by Gwen Moffat
‘You think she went willingly?’ Tyndale asked, almost casual.
‘That girl was nine years old.’ Anne was bitter. ‘She behaved as if she were twenty. She always went willingly.’
‘Like that, was it?’ Tyndale said. ‘Couldn’t her mother cope?’
‘She died when Joan was born. The father died years after the flood. He should have been put down at birth. We were a very isolated community, inspector.’ Her tone was loaded.
‘Edith Bland was friendly with her.’
Anne’s lips thinned. ‘Edith could tell you a great deal, but not necessarily the truth. People block out those times, others genuinely forget, some create fantasies.’
Harald drifted back shuffling a stack of colour prints. He sat beside Tyndale on the sofa. ‘This is the house on the coast,’ he began eagerly. ‘And this is a telephoto of the sea lions on the beach below...’ Tyndale was all attention.
Anne exchanged glances with Miss Pink, both struggling to find an innocuous topic of conversation.
‘We’re going over in the autumn,’ Anne announced, rather wildly. ‘Have you been to California, Melinda?’
Miss Pink forced her face to relax. ‘One of my favourite states,’ she enthused, her eyes on Tyndale’s bent head. He was starting to go thin on top, she saw. ‘And so varied,’ she went on: ‘deserts, forests, that glorious coast; you’ll love it.’
Clive came back. ‘Is the inspector dining with us?’ he asked politely. ‘I’ll need to set an extra place.’
‘Oh, no thank you.’ Tyndale was startled. ‘I have things to do.’ He stood up, returning photographs to Harald. ‘We have to recover the skeleton before the rain.’
‘Rain!’ Anne glanced out of the window. ‘It’s going to rain?’
‘There was a storm over towards Scafell today,’ Miss Pink pointed out.
‘We’ve been getting long-range weather forecasts,’ Tyndale said. ‘It was essential when we were working in the old village; if the water had risen we’d have been forced to abandon the digging. It doesn’t matter now of course, not there, but it could hinder the recovery on top.’
‘What is the long-range weather forecast?’ Anne asked. ‘We haven’t been able to water the garden for weeks.’
‘We use the bath water,’ Harald said, smiling.
‘It’s going to rain,’ Miss Pink said. ‘It’s too hot. The weather has to break soon.’
Tyndale took his leave bemoaning the heat wave.
‘Now tell us about this body,’ Harald ordered as they settled with fresh drinks.
There wasn’t much left to tell, only the peripheral details of how Bags had broken away, nothing more. Tyndale had covered the rest. Odd that he should have asked so few pertinent questions.
‘Why did he come?’ Clive asked.
‘To give you the news,’ Miss Pink said.
‘And to see how we reacted.’ Anne smiled at her husband. ‘You ran true to form, darling. I loved the bit about the dam.’
‘Pity I didn’t suggest it sooner. They’d have been tearing it down with jackhammers.’
‘Not on your say-so. He knew you were teasing him.’
‘I was deadly serious. Haven’t I always maintained that disposal was the biggest obstacle for a murderer?’
‘Yes dear, repeatedly.’
‘Are we ready to eat?’ Clive asked, evidently accustomed to his stepfather’s flights of fantasy but not prepared to indulge them, at least tonight.
‘What happened to Rick?’ Anne asked as Clive seated them bossily at the table with instructions not to move, except for Harald who was serving wine from a dumpy bottle. Miss Pink took an experimental sip and rolled it round her tongue. Spicy wine for spicy food; Clive had good judgement. ‘Rick came back to town with the dog,’ she said, and fell silent, thinking about that.
‘Was Perry with you?’ Harald asked. ‘We haven’t seen her for days.’
She stared at him. Anne said, ‘She did come back? Rick called last evening, looking for her. He was panicking, wouldn’t come inside.’
‘She didn’t come home,’ Miss Pink said slowly. ‘She phoned him from Scotland.’
‘She left Bags behind?’ Harald sank into his chair, appalled. ‘She’d never do that!’
‘She’ll be back,’ Miss Pink soothed. ‘I imagine she’s a runaway and the police scared her off. She’ll lie low for a while.’
