by Gwen Moffat
“I told you we went down to look at the mollies,” Sadie interrupted: “We’re not climbers though.”
“It could be only one person,” Miss Pink said sadly.
MacKenzie nodded. “Only one cared enough,” he agreed. “Aye, he was a bad lot, that Stark.” His eyes rested thoughtfully on Rita. “We might any of us have done it but only one had the heart.”
“I could have,” Rita protested: “But my God! — them whales!”
“Were they there?” Miss Pink asked innocently.
They erupted in speech. Only Ian sat silent and amazed as everyone volunteered information. Jessie’s hand, knobbly with arthritis, with a big rhinestone winking in front of a knuckle, clutched convulsively at Miss Pink’s tweedy knee. The flood subsided.
“. . . never once opened his great big mouth,” she heard from Jessie.
She looked at Murdo. “Will you say it again, Mr MacLeod?”
“If the wimmen will keep quiet I will. No wonder ye couldna hear. Went round him like cattle, they did: touched him — that was the bull, like a kind of escort, an’ he had to go so slow, gettin’ the corp back so as not to make them angry. Its clothes was all mixed up with the rope, you understand, and in the water, with them there, he couldna find how to release it —”
“’Twas a wee screw,” MacKenzie put in: “He had to unscrew the clip thing and then cast the body loose again.”
“Because,” Miss Pink elaborated, “he expected the whales would —” She stopped and her glance flickered towards Rita.
“I been through all this,” the girl said. “He were dead long before. It meant nothing — except that if only the whales had — well, you know — then he’d have got away with it. No one would have found out, because Pinch would have sunk — and them slings too — and they wouldn’t ’a known where or how he was killed. It would ’a been a couple of climbing accidents, wouldn’t it?”
“Written off,” Miss Pink murmured.
“He didn’t mean to kill that one,” Elspeth told her, trying to keep the record straight. “We’re sorry about the other but Stark had to go, didn’t he?”
“Because of the drugs?” Miss Pink asked, not looking at Sadie.
“That were me,” Rita said. “He tried to make Sadie smoke but she wouldn’t because she’d never smoked anything, see? But when she told me, I told Hector. But drugs was only one thing,” she added darkly.
Ian was staring at the girls in horror but Miss Pink looked at the brother. He nodded at her as if she had asked a question and she knew that Stark was killed less because he had offered Sadie cannabis or seduced her or killed her cat than because he’d made her unhappy. That left only the mechanics of discovery.
“It was not so much the climbing that clinched it,” she went on, “but the whales. It had to be someone who believed they attacked human beings because that was the only reason why the body should have been cast adrift. Mr Perry, being a medical man, could never have believed that Pincher was still alive — nor could Miss West; she’s a woman who remains level-headed in emergencies. She wasn’t shocked — in fact, she wasn’t there. But if it was someone who thought that the whales would attack a body, it follows that he had tremendous courage to swim out to it.”
Then Hector laughed. “Ach, no, ma’am — you’re quite wrong there; I was so frightened I could hardly move, you’d have thought I had diver’s boots on my feet — and I had no clothes on, mind; I’d left them on the beach: the other side of the cave. An’ when I saw his fin go over, flat with the sea, so I knew he was turnin’ on his side an’ his mouth comin’ up — I thought well now, could I be gettin’ back to the stack before he took a second gulp out o’ me — an’ there was the others just beyond him. An’ I turned my back on him an’ tried to make my legs small an’ then I felt him: like a dog’s nose under water it was, an’ hard things scrapin’: nibblin’ with his teeth like a big dog playin’. An’ here I was thinkin’ this was the end — an’ it went on so long, but he never even scratched me.”
“God!” Ian breathed: “So they are harmless.”
“He didn’t know that!” Rita cried angrily.
“What I can’t understand,” Miss Pink pressed, consumed by curiosity, “is why you didn’t leave the body on the rope. Did you think the whales would be more likely to attack if it were floating free?”
“Well, you see, I didna think of the whales at all in the first place. I needed to loosen the corp so that it would float away and not be showin’ where Pincher fell off. I wanted it thought they both fell from the Head. Folk would accept one climbing accident, wouldn’t they? But not two separate ones in different places — and two top climbers killed. You’d all start thinkin’: ‘queer thing, that: two men killed in two different accidents — maybe both wasn’t accidents?’ I did think it strange the whales hadna started on him, but then there was the rope, an’ he was floatin’. But I didna care about the whales where he was concerned until I saw that he was holdin’ them bits of string and I couldna get them out of his fingers. Then I prayed that the whales an’ the fishes an the crabs would start as soon as he sank.”
“But the rope,” Miss Pink insisted: “Weren’t you afraid that it would give you away?”
“I couldna get it down from the overhangs but I didna worry. Mr Perry got his rope snagged once an’ they went back next day and got it down with everybody co-operatin’ on more ropes. ’Tis a common occurrence, I thought; folk would be thinkin’ it had nothin’ to do with Stark and Pincher bein’ killed in a fall from the Head — and indeed, until Pincher was washed up, that’s what you were thinkin’. It was the storm was my undoin’, bringin’ him back like that, poor soul.”
