Die Like a Dog

by Gwen Moffat

‘Who’d take any notice of two young lads crossing a road in the middle of the summer in Snowdonia?’

  ‘Anna Waring was in Chester,’ Pryce said thoughtfully, ‘so when they reached the cottage on Saturday night, there’d only have been one car. They’d have known she wasn’t with Judson.’

  ‘It would make very little difference. If Judson were alone, he’d still be furious when he went down and found the garage empty. But there may have been a second car at the cottage. Not Anna’s, one belonging to some – other – woman.’

  Pryce leaned back in his seat, his face drawn with fatigue; he’d had only two hours’ sleep this morning.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘we have to talk to those two lads. And from what you say it looks as if we’re going to have our work cut out. You admit you won their confidence because they respect you as a mountain climber. How do you suggest we go about it?’ The sarcasm was laboured.

  ‘I don’t have any suggestions,’ Miss Pink said, her mind on that hypothetical second car at the cottage on the moors.

  ‘You don’t think they’re killers? They’re sixteen years old. There’ve been ruthless killers of that age before now, ma’am.’

  ‘But did they hold up under questioning? I wonder. Wouldn’t you have the feeling, talking to killers of sixteen, listening to them, that you were in the presence of a hard and vicious mentality?’

  ‘You didn’t get that kind of feeling with young Banks?"

  ‘I had a doubt,’ she admitted. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to push him. But the doubt was based on reason, I was thinking: I don’t know that this boy is not a killer, I must be careful, particularly in a place where there are no witnesses. On the other hand my instinct didn’t warn me that I was in the presence of something evil. I watched his eyes. The stolen car is in character: the desire to watch the enemy writhing. That terrible hatred that needs to see the hated person wiped off the face of the earth is not.’

  ‘Have you come across anyone in this village capable of that kind of hatred?’

  ‘Given the right circumstances –’ She stopped short of the trap. She caught the flicker of a smile on his face and rallied with the first ammunition to hand.

  ‘Both deaths resemble suicides.’

  ‘Resemble is the operative word, but Evans was unconscious when he hit the water. There’s no way he could have banged his head on that cooker as he fell, not to cause the bruise he has. But think of it as a murder. The killer needs to simulate a suicide but you can’t persuade a conscious man to tie a rope round his neck before you push him off the bank, tied to the cooker. So you knock him out when he’s bending down, looking inside a tent, for instance. It’s only a matter of a few yards to drag him to the bank above the pool.’

  They were silent. Suddenly Seale was in the picture again.

  Pryce continued: ‘Judson’s death is more straightforward; his prints are on the gun – and it’s his own gun. Gladys Judson identifies it.’

  She frowned. ‘That was suicide?’

  ‘Again, it looks like it at first glance but the only prints are about the trigger guard. The weapon should be covered with ’em. There are some certainly, but others are overlaid. By smudges.’

  ‘Gloves?’

  ‘And wiping, ma’am. Like the latch on the front door that should have Judson’s prints on it or, at the least, the prints of someone who was at the cottage with him. There should be prints on that latch and there aren’t. Someone came to the cottage after Judson arrived, and that person wore gloves.’

  ‘And even if he’d met a woman there, she wouldn’t be wearing gloves on the moors in the middle of summer. Are there other prints in the cottage?’

  ‘Anna Waring’s. We were prepared for those, of course.’

  ‘So you’ve taken her prints. What about Lloyd and Seale?’

  ‘We haven’t found theirs in the cottage.’

  ‘And on the cooker that you removed from the pool?’

  ‘Innumerable fragments and smudges, but probably a lot of those come from animals that have been licking it and rubbing against it.’

  ‘Were Evans’s prints on it?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘You took a long time before you told me that.’

  He shrugged. ‘If the killer put Judson’s prints on the gun, it stands to reason he’d press Evans’s hand on the cooker.’ He folded the map carefully. ‘There’s the question of motive,’ he said.

  She stiffened. ‘Yes, motive.’

