by Gwen Moffat
‘Wren? He wrote the letters?’
‘Who else? Who is left? There’s Quentin Bright and his wife—but you vouch for them.’ She paused and he didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Then there’s Denis Noble. Why should he blackmail his wife and his mistresses? He could get all the money he wanted legitimately from Sarah, far more than the hundred pounds she’s paid to the blackmailer since September. As for Mossop, Sarah and Lucy, they are all victims. That leaves you and your family, and Wren. And the Brights.’
‘And Harper.’
‘Oh no, not Harper!’ He was surprised at her assurance. ‘He’s got no drive,’ she added lamely, ‘his only passion is for his daughter, besides—’ now she was on firmer ground, ‘—he just didn’t have the local knowledge.’
At this point they were interrupted by Arabella to say that lunch was ready. During the meal conversation was general but Miss Pink caught a speculative look in Rumney’s eye and knew that he would want to spend the afternoon in discussion. Imagining his proximity in that small warm office she panicked; she felt it would be impossible to remain silent about Caroline’s disappearance all afternoon. Was there nothing she could do at least until milking time? If she shut herself in her room they would come inquiring to see if she were unwell. Almost aggressively she announced that it was essential she get some fresh air; she would go for a walk.
After lunch Rumney stood in the porch with her and sniffed the wind. She took a torch from her rucksack and put it in the pouch pocket of her cagoule.
‘You’re going to the caves?’ he asked disapprovingly.
‘What caves? I’m going up to Dalehead to look at the barn. It’s cruck-framed, isn’t it?’
‘That’s so. I thought you were going to Shivery Knott; it has a cave system, rather like the Rat Hole in Borrowdale.’
‘It would be better underground than outside on a day like this,’ she muttered, feeling overwhelmed by water and the noise it made, and the need to get away from him before she blurted out the whole story. ‘But I’ll have a brisk walk and be back for tea.’
White water was everywhere. A beck rushed down the outrake and the erstwhile pasture on the river bank was swamp. The track wound between long whalebacks of moraines where rain swept across their gravelly slopes with a sound like sleet. Far above, cloud drifted across the face of High Cat Crag.
A roof gleamed on the other side of the river: the barn which was all that was left of the former farmstead of Dalehead. The house was in ruins: two gable ends above a tumble of slates and rotted timbers.
The bridge was humped, and only the hump kept it clear of the water. Upstream of it the path climbed in zig-zags to Sheepbone Moss and Rannerdale. Water was pouring off the plateau and down the headwall in long white cascades and the noise was awe-inspiring.
She trudged across the bridge and splashed towards the barn. It was still in good condition, but no doors hung in the wide entrance on the stream side. She would have expected to find stray sheep sheltering but the structure appeared empty. The floor was composed of droppings, muddy towards the entrance, and in the mud the marks of gumboots going in but not emerging.
She stopped and stared past the great arched crucks to the farthest recesses. In places daylight showed where a slate had slipped but the afternoon was too gloomy for the holes to come anywhere near exposing the interior. Then something moved and there was a click of metal, audible because so alien in this place.
Her hand went to her pocket and found the torch. She brought it out, feeling her hand catch on the wet plastic, taking a last-ditch comfort in the weight of the heavy rubber cylinder. She pressed the knob.
A hooded figure in waterproofs stood against the end wall, its hand in its own pouch pocket and, at its feet, a bundle of what looked like clothing.
She asked coldly, ‘Am I disturbing you?’
‘Why, it’s Miss Pink!’ It was Daniel Cole. He stepped towards her exclaiming happily: ‘What a romantic place to meet you again! What are you doing here?’
‘Stretching my legs.’ She wasn’t impressed. She had been frightened, had summoned all her reserves to cope with the fear, and now must endure a fulsome anti-climax. ‘I didn’t know you were a mountaineer, Mr Cole. What’s that on the ground?’
