by Gwen Moffat
18
‘Her neck was broken when she fell,’ Tyndale said. ‘The skull was badly bruised.’ He touched the back of his head. ‘She must have cart-wheeled down the stairs. Death would be instantaneous. Just as well: she wouldn’t want to live with those burns. Chip pan fires are the devil.’
Rick, coming home that evening, turning into Plumtree Yard, was just in time to see the top flat’s kitchen window explode outwards, followed by smoke and flames. He glanced at Edith’s door, knew that if she could get out she would have done so, rushed into his flat and dialled 999. He shouted the address, and then tried to break down the partition in his hallway, but plywood is difficult to smash. By the time he’d prised it away with a poker and dashed up the disused stairway the fire in the kitchen had spread and he had to retreat. His attempt at rescue would have been useless anyway for by that time Edith was dead. The firemen found her inside her front door at the foot of the stairs.
At first the neighbours watched the fire in horror: Rick and the Fawcetts and Miss Pink — it was she who told Tyndale that Edith intended making chips for supper — but as soon as the firemen found the body the initial horror was over. At least she hadn’t suffered — not for long anyhow. Not as long as Joan Gardner did, Miss Pink thought grimly, wondering how long it took for one little girl to strangle another. Time was relative. How long would she have taken to drown this morning had she not been able to swim?
She spoke to Tyndale that night but it wasn’t until next morning that she told the story to the rest of them. They sat in the garden at the back of Nichol House while Bags chased butterflies and Rick listened, interested despite himself, despite his frustration at having visited every travellers’ camp in the Borders without finding Perry.
Tyndale arrived, in a clean shirt and washed, but haggard. He drank coffee gratefully, saying it would keep him going.
‘You should go home and get some sleep,’ Miss Pink told him. ‘It’s all over now.’
‘Ma’am, it hasn’t started! Now there’s the paperwork, not to speak of your own statement.’
‘The investigations are over,’ Harald pointed out. ‘All of them. Three,’ he added as Tyndale glanced at him morosely. ‘Joan, Walter, Isaac.’
‘And Perry?’ Rick put in angrily. ‘What happened to her?’
Clive raised his eyebrows, looking to Miss Pink for help. She smiled neutrally. They were grown men, they must sort out the problem of Perry between them.
‘She can come back now,’ Rick persisted. ‘Edith’s dead, there’s nothing to be scared of — although she never knew what it was.’ He looked mystified himself. ‘Did you find out?’ he asked Miss Pink. ‘I meant you to go to Edith —’
‘It was the bone,’ she told him. ‘Edith must have said — shouted rather — something revealing on the phone, like telling Isaac to keep quiet, that everyone thought Walter had killed Joan, that she was safe as long as Isaac kept his head.’
‘But Perry didn’t hear anything like that, she’d have told me —’
‘Edith thought she did. Guilty conscience.’
‘I wouldn’t say that Edith Bland had a conscience,’ Anne put in coldly. ‘She shot her own brother — or are you suggesting that he did die from the first wound like she said, and she shot him again to stage a suicide?’
‘No,’ Miss Pink said. ‘If she was driving him to hospital why not continue? How would she know he was dead? In any event, why stage a suicide if he died by accident?’
‘I still can’t see her walking back to Kelleth after she’d put the Land Rover in the water,’ Tyndale said. ‘She was a heavy woman.’
‘Oh, come on!’ Miss Pink protested. ‘Four miles?’
‘When did you start to suspect her?’ Clive asked, going for the nub of the matter.
She thought about it. ‘Not to say suspect, but one had the feeling that something was out of kilter, a word or a look that jarred, or someone acting out of character. Little things like her saying she couldn’t drive but knowing how Isaac might have shot himself in the driver’s seat, and how he’d have placed his feet at the same time to get the truck rolling.’
‘You did a crazy thing,’ Tyndale said: ‘setting a trap for a woman you suspected had already killed once, if not twice.’
