Miss Pink at the Edge of the World

by Gwen Moffat

  He smiled ruefully and stretched his legs.

  “Did anyone see you?” she asked idly.

  “MacKenzie.”

  She sat up. “What was he doing?”

  “He was doing something to the engine on his boat. These chaps have got eyes like hawks. Of course, I don’t know that he saw me, but he must have done.”

  “But he couldn’t have seen how far you went, even with the moon!”

  “That’s the point, but he knows I was out — and by the time I came down from the Head, he’d rowed ashore, so he can’t alibi the time of my return. It would be useless, in any event.”

  “Why?”

  “I spent too long up there.”

  Her mind felt sluggish. After a while she asked: “Were you out on Tuesday night too?”

  “Oh yes. There were the lambs, d’you see. I was going round the sheep both nights, watching for foxes.”

  “No! What were you carrying?”

  “A Winchester.”

  “For foxes!”

  “It would scare them.”

  “But you don’t do things like that; if you go out to keep foxes away from the lambs you go to shoot them, not to scare them. It should have been a shot gun.”

  He sighed. “I can’t do anything about it now. I had to tell the police because I saw the others at different times, Sadie and Hector, and they knew I had a rifle. I mean, they know the difference even at a distance.”

  “It wasn’t for foxes,” she repeated stubbornly, holding his eye.

  “No, I took it for Stark.” He leaned forward and patted her hand. “Don’t worry, my dear; there was a telephone call for Bell while he was here. He said it was the results of the post mortems but he didn’t give any details. I didn’t need them. There were no bullet wounds, and you can take my word for it: both died as a result of falls. And now, will you excuse me? I have to go and look at a heifer that’s a little off-colour — or would you care to come with me?”

  She glanced at her watch and, seeing it was late, said that she would stay to help Leila with the meal.

  When he’d gone, she went to the kitchen and, lifting a cover on the stove, pushed a large kettle on the hotplate. The house was empty and it was after six-thirty; where could Leila be? She wandered back to the drawing room and saw her friend walking up the slope carrying a yellow plastic bucket.

  “Ah, you’re here,” she exclaimed, entering the kitchen, heaving the bucket on the table. It was full of king prawns. “Where are Jessie and Elspeth?”

  “I haven’t seen them.”

  “Oh really, it’s too bad of them! I thought we’d only need to — Well, no good grumbling; we’ll have to eat late, that’s all.” She filled a pan with water from the kettle and pushed it back to boil. “Where’s Clive?”

  “He went out to look at a heifer.”

  “‘Went out’?”

  “I’ve been talking to him in the drawing room. The police have been here.”

  “Here? To the House?”

  “They were talking to Clive.”

  “Why?”

  “They’ve realised that only a climber could have killed Stark and Pincher.”

  “We knew that. Why Clive in particular?”

  Miss Pink stared at her friend in bewilderment. “It seemed logical when he was telling me; now I wonder myself why they should have come to him first, rather than — ah! Bell doesn’t know about Bridget and Stark.”

  “So he thinks only Clive had motive. What about the others: outside the House?”

  “It’s quite obvious.” She remembered now. “It’s a matter of elimination. Sadie’s out: she regrets too much that she didn’t do it, and then she’s not a proper climber; none of the crofters is. Rita never went up to the Head on Wednesday evening. You told Bell this morning that Ian was a poor climber so that takes care of him. As for me, Bell appears to have arrived at the conclusion that I’m far too decrepit.” She smiled. “He doesn’t realise that it’s nerve I need, not a young body. So they are left with four people who might interest them and, presumably, since three of those weren’t available this afternoon, that’s why they came to Clive.”

  Leila relaxed. “Slice some lemons for me, will you? There’s a knife in that drawer. I must put these prawns on.”

  When she’d attended to this she went out of the room. Miss Pink sat solidly at the table, slicing lemons. The younger woman returned with glasses and a bottle of Tio Pepe. She poured the sherry and, fetching a lump of pastry from the refrigerator, she cleared a marble slab by the window.

