Miss Pink Investigates Part One

by Gwen Moffat

‘Well, I wouldn’t want to think too much about the kind of person who was compelled to write letters like that.’

  ‘Did you think it was Peta?’

  ‘Peta!’ She stared at him. ‘This person was illiterate,’ she added on a lower note.

  ‘Illiterates can’t write.’

  ‘Semi-literate then. Why did you think of Peta as soon as I mentioned it? I never thought—but, of course, she does hate me—and there was that breakdown a few years ago. Poor girl, she really is in love with you, darling, in her fashion. How fortunate you managed to extricate yourself before—well, before any harm was done. You ought to be nice to her when we get back; she could be a bit tricky if she’s hostile.’

  ‘If she’s writing anonymous letters, I’ll avoid her like the plague. She’s gone quite haywire, you know.’

  ‘It’s not important. I only asked because I wondered if she’d—if you’d had a letter as well and were keeping quiet but were worried all the same. You’ve got enough on your plate with the factory and—everything.’ She shivered. ‘Anonymous letters aren’t the kind of thing one wants to keep to oneself. The letter doesn’t matter, but no one can be easy with that kind of mind living near us, perhaps even in the same dale.’

  Chapter Two

  At five o’clock on the day after Lucy Fell returned from London, George Harper glanced across the beck and saw a light in her kitchen window and a faint glimmer in Rumney’s cow-house. If she’d started cooking that meant she would have fetched her milk and he didn’t have to run into her. He shrugged on his sheepskin, took a torch and the aluminium can and crept down his garden path with caution. The paving stones glistened wickedly and he’d already found to his cost how hazardous slates could be with a veneer of frost.

  Sunset lingered above the fells but the dale was black as the pit except for the lights across the beck. Upstream the line of the headwall was humped like a herd of elephants across a fading backcloth and an owl called far out towards Dalehead.

  He went down the iron-hard track and crossed the packhorse bridge where the water was unusually subdued; the bogs were frozen above a thousand feet and the level of the streams had dropped.

  He came stealthily round Lucy Fell’s cottage assessing the stillness in the hamlet. There was no street lamp. Then a bucket rang on stone, a cow coughed, and Rumney’s voice came from a byre where the door stood open on a dim interior. The voice was cultured—for the shank-end of a Cumbrian dale.

  ‘Come up there, Isbell; move over.’

  ‘’Evening, Zeke.’ Harper spoke quietly so that he wouldn’t alarm the cattle.

  Inside the cow-house a hurricane lamp gave as much light as a five-watt bulb. He could just make out the cows’ rumps with their incredible hip joints but he couldn’t see Zeke, only hear the twin streams of milk as they sang in an empty bucket.

  ‘Good evening.’ The disembodied voice came from the direction of the middle cow and Harper moved along and stared at its flank. Now he could just discern the gleam of Rumney’s cheek. ‘I’m running late,’ the voice went on, ‘I’ve been getting the sheep down.’

  ‘I don’t mind waiting,’ Harper said. ‘Have you finished the sheep?’

  There was a long pause during which he listened to the cows masticating. Milk started to froth in the bucket.

  ‘Not altogether,’ Rumney said at last. ‘There’s a few missing.’

  ‘Where would they be?’

  ‘Depends.’ The milker’s face turned to the other but the eyes remained shadowed. The voice continued as if answering an academic question but with the Cumbrian creeping in as it did when Rumney became emotional. ‘If they went last night they could still be in t’slaughter-house, but if they be gone longer, they could be in them lyle packets tha picks out of t’freezer in t’supermarket.’

  ‘Oh.’ Harper regarded the pale moon-face fixedly. ‘Is that kind of thing common round here?’

  ‘Not as tha might call common.’

  ‘Have you any idea—? Or don’t you like to make a guess?’

  ‘I would prefer to speculate on a certainty,’ Rumney said drily and with a return to his normal accent. ‘There could be repercussions if one put a load of shot up the wrong arse.’

  ‘The Law’s no help?’

  ‘The Law? Does the Law repay you for your shepherding, for the work you’ve put into training your dogs, and the lambing, and building up your flock? Are you covered even for market value? I don’t know about the Law.’ The face turned away and the voice seemed to come through fur. ‘We’ve allus been the Law,’ Rumney said.