‘A calculated risk, and it worked. She did push me into the gorge — and I’d looked at that spot before; it was a clean drop into deep water. And she did drive my car to Carlisle, confirming that she knew how to drive. You couldn’t have incited her to do that. No’ — seeing he was affronted — ‘I mean, you’re bound by the rules. I could — and did — lie, and I used innuendo and generally confused her. I deliberately muddled the murders, the victims, even the pronouns, until she didn’t know where she was. I’m talking about last night, in Plumtree, although even there she still had enough sense left to point out that there were no witnesses.’ A thought struck her. ‘Have you found my car yet?’
‘No, but we found a witness on the Bigrigg estate in Carlisle who saw a small boy open the door and look inside. Correct registration: it was yours all right, and she must have left it unlocked, the kid didn’t have to break into it. No doubt the keys were in the ignition too. Next time the witness looked the car had vanished.’
‘She wasn’t clever but she had a streak of cunning. She was single-minded to the point of recklessness. It was that that made her dangerous.’
‘For you.’ Tyndale was determined not to let her off the hook.
‘For anyone who came in contact with her, given the right conditions. Isaac knew that. They were two of a kind, a team, right from the start.’ She paused, considering. No one else spoke. ‘Remote communities,’ she mused, ‘the Lakes, the Pennines, probably any country you care to name. Old sins, old crimes, family secrets —’
‘Not confined to the countryside, Melinda,’ Harald said firmly. ‘There’s child abuse in urban areas.’
Tyndale coughed and glanced at Anne, embarrassed.
‘Actually that’s how it started,’ Miss Pink said, alert now. ‘Edith being so possessive about her brother, Joan knowing the relationship between them, teasing her plain friend, flaunting her own charm — two little girls sexually initiated but with no control over their emotions. And once Edith had strangled Joan in a jealous rage Isaac had to dispose of the body because otherwise everything could come out, not only his sister being a killer but the incestuous relationship.’
‘Poor Walter,’ Rick said, and flushed, throwing a glance at Clive. No one had seen fit to enlighten him, least of all Clive himself. His parentage didn’t concern Rick.
‘Yes,’ Anne said, easing an awkward moment, ‘he was totally innocent. As was my old man here,’ she added quickly, taking Harald’s hand and glaring at Tyndale. ‘All those two ever did was fight.’
‘But my blow knocked him down,’ Harald pointed out.
‘So Isaac came along,’ Rick said. ‘And got his fall-guy for Joan’s murder.’
‘And a handle to make me give up Blondel,’ Anne said drily. ‘Isaac was an opportunist.’
Clive said wonderingly, ‘He could blackmail you but he didn’t trust his sister to do it.’
‘Exactly,’ Miss Pink said. ‘He didn’t trust her. She didn’t have his self-control. Isaac would guess that Edith’s comparatively innocuous blackmail to counter what she thought of as eviction would lead to harder demands. She was prodding sleeping dragons and he was worried. That’s why he followed her to the Hoggarths’ place that night, when he discovered his gun was missing. Edith was being crowded by events, she was close to breaking point — and she could destroy both of them.’
‘I never liked her,’ Anne said, ‘right back to the old days. Joan was nothing: a precocious silly child who enjoyed being naughty, but to Edith sin came natural.’
Tyndale stood up. He was uncertain of the distinction between sin and crime in this context and didn’t want to be drawn into any discussion on it. ‘Statements,’ he told Miss Pink heavily. ‘Shall we say two o’cloc
k?’
Anne escorted him indoors. Clive and Harald started to talk about rebuilding the house in Plumtree Yard. Miss Pink accepted Bags’ insistent paw. Rick stared into the distance, frowning. Anne returned with Perry.
The others broke into smiles, all except Rick who leapt up and made to rush towards her.
‘Hi, everyone,’ she said, nodding round the circle, avoiding eye contact with Rick. She stooped to maul Bags who was welcoming but not beside himself with joy. Bags was Harald’s dog now.
‘Clive, let’s make a start on lunch,’ Anne commanded, and he trotted indoors with her obediently.
‘We have to talk,’ Rick said, bewildered by Perry’s lack-lustre greeting.
She glanced at Harald. ‘Why not?’ he responded kindly. ‘You have to tell him your plans — and everything.’ She looked sulky. ‘He’s been searching the Borders for days,’ he pointed out. ‘And in the dark. You could have been dead for all he knew.’
