Over the Sea to Death

by Gwen Moffat

  A small sigh escaped Miss Pink and the younger woman turned, her expression questioning, then alert. She glanced from Miss Pink to the glen. The road and Glen Shira House were hidden by a convex slope but they could see across the mouth of the valley to Largo and Rahane and, following the green shelf westwards, it was possible to make out Scarf Geo.

  ‘Terry Cooke has gone,’ Miss Pink said.

  Watkins looked startled, then relieved. ‘That’s a pleasant welcome at the end of the day.’

  Lindsay shot him a glance. Betty asked, ‘Gone where?’

  The guide gave a snort of laughter. ‘What the hell does that matter so long as she’s off my back?’ A thought struck him. ‘You do mean she’s left the glen?’ he asked of Miss Pink.

  ‘No. She’s dead.’

  Betty gasped. There was a pause, then she said coldly, ‘You mean—drowned? A swimming accident? Or did someone take her climbing . . .? Or—’ She looked down at the ravine.

  ‘Her body is in Scarf Geo.’

  ‘Oh—h!’ The exclamation—of enlightenment, and drawn out—came from Lindsay, and Miss Pink turned to him. His face was clear and boyish and he smiled at her weakly. His forehead was damp. ‘Suicide,’ he observed.

  ‘That is possible. But if so, then she died in some other place, because the body is in a survival bag.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Betty said.

  ‘One of those large plastic bags that we carry— You probably have one in your pack now.’ She addressed the guide.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quickly, ‘I have.’

  Betty said with deliberation, ‘You mean someone put her in a bag? But that would mean murder.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Miss Pink was brisk. ‘She could have met with an accident or committed suicide and then someone put the body in a bag and dropped it down Scarf Geo. There are reasons for people covering up a death, or otherwise confusing the issue. Bodies are often moved after car accidents for example, and, in the case of an illegal abortion, it’s important to get the body off the premises as quickly as possible.’

  ‘But that doesn’t hold in this case,’ Lindsay pointed out. ‘She wasn’t pregnant.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Miss Pink asked with interest. He was dumbfounded. Watkins swallowed painfully.

  Betty said reasonably, ‘In those tight pants it would have shown; she was as flat as a board.’

  ‘I never saw her in pants,’ Miss Pink said, and watched Betty’s face freeze. ‘In the dress which she was wearing on Saturday evening it would be difficult to tell.’

  Watkins started to grin. Betty looked from him to her husband and said meaningly, ‘I think we’d better get down.’

  She touched Lindsay’s arm and gestured towards the glen. The guide watched them go, then turned and joined Miss Pink in contemplation of the waterfall. When she sat down on a bank he followed suit, then asked, ‘When was she killed?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He moved impatiently. ‘When was she found then?’

  ‘About midday today.’

  ‘And who saw her last? Alive?’

  She looked at him and he added quickly, ‘I mean, who apart from the killer?’

  ‘It seems that a man was talking to her some time before eleven last night—’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, naturally I’m interested. He could be lying, could be trying to protect himself. . . . It’s likely that the fellow who told you she had a visitor last night, could be the killer, yes?’

  ‘I didn’t say my informant was a man.’

  ‘So it was a woman.’ He turned his head. The Lindsays were out of sight. ‘Could be.’ He looked at her with an expression of candour. ‘I always thought she liked young girls. That’s the trouble between her and her husband; you’ve noticed it, of course. She’s wearing the trousers in that set-up, no mistake about it, but I never thought it went any further: outside the family, like. But there’s no reason why those sort shouldn’t be the same as everyone else—I mean, they’ve got their appetites, haven’t they? And she didn’t—doesn’t—give a damn about her husband; there’s nothing between them at all. You could tell she was attracted to Terry on Saturday night; she was so spiteful. Love-hate relationship, that’s what it was.’

  ‘How curious that you should put that interpretation on it.’ Miss Pink was thoughtful. ‘Granted she’s a powerful woman, but I thought her very feminine at heart.’ She laughed deprecatingly. ‘In fact, I would have said that she was very much attracted to yourself.’