  Harper cocked his head. ‘Someone’s singing.’

  ‘It’ll be Arabella; well, there’s enough milk for the two of you. You don’t want it cooled tonight, do you? I’ll finish Isbell and you can take what I’ve got here.’

  A figure came and stood in the doorway, cheeks and eyes shining, breath steaming in the lamplight.

  ‘Who’s that?’ The girl peered at Harper, her accent charmingly American. ‘A glow-worm would give a better light than this, Uncle Zeke.’

  ‘Wrong season for glow-worms. It’s George Harper.’

  ‘Oh, good evening, Mr Harper. Isn’t it a lovely night? Are we all waiting for milk?’

  ‘Isbell’s holding back,’ Rumney complained. ‘She’s a cow that likes all the attention. You could do something for me, Harper, while you’re waiting.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘There’s a pile of eggs in the end manger; Arabella will give them to you. I promised them to Lucy Fell: guinea fowl eggs. If you take them to Thornbarrow you could earn a sherry for your pains.’

  ‘I find Mrs Fell a little domineering,’ Harper said doubtfully.

  ‘You don’t have to be afraid of her,’ Arabella told him. ‘She’s interested only in rich gentlemen. She went after Uncle Zeke when they first came here but soon dropped him when she realised all his assets were in land and stock. Those gorgeous rings are far more portable than cows.’

  ‘She was a married woman when she came here!’ Rumney protested.

  ‘I’m not saying she’s promiscuous,’ she said earnestly, ‘but she’s a lady who’d always have an insurance policy, isn’t she? And Mr Fell wasn’t a fit man, you could see that.’

  ‘How do you know? You weren’t here. He died three years back.’

  ‘Grannie told me.’

  ‘Your grandmother gossips. At eighty-five—’

  ‘Gossip’s not amusement, Uncle Zeke.’ Arabella was grave. ‘It’s an essential part of social life.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It keeps up the moral values of a community by picking out the deviants and criticising their behaviour.’

  ‘Are you suggesting Lucy Fell’s a deviant?’

  ‘No—o.’ She considered this carefully. ‘Perhaps not; the healthy, intelligent courtesan has always been respected. The Victorians said she took the pressure off respectable ladies. There’s a number of unattached men in this dale,’ she added darkly.

  There was a pause. ‘She frightens me,’ Harper admitted eventually. ‘I hide below the window-sill when I see her coming. She’s been across to my place, you know.’

  ‘She always takes something,’ Arabella assured him. ‘A pie or a jar of preserve: that’s a courtship display. Are you a misogynist, Mr Harper?’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Arabella!’ Rumney broke in. ‘We’ve no idea what you’re on about! And suppose Lucy Fell came up for extra milk?’

  ‘And heard us talking? Uncle Zeke, if you think Lucy doesn’t know her own limitations by this time, you’ve learned nothing from the relationship.’

  ‘I haven’t had a relationship with her.’

  ‘Everyone relates. We’re all relating in this cow-shed. You relate to Isbell.’

  ‘Couldn’t you take the eggs to Thornbarrow,’ he pleaded, ‘and come back and tell us what Lucy Fell says about relating?’

  ‘I’ll do that some day but right now I have to make a caper sauce for the mu
tton so I must take the milk back, and if you don’t hurry with that cow, Uncle Zeke, the mutton will go dry waiting for you.’

  ‘There are two more cows yet, and the eggs to go to Thornbarrow.’

  ‘Mr Harper will take the eggs on his way home.’

  Rumney filled their cans with the warm milk. Something insubstantial as a shadow slid over Harper’s feet and he jumped.

  ‘Drat that pawky cat,’ Rumney muttered. ‘Always stands underneath when I’m pouring milk.’

  *

  Thornbarrow and Sandale House, where the Rumneys lived, and their buildings, formed a kind of street. Harper, a small bucket of eggs cradled in his arms, dangling the milk-can from three fingers, stepped gingerly down the cobbles towards the bridge and round the back of Thornbarrow, having difficulty with the gate. After the darkness between the barns, Lucy Fell’s kitchen light made her garden look naked: the rocks shining with frost crystals and her great yews too black to be real. He glanced upstream at his herd of elephants. They were still there.

