Lady With a Cool Eye

by Gwen Moffat

  She rang the Goat and Olwen answered. Mr Roberts wasn’t in; he was at Plas Mawr. Miss Pink thanked her and, after making sure that Pryce wasn’t at the hotel, she rang off before the woman could question her.

  She dialled the Centre’s number and Sally answered. Ted had just left to go to the Goat.

  “Right,” Miss Pink said, “what’s happening with you — quickly? Are the boys all right?”

  They weren’t. Two were missing and had not been seen since midday when they had become separated from the other members of their party in the blizzard. At that time they had been approaching the top of the high and extensive face called Craig yr Adar but the visibility had been so bad that the surviving boys said that they had seen no sign of the cliff. Another group, following the leadership of a boy with more sense, had come down from the ridge and passed underneath the cliff. Shouts had been heard soon after midday from somewhere around the middle of it.

  “And that’s where they’re concentrating,” Sally said, “along the foot of the face and up the gullies, but conditions are so atrocious that Rowland says it would be hopeless trying to look for anyone on top; you can’t stand on the ridge. The wind is gale force and there’s about six inches of new snow and it’s drifting.”

  “Is Lithgow in charge of the rescue?”

  “He’s vanished. He hasn’t been seen since eight o’clock this morning when he checked his patrol out of camp — except by the police who spoke to him for a moment but the weather was getting worse very quickly and he told them that he was going to call off the high-level route and get the parties down to the valley. He left to intercept the boys and that’s the last the police saw of him. None of the boys have seen him either. And that’s why they were all on the top today: because he didn’t reach them to tell them to come down.”

  “I wondered,” Miss Pink said. “Was he in the Centre’s Land Rover?”

  “Yes. They’ve not found that either. The police have been looking for it.”

  “All the other instructors are out, I suppose?”

  “They must be searching for the boys. The R.A.F. team’s out as well. Linda and I are holding the fort here, seeing the lads into hot baths and dry clothes as they come in, and we’ll make sure they’re fed, don’t worry.”

  Miss Pink tried the Goat again and Ted came on the line. He was full of Lithgow and she was about to interrupt when she realised he was telling her that the Centre’s Land Rover had been found — on the camp site below the ramp that led to the mine entrance: “They’re in the mines now. They think he might be reckoning on some grand gesture, like blowing up the lot —”

  “Can you get hold of Pryce?” she interrupted.

  “I wouldn’t try. He’s torn in two. The more men he can put in the mines, the more likely he is to flush Lithgow before he succeeds — and the more lives he’ll lose if the lot goes up.”

  “Lithgow isn’t in the mine,” she said, talking slowly and firmly: “The Land Rover is a red herring, so was sending the boys on the high-level route. He’s desperate to keep people away from Porth Bach. The explosives Lithgow’s interested in are in the Adams’ cottage, not in the mine. Lithgow’s down here; he tried to kill me.”

  She told him about the second murder and the shot fired at her below the Schooner: “He stole the second Land Rover to replace his own after he abandoned that in a place where it would put you all off the scent. Something’s planned for tonight; everything points to it. If you can’t get Pryce on the phone, tell them to get him on a radio. But you shouldn’t leave the hotel. Stay near the phone.”

  “They’ll take a devil of a lot of convincing —”

  “That’s your job,” she snapped, “but Mrs Wolkoff was killed down here and so was Bett Martin. Lithgow’s not blowing himself up in the mine, he’s going to try to save what’s at Porth Bach. If you get time to ring the Coastguard I think you’ll find that a converted torpedo boat is making for here too.”

  *

  It was after six o’clock and she was driving slowly eastwards on the main road and nearing the turn to Bethel when a police car passed at high speed going in the opposite direction. She turned and followed. So P.C. Edwards had thought the message worthy of instant transmission after all.

  The distance between the two vehicles increased. Miss Pink’s was an ancient Commer van which she had hired from the Glanaber butcher for five pounds — a price which, she reflected grimly, was probably its market value as scrap.

  She passed the lay-by where the track crossed the fields to Porth Bach. It was deserted, and so was a telephone kiosk some few hundred yards to the west. She made a mental note of that for future reference. Half a mile ahead she saw the police car turn on the Schooner track. With this kind of protection the dark country lost its forbidding aspect and became merely background again. Then she remembered. With stakes like a cottage full of explosives they’d be prepared to take very high risks, or would the risks have been anticipated and very carefully calculated?

  She turned left again and realised that she had lost the police. Surely they hadn’t gone to the Schooner? She drove carefully with her headlights full on, then she topped a gentle rise and saw tail lights some distance ahead. There was a considerable wind down here and pieces of rubbish and dead stalks were hurled against the windscreen.

  She passed the place where Charles had slept in her Austin, the point where the Jaguar left the road, and then, approaching the next passing-place, above Puffin Cove, she saw that she was overhauling the police car. She slowed down and realised that it was stationary.

