by Gwen Moffat
‘This isn’t getting us’ – Leo began angrily, but the telephone was ringing – ‘anywhere.’ She ended on a subdued note. They all stared at the telephone.
Miss Pink lifted the receiver and listened. The others heard a barked question. ‘No,’ she said, turning as if she could see through the front door, glancing at the fog beyond the deck. ‘No, we haven’t seen her … yes, I’ll call you; where will you— ’ She replaced the receiver. ‘Cut me off,’ she said wryly. ‘Now Lois has disappeared.’
After a moment Leo asked, ‘How? If the police were there?’
‘Why?’ Sadie asked.
‘He didn’t say. The bathroom window probably. It’s traditional, isn’t it?’ Miss Pink sounded listless.
‘She’ll need a car to get away,’ Sadie said. ‘Maybe she took the Jeep.’
‘There’s Grace’s car too.’ Leo looked at Miss Pink. ‘Or did Grace and Chester take both cars? We don’t know much, do we?’
That situation didn’t last. In a few moments Hammett was there, glancing round sharply as he was admitted. Miss Pink’s surmise had been correct: Lois had left by way of a bathroom window, which had not been screened. He saw their expressions and his lips thinned.
‘The screen was leaning against the wall on the outside of the house,’ he told them.
‘You can’t remove screens from the inside,’ Leo said.
‘It was done before we got there this morning.’
‘Are you trying to tell us she knew in advance that she— ’
‘Shut up, Brant!’ It was quick, hard and so out of character that Leo stared at Sadie in amazement.
‘Did she take a car?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘No, ma’am, nor did the girl; the only car missing is Chester Hoyle’s.’
‘So they’ve all gone together,’ Sadie said when Hammett had left. ‘And he just called in to make sure Lois wasn’t here with us. Fat chance. They picked her up somewhere outside the village.’ She glanced at the window. ‘The fog’s on their side.’
Miss Pink said nothing. They looked at her, at each other, and then they poured themselves more coffee.
In the afternoon the fog cleared and some tourists walking to Fin Whale Head found an expensive parka and a pair of safari boots on the wet sand. Under the boots was a sealed envelope with an inscription asking the finder to contact the police. Laddow found Miss Pink in her garden and showed her the note that had been in the envelope. Signed by Lois it said nothing more than that her Will was with the law firm that she had failed to contact that morning. It was a simple Will, Laddow said: she had left everything, including her house, to Grace.
He was confused and angry. ‘Why?’ he exclaimed. ‘Why did she have to do it? We have no proof, and the guy was a psychopath anyway. She’d have got off.’
‘You were keeping a pretty close watch on her.’
‘We had to have a statement, that’s all. I couldn’t close the case on Gayleen without her evidence. Andy had confessed to her and I needed that in writing. Now she goes and drowns herself – and I thought she was an intelligent woman! It’s going to break her daughter – unless – ’
But Miss Pink was leading the way to her deck which was steaming in the sunshine. She brought cushions from the living-room, glasses and a pitcher of lemonade. ‘Unless what?’ she asked as she sat down.
He eyed her steadily. ‘We wondered: did Chester get cold feet – like she had pushed one partner over the edge, did he think murder was an occupational hazard of being married to Lois?’
‘And Grace?’
‘Maybe she didn’t like the idea of hanging around her mom neither. Maybe there was something between those two: Grace and Chester.’ He saw her scepticism and went on, ‘They drove off and left Lois facing a murder charge … ’ He ignored her raised eyebrows, ‘She has to have told them the truth, else why did Chester claim he did it? There wasn’t any need unless he knew it was murder.’
Someone was mounting the front steps. Hammett came round the corner of the house and placed a key on the table. Laddow didn’t touch it. Miss Pink asked Hammett to sit down and she brought another glass.
‘There may be something in the house could tell us more,’ Laddow said, eyeing the key. ‘Hammett’s closed up the place and we can’t do anything until Grace comes back, if she comes back. This is a very unsatisfactory business all round. Here we got three deaths and not one statement: Gayleen’s killed by Andy: Lois kills him, then herself. Case closed.’
Hammett nodded glumly. Miss Pink stared at the dancing water. Laddow’s face was a mask of bewilderment. ‘There was no proof,’ he repeated and then, becoming aware of her silence, he turned on Miss Pink. ‘Was there?’ he asked, and Hammett stared.
