by Gwen Moffat
“I doubt if she’ll know,” Miss Pink said and stopped, surprised at her own assumption that after all, Mrs Wolkoff would come back. Out here in the sparkling air the joint seemed pathetic rather than sinister: Mrs Wolkoff’s lost treat.
“. . . she may be mad,” Pryce was saying, “but these old girls who live alone know if a mouse gets in, let alone people breaking and entering.”
Miss Pink thought how right he was and she didn’t even trouble to point out that Mrs Wolkoff wasn’t an anarchist. When they arrived at the cove she didn’t walk up the ravine with them but stayed at the turning-circle looking at the ground. Ted glanced at her then followed the police.
Originally the circle would have been a clear space of bedrock and thin soil but someone, probably the local property owners, had put down several loads of shingle. Under pressure this had formed a hard surface but where pockets of soil had been deep the stones had worked down so that now they were covered by a skin of mud. There were imprints of tyres and cleated boots.
She walked down to the jetty and looked at the varnished dinghy which lay, bottom up, well above high water mark, secured to a ring bolt by a painter of nylon rope. She knelt down and tilted the boat slightly so that she could peer underneath. As she had expected, there was nothing except the shingle: no oars and no rowlocks.
She stood and stared at the Adams’ cottage. The shutters were of steel and they were closed from the inside. The house possessed no outbuildings but there was a septic tank between it and the shore. She walked round it and saw pipes coming from what must be the bathroom. It was a good cottage: solid, four-square and, so far as vandals were concerned, it appeared impregnable.
She started up the ravine and on the way observed the properties belonging to the elegant Miss Lupin and the Silkins. She noted that Miss Lupin’s place also had steel shutters but that its roof needed attention. On its seaward side was a walled paddock with a tumbledown barn that would once have sheltered a cow or a pony. She got into the paddock by means of a gap in the wall and entered the barn. A slit-shaped aperture in one wall commanded the jetty, the turning-circle and the Adams’ cottage. Rubble and broken slates covered the floor and showed no footprints.
The Silkins’ cottage stood on the other side of the stream. A lot of money had been spent on it and it was a delightful place but there was nothing remarkable about it in the present context. Like the other empty places, it had steel shutters.
The light was fading but she could just make out the police behind Mrs Wolkoff’s cottage. Watched by Ted from a distance they were scuffing among the dead leaves at the edge of the wood.
“What do they think?” she asked.
“They’ve been inside — the same way,” he smiled. “But they found no signs of foul play any more than we did. There hasn’t been a struggle, there’s no blood, everything’s as neat and proper as you’d expect it to be — except for the joint.”
“And the note to the postman advertising the fact that the house was empty?”
“She couldn’t have been normal to live here all on her own,” he said as if that explained everything. “I forgot to tell you: they’ve let Hughes go.”
“They had to,” she said simply.
“Why?”
“Whatever was done here, he was in custody at the time.”
“So you’re back to that. You won’t accept it that she just forgot the joint and her absence has an innocent explanation?”
“No, none of it’s in character.” She looked down the ravine. “Steel shutters against vandals, and a valuable dinghy left out unprotected — nothing makes sense. But it’s shaping: forming a very nebulous pattern. What appears to be revealing itself is fantastic and I’m quite aware that much of it is due to imagination, although what’s that except being able to put yourself in the place of other people?”
“Which people?”
“I’ve been thinking of Bett, and Mrs Wolkoff.”
“Did you get anywhere?”
“Oh, some considerable distance, but I want to get things straight before I tell Pryce — or even you. What has he been doing this morning?”
“I met him at Plas Mawr but by the time he arrived all the instructors were out on the hill. I guess he’d wanted to have a go at Lithgow.”
“Why isn’t he interested in the cliffs any longer?”
“I think he’s finished down here, but there’s a shortage of manpower too. Dawson said the police car was at the junction this morning but it left before we arrived. There’s a flap over security at the mine and I think that in the circumstances the murder’s taken second place.”
On the way back from the coast Pryce said they would do nothing about the old lady for the time being; they couldn’t, he said petulantly, on the strength of half a leg of lamb. Miss Pink didn’t seem concerned; she continued to look out of the window at the line of mountains. Once she remarked that the cloud was dropping. She frowned as she said this and Ted assumed that she was thinking about the boys on the tops.
Chapter Thirteen
It was a bright, brassy dawn and at eight o’clock the weather forecast was bad. None of the instructors heard it; four of them were checking the boys out of the camp sites where they’d spent the night, and Nell Harvey was eating a hurried breakfast at Plas Mawr. The high-level route had been chosen after all and she was to man the first check point: the summit of Moel Eilio which was just under three thousand feet at the end of a long ridge running north-west from Yr Aran.
At eight o’clock Miss Pink was also eating a solitary breakfast. By eight-thirty she was in her car and heading for the Schooner. She was in climbing clothes and beside her was a small rucksack which contained the usual items of mountaineering equipment: elastoplast, maps, a torch, spare sweaters and two packed lunches.
There was no sun; the too-bright dawn had given way to a milky cloud cover which, over the hills, held strange, unshadowed depths. The tops were clear and hard like cardboard. Occasionally a snowflake landed on the windscreen and melted immediately.