‘Some old rags. Am I really a mountaineer because I got this far? That’s nice; I’ll dine out on that for weeks in Hampstead.’ His voice changed, became businesslike. ‘I want this barn; I can’t say its exterior is up to much, but I must have pictures of these cruck blades. How old is the place?’
She passed him and went to the end of the building, playing her torch on the ground. Someone—hikers probably—had brought in flat stones for seats and draped them with a disgusting overcoat which might have been discarded by a tramp. She wandered round the interior; there was nothing but the trampled floor of sheep droppings, the odd and very old cigarette packet, a rusty tin or two.
‘How old?’ she repeated, returning to him in the doorway. ‘Rumney will tell you exactly; cruck frames were used until quite late, but these look so good that they could be two or three centuries old. Have you not seen a cruck barn before?’
‘No, that’s why I came up here; Mossop said that there were whole tree trunks in this barn. Isn’t that bridge exquisite?’ He pranced out of the doorway, extracting a very expensive camera from his pouch. He took several photographs from different angles and came back. ‘No good, of course; the lens will be covered with water, but one can’t resist it.’
They splashed down the track: the opposite one from that by which she’d come up the dale. Cole was wearing olive waterproofs the drabness of which accounted for her not seeing him ahead on the other side of the river. Now, with the rain at their backs, they could talk more or less comfortably.
‘But what are you doing?’ he persisted, the dark eyes warm and intent through the water that streamed down his face.
‘I’m taking exercise. In London people walk on commons; it’s tamer there but done for the same motive.’
‘I frightened you in the barn.’
‘No.’ She stopped and regarded him sternly. ‘I frightened you.’
‘Oh, you did indeed! This is a totally strange world to me; it would be weird enough without this awful rain, but with all the water and the noise and the gloom, and the complete absence of people, my nerves are at the end of their tether. And as if it wasn’t horrifying to think that I’d stumbled on another body, you walk in on me with no clue as to your sex or intentions, dear lady, until you spoke. . . . You appear in the doorway: a hooded figure full of menace, and you stare straight at me as if you can see in the dark and pull out a gun.’
‘I didn’t—’
‘At a distance, dear, that remarkably massive torch looked just like a pistol, even—with all that black rubber—like a silenced pistol, or are silencers made of rubber only on children’s toys? I’ve seen them somewhere.’
‘Why did you say another body?’
His eyes widened and he wiped water from his lashes. ‘Mossop’s wife being the first, of course. Or don’t we talk about that in Sandale?’
Miss Pink asked carefully, although in the circumstances, and splashing through bog, little could be deduced from a tone, all concentration being on the footing: ‘Has he taken you into his confidence?’
‘Impossible to say,’ he was objectively cheerful, ‘not knowing the extent of his knowledge.’
‘As a journalist you must be interested in the crime.’
He made a detour round a stretch of water-logged peat. ‘Of course I am!’ He said it as if he were confessing a misdemeanour. ‘I might even be able to sell a story on it: spinoff from the main assignment.’
‘Have you any theories?’
‘Concerning the identity of the killer? None. I don’t know anyone here, you see. But do you think there’s a connection between the different crimes?’ He regarded her earnestly. Ahead of them loomed Burblethwaite’s barn and beyond it there was a light in Harper’s living room.
‘Extortion, blackmail—whatever you like to call it—and the murder.’
They were passing a clump of ancient yews and she stepped aside to halt under the matted branches. He came round and faced her.
‘A connection between her being blackmailed and her death,’ she said. He waited expectantly. ‘How did you know she was being blackmailed, Mr Cole?’
His expression didn’t change. ‘Mossop told me.’
‘How did he know?’ She watched a flicker in the deep eyes shape itself into bewilderment.
‘You mean,’ he said slowly, ‘you knew she was being blackmailed but he didn’t?’ He had changed; he was still curious and alert but now she could feel a determination in him. There was no more frippery. Still holding her eye, he said: ‘She was stealing from the tills and from his wallet. He didn’t tell you that.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘But he told you.’
‘I wasn’t privileged. He thinks you know already. Do you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know if he killed her?’