  His mouth stretched in a nervous grin. ‘Yeah, she was a nuisance, like that.’ There was a brief pause. ‘I couldn’t shake her off; middle-aged women are far worse than kids. They get infatuated; a lot of it’s the glamour of the job. She used to come down to the camp site in the evenings.’ He stopped as if waiting for questions.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Difficult to remember.’ He grinned again. ‘I had a lot of visitors. She made a number of suggestions to me—propositions, you’d call them rightly.’

  ‘What was her husband’s reaction?’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t care; he’d be used to it.’

  ‘You didn’t think this was an isolated instance, then?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘She was often infatuated with younger men?’

  He drew a breath. ‘There were several things—contributory factors.’ He smiled, pleased with the term. ‘There was the heat, she often remarked on it: made us fed-up—I mean, we wanted to concentrate on the climbing. It would be her age, I guess; that would be another factor. And then they’d never had any children. She wanted to mother me—and him, but that’s unhealthy, isn’t it?’ He grimaced in distaste. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’ve always found her a bit of a drag. I’ve been guiding them for years now; they’re quite good climbers but I must admit she’s getting embarrassing lately; not enough to make me refuse to guide them any more but little things—some of them more than little: make your hair stand on end, the things she says. Everything had a double meaning, you know? And a party’s pretty intimate on the hill; you’ve got to strike a delicate balance if a situation’s not to get out of hand. I don’t mind admitting that with Mrs Lindsay I’d got to the stage where I wondered if she was round the twist. I’d not wanted to take them this year and I’m definitely going to find a way to get out of taking them next year.’ He lifted his hand and stared blankly at a piece of lousewort clutched between his fingers. ‘None of this surprises me,’ he added.

  *

  ‘Ah, good evening!’ Ken Maynard came into the cocktail lounge, still bouncing with energy after his day on the hill. ‘Just in time for a quick one, Gordon; two lagers, please.’

  ‘Make it pints,’ Madge amended, following him. ‘It’s humid today; I feel dehydrated. Good evening, Miss Pink; I didn’t see you in the corner.’

  ‘Have you had a good day?’

  ‘An easy day for her,’ Maynard responded. ‘We didn’t put the rope on until we were coming off the third pinnacle. What did you do?’

  It was the ritual question. They were only interested in their beer at this moment.

  ‘I found Terry Cooke’s body.’

  Maynard looked moderately startled. ‘Found Terry’s what?’

  Madge regarded her warily.

  ‘Body,’ Miss Pink repeated. ‘She’s dead.’

  Maynard stared at her, then turned to Hamlyn. ‘Is that true?’ The hotelier nodded mutely.

  ‘How did she die?’ Madge asked.

  ‘We don’t know.’ Miss Pink reflected that by now it was likely that a number of people knew, not to mention the one person who had known all along.

  ‘She was murdered,’ Maynard said coldly.

  ‘How do you know that?’ She felt a frisson of excitement as one person came out in the open.

  ‘Because only that could explain your peculiar—and discourteous—method of breaking the news. It’s ghas
tly, but you made no effort to cushion the shock, because you want our reactions. And that presupposes not merely—God, “merely”!—murder, but that there is some doubt or—’ he regarded her keenly, ‘—or a lot of doubt, as to who killed her.’

  Madge was frowning. She looked tired. ‘Do you have any more details?’ she asked.

  Miss Pink told them how the body had been found.

  ‘Why a survival bag?’

  Hamlyn and Miss Pink were silent.

  Maynard said flatly, ‘Because he had to carry her from Largo. If the body wasn’t wrapped it would leave traces on his clothing, or on the pack frame that he must have used to carry her. Also it’s possible that he thought that plastic doesn’t take fingerprints.’ He grinned at Miss Pink unpleasantly.

  ‘Does it?’ Madge asked her.

  ‘Yes, but he could have worn gloves.’

  ‘It means a climber,’ the guide postulated. ‘A survival bag and a pack frame. Was there a frame near the body?’

  ‘I didn’t see one, but then it could have been covered by rubbish. The reason the body wasn’t, was that it slid off the plastic, presumably.’

  ‘Why are you so certain about the frame?’ Hamlyn asked.

