“Tell me exactly what you saw, Mr. Settle.”
“Mr. Dinsdale lyin' on t' ground, twitchin' summat terrible, 'e was. Katie Elger kneelin' down beside 'im. The rest of t' guns standin' around. Mick Curtis pukin is guts up. And t' bloody adder.” His face tightened.
“Had Mr. Dinsdale been unwell any time up to that point?” Sarah asked.
Settle looked at her with an odd expression on his face. “What do you mean, unwell?”
Sarah shrugged easily. “I understand he had asthma; I was just wondering if he'd had an attack that day, that's all.”
“Oh, that. He was always huffin' and puffin', but no more than usual, I reckon.”
“You're sure?”
“Aye.”
She paused briefly to gather her thoughts. “I want to make sure I've got this straight. You said that there were sixteen of you on the shoot, including Mr. Dinsdale. How many butts are there again?”
“Eight on East Moor,” Settle answered.
“So there are eight guns in the butts and eight other people driving the grouse?”
Settle nodded. “Except for Mr. Dinsdale. He was always a gun.”
“Who determines who's a gun and who's a driver?”
“You mean a beater, lass,” Settle corrected.
Sarah grinned. “Right.”
“We just divided ourselves up at t' beginnin' of t' day, and those that were beaters in t' mornin' got to shoot in t' afternoon.”
Sarah frowned. Something didn't add up. She mused aloud. “If Mr. Dinsdale was always shooting, there would only be seven butts available. Yet you said there were fifteen others including yourself. It seems to me that one person wouldn't get to shoot.”
“One of the farmers, Brian Whyte, brought 'is fourteen-year-old boy along. Normally 'e would have had to share a butt with 'is father in t' afternoon, but at t' last minute, one of t' others offered to give up 'is place for t' lad.”
This caught Sarah's attention. “Who was that?” she asked.
“A local farmer, name of Frank Elger.”
“Mr. Elger would have joined the beaters, then?”
He hesitated for just an instant. “Aye, that's right.”
She took a sip of her tea.
“Do have a bit of shortbread, lass,” Mrs. Settle urged.
“You won't have to twist my arm, Mrs. Settle,” Sarah replied, taking a large piece from the blue willow-patterned plate. She munched away happily for a moment, making appreciative sounds as the buttery shortbread literally melted in her mouth. She tried not to think about her waistline as she helped herself to another piece. She turned to Mr. Settle. “I've been wondering about something. Was it usual for Mr. Dinsdale to participate in the farmers' shoot?”
“It's traditional for t' landlord to 'elp out. Old Mr. Dinsdale used to beat side-by-side with 'is tenants, but 'e'd never shoot 'imself. ? felt it was t' farmers' day to 'ave some sport.” Mr. Settle screwed up his face in disgust. “Not like 'is bloody son. I think young Mr. Dins-dale came out just to make sure that 'is tenants didn't shoot too many of 'is grouse or drink too much of 'is beer.”
“Harry!” Mrs. Settle warned.
“It's t' truth, woman!” Mr. Settle retorted.
In the interests of restoring family harmony, Sarah remarked that the rain seemed to be letting up.
Mr. Settle grunted disinterestedly. Mrs. Settle appeared to be sulking. Her ample bosom rose and fell in time to a clock that was ticking somewhere in the house.
How to broach a prickly subject? Sarah wondered. Once again, she decided it was best to damn the torpedoes. “And you, Mr. Settle,” she said, “you say you were no longer working for the estate, yet you participated in theshoot. Whyisthat?”
He gave her a look that made her feel guilty for asking the question. Before he could speak, Mrs. Settle rose to her husband's defense.
“My Harry's been runnin' t' farmers' shoot for over twenty years, ever since old Mr. Dinsdale took over t' estate. Believe me, Miss Evans, 'e 'ad to swallow 'is pride, but 'e felt it was 'is duty to 'elp out that one last time. It was like 'is retirement due, in a way.” She looked at her husband sitting beside her, her eyes moist.
Mr. Settle just stared at his large, callused hands folded on his lap.
Sarah took a deep breath. “How long have you worked as a gamekeeper, Mr. Settle?”
