Miss Pink Investigates Part One

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘What did he wait for?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘For the other cars to get clear. He couldn’t risk his own car being seen in the forest and recognised.’

  Lucy lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Who was it?’

  Cole pursed his lips in distaste. ‘Zeke.’

  Miss Pink gave an angry snort. Lucy stared at the fire. ‘Zeke,’ she repeated and, as if to herself, ‘I’ve known that man for years. . . . Do the police suspect him?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘The letters—my letter, had to be from a local person; I never thought otherwise.’

  Cole looked at Miss Pink. ‘That applies to all the blackmail,’ she said, ‘local knowledge.’

  ‘Starting with Mossop,’ Cole continued.

  Miss Pink nodded. ‘Only someone from the dale could have known about the stolen whisky.’

  ‘Except that it wasn’t whisky to begin with,’ Cole put in gently. ‘It was sheep stealing.’

  ‘So he was stealing sheep!’ Lucy exclaimed.

  ‘But of course!’ Cole became chatty. ‘Although the blackmailer didn’t know that; all he knew was that he’d seen Mossop’s wagon under Whirl Howe, pulling out on the road in the middle of the night, so he rang Mossop saying just that: “What was your wagon doing . . . etc?” What a scream!’

  Miss Pink smiled. Lucy asked with annoyance, ‘What’s a scream?’

  ‘He never guessed.’

  ‘About the sheep stealing?’

  ‘No, the sheep was just a bit on the side, a one-off trick; it was too much like hard work and too risky for him to try it twice. No, he never guessed what Mossop’s real game was: commuting to the motorway night after night, picking up all the loads falling off backs of lorries all the way from Lancaster to Carlisle. Mossop was terrified.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, you’d never have guessed,’ he assured her. ‘He bluffed. He bluffed the first time the blackmailer rang; he had the feeling, you see, that he was dealing with an amateur—and also the sheep were safely sold and he wasn’t going to try that lark again. Well, the blackmailer didn’t call his bluff but a few weeks later he phoned again and this time he mentioned stolen whisky. Now the odd thing is that Mossop had none on his premises at that moment, nor anything else that shouldn’t have been there, so he told the caller to go to hell. Then they both lay low for a while, until Mossop started to operate again, very cautiously: just one crate of Scotch—and the police were tipped off immediately.’ Cole looked straight at Miss Pink.

  ‘Only one person could have known,’ she said, watching him. He nodded encouragement. ‘Peta,’ she murmured.

  ‘That’s right: Peta.’

  ‘Well, she was mad,’ Lucy said coldly. ‘How do you know so much about Mossop’s behaviour?’

  Cole’s eyes opened wide. ‘He talked, dear.’ He added, placing the words before them like small grenades: ‘And then there was Sarah.’

  ‘Sarah?’ Lucy seemed bewildered.

  ‘I’m demonstrating why the blackmailer had to be a local,’ he said patiently. ‘Now Sarah had her accident in September. Did you never wonder,’ he asked Miss Pink, ‘why Mossop agreed to help her?’

  ‘She paid him.’

  Lucy asked, ‘When did Sarah have an accident?’

  Cole seemed not to hear her but addressed Miss Pink. ‘I have a feeling Sarah hasn’t told you the truth. After the accident she drove up to Storms but she didn’t go to the main building; there’s a barn set away from the hotel, and probably she meant to leave her car there and try to see Mossop without anyone else knowing. Of course, she was drunk. And at the barn she ran straight into Mossop, unloading his wagon! It was colour T.V. sets that time. She saw him before he saw her and he hadn’t a chance.’ Cole looked at Lucy. ‘If Mossop had been a killer, Sarah’s life wasn’t worth much at that moment, but he’s a thief, not a murderer, and he struck a bargain: he’d take the damaged car away and get Sarah another one, providing she kept quiet about the load on his wagon.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Miss Pink said, ‘but then, someone else had to know.’

  ‘You’re suggesting,’ Lucy said with interest, ‘that Sarah killed the hiker.’

  ‘Yes.’ He agreed with both of them. ‘Someone noticed that Sarah had a new car and, with the same kind of thought process that had connected crime with Mossop’s wagon being on a pass in the middle of the night, connected Sarah’s new car with a dead hiker, and this time he hit the target. Sarah paid the first instalment and he knew he’d got her.’