  Madge regarded him with good-natured contempt. ‘A fireman’s lift? All that way?’ She turned to the others. ‘But only a climber would think of a pack frame. There wouldn’t be any traces. . . . But he’s lost his survival bag. It’s simple, isn’t it? Whoever can’t produce a bag—’

  ‘It’s not so simple as that,’ Miss Pink demurred. ‘A person who has no bag today could say he never had one.’

  ‘Unless someone knew he had one,’ Maynard pointed out. ‘But then he would have come prepared with two bags.’

  ‘“Would have come”,’ Miss Pink repeated, ‘to the island? You think it was premeditated?’ There was a dead silence. Her eyes became abstracted, then sharpened. ‘And working on the lines of personal equipment is no help at all,’ she went on, ‘there’s all the gear in the Rescue Post.’ Mountain Rescue equipment was stored in a stable at the back of the house.

  ‘You’d better see if anything’s missing,’ Maynard told Hamlyn. ‘What’s your security like?’

  The other glowered, but seeing Miss Pink’s eyes on him, muttered unhappily, ‘The stable’s kept locked, but the key hangs in the passage inside the back door—with a tag marked Mountain Rescue Post. We don’t lock the back door until we go to bed.’

  ‘So it could have been anyone,’ Madge said.

  ‘Hardly anyone,’ Maynard corrected. ‘Survival bags are kept folded. Only a climber would know that they were big enough to get a body inside; only a climber would know that they were bags. It’s assuming too much to imagine a non-climbing tripper “borrowing” the key and taking just a plastic bag out of all the valuable gear lying around in that stable—against the time when he’s going to need it.’ He looked at Hamlyn. ‘You’d better go and take an inventory.’

  ‘It wouldn’t prove anything. The pack frame will have been put back, and I’m not particular about listing the numbers of small items like plastic bags.’

  ‘You’d make a good quarter-master,’ Maynard said acidly.

  *

  Detective Chief Inspector Merrick was tall and thin with hair which, having receded in a wide central swathe, made his face appear longer than it was. An impression of astuteness wasn’t contradicted by his other features; he was all angles: chin, nose and pointed ears, and he shone with a kind of bony cleanliness.

  His sergeant—a man called Ivory—was equally tall, but broad. Miss Pink always had the feeling that policemen’s wives knew little about diet; the only thin ones were those who would be thin in any circumstances—like Merrick. Another thought came to her as Merrick introduced Ivory; weight and fat were usually correlated with geniality but it was seldom that one met genial detectives. Despite his double chin, Ivory had sharp eyes and a narrow mouth. He hailed from Glasgow and looked like a successful ironmaster. She thought he would be good with professional criminals. Merrick looked as if he’d be good anywhere.

  It was now nine o’clock. It had been a strange evening for the residents of Glen Shira House. By way of the bush telegraph they’d been made aware of the movements of the police, but not of the details, and they’d tried to fill the gaps in their knowledge by speculation. During the afternoon the boats belonging to the settlement, directed by Captain Hunt, had taken policemen to Scarf Geo, and there were strange people along the top of the cliffs. There was a uniformed man on duty outside Largo and men in plain clothes coming and going. There was a rumour that fingerprints were being taken. After dinner the police asked to see Miss Pink.

  They were in the writing room. From the beginning it was clear that she was the one person who could be eliminated as a suspect, and that Merrick was going to take full advantage of her position and her knowledge. She’d been three days in the glen, had made contact with everyone except old MacNeill, and now she told them what she’d learned. It was a strange recital for, with hindsight, almost everything that had happened possessed significance and it was difficult for her not to be side-tracked by her own revelations.

  Ivory took notes but not many; she realised that since these were scanty there was indeed a good brain under Merrick’s high skull. Her formal statement—relating to the finding of the body—was all that was taken down carefully, but it seemed sparse. It was astonishing how concise one could be about death. Merrick asked more questions about the living people. She had a sudden impression, perhaps erroneous, that despite the wild setting they thought this was a stereotyped crime.