‘Who’ll lie low?’ Clive asked, entering the dining-room with a casserole. ‘Who’re you talking about now? I miss all the best bits in the kitchen.’ The room had darkened and he switched a light on.
They told him about Perry as he served the biryani. He didn’t seem much interested. Miss Pink explained that the girl had been introduced to them by Rick Harlow.
‘Who’s her knight in shining armour.’ Harald chuckled and related how Jonty Robson had the tables turned on him by this yellow-haired waif who’d escaped with the fellow’s sun-glasses and twenty pounds.
‘I never knew that!’ Anne cried. Harald pursed his lips and there was an impish gleam in his eye. ‘She stole his wallet?’ She was furious.
‘Not at all.’ He was enjoying himself. ‘It was payment up-front. He took her for a loose woman.’ His tone changed. ‘So she’s gone to Scotland,’ he murmured, and then, brightening: ‘We were in Liddesdale yesterday, Clive. Do you remember Liddesdale?’
There was a flash, the light flickered, and eyes glazed as they counted. The thunder was muffled. ‘A few miles away yet,’ Harald said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be on Helvellyn at this moment.’
‘Tell me about Liddesdale,’ Clive said.
*
Thunder crashed above the town and the bats were going frantic among the moths. As yet there were only a few spots of rain. A body was stretched on a flat tomb, spectacles gleaming in the lamplight. The trees drooped listlessly. Miss Pink stared at the prone form; now she saw that it was Rick.
‘Are you asleep?’ she asked, advancing. ‘Or merely drunk?’ His hand moved and he sat up. ‘Oh, it’s you. I was waiting for you.’
‘It’s been a long day,’ she said heavily. ‘How about coming over for breakfast tomorrow?’
‘I feel quite fresh.’ And indeed he sounded jaunty.
‘You’ve been sleeping. I’ve been socialising and the drink has suddenly hit me. I need my bed. Are you implying that you’ve discovered something that can’t wait until morning? Is it Perry?’
‘Perry’s all right. She knows the cops aren’t interested in her. No, I’ve been learning things about Orrdale and — you know what? This is going to be my breakthrough: the story of Joan Gardner. The rural idyll shattered by a dreadful crime. Forget modern horrors: child killers, serial murderers and so on; it’s the background that makes this story: the fells, the drowned village, the body in the peat —’
‘— your landlady’s first husband,’ Miss Pink added coldly. ‘You can’t do it, Rick. I’ve been at Nichol House all evening. Walter Thornthwaite’s son is there, from California: a nice man who’s made a success of his life despite everything. He’s very fond of his stepfather. You can’t destroy that family. I won’t allow it.’
‘But Walter’s way in the past! Anyway, you can’t stop me.’
She gasped. ‘How —’ She was about to ask how he dared defy her, and realised that this was histrionic. She sat down beside him. ‘Tell me what you’ve discovered,’ she ordered.
‘Thank you.’ It was ironic. She caught a stale smell of beer. ‘I went to the newspaper office first,’ he began chattily, ‘and with hindsight it’s not surprising that I didn’t learn much there: local paper, conservative editor in those days, I gathered — well, prudent might be a better term. There was no speculation in the accounts of the Joan Gardner case; even reading between the lines there wasn’t a hint of foul play. A parallel was drawn with a boy of nine who went missing on the fells in 1907. Four days lost in the mists and he survived; the difference being it was assumed that Joan Gardner had died out there: hypothermia, wha
tever.’
‘It was summer time,’ Miss Pink murmured.
‘The man wasn’t mentioned,’ he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘There was the usual guff about her being a happy child —’
‘For happy read friendly.’
‘What? I suppose so. Are you implying something? Yes, you are —’
‘Go on: a happy child...’
He glanced at her suspiciously. ‘Motherless,’ he said slowly. ‘A masculine household: brothers, a father, all dead now... this is significant, isn’t it?’
‘Editors of local papers are wise old birds. They have to be, they live among their readers. So you came away from the newspaper office empty-handed?’
‘No.’ He was resentful, staring at her. ‘I learned that the guy who wrote the booklet The Drowned Village is the chap who runs the bookshop.’