  ‘Evans suspected that Lloyd killed the dog –’

  ‘Just a minute.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt –’ she didn’t sound in the least apologetic, ‘– but couldn’t we consider the motive in general terms – at least for the moment?’

  ‘Go on.’ He could have been humouring her.

  ‘Leave the dog out of it because, rightly or wrongly, no one except Evans considered that shooting the dog was a crime. But, assuming that Judson was killed on Saturday night – which seems likely because he didn’t report his car stolen on Sunday – then was Evans getting close to the murderer, at least inadvertently?’

  ‘You’re coming back to the dog.’

  ‘Not really. Certainly Evans was after the killer of the dog but could he have stumbled on something else? Not something concerning the dog’s killer but Judson’s. I mean, we know they’re different. Young Bart shot the dog; he didn’t – I reckon he didn’t – shoot Judson. Now Evans didn’t know that Judson was dead but could he have come across something significant without realising its significance? Evans had the – attributes for that. He was extraordinarily determined, inquisitive, and very stupid.’

  ‘A murder of elimination,’ Williams suggested.

  ‘Could be,’ Pryce admitted. ‘Then you come to the motive for Judson’s death. Did you know that he was pestering the girl, Seale?’

  ‘It was obvious.’

  ‘And that she responded?’

  ‘No! I don’t believe it. Who told you that?’

  ‘She did.’

  Miss Pink flushed. After a while she said coldly: ‘Are you going to give me the details?’

  He appeared not to notice her tone.

  ‘I think we can do that, not that we didn’t have some trouble getting it out of her. They’re a fine crew: those boys and Lloyd and Seale; you’ve got to fight for every inch of ground. And the girl’s the worst of the lot; she doesn’t resist you, she’s continually pretending to miss the point of the question.’

  Miss Pink stared stonily at the ferny bank outside the car. She didn’t remind him that where the boys were concerned, she’d done the work so far.

  ‘This morning,’ Pryce went on, ‘at first she would say only that she thought someone was in these woods on Friday morning. It wasn’t until some time later that she told us she wasn’t alone at that moment. She was with Judson. When I say “with” I don’t mean it in any irregular manner. He had come down to her camp to try to persuade her to – ah, well, you might say it was irregular.’

  Miss Pink refused to rise to the bait. Williams had turned his back on them and was staring through the windscreen. She sighed and Pryce looked peevish.

  ‘He was trying to persuade her to go away with him.’

  Miss Pink looked bored.

  ‘She drove away,’ he said coldly, ‘and Judson followed. They went down to the coast and had lunch together. Then she left him and walked along the sea cliffs but they met later at Ebeneser where she was giving a lecture that evening. After that she sent him packing. It looks as if they had a fight. At all events they split up and she didn’t come back to her camp site, thinking he’d be waiting for her, but spent the night in her van in some woods down the main valley. That’s her story.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘There’s no corroboration.’

  ‘There’s no need for any. It’s not important. Judson returned to Parc that night and nothing happened to him until Saturday. All she did was have lunch with the man. Ar
e you suggesting that she went to the cottage with him that afternoon?’

  ‘I hadn’t considered it. But according to her he did want her to spend the weekend with him – and he never gave up. He was at her camp again on the Saturday shortly before he left the valley. She says, brazen as you please, that although she refused to go with him, he was convinced that she’d follow. You see her slip: if she followed then she knew where the cottage was. She recovered herself nicely: said he’d given her directions how to reach it but she hadn’t listened because she wasn’t interested. Not interested when she had lunch with him on Friday?’

  ‘Why not? She felt like eating a good meal and he wasn’t bad company when he set himself out to be – presumably, or she wouldn’t have gone to a restaurant with him. Most philanderers have charm.’

  ‘What about Lloyd?’

  ‘Don’t be old-fashioned. Lunching with one man doesn’t preempt the relationship with another. Probably she didn’t sleep with Lloyd until Saturday night anyway.’

  ‘And did she then? Or did she go and join Judson on the moors?’

