Miss Pink Investigates Part One

by Gwen Moffat

  She took the road to the pass and after a mile or so of farmland and hardwoods, the ground started to rise and the forests began. Occasionally cars passed in the other direction, they and Miss Pink dipping their lights automatically. She felt a sense of comradeship with these unknown, unseen drivers who kept within the law, until she remembered that the criminals would dip their headlights too.

  She did not know the Lakes well enough to identify the gateway as she approached from the bottom but there were very few, and about a mile from the top of the pass she started to look out for entrances, and when one appeared she tried to pierce the blackness outside her lights to discern a gleam of metal, but she saw no other car waiting, neither there, nor at the next entrance. Then she ran into cloud and dipped her lights. The gradient eased, she passed a big parking sign and put out her indicator.

  At the top of the pass there were broad spaces on either side. She eased along, watching for the left-hand one. Here it was, the gravel entrance scarcely discernible against grass that was colourless in the mist-diffused light. She turned in but, not wanting to lose the way out again, went round on a hard lock and came back to the road immediately. If other cars were parked there, she couldn’t see them; only the mist drifted through her beams.

  She stopped momentarily and doused her lights to make sure nothing was coming, then she started back the way she had come.

  She ran down the road carefully, watching for the first entrance. She passed it, came out of the cloud, realised it was dropping, and rolled on to the second gateway.

  The forestry track was surfaced with chippings which were soft under her wheels. She hoped that she wouldn’t get bogged down but reckoned that she was near enough to walk now. Half a mile, the voice on the telephone had said. She guessed that she was not alone in this section of the forest. Someone was listening to the sound of her engine; someone was waiting near the hut by the fire beaters. Now it showed in the lights: a small wooden bothy with a tin roof gleaming, and beside it: the rack of beaters. There was a turning circle and the track divided into three.

  She turned and nosed back to the hut. She stopped the engine and got out.

  The forest was alive with the soughing of the fir trees. The rain seemed less heavy than it had been at the lower altitude. She opened the rear door and dragged out the suitcase. She put it beside the beaters, returned to the car and drove back to the road.

  There were lights coming up the hill from the direction of Carnthorpe. She was exhausted and hardly concentrating, except that she remembered to dip for the approaching traffic. She wondered how soon they would hear from Caroline.

  *

  Back in Burblethwaite they waited for the telephone to ring and talked as one does in bivouacs during a storm or waiting for the stretcher beside a corpse. Pondering the number of people who might have known that George Harper possessed money, if only temporarily, Miss Pink said: ‘If anyone had suspicions about you, they’d have deepened when Caroline arrived. They didn’t know she was your daughter presumably, and an expensive mistress implied that you were rich yourself.’

  He nodded. ‘I never meant her to come here. She turned up sudden like. You see, she doesn’t know—’ He looked away, his fingers plucking at the cover of his chair.

  ‘She was too well-dressed,’ Miss Pink mused.

  ‘I took her to Paris when I was flush,’ he recalled dreamily. ‘It was a holiday for both of us. I gave her the Lotus too. I don’t much care for money, myself, but I like to give Caroline things.’

  She had no comment to make on this. After a while she looked at her watch and remarked that she would have to go to Sandale House or Rumney would start to worry. Harper, who had been quiet for a while, agreed.

  ‘You don’t have to come back,’ he told her.

  ‘I’ll come back; I’ll bring a sleeping-bag. . . .’

  ‘Then you’d have to tell Rumney.’

  ‘I would tell him where I am; I don’t have to tell him why.’

  In the circumstances the last part of this was untrue but they both knew it would be unbearable for him to wait on his own for a telephone call which might not come. She looked at him thoughtfully, trying to think of a good reason to give to Rumney for spending the night at Burblethwaite and at that point there was a knock on the door. Harper’s drawn face, for one moment, was suffused with joy, until he realised that Caroline wouldn’t knock.

  ‘You answer it,’ he said.

  It was Rumney. He looked worried and sounded jolly and artificial. ‘Heard you come back some time ago,’ he said, peering past her at Harper, then walking in without invitation. ‘’Evening, George. . . .’ He looked closely at the other man. ‘Something’s wrong.’