Miss Pink got to her feet. ‘We’ll leave you to chat,’ she said. ‘Come along, Harald, we have business to attend to.’
‘Better to have them in sight in your garden,’ she added as they entered the kitchen. ‘We don’t want them going off on their own. There’s been enough trouble.’
‘Trouble?’ Clive looked up from the chopping board. His eyes went to the figures under the tulip tree.
‘There won’t be any trouble,’ Anne assured them. ‘I’ll see to that.’
Harald and Miss Pink went to the drawing-room where the french windows were wide to the garden and the sun. Bags wandered in and sat by Harald’s chair. ‘Here’s one who’s accepted the situation,’ Miss Pink said approvingly. ‘Poor Rick.’
‘Rites of passage.’ Harald smiled. ‘Who am I to talk? I was never disappointed in love. Of course what’s going to rankle with Rick is that everyone else knew where she was, and they allowed him to go off on a wild-goose chase in the Borders, and all the time she was in Orrdale’s attics.’
‘Deborah brought her down to the attics only because of the storm — and most of the time only Deborah and Clive knew. But the point was she was a murder suspect and Rick was so besotted that if he’d known where she was he could have given the game away. Look how easy it was for Edith to follow him to the Hoggarths.’
‘I doubt he’s looking at it logically.’
Under the tulip tree Rick was gesturing wildly, Perry half turned from him, looking down the garden.
‘Relationships!’ Harald sighed. ‘Jonty Robson came back.’
‘Who? Oh, him. I didn’t know he’d been away.’
‘His wife banished him but she’s taken him back. There are the two little girls to think of.’
They were silent, thinking about little girls. Bags’ ears went up as Rick approached the window. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said roughly.
Harald nodded. Miss Pink said nothing. Rick marched across the room and after a moment the front door slammed.
‘How’s Perry going to take to California?’ Harald asked.
‘She’ll love it. Two Alsatians and horses next door: she’ll be in her element. It was perceptive of Clive to suggest it, to see that what she needs is love, not sex. Bags was her only friend, perhaps the only being she ever loved. Now she’s started to discover nice people: you, Deborah, Clive. She’ll be happy with Clive.’
‘Quite. He won’t make demands. So everything’s worked out. And Bags stays with me. No loose ends?’
‘None,’ she said, as bland as when she’d told Edith she couldn’t swim, wondering how he had worked it. Because, although she had heard a step on Edith’s stairs, it hadn’t been Tyndale.
Had he hidden in the kitchen or retreated to the yard, returning after she’d left? There would be spare keys to all the Fawcett properties. And what he hadn’t surmised already he would have overheard on the staircase. It was all for the best, she supposed; it had to be, nothing could be changed now, and Tyndale was satisfied that a heavy woman falling downstairs could sustain a bruise on the back of the skull.
Edith would never have come to trial: for Joan’s murder, for Isaac’s, for the attempt on Miss Pink. She would have been incarcerated in some high security hospital where she would never stop plotting escape. With her cunning she might well have succeeded: to come back, and dispose of the people she’d hold responsible for putting her away, starting with Anne. But Edith (who looked on sin as natural) had come up against Harald, who had his own code, and that dictated that he become an executioner when occasion demanded.
PRIVATE SINS
Table of Contents
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1
‘KEEP OUT!’ the notice screamed. ‘Cyanide capsules in place! Cyanide guns set inside. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!’
‘That can’t be legal.’ Miss Pink was deeply shocked.
‘Charlie doesn’t care whether it’s legal or not. It’s his land.’
Sophie Hamilton turned her horse and moved away. Miss Pink pushed after her. ‘D’you mean he can put poison down — and for heaven’s sake, what is a cyanide gun? Sophie, you don’t approve?’
They stopped at another small, decrepit structure, evidently masking a mine shaft: a roof of timber and corrugated iron held up by one baulk supporting a massive beam.
‘Of course I don’t approve.’ Sophie was huffy. ‘But Charlie could be thinking in terms of insurance and kids coming out from town to explore the mines. These old buildings are death traps: rotting floors, shafts not properly plugged, roofs — look at that roof: held up by one post just, waiting to collapse. On the other hand, Charlie’s a great joker.’