‘I don’t think he did.’ She found his eyes disturbing but she was not going to tell him why she thought Mossop innocent of his wife’s murder. He was Press, and an unknown quantity. She regarded the stones of Harper’s barn and was reminded of Caroline.
‘You believe in getting other people to do your work for you, Mr Cole.’
‘Conservation of resources.’ It was glib but he smiled. ‘I don’t think he did it either. Who’s short of money round here? Who’s got the evil mind?’ Miss Pink’s eyes were drawn to Coneygarth as if the cottage were magnetic. ‘There can’t be many to choose from,’ Cole said.
She stepped out from the shelter of the yews and continued down the track. The doors of the barn were open and Harper was attending to the tyres of his Cortina, operating a foot pump and staring sightlessly at the rain. He focused on Miss Pink then looked incuriously at Cole. During the introductions the journalist regarded the other man with interest.
‘Have you lived here long?’ he asked.
‘A few months.’ Harper looked at Miss Pink with the eyes of a sick dog and she gave Cole no opportunity to launch into an extempore interview but led him away, making conversation.
‘I’ll bring you over when the sun’s shining and he’s in a more welcoming mood; he’s had a terrible cold for days. . . . His barn’s not bad; you wouldn’t be interested in the house, it’s been spoiled. You’ve seen the packhorse bridge: the parapets had to be so low because of the loads on the ponies’ backs. . . .’
‘Enchanting. And so is the house beyond it: those yew trees! What must it look like by moonlight? Too corny for words?’ His glance slid past her shoulder. ‘Someone is trying to attract our attention.’
Lucy Fell had opened her kitchen window and was leaning out to call to them but no sound could be heard above the wild rush of the river. She beckoned. Miss Pink waved acknowledgement and crossed the bridge to Thornbarrow’s garden gate, Cole striding happily at her side.
‘At last,’ he enthused, ‘I’m going to see the inside of one of these places—it is a statesman’s house, isn’t it?’
‘A statesman was only a yeoman farmer, so all houses of this size were statesmen’s.’ She didn’t think Lucy’s summons had extended to him and, about to point this out, she hesitated. ‘Just a moment, Mr Cole.’
He turned, politely eager. ‘Yes?’
‘I think it might be better if you kept to your conservation angle in this house.’
‘Oh. Does she have something to do with the crime?’
Whenever he said ‘crime’ she wanted to shout: ‘Which one?’ and now her eyes wandered desperately over the dale. Where was Caroline being held? She became aware that he was waiting for an answer.
‘Distantly,’ she said, trying to make the words lighter than she felt, ‘but someone is missing and he may have met with an accident; Mrs Fell is rather worried about that—naturally.’
He grinned and nodded. ‘Boy friend?’
‘In a way.’ She opened the gate and went along the flags to the back door which was ajar.
‘God!’ Lucy exclaimed, sweeping across the living room. ‘What a hell of a day; the floods will be out if it goes on like this. Who’s that with you, is it Zeke? Drop your wet things in the passage and come in to the fire.’
Miss Pink made the introductions and they pussy-footed into the house. Cole stopped with a gasp at sight of the bread cupboard. ‘May I?’ he breathed, advancing.
‘Have a look round,’ Lucy said blithely on her way to the kitchen, ‘it’s all yours.’
He turned to Miss Pink, his hands clasped ecstatically. ‘Can I see inside?’ he called. ‘Or shall I expose the skeleton in your cupboard?’
‘What, more?’ Lucy asked drily, invisible. ‘You look; enjoy yourself.’
He opened the cupboards to reveal her drinks and glassware and, in the much larger section underneath, a collection of massive family party pieces: tureens, oval dishes for whole geese and turkeys, a complete dinner service. He ran his hands over the carving, exclaimed at the hinges, sighed over the faulty sapwood, and then stood back muttering about light, and making notes in a small book. Lucy came in with a tray and he started to plead for pictures. She treated him with indulgent amusement and said he could take photographs at any time, then she released him, as if he were a small boy, to roam the house.