“What are you going to do?” Miss Pink asked.
“Why, nothin’, ma’am. ’Tis all over.” He poured himself a little whisky. “Ian is goin’ to stay in Scamadale now, an’ the others will be teachin’ him what he doesn’t know already. Sadie will be lookin’ after him.”
“Ach, I’ll look after him,” his sister echoed, and Miss Pink saw that this was Hector’s way of saying that Ian was to see that the girl came to no harm.
“This is all going so smoothly,” she said, “that I can’t help feeling — wondering why you are giving yourself up. I assume you are going to do that?” she asked carefully.
He didn’t answer her question directly. “It would have been all right,” he told her, “but for Mr Perry. He was after tellin’ me he was goin’ away. I knew what that meant — and you’ve confirmed it. You see, the police knows it was murder and not an accident, so they’ve got to have someone for it, but that one’s me. I made the mistake.”
“Oh, you think it was a mistake.”
“Of course.” He regarded her with astonishment.
“I had the impression that everyone, but most particularly yourself, thought that Stark was — not fit —”
“Oh, Stark! There was no mistake with him. No, ma’am. I mean, me bein’ so sure Stark would be the one to fall off the Old Man. If it had been him, and Pincher was spared, we’d all say it was an accident: the nail thing comin’ out because it wasn’t put in firm like. ’Twouldn’t be no good you sayin’ it was firm because all these —” his glance went round the room, “— would be sayin’ I was in the fields with the sheep.”
“But you could have said it was an accident anyway! No one could have proved the piton was loosened, nor even that the knot in the fixed rope was undone by hand. There is no evidence against Mr Perry. There is no case.”
“But Pincher was killed.”
“It’s Pinch, you see,” Rita put in earnestly, and the crofters nodded in unison: “He thinks he’s got to pay for Pinch.”
The collie growled in its throat and they stiffened. As Hector stood up and they all watched him, Miss Pink heard a car engine. He drew a small and battered suit case from under the table.
“Goodbye, ma’am,” he said, and held out his hand.
She followed as he went along the passage and opened th
e door. Bell was on the step. He stood aside but checked when he saw Miss Pink. The police car waited on the track, its side lights burning and the engine running.
“How did you find out?” she asked rudely.
“We didn’t; he came to us.”
And they’d let him have his farewell party. She stared at Hector, standing huge in the moonlight, the ridiculous little case at the end of a long arm. He put his hand on her shoulder and patted her.
“Don’t worry,” he said, and gestured towards the cottage: “They’ll be all right. You just be gettin’ up to the House now an’ tell Mr Perry how it is. An’ tell him I’ll be back.”
*
She watched the tail lights recede through the dunes and went on watching until they’d climbed the headwall and disappeared, then she became aware of the others crowding behind her in the paddock — and across the water came a long and ululating cry, infinitely moving.
“The seals is back.”
“Their voices don’t carry so far.”
“What is it, Ian?”
“Don’t ask me; I’m only a scientist. Ask MacLeod. It’s his grandfather’s cousin’s woman, isn’t it, Sadie?”
“You know it is, so why do you ask? Come on, he said we’d to go round the sheeps soon as he’d gone.”
A SHORT TIME TO LIVE
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
In this story Sandale and its houses are imaginary, as are all the characters, who have no relation to any specific people, alive or dead.
Chapter One
It was two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon in November and the London-Glasgow express was making good time as it bored through the urban sprawl between Liverpool and Manchester. The fog was thin but it had brought an early dusk to the north country; there were lights here and there in houses, more in offices, and street lamps hung like tangerines in the opal gloom.
The train slipped through a station and past rows of dark brick cottages with outdoor lavatories in grimy yards and lines of nappies limp in the sodden air. In the restaurant car Lucy Fell played with the stem of her wineglass and watched the reflections of her rings in the window. Across the table Denis Noble remarked expansively, ‘I should have ordered champagne.’
‘We had champagne on the way up.’
‘We’re celebrating again—aren’t we? Going south it was in anticipation of a lovely time, and now we should celebrate an achievement, right?’
She smiled at him and her round and rather large face glowed. The green eyes sparkled and her expression was so infectious that Noble, a ponderous and fleshy man with anxious eyes, looked suddenly boyish and eager.
‘All relationships have their ups and downs,’ she murmured. ‘Thank God we’re not humdrum, darling. Chaps are bound to feel their oats sometimes. After all, she was very young. . . .’ She returned to contemplation of the interminable terraces, her profile classical in the light. She had good skin and high cheekbones. ‘And exciting,’ she added.
‘You can say that again!’ He shifted in his seat. ‘And I don’t mean it as a compliment. No, Lucy, that’s my last oat, I’m afraid; I’m an old man.’ He reached across the table and captured her hand. ‘You’ll have to take care of me from now on.’ He caught her expression and his eyes were contrite. ‘I know that’s a lot to ask after I’ve made such a fool of myself, not to say hurting you, but at least I’ve found my level. If I hadn’t succumbed to that little tart, I’d have gone on wanting her for the rest of my life.’
