by Gwen Moffat
Pagan, noticing movement on the part of his hosts, collected Anne and Esme and left, his flock under his wing. Behind him a flash of hysterical amusement subsided and during the subsequent meal people played raggedly with the new hypotheses—the significance of the streaker, Hamish’s homosexuality—and allowed them to drop. Dinner was a subdued affair and the evening was not protracted. After coffee in the drawing room, the guests pleaded fatigue and took their leave.
‘I’m falling asleep,’ Beatrice said, collapsing in the car.
Miss Pink, recognising that this was not the moment for serious matters, made light conversation. ‘We must talk about Kenya tomorrow. Are there other countries one might consider—less commercialised perhaps?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Why the sudden interest in badgers? Surely there must be a dozen species claiming precedence in Africa?’
‘Who’s interested in badgers?’
‘Why, you. You were talking to Flora about them.’
After a few moments Beatrice asked, ‘is your hearing quite all it should be?’
‘I have excellent hearing.’ There was a pause. ‘The hearing in one ear is slightly inferior to the other.’
‘So is mine. It’s not always easy to locate sound. You heard someone make a remark and it seemed to come from me.’
Miss Pink drove to Feartag, but declined the offer of a nightcap. They were both exhausted. A good night’s sleep, they said, and they would meet in the morning. Beatrice promised to bolt her front door as soon as she was inside, and Miss Pink drove back to her little cottage, parked on the grass verge and went indoors.
She was so tired that she could hardly face the thought of reading in bed, but knew that if she didn’t follow her nightly custom she would not unwind. Sighing heavily, she put a saucepan of milk on the stove and, ten minutes later, went upstairs with a cup of cocoa and the latest Tony Hillerman.
Usually she read a few pages while she drank the cocoa, and one more page afterwards. Then words started to blur, she would mark her place, remove the cardigan that protected her from the frosty air and put out the light.
Tonight was different. She had finished the cocoa and started on that last ritual page when, very distantly, she heard a familiar sound—although at first it was only the subconscious mind that was aware of it. The sound continued rhythmic, persistent, and she became aware of other factors—constriction, cold, a flood of light. She opened her eyes resentfully. The bedside light glared and she was lolling sideways on her pillows, still wearing her cardigan, Hillerman open on the quilt. Downstairs the telephone was ringing; it was one o’clock.
She went down the stairs carefully, knowing the dangers of haste in the small hours. She lifted the phone.
‘Melinda? It’s Beatrice. Can you come? I’ve shot him. The intruder. I heard him downstairs and I came down and—it must have been the glass I heard—he broke it: the glass pane in the french window—you know those windows—’
‘Is he dead?’ Miss Pink asked roughly.
‘Oh. Oh, I hope not. I don’t like to go near—’
‘Stay there. If he moves, shoot him in the legs. I’ll be with you in a moment.’
She grabbed her car keys and, in dressing gown and slippers, drove like a fury to Feartag, pulling up with a long skid on the gravel before the front door. Beatrice was on the step, holding a rifle.
‘He hasn’t moved,’ she said. ‘He’s in the sitting room.’
Miss Pink took the rifle and went along the passage. The lights were on in the sitting room; one french window was open and sprawled on its face on the floor was a dark figure.
Miss Pink dropped to her knees and felt for a pulse in the neck. ‘Help me get this thing off his head; it must be interfering with his breathing, if he’s alive. No, don’t turn him on his back, just free—’ She stopped talking. They had peeled the black ski mask over the head and Flora’s blank eyes stared along the jewelled carpet.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘How could the girl be so silly—on this night of all nights?’ The question was not rhetorical; across the kitchen table Beatrice pleaded for an answer. Miss Pink looked away: at the window, the stove, the brandy bottle between them. ‘Everyone knew about Robert’s guns,’ Beatrice persisted. ‘What could have possessed her?’
‘Death wish?’ hazarded Miss Pink. ‘A compulsion towards self-destruction, or just a craving for high risks?’
‘She was always taking risks.’
‘The guns made it supremely exciting.’
