by Gwen Moffat
Merrick was immediately alert. ‘He couldn’t be a stranger to the glen. . . . A friend of the girl’s? But the last anyone outside the glen knew was that she was coming here to join Watkins. How could she have got word out that she’d moved in with Irwin? Only the people in the glen knew that she was alone at Largo that night. Even if anyone outside did know she was at Largo, it would be too much of a coincidence if he also knew that Irwin would be away on Monday night. No, it was an inside job, there’s no doubt about that.’
*
On the site of Watkins’ tent, a plainclothes man and a uniformed constable were gingerly retrieving battered objects from the turf. They acknowledged her presence with diffident mumbles but continued with their work. As she stood there, idly wondering whether to return to the house for an early tea or to pay a visit to Shedog, someone gasped, ‘Oh, my God!’ and Andrew Lindsay blundered past her to stand irresolute behind the constable who was prising a cooking stove out of the sand. Lindsay turned horrified and appealing eyes on Miss Pink.
‘Did you see what he did to him? He nearly killed him! He can’t walk! They had to bring him up to the house by car, and now they’ve taken him to hospital. He’s a hospital case!’
The detective was listening avidly and the uniformed man was merely making motions with his hands but Lindsay wouldn’t have been concerned if they’d been recording him.
Miss Pink said soothingly, ‘Perhaps there was some resentment between them; it could have cleared the air.’
There was a prolonged silence after this inanity. The police made meaningless passes over the chaos in the turf and the horror died in Lindsay’s face.
‘I see,’ he said at last and sulkily. ‘You think it was over the girl. Jealousy.’ His eyes blazed again. ‘What? He thinks George killed her?’ Miss Pink had said nothing and now, dreading the moment when he would dry up in the presence of the Law, she moved away. He followed, clutching at her sleeve. ‘But that’s mad! George was over at Sligachan; he got drunk that night. In any case, he didn’t care who she went to; it was all over between them.’ He walked on with bowed head, absently kicking the daisies. After a while he continued unpleasantly, ‘This hasn’t done MacNeill any good, just the opposite: it’s clinched the case against him. They’ve taken him in; he’ll be charged with assault.’ His voice was rising again. ‘George—’ he choked on the name, ‘—he’s lost several teeth . . . they might have gone down his throat—he could have killed him!’
She did not voice her private thoughts on that but sat down on a dry bank facing the sea. This put her in mind of Watkins sitting beside her above Eas Mor yesterday. Some of these people were incapable of dissimulation when they were disturbed. She asked gently, ‘Would George have minded if Terry had been pregnant?’
‘He wouldn’t have cared,’ he responded flatly. ‘She could never have proved it. She was a tart. But she wasn’t pregnant.’
‘Difficult to tell,’ she murmured.
‘She didn’t look pregnant,’ he insisted. ‘No, she couldn’t have been.’
‘You must have been watching her through binoculars,’ she said pleasantly.
He glared at her. ‘Why the hell—? I never watched her. Why should I? I’m not—I wasn’t interested in her!’
‘How many times did you meet her?’
‘I never met her.’
‘You met her on Saturday evening; you may not have been introduced, perhaps you didn’t speak to her, but you were standing right next—’
‘That was the only time; I never saw her again.’
‘You must have done because in the dress she wore that evening you couldn’t have sworn she wasn’t pregnant, and you’re so certain. It was the style of dress women might wear when they are pregnant.’
His eyes wandered. ‘I didn’t see her again.’
‘So Betty did.’
He licked his lips and looked crafty. ‘Yes,’ he agreed carelessly, ‘Betty saw her again.’
‘When?’ She caught a flicker in his eyes. ‘You were on the White Slab the day that Irwin left, and that evening you quarrelled with your wife and left the dining room quickly. Where did Betty go?’
He grinned at her. ‘You’d better ask her. I stayed in the bedroom.’
*
The air was thickening over Loch Shira, forming a belt of sea fog, and at the same time the corries were filling with an opaque but brilliant mist which seemed to seep like steam out of cracks in the rocks.