  Miss Pink stood there in consternation. All Harper’s suffering was in his eyes and now he dropped his head in his hands and groaned. Rumney looked from Miss Pink to the door, shocked, and torn between his indelicacy at witnessing another man’s collapse and the need to share Miss Pink’s responsibility with her. She was looking at the telephone.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s George’s problem,’ she said meaningly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Harper said.

  ‘It’s not been very long,’ she reminded him. ‘it’s not two hours yet.’

  ‘He’s had time to ring the others; he’s passed a dozen kiosks by now.’

  ‘Consideration for people’s feelings isn’t one of their finer points,’ Miss Pink said, and cursed herself for the pomposity.

  Rumney shifted his feet and she motioned to a chair. He sat down quietly, watching Harper.

  ‘She won’t come back,’ Harper said.

  ‘No!’ It was wrenched from her, and then she realised it could be taken for agreement. ‘Perhaps the fellow they sent hasn’t found the right place; he could have got lost in the forest.’ Harper said nothing. ‘Tell Zeke,’ she pleaded.

  ‘You tell him.’

  So she told him. It didn’t take long; the facts were simple and sparse. All the horror had been in the waiting—since one o’clock yesterday afternoon for Harper. When she finished, with the information that they were now waiting for the telephone to ring, Rumney was harrowed and speechless. At length he suggested that she return to Sandale House while he spent the night at Burblethwaite. She could tell his mother merely that he was keeping Harper company. ‘Mother won’t question it,’ he assured her.

  Eventually she said goodnight to Harper and went out. It was raining. Rumney came with her to the car and sat in the passenger’s seat.

  ‘Don’t leave him for long,’ she urged.

  ‘I’m just going back. Do you think she’s alive?’

  ‘God knows . . . and her abductor.’

  ‘When do we give up hoping and tell the police?’

  ‘This is the worst moment of all,’ she admitted. ‘At least, before, we were in the hands of the kidnapper, doing what he told us to do. Now we don’t know whether we’re on our own or not. If we knew she was dead we should tell them immediately; there’s no doubt about that. But if she’s alive, could telling them jeopardise her safety? Suppose for some reason they’re still holding her, suppose the man who was meant to pick up the money has had an accident: is in hospital or even dead? If we told the police, and the search started for Wren tonight, it could be on the radio tomorrow morning, and then they might kill her. In any case,’ she added angrily, ‘what do we lose by not telling them? The gang gets away, that’s all: better a number of guilty men escape than an innocent person dies—isn’t that the foundation of British justice?’ She was bitter. ‘I’m not telling them tonight. You won’t either, not after an hour with Harper.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Miss Pink woke to knocking, a flood of light, and Arabella standing against the sunshine, her dark little face harassed, a cup of tea in her hand. ‘Zeke told me,’ she said. ‘No one’s phoned; no one at all. What are we going to do? Oh, God, what a way to wake anyone!’

  ‘No harm done
.’ Miss Pink was equable, sipping her tea and getting the feel of the day. A robin was singing above the noise of the beck.

  ‘That poor man,’ Arabella said. ‘I can’t believe it’s happened. I suppose it’s true—Caroline couldn’t be playing some ghastly trick?’

  Miss Pink thought of Peta’s murder and the blackmail. ‘No,’ she said, and knew it was the end of that possibility. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Where do you think she—? Where would they take her?’

  ‘The police will look for her car.’

  ‘Zeke brought George over for breakfast. That man didn’t eat yesterday!’

  ‘I know; I couldn’t get him to eat.’

  *

  Harper, seated at the breakfast table, was, as she’d expected to find him; dull, shocked, hopeless: an automaton eating what was put before him and saying nothing. Rumney took her aside and said that he’d sent for the doctor. ‘He didn’t sleep all night,’ he told her, indicating Harper. ‘Quentin will give him a sedative, I expect; he can sleep in my room.’

  ‘Someone ought to be at Burblethwaite in case the phone rings.’

