by Gwen Moffat
‘Is that water?’ But Eleanor didn’t hear. Silly question anyway: Lakeland, there was water everywhere. In fact, there was the beck she’d had to wade across two days ago, the one with the dead sheep plastered against the watergate. That beck flowed into the quarry so where was it? Or rather, where was it in the lower section because with every step it was obvious that she was coming to it. She realized that for some considerable distance it must run under ground.
The boulder field ended and they were on turf again: a level floor under a big wall at the base of which was a slit about two feet high and from which issued a clear rill a few inches deep. Miss Pink followed its course to another slit-like cave in the opposite wall where, chuckling to itself, the water disappeared.
Eleanor was amused by her companion’s fascination. ‘There has to be a tunnel. It’s like limestone. No doubt some of the underground channels will be man-made.’
‘It’s not the same beck,’ Miss Pink said. ‘Or more likely, the water’s been diverted. There’s far more going in at the top than there is here.’ She walked back to the first cave, stooped and peered into the depths. She stood up and nodded. ‘I can hear roaring, like a big waterfall.’ She gestured widely. ‘Somewhere there’s a huge underground channel.’
‘That’s what I said, and that’s where the danger is. I’m not going up there, and neither are you.’
‘Going up where?’
They were close to the back of the quarry now and there was no more level ground above. The tall hewn cliffs were behind and below them, and they were in the base of a funnel that was at a transient stage between excavations and natural fell. There were glimpses of the boundary wall on the skyline and a gap where the watergate would be. From where they were standing a narrow path rose diagonally up an overgrown tip. It was no wider than a sheep trod but it was marked by cleated boots.
‘Oh, please don’t!’ Eleanor cried as Miss Pink started forward.
‘I’m just going to see where this goes.’ Into her mind came the ominous words of Lawrence Oates to Captain Scott: ‘and may be some time’. Not perhaps a good moment to remember that.
Below the watergate the beck poured down the fellside for a hundred yards to a fine waterfall some twenty feet high. Then came a miniature gorge and a natural rock bridge with a mantle of tall grasses, and a rowan sprouting from a crevice, its creamy blooms swaying in cold air currents. Below the bridge there was another waterfall but this one must be even more impressive because it thundered, echoing upwards from a monstrous black hole. Below that, as Miss Pink knew, the quarry was dry except for that trickle in the amphitheatre.
She crossed the bridge – it was wide and safe so long as you had a head for heights – and came to an eroded soil-slip dropping straight to the torrent, but it was only a matter of a few steps and without thinking she was across and on another of those turfy levels, and this one ended at a padlocked gate. On the other side was the green path that would intersect the Gowk track.
When she returned Eleanor was pale with worry. ‘I know what happened,’ Miss Pink announced, in a hurry to forestall an accusation of irresponsibility, although she thought it unlikely that Eleanor had ever seen that lethal chute. ‘Meaning,’ she went on, seeing that the ploy had worked, ‘I see what she could have done.’ And she described the setting. ‘She could have come down from Gowk, along that green level, over the gate, and she slipped as she approached the natural bridge. Tell me, where does the main beck emerge?’
They looked down past the chasms to the dale. ‘We passed it,’ Eleanor said. ‘It’s way back from the track, in a clump of trees. We crossed it by a plank bridge.’
‘No watergate?’
‘No. You’re thinking that, after all, she did come here, and then she slipped. I did wonder, but I wanted to be sure.’
‘I think it’s highly likely that’s what happened.’
They retraced their steps. At one point they stopped, Eleanor staring upwards. Miss Pink looked and saw a gully full of globe flowers. As she was castigating herself for not bringing a camera, thinking that she must come back for a picture, Eleanor said, ‘If she fell on Sunday why didn’t she – appear until Tuesday?’
‘The storm. The body got caught up underground but the rising water freed it.’ She looked away from the globe flowers, massaging her neck. ‘We need her camera.’
‘Why?’
‘It would tell us why she came here in the first place.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘No. All the same it must have been for something important to make her risk her neck.’
‘A flower. She’d have risked anything for a flower.’
Gemma dropped her bike under the laburnum and started towards the porch, silent in her Reeboks. There were people in the kitchen. As she stepped indoors Isa was almost shouting: ‘– don’t own me! What d’you expect me to do: weed the garden? Bake bread? The one chance I get –’
‘I don’t give a –’ Alerted by her fixed eyes Martin Blamire turned and saw Gemma in the doorway, grinning mischievously.
‘You poor thing,’ she told her sister-in-law. ‘Battered by one guy last night and now getting stick from another one. Is there anything I can do?’
‘Battered?’ Martin breathed, turning back.
Isa shook her head stiffly. ‘You shouldn’t listen at – to other people – their conversations,’ she blurted.
‘Conversation? I could hear you way out in the lane,’ Gemma lied. ‘You got a problem, Martin?’ The tone was deliberately childish, the sentiment wasn’t.
Martin said tightly, ‘If you have any influence with her or with your brother – stop her driving that car before she’s passed her test. She’s going to kill someone or land in jail. Or both.’ His teeth were gritted.
‘Is that all?’ Gemma was the picture of astonishment. ‘It sounded much more intimate.’
‘Don’t be so bloody cheeky.’ Isa was recovering but still showing the whites of her eyes. ‘And what are you doing here anyway? You were supposed to be at the Harbens’ all day.’