As Miss Pink strolled towards the big house, these isolated patches of vapour spread and coalesced, the belt behind her moved landward, but for a few minutes the peaks stood above it, violet-coloured and appearing incredibly high.
By the time she reached the house the atmosphere was dim and clammy. The front door was open to the fog and the place appeared empty. She walked round to the back. She had not been here before but was not surprised that there should be no sign of the squalor usually found at the rear of catering establishments. The Hamlyns’ Avenger and an old but gleaming Rescue Land Rover were parked neatly in the yard. There were no empty beer crates, no over-flowing dustbins, in fact, but for the iron fire escape, it could have been the back of a private residence, and even the fire escape might have been the work of a responsible paterfamilias.
There was a movement inside a stable and Hamlyn appeared in the doorway, critically inspecting a helmet. His surprise at her presence was superseded by a different kind of alertness as he cocked an eye at the wraiths of fog drifting through the trees.
‘Now what does this mean?’ It was a rhetorical question. ‘Sea fog. Heat? But the forecast is “unsettled”. However, I don’t think it’ll come to much.’
‘That’s just as well, with Madge hoping to traverse the ridge tomorrow.’ She was examining a cushion of stonecrop in the stones of the mounting block. ‘Wall pepper,’ she observed. ‘It must like the lime in the mortar. Surely these buildings aren’t of limestone?’
‘Granite—from the Red Hills. She’s going to do the ridge tomorrow?’
‘So she says. I would think it will be more difficult in cloud.’
‘Not for someone who knows the way. I’ve done it in cloud.’
‘Indeed. You must have been a very active man in your prime. You’d leave most of your contemporaries behind even now.’
He made a deprecating gesture but it was at variance with his tone. ‘Four principles: a good diet, plenty of exercise and fresh air, and positive thinking. It’s as simple as that.’ She beamed and nodded. ‘But you subscribe to that philosophy yourself,’ he pointed out as if accusing her.
‘As fully as I can.’ She peered inside the stable. ‘Are you restoring order? Can I see the equipment?’
‘Certainly.’ He stood back and motioned her inside.
She looked with interest at the paraphernalia of rescue: rucksacks, pack frames, radio sets, a pile of plastic bags. Below a wall map was a telephone and clipboard, and three stretchers were suspended from beams by an ingenious system of pulleys. It looked very professional.
‘It’s fascinating to see how different people organise a Post,’ she admitted. ‘Tell me—’ her hand rested on a shelf but now she lifted it with a look of horror. ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ she murmured, ‘I’ve left a print.’
‘The police have finished in here; that’s how I come to be replacing the stuff. They’ve gone over the place with a tooth comb but they’ve come up with nothing that shouldn’t be here. I understand the same thing’s happened with personal pack frames. Only four of us have them: the guides, Irwin and myself.’
‘But the frames will be covered with their owners’ prints.’
‘Well.’ He coughed in deference to the gentler sex. ‘They were looking for traces, d’you see, hairs and things.’
She considered this and then remarked that a survival bag was concerned too. He looked guilty.
‘I’m naughty about inventories; there could be a bag missing, I can’t be certain. But the police seemed sure that th
ere were no strange prints in here. However, I suppose he could have worn gloves?’
‘Glove prints will show.’
‘Is that so? Intriguing, this fingerprint business. Did you have yours taken?’
‘Oh yes.’
He was sly. ‘So even you are a suspect, ma’am.’
‘Possibly, but I would think they took them for elimination purposes. I was at Largo, you see.’
‘You were? When?’
‘Yesterday morning.’
‘Of course. I was wondering if you’d gone across the previous night.’
‘No.’ She regarded him levelly. ‘When I said goodnight to you on Monday evening, I was on my way to bed.’
He clapped a hand to his forehead with a theatrical gesture. ‘People’s movements! I’m starting to act like a detective myself! They keep asking me where everyone was, as if I were a kind of spider at the centre of a web. I know where they are when they’re in the cocktail lounge, that’s all.’
She smiled in sympathy. ‘Did you know that Willie MacNeill had gone to the police station?’