  ‘Lucy Fell’s over there; she’ll ring us immediately if anything happens. She had to be told, you know.’

  ‘Yes; everyone will know in an hour or two. I must go to Carnthorpe and see the police.’

  He nodded. ‘We can’t do anything, and they’ve got the manpower; she could be anywhere between here and London.’

  Arabella went to Carnthorpe too, taking the Rumney Land Rover. They went separately because Miss Pink didn’t know how long she would be kept at the police station. Before they left she said to the girl, out of Harper’s hearing, ‘You might get into conversation with that car-park attendant; it would have been quite early Saturday morning that Wren left his van: before ten.’

  *

  Workmen were clearing the road in the Throat. The water level was still very high and the torrent even more terrifying seen in daylight, but everything sparkled and there were rainbows in the spray. Miss Pink felt the sighs of delayed shock rising to the surface and suppressed them ruthlessly.

  The C.I.D. man was a chief inspector called Hendry. There were no recriminations; there might be later but now a machine started to roll and the machine demanded facts. Miss Pink supplied them. There was a small exchange when Hendry told her that they’d been keeping an eye on Harper not as a professional punter but as a London villain. This was no more than she’d suspected but she was aware of an element of surprise on the part of Hendry when she told him that Harper had kept fifty thousand pounds in Burblethwaite. ‘But he was only a labourer!’ he remarked, and asked her what the notes looked like.

  She had wondered if they might be able to concentrate on the kidnapping to the exclusion of the blackmailing letters (thinking of Sarah Noble and the dead hiker) but there was no chance. Question led to question, explanation to explanation, and at last it seemed that everything was revealed, everything that she knew, even to the theft of Rumney’s sheep. And if she was aware of disapproval lurking in the background she had a momentary sense of balance redressed when she told them about the priest.

  ‘Blood on it?’ Hendry repeated. He was new to his rank: young, alert, never missing a nuance or moment of hesitation. He was going bald quickly but he still had the hard heavy body of a rugby player. He had sharp blue eyes and a thin mouth.

  ‘I thought it was blood,’ she admitted.

  ‘But you didn’t do anything about it.’

  ‘It could have been salmon blood.’

  His mouth thinned further in a closed smile. She was not intimidated; she didn’t think that the police would have found Caroline if she had told them yesterday morning that the priest had blood on it. Hendry thought that here was a woman who knew herself morally in the right and, recognising that her—to him—irresponsible behaviour was in the past, he accepted it without approving it, and concentrated on the present. He said that he was going up to Sandale and asked her to return there herself.

  *

  Arabella followed her up to her room. Harper was sedated, she said, and Quentin wouldn’t allow him to be interviewed for another half hour. The police were at Burblethwaite, having released Lucy Fell from a useless vigil. There were more police at Coneygarth and she guessed some were with Lucy at Thornbarrow. ‘And probably everyone down the road is being questioned,’ she said grimly. ‘I know it’s terrible, Miss Pink, especially when you think of Sarah, but I’ve got this awful smug feeling: thank God we’ve done nothing wrong! How selfish can you get?’

  ‘Perfectly natural,’ Miss Pink observed. ‘Did you learn anything in Carnthorpe about Saturday?’

  ‘I found out quite a bit but I don’t see how it helps. They arrived in the two cars some time before ten o’clock, the attendant said. Jackson was in climbing gear and wearing shades; Caroline attracted his attention—her car is so distinctive for these parts. They left both cars and were away for only a short time. Caroline bought a pair of sneakers.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘You know: canvas boots, for climbing.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘If they were away for so short a time, it was likely they’d bought something, besides, the attendant said she’d been carrying a small parcel when they came back. I thought of presents and I tried the crafts shops first and then I thought it was odd for Jackson to wear breeches to drive to London for a weekend and I remembered about their making arrangements to climb but one can’t climb without boots, so I tried the climbing shop. That was it; she’d bought sneakers. I saw the guy who served them but he’s new there and he didn’t know Jackson so they didn’t chat. He remembered Caroline of course.’