  It had stopped with its doors open and the interior light on, and its headlights trained on the green Mini which she had last seen in the Glanaber constable’s drive. Now it was slewed across the road with its door wedged open by his body, the head towards her and the eyes open. In her own lights she saw the detective, Williams, crouched behind the big police car. He was staring over his shoulder at her and his face held the curiously blank expression, without fear or hope, of a man expecting death. She had seen that expression in the mountains and, as she identified it, realised that she was the cause. Williams didn’t know who was in the Commer.

  She switched off her lights and gradually, as her eyes became accustomed to that curious stage scene ahead: the side of the green Mini with the word POLICE on it, the tumbled body, and a small odd shape that was Williams’ feet silhouetted against the reflected light, she distinguished movement on the right of the police car, and she assumed that Pryce was there, perhaps with others.

  Gusts of wind shook her van and, picking gravel from the road, flung it like hail against the metal. Almost subconsciously she wondered how the wind could raise gravel from under the slush.

  There was a flash on the left of the road and the sound of a shot was followed by others, louder and heavier. With the windows closed against the wild fluctuations of the wind, the noise of gunfire was confused and all sense of direction was lost. Then the fusillade stopped and there was no movement on the offside of the police car. When the next shots came the participants seemed to have shifted to the right and she could see no feet against the light. What she did see was a fast-running form which came from the left to toss something in the car ahead and retreat so quickly it might have been an illusion except that now the car’s interior was a riot of flames which streamed back towards her in the teeth of the gale.

  She started her engine and by the light of the offside indicator reversed with her head out of the opened window, fully aware that only a few yards below the unfenced tarmac the cliffs dropped into Puffin Cove. The air was full of spray.

  A bullet crashed against some metal part of the van. She withdrew her head and turned her neck painfully, grateful that she could turn it at all. She switched on her headlights and saw that she hadn’t reversed far enough. She put out the lights and continued backwards, hearing the crash and roar of the sea below the wind.

  This time, when she switched on, the passing-place was in front. She turned carefu
lly (recalling the Jaguar with horror) but as fast as she could force the worn gears to mesh. Then she put her foot down and, except for the two turns, didn’t lift it until she reached the telephone kiosk on the main road.

  Ted had taken her at her word and remained at the Goat. She told him what was happening on the cliffs, that one police radio would have been put out of action and the other was now in flames, and she emphasised the need for speed in sending reinforcements. As she stopped talking, he said quickly: “You were right about the torpedo boat!” and cut the connection.

  She put down the receiver and thought that this was the end for her; there was nothing else she could do. She pushed open the door of the kiosk and stood in the blustery night thinking that she was at last safe from gunfire: everyone else was engaged elsewhere. Time was working on two planes: she had reached the anti-climax but the others were still concerned with the crescendo. She wondered where Dawson was.

  She looked towards the coast but she remembered that even in daylight the cliffs and cove would be hidden by slightly rising ground, although she fancied she could see a flickering light which might be the burning car.

  She could never do nothing in an emergency and now she started to stroll towards the stile where the footpath began. After a few steps she checked, turned back to the van and, taking the torch from her rucksack, adjusted it on her head.

  *

  The snowy fields were windswept and untenanted, for even the cows were in the barns. An occasional light showed in a farm but the night was too noisy for the dogs to hear her and none barked. There was no moon but above the coast the sky was clear and the combination of stars and snow resulted in a weak light against which she could see the tops of walls and the first of the battered thorns as she approached the ravine. She didn’t use her light.

  The wind was raging in the tops of the trees but as she climbed down from the last stile she couldn’t fail to hear a report and a vicious crack as, for the second time that day, she heard a bullet strike rock. She stood quite still and, in a lull in the wind, called to the darkness ahead:

  “I haven’t got a gun.”

  The first trees were black before her where they stepped down the slope but as she stared, part of the blackness detached itself and moved forward across the snow: a figure that carried something which could only be a rifle. The person, shorter and slighter than Miss Pink, stood beside her and a few feet away.

  “Move down into the trees,” Nell Harvey said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I can’t see your face,” Miss Pink said stupidly.

  “It’s a black stocking.”

  When they came to the wood the girl stopped the older woman at the first trees and herself moved a few steps farther. Thus she had the stile and Miss Pink almost in line. It was sheltered here and there was no sound but the low rush of wind and the creak of branches. Miss Pink turned towards the other and stared with fascination at the black void where a face should be.

  “Why did you miss twice?” she asked.

  “I didn’t aim at you here — and it was Slade on the cliff.”

  “Slade?” She absorbed this, then she asked ironically: “Wasn’t he aiming at me either?”

  “He meant to kill you but he isn’t a good marksman. No one else was available at the time.”

  “Why should he shoot to kill, but not you?”

  “He was meant to stop you getting help. We’d worked hard enough to keep the police in the mountains.”

  “How did you know we’d found the body?”

  “He’s been down here since soon after ten this morning. If it hadn’t been for the snowstorm he would have shot you both as you left Ogof Lladron. Then he thought he’d get you as you came up to the hotel and never guessed that Dawson would go back to Porth Bach and leave you to come ashore alone.”

  “So he did realise I was alone?”