It took him a moment to assimilate this. ‘Did he go voluntarily?’
‘No. He assaulted Watkins.’
He sighed in exasperation. ‘I told you so: only yesterday. No discipline, you see, no self-control; all these closed communities are the same; they were all right while the old values held and the community had leaders for whom—’
‘Colonel!’ He stopped in mid-flight and gaped at her. ‘Forget about Glen Shira for a moment,’ she ordered sternly, ‘George Watkins comes from an urban environment but he had considerably less control. The only way he could end a relationship he found unsatisfactory was to use violence. Willie’s thrashing Watkins was perfectly natural; I don’t blame him a bit.’
‘Ha!’ He’d recovered and was jovial although he didn’t look amused. ‘You approve of primitive instincts?’ He shook his head seriously. ‘But we can’t have it in a civilised community, d’you see. They make the mistake of thinking of freedom as licence, but freedom carries obligations; even animals are very highly organised.’ He smiled at her. ‘We can’t have people taking the law into their own hands, that’s anarchy. What I always say is: it doesn’t matter what you do so long as you don’t hurt anyone. Now I admit that sounds like licence but you think about it, dear lady, you think!’
‘Generalisations can be dangerous,’ she murmured.
He hardly heard her. ‘There is nothing you can do that doesn’t affect someone else—unless you’re stuck on a desert island. We’re all interdependent, and in a place like this any lack of consideration sticks out like a sore thumb. It isn’t just bad manners then; it becomes anti-social behaviour. Look at that tip in Scarf Geo! There are dead sheep down there, ma’am! That’s illegal. But, as you say, it’s not only the crofters—’ he looked startled. ‘In fact, they may not be so bad; it’s possible I’ve been doing them an injustice. The visitors are city folk: marginally better educated perhaps, but look at them: transistors on the shore, stealing produce from the garden, lighting fires in the woods—’ his eyes became more protuberant. ‘You have the same situation in Cornwall; the police have a load of trouble with artists and drugs in St Ives.’
‘Britain is such a small country; there’s so little room for people to enjoy—’
‘There are too many people!’
She divined what was coming and edged towards the door. He raised his voice in an effort to detain her: ‘The fact is that the lower their intelligence, the more prolific they are, and in poor Catholic countries you see it at its worst. Look at Ireland! This modern emphasis on population control: two children to every family! It’s suicidal! D’you know what will happen? The middle classes will limit their numbers and the masses will breed like rabbits—and in a few generations they’ll have bred us out of existence!’
Miss Pink said weakly, ‘So what do you suggest?’
Suddenly he looked tired and old, and ashamed. ‘It’s the crunch, isn’t it? And I talk about positive thinking!’ He was obviously suffering. ‘I’m glad we had no children. What would it be like for our grandchildren? Have you seen a pop concert on television?’ His tone was flat. ‘The audience isn’t even adolescent; they are little girls. And they’re the future mothers of the race. And when you see those . . . those animals posturing on the stage, manipulating them. . . .’ He stared at her. He was breathing heavily. ‘That is not decadence, ma’am, the decadence lies in the people manipulating the puppets. We have reached the stage of free bread and circuses, d’you see?’ Suddenly he gave a boyish grin. ‘They’ll be putting drugs in the drinking water next. Of course, we’ve got our own supply.’ It was self-parody and Miss Pink smiled faintly.
‘What can you do?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘What do you do?’
‘Me? Oh, I cultivate my garden. I’m self-sufficient for vegetables and fruit; I keep bees. . . .’
‘Drop in the ocean,’ he said, following her into the yard. ‘When you hear that louts have put a girder on the line in front of an express train, I suppose you go out and transplant the lettuces?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
Chapter Eleven
At five minutes to six the weather forecast was still unsettled and Miss Pink regarded the gloom outside her windows with scepticism. It looked like a November evening and she could no longer see Largo. At six o’clock she smelt peat smoke and went downstairs to find that the fires had been lit.
