s something wrong. It’s not his lighter: he could have faked his surprise over my finding it; there’s something wrong with the times. By the way, how did Pryce get to the cliff before me this morning when they hadn’t brought you back before I left the Goat? Is there another way down to Porth Bach?”

  “Across the fields? There could be. But Pryce went straight to the cove from his hotel which must have been while you were having breakfast, and I walked back.”

  “But then when did he see Mrs Wolkoff?”

  “Very early. He left Williams questioning Martin at one time.”

  “Well, well.” She told him about the cottage full of dossiers. “Perhaps,” she said smiling, “the police have got her on their list of militant revolutionaries.”

  Ted gave a bark of laughter. “I didn’t tell you they’d found one of the missing lorries. Could Mrs Wolkoff have been the driver, d’you think?”

  She smiled absently. “Where?”

  “In the bottom of a wooded ravine near Clapham, in Yorkshire.”

  “A lot of caves near there.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did they think the lorry was being driven to one and went off the road?”

  “Either that or it was returning. There was nothing in it.”

  “It was one of the stolen lorries?”

  “Oh yes. They’d changed the flashes but it was one of the batch stolen from the Midlands last Friday. Incidentally, no other Service vehicles have been reported missing.”

  They were silent for a moment then Miss Pink asked: “Why would they want to stockpile explosives in this country? I like that even less than shipping them out. I suppose that’s selfishness.”

  “It’s more sinister,” he agreed, “we’ve got used to violence in Ireland, but we did think it was contained there.”

  *

  Inside the building the bell went for the afternoon session and they glanced at each other guiltily. The routine work of the Centre continued in the face of increasingly difficult conditions. It was Nell’s day off, there was no warden, and neither of the directors ventured an opinion as to when or if Hughes would return. There was no sign of him, nor of Sally. Fortunately the Centre was engaged on indoor activities this Wednesday afternoon, for on the two following days they had the mountaineering expedition which ended the course. Nevertheless, Miss Pink and Ted would have gladly offered their services but for the fact that the inquest was at three. In the end they compromised and while Miss Pink stayed at the Centre to see if she could make anything of the office work, Ted left to attend the inquest.

  After three hours, at the end of which she felt she had done little more than make a gesture but exhausted herself in the process, she left Plas Mawr and drove to the Goat where she was suddenly, and to her great surprise — for she had forgotten their existence — accosted by the Press in the person of a stout and middle-aged Peter Pan with sideboards and a bow tie. She gave him the agreed statement and then became so vague as to appear quite silly but for all that, and in addition to reminding the man that Martin wasn’t employed by the Centre, she allowed two facts to emerge: the name of the detectives’ hotel and the point that the inquest was over. The man was seasoned and knew that the latter had no interest, but then neither had Miss Pink, and he left to find the police.

  “They’d run the superintendent to earth soon enough, anyway,” she told the lurking Olwen as the front door closed, “and it gets them off our backs for the time being.”

  “Will I tell them all where the poliss is staying?”

  “Yes, you do that. Is there nothing else you can tell them to stop them coming here?”

  “We can’t have them, mum, not to stay. There’s no one for behind the bar after half past ten. We shan’t get many asking, anyway. There’s a flock of them at Bontddu, all waiting for one of them lorries to go off the road with a load of bombs.”

  Ted came upstairs soon after Miss Pink. The inquest had been adjourned and there were no new developments. They went down together and as they came into the hall, Sally got up from a corner and came towards them. Miss Pink was touched by her obvious distress. If murder wasn’t the worst crime, she thought, taking the girl’s hands and drawing her to the fire, it certainly had cruel effects on the widest circle.

  “They’ve taken him away,” Sally said.

  “Not arrested?”

  “I don’t think so. They said they wanted him for questioning. He agreed to go. I think he wanted to. He was thinking of the children coming home, you see.”

  “Good,” Miss Pink said absently, meaning good that he hadn’t been arrested — yet, “now tell me — damn! Have you had tea?”