  His boots made no sound on the flagged path. He knocked on the back door and someone shouted to him to come in. He found and depressed the thumb latch and entered a stone passage. On his right was a dim room with the doorway to the kitchen in the opposite wall. He could see the end of a table and a stove.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Harper. I’ve brought your eggs from Zeke.’

  He glanced round the living room. The oak table was set for dinner with glass and silver, and two red candles stood in pewter sticks. Only one standard lamp was lit. Firelight flickered on cream walls and on a magnificent bread cupboard at least six feet long and stretching from floor to ceiling. The date on it was 1649 and it formed the partition between the room and the kitchen.

  ‘I can’t come,’ she called, still not showing herself. ‘I’m piping.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Come here, man, and stop shouting.’

  He removed his boots in the passage and crossed the carpet: a spare but unremarkable middle-aged man with restless eyes. Lucy Fell looked up from the kitchen table and smiled. She wore a flame-coloured velvet gown with a butcher’s apron protecting it and her tawny hair was looped in soft wings to a pleat at the back of her head.

  ‘You’re a lovely man,’ she said when she saw the eggs, ‘to come all this way on a bitter night for a poor widow woman.’

  ‘I’ve only come from Zeke’s cow-house. It was on my way actually.’

  Her mouth drooped. ‘You need a drink.’

  She had been piping cream round a flan. The big wooden table was cluttered with the equipment and discarded trimmings of a luxurious meal. The smells—of rich gravy, spices, some kind of roasting bird—were delicious. She put the flan in the refrigerator, washed her hands and went to the bread cupboard where the drinks were. He accepted a whisky.

  ‘How much would it be worth?’ he asked, looking at the cupboard.

  ‘You like it, don’t you? I saw you were interested when you came to my party. I don’t know what it would fetch. I’m not selling.’

  ‘Just a thought.’

  He noticed that she wasn’t drinking. There was a bottle of red wine on the table, and champagne glasses. His eyes were expressionless. Places were laid only for two people.

  ‘You must come and have a meal one night,’ she remarked, watching him. ‘Only a few friends, not a big party.’

  ‘Mm. I’ll do that.’ She waited. ‘I like this place,’ he went on heavily. ‘Tonight it’s very remote: us all on our own up here, just a handful of houses. Very grim, some people would think: bleak.’ He gestured towards the table. ‘I like this; it’s homely.’

  Her fine eyebrows had risen. ‘I don’t know why you ever left London if you feel like that.’

  He looked away. ‘It gets a bit too much sometimes.’

  ‘The rat race?’ she asked ironically.

  He nodded. ‘Everything: noise, hurry, fumes; you never know where you are. You don’t stay long in London yourself when you go there, do you?’

  ‘That’s different; my home’s here, but London’s so exciting! Sandale must seem incredibly dull to you. Besides, there’s your work. . . . But I forgot: you’re retired; you made tools of some kind. . .? What do you find to do over at Burblethwaite in these long evenings?’

  ‘Most nights I fall asleep in front of the television. Business had been difficult for me for some time and after all the worry of the past year I don’t feel up to much. I’m glad of the rest—which is why I came here, of course. I seem to spend more and more time in bed as I get older.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I’m nearly a pensioner, you know. What do you do in the evenings?’

  ‘There’s the Women’s Institute, the Red Cross, lectures in Carnthorpe and Carlisle; other people’s parties, planning the garden for next year, cooking for the freezer; it can take a whole evening to make one course if you’re interested in that kind of thing. There are books and television and listening to music. My life is quite full.’

  ‘We’re both self-sufficient then. I suppose people would have to be, in a place like this; they’ve always had to make their own amusements.’

  She smiled a trifle stiffly and the telephone started to ring. It stood on a table by a curtained window and she crossed the room with long strides, her skirt swaying and catching the firelight.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked pleasantly, not giving her number, looking past her visitor to the fire. Harper stared at his whisky intently.