“Goin' on forty years now.”
“And how long at Blackamoor?”
“I started 'ere, workin' with my father when Lord Livingston owned the estate.”
“You must know these moors like the back of your hand, then.”
“Aye, I reckon.” A hint of pride in his voice.
“Have you ever heard of anyone being bitten by an adder before?”
“Beasts get bit from time to time, and a walker once on t' West Moor,” he said slowly.
“Would you say that Mr. Dinsdale's encounter with the adder was unusual in any way?”
He looked up at her. “Bloody unusual, I'd say.”
“Unusual how?” she asked.
He returned to an examination of his hands. “Never 'eard of such a thing,” he muttered.
Sarah had concluded by then that she was rapidly approaching the point of diminishing returns and was unlikely to extract any more useful information from the gamekeeper and his wife. She toyed with the idea of bringing up the photograph of the Walkers, but she didn't want the Settles to think she was a snoop. The irony of this concern did not escape her. “I won't take up any more of your time,” she said brightly, getting to her feet. “Thank you for the lovely shortbread, Mrs. Settle. I'll never be satisfied with the store-bought variety again.”
Mr. and Mrs. Settle stood up in unison and stood together awkwardly.
“Oh, there is just one more thing,” Sarah said. “If you think of anything else, anything at all, you can get in touch with me at the Lion and Hippo.”
Mr. and Mrs. Settle glanced at each other, and Sarah could swear that a guilty look passed between them.
CHAPTER 10
“You didn't want them to think you were being nosy. That's bloody rich.” Powell chuckled. He sat with Sarah Evans on the outside terrace of the Lion and Hippo, a raised brick patio that adjoined the pub and overlooked the river. The afternoon sun had broken through the clouds and now illuminated the dale with a rich golden light.
She frowned. “You know what I mean. They've been through a lot lately, and it seemed like an invasion of privacy.”
“We are conducting a police investigation,” he pointed out.
She was beginning to get annoyed. “That did occur to me, which is why I decided to broach the subj ect with Mr. Walker when I got back from the Settles'.”
“Brilliant!”
She searched his demeanor for any hint of condescension and, to her relief, could find none. She could forgive many things, but never that. If anything, her companion appeared to be in a slightly manic mood. “As I was saying,” she continued patiently, “I had a word with Mr. Walker about the Settles. Mrs. Walker is still suffering from migraine,” she added as an aside. “I discovered something rather interesting … Emma Walker is the Settles' daughter.”
Powell sipped his beer with exasperating precision. “I'm not surprised,” he said casually. “There's a photograph of the Settles on the desk in the Walkers' office. I noticed it when I first arrived.”
Sarah was dumbfounded. “But how could you have known that it was Mr. and Mrs. Settle in the photograph? You've never met them and—” Realization suddenly dawned on her. “How would you like a G-and-T shampoo?”
Powell laughed. “I deserved that. It's a technique I picked up from Merriman: Take credit for everything, and give none to your rivals.”
She gave him an odd look. “I wasn't aware that we were rivals.”
He met her gaze. “How would you characterize our relationship?”
“Er, drinking buddies is closer to the mark, I think.”
Powell smiled. “I'd better get us anot
her, then.” He got up and walked through the French doors into the pub.
Sarah experienced a whirlwind of conflicting emotions as she looked out over the emerald green fields beyond the river. She could no longer deny that Powell interested her greatly. There was something about him that she found strangely attractive—it was difficult to explain, but he seemed to have a certain intuitive quality that at times was quite disconcerting. She knew, however, that she could never do anything to compromise either herself or her career. She had always been scrupulous in keeping her personal and professional lives separate, and she wasn't about to change now. Neither did she wish to jeopardize her chances of working with him again by complicating their relationship. She chided herself for being so coldly calculating. She knew he was married and her own intuition told her that he was basically a decent bloke, but she would have to be careful not to encourage him. Her reverie was interrupted by Powell returning with the drinks.
“Now, then,” he said, “where were we? Ah, yes, you were about to tell me about your conversation with Mr. Walker.”