  “It’s coming,” Ted said, approaching from the kitchen. Miss Pink realised he must have gone straight there on seeing Sally’s face. He was carrying a glass of brandy which he put in front of her.

  “Thanks,” Sally whispered and drank some. She put down the glass and said dully: “I lied to you all the way through.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Miss Pink said cheerfully, “anyone would have done the same.”

  Sally stared but the older woman’s eyes didn’t waver behind the thick lenses. Olwen came in with a large tea-tray.

  “Had it ready tonight, mum,” she explained in triumph, working between the furniture like an athlete in an obstacle race. “You’ll be needing it, all of you.” She glanced at the hearth: “Got plenty of woods there. There’s your tea then, and there’s something to do with a cock for dinner. He’ll need a lot of stewing, I said: an old cock, why didn’t you get a nice young chicken, I said, from Ellis Free Range, all running about in the muck and no chemicals, but I suppose she knows what she’s doing. It come from Ellis anyway.”

  “Woods?” Sally asked when Olwen had gone.

  “Logs,” Miss Pink explained, “and the cock will be coq au vin. You’ll stay and have dinner with us?”

  “No, I must get back to the children. I came to apologise and to tell you —” She frowned and passed a hand over her eyes. Miss Pink poured tea imperturbably.

  “It’s gone,” Sally said, “it’ll come back. Something Rowland told me to tell you.”

  They drank tea and munched scones and Miss Pink thought how cosy their little group would look to a stranger coming in the door.

  “He’s not wicked.” Sally’s words dropped into the silence.

  “Oh no,” Ted sounded shocked, “not wicked.”

  “It all happened so logically,” she went on, “when you look back on it, events seemed to march like Fate. I feel like a puppet and, God knows, thinking of them, Bett and Rowland and Charles — oh, definitely puppets.”

  Miss Pink studied her thoughtfully. Ted continued to eat, listening and watching.

  “Some of what I told you was the truth,” Sally continued, “quite a lot. I just twisted the facts.”

  “I know,” Miss Pink said, rousing herself.

  “You mean, you knew I was lying?”

  “I know now — although even at the time your attitudes varied, and widely. One day you implied Bett was a nymphomaniac, the next you went out of your way to persuade me that she was a kind of asexual nuisance. I see why — now.”

  “She was promiscuous though, and she was a moaner but yes, I did try to change the emphasis. The truth is that she was both and she clung: you couldn’t get rid of her —”

  She stopped, horrified.

  “There’s no point in not saying it,” Miss Pink said equably, “you’re not giving anything away.”

  “What can I do?”

  Ted said kindly: “He’s not charged yet.” As if reminded of something he added: “I ought to telephone,” and went away. />
  “How long have you known about Bett and Rowland?” Miss Pink asked.

  “I’d guessed all along but I couldn’t do anything. I just had to stand by and watch him growing more guilty and frightened and then when he did tell me it was too late to do anything. It had been done, but not by Rowland!”

  “Why did he go up on the cliffs with her?”

  Sally shrugged miserably. She was still fighting.

  “Was she trying to persuade him to go away with her?”

  “How did you know?”

  “But why didn’t he just tell her to —” she had nearly said “go and jump in the sea”.

  “He was frightened of her. That’s probably why he drank the whisky. He knew he’d be terribly ill. It was a kind of defence mechanism: to get away from her. But she was alive when he left her. There was no need at all to tell me where he’d been when he got in on Sunday morning, but he did.”

  “There was a need. He had to have your alibi.”

  Sally sank back in the depths of her chair. She stared at the fire and suddenly her eyes widened and she sat up, gazing at Miss Pink with a kind of awe.