Dawson was evidently an early riser. He was dressed and shaved when he came to the front door but he was astonished to see his visitor. Miss Pink wasted no time on preliminaries.
“There’s a rowing boat on the shore at Porth Bach in good condition,” she said, “a varnished boat. Do you know it?”
“That belongs to the Adams. The oars are kept in the cottage.”
“The boat has been used recently. The weed marking the last high tide has been disturbed and there are other marks in the sandy patches. Someone has raked them over to try to conceal the groove the boat made.”
“Davigdor wasn’t down last weekend so far as I know,” he said slowly, watching her. “He didn’t phone me anyway and I’d have noticed them if they’d been out on Sunday.”
“I don’t think those marks were there on Tuesday morning,” she said. Then: “Are there any caves in the bay?”
“I’ll show you.” He led the way to the room which looked towards the east and crossed to the window. “There are no caves as such east of Porth Bach,” he told her, “depressions, but not true caves. What are you looking for?”
“A cave which has some portion above high water mark, and one that is accessible only by boat — although a dry cave is a remote possibility.”
“How big a boat?”
“The torpedo boat belonging to Davigdor’s friend?”
“Oh no! Definitely not. You’re no sailor, Miss Pink.”
“Elimination,” she explained. “A cave then that is accessible to an inflatable boat or dinghy.”
“In good conditions you could go anywhere along the foot of the cliffs in boats like that. What are you thinking of? Smuggling?”
“I’m not sure; I shall know more by this evening but — caves?”
“Ah yes. There are two. One is Ogof Ddu: you can’t actually see it because it faces away from us. It’s between Porth Bach and Puffin Cove, just east of Puffin.” He pointed. “Then, in Puffin itself, on
the easterly side, is Ogof Lladron; that’s also hidden from us by a sloping buttress: the light is picking out the crest of it now. It has a pinkish tinge.”
“I see. Lladron means ‘thieves’.”
“Does it? It sounds as if it had a history then, but I don’t know the story. What kind of smuggling do you think? Spirits, or something nasty, like drugs?”
She looked at him thoughtfully.
“Drugs take up such a small space,” she murmured, “on the other hand accessibility could be more important than space. Where is your launch?”
“Down below. I’ve got a mooring that’s sheltered from everything but an easterly gale. If that’s forecast I take her over to Porth Bach and use a mooring of Silkin’s. I’ll have to watch the wind today.”
“I’d like to go and look at these two caves. Would it be convenient for us to go today, as soon as possible?”
He was delighted. He had been meaning to lift his lobster pots but they could wait till the afternoon. He hurried away and returned very quickly in stained flannels and a seaman’s jersey. He carried a heavy torch and a pair of rowlocks.
The anchorage was a gouge in the eastern side of the headland. It wasn’t a cove for there was no beach; at high tide the sea would wash the foot of the cliffs which were about two hundred feet high. Access was immediately below the hotel where there was a kind of twisting rake with steps cut in the rock and an iron handrail: a sensational way, but safe.
On the opposite side of the anchorage there was a magnificent syncline with long, diagonal strata sloping down to a shelf on the water-line. It was about two hours after high tide and huge platforms were exposed at the foot of the cliffs. These were on different levels and covered with a thin veneer of what looked like black slime.
The rock below the hotel was less firm than that on the syncline. On the staircase itself all the loose stuff had been cleared away but on either side there were tottering flakes and pinnacles and, in one place, a large detached block stood poised on the outside of the steps.
“Don’t touch that,” Dawson warned, “it’s balanced on nothing.” At the foot of the staircase a small fibre-glass dinghy lay high and dry, but still carefully secured, on one of the upper shelves. She helped him manoeuvre it into the sea and was surprised at its lightness. This was essential, he told her, because usually he handled it alone and at this state of the tide it had to be lowered the last few feet down a sloping gully by a system of ropes and pulleys.
The rock staircase continued with a few steps in the outer edge of the seaward shelf, and while she held the painter Dawson went back to a cleft in the cliff and withdrew a pair of oars.
They rowed out to the launch and secured the dinghy at the stern. Dawson’s lobster boat was a half-decked craft with a capacious well for the pots. While he concerned himself with the engine Miss Pink had a chance to look at the weather.
On a clear day Yr Aran and the rest of the range would be visible across the bay but now all the mountains were obscured by an opaque and pearly film. The air was sticky and still.
By the time they were under way and heading towards Porth Bach the Merioneth coast was concealed behind the same kind of murk that hid the mountains. But the sea remained calm and Dawson reckoned that they would have a good two or three hours clear before they might have to look for shelter. Since they couldn’t be more than two miles from Porth Bach and its good anchorage at any time there was no cause for alarm.
As they neared Puffin Cove Miss Pink studied the scene with interest. Since it was some hours short of low water there was no sign of the Jaguar but they could see a fresh scar on the top of the cliff where the car had touched before it bounded clear.
In the cove itself one saw that at high tide the cliffs would drop straight into the sea but now there were massive boulders at their foot for the rock was soft and unstable and these would be eroded blocks that had fallen from above.