‘She didn’t come here because I had the guns.’
‘Pagan is going to ask why—’ There was a pounding at the front door. ‘Talk of the devil—’ She left Beatrice and admitted the police herself. She gestured to the sitting room. ‘It’s there.’
‘Where’s Miss Swan?’ Pagan asked.
‘In the kitchen.’
He went along the passage, followed by Steer. She rejoined Beatrice. ‘Have you any idea why Flora should come here?’ she asked.
‘None.’ It was curt, as if Beatrice refused to consider a motive. She went on, ‘Masked too, and gloved. Did you see those great thick gloves?’
‘For breaking windows.’
Beatrice stared at the table. ‘Unsuitable for autumn wear.’
Miss Pink said sharply, ‘I’ll put the kettle on again. There’ll be a run on your tea and coffee tonight—this morning rather. I’d go back to bed if I were you, after Pagan has spoken to us. I’ll stay, of course.’
‘Are you suggesting I’d be able to sleep?’
‘The body’s at rest even if it’s only lying down.’ She winced at her own unfortunate wording.
Pagan loomed in the doorway, Steer behind him. ‘Good morning, ma’am.’
‘Morning?’ Beatrice repeated stupidly.
‘A nasty shock for you.’ He looked at Miss Pink, who asked them to sit down. They pulled out chairs and all sat at the scrubbed wooden table like actors in a Christie play: the ladies in their warm dressing-gowns, Steer correctly dressed except for the absence of a tie, Pagan with his pyjama sleeves showing below the cuffs of his jacket.
‘Did you move the body?’ he asked.
‘Only to get the mask off,’ Miss Pink told him, ‘and to free the airway. I wasn’t sure, you see … I’d already seen the exit wound—a wound, I mean, in the back—-no, a tear—but even with the dark anorak there was so much blood …’ She was gabbling.
‘Quite.’ Pagan turned back to Beatrice. ‘Do you feel up to telling us what happened?’ he asked gently.
After a while she said, ‘I never thought I’d have to use it, you know. I locked and bolted everywhere so carefully, and then I thought how ridiculous all these precautions were; he had only to break a window and one would be at his mercy, as they say. I realised that I was totally helpless; that we all were—except yourselves. Presumably you’re armed? You’d told us to stay indoors, bolt the doors, secure the windows, but you knew all along that there wasn’t any security for us. I was very angry.’ She looked at him steadily, then at Steer. No one was taking notes.
‘I can see why you’d be angry, ma’am,’ Pagan said.
‘It would never have happened when my brother was alive,’ Beatrice continued. ‘I asked myself what he would have done—although no one would have dared to approach this house knowing Robert was inside. A man of great courage, Inspector; he was the Arctic explorer, Robert Swan. I’m sorry, I’m rambling. My brother would have slept with a loaded gun beside him, as he did abroad when dangerous predators were about. So I loaded his Winchester and put it by my bed. That made me feel much more secure.’
‘It would,’ Pagan said. ‘What time would that be?’
‘When?’
‘When you went to bed.’
‘The first time was shortly after Miss Pink brought me home, and that would have been about ten o’clock. But I couldn’t sleep and it must have been about half an hour later that I got up and unlocked the gun cabinet. Even then it wasn’t
easy to get to sleep, but I must have done so eventually because I was wakened by something—I don’t know what—and I was wide awake immediately. After a while, I picked up the rifle and went to the top of the stairs. I stayed there, listening, but I couldn’t hear anything. All the windows were closed, so the river was scarcely audible. Then I heard the glass break—quite loud really. The noise came from the sitting room. Suddenly I was angry again. I didn’t think of myself, only that this monster—as I thought—was about to destroy my property. For some reason, I thought of petrol bombs. I was quite convinced that a bottle had been thrown into the sitting room, or would be thrown through the broken window.’ She made a helpless gesture. ‘Old people get very attached to their possessions, Inspector, more so than they are to their own bodies perhaps. So I came downstairs in a rage, prepared to shoot as soon as I saw him. By the time I reached the sitting room he was inside and silhouetted against the glow of the street light. There’s one on the bridge; it’s only a faint glow but my eyes were accustomed to the dark by then. I fired straight at him. Had I thought about it, I might have aimed for the legs, but you don’t think in a situation like that. I’d heard the glass break and here was the person responsible. And there was a murderer in the village.’ She spread her hands. ‘That’s all.’ Suddenly her face changed, became fiercely intense. ‘But why Flora?’ she demanded. ‘Why?’