  “No,” she said, “you’re wrong! He didn’t tell me because of that. We planned that much later: the following evening, after you’d phoned to say the car had been found. He couldn’t have done it. Don’t you see? When he came home early Sunday morning all he told me was that he’d been on the cliff top and she’d left him to walk home. Suppose he had killed her: he didn’t know how soon the car would be found. It could have been seen Sunday morning. But he didn’t ask me to work out an alibi until Monday evening!”

  “That’s it,” Miss Pink said, herself looking quite pleased. “I thought there was something wrong with the planning if Rowland had done it. Of course, you would have talked to me about him (and, incidentally, established his alibi) on Sunday or Monday, not waited till the car was found. But why did you plan an alibi Monday evening? We didn’t know she was in the car till Tuesday.”

  “Everyone suspected it,” Sally said impatiently. “The alibi was only to be used if it was necessary. I’m quite certain he didn’t know she’d been murdered, though. That threw him and then, on Tuesday evening when the police appeared to suspect me, and asked him questions about me coming in, and about the rain, he nearly broke down. We’d arranged a story to protect him but he couldn’t think quickly enough to know if the lies in that story might involve me. They were asking the wrong questions.”

  Miss Pink nodded agreement. “The police are going to be awkward,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter. I know he didn’t do it. He knows. Everything will be all right. The trouble was, I really did think he’d done it; a kind of accident perhaps, putting his hands on her throat to stop her laughing, and pressing too hard. You look worried, Miss Pink. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “Yes, my dear, but if Rowland’s in the clear, who did it?”

  Chapter Eleven

  “It would be pretty conclusive if it were true,” Ted commented.

  She’d found him in his room where he had gone when it occurred to him that Sally would talk more freely to Miss Pink on her own.

  “I believe her,” she said flatly, “it was obvious that she couldn’t believe it herself when she realised the significance of Rowland not troubling about an alibi for so long after Bett died. Suddenly she stopped being desperate and there was a complete reversal of feeling. She can’t fabricate facial expressions and she can’t hide them, otherwise she wouldn’t have looked so stricken when Llewelyn rang yesterday afternoon. She guessed then what the results of the post mortem were. She’d dreaded it from the moment she heard the car hadn’t left the area but was in the sea. Hughes had assured her that Bett was alive when he left her, but the poor chap can’t even tell the truth convincingly.”

  Ted thought about this for a moment, then he said: “If we work from the premise that Sally is telling the truth now, then there was a third person on the cliff. Hughes could be keeping quiet about him.”

  “No. He’s a very frightened man, and if he’d known that a third person was present, he’d be the first to say so. And if he’s innocent of the murder he can’t have been an accomplice; in fact when I saw him this morning, it was only in passing that he mentioned a third person, and that’s a big point in his favour because if he’d been guilty he’d have had a suspect all lined up for us. He did make a clumsy attempt to implicate Martin but that was spontaneous.”

  “Yes, he’s too stupid to be a murderer. But it’s odd about that lighter. Your widow woman sounds as if she wouldn’t have missed it when she was looking for the tyre marks. It was very likely planted. I wonder when he lost it. No, the question is: when was he last seen with it in his possession?”

  *

  Miss Pink telephoned Sally: “About Rowland’s lighter: do you know when he lost it?”

  “But that’s what I meant to tell you: why I came to the Goat! He told me to tell you he had it Sunday, possibly even on Monday.”

  “When on Sunday?”

  “In the afternoon. He remembered using it at the Centre. He came down after lunch and spent the afternoon reading the papers.”

  “It wouldn’t stand up in court,” Ted said when she returned to him, “what’s needed is an impartial witness who saw him with it after Saturday night. She will have realised that by now too. I wouldn’t be surprised if, within the next few hours, someone rings up to tell us he, or she, saw Rowland lighting a cigarette on Sunday.”

  She nodded and frowned at the empty lounge. “Where’s Martin?” she asked, “I haven’t seen him since lunch time.”

  “I expect he’s asleep.” Ted was casual.

  Miss Pink said: “Do you remember how puzzled we were to think why Bett Martin went down to the cliffs?”