  ‘The devil!’ Lucy exclaimed.

  ‘And then there was Peta,’ Cole went on. ‘I don’t know what he found out about Peta. Mossop doesn’t know either.’

  ‘It isn’t relevant,’ Miss Pink said. ‘I never met her but she deserves consideration.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed suddenly, ‘she deserved a great deal more than she got.’

  Lucy said, ‘I’m afraid I had very little sympathy for her.’

  ‘No one seems to have liked her,’ he said. ‘And yet one doesn’t kill people one doesn’t like; it has to be something stronger than that—usually.’

  ‘There seem to be two motives involved where Peta was concerned,’ Miss Pink mused. ‘Money, because she was blackmailed, but then blackmailers don’t kill their golden goose.’

  ‘Not normally.’ Cole nodded as if she had a good point. ‘Do you see a progression here—in violence—and a corresponding deterioration in reasoning power? Our blackmailer—’ she wished he would not be so familiar, ‘—starts tentatively with Mossop, and when he won’t play, the attempt is abandoned—although he has his revenge by tipping off the police—right?’ It was sharp and vulgar and directed at Lucy. Her nostrils flared.

  ‘So you say.’

  He turned back to Miss Pink. ‘Then he makes a guess with Sarah and it pays off, so he stays with Sarah. Clever not to press it with Mossop, clever to stay with the old lady. But then he starts on a neurotic girl—now that was a mistake—and a girl with no money and that, on the face of it, was stupid, but now listen: Peta had access to money, from the tills and her husband’s wallet, but it was terribly dangerous, stealing from her own husband—and such a nasty piece of work as Mossop is. No wonder she nearly went round the bend with worry. I wonder,’ he asked of Miss Pink, ‘whether that wasn’t the idea: to drive her mad—which could be so interesting and so rewarding?’

  His listeners were silent and in that silence the telephone rang. Lucy stood up with a polite smile and Cole returned it. She picked up the receiver. ‘Hello? Oh, hello, Mark, how nice to hear you. Tonight? No, I’m afraid I’ve people in. Why, yes, that would be lovely; six o’clock? I’ll look forward to it. It was rather hairy: rocks on the road and the river nearly over the banks, but I got through without damage. No, not at all, I had a delightful time. Perhaps I should have done that. Tomorrow at six then; godnight, and thanks for calling.’

  ‘That,’ she said, returning to the fire, ‘was our speaker from last night suddenly worried, twenty-four hours after the event, that I might not have reached home safely. Not quite twenty-four hours; I left him at eleven. I could have been rolling along the bottom of the lake by now.’

  ‘You came home at eleven,’ Cole exclaimed. ‘How intrepid you ladies are; it took me all my courage to drive through the Throat in broad daylight.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to leave it so late,’ she confessed, ‘but after the lecture we went to the Saracen’s Head and it was closing time before I got away. You know how it is.’

  ‘You have great courage,’ he insisted. ‘All alone in the dark. No wonder you ignored the blackmailer.’

  She shrugged. ‘You know everything; you must be a detective.’

  ‘Now you’re teasing.’

  ‘Don’t you think he’s a policeman, Miss Pink?’

  ‘He knows a great deal.’

  ‘Ironical,’ Lucy said almost idly. ‘The people who knew a lot in Sandale died.’

  ‘Well, Peta did,’ he
conceded. ‘You mean Jackson Wren knew too much?’

  ‘Of course.’ Lucy turned to the other woman. ‘Daniel told me what happened at Shivery Knott.’

  ‘Does he know?’ Miss Pink asked innocently.

  ‘Of course—’ Cole ignored the question, ‘—the reason why Wren broke into Harper’s cottage the night you gave a party, Lucy, was to steal the money. The person who became the kidnapper was very curious about Harper; as Miss Pink pointed out, Harper was a mystery man, and then he was known to the police. There was that big train robbery last spring and the villains must have had inside information. Harper worked on the railways until recently. But the police couldn’t get anything on him. However, his friends thought that it would be better for his health if he took a little holiday some distance from the home counties—’

  ‘Although quite near the Glasgow-London line,’ murmured Miss Pink, ‘where it runs through the wildest country.’