***
‘There has to be a connection between her and Hamish,’ Miss Pink said.
Six hours later, Feartag was in a quiet state of siege. While Beatrice and Miss Pink slept, or at least retired to rooms upstairs, various authorities had dealt with the body, finally removing it along with the carpet. The Press had been chivvied away from the drive, the gates closed and Knox stationed outside them in a police car guarding the property while he himself was in clear view of most people in the street, including other police officers. Miss Pink had discovered his presence when she got up to make a pot of coffee and glimpsed the car on the other side of the gates. From her angle, it looked as if it were blocking the exit from Feartag as much as protecting the occupants from curiosity seekers.
They breakfasted in the kitchen, but it wasn’t until Beatrice was on her second cup of coffee and Miss Pink had assured her that, except for the missing window pane, all evidence of the night’s events had been removed—not until then did she refer to the most astonishing aspect: a criminal connection between Flora and Hamish.
‘They dressed similarly,’ Beatrice agreed. ‘At least when they broke into houses. What else is there to prove a connection?’
‘There’s not much proof of anything in this business,’ Miss Pink said with unwonted vehemence. She had been thinking that there had been three violent deaths and the only one where the killer was known had been an accident. ‘There were connections,’ she went on. ‘Hamish’s telephone call to Flora—and since last night, I suspect that the reason for that call was much more important than to ask her for money.’
‘He made it after he burned down Campbell’s cottage.’
‘And what effect would that information have on her? It would depend on why he set fire to the place. Was it to destroy his prints or to destroy Campbell? He—or they—wanted Campbell dead, because he was killed the following night. Why wasn’t he killed the same night?’
‘Because Hamish wasn’t strong enough to kill a grown man.’
‘What made him stronger the second night?’
‘He’d acquired a gun then. His father has a shot-gun.’
‘Campbell wasn’t shot.’
‘You can use the threat of a gun to control a victim while you engineer his murder in some other way, a way that can’t be traced back to you.’
Miss Pink shook her head. ‘That’s impractical. If a lad is holding a gun on an adult, he keeps his distance. You need another … that’s it! Another person. Flora came back and they killed Campbell between them.’
‘She was in Edinburgh.’ The tone was dull; Beatrice was beyond shock. ‘You brought her home two days later.’
‘She could drive, she could have borrowed a car. Let’s work it out. We need a road atlas.’
The distance between Sgoradale and Edinburgh was 250 miles. ‘Six hours at the very least,’ Miss Pink said. ‘She wouldn’t risk going fast for fear of attracting attention from the police. She could drive here in the afternoon and evening, leave the car on a peat track out on the Lamentation Road, meet Hamish and they’d kill Campbell at the cove. She’d have time to get back to Edinburgh before dawn, and if she’d made the right excuse to her hosts no one need know she’d ever been away.’
‘The owner of the car would find it had done 500 miles overnight.’
‘She stole it and replaced it close to where she’d taken it from. If the owner had reported its loss, he might be so pleased to have it back undamaged he might not bother to mention to the police it had been taken for such a long joy-ride. And if he did, who’d connect that with a murder in the northern Highlands?’
‘How would she steal it?’
‘The thief operating in the car park here had keys; Pagan didn’t mention finding keys in Hamish’s room, but Flora could have Kept them for him. I doubt if she stole from cars; the practice seems a trifle tame for her.’
‘Tame?’
‘Juvenile, I mean. Not much risk attached.’
‘Mm. Yes.’ Beatrice seemed to be following a line of her own.
Miss Pink said, ‘When you suggested Hamish was homosexual, were you implying the boy was soliciting back in the summer?’
