Miss Pink Investigates- Part Four

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘Of course. It’s a matter of resources. Besides, it’s irrelevant.’

  10

  The Land Rover skidded to a halt in the narrow lane. Most drivers would have sworn at the bullocks blocking the way but at close on eighty Albert Bainbridge was philosophical. He regarded the animals thoughtfully; they were Isaac Dent’s beasts. Should he run up to Blondel now or on the way home from Kelleth? He’d need to help Isaac get the beasts back, and the shopping would be sitting there in the back of the truck in the midday heat. Better tell him now, get it over.

  Driving the bullocks before him — there was no room to pass — he was pleased when the leader turned up Isaac’s track. It was a long way to the house and he went slowly, casting a critical eye at the fields on either side. A fine crop of thistles and ragwort: no wonder the beasts went looking for a bit of decent grazing. And the house wasn’t in much better shape: mottled grey patches where the whitewash had scaled off, the roof missing slates. He wondered how long it would be before Isaac gave up, or was eased out, more like.

  His Land Rover wasn’t at the back of the house but he hadn’t taken the dogs. They were penned and barking. Albert cut the engine and stared at the dirty windows, all closed. He frowned; there was an odd note to that barking.

  The back door was locked. He didn’t go round the front; no one used his front door except on special occasions. Isaac had no special occasions. And he didn’t look in the barns, the ‘Rover wouldn’t be there. He was puzzled. Isaac wasn’t out with the sheep because he didn’t have the dogs with him, but if he’d gone anywhere else he’d have seen the bullocks and put them back. He had to see them; the lane was a dead-end: turn left and it led only to Albert’s farm and a couple of holiday cottages.

  The dogs were housed in a row of pens. They weren’t as noisy as they should have been and the two who were barking stopped as he approached. One whimpered. A third was lying down, another sprawled, flat out, eyes closed. All were without water.

  *

  ‘What’s it got to do with us?’ Tyndale asked. ‘He had a skinful, stayed out all night; he’ll be sleeping it off at the back of a pub car-park somewhere.’

  ‘This farmer, Bainbridge, says the dogs have been without food and water for days,’ Mounsey said. ‘Well, more’n a day anyway.’

  ‘So he’s had an accident on the fell. That’s a job for Mountain Rescue and uniforms.’

  ‘He’s not shepherding. He didn’t take the dogs.’

  ‘Then he’s had an accident on the road! For God’s sake, man, get your priorities straight! We’ve got a murder case on our hands here —’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking of —’

  ‘Eh?’ Tyndale stared, blinked, considered. ‘How do you make the connection?’ He was interested.

  ‘I don’t.’ Mounsey relaxed now that he had the other’s attention. ‘But it’s a funny coincidence otherwise: a girl missing, lots of blood, an old guy missing who — incidentally — knew the girl.’

  Tyndale fingered his lip, looking at his sergeant but not seeing him. He gave a sudden snort of laughter. ‘That old lady, Miss Pink: she was talking about coincidences this morning and I’ve just realised there’s yet another. Forty-five years since a girl and a man went missing at the same time and we know there was foul play. Now another girl and another man disappear, and there’s all that blood... How many more coincidences are we going to have?’ There was dead silence. Tyndale said slowly, ‘Are they coincidences?’

  *

  ‘What can we do?’ Rick pleaded. ‘Where can we look?’

  ‘Tyndale’s searching,’ Miss Pink said. ‘You can’t do a better job than his men, they’re trained for it.’

  Rick had arrived after Tyndale left, having spent the night cooling his heels in a police cell with an assault charge hanging over his head. To his surprise he’d been released this morning but with a warning not to go near Jonty Robson. Which he’d done immediately, only to find the man’s house deserted. The whole family had left. He returned to the centre of town and Miss Pink.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ he asked. ‘If it wasn’t Robson, then who? Because if we could answer that, we’d have an idea where he’d taken her. She’s still alive — isn’t she?’ His eyes were frantic. ‘I mean, there is a chance? I can’t sit at home and do nothing.’

  In her mind Miss Pink agreed. She looked out at the graveyard and thought of driving — but where? Of empty cottages (getting the keys from estate agents), of unused garages and, further afield, of barns and abandoned farms. But the police would have thought of all those, and they would have contacted doctors and hospitals, because Tyndale maintained that with the amount of blood there had been in the Hoggarths’ kitchen, treatment would have had to be urgent or she’d have died.