‘I sleep in a four-poster,’ she explained to Miss Pink. ‘Modern mattress and electric blanket, of course, and Liberty hangings. It’s over two hundred years old.’ They listened to the stairs creaking as Cole ascended slowly. ‘He’s looking at the panelling,’ Lucy said. ‘Is there any news about Jackson?’
‘Not to my knowledge,’ Miss Pink said truthfully. ‘Tell me, did you ever have a theory as to who might have written that anonymous letter to you?’
‘I told you: Peta.’
‘But she had one as well; hers was blackmail.’
‘That’s definite? That’s nasty. Did she pay?’
‘Yes. That was nastier. What was the relationship between Wren and Peta?’
The other was startled. ‘Jackson and Peta? He drank at Storms, and probably had an affair with her—of a sort. I wouldn’t expect him to be serious about it.’
‘Was she possessive?’
Upstairs a cistern flushed. ‘Making himself at home,’ Lucy observed. ‘What is he? An Iraqui?’
‘Oh yes, I was forgetting you’d been in the Middle East.’ Miss Pink looked at her hostess calmly. ‘I thought Jackson would have been in touch with you.’
Lucy’s face was stiff. ‘Why?’
‘Because, on Friday evening you seemed very much attached to each other and he’d know you’d be worried if he disappeared suddenly and without explanation. You are worried, aren’t you?’
‘Not so much now. I’m beginning to wonder if he went to London—with Caroline Harper.’
‘Wouldn’t he have let you know?’
Lucy smiled wryly. ‘Not, I think, in the circumstances. She’s very attractive.’
Cole reappeared, silently in his stockinged feet, and eyed his hostess with awe. ‘And you live—among all this—just an ordinary, everyday life!’
‘Who’s ordinary?’ She was wearing the grey flannel suit and all her rings, and as Miss Pink watched she saw a change, not merely in the other woman’s face but in the lines of her body: a softening, a relaxation, a kind of preparation as if Lucy were marshalling her forces. The eyelids drooped a little, one noticed the long thighs and slender ankles, the superlative grooming.
‘Sit down,’ she ordered, and lifted the tea pot. ‘Tea?’
‘Yes. Yes, please.’ He glanced warily at Miss Pink who was waiting for him to renew his request to take pictures, but it was Lucy who, passing him a plate of scones, asked casually: ‘When would be a suitable time for you?’
He flashed his gold fillings. ‘Tonight?’ he asked brightly, and in t
he same tone, correcting himself, This evening?’
‘I have an engagement this evening.’
‘On Sunday? What do you do on Sunday evening in this—er, community?’
‘Carnthorpe and Eden Valley Naturalist’s Trust are having a lecture from a lichenologist.’
‘Oh no. You mean, you’re interested in lichens?’
‘No, in the lichenologist.’
Miss Pink rubbed her nose. Cole frowned. ‘Are you serious?’
Lucy’s eyes narrowed teasingly; she looked beautiful and confident and not at all middle-aged.
‘What happened to Jackson Wren?’ he asked.
In the silence her face went quite blank. ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked.
‘Since last night.’
Her voice was honed. ‘Hardly long enough to do a check on your gossip, leaving aside the question of etiquette in repeating it. After five years’ time we might allow you to gossip about the dale, if you were amusing, but it’s a lengthy initiation; anything quicker is considered rather vulgar.’
He bit his lip and blinked, then stood up. ‘That slipped out. I can’t ask you to forgive me; I’ll just go. Thank you for the tea.’
‘When you come back to take your pictures,’ she said lightly, her tone halting him on his way to the door, and rising herself. ‘Wear something other than wellies and waterproofs. Do you like cordon bleu cooking?’
‘Yes.’ He stood there, letting things happen to him. She put a hand on his arm. ‘Tomorrow night? Shall we say six o’clock? But you’ll want to come earlier for your pictures. Come any time.’