  ‘No, he isn’t—’ Her tone was suddenly harsh and she turned her back, gripping the edge of the table so hard that the knuckles gleamed white. A voice shrilled at the other end of the line then stopped as if the speaker had choked. ‘I’ll give him your message,’ Lucy said with elaborate contempt. ‘He may call you back.’

  She put the receiver down carefully and shivered, but the room was warm. Taking a marquetry box from the cupboard, she came back to the fire and offered him a cigarette. In silence he lit hers, then his own. It tasted stale. Her hands were steady but she watched him through the smoke and her eyes held speculation.

  ‘Zeke tells me he’s missing some sheep,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘He thinks someone rustled them—is that the word?’

  ‘Surely you rustle cattle; you steal sheep. People used to be hanged for sheep stealing, I believe.’

  ‘Zeke said something about shooting the chap if he could catch him.’

  ‘The Rumneys are a law unto themselves. When Zeke says they’ve lived here for five hundred years you get the feeling he means it personally. He doesn’t distinguish between his ancestors and the present generations. Grannie Rumney’s the same; they’re all damned autocratic.’

  ‘Arabella’s an odd girl; I can’t get her measure at all.’

  She shot a glance at him. ‘She’s a real Rumney; Grannie says that’s why Dolly Banks—that’s Arabella’s mother—why her husbands keep running away: even Americans can’t take a Rumney bossing them about.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Dolly Banks has got an eye for the main chance though: rich husbands and enormous alimonies and no hard feelings. Grannie says Arabella will come into a fortune when she’s twenty-one.’

  ‘It’s nice to have money.’ He was wistful.

  ‘Another drink? No? Well, it’s nice to be able to offer guests a drink; imagine, if you could only afford beer and instant coffee! And fancy making shin beef and potatoes the focal point of a dinner.’ She glanced at her table complacently. ‘I don’t want to be rich like Dolly and Arabella but I’d find poverty rather tiresome. Subsistence level is good enough for me providing I’ve got the basic necessities.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t have to sell the bread cupboard yet.’

  Harper’s eyes rested on her rings and he blinked slowly. ‘I understand Arabella is going to start a pony trekking business in the dale.’

  She gave a snort of derision. ‘That’s Jackson Wren’s idea.’

  ‘Wren’s behind it, is he?’

  ‘Well,
it’s obvious. Jackson, who is not one of the world’s workers, as you must have noticed, would like to start trekking but he hasn’t any money. Arabella is an expert on horses, has access to a lot of money, and is fascinated by Jackson. It seems a shaky foundation for business but I doubt if it will ever get off the ground because one of the Rumneys, Zeke or Grannie or even Dolly, will put their foot down as soon as Arabella tries to transfer money from the States. What’s your interest in the Rumneys anyway?’

  ‘In Arabella,’ he corrected. ‘She’s so—foreign—for Sandale, and then I’d seen her with Wren and wondered. . . . And then tonight she came for the milk while I was talking to Zeke, and she seemed such a well-educated girl. Wren’s not up to much, is he? Father a Council worker?’

  She was amused. ‘You’re a snob. At a guess I’d say the relationship is the usual one between a girl and a virile man.’ She was perched on the arm of an easy chair and now she regarded him with a lack of expression that possessed its own significance. ‘Some of us still make our own amusements,’ she murmured. ‘Now how about that other half?’ She rose and took his glass. Their fingers touched.

  He got up quickly. ‘I must go; I left my stew on the gas, and you’re expecting company. I just brought the eggs. . . .’

  He was retreating towards the passage as he spoke. He thrust his feet into his gum boots, picked up his milk-can and fumbled for the latch. ‘See you,’ he threw back over his shoulder, testing the slates of the path for rime. Lucy’s expression was strained.

  Chapter Three

  Noble was late, and in a bad mood. His face softened a little at the sight of Lucy’s table but obviously he wasn’t happy. He’d been drinking, too, which was unusual. On Friday nights he had been accustomed to come straight from the factory to Thornbarrow, not even calling at his own home at the mouth of the dale. True, there had been a disruption in this routine over the past few weeks but he might have been expected to return to the old arrangement without diversions. He knew this.

  ‘I called and had a drink with Sarah,’ he explained. He had to justify the drink anyway; she would smell the whisky on his breath.