‘Yes?’
‘So I went to him.’
‘You have been busy.
He ignored the sarcasm. ‘I wanted to know what he knew about Orrdale that he hadn’t put in the book. He said he didn’t put the rumours in, particularly the one about Joan being seen with a man, and Walter Thornthwaite disappearing shortly after she did.’
‘Incidentally, how long after?’
‘What? I don’t know. Does it matter?’
‘Probably not. What else did he tell you?’
‘That Edith Bland was Joan’s friend and that her tipple is cherry brandy. Dave Murray knows everything. That’s him: the fellow at the bookshop. He’s gay, not that that’s of any significance except it makes him a good informant. Gossipy, you know? So I talked to Edith.’
‘I see how you came to fall asleep on a tombstone. And what did Edith tell you after you’d got her drunk on cherry brandy?’
‘Hell, I had to work my guts out even to get inside her flat but once I’d convinced her that I was lonely because my girl had walked out on me —’
‘Yes, what did happen —’
‘Let me tell it my way.’
She inhaled sharply but she was too tired to push it. ‘Once I was in,’ he went on, regardless, ‘she revealed everything. Actually it wasn’t much really, only confirmation. Come to think of it, she did point out that Joan lived with men — oh hell, that sounds so gross! What I mean is that the girl had lost her mother and was brought up in an all-male household. Brothers, no sisters. Oh yes, and she said Walter Thornthwaite was a sly lusty fellow, and she for one was never surprised how it turned out. Now what do you make of that?’
‘Interesting.’
Walter Thornthwaite being sly and lusty was an unexpected slant on Anne’s first husband and food for thought. Miss Pink was also intrigued by what she was learning about Joan Gardner — but, she reminded herself, she wasn’t necessarily learning about the child, only hearing people’s opinions. Gossip was valuable less for what it told you about the subject than for what it revealed about the gossips.
8
‘Mr Tyndale!’ Anne was losing patience. ‘How can you expect anyone to remember a sequence of events that happened nearly half a century ago?’
‘I have to ask the questions, ma’am.’ Tyndale was sticking to his guns. He glanced round his bright little office that overlooked the bus station. ‘Try it this way: there had to be a moment when you realised your husband — your first husband — wasn’t only absent but missing.’
Anne frowned, doing her best to remember. ‘They were searching for Joan,’ she said slowly, ‘so he was out every day. It could have been the third evening that he didn’t come home.’
‘What did he take with him?’
‘You mean, on the search or when he left for good?’
There was a pause. ‘On the search,’ Tyndale said.
She sighed. ‘This is too difficult.’ All the same she tried. ‘He’d have taken something to eat...’ She trailed off.
‘And his dog.’
‘They’d all have taken their dogs, all the men who were out searching.’
‘And on the last day, the day he didn’t come back: he took his dog then?’
She hesitated. ‘He must have done.’
‘So did the dog come home alone or did it disappear with him?’
‘It didn’t disappear, but for the life of me I can’t remember when it returned. Dogs come and go; you don’t notice.’
‘But he took no clothes, no personal items?’
‘No.’ It was morning but she looked exhausted. ‘It’s all there in my original statement.’
‘Would it be correct to say that the last time you saw your husband was that morning, when he left to search for the child?’
‘He could have come in for his tea.’ She shifted in her chair. It was hot in the room; the night’s rain had freshened the air but the sun was shining through a window closed against the bus fumes. The door was open but the room was stifling. ‘At this distance I could have the days confused,’ she said. ‘He might have come home to eat and then gone out again. There’s always something to do on a farm. The police asked me at the time,’ she added pointedly. She nodded. ‘I remember now, all this was happening as we were packing up to leave. I’d been thinking I couldn’t remember because our days were so monotonous. Just the reverse: everyone was at sixes and sevens; the water was rising and we had to get out.’
‘How long after he left did Mr Thornthwaite send the postcard?’
She stared at his tie: green with a motif of tiny golden retrievers. Was there a ruling that senior ranks must wear ties? ‘Some days later,’ she said.
‘Did he send it to the village or to your new address?’