  “Did you know that Clive was on Farrid Head on Wednesday night?” Miss Pink asked.

  “He wasn’t!”

  “He says so.”

  “To you or the police?”

  “Both.”

  Leila sat down and stared at the other in alarm. “Go on — what else?”

  “He had a rifle — but he says the post mortems will have shown there were no bullet wounds —”

  “What!”

  “He didn’t go right to Farrid Head; he turned back at the top of the band.”

  Absently Leila poured herself a second sherry, ignoring Miss Pink’s glass.

  “Why did he go up there?”

  “He was looking for Stark. He thought they might have sneaked back into the glen.”

  “But he didn’t go to the Head?”

  “Er — no.”

  “Why do you hesitate?”

  “Well, he says he didn’t.”

  “And you don’t believe him.”

  “What I believe is immaterial, but in telling the police that he went in that direction, he must have made them suspicious to say the least.”

  “But if Clive had — had anything to do with the deaths, he wouldn’t admit that he was up there, would he? I mean, he must have told them unsolicited. If anyone else had seen him, they wouldn’t have said anything . . .”

  She got up and walked to the window where she stood with her back to Miss Pink absently rolling the pastry.

  “You know him best. These lemons are finished. What else can I do?”

  “Grate some breadcrumbs. He didn’t see Stark?”

  “He didn’t say so.”

  She stopped rolling pastry but didn’t turn round. After a moment she asked: “What else did he tell the police?”

  “I think he implied that only the four of you could descend Tangleblock in the dark and solo.”

  “You mean, on Tuesday evening: to climb the stack and loosen the piton?”

  “And Wednesday. Pincher’s body had been taken off the rope.”

  “I’m not sure that I’ve got this clear. What do the police think was the order of things?”

  Miss Pink recounted what she had learned from Clive: the probable sequence of events and the fact that the killer, realising he’d killed the wrong man, lay in wait for Stark as he approached the top of the fixed rope.

  “Silly really,” Miss Pink observed: “He was there so long that he must have known that Pincher —”

  There was a knock at the door. Miss Pink answered it.

  “Could we trespass on your time for a few minutes?” Bell asked politely.

  She went to the passage for her anorak. When she returned, he was showing a lively interest in the preparations for the meal.

  “. . . wife’s speciality, puff pastry,” he was saying. Leila’s smile was forced and Miss Pink noticed that her friend’s lipstick was too bright — or her face too pale.

  *

  MacPhee was waiting at the entrance to the stable yard. She allowed them to escort her deep into the woods until they were out of sight of the House. Her lips twitched at the bizarre nature of the situation, particularly when she saw that she was being taken to a rustic bench in a glade. They’d have to be careful about conducting interviews in any of the houses and were thus reduced to having them in the open air. She wondered where they would go if it rained.

  Bell was in no hurry to begin and a few yards away a red squirrel, which had
vanished at their approach, appeared from behind the trunk of a sycamore, its claws clutching the bark and its ear tufts luminous in the light as it inspected them.

  “Another lovely sunset,” Miss Pink observed.

  “How many would you say could descend Tangleblock, ma’am?” Bell asked conversationally and with no doubts about his terminology.

  “Solo?”

  “That means without a rope? Yes, and in the dark.”

  “Bridget Perry and Leila West.”

  He nodded. “Even her uncle maintains that the girl’s very good: the best. Now why should he tell us in as many words that his niece is the most likely candidate for the killer? Because he knows she didn’t do it? Or because he knows she did — double-bluff? Where’s her motive? But I favour Perry. He was on those cliffs with a rifle on Wednesday night and he didn’t admit it until I told him MacPhee had talked to MacKenzie. Now MacKenzie swears he didn’t see anyone about that night, except people shepherding, but I didn’t tell Perry that.”

  “What was his motive? The fire came after the piton was loosened.”

  “Stark told him about the film on Monday night.”

  “What!”