‘What explanation do you have for the naked man not reporting the loss of his clothes—and car keys?’
‘I wonder what happened to that man. Could he be traced? He had to repair his window. What kind of car did he have? Who’d be likely to know that?’
‘There was the man who saw him trying to get into his car—the one who spread the story around. He was in the hotel.’
‘So he was.’ Miss Pink lapsed into silence. ‘And it would get you off the hook,’ she murmured.
‘I’m on the hook?’ Beatrice asked politely.
‘Pagan isn’t interested in motivation; he wants to know who delivered the final blows to Campbell and Hamish, and where the boy’s body was kept for two days. The rest is surmise so far, the product of what he’d call a hyperactive imagination. Apart from the nudist, I think the clue to the mystery lies in Flora’s activities. I think she came here to kill you last night, probably in the same way that she killed Hamish—with a pillow over his mouth—’
‘The person who did that got Hamish drunk and hit him with a piece of wood first.’
‘Or they were drinking, and they quarrelled and she hit him.’ Miss Pink thought for a moment and came to a decision. ‘I’m going to Edinburgh. Will you be all right on your own?’
‘With the police on the gate, yes. And the naked man?’
Miss Pink stood up. ‘I’ll see Butchart and find out if he can remember where that other man was staying. Since both men probably lived south of here, I may be able to kill several birds with one stone. What was the name of the barrister whom Flora was staying with?’
‘Neil Fleming. Just a moment …’ as Miss Pink headed for the door. ‘Did Flora repeat that 500-mile drive the following night in order to kill Hamish?’
Miss Pink halted, her lips pursed, then her face cleared. ‘She didn’t go back to Edinburgh. She stayed on, holed up somewhere—in an empty cottage perhaps. She returned to Edinburgh on the Sunday night, after killing Hamish.’
‘Having concealed the body somewhere.’
‘Ye-es.’
‘And you brought her home on Tuesday, and she found some way to put the body in the sea on Tuesday night. You could do with some help in tracing her movements. Shall I come with you?’
‘No. You’ve had enough excitement. And I have contacts, fixed points to start with. They’ll lead to others.’
***
‘I remember that fellow,’ Butchart said. ‘Ice i
n his whisky and complaints about my barman putting his cigarette in the ashtray while he was serving. Then he asked for the menu—and who was the chef? Then he said he’d decided he could make it for dinner at his own hotel, after all. Yes, I remember that customer!’
Miss Pink smiled in sympathy. ‘And which hotel did he think was superior to this one?’
‘He was staying at the Claymore in Morvern. Their chef can only do something called country cooking.’
‘Was he well-known?’
‘Who?’
‘The photographer. The man who stayed at the Claymore.’
‘I didn’t know—oh, yes, he was sitting in his car changing a film, wasn’t he? I don’t remember that he mentioned his name.’
***
‘He was called Osgood,’ Alec said, tightening the pup’s leash to prevent his jumping up at Miss Pink. ‘I didn’t meet him, but my dad did. He was staying at the Claymore and the date was August 4th.’
‘How on earth do you remember that?’
‘I went to the car park next day, to see if it was true, and I saw the broken glass on the ground. It wasn’t like ordinary glass; a car window breaks into bits like tiny gravel.’ He stopped and Miss Pink waited, her eyebrows raised. ‘She hurt her paw,’ he muttered, refusing to speak the poodle’s name, ‘and I remember dates when they had to do with her. I thought she got a bit of glass between the pads, but she was better next day.’
***
The receptionist at the Claymore wanted to play it by the rules. ‘Shouldn’t you tell me why you want to know?’ she asked.
‘He’s a photographer,’ Miss Pink explained. ‘I allowed him to take a picture of my house on condition he sent me a copy. He did and it’s quite exquisite. I want Christmas cards made from it. The trouble is copyright, you know? He stamped the back of the print with his name and phone number, but I can’t get any reply. It must be an old stamp.’
The receptionist was turning back the pages of the register. ‘August 4th, you said? Here it is: Hedley Osgood, Aberdeen. That doesn’t help you much.’