  ‘Who?’ Rick broke in on her thoughts. ‘Or did Robson take someone else’s car, or has he got another car besides his Mondeo? How can we find out? You know, he can’t have gone far. He’s a suspect, same as me, and Tyndale told me not to leave Kelleth.’

  ‘Perhaps he did use another car,’ she said slowly, ‘and he didn’t bring it back. Where would you hide a car?’

  ‘An isolated barn?’

  ‘Nowhere’s isolated in high summer in the Lake District.’

  ‘He could run it into a bog.’

  ‘No bogs in England are that deep; you’re thinking of swamps — ah! Water!’

  ‘The river?’

  ‘Again I don’t think there are pools in it deep enough to submerge a vehicle. Quarries? I don’t know the area that well. Let’s go and talk to the Fawcetts.’

  Going through the churchyard, Bags cavorting between them, they met DS Mounsey coming from the direction of Plumtree Yard. ‘Looking for me?’ Rick asked, deliberately casual.

  ‘No, I was with Mrs Bland.’ The sergeant addressed Miss Pink. ‘We’re trying to trace her brother’s movements. Would you have seen him the last day or two, ma’am?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not since we came down to the dale after finding the skeleton. He was going on the fell then. Was it a stormy night?’ She tried to remember. ‘There was thunder about. Didn’t he come down again?’

  ‘He had to. His dogs are at the farm but they haven’t been fed or watered for a while. He’s missing, and his Land Rover.’

  ‘Couldn’t Mrs Bland help?’

  ‘No, ma’am; she’s got no idea.’

  ‘Has she been out to his farm? Where is that, by the way?’

  ‘Blondel. It’s north of town. She doesn’t drive so I need to find the inspector —’

  He stopped short, wondering why he was blethering on to this old girl, and that in front of a suspect in what must be a murder case.

  Rick was regarding him intently. ‘Why are you chasing Isaac?’ he asked. ‘A young girl’s missing; why aren’t you looking for her?’

  ‘They are,’ Miss Pink said comfortably, urging him forward. ‘Mr Mounsey is just one chap chasing up another disappearance. The others are looking for Perry, isn’t that so, sergeant? Tell me, has Mr Tyndale considered that the vehicle used to carry Perry away could have been dumped in deep water?’

  Mounsey swallowed and his head went up defensively. ‘I’ll tell him, ma’am.’

  They moved on. ‘An ingenuous young man,’ she murmured.

  ‘Thick.’ Rick was savage. ‘The police attitude leaves me cold. I don’t believe they’re looking for her at all.’

  *

  ‘Isaac Dent missing!’ Anne repeated, leading the way to the empty drawing-room. ‘First Perry, now this. Is there a connection?’

  Rick and Miss Pink exchanged glances. They hadn’t thought of that. ‘How could there be?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘It’s just you mentioning Isaac when I was expecting you to come out with the latest news of Perry.’

  ‘There isn’t any,’ Rick said tightly. ‘What we came for was to ask if you could think of anywhere Robson might have dumped the vehicle that he used to carry her away.’

 
‘He’s jumping the gun,’ Miss Pink said sternly. ‘We don’t know it was Robson, but Perry must have been — transported from Whelp Yard in something, and there’s no trace in the Robson cars so we wondered if whoever was responsible for that attack got rid of the vehicle that he used.’

  Anne went to speak, and stopped. Miss Pink guessed that she had been about to suggest that if the car had been dumped the body could well be inside. ‘Quarries,’ Miss Pink said quickly. ‘We were wondering if there’s a deep quarry in the area.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Harald was standing in the doorway. He looked interested and eager. ‘But that means two villains,’ he went on. ‘Another car and another driver, d’you see: to carry the first driver away from the quarry.’ They stared at him. ‘But I can’t think of any,’ he confessed. ‘Oh, there are quarries, but not with deep water in the bottom. What you’re looking for is a pool beside the road, below the road.’ Eyes glazed, but not his. ‘Like the reservoir,’ he said.

