by Gwen Moffat
‘We? It’s you who are harbouring her.’
‘How archaic. You have a choice: come in with us or tell Tyndale.’
She shook her head. ‘She didn’t fire that second shot, but you must realise that the most effective way of proving her innocence is to find out who did.’ She held his eye. ‘I need to talk to her before the police get any closer.’
She left him then and rode away, letting the pony take its own course, thinking about Isaac, about Perry and Isaac at the drowned village. Was that the only time that the two had met?
The pony dawdled and snatched a mouthful of grass. She pushed him on automatically, not noticing where they were going, and shortly they came to the edge of the trees and a gate. The pony placed himself correctly and she opened it without dismounting, closed it too; the animal had been here before. Now they were on the open fell with the reservoir below on the left and the path dropping gradually towards the head of the dale and the old village.
There was a breeze from the west; it lifted the pony’s mane and swayed the bracken, bringing a hint of autumn. Here and there a bracken frond had changed colour and all along the turfy ride the harebells danced like blue drops of dew.
She had brought sandwiches and she lunched by a beck, holding the reins, aware that if the gelding started for home she would never catch him. A hundred feet or so below and half a mile away the occasional car drifted by. The odd picnic party was encamped under gaudy umbrellas. She regarded them benignly, pleased that the tourists were having good weather.
The air was soft, her eyelids drooped — to snap open as the twisted reins tightened in her hand. The pony was straining to go home.
She placed him down-slope and climbed on. She headed up the dale and as she approached the village she saw that as usual there were people among the fallen walls. Someone was sketching, a couple were heaving stones aside. The crack of rock on rock sounded out of place above the muted voices and the murmur of tyres on gravel.
She circled the car-park and started across the dry mud, the pony stepping delicately between the tumbled stones. She drew rein behind the artist and saw that he wasn’t sketching but drawing a plan. The fellow was young, shirtless, wearing faded jeans.
‘Is this a project?’ she asked curiously.
‘Right. I’m interested in the history of hill-farming. I’m at High Barroc’ — naming the local agricultural college — ‘Mike down there, he found a clay pipe so he’s looking for more stuff.’ He nodded towards the two people shifting rocks. At close quarters Miss Pink saw that one of these was a boy. ‘That’s young James,’ her acquaintance went on. ‘His people used to own all this land before the dam was built. He’s helping out.’
‘They’ve found something.’
The two labourers had stopped heaving stones and were standing rigidly, staring at the ground at their feet. The man glanced towards his fellow student, saw the rider, hesitated, then waved urgently.
‘Look!’ Young James breathed as they came up. Everyone was wide-eyed. Someone exhaled loudly. At their feet, framed in a cavity just large enough to hold it neatly, staring yet eyeless, was a biscuit-coloured skull.
The man who had been sketching looked at the knoll where the church had stood. ‘Washed down out of the graveyard,’ he said, trying to sound casual.
‘Oh come on!’ — from his mate. ‘It had tons of rock on top.’
‘So how did it get there?’
‘Let’s shift the rest,’ James cried. ‘There’ll be a whole skeleton under this lot — like there was in the peat.’
‘No!’ Miss Pink put in sharply. ‘You have to wait for the police. Anyway,’ she added, having caught their attention, ‘the weight will have crushed the rest of it. The skull is whole only because the stones seem to have formed a kind of chamber and prevented its being damaged. What was this place?’
They were staring at her as if she’d appeared by magic. James said wonderingly, ‘That’s our Buck you’re on. What are you doing with one of our ponies?’
‘I’m Melinda Pink, a friend of your grandfather. You’re James Fawcett, and these gentlemen?’
They introduced themselves weakly. Mike and Tim. She didn’t press for surnames.
‘Who is it?’ James asked, satisfied with her credentials but his shock revealed in the silliest question.
But was it silly? This was a full-size skull, it had belonged to an adult, and it had been here before the village was flooded, and only one adult had disappeared around that time. At the same moment that Walter Thornthwaite came to mind Miss Pink wondered why one eye socket seemed larger than the other. Not quite so well preserved as she thought; one stone, in tumbling, must have glanced off the face.