Maynard was in the cocktail lounge, and Hamlyn behind the bar. Maynard had been for a row in Captain Hunt’s dinghy but, seeing the fog coming in, he’d retreated hastily and had been invited to take a dram with the captain. Thus he had heard about the fracas on the camp site although his version had it that Watkins was in custody too. At this point Hamlyn remarked that the glen would be a better place for the loss of its trouble makers. Maynard stared at him.
‘If neither young MacNeill nor Watkins is the murderer,’ he observed, ‘then the worst trouble maker—’ he stressed the words ironically, ‘—is still here. He could be one of us.’
Hamlyn gaped at him then turned for help to Miss Pink. Maynard, enjoying his host’s consternation, said, ‘Right, so it isn’t Watkins or Willie. Let’s say, excluding the hostel people—and I reckon we do: they’re outwith our cosy little community—there are—’ he lapsed into a mumbled calculation on his fingers while Hamlyn glared belligerently, ‘—it leaves six men unaccounted for.’
His listeners’ eyes glazed predictably. Miss Pink responded first, ‘That is correct, but only if you include the crofters.’
‘Which you don’t,’ Maynard said easily. ‘No motive. So excluding them, you’re left with Lindsay, Irwin, me—’ he smiled gaily at Hamlyn, ‘—and you.’
Hamlyn said, ‘What motive did I have?’
‘Oh, sex.’ The other’s tone was earnest. ‘It was a sex crime.’
Betty Lindsay came in wearing a khaki safari suit which made her look like a navvy. As he turned from Hamlyn, Miss Pink saw that Maynard was not really amused. Tonight his baiting of the colonel was a defence mechanism.
‘And there is Betty,’ he remarked outrageously, ‘who is as strong as a man.’
She was preoccupied. ‘What’s that, sweetie?’
‘You’re a likely candidate for the killer.’
‘Really? I’ll have a large gin, Gordon. Why me?’ she continued, folding a pound note and tapping it on the bar.
‘Why anyone?’ Maynard lost interest and turned to Miss Pink. ‘I’m going on the hill tomorrow, no matter what the police say. I’ve only got two more days and I’m not staying down in the glen for another of them. This place gives me the willies. Will you come out with me?’
‘I should like that. Madge is hoping to do the ridge and I’d enjoy seeing her go past. From the right spot we should be able to watch her for a long way.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Betty put in.
Ken blinked but his tone was pleasant. ‘We’ll make up a p
arty then. Where do you suggest we go?’
‘I think we should go to Mhic Coinnich or Alasdair,’ Miss Pink said. ‘She’s cached some food on Banachdich so, to encourage her, we ought to meet her halfway between the start, at Gars Bheinn, and the cache.’
‘The start is her tent,’ Maynard said.
‘What’s a cache?’ Betty asked.
‘Some food and water; she’s put it under a stone on the Banachdich pass.’
‘I hope she can find it again,’ Hamlyn said.
‘There’s an obvious perched block on the north side of the pass with a hole about six feet from its base. She could come straight down to her tent from there if she decided for some reason not to continue.’
‘Will she be in for dinner?’ Betty asked innocently. Apparently she knew nothing of the under-currents in the house. The men remained silent and Hamlyn busied himself with a glass cloth.
‘I doubt it,’ Miss Pink said. ‘She’ll be up before dawn so I expect she’ll have an early night.’
Betty glanced at Maynard suspiciously. She would be remembering that his engagement with Madge had two days to run but she didn’t comment. Instead she said loudly, ‘That’s fixed then—for tomorrow? But how are we going to find her if this doesn’t clear?’ She gestured towards the window.
‘It’ll clear,’ Hamlyn told her. ‘It’s only a sea fog.’
Andrew Lindsay slouched into the room. His eyes were rimmed with red and he ordered a large whisky without speaking to any of the guests. Betty exclaimed brightly, ‘I must go and put things together,’ and left the bar. Maynard made nervous grimaces and eyed Miss Pink.
‘Where is Lavender?’ she asked with a sinking heart, dreading that she might be contributing to the tension.
‘Not feeling too good; she won’t be down for dinner.’
Hamlyn looked concerned. ‘Can we do anything? Broth, toast . . . She must have something.’