“The whole thing has upset the family terribly, as you can imagine,” she began. “Particularly Mrs. Walker. Mr. Walker reckons the stress has brought on her migraine. According to him, the Settles are in a pretty precarious state financially. They've lived in the gamekeeper's cottage all of their married lives—it goes with the job of head keeper, apparently—and they don't have any savings to speak of. Losing their house, their livelihood, has come as quite a blow.”
“I take it that Mick Curtis will be moving in as soon as the Settles have vacated the premises?”
Sarah nodded. “There's no love lost between them, I can tell you that. Anyway, they've found a small flat in Scarborough that they can just manage on their pension if they scrimp. The Walkers offered to put them up here or rent a cottage for them in the village, but Mr. and Mrs. Settle wouldn't hear of it. Too proud, apparently.”
“A hell of a way to end up,” Powell commented. “Anything else?”
She thought for a moment. “There is something …” She frowned, as if unsure how to put it into words.
“What is it?” Powell prompted.
She looked at him. “I have a feeling that the Settles are hiding something.”
The next morning, Powell drove up to Blackamoor Rigg. He'd given Sarah Evans the task of interviewing the five others who had occupied the butts on East Moor the afternoon of Dinsdale's death. He didn't expect anything new to turn up, but one could never tell, and it would keep his assistant usefully occupied. For his part, he felt as if he needed to tread water on his own for a while, to get his mental bearings.
He pulled off at the car park at the junction of Blackamoor Bank Road with the main road to Eskdale. There was one other car parked there and a man stood on the moor about fifty yards off with a small dog frisking about him. Powell retrieved his trusty Ordnance Survey map from the glove box, unfolded it carefully, and soon located the track leading to the shooting box on East Moor, which took off about a quarter mile down the main road by the looks of it. He decided to walk.
It was a bracing autumn morning and a herd of skittish black-faced sheep were grazing on the grass along the edge of the road. Occasionally a passing car had to toot its horn to hurry a jaywalking beast on its way. He located the track without difficulty and followed it for about a hundred yards up a slight rise and then down into a depression in the moor, in the center of which stood a small stone building with a corrugated metal roof and stovepipe chimney. The door was locked, so he peered through one of the windows into the murky interior. He could see a long wooden table with benches piled on top, a small cooker at one end with shelves and cupboards arranged on either side. He stepped away from the window and walked around the cabin. Approximately twenty-four feet long by sixteen feet wide, rustic but serviceable.
A rough track, consisting of not much more than two muddy ruts, continued past the shooting box in an easterly direction over a slope of burnt heather and disappeared over the skyline. According to the map, the track terminated at the western end of a line of butts that ran on an east-west axis from a point just beyond the shooting box to the crest of the ridge separating Rosedale from Brackendale. Powell reckoned that the westernmost butt must be just out of sight over the rise. The one that was occupied by Harry Settle on the day of the farmers' shoot, he remembered. He decided to retrace Katie Elger's steps as closely as possible when she'd set out in the fog on that fateful afternoon.
He started off on the track and then veered off it to the right, heading southeast as Katie must have done. Eventually he came to a patch of boggy ground. He skirted it and then walked up a gentle slope towards a heather-topped mound silhouetted against the sky. A few seconds later, he could see that the mound was in fact a shooting butt, its low stone walls capped with cut blocks of heather. As he climbed to the crest of the ridge, he was greeted with a most fetching prospect: The green swath of upper Rosedale below him dotted with scattered red-roofed farms; off to his left the line of grouse butts with the west side of Brackendale as a backdrop; to the north and south, as far as the eye could see, an unbroken expanse of rolling moorland. He could still see the main road in places, as well as Blackamoor Hall in the distance.
He consulted his watch. It had taken him a little less than ten minutes to get to this point after leaving the shooting box. He recalled that Katie Elger had said that she'd been wandering about in the fog for about twenty-five minutes when she heard the gunshots. Given the poor visibility, she'd no doubt followed a less direct route than he had, which could explain the time difference.