The students had a car so she sent them to phone the police station, herself staying to guard the site and make sure no one disturbed it. The prime candidate for that was the excited James whom she hadn’t a hope of sending home. He was still intent on exposing the skeleton he maintained was under the stones and she could restrain him only by colourful accounts of murders past. At first spellbound, eventually he caught the connection.
‘You reckon this is murder too?’ he asked.
‘There’s a doubt,’ she acknowledged gravely. ‘What do you think?’
‘He’s buried,’ James said slowly, echoing her tone. ‘That has to be foul play, doesn’t it?’
‘Not buried. He — or she — is under a gable-end, I take it.’ They stared at the heaps of stones. ‘Yes, I think that’s a gable. Definitely a house, those flat pieces are roof slates. It could have fallen on him. On the other hand it might have been a barn.’
‘They pulled down the gable-ends,’ James said.
‘They did? Why?’
‘They were frightened that the ghosts would come back.’
‘But the houses would be covered by the water. What ghosts anyway?’
‘Yes, well. They were very superstitious.’
She thought of ghosts inhabiting a village under water and flinched. ‘So,’ she said loudly, ‘he could have been pulling down the gable-end and it came too quickly, or too far.’ She looked up at the Corpse Road and remembered the wall that had moved when she leaned against it. ‘These old ruins are death traps.’
‘It wouldn’t take much.’ He sounded pompous. ‘He didn’t jump clear.’
Their vigil was short-lived. Within half an hour a police car came speeding up the road, lights flashing, siren ululating round the fells. James giggled. ‘A skull’s not going to run away, is it?’ he asked. Miss Pink wondered how long it would be before Tyndale arrived, and what he would have to say. What a load the poor fellow had on his plate: Joan Gardner’s skeleton in the peat, Isaac shot — and now, this. She stared at the uniforms approaching over the dried mud, white shirts dazzling. Her brain had gone quite dead. Three violent deaths. Three coincidences?
*
When Tyndale arrived he was exasperated but clinging to a shred of hope. ‘It must be an accident,’ Mounsey said as they regarded the skull. ‘Those students reckon it was a byre and this fellow was pulling down the gable-end.’ They looked towards Miss Pink and her companion who were seated at a discreet distance. Beyond them a small crowd of tourists stood about: excited teenagers and self-conscious adults, all avid to discover the reason for the presence of uniforms and what could only be CID.
‘We’ll wait for SOCO,’ Tyndale said. ‘There’ve been too many violent deaths for us to assume it was an accident.’
Mounsey was startled. ‘You never think this one’s connected with the kid in the peat!’
‘Why not? For my money they died around the same time. This chap didn’t die after the village was flooded.’
Their attention shifted to the line of the Corpse Road. Miss Pink, simulating boredom, guessed someone was pondering connections, but if this skull belonged to Walter Thornthwaite and Walter had killed Joan Gardner, how had Walter met his death? Divine justice was seldom so punctilious.
Mounsey came over and asked h
er to go to the station to give a statement. James was affronted to be excepted; he was to go home, Mounsey said kindly, and his statement would be taken there. Furious, forgetting to say goodbye, he sped off on his mountain bike.
The pony stepped out smartly, eager for home. James was going to get there first and blurt out his sensational news. Thus he could be informing Clive — if he was at the big house — that his father had never left the dale but all these years had been lying under a gable-end in the drowned village.
14
There were a number of cars at the front of the big house, Tyndale’s among them. It was past five o’clock and the last of the public visitors were pulling away. As the gelding clopped into the stable yard Deborah appeared at the door of the tack-room, stiff with excitement.
‘I’ve been waiting ages!’ It was an accusation.
Stung, Miss Pink retaliated. ‘You should be glad it was me at the summer-house and not some nosy detective. I’m not going to talk, I’m on her side. Did Clive say if she’d agreed to meet me?’
‘He’s working on it. And keep your voice down, you don’t know who might be listening. I told you not to go up —’
‘You protested too much. You’ll have to watch yourself if you want to become a successful conspirator.’