  ‘No,’ Miss Pink said firmly. ‘Because her fingerprints weren’t found there.’

  ‘That’s debatable. It’s unlikely that anyone other than Judson spent considerable time in the place last weekend, but someone else was there: the person who wore gloves, the person who almost certainly killed him.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that’s suicide, not without we can find a feasible explanation for those prints having been wiped off. It could have been the girl, you know.’

  ‘But where’s the motive? You don’t kill a man because he refuses to take no for an answer. Where murder’s concerned the opposite is the case: the man kills the woman.’

  ‘After rape, or in conjunction with it. Quite. I agree: it’s not that kind of case, but Lloyd could have followed her to the cottage. He hated Judson’s guts. He’s trying to conceal it now but he hasn’t a hope of hiding his real feelings. He’s not a devious fellow.’

  ‘I don’t see him as a cold-blooded murderer.’

  ‘By the time Seale told him about Judson’s pestering he could have been pretty hot-blooded, more so since he’s keen on the girl himself.’

  ‘I doubt if she told him. She’d consider it unimportant.’

  Williams turned to face them.

  ‘He had a motive, miss. Judson was gunning for him, determined to drive him out of the valley: all over this old friction about him riding through the Reserve and his dogs running loose, frightening the animals and such.’

  ‘Have you charged him?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Pryce put his hand on the door. ‘We’ve got nothing to charge him with, nor her. He’s got an alibi for the Saturday night, such as it is: the girl, of course. She alibis him from Saturday morning until last evening, so that covers Evans too. If you believe her she was with him right through the critical times. And where would you say that leaves us, bearing in mind your contention that this is a sex crime?’

  ‘Who said that? I didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t you? I beg your pardon.’

  He was all innocence but Miss Pink was on the alert.

  ‘How many people knew about this cottage on the moors?’ she asked.

  ‘There was Anna Waring.’

  ‘And she was forced to tell me about it because Judson’s body must surely be found eventually – and she’d left her prints there.’ She returned Pryce’s stare, and enlightenment dawned. ‘She couldn’t have known Judson was there!’ She paused. ‘But maybe she suspected he was; she might even have driven out there and found him dead. The door wasn’t locked.’

  ‘Or Waring could have gone, if he hadn’t been out there already: on the Saturday night.’

  ‘I don’t think Waring cares so passionately about his wife that he would commit murder for her.’

  ‘What about Anna? Did she care?’

  She remembered the woman’s expression as Judson accosted Seale in the river room after the lecture.

  ‘Not love,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Possessiveness, pride – hurt pride, yes, Anna would feel very deeply about that. She’s vain ... But she was in Chester.’

  ‘Not far away,’ Williams said. ‘Time enough to slip back Sunday, even overnight. Hotels have fire exits, flat roofs. Can she prove she was in her room all night?’

  A car was coming up the lane. It stopped abreast of them. Cross was in the front with Bowen driving. Seale and Lloyd were in the back. They stared bleakly at Miss Pink.

  ‘When you’ve dropped your passengers,’ Pryce said equably to Bowen, ‘come back to this spot. I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘We’ll walk from here,’ Seale said. ‘We need the air.’

  She looked pointedly at Miss Pink and they got out the other side of the car and walked up the lane. In a moment they had climbed the bank and disappeared into the trees. Miss Pink was put in mind of a couple of animals released to the wild.

  ‘I’ll leave you too,’ she said, adding, with a thin smile: ‘with a little less hostility.’

  ‘None, I trust.’ Pryce was shocked.

  ‘The trouble is,’ she said, holding the door, ‘I like all of them; at least I don’t dislike any of them enough to wish –’

  ‘And you on the Bench, ma’am! Think of the cooker going over, and the rope round his neck. Think of that shotgun pushed up against a man’s face. Don’t forget the victims.’

  Chapter 12

  THE PRESS HAD discovered Dinas. Already, on the short return to the inn, Miss Pink had encountered a car carrying three men who showed more interest in her than tourists would have shown in an elderly and apparently nondescript woman. But evidently they knew whom they were looking for and she didn’t correspond with the image they had in mind. They surveyed her briefly as she stood on the grass verge to let them pass, they nodded an acknowledgement but they didn’t stop.

