by Gwen Moffat
‘She’ll have to come off now,’ Miss Pink said, and he nodded.
‘She’ll come down Coire Banachdich.’
But the storm didn’t last long and by the time they came to the mouth of Coire Lagan the clouds were clearing, and again the peaks stood gaunt and dry above the steaming corries.
The tent came into view across the burn but no one moved about it and the flaps were still closed. They studied the back of Coire na Banachdich through binoculars but could see no sign of her, so they assumed that she was continuing the traverse of the ridge.
Below the tent they looked back at the fall and noticed that there was less water in it than there had been this morning. So what they’d seen then must have been last night’s rain running off; the recent storm would make little, if any difference to the level of the burns.
Miss Pink bathed and then made tea in her room. She was enjoying her second cup when there was a knock at her door. Betty entered, wearing the same khaki suit she’d worn last night and at breakfast, so crumpled now that she might have slept in it. She looked exhausted.
Miss Pink glanced at her and immediately filled a second cup with tea, then she got up to fetch her medicinal brandy.
‘Andy’s gone,’ Betty said without passion. ‘He’s cleared off with George Watkins. They’ve eloped.’
She started to laugh stridently.
Chapter Twelve
‘He left a note,’ Betty explained, gulping brandy from a bathroom tumbler, ‘saying George had rung telling him to take the van to the hospital. Of course, no one had rung; I asked the Hamlyns. The note was on the dressing table when I came upstairs last night. And then I realised that Andy had taken all his things. I didn’t get too excited about that. We had a row on Monday, you may have noticed; he slammed out of the dining room. I’d been putting the pressure on; there’s this house for sale outside Portree: a bargain, and I wanted to put a deposit on it. He wasn’t having any, put his foot down, refused to leave the south. . . . You know how one thing can lead to another?’ Miss Pink nodded sympathetically. ‘In the end—upstairs—we were quarrelling about George. That was nasty. The atmosphere’s been tense for the last few days. So last night I wasn’t really surprised when I saw he’d gone—’ she smiled wryly, ‘—after all, he had left me the car; I went down to check. Funny thing, it didn’t seem significant at the time that he’d taken George’s van. I thought he’d spend the night in Broadford or somewhere and then ring me to go and pick him up. He didn’t ring so I went over this morning. When I got to the hospital they told me Andy called some time after nine last night. George had been waiting for him. Then one of the ambulance men said he’d seen them go to a hotel in the village so I went and looked in the register. They’d left, of course, but they’d signed in: under a false name, Drummond, and shared a room.’
‘Cheaper,’ Miss Pink murmured.
One side of Betty’s mouth rose. ‘I’ve known all along; I refused to acknowledge it, even to myself. You can keep up a better front that way.’
Miss Pink nodded surprised approval. ‘But,’ she pointed out, ‘flight looks very suspicious at this moment.’
‘No one’s been told not to go.’ She was on the defensive and Miss Pink realised she was still fighting for this strange couple.
‘Perhaps Merrick was hoping something like this would happen,’ she mused. ‘I thought it curious that they should have left us to ourselves last night.’
‘You mean, he expected George and Andy to—to—’
‘He might have been expecting someone to make a run for it.’
‘Well, it won’t worry them. George will be amused at being hunted by the police. He’s probably making a game of it right now. He won’t have much success though; he hasn’t got the brain for a criminal.’
‘You don’t seem to have any illusions left.’
‘I never had. He’s a mutton-headed oaf, and I’m not the first woman to be attracted to one.’ She stared at the other belligerently.
‘Is that why you went to Largo on Monday evening: because you wanted to catch him with Terry and have a show-down?’
Betty’s mouth hung open. After a moment she gasped, ‘How did you find that out?’ Miss Pink sighed. ‘I see,’ the other continued flatly, ‘Andy told you.’
‘It wasn’t calculated malice. He’d mentioned that Terry was “flat as a board” when pregnancy was referred to, you remember? So I thought he must have met her after Saturday evening because then her dress was concealing—in that respect. Someone must have seen her in other clothes, or through binoculars from the house—which didn’t sound like your husband.’ Miss Pink was poker-faced. ‘Nor,’ she added more naturally, ‘like you. It seemed more likely that you had gone to Largo, and then told him.’