  He regarded her with satisfaction. “You were at Soutra with Miss West, Bowles and Bridget Perry. Stark went to the House with Pincher and put the film before Perry first as a commercial proposition. When Perry blew his top, Stark told him the project was all sewn up; they’d make it anyway: with helicopters and boats coming in by sea from Kinloch.”

  “I can’t believe it. He showed no sign on Tuesday —”

  Then she remembered that he had been at Kinloch for the early part of that day. The first sight she’d had of him was when she’d seen him on top of Farrid Head that afternoon. From there the slings and the slab would have been in full view. He hadn’t seen the piton placed in position, so far as she knew, but the others had explained to him how the slings were used.

  “He’d had a night to sleep on it,” Bell went on, “and to decide what to do, if not how to accomplish it. The piton must have seemed to him a phenomenal stroke of luck: Fate on his side.” His tone became speculative: “He’s a strange man: a kind of throwback to the old landed gentry: feudal, that’s the word. Thinks he’s a kind of patriarch to the people here, his people. Knows the right kind of life they should lead, what cars they should buy, how fast they should drive, even buys their dogs! He dominates the glen; it’s his estate, his achievements, his scene. He’s been isolated up here for years away from contact with his own class: just the crofters and the land and the sea. People get exaggerated ideas about their own importance in a situation like this; it’s not natural. He seems to have been successful with new ideas: experimenting and managing to make the place pay. Yes, we’ve been talking to the crofters and young Morrison. You notice that the people he collects round him are intelligent — and more: look at that girl, Bridget, why she’d be a beauty in London; here she takes your breath away.” MacPhee looked embarrassed and shifted his feet. “Having a circle round him like that has made him into an exhibitionist.”

  “You’re contradicting yourself,” Miss Pink told him. “He’s not isolated with merely crofters for company and they hide their lights under bushels, Mr Bell; as you say, he attracts a circle of intelligent, healthy people. He’s a gregarious man.”

  “He’s used to ordering things — and he’s ruthless. He’s not one of your little-feathered-friends sentimentalists: he’s got two lists: one for the birds and animals he’s going to keep, and the others — which he exterminates. He protects his lambs and shoots the foxes, he likes those little penguin things —” “Auks,” MacPhee interrupted. “— so he shoots the seagulls. See what I’m getting at? Some people might question whether seagulls and foxes have some uses of their own but Perry’s quite sure: they’re vermin, they threaten his favourites. He’s sure — but he’s making too much of those foxes for all that. Did you see any since you’ve been here, ma’am?”

  “No.”

  “No more have we. But last Tuesday and Wednesday nights Perry was out after them with a rifle. You shoot foxes with a shot gun.”

  “Were Stark and Pincher shot?”

  “No. The findings on the post mortems show nothing other than injuries consistent with long falls.” She said nothing. “But the rifle isn’t irrelevant,” he countered her unspoken thought. “It shows his attitude of mind.”

  “But the killer had to climb down Tangleblock,” she pointed out. “I don’t think he’s capable of that.” As she said it, she realised that if he accepted this, so far as he was concerned only Leila was left — but Miss Pink’s mind had flown to Bridget, who was probably the best climber of them all.

  “On his own admission Perry’s done much harder things than these cliffs,” Bell said.

  “Not harder, different; you can’t compare great ice routes in Switzerland with a sea cliff in Scotland.”

  “With due respect, the finer points of climbing technique are beyond us. We want a good climber and we’ve found him.”

  “Oh no!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I meant you can’t arrest a man because his standard of climbing is high.”

  “Of course not, but there’s everything else, isn’t there? He was on Farrid Head both nights —”

  “Not on it.”

  “He went up there. He admits it and that he took a rifle. He wants to confess; he’s halfway there already. He never even tried to convince us that he was after foxes — and we’ve not tried to establish if, at other lambing seasons, he went round the sheep with a shot gun. I’m willing to bet he never went out with a gun at night before Stark arrived in the glen. No, he makes statements and doesn’t expect us to believe them but he’s playing it out to the end; it’s a kind of ritual, building up to a confession. The majority of murderers are like this; it’s not so much that they can’t go through with it, but that they never meant to; they had the death wish when they started, and everything fits into the pattern. The ritual revolves round the killer. It doesn’t end with the confession; after that he’s got the trial and sentence. They must feel cheated nowadays; they’ve lost the ending.” He sounded regretful.