Scowling, Deborah held the pony while Miss Pink slid down, grabbing at the saddle as she hit the ground. Waiting for her to regain control of her legs, the girl said harshly, ‘You don’t want to go inside; the cops are here, grilling James. And they’ll need to see you; you were there too!’
It was another cause for resentment; not only had Deborah failed to prevent her own secret from being discovered but her brother had created a sensation. ‘They made me work all afternoon as well,’ she grumbled. ‘It’s illegal. They’d be jailed if I told Tyndale.’
Miss Pink ignored this. ‘How did they take the news?’ she asked, following the other into the stable.
Deborah shrugged. ‘How should they? They weren’t as shocked as you’d expect.’ She walked away with the bridle. ‘You’d think a corpse rotting in our drinking water would get some sort of reaction, wouldn’t you? I was disgusted.’
Miss Pink pulled off the steaming saddle and looked round for a peg.
‘James made a meal of it,’ Deborah went on, returning with a brush, ‘but he would; he’s only ten. Uncle Clive looked a bit sick. He’s gone home; he’ll want to tell Gran before she hears it on the News.’
‘It’s hard on them both, if it is Clive’s father.’
‘No doubt about it, Dad said; he was the only man who went missing at the time.’ She caught Miss Pink’s frown. ‘I listened outside the door,’ she added. ‘The police will be finished with James soon, so you’d better escape while you can.’
*
Edith had installed the coveted hanging baskets. The wall was in shadow and pink and purple petunias made a flamboyant display against the dull sandstone. Miss Pink slipped quietly up to the side entrance, not wanting to be seen by Rick if he were home. The bookshop was closed; she had no way of knowing if he had been bailed or was still at the station.
Edith’s face was set before she opened the door, and her expression didn’t change at sight of the visitor. She grunted what might pass for a greeting.
‘I have some news,’ Miss Pink said. ‘May I come in? We’d better sit down.’
Edith blinked once. You were told to sit down to hear bad news. She climbed the stairs heavily.
Seated at the table in the cluttered living-room, Miss Pink asked pleasantly, ‘How well did you know Walter Thornthwaite?’
‘I didn’t —’ It could have been final but Edith thought better of it, ‘— know him at all well. I was a bairn.’
‘Just as well.’ Miss Pink nodded. ‘It appears he’s been found.’
There was an empty glass on the table beside the inevitable bottle. Edith’s eyes strayed to it and, devoid of expression, returned to Miss Pink.
‘He’s in Canada?’
‘He never went away.’
Edith hesitated. ‘So where is he?’
‘Now that I can’t be sure of exactly, but somewhere around the middle of the village, would it be? Not so far from the church. A byre, they say. How long did the search last?’
‘We never looked for un.’ The tone was flat, absent; Edith’s mind was elsewhere.
‘The search for Joan, I mean.’
‘Oh, Joannie. Days. They searched for days. Weeks.’
‘How many days did Walter go out with them?’
Edith reached for the bottle, and withdrew her hand. She stared at the chenille table-cloth.
‘Walter did search for Joannie?’ Miss Pink persisted.
‘Aye, he were out with ‘em.’
‘For how many days?’
‘Two, three, who knows?’ The eyes focused sharply. ‘He had to search, to pretend, didn’t he?’ She grabbed the bottle and filled her glass, spilling a few drops. She waved the bottle towards Miss Pink who shook her head. ‘What’s it to do with you anyway? You’re always over here, asking questions.’
‘I came to break it gently.’ Miss Pink’s expression was one of startled innocence. ‘Tyndale will be here shortly.’
‘Why? Walter Thornthwaite were nowt to me. I said: I were a bairn.’
‘Well, ten years old? Even so it has to be something of a shock: to hear that the man you thought left the area was there all the time.’
‘In a byre?’
‘The gable-end had fallen on him.’
Edith drew a quick breath. ‘They dropped the gables. They needed to destroy the homes.’
‘Poor man.’
‘I got no pity. You forget little Joannie.’ The tone was saccharine.