Betty was deflated. After a moment she remembered the original question. ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘I did go across because I thought she’d be with someone; perhaps I hoped it would be George. I was in a horrible mood; I felt that a violent confrontation, particularly with George, was what I needed at that moment.’
‘And was she alone?’
‘Yes. I didn’t go in. There were no curtains, or they weren’t drawn. I watched her for a while and then I came away.’
‘Did you get the impression that she was quite alone? Could there have been a visitor anywhere else? Upstairs, for instance, or even outside?’
Betty stared. ‘I wouldn’t think so. If there was, she didn’t know it. She was reading, and then she got up and hefted the kettle so I came away quickly in case she came outside for water. I didn’t want her to catch me there. By that time I felt awful. I saw the bruises on her face and I felt like a Peeping Tom.’
‘What was the time?’
‘Not late; about nine.’
‘Did you hear anyone on your way back—or at any time while you were out?’
‘No, but I was too early; she must have been killed after eleven. Willie saw her alive then.’
Miss Pink looked blank. ‘But that may have had no particular relevance to when her killer went across, you see.’
‘You mean he may have gone there much earlier than eleven.’ She leaned back in Miss Pink’s easy chair. She was a better colour now as her rather slow brain started to follow the line which was appearing to her. She looked up quickly to find herself observed. ‘You’re thinking I was powerful enough to carry her body to Scarf Geo. Quite true. I didn’t do it though.’ Miss Pink nodded with a small neutral smile. ‘The field’s pretty limited now, isn’t it?’ Betty was thoughtful. ‘Obviously it wasn’t George or Andy. You may include them but I know it wasn’t. So that leaves Ken, Gordon Hamlyn, Colin Irwin. Who else? The crofters?’
Miss Pink said, ‘I think we ought to dress.’
Betty appeared not to have heard her. ‘Isn’t that odd,’ she murmured, ‘Madge and Vera are just as strong as me.’ She stared at Miss Pink in horror. ‘Madge and Vera? Why has Madge gone up to the waterfall? Do you know?’ Miss Pink stood up and smoothed her bed. Betty stood too. ‘The service stairs are down this passage,’ she said, ‘after the Hamlyns’ suite; they’ve got a sitting room and bedroom farther along. And then there’s the fire escape; anyone could go and come secretly. Madge is on this corridor too. How did she appear today when you met her?’
‘We missed her,’ Miss Pink said.
*
Lavender, in black with pearls, smiled tightly. ‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked.
‘Quite pleasant, thank you.’ Miss Pink was equable.
‘But you didn’t see Madge.’ There was an infinitesimal hesitation before the name as if she didn’t like pronouncing it. From behind the bar Hamlyn regarded them both with what might be trepidation.
‘We missed her,’ Miss Pink said heavily. ‘Are you feeling better?’
‘I’m fair. I’m afraid I’m always affected by tension. As Kenneth says,’ she looked innocently at Hamlyn, ‘I shouldn’t have come to Skye. There would have been tension anyway—with him climbing every
day, but it would have been even worse if I’d stayed at home.’
The colonel said stiffly, ‘Non-climbing wives have a great deal to put up with. It’s not dangerous really, y’know; much more dangerous crossing the road.’
‘I’d feel so much happier if he took a proper guide,’ Lavender went on. ‘I know Madge Fraser has some certificates but so had that fellow Watkins, and no one could have been more vicious than him. Except a woman. And why has she gone up to the waterfall anyway? I know Vera has suspicions.’
Hamlyn said, ‘I really don’t think you should express yourself in that vein, ma’am; it might do a great deal of harm if it reached the wrong ears. Press, for instance. Don’t you agree, Miss Pink?’
She roused herself from what appeared to have been a stupor. ‘Oh, no doubt.’ She was vacuous. ‘She must have travelled at quite a speed though. On the ridge, I mean.’ She beamed at him. ‘Have you been out today, colonel?’