There were few birds about: no gulls, but occasional fulmars glided past, looking for food with soft black eyes like gentle cats. There was something uncanny about this silent flight and the absence of calls, and Miss Pink found herself wishing for the raucous gulls.
There were no other birds except for the odd shag drying its wings on a rock.
The launch chugged gently under the cliffs, the first snow drifted to the deck and she had a sudden reversion of feeling. She looked at those terrible rounded boulders, thought of bruised shins and sprained ankles, of her arthritis — and she wondered why she was there.
Dawson anchored off Ogof Ddu and she regarded the cave with distaste. Then from her rucksack she produced her head-light which she fastened over her balaclava. The flex was clipped to be back of the headband and then ran down her back to the battery in her anorak pocket. Her arms and hands were thus free. Dawson, who was wearing a short oilskin which he’d brought up from the cabin, put his torch in the pouch.
They rowed ashore — if the boulders could be termed shore. It was the worst terrain that Miss Pink had ever come across. The rocks were too close for them to make a way between, and so slimy that to get on top and jump from one to the next would have been to invite a broken leg in a matter of seconds. They progressed by clambering over, and round and through the gaps, to be further frustrated by the fact that they could find no purchase for their hands. They said nothing, but slipped and grasped and fumbled, taking about ten minutes to cover a few yards, then the walls of the chasm were above them and surprisingly, for she hadn’t looked ahead, the boulders ended in a sloping shingle beach.
They scrunched up the wet stones into gloom that was loud with the drip of water. The cave wasn’t very deep and the daylight penetrated almost to the back of it except for shadows in the roof. The two torch beams lit these corners powerfully but it was quite obvious, if not to Dawson, then to Miss Pink who knew something of the nature of rock, that there was no formation beyond the reach of their lights that could conceal anything larger than a matchbox. What they were looking for had to be considerably bigger than that, otherwise why choose a cave? There must be thousands of inaccessible hiding places on the face of the cliffs which would hold a small object.
“How are drugs kept dry?” Dawson asked curiously as they made their way back to the dinghy, but Miss Pink, feeling ineffectual, and bruised and battered into the bargain, for once affected not to hear.
Ogof Lladron was on the other side of the buttress that formed the eastern headland of Puffin Cove. Probably the two caves were part of the same fault. The cove was sandy at the back and would have made a good landing place but for its total inaccessibility from the land. She saw that there were several lines up the cliff that might tempt a good rock climber but the rock was loose and, in any event, such routes provided no access in the normal sense of the term.
The floor of the cave was submerged and since there were no ledges along the walls, entrance could be effected only by boat.
Dawson turned round in the mouth and rowed forward so that now they could both see where they were going.
Water slapped eerily in the depths and, as in Ogof Ddu, the gloom was punctuated by the sound of drips.
“Does it dry out at low tide?” Miss Pink asked.
“I don’t know if it does at the back. The entrance is always covered. I’ve never been in here before. It isn’t my kind of place at all.”
The torch beams probed the darkness, Miss Pink obtaining extra power by shining Dawson’s along the beam of her own.
“There’s what looks like a ledge high up,” she said, but he had seen it at the same time.
“That will be where the shag nest,” he told her, “they’re always flying in here in the season.”
The back of the cave ended abruptly in a wet, concave wall that gleamed in the light, and the roof ran down to meet it so that the end of the cavern would be completely filled at high tides. The only ledge was the one that they’d seen; on the other side the wall curved smoothly into the water without a break.
Dawson t
urned the dinghy and started back towards the entrance. Miss Pink studied the rock below the ledge.
“There!” she said suddenly, “if you can get the boat close to the rock, there’s a line of holds leading up to the ledge.”
“You can’t go up that!” he protested, “it’s sheer!”
“It’s nothing of the sort — and it’s only a matter of twenty feet or so. You must move the boat away once I’ve stepped on the rock because if I do come off I prefer to fall in the water rather than on something hard.”
“You’ll catch pneumonia!”
“Nonsense. It’s an easy climb and if I fall in you can row me back to the launch and I’ll change into that spare clothing you’ve got in the cabin.”
He pulled close to the rock and, reaching over the side, found a barnacled pocket by which he could hold them in. The rock was plentifully supplied with these pockets and her only difficulty was the high step out of the rocking boat but she was, despite her age, a powerful woman and, using her arms and shoulders, she pulled herself on to the rock and the boat bobbed up behind her like a cork. She directed her beam up the line of holds.
“That’s fine,” she said, “now you pull back a few feet out of the way, and don’t worry if I come off: I’m a good swimmer.”
He watched in amazement as she climbed what was indeed vertical rock, but without the advantage of a climber’s experience he had no idea of the security provided by large holds and he found it quite unaccountable that a woman who must be twenty years his senior could accomplish something that he knew would have been beyond him.
Miss Pink didn’t make the mistake of trying to stand when she reached the ledge, but looked up first. She was sensible; a secondary roof impended about three feet above her head and exploration could be furthered only by what in climbing parlance is termed a stomach traverse. There was a strong smell of fish-eating birds.