  “So?”

  “Now we know. But what kind of thing would take a third party down there?”

  “It probably has as logical an explanation as the one for Bett’s visit. What about Mrs Wolkoff?”

  She opened her mouth to protest and stopped. They were both silent for some time.

  “I haven’t met her,” Ted pointed out.

  “You should. We’ll go there tomorrow. I wonder if she can drive. What motive could she have?”

  “Would she need a reasonable one?”

  “Well, there are degrees of madness but the more I think about her the wider the gap becomes between her particular lack of balance and homicidal mania. She could do a lot of harm by talk and letters (signed, I think, not anonymous) but I can’t associate her with physical violence. She’s stupid and stubborn and dangerous but she’s not ruthless.”

  “Do you think she has visitors: people mixed up with this anti-Semitism business?”

  “That’s a point, but how could she or her visitor have got hold of Rowland’s lighter? It comes back to the Centre. Who came along that road between nine and eleven o’clock and why? Dawson of the Schooner might very well be visiting Mrs Wolkoff, if they’re friendly, but no: as the Americans say, we’re reaching.”

  “So if we say it was someone at the Centre and we rule out Martin and Hughes, we’re left with Slade, Paul Wright and Lithgow.”

  “Slade and Nell were —” She stopped as Olwen came in and, with a pointed look at Miss Pink’s breeches asked if they would like to order the wine. Thus reminded of the time, they went upstairs, bathed and changed hurriedly but were further delayed from resuming their conversation by the presence of Olwen while they ate their moules marinières and subsequently by the delights of the coq au vin. They were silent until the Stilton had come and been regretfully refused and then it was Olwen who broke the silence:

  “There’s one of your people outside, wants to see you.”

  “Which one?” Ted asked.

  “The nice one with curly hair, reddish it is.”

  “Paul,” Miss Pink said. She looked at Ted who nodded. “Ask him to come in, and bring another cup.”

  He came in apologising pro
fusely. He hadn’t meant to interrupt; he would wait till they’d finished. Ted told him to draw up a chair and Olwen brought coffee. Asked what he would drink, Paul’s eyes went to Ted’s brandy glass. Miss Pink excused herself and went to the kitchen. Olwen and Miss Devereux, a blue-haired lady with a generous bosom and fine legs, were sitting at the scrubbed table enjoying the last of the chicken. Miss Pink complimented the chef and asked Olwen to take the Martell and leave it on the table. Miss Devereux sat back in her chair and regarded the visitor shrewdly.

  “He didn’t do it,” she said.

  “I’m inclined to agree, but why do you think so?”

  “Boys like him don’t kill women like her. And he was in the bar from about nine till ten-thirty, then he had to walk home. The barman will swear to it. Leaves you with the boxer type and the wee Scot,” she ended coolly. “Take your pick.”

  “Which do you favour?” Miss Pink asked, fully aware that, in the absence of Olwen, there was no witnesses to this conversation.

  Miss Devereux selected a toothpick from a Bernard Leach bowl and regarded it thoughtfully.

  “Nothing to choose between ’em,” she said.

  “They’re still questioning Rowland,” Ted told her as a kind of introduction when she returned.

  “The reporters came up and told us,” Paul informed her eagerly. “We had no comment to make. But I wanted to see you about Rowland. You were asking Sally when he lost his lighter. I can’t tell you when he lost it but he had it Monday morning at breakfast. I remember because I hate people who smoke at the table and I always try to finish before him but he didn’t have bacon Monday, seemed off his feed — and no wonder, seeing the mess he’d got himself into — so he lit up before I’d finished and I remember that click of his lighter: a terribly meaningful sound, then a cloud of smoke all over the table.”

  “He definitely used the lighter, not a match?”

  “Oh, definitely. It’s a different action, isn’t it? Two hands for matches, only one for a lighter. I can see him now in my mind’s eye.”

  “Who else was at the table?” Ted asked.