In his relief at her turning the conversation, he became verbose. ‘I was cutting the grass this morning, and setting traps for those moles, but after lunch I was allowed to go out on the loch for a bit of sport. Hunt was out too. You’re having mackerel fillets with fennel tonight.’ He looked smug, then anxious. ‘You won’t be dining on toast, ma’am?’ he asked of Lavender.
‘Mackerel’s so rich.’
‘The fennel takes care of that.’
‘What is to follow?’ Miss Pink asked frantically, but then Maynard ran down the stairs and entered the room. He was followed by Betty Lindsay and the conversation remained—innocently and without contrivances—on food.
But Lavender was not to be escaped so easily. After a delicious dinner with venison following the mackerel, Miss Pink was strolling on the colonel’s shaven if bumpy lawns when a figure came towards her lit eerily by the Northern Lights.
‘One can’t stay out,’ Miss Pink warned. ‘The midges are bad.’
Lavender fell into step beside her. She was smoking and Miss Pink leaned gratefully into the smoke. When she spoke, the other’s voice was surprisingly cool and serious.
‘What is Kenneth hiding?’ she asked.
‘Why don’t you ask him?’
‘I have and he won’t tell me. It’s something to do with Madge, isn’t it?’
‘You heard that altercation before breakfast yesterday.’
Lavender ignored this. ‘It’s something to do with Monday night. And Madge. What does she know?’
Into her voice had crept the familiar ghoulish note. Miss Pink looked round the dark lawns and back at the lighted windows.
‘When did your husband leave you on Monday evening?’
‘There was a lot of Monday evening. When, between six and midnight?’
‘What makes you think he went to Largo?’
In the silence that followed the bats could be heard squeaking, fainter than mice.
‘Did Madge say he was at Largo? But how did she know? Ah! She was at Largo and saw someone. No—’ her tone changed, became firmer, ‘—that’s what she says.’ The sharp face turned to Miss Pink, the angles accentuated by the wheeling lights. ‘You know,’ Lavender whispered, ‘it could be Madge; she can pull Kenneth up a climb. She’s immensely strong.’
Miss Pink took the other’s arm as they moved towards the house. Her voice was low. ‘You may know too much. As Hamlyn says, it could be dangerous. I lock my door at night. You should as well.’
Lavender stopped abruptly. ‘That’s ridiculous.’ She giggled. ‘We’re hardly young girls.’
Miss Pink was serious. ‘I know it was a sex crime, but no one knows the motive, do they? Besides, that’s not the point. You could be dangerous in another way.’
‘To her?’
‘To someone.’
Chapter Thirteen
There was a further storm during the night and when morning came the cloud was clamped solid at two thousand feet. The wind was in the south-west and, standing outside the porch after breakfast, Miss Pink remarked to Ken Maynard that it wouldn’t be long before the start of the equinoctial gales. When he didn’t respond, she turned and saw that he was staring thoughtfully through the trees in the direction of Eas Mor, oblivious of her words and the resulting scrutiny.
His uneasiness was infectious. ‘Shall we stroll up the hill and find out how the traverse went?’ she asked.
He agreed with alacrity and they put on their boots and went up the drive. Madge owned a white Simca and when she left Glen Shira House she had parked it beside the road at the point where an ill defined path started for the waterfall. They could see the place from the entrance to the grounds but no car was parked there.
‘That’s quite logical,’ Miss Pink said after a moment, and as if they had been arguing, which they hadn’t. ‘She must have abandoned the traverse at a point nearer Glen Shira than Sligachan and descended to the tent direct. She could have retreated down one of the corries farther north and walked down the glen.’ Maynard was staring at her and she felt she was gabbling. ‘Let’s go up,’ she said gruffly.
There seemed to be a tacit agreement that hurry would indicate anxiety: a feeling that it was possible for them to precipitate something; nevertheless, their strides were long and they were breathing hard by the time the tent came in sight. No one was visible, but then they were approaching the back of the tent.
‘She’s gone to Sligachan to pick up the car,’ Maynard said, but his companion was silent as they skirted the guy ropes.