  Merrick, sitting at the writing table, regarded the notebook in front of him and read aloud: ‘Watkins, Irwin, Hamlyn, Lindsay, Maynard.’ He looked up. ‘Are we right in assuming that a woman couldn’t have carried the body? Climbers must be very strong. Is it not possible? What did she weigh? Eight and a half, nine stone?’

  ‘Nearer nine,’ Miss Pink ventured. ‘That’s—one hundred and twenty six pounds. A woman accustomed to carrying heavy loads could do it, but it’s over a mile from Largo to Scarf Geo, and we’d all know if there were a woman as strong as that around . . . surely?’ There was a pause during which the build of the women in the glen passed before her mind’s eye. She continued without expression, ‘Also I’m sure she’d need assistance to get the body on the frame, and to hoist the frame on her back. . . .’

  By now it was generally accepted that, in view of the plastic bag which would make the load incredibly slippery—as Madge had suggested—a pack frame must have been used as well. Ivory had checked the rescue equipment with Hamlyn but no frames were missing. That was not conclusive; it could have been taken and returned. Hamlyn couldn’t be sure about the survival bags.

  ‘So,’ Merrick continued, reverting to his list, ‘the body was probably too heavy for a woman to carry. That leaves us with these men.’

  ‘Only those five?’

  He looked at her keenly. ‘These to interview, ma’am. There are three more: Hunt and the MacNeills. We’ve had preliminary talks with them.’

  ‘They’re the crofters.’

  ‘The more important people had to wait until I arrived.’ It was said dryly. So it was the preliminaries which lesser ranks had been engaged on during the afternoon and early evening. It was dark now and high tide. The body was protected by a plastic tent and was being watched over by two men on top of the cliffs. Since the geo could only be approached by sea, and oars and outboards had been removed from the boats, there was no need to place a guard right on that awful tip. In any event, said Merrick, it was most unlikely that the killer would approach the body at this stage, when it had been photographed and the plastic bag treated for prints, but one had to observe the letter of the law.

  The body had been examined by a doctor. There were bruises on the throat which suggested strangulation, and it was almost certain that the other injuries had been caused after death, from the effects of the fall. Nothing was certain of course
; they would have to wait for the pathologist’s report. However, there were indications. The body was fully clothed: in a pink halter top under a black jumper, and the jeans were fastened. It was not, on the face of it, a picture of rape. A search in the rubbish had revealed the bedding roll and a coat in addition to the shoulder bag. Even the flip-flops, the lilac dress and the contents of the plastic carriers (and the carriers) were found. Irwin had been ferried out to find and identify these effects. They had found no pack frame in the geo.

  ‘You’ve told us about these five men,’ Merrick was saying, ‘as they appear to you. We’ll go over them briefly to see if I’ve read you correctly, and then I think we’ll call it a night. Let’s start with Watkins. Stop me if you disagree. He’s forty-ish, powerful, running to fat; lazy, bad-mannered, and a bad guide. What is it, ma’am?’

  ‘Perhaps not bad technically, not a bad climber, just clumsy; it’s his relations with his clients that are unethical.’

  ‘Can you elaborate?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘It’s difficult to find an analogy. The point is that the activity is potentially dangerous—and emotional relationships destroy objectivity. So in this context such relationships are irresponsible. In putting his clients at risk he is a bad guide.’

  ‘You see why we need you. To continue: Watkins drinks heavily, he used violence on Terry Cooke and appears to have emptied her purse—of less than a pound, and he’s earning something like ten pounds a day excluding expenses.’ Merrick and Ivory exchanged looks. ‘We see a lot of violence and a lot more petty thieving. I don’t like a man who knocks women about and then steals a few coppers from her. It’s not fitting in this environment.’ Miss Pink’s mouth twitched. He went on, ‘The relationship between him and each of his current clients is also odd. Dear me, what a peculiar triangle for the Cuillin. What else was there?’

  Ivory pretended to look at his notes. ‘An inveterate liar.’

  ‘Was that my word—inveterate?’ Miss Pink was ingenuous. ‘That conversation I had with him this afternoon was bizarre; he appeared to assume that the killer was a man, then followed me rather too closely when I pointed out I had not mentioned the killer’s sex, and so jumped to the conclusion it was a woman. Was that stupidity or—’