  It was a respite, but only a brief one, although she had one consolation. She knew that Pryce had as yet said little to the Press and the implication of what he had released was that both Judson and Evans had committed suicide.

  Seale and Lloyd had been smuggled in and out of the Police Station without the reporters’ knowledge – but obviously the Press had got wind of where Evans’s body had been discovered. The car bearing the three strangers had been going slowly, not speeding up the combe to Lucy’s or Joss Lloyd’s cottage. They were looking for the pool. That much they knew, or had deduced: that the pool was close by; what they didn’t know was the degree of involvement of this large lady in spectacles who stood aside to let them pass. And between Miss Pink and the Media stood a number of local residents. Those, she thought thankfully, would keep them busy for a while.

  To her surprise there was only one strange car in front of the Bridge and only one customer in the river room. The other residents, laudably uninterested in violent death, had taken packed lunches and departed in pursuit of innocent pleasures.

  Waring stood behind the bar, neatly turned out in blazer and regimental tie, but for a moment Miss Pink, accustomed to regard the man as ingenuous, was unable to define his mood. That she found intriguing.

  He served her with sherry and introduced the customer as Tudor Davies.

  ‘Manchester Evening Express,’ the man murmured, as if presenting credentials.

  ‘One of many,’ Waring observed to Miss Pink. ‘So Mr Davies informs me; the others being at the cottage where the suicide occurred.’

  ‘A shocking business,’ she said. ‘Have you been to the cottage, Mr Davies?’

  He was a small, sallow fellow with greasy hair, eyes that bulged a little giving him a permanent air of surprise, and a nose like an ant-eater’s snout.

  ‘No,’ he said, then, as their attentiveness forced him to qualify that: ‘The Express is not a tabloid.’

  Miss Pink chuckled. Waring said artlessly: ‘More like The Times?’

  Davies shot him a troubled look.

  ‘We’re not in the same league as far as the features
are concerned,’ he admitted. ‘And of course The Times readers are better educated than ours.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Waring said. ‘But good taste is the rule, eh? Pornography and naked women and Andy Kapp are out? You write for a middle-class public, I take it.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s the middle classes that demand the porn,’ Davies assured him. ‘They’re repressed. It’s the working classes and the aristocracy who are honest. They live how they like; they don’t need porn.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Waring flushed angrily. ‘And you’ve come to the wrong place to talk about class. There’s none of that in Wales. We’re a classless society.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Davies sounded morose. ‘How did the village get on with Judson then?’

  Waring had been fussing with beer mats as he wiped the counter. Now he was still for a moment, staring at the hand that held the cloth, then it started to move again: round and round in the same place. Miss Pink and Tudor Davies sipped their drinks idly, as if they’d all run out of conversation, as if no question had been asked.

  At length Waring said slowly, having given his answer considerable thought; ‘I wouldn’t say that any of us knew Mr Judson in depth.’

  ‘Who does? Know anyone in depth, I mean.’ Davies smiled at Miss Pink.

  Waring moistened his lips.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it’s the last thing one would know, not being on intimate terms – but –’ he glanced towards Miss Pink as if for help or confirmation of what he was about to say, ‘– he was a heavy man, what used to be called a good trencherman, and he in-d-dulged in strenuous activities. He r-rode – a horse –’ He was tripping over his words and he was sweating. He paused, drew a deep breath, and continued harshly: ‘He was an excellent horseman but he rode big, powerful horses. They had to be, to carry him; he was over-weight and he wasn’t a young man. You need a lot of energy to control a horse. When I heard the news I can’t say I was altogether surprised. In fact, I’d never have been surprised to hear he’d suffered a stroke. I’ll lay odds that at the inquest his doctor will tell the coroner his blood pressure was dangerously high.’

  ‘Which wouldn’t have been helped by heavy drinking,’ Miss Pink contributed.