  “Why haven’t you arrested him?”

  “We can wait. He’ll come to us tonight, you’ll see.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Scamadale was busy in the twilight. Down on the shore the cows had been milked and the hens shut up for the night. Now doors closed and people moved purposefully against the gloom.

  Up at the House the climbers had come back from the cliffs and the party assembled: the same as that on the previous Sunday, with the exception of Ian. The scene in the dining room held an air of drama: sophisticated and even contrived. No one had changed. They’d washed but they still wore their working clothes and these looked odd against the setting of the table and the room. The meal had been hurriedly prepared but they drank champagne. There was an air of purpose here as there was in the settlement at large — apparent but not identified, at least by Bridget.

  “Are we drinking champagne in honour of the second ascent of the Pagoda —” she asked, raising her glass.

  “It’s a fine climb,” Clive acknowledged.

  Marcus told them how she had led the final overhangs. The others listened with blank faces, Leila, one hand supporting her chin, turning a prawn shell in the other. The room was in shadow, the low table lamp illuminating glass and silver, hands and faces. “Like a Georges de la Tour,” Bridget remarked: “You know: the girl with a skull.” Leila dropped the shell.

  “What are the police doing?” Marcus asked.

  Miss Pink’s eyes met those of her host. “Investigating,” he said.

  It went on like that: small bursts of conversation linked by Marcus and Bridget talking about new lines they’d been studying from the Pagoda.

  “How about getting up a party tomorrow,” he suggested, “and going to look at this crack — it’s a good two hundred feet and solid as granite?�
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  “Not for me,” Clive said.

  Miss Pink, realising she was being addressed too, collected herself. “I can’t say at the moment.”

  “I shall be busy,” Leila said.

  The champagne was finished and they had become more subdued with each glass. Now they moved to the drawing room, Marcus speculating on the absence of Jessie and Elspeth.

  “They’re all at Catacol,” Clive told them. “I saw people making their way there as I went round the sheep. I — spoke to Hector.” The sentence seemed significant in the charged atmosphere.

  “They never tell you what they’re doing,” Leila murmured.

  “They do usually.”

  Bridget brought the coffee, Clive served brandy and liqueurs.

  “Festive,” Bridget observed, sinking gracefully on the sofa. She turned to her uncle with studied languor but demanding his full attention. “That had all the rites of a last supper, darling,” she said firmly. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing!” Leila was sharp.

  He looked round their circle. “I’m going away — for some time — but you don’t have to worry —” as Bridget made an involuntary movement, “— Leila will take my place. We shall go on as before.”

  “Going where?” Marcus asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.” As the others reacted in astonishment — all except Miss Pink who watched him steadily — he went on: “I’m not going to hold a post mortem: to consider whether a mistake’s been made, but I owe it to all of you to try to explain my actions. If a mistake was made it was in my thinking that, socially and culturally, we could remain self-sufficient — untouched. There were always threats to our way of life; as MacKenzie is fond of saying, you can’t resist progress. Sooner or later we had to lose our privacy: the road would be widened, we’d have a caravan park; worst of all, the crofters would become discontented. I ignored the threats, blocked them out; I tried to keep the place like the Garden of Eden. I don’t think I can change, I’ve had it my own way for too long. When I come back I shall go on as before, but it will be a matter then merely of running a farm rather than trying to preserve the old values in one small corner. I could have got my priorities wrong; that’s my affair. I shall always regret Pincher’s death —” Bridget gasped with shock: “— if only, when we take the law into our own hands, it involved nothing more than it does when you shoot a crow! But when you start on human vermin, the action has repercussions which you never thought of originally.”