  ‘You have a criminal mind,’ Cole told her with disapproval, and continued: ‘For one reason and another the local force kept an eye on Harper; they weren’t really worried about him, as I see it, but they were interested to see if he had visitors, and who they were. Harper was worried—he has that kind of mind—although not about the police. He was worried about being watched by someone other than the police so, when there was an attempt to break in at Burblethwaite, he changed the locks. To the person who was interested in Harper, when he changed those locks, it was like Sarah paying the first instalment of blackmail money: suspicion was confirmed. Harper had something to hide.’

  Miss Pink said, ‘I’m surprised he wasn’t blackmailed.’

  ‘Oh, no; the blackmailer was after bigger game than small instalments; he wanted the lot, if there was a lot. He must have got wind of the police surveillance; that wouldn’t be difficult for someone who moved in the right circles. But if Harper had money, he didn’t flaunt it, until Caroline turned up, and she spelled money. Wren was sent to Harper’s cottage last Friday night to break in and see what he could find, and this time he got in.’ He stopped talking.

  ‘Well, what did he find?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But the money? It must have been there.’

  ‘Obviously.’ He smiled at her.

  ‘So why didn’t Wren steal it instead of having to go through all this ghastly business of the kidnapping—and two people being killed?’

  ‘Harper hid the money. You don’t think, with one attempted break-in already, and Wren hanging around his cottage, he’d leave fifty thousand lying around?’

  Miss Pink asked, frowning, ‘Why did you say just now: “the person who became the kidnapper”?’

  ‘It was an escalation in violence: attempted blackmail, successful blackmail, murder, but when Wren broke into Harper’s cottage, the object was theft. When he couldn’t find anything, they put the kidnapping plan into operation, and that was wild. The fellow had gone mad.’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ Lucy demurred. ‘He’s got the money; I’d think that meant success, in his terms. Is there something wrong with the money? Is it counterfeit?’

  ‘No, it’s almost certainly the proceeds of robberies. The madness lay in the use of an accomplice; that’s always risky. And what an accomplice! Of course, he knew that Wren had to be killed eventually, but he’d planned to wait until the crime was completed, the money picked up, stowed away—probably in a Swiss bank—and no suspicion attached to himself. Then he’d kill Wren, simulating an accident. You do realise,’ Cole turned to Miss Pink, ‘that it could have been just too easy for the kidnapper? Harper would never have asked the police for help, even after he got Caroline back safe, because the money was hot. Oh, yes, it was intended to release Caroline—remember she was bound. After she returned to Harper, the whole thing would have died. The police would have known nothing. Once Wren was killed in an “accident” the kidnapper was as safe as houses.’

  ‘You’re playing games,’ Lucy said. ‘You’re making it up as you go along.’

  ‘Like Miss Pink, I have a criminal mind.’

  ‘Like our murderer,’ Lucy was sarcastic, imitating his familiarity.

  ‘No, dear; he has no sense of application. He was bound to make mistakes when he got into serious crime. The first was not to move Wren’s car.’

  ‘It drew our attention to the locality,’ Miss Pink agreed. ‘No, that’s not quite correct; the fact that it was still here, in Carnthorpe, made me think it would be worth while to question the attendant, and so we learned that Caroline bought boots.’

  ‘Boots,’ Lucy repeated, ‘what boots?’

  ‘Weren’t you told?’ Cole asked.

  ‘All that I know about the kidnapping is what you’ve told me. The police were only interested in the letter I had and whether I’d seen any strangers hanging around at the weekend. Perhaps the bodies hadn’t been found when Hendry called on me.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ Miss Pink said. ‘What happened was that Wren wore climbing breeches Saturday morning, which he would hardly do on a trip to London but which he’d wear if he were going climbing, and he took her shopping to buy boots, and all this in full view of the car-park attendant.’

  ‘Wren was as thick as two planks,’ Cole said. ‘Using him was inviting disaster.’

  Miss Pink agreed. ‘They ought to have gone farther afield or at least left his van where it wouldn’t be obvious.’ She hesitated. ‘And then there was Caroline’s car: hidden in the forest certainly but still too close to home. Could the position of the cars have been intended only as a temporary measure?’ she asked of Cole. ‘There were at least two criminals originally,’ she pointed out. ‘There could have been a plan for the cars: to take them to Carlisle perhaps, and leave them in a side street with the keys in the ignition so that they would be stolen, or Wren could have been meant to take the Lotus to London to dispose of it.’