He walked over to the nearest butt to have a closer look. Laid out like an H, oriented north and south, so it could be used to shoot grouse driven from either direction, the drystone walls were about four feet high with heather growing on top for camouflage. Based on Katie's account, Powell reckoned that the beaters had been stationed to the north of the butts on the afternoon in question. He stepped into the butt.
The ground enclosed by the walls was slightly depressed and covered with short turf. He crouched down below the heather-topped ramparts then straightened up and swung an imaginary shotgun in an arc across the sky. He wondered what it would be like to shoot in the grand style. He still enjoyed his fishing and the odd bit of rough shooting, but he had noticed that his appetite for blood sports had waned in recent years. There had been no dramatic moment of realization, no ethical or political transformation, as far as he could tell—there was just something about the finality of it all that made him increasingly uncomfortable about taking the life of another creature. He was, however, no vegetarian, and had often argued the hypocrisy of the anti-blood sport position— at least as espoused by the majority of its adherents. These were usually the same people who, whilst objecting to the shooting of game for sport, devoured with relish the pallid carcasses of factory chickens bought from their local Sainsburys.
Powell's philosophical musing was suddenly interrupted by the intrusion of a chilling thought. Not that long ago, a human being had lain, alone and helpless where he now stood, suffering an agonizing death. And even more chilling was the possibility that Dinsdale had not been killed by an adder. Powell was becoming convinced that the local police were on to something, but for the wrong reasons. Too many things didn't add up and it was becoming increasingly evident that Dickie Dinsdale had potential enemies. The Settles, the Walkers, the El-gers, for instance—and that was just for starters.
He examined the enclosing stone walls of the butt. The stones fit closely and there didn't appear to be a gap that was more than two inches wide. Hardly big enough for an adder to squeeze through, in his estimation. Nor did there seem to be any place in the wall where a cavity could exist that was large enough for a snake sex orgy (as Sarah had so vividly put it) or even a single individual of the onanistic persuasion. He walked around to the other side of the butt and conducted a similar inspection, with the same result. As he came around to the south side again, h
e noticed a spent shotgun cartridge on the ground, half concealed in the heather. He picked it up and examined it. An Eley Grand Prix No. 6. He looked around the immediate vicinity and soon found another identical red case. He put them both in his j acket pocket.
Powell set off towards the next butt—the one that had been occupied by Mick Curtis—pacing off the distance. It turned out to be nearly fifty yards away. Far enough that Curtis may well have had difficulty hearing anything of his employer's distress, particularly in light of the fact that Dinsdale was drunk and might not have realized exactly what was happening to him. Powell had a quick look around the butt, which was similar in every respect to the first one, and found nothing of interest. Ahead, the moor began to fall away into Brackendale; he could see the next butt and just the heather top of the one next to that, but the remaining four were hidden from view. When he reached the third butt he looked back; the first two butts were hidden behind a hummock of heather. He continued along the line of butts, making a cursory examination of the next two. From his vantage point, he could see the last four spaced out ahead of him. Up to that point, the distance between the butts had varied from forty to fifty yards.
A movement overhead caught his attention. A hen harrier was circling above him, effortlessly riding the air currents searching for prey. Powell unzipped his jacket and headed for the next butt, keeping an admiring eye on the harrier. If he'd been paying attention to where he was stepping, he might have noticed the wire strung tautly through the heather about six inches off the ground.
As it was, he caught it with the toe of his left boot. A deafening explosion rang in his ears and he experienced an odd sensation of detachment as he went down, everything seeming to happen in slow motion. He found himself lying facedown in the heather with a sharp pain in his right knee. After he realized that he was more or less in one piece, he lay still, his heart pounding wildly, and tried to get his bearings. There wasn't a sound, just the wind rustling in the grass and the acrid smell of cordite. He rolled over with a painful grunt and looked around. No one was in sight. Just his old friend the harrier circling complacently overhead. He looked down at his leg— there was no sign of blood or any obvious damage. Relief suddenly gave way to anger. He swore aloud. He'd probably reinjured his bloody knee—twisted it when he fell. He struggled awkwardly to his feet. The pain wasn't too bad, he decided, so he did an impromptu slow-motion jig to verify his diagnosis. When he was satisfied that his knee was basically sound, he began to look around.
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