  *

  The crags started not far upstream of the dam. The four of them had squeezed into Miss Pink’s little Renault, Clive having taken the family Volvo to visit the younger Fawcetts at the big house. Miss Pink slowed down after the dam but she was urged on by Harald.

  ‘You can keep moving,’ he said. ‘The obvious place is that right-hand bend before the waterfall: nasty at night with the gleam of the lake and the fall. Confusing. It’s about half a mile ahead.’

  The road widened on the bend, giving room for two cars to pass comfortably. It was one of those places where irresponsible drivers would park in order to photograph the mountains that formed the headwall of the dale. The slope below the road was so steep that they looked over the crowns of a few oaks to the water below. The mud flats were too far away to be visible.

  There was no wall on this stretch but a fairly new fence. One post was broken about ten inches from the ground and wire trailed down the incline. Twin lines that must be wheel tracks ran through the bracken and there was a bright yellow gash on a tree trunk that was horribly reminiscent of Perry’s hair.

  ‘Do you have a rope?’ Harald asked, his tone as level as if he were thirty again.

  ‘An old one,’ Miss Pink said. ‘I use it for towing. It’s good enough for this.’

  ‘I think, sweetie —’ Anne checked and glanced at Miss Pink who nodded reassuringly. Harald wouldn’t have forgotten how it was done. In any event there was no one else, neither Anne nor Rick had climbed. She looked at Rick and saw he was so forlorn she knew the sight of those wheel tracks had destroyed any hope he had. They had been there too long. Drowning takes four minutes.

  Her trainers wouldn’t grip on lush vegetation but she had the security of the rope. She tied a bowline with the old expertise and Harald, equally deft, belayed himself to a tree. He nodded to her and, forsaking dignity, she lowered herself on her rump and started to work her way downwards from trunk to trunk.

  Her groping hand encountered barbed wire and she swore; flies whined about her head suggesting only too graphically what the vehicle could contain. Because there was no doubt that there was a vehicle below — and suddenly she stopped.

  Watching from fifty feet above Harald called, ‘All right, Mel?’ She raised a thumb in response but she didn’t move. When had her thinking changed? When she and Rick had gone across to Nichol House less than an hour ago, they’d been thinking in terms of Jonty Robson — or someone — dumping a car in which he’d carried Perry, alive or dead. But just now, inching down this slope, following the twin ruts, she’d been visualising a Land Rover — Isaac’s truck. Could it be — his vehicle, her body?

  ‘What d’you see?’ Harald called; it was a hint to her to get moving. She waved and continued, pulling against the rope which was too tight. Harald wasn’t taking any chances.

  She came to the last tree. It was rooted right on the edge of a crag which plunged for twenty feet straight into the water. She embraced the trunk and leaned out.

  A few inches below the surface was the square outline of a Land Rover’s roof.

  The return wasn’t strenuous. When she realised that there were now several people hauling on the rope, she gripped it with both hands and virtually walked up the slope. Before she reached them she recognised Tyndale among a number of uniforms.

  ‘How did you guess?’ she gasped as she stepped out on the tarmac.

  ‘You spoke to Mounsey,’ Tyndale said, ‘and you were seen leaving Doomgate. And this is the nearest deep water.’

  ‘You’re on the wrong track; this isn’t the vehicle Perry was taken away in. It’s a Land Rover; there’s no mistaking the outline. It’s submerged. How on earth are you going to get it out?’

  ‘The divers can break a window if the doors are jammed.’

  She was startled. She had been referring to the difficulty of recovering the truck, she had forgotten that Isaac could be inside. There was no doubt in her mind that it was his Land Rover.

  ‘He ran out of road,’ someone said as Tyndale turned away, moving to one of the cars parked behind her Renault.

  Harald said, ‘What was he doing up here at night?’

  ‘Coming back from shepherding?’ she hazarded. ‘What’s wrong with Rick?’ He was pacing back and forth in front of Anne, gesticulating, grinning maniacally.

  ‘What’s right with him?’ Harald corrected, amused. ‘That wasn’t Perry’s blood in the Hoggarth house. Tyndale checked with the Essex authorities. It’s not her group; she isn’t hurt at all, let alone murdered.’

  She stared at him. ‘Then whose blood was it?’

  He shrugged. ‘A burglar? We don’t have to worry anyway; we’re all present and correct: family and friends. No one’s missing.’