‘So he took her up to the peat cuttings on a pony,’ Miss Pink said clearly, anxious that Edith should catch every word, ‘at night. It had to be in the dark because of the neighbours... But Anne must have known.’
‘Oh, she knew. She knew everything, thinks herself so high and mighty...’ Edith gulped the rest of her drink and eyed the bottle moodily.
‘She didn’t know she was being watched,’ Miss Pink said. Pudgy hands gripped the edge of the table, the knuckles white. Edith’s mouth hung open.
‘You saw what you shouldn’t have seen,’ Miss Pink said sternly, ‘and you waited all this time: forty-five years.’
‘She told you?’ Edith was incredulous.
‘It doesn’t matter now —’
‘It’s not true, I never asked for nowt, she can’t prove anything. I told her I’d keep my mouth shut if only... you can’t throw an old blind woman out on the street, live in a cardboard box, and her in yon great house with washing machines and microwaves and — and videos, and her with a bastard she allus swore were Thornthwaite’s, and we all know why that was, don’t us?’ She was not quite beside herself because she managed to pause for a response.
It was as if a picture had fractured to re-form with different images, but there was no time to study it. Parts were missing. Miss Pink started to look for them. ‘Clive could still be Walter’s son,’ she said reasonably.
‘Is it likely?’
‘You’re talking about his cross — his fondness for dressing up.’
‘He were one of them perverts. No way could Walter Thornthwaite father a child. So she went looking elsewhere — the old whore.’
‘She’d be young then.’
‘And made sure she got him, and got Walter out of way at same time.’
‘Mrs Fawcett killed her husband — is that what you’re saying?’
‘Never! And you can’t say as I did!’ Edith glared at the closed window, the closed door to the bedroom. There were no witnesses. ‘I never said nowt.’ She drank and sighed. ‘I can’t help it,’ she muttered, and Miss Pink knew that the cloudy mind was elsewhere, that even if she meant what she said, she was not referring to this conversation.
‘Your voice is rather high-pitched,’ she hazarded.
Edith
seemed to shrink against the back of her chair. ‘I got no more to say,’ she whispered. She breathed deeply and hauled herself to her feet, armoured in the kind of fragile defiance that it would be dangerous to challenge.
Miss Pink nodded casually and, keeping the table between them, she left the room and descended the stairs, aware that there was no sound behind her and glad of it, glad too that there had been no knives lying around when she turned her back.
*
‘What’s she so scared of?’ She glanced out of the kitchen window to make sure that Harald wasn’t within earshot but he seemed to be dozing under the tulip tree, Bags stretched at his feet. Clive had gone out for some last-minute shopping and Anne was scrubbing tiny potatoes at the sink. She said drily, ‘She’ll be terrified of you.’
‘No.’ Miss Pink was puzzled. ‘She took fright when I pointed out that her voice is high-pitched; she literally quailed: as if she’d been hit.’
‘What was the context?’
Miss Pink sat down, the better to think. Fatigue was asserting itself after long hours in the saddle. She remembered the context, and played for time. ‘She’s unstable: early dementia perhaps.’
‘She always was neurotic.’ Anne turned back to the potatoes.
‘I went there to tell her about James’ discovery before the police should reach her.’
Anne’s shoulders dropped. She was immobile, staring down the garden. ‘They can’t have identified it already.’
‘There has to be an assumption. Did anyone else go missing before the flood?’
‘No.’
In the ensuing silence they heard the front door open and close. After a moment Clive appeared with bags of shopping. His smile was wary but he spoke pleasantly enough.
‘I was expecting you, Melinda.’ He eyed her searchingly. ‘You’ve had a full day.’ He looked from her to his mother, evidently wondering what had been said. He saw Harald in the garden but he made no further comment.
Miss Pink studied his features. Yes, there was more than a resemblance under the flesh, not only to Harald but to Bob as well.
‘She’s been with Edith Bland,’ Anne said, and addressed Miss Pink. ‘I don’t understand this. You didn’t go there out of compassion, to break the news gently. What could she have to do with Walter?’