  ‘Why didn’t it happen like that?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Because Caroline died and Wren panicked. Look at it this way: they went straight to Shivery Knott from Carnthorpe, leaving the Lotus in the scenic park where you left your car today,’ Miss Pink told Cole. ‘They went to the caves and Wren overpowered Caroline, possibly knocking her out. He tied her up. I wonder if she knew there was a big drop below? I feel she must have been unconscious at some point, and she rolled off the ledge when she started to come round. She would be in pitch darkness, you see.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Cole said. ‘She’d wake up in the dark, would she, and her hands and feet tied? That indicates a certain carelessness on Wren’s part. She was also tied to this peg thing?’ There was a peculiar lilt in his tone as he addressed Miss Pink.

  ‘Yes, she was tied to the peg by the climbing rope, but he’d left too much slack. If she’d been tight to the peg, she wouldn’t have rolled over the edge.’

  ‘Careless,’ he repeated thoughtfully. Lucy winced.

  ‘After attacking her and tying her up,’ Miss Pink continued, ‘he would have driven the Lotus round to the Whirl Howe forest and walked back to Shivery Knott over the tops. I heard him at four o’clock.’

  ‘That was when he came out of the cave after discovering Caroline’s body,’ Cole explained to Lucy.

  ‘Then what happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Why, Wren came down and fetched his boss,’ he said, ‘who went back and shot Wren, almost certainly wiping the gun, and left it there. It wouldn’t take long to run up to the crag and back again, would it?’

  ‘He’d do it well inside an hour,’ Miss Pink said. ‘He didn’t have to rig any evidence.’

  ‘Well, of course—’ Cole stretched his legs, ‘—the police will be on to all this.’

  ‘They’ve started on Arabella,’ Miss Pink informed him. ‘She was upset.’

  A heavy silence descended on the room.

  ‘There are loose ends,’ Miss Pink continued after a while. Cole glanced at her ingenuously; he looked tired. Lucy stroked her throat, her rings glittering
.

  ‘Harper had the first telephone call, the one saying Caroline was being held, at one o’clock on Saturday. How did Wren communicate with the telephone caller to say that he’d completed the first stage successfully—or was the other criminal in the caves with Wren?’

  ‘No, dear,’ Cole said. ‘The killer was keeping his hands clean; he was safe in Sandale going about his daily business—except for one quick telephone call to Harper when he knew Caroline had been trapped. Wren had some brilliant clothing and for anyone watching, they’d recognise him on the top of Shivery Knott. He didn’t have to signal; his appearance itself was the signal. You can see the whole of the hamlet from the crag.’

  ‘I’m not sure you can see the crag from Sandale House,’ Miss Pink put in. ‘You can see it from the fields, and most other places on the farm. But going back to mistakes: surely the worst one the killer made was in making further telephone calls to Harper and me yesterday when he’d set up Wren’s death to appear as suicide? If Wren were the kidnapper—people would think—then who made the telephone calls after he was dead? That was the first reason why I thought Wren’s death wasn’t suicide. And if Wren was murdered it was most likely that he was killed by the person making the telephone calls on Sunday.’

  ‘Why couldn’t Wren have made those calls?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Because he was dea—’ Miss Pink faltered.

  ‘Yes.’ Cole agreed with the unspoken thought. ‘We don’t know. What with the temperature in a cave, and the time of year, and excitement and physical exertion prior to death, it could be difficult to fix when he was killed. I wonder if he could have made those calls yesterday?’

  Miss Pink was stubborn. ‘If he’d been dead only twelve hours, he should have been partially rigid; besides, it didn’t sound in the least like Wren on the phone.’

  ‘People can imitate voices,’ he said airily and glanced at Lucy. ‘Ah nivver thowt tha wad hev played sic a trick on tha neighbour!’ It was a fair imitation of Cumbrian and it startled Miss Pink. Lucy was shocked.

  ‘That’s not amusing.’

  ‘It wasn’t intended to be; I was demonstrating a point.’