‘I have no — I can’t remember. It would have made no difference. The postman would know where we’d moved to. Look, inspector: I was asked at the time, there has to be a record —’
‘You didn’t produce the postcard.’
‘Of course not. He’d walked out without telling me he was going. Why would I keep his card? He’d left me all alone with a baby on the way — I was angry.’ She’d lost her poise and now she had the look of a farm wife rather than the lady of Nichol House.
‘Do you think he killed Joan Gardner?’ Tyndale asked.
She held his eye. ‘All these years I’ve refused to speculate. She could still be alive, they could both be alive’ — she made an expansive gesture — ‘in Canada, America. Anything could have happened; he could have abducted her, maybe she persuaded him to take her away. I told you she was much older than her years — and she’d do anything to get away from home — presumably. I refused to consider — violence.’
‘Now you have to.’
She gave the slightest shrug. When she remained silent he continued, ‘There can’t be many people left alive from those days. We have to trace the survivors. I’ve seen the statements made at the time but I don’t remember any suspect being named in them. Mr Thornthwaite was mentioned but only because he was missing too. People were careful not to make connections. What do you think now, since the body was found — buried?’
She said calmly, ‘I shall continue to think he’s innocent.’
He nodded, noting the tense, accepting her attitude; Walter was her son’s father. He was depressed at the thought of trying to trace the man through the police on another continent. It wasn’t the distance so much as the ramifications of an information network going back to the days of filing cabinets and paper rather than computers. Resources would never stretch. And there was no guarantee that he went to Canada; he could have gone to South Africa, Australia, anywhere...
*
At midday Jackson and Carla Hoggarth were dropped by their cab at the bottom of Whelp Yard to stagger up the passage carrying their cases and duty-free spirits, and a pair of rugs, souvenirs from Guatemala. They were conker-brown from the tropical sun, exhausted from the flight, and bad-tempered, Carla insisting — as she always did — that if Jackson would only tip handsomely, drivers would carry luggage to their door. Jackson pointed out that they’d spent all their sterling at the airport. Ca
rla said he couldn’t have done — ‘And will you look at my petunias!’ she shrilled. ‘That’s kids pushed that pot over. You can’t leave the place for a couple of weeks without —’
‘Here, hold these.’ Jackson thrust the rugs at her and fumbled for his keys.
The yellow front door opened to a smell of cooked food. Carla gasped. ‘This place stinks! Let me open some windows. You’d never believe a smell could last that long.’ She sniffed angrily. ‘That’s curry! When did we ever have curry?’
Luggage was dropped in the passage. She rushed to the kitchen at the back. Jackson moved into the front room, glad to be home, thinking about the local pub, the wives, his tan, golf, English TV again... He snatched at the curtains and twitched open the blinds. He turned round and stared.
The room looked like a dump. She’d never left it like this. And then he heard her: a small sound at first, more of a whimper, then a high moan, a silence — ominous as a baby drawing breath — and then the full-throated screams.
He knocked over a coffee table as he plunged for the passage. She had raised the blinds at the kitchen window — her adored new kitchen in blond pine and apple-green counters, the floor of eau-de-nil tiles, the breakfast nook with its crystal cruet — and now the table listing under a chaos of smashed crockery and cans. The stench was nauseating: curry and butcher’s shop. Blood had splashed the ivory walls and the Swedish settle, dripping down its back to pool among the delicate flowers of Carla’s Liberty cushions.
*
Miss Pink was enjoying a gossip with Dave Murray when Rick stumbled down the step into the bookshop.
‘Thank God I found you!’ he blurted, addressing Miss Pink. ‘I’ve been ringing and ringing. The police have got the yard sealed off. Those plastic tapes. Go and see what’s wrong, will you?’
‘They’ve sealed off Plumtree Yard?’ She was astonished. Murray — a handsome man running to seed — looked utterly bewildered.
‘Not Plumtree. Whelp!’ It sounded familiar.
‘Whelp Yard?’ Murray asked.
‘Of course.’ Rick swallowed. ‘Perry’s there. No one else, that’s why she’s there: no other occupants in the yard. The house was empty. She holed up in it. You have to go!’ He clutched Miss Pink’s arm.