‘The proof is there in her – suicide,’ she said and, seeing their confusion deepen, she went on, ‘You put the cart before the horse: theories first and then working out how the actions fit although’ – as Laddow stirred impatiently – ‘I had the advantage of you. I heard Andy fall.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he began, ‘you were – ’ He glanced at Hammett.
‘You were in the Tattler,’ Hammett said. ‘All evening, unless you’re suggesting you could have heard a rock fall as you were going home. Is that it?’
‘He fell just after lunch that day.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Laddow was deflated. ‘You were up there. Did you see him fall?’ he asked without interest.
‘No. I heard the rocks go down. Before that I heard voices.’
They said nothing. Their expressions were resigned, understanding; the whole thing was an anti-climax. She saw that but she continued, ‘Then Lois ran down to her house, picked up Gayleen, drove to Moon Shell Beach, shot the girl and cycled back.’ Laddow and Hammett exchanged looks. ‘If she drowned herself,’ she went on, ‘it was because of Gayleen, not Andy. She’d find good reason for killing him, but Gayleen was a different matter.’
‘It was indeed.’ Laddow was silky. ‘So why did she have to kill Gayleen at all?’
‘Because Gayleen knew she had been in the forest; she could have been looking for her hostess and discovered that Andy was missing as well. When Lois did return, with some story about Andy having been called away that morning but that she, Lois, had to go to Portland and would give Gayleen a lift, the girl would go along with that. Lois is probably telling the truth when she says Gayleen was in awe not only of her but the whole situation. However, if Andy’s body were discovered – and there didn’t have to be a bullet in the skull – even Gayleen’s simple mind would connect where it was found with Lois coming down out of the forest and, of course, the lies Lois had to tell in order to get Gayleen to leave. Andy hadn’t been called away: he was dead all the time. The girl had to be killed to silence her.’
‘You are ingenious,’ Laddow said admiringly. ‘You should be writing crime stories – ’ and then was disconcerted as he remembered that Lois Keller was a writer of crime stories. He pulled himself together and continued coldly, ‘And you’re going to tell us that a woman who kills her husband – in a quarrel? – and kills a second time to silence a potential witness, that this cold-blooded killer is so overcome with remorse she walks into the ocean and drowns herself?’
‘I’m not saying that. For one thing Andy’s murder could have been premeditated, but I think it would be in the form of an execution. If his body wasn’t so battered the pathologist might have found a bullet track— ’
Laddow was holding up his hand. ‘And how did she convince him to go up there in the first place?’
‘That man would seize any chance to annoy people. She had only to say that she was going for a hike for him to propose himself as company. He wouldn’t need any persuading, merely an indication that she would prefer to be alone. The revolver,’ she added, ‘if one was used, would have been in her rucksack.’
‘And where is it now?’
‘Like the Stetson: where you’ll never find it. The hat will have been burned; the revolver will be on the bed of a riv
er, or down a deep hole.’
‘May one ask’ – elaborately polite – ‘what the motive was? I mean’ – and now the sarcasm was honed – ‘for Andy’s murder?’
‘Didn’t you see the bumper sticker that he had put on the Chevrolet?’
‘Bumper sticker?’
‘You remember,’ Hammett prompted. ‘The addict – the car thief – rubbed dirt on it because it was conspicuous? It said, “I Love Spotted Owls. Roasted”.’
Laddow said nothing but his eyes were furious.
‘That could have been the final straw,’ she said. ‘Not so much the content of the statement but that he should have come here with that sticker on his wife’s car. It was showing what he thought of her beliefs – and it was self-destructive. Lois is a wilderness person; she puts animals before people.’
‘Was a wilderness person,’ Laddow murmured. ‘You got the wrong tense.’
‘Did I?’
They studied her face. At length Laddow remarked, ‘You’re not on her side, are you?’
‘I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m just telling you what happened.’
‘You built a whole scenario on one shaky occurrence. You heard voices before the rocks fell so you decided those were the voices of Andy and Lois. You’re saying she shot him and knocked down some rocks to finish the job or cover the body, or both. Why didn’t you hear the sound of the shot?’
She shrugged. ‘She might have pushed him. If she did use the revolver – muffled by the fog – it could have sounded like a branch snapping or the start of a stonefall— ’
The men exchanged looks and this had the effect of checking her. She could have gone on to say that Forensics might find one of Lois’s hairs inside the red cycling helmet. The Stetson would have been burned but had she thought to destroy the helmet? She could suggest that they might learn a lot from observing the behaviour of Chester and Grace when they returned. She knew now that they would return. She said nothing; she would let events take their course.