She showed no surprise. Her eyes lingered on his thick hair where there was only a suspicion of grey in the black, on the broad face sweating gently after the food and wine, on the wide shoulders and the Savile Row suit.
‘You’re still a very beautiful woman,’ he said. Her eyes slipped as if gear wheels missed a cog. He went on happily, ‘And you can still make me madly jealous. You didn’t spend much time with me in town but I suppose that was deliberate: wanted to put me in my place, eh?’
‘I was shopping.’
‘The bills told me that, my sweet.’ He smiled to show that no sting was intended and surveyed her costume with interest. She was wearing a silk blouse with a woollen skirt and she’d wound silk scarves round her head. The ensemble, including long suède boots, was in deep shades of green and red and she looked like a German film star playing at being a peasant.
‘You don’t look a day over thirty, my sweet.’
She shrugged. ‘Flatterer.’ She fingered the muscles under her jaw where they were starting to slacken. She was forty-four. ‘This outfit set me back a packet,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll have to shelve the idea of a Datsun for the time being.’
‘Why, how much have you spent?’
‘I don’t know. About three hundred perhaps.’
‘On that!’
‘Darling, you like it.’ She shot him a glance. ‘And I paid for this. Besides, there’s a cape—and these boots are gorgeous—’ Feeling went out of her eyes and left them glacial. She looked at the last of her wine. ‘Do I have to justify my spending?’ she asked quietly.
‘Of course not. It’s just that I like to buy your clothes, you know that.’ Her eyes narrowed a fraction. He rattled on: ‘I wanted to give you a cheque for the Datsun: to make up the difference when you traded in the Jensen, but I’m not sure whether I can see my way . . . not to both, you know.’ Again his eyes went over her outfit and he looked deeply concerned. He wasn’t thinking of the cost of clothes nor of the woman wearing them—and she didn’t remind him of where he’d been spending his money recently; he was thinking about his business and the state of the economy.
Now it was she who leaned across the table intimately. ‘You’re going to have a brandy,’ she told him. ‘Champagne would have been an anti-climax anyway: going home; we’ll have a bottle tomorrow night instead. Here’s the steward.’ She sat back smiling vaguely while Noble saw to the brandy, then she leaned forward again. ‘I’ll sell a ring,’ she said with an air of conspiracy.
He was shocked. ‘Those rings are an investment. You’re not to sell one to buy something that’s going to depreciate. I won’t allow it.’
‘You didn’t give them to me, Denny.’
‘But nor would Edward allow you to sell them if he were alive, and he expected me to watch your business affairs, you know that. He said to me, when he knew the end was near—’
‘Yes, yes, darling. I won’t sell a ring then; I’ll sell the bread cupboard, or something. Quentin was suggesting—’
‘You haven’t told Quentin!’
‘Told him what?’
‘That you’re short of money.’
‘Hell, Denny! Everyone’s short.’
‘Not you; not while I’m alive. You shouldn’t have told Quentin about your affairs; what will he—’
The steward came with the brandy. When he’d gone, she said softly, ‘Stop bullying me, Denis.’
‘You’d set your heart on that Datsun.’
‘And I’ve spent it on clothes. That is, I’ve broken into what I was—’
‘How much do you need for the car?’
She licked her lips and looked guilty. He was very red in the face. ‘Tell me, Lucy. Five hundred? A thousand?’
‘Well, more than five hundred. . . .’
‘I don’t know whether I could manage a thousand anyway,’ he grumbled, reaching for his cheque book, unscrewing the gold cap of his pen. ‘Would eight hundred do?’
She nodded. ‘It will be ample, darling. You’re sweet.’
> He signed the cheque and grinned at her, then his face changed. ‘What’s wrong?’ He proffered it abstractedly.
She put it loose in her bag. ‘Thank you, darling.’ She looked out of the window. ‘I was wondering what might be in the post when I get home.’
‘Are you worried about something?’
‘Not really. Are you?’
‘I don’t understand. I should be worried about my mail? About the factory, d’you mean?’
‘No, I didn’t mean the factory.’ She sounded a little tired. ‘Denny, have you had any anonymous letters?’
He considered the question at its face value. ‘Yes, we’ve had a few: about employees, you know, almost certainly written by other—’ He stared at her, astonished. ‘You mean, in the dale? You’ve had an anonymous letter?’ She nodded, her eyes wide. ‘What did it say?’ He was grim.
Her face expressed disgust and she tasted her brandy before she answered. ‘It was filthy. It accused me of . . . I’m not sure; it was worded so crudely and written by an illiterate. . . . There was something about a baby and burying it in the garden: the garden at Thornbarrow! But whether it meant a live baby or a foetus I couldn’t say. And I don’t care,’ she added.
‘Nasty.’ He was frowning but then his face cleared and he grinned. ‘They could hardly accuse me of the same crime.’
‘They could—in conjunction.’
‘I didn’t think of that. So you think it’s someone who disapproves of us?’