‘Cyanide’s a joke?’
‘My dear, anything that causes discomfort is a joke to my brother-in-law.’ Sophie caught the other’s expression. ‘There won’t be any cyanide,’ she added quickly. ‘Only the notices. It’s a bluff. I never did like this place,’ she went on. ‘Ghost towns are fun but old mines can be horrors.’
‘Something died here. I can smell it.’ Miss Pink was disgruntled.
‘A calf, maybe, or a fawn. Bitten by a rattler. Let’s get back to the top. I shouldn’t have brought you down here.’
They pushed back to the ridge where the air was sweet, scented with sage. Little fair-weather clouds seemed to be stationary in the shining sky and the sun’s heat was tempered by a breeze. In the south the mountains were plastered white after a late snowfall. ‘This is what I came for,’ Miss Pink announced. ‘A good horse and a fine day in the Rockies. Blissful.’
‘That’s great.’ The tone lacked conviction. ‘I’m so glad. We’re lucky with the weather.’ Sophie was abstracted. They had reined in facing downhill and a mile or two below was a building too large to be called a ranch house: dazzling white and roofed in red; not one roof, but many at different angles.
‘Is that Glenaffric?’ Miss Pink asked. She was being sociable, aware that there was only one house of this size in the vicinity, perhaps in the county.
‘Yes, that’s Charlie’s place,’ Sophie said with finality. ‘And Edna’s,’ she added as an afterthought.
It occurred to Miss Pink that she might shorten her visit. Sophie’s invitation had been open-ended but she knew a troubled mind when she was in close proximity to one. There had been tension last night, and this afternoon, absorbing those references to Charlie Gunn, the brother-in-law, she guessed she had walked in on a family problem. Her presence could be an embarrassment. All the same, her antennae were bristling; whatever had happened to turn an elegant and friendly lady into a strained and — it had to be said — a dirty person was intriguing to say the least.
They had met when Sophie was exp
loring Cornwall on her own, something that set her apart immediately: an elderly but well-heeled American tourist in an Armani suit touring in May to avoid the crowds — and in a BMW at that. They’d struck up a conversation over a ploughman’s lunch, Sophie had visited Miss Pink’s sprawling cliff-top house and they’d kept in touch since, each fascinated by the other’s lifestyle. Each had kept something back. Miss Pink had confessed to writing Gothic romances but had mentioned only that she had been on the fringe of one or two murder investigations. Sophie hadn’t probed, perhaps expecting that details would emerge later, perhaps thinking that such details would demand a quid pro quo. And Sophie was keeping back a lot, although her confidences would be concerned with her family, not murder. The bits of her background she did reveal were enthralling. She lived in the Montana Rockies, in a small town surrounded by mountains. She owned a dude ranch — dudes were city folk whose idea of bliss was a vacation spent on horseback. Her niece ran the business, so Sophie had all the fun without the grind. When, after that chance meeting in a Mousehole pub, the prospect of riding those ranges was dangled before her, Miss Pink had succumbed, seduced by the memory of big skies and the promise of an Arab mare. They had made excited plans by telephone, had even speculated that they might go elsewhere after Montana: take a horse trailer and ride in Idaho and Oregon, even Canada. It would be a long summer of delights.
The reality had been less inviting. True, Sophie had been waiting at the little local airport but recognition, at least on Miss Pink’s part, was not immediate. She was looking for the chic tourist in designer clothes but the woman who approached — square and solid in old Levis and a flannel shirt — wasn’t the Sophie of the BMW and Armani suits. The jeans were sweat-stained, the boots crusted with dung — and she smelled. The eyes, under the peak of a tacky ball cap, were sunken and she looked exhausted. She did explain that she’d been riding, had been held up and had come straight from the ranch to the airport without taking time to change. Miss Pink collected herself, accepted the explanation with equanimity and emerged from the terminal into the velvet night — a moon behind the clouds — to be overwhelmed by the air and the warmth, and the glorious sense of space beyond the airport’s lights.