The news was on local television that evening. She waited for her telephone to ring but she learned later that it was the Surfbird that Grace called, asking to speak to Laddow. The identity of the owner of the abandoned parka and boots hadn’t been named on television but he told Grace what she expected to hear. Chester came on the line then and Laddow said that he had no further information. No body had been found. When might the two of them be expected to return? They were in Eugene, Chester said; they would return tomorrow. All this was relayed to the rest of Sundown as a matter of course by Mabel Sykes.
Chester and Grace returned the next morning, having had a night to get over the first ghastly shock, as Fleur put it to Miss Pink, who had gone down to the gallery in a deliberate attempt to avoid the police and the residents on the loop road.
The fog had rolled away as the sun gained strength, and the air was exquisite: washed and sparkling, the stacks reared above their own shadows on the peacock water. Fleur looked and shuddered.
‘Horrible,’ she said, ‘to think of her out there, drifting on a current. Death is so appallingly sudden.’
‘It was for Gayleen too.’
Fleur accepted this in the same vein as anyone else in the community would. Miss Pink had not, and never would, voice her own theories. Whether or not the police laid any credence on these, they would keep quiet too, for obvious reasons. When Lois’s parka and boots were found on the sand the case was closed.
‘Gayleen was different,’ Fleur said. ‘She was born prey: with those looks and that immaturity – like Marilyn Monroe when you come to think of it. But Lois was a survivor. How can I say that? It’s a contradiction in terms.’ And she stared moodily at the sea.
It was quiet in the sitting-room. Miss Pink looked around casually. ‘What have you done with Lovejoy?’
‘I had to let him out of the shed, he was making such a din. He hadn’t touched his food and as soon as I opened the door he streaked round the front of the house and presumably straight back to the Keller place. He adored Lois.’
That Christmas Fleur sent a letter to Cornwall with her greetings card. Miss Pink, ensconced in her cosy drawing-room at ten o’clock one morning, lamps throwing pools of light in the gloom, an opaque wall outside the windows and the fog horn moaning, was transported back to that other barbaric coast on a different ocean, visualising as she read, the stacks and the headlands, the timbered range and the houses clinging to the lower slopes above the cove like nests of migrant birds.
… they sold both houses [Fleur wrote]. I guess they couldn’t stand the memories. You know they never found the body? How could either of them walk the shore again not knowing what they might come on in a crevice, washed up by the tide?
Grace has to be a very wealthy woman now; the house sold for close on a million, all the land and the cabin up back, and Lois died worth several more millions. Then there’s her royalties – all to go to Grace. I was surprised actually. I understood she always meant to expand her business, even start a chain of boutiques, but she hasn’t yet and I was in the Portland store and her manageress said there were no plans. Grace herself was somewhere on holiday in the Caribbean so I didn’t get to talk to her, and of course she doesn’t come to Sundown any more. There’s nothing here for her.
When Chester sold up he disappeared. Said he was putting all his possessions in store and just taking off. He bought a pick-up and put one of those camper shells on the back – you know the kind: only room for one guy – oh yes, and a cat. You remember Lovejoy, Lois’s cat I took in the night she drowned? Chester adopted the animal and took him on his travels. That reminds me of an odd coincidence. Jason says Mabel heard a rumour that Chester had been seen in Yucatan or Belize or somewhere – or maybe it was Oliver was down there. Oliver writes to me by the way; he left Sundown and took up with the widow of a Texas oil man. It had to be Oliver; he said there was this guy he glimpsed in a street in some little fishing village, just walked past the café Oliver was in, looked like Chester, but then Chester wasn’t remarkable to look at, must be hundreds like him. Anyway it couldn’t have been him because he was with a woman. In fact they looked so ordinary that Oliver would never have noticed them at all, just a couple of American tourists, except the woman had a black and white cat draped over her shoulder. It made a pretty story, Oliver writes well …
Miss Pink sighed and put down the letter. The fog horn boomed. She wished it had not been necessary to kill Gayleen but then, as Fleur had said, Gayleen was not a survivor; her tragedy was that sooner or later she was going to come up against one, and when she did, it had to be Lois. She suspected that they were quite happy – in Belize or Yucatan – or wherever in the world they established territory.
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[*]Rage (Macmillan 1990)