  ‘Perry is.’

  ‘Ah, but unhurt. That’s why Rick’s acting like a lunatic. His lady’s safe.’

  Miss Pink moved to join the others. Behind her the police were lowering one of their number. She hoped her tow-rope could withstand a second load. ‘I’m so glad about Perry,’ she told Rick.

  ‘It had to be someone who broke in!’ he blurted. ‘And she came along afterwards, saw the blood, panicked and ran again. This time I reckon she really has gone to Scotland.’

  Miss Pink caught Anne’s eye; was she too wondering where all that blood had come from if not from Perry?

  Like a dog rounding up sheep, Tyndale collected Miss Pink’s party and indicated that they should leave, but he had to know where they were going. ‘I’ll need a statement from you,’ he told Miss Pink. His eyes rested on Rick and he hesitated.

  ‘We shall be at Orrdale House,’ Anne put in. ‘As soon as the divers have been down perhaps you’ll let us know the result.’ It was her tone as much as the words that shook Tyndale. She saw he was affronted. ‘Isaac is our tenant,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  She turned away. Harald regarded the inspector. ‘He drank,’ he said gravely, shaking his head. ‘Bound to happen: old age, poor judgement. I never liked this bend. The Water Authority should have built a stout wall along here instead of this flimsy fence.’

  They piled into the Renault. ‘A good thing we didn’t bring Bags,’ Rick chuckled, his equilibrium quite restored. They had left the collie in the garden at Nichol House.

  ‘Edith has to be told,’ Miss Pink murmured as she started back towards the dam.

  ‘We don’t know that Isaac’s in the ’Rover.’ Rick was assertive, concerned that no one should leap to conclusions this time. ‘He may have jumped clear.’

  ‘The police will inform Edith,’ Harald said. Evidently he had no faith in Isaac’s agility.

  ‘She could know already,’ Miss Pink said. ‘She’s with Mounsey.’

  ‘Why?’ Rick asked, amused.

  ‘Why? Oh, she can’t drive so he was going to take her to Isaac’s farm — to see if there was any clue as to his whereabouts, presumably. You were with me when he told us, Rick!’

  ‘So I was. I wasn’t paying attention —’

  �
�She drives,’ Anne said.

  There was a pause. ‘I mean,’ she went on, ‘she can drive. I suppose she had to give it up. Certainly she doesn’t own a car.’

  ‘Why should she give it up?’ Harald asked. ‘She’s not that old.’

  ‘She has glaucoma.’

  ‘Oh.’ He was stricken. After a moment he said quietly, ‘We must get her into a modern flat as quickly as possible. Plumtree’s a death trap. Those stairs!’

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, sweetie. She knows where everything is in Plumtree; she’d have to learn all over again in a new place. Much better to leave her where she’s happy.’

  They came to the entrance to Orrdale House, the drive flanked by pillars supporting the heads of stone horses. The Renault rattled across the cattle grid.

  ‘So you’ve shelved the plan to turn the flats into one house,’ Harald said.

  ‘In the circumstances.’ Anne was pleasant but firm. ‘As soon as she told me, there was no question. Time enough to think about it when she’s blind. Then she’ll be forced to go into a home.’

  ‘Glaucoma doesn’t have to mean blindness,’ Miss Pink pointed out. ‘It can be arrested and contained with drugs.’

  ‘Her condition’s gone too far. Ah, there’s Debbie,’ as her granddaughter came cantering across the parkland on a stocky black pony. ‘Hello, darling; you see we’ve all come to visit. Is everyone at home?’

  ‘Hi!’ Deborah bent low on her pony’s neck so that she could see who was in the car. ‘You didn’t bring that nice collie. Uncle Clive’s here; he’s making something called Submarines for lunch. James is up at the dig.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Harald asked.

  ‘He won’t say, just that we should be more adventurous with our food, but whatever Clive produces is yummy, you know that, Grandad.’

  ‘I meant, what dig are you talking about? Are they excavating the fort after all?’

  ‘No.’ The pony turned and took off nimbly. ‘At the village,’ Deborah shouted.

  Miss Pink shifted into gear. ‘Does Bob breed the fell ponies?’ she asked, glimpsing a group of mares and foals in the shade of a horse chestnut. No one responded until Rick asked politely if she rode.