  “Eventually, but he’s slow. Then, when he thought he’d killed you, he realised Dawson had put back to Porth Bach so he went there.”

  “Did he kill Dawson?”

  “No, he was too late there as well.” Her voice was expressionless and Miss Pink asked curiously:

  “Why do you — use him?”

  There was a long pause and she thought the girl was not going to answer. Perhaps she was considering Slade’s intrinsic worth, for at last she said:

  “He does what he’s told without question . . . which isn’t enough. Sometimes they have to act on their own initiative. Lithgow is better.” Then she asked with a hint of interest: “How did you get out of that place?”

  Miss Pink told her about the syncline.

  “That’s what I told Slade,” the girl remarked, “but he said that if you weren’t dead, you were injured, and anyway you were too old. Lithgow wouldn’t have made that mistake.”

  “How did Slade get to the hotel?”

  “Yes, transport has been difficult. It had to be left to chance but I was banking on someone being careless, and they were. Slade stole a truck first thing this morning while a farmer was getting his sheep down.”

  “And while he was stalking us along the cliffs, I suppose you and Lithgow were setting up that search operation?”

  “Not much setting up to do. Once the boys had been sent on the tops in that weather, trouble followed naturally.”

  “Were you on top at all?”

  “Oh yes. Lithgow and I were up there muddling things as much as we could — until it was time to leave. Then we met at the camp site and I brought him down here in the Mini.”

  The girl made a sudden gesture and Miss Pink flinched. She caught sight of a tiny glow. The other was looking at her watch.

  “Was it you in the mine?” Miss Pink asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you trying to kill us?”

  “No, just watching. If I’d shot you your bodies would have floated in the loom and I didn’t want to attract attention until we’d got the explosives away from the cove.”

  “But you were doing field-work with the boys while we were in the mine.”

  “The boys were on field-work. No one asked me where I was for an hour or so.”

  “Slade confused me,” Miss Pink said conversationally. “He was on the defensive when we met him on the estuary. I wondered at the time if it was him in the mine. What was he hiding?”

  “At the estuary?”

  “When the last canoe expedition was coming in.”

  “Of course. I sent him to warn Lithgow that they’d discovered the break-in at the mine. He was waiting for Lithgow when you arrived, using a puncture as an excuse to stay there. He could cope with Wright but after you came, he wouldn’t get a chance to speak to Lithgow privately, so he left. As it happened Lithgow had seen the Mini from the sea and was careful what he said when he came in.”

  The girl moved again and Miss Pink felt that time was getting short but she wanted an answer to her original question.

  “Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t necessary.”

  “You mean I’m no longer dangerous?”

  “Not to us.” Was there a hint of amusement in the cool voice?

  “It’s nearly time to go,” Nell said.

  “You don’t kill when it’s unnecessary then?” Miss Pink pressed.

  “No. Why should we? We’re not wanton.”

  “‘Wanton’,” Miss Pink repeated. “How are these explosives to be used?”

  “Not wantonly. They’re much too valuable. They’ll be used very selectively — and only after careful discussion — where they’ll cause the most damage.”

  “To morale?”

  “Possibly.”

  “In tower blocks of flats, for instance?”

  There was a sharp movement in the gloom but when the girl spoke again she sounded tired.

  “There are innocent people — and children — being repressed and starved and tortured, systematically, everywhere. Are you worried about them? Don’t be a hypocrite, Miss Pi
nk.”

  “I thought you didn’t care about world problems. You seemed so objective about them.”

  “Problems,” the girl repeated thoughtfully. “Yes, I gave up ‘problems’ some time ago. They become unbearable, and you go mad — or kill yourself, like Cary Paterson.”

  “‘A weak character’, you said.”

  “Yes; if it’s so bad that you feel a compulsion to take your own life, why not channel that energy outwards, towards the people who are making the problems?”

  “Capitalists?”

  “No, Miss Pink, don’t make me out a Communist; they’re part of the established order too.”

  “Are you anarchists?”

  “No. We put our faith in a strong government.”

  “I see. You’re going to overthrow the world order so that you can set up another in its place. What will be different about it?”

  “This one will be better.”

  “Founded on violence and the lives of innocent people. What’s the difference between killing babies in Vietnam and killing them in Ireland?”

  “You’re bringing sentiment into it.”

  “My God!” Miss Pink exclaimed, and Nell said hurriedly:

  “Hypocrisy, I mean. We’re honest.”

  “I wonder why you’re doing this,” Miss Pink murmured in all sincerity, “what the basic motive is.”

  “We have to survive — any way.”

  “Why can’t you do it politically?”

  “We’d never get the votes.”

  “It’s Fascism. You know that, don’t you?”

  There was no reply. A branch cracked in the ravine, or it could have been a distant shot.

  “Time to go,” Nell said, “you first. Don’t use your light or they’ll shoot at it.”

  *

  It wasn’t hard to see under the trees, for the path was a white trail. They came to Mrs Wolkoff’s cottage and, at that moment, heard more shots ahead.

  They stopped and in the ensuing silence Miss Pink whispered: “It was you in the woods that morning. You saw me with her.”