The tent was closed but on the grass at the entrance were the small day sack which Madge used when climbing, strapped and fastened and lying as if it had just been taken off, a pair of boots and navy-blue socks, the latter partly inside out, again as if she’d just pulled them off and left them lying. There were also two or three aluminium billies, obviously forming a set. Everything was soaked by the rain and the frying pan was brimming with water.
‘Should we wake her?’ Maynard whispered.
Although all the buttons down the front of the tent were unfastened, the flaps were still held together by the small loops at their base slipped over a central tent peg. Miss Pink was eyeing a half-bottle which protruded from under the side of the tent. It held an ounce or two of amber liquid. As she didn’t answer immediately Maynard bent and parted the flaps.
‘There’s no one here!’
‘She’s gone to Sligachan,’ she said, and felt her stomach contract with tension.
‘Look!’ Lifting the nylon loops off the peg, he threw the flaps wide.
Miss Pink saw a spartan interior: an expanse of ground sheet, a tidily rolled sleeping bag at the back, a big closed rucksack, an old-fashioned biscuit tin and the half-bottle that still contained a little whisky.
They stood back and surveyed the scene.
‘She’s just come down,’ he said, regarding the boots and socks, the day sack which, apart from the rain, still looked as if it had just been swung off its owner’s back except that the concavity which the spine makes in an unframed pack had now filled out.
‘Had just come down,’ she corrected.
His look was hostile but impersonal; his thoughts were not on Miss Pink. ‘She’d just come down,’ he amended, ‘very tired; didn’t even trouble to unfasten the tent properly—oh God!’
She had been following her own line of reasoning and his tone shocked her.
‘Was someone waiting in the tent?’ He was horrified.
‘Most unlikely.’ She became abstracted again. ‘Why the billies? Why start cooking before she’d even opened the tent properly?’
‘She didn’t trouble; she needed a drink. That whisky bottle’s too obvious for anything else.’
‘She didn’t have any whisky,’ Miss Pink said.
‘How on earth do you know?’
‘I don’t mean when she came down off the ridge. She didn’t have any the day before, when I was up here. She must have bought another half-bottle at Sligachan when she took the car over. She’s drunk rather a lot, hasn’t she?’
H
e wasn’t listening. He was fitting the billies into their ‘nest’. ‘This little lid: the pan is missing that it should fit.’ Carrying the lid, he walked towards the burn.
‘She didn’t get water there,’ Miss Pink called, herself making upstream to the point where she remembered Madge emerging on Wednesday morning. There was a faint trod which, after about twenty yards, converged with the bank of the burn. At this point some slabby rock intruded into the moor and the way came unpleasantly close to the edge. The drop was about fifteen feet but a few paces further was the place where Madge must have drawn water: a broken rib of rock dropping in easy steps to a sloping slab some twelve inches above the present level of the burn. As she contemplated this she was joined by Maynard.
‘What’s happened?’ he pleaded. ‘That gear there—’ he jerked his head towards the tent, ‘it’s been out all night. Where is she?’
Unhappily they started to follow the bank downstream, where, in places, the heather actually overhung the short rock walls. Miss Pink crossed the slabby patch and looked back at it from a vantage point. There was a mossy corner below the slab.
‘What’s that?’ Maynard was standing above the corner, pointing.
‘I can’t see anything.’
‘There’s a shoe wedged behind that rock; I’ll go down—’
He ran back and scrambled into the burn, stumbling over the boulders to below the corner. She watched and waited with a sense of inevitability. He retrieved the object and stood staring at it, water flowing over his boots, then he waded upstream, climbed the bank and came slowly through the heather. The smell of honey was overpowering. He held out a brown sandal with a flat sole.
‘It’s hers.’
‘How can you be sure?’
He turned away and she didn’t press for an answer. They continued down the bank, studying the bed of the stream. After a few yards they saw a light metal pan in the bottom of a pool and, a short distance further, cast like flotsam on a strip of gravel, the second sandal. They didn’t retrieve these but continued to the lip of the great fall where they stopped and regarded the water sliding over the edge.