  Miss Pink was silent and after a while Arabella went on: ‘They left in Caroline’s car but the attendant didn’t see which way they went; he couldn’t because of the houses.’

  ‘Someone may have seen them; the police will find out which way they went.’

  ‘It was on the radio news; they’re looking for the Lotus.’

  ‘You could hide a hundred cars in the forests under Whirl Howe,’ Miss Pink said absently.

  ‘But there aren’t any crags round there.’ They stared at each other. ‘I did a lot of climbing with Jackson,’ Arabella explained, and looked puzzled. ‘Why couldn’t they have had a climbing accident?’

  ‘That doesn’t explain the kidnappers’ threats and the ransom demand.’

  ‘Oh no. I was clutching at straws.’ Her little face puckered again. ‘But if they went climbing—I mean, don’t the sneakers imply climbing?—how does that tie in with her being kidnapped?’

  Miss Pink said slowly: ‘He told her that they would climb in order to get her to some . . . hut? Cottage? Are there any crags above buildings: a closed building where you could confine a person? It would have to be a remote crag.’

  Arabella sat on the bed and pressed her fingers to her forehead. ‘There’s a climbing hut round the other side of Helvellyn: Rushwaite Lodge?’

  ‘A climbing hut’s no good because of the likelihood of the owners turning up, particularly at a weekend. It’s Ruthwaite Lodge, not Rushwaite: up above Greenside lead mines . . . no, they’re in the next valley—’

  ‘Mines!’

  ‘Mines?’

  ‘Mine buildings. Some of them are in good condition and if she were tied up it wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t lock her in; in fact—’ Arabella shuddered, ‘it wouldn’t be necessary to put her in a building if she were bound and gagged.’

  ‘She’d die if she were in the open; remember the weather.’

  ‘Well. . . . But I didn’t mean the open air. What about a cave? Why—’ She stopped and stared at the other. ‘Wasn’t it raining on Saturday? Of course it was! It poured.’

  ‘Quite late, surely?’

  ‘The cloud was low at daybreak—so that rules out a high crag to start with; Jackson hated greasy rock. I’m sure all the rock would have been greasy, even at a low altitude. It did rain early, Miss Pi
nk, because I did some washing and had to hang it in the barn, then Grannie and I had coffee. I guess it was raining at eleven. I know where they’d go! The Rat Hole in Borrowdale! That’s where everyone goes on a wet day.’

  ‘But if everyone goes there—’

  ‘Oh yes, there are crowds, particularly on a Saturday.’

  ‘—he wouldn’t go there, would he?’

  There was silence broken by Arabella in a small voice.

  ‘Miss Pink.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s Shivery Knott.’

  ‘Zeke said there were caves,’ Miss Pink said quietly, ‘I came back under Shivery Knott on Saturday afternoon and there was something in the woods.’

  *

  Chief Inspector Hendry was talking to the doctor in the living room and two strange men stood by the window. Hendry turned as Miss Pink came downstairs and entered the room. She nodded to Quentin Bright and she told them about Shivery Knott. Hendry looked doubtful and, indeed, the chain of reasoning by which she and Arabella had arrived at this point seemed flimsy in the telling.

  ‘Where would they leave the car?’ Hendry asked.

  It was Bright who answered. ‘They’d go up to the scenic car park above the Throat: you know the one, where the car rolled over before the wardens put the tree trunks along the edge. There’s a path going along past Mart Howe to the top of Shivery Knott. Of course, the quickest way to the crag is from here, but since the car isn’t here . . .’

  ‘I’ll send a couple of men up there,’ Hendry said.

  ‘But he’d have moved the car,’ Miss Pink pointed out.

  Hendry’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you suggesting that he’s holding her in a cave at this place?’

  She restrained a sigh. Quentin Bright said: ‘It goes in for some distance; climbers leave it alone because, if you want to explore a cave system, there’s a far better one in Borrowdale. I don’t think anyone goes to Shivery Knott nowadays. We’ve been there because we’re residents and we’re climbers and we go there once out of curiosity, that’s all.’