‘Lucy had to go to town with her mother. To see a specialist.’ Isa was staring at her. Martin watched Isa. ‘Family planning clinic,’ Gemma improvised, wondering what she could say that would shake them out of what appeared to be a trance. They looked like dummies in a shop window.
‘They phoned through the results of the autopsy,’ she said.
‘You’re making that up,’ Isa said weakly.
‘No, I’m not! Paul Harben was there: the surgeon – well, he will be when he qualifies. He’s cool. He told me.’
‘Told you what?’ Martin grated.
She glowered at him. ‘That she had a fractured skull and water in the lungs. Which means –’ she enunciated clearly for his benefit – ‘that she drowned. I’m going visiting: find some civilized people to talk to.’
Eleanor and the old woman from Ashgill were sitting on the patio at Jollybeard. There was a coffee pot on the table and a plate with two sandwiches. Dolefully Gemma explained how she’d been meant to have lunch with the Harbens but there had been a misunderstanding and she’d come home only to find Isa had visitors … Eleanor got up to make more sandwiches.
‘The Harbens?’ Miss Pink was mildly curious. ‘I don’t think I’ve met them.’
‘You wouldn’t.’ Gemma pushed crumbs into her mouth. ‘They live way down the dale. He’s a doctor. Lucy, my friend, she’s going to be one too, a forensic pathologist actually. She dissects dead animals.’
Miss Pink refrained from looking at the remaining sandwich. ‘What do you propose to do?’
‘I’m going to be a vet. I’m good at dissection too but I’d rather work with animals. I mean, people are dead.’
‘Not always.’
‘If you’re a pathologist they are.’ Gemma reached for the last sandwich. ‘The autopsy came through – on Phoebe. Paul Harben told me.’
‘The au –’ Eleanor was back, putting a loaded plate on the table. ‘The report?�
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Gemma nodded and swallowed.
‘Well?’ Eleanor was tense. ‘What did it say? How could you have seen it?’
‘Grapevine. Medical family. Of course Dr Harben’s seen it, or heard what’s in it. There’s nothing actually. I mean, nothing we didn’t know already. She was drowned. What more could there be?’
‘She did drown?’ Miss Pink pressed. ‘There’s no doubt about it?’
Gemma stopped eating. ‘We knew that. There’s water in the lungs.’
‘Ah.’ Miss Pink sat back. ‘Who said that?’
‘Paul Harben, he’s a medical student.’ Gemma nodded solemnly. ‘I know what I’m talking about.’
‘Miss Pink was right about her arteries,’ Sergeant Winder said. ‘She was a healthy old lady, for her age. She didn’t have a stroke, she just fell in, presumably slipped as she was wading across, lost her balance, and so …’
Eleanor replaced the phone. ‘Winder reckons she lost her balance crossing the beck,’ she repeated to the attentive Miss Pink. Fed and watered, Gemma had left with only cursory thanks for the hospitality.
‘It’s more likely that she came to grief on the nasty slope in the quarry,’ Miss Pink said. ‘I wonder where the camera is, and there’s her other boot, and gaiter – and her rucksack. She must have had one.’
‘She always carried a pack with waterproofs and things. The rest of her gear will be scattered down the course of the beck.’
The result of the autopsy was broadcast on the local news, with the additional information that a hairline fracture indicated that Phoebe could have struck her head as she lost her balance, and that could have rendered her unconscious and so explained why she didn’t try to save herself from a stream that wouldn’t be in spate until nightfall. The news went round the village with the speed of a grass fire.
At Sleylands Swinburn said, ‘Her never fell in t’Rutting Beck. Her were in t’old quarry, nosying around, looking to see was I tipping there, or worse.’
‘Do you?’ Mabel asked, rinsing a plate under the tap.
‘Do I what?’
‘Tip in the big quarry?’
‘Don’t be daft, woman. I don’t need to –’ He stopped and his eyes glazed.
‘She were eighty,’ Sherrel said, shifting the baby to the other hip. ‘That’s very, very old.’
‘Jacob says Rap’s twelve and that’s older. He can jump walls.’
‘Dogs is different, Bobby. Miss Metcalf would have been rheumaticky too.’
‘What happened to her things?’
‘Like what?’
‘Her – you know …’ He patted his shoulders.
‘Her rucksack? That’d fall off – Bobby Lee, did you find it?’ Sherrel was suddenly angry and frightened.
‘No, no, I didna! I just wondered –’
‘You didn’t find nothing: her camera, her wallet – oh no, not money?’
‘No, Mam! Honest, on my heart, I never!’ Belligerent, he tried to turn the tables: ‘Why is it always me? I get blamed for everything. I’m going up t’top. Jacob needs me for t’sheep.’
Honeyman switched off the radio in the Lamb’s kitchen. ‘Nothing new there,’ he said.
‘Except the fracture,’ Dorcas said, and Misella stopped wiping the interior of the oven.
‘The fracture?’ Honeyman’s eyes disappeared in fat creases. ‘I wonder she weren’t broke to bits trundled down t’beck in t’storm.’ Showing his contempt for women’s brains.
‘She wasn’t – just the head.’
‘Well then,’ he blustered, ‘water would cushion her like, stop t’body smashing against rocks.’
But Dorcas was thoughtful. ‘I don’t like that head wound.’
He stared at her, then grinned. ‘You’re saying it wasn’t an accident?’
They looked at Misella who should have turned back to her work but didn’t. She regarded them blankly, no more emotion showing in the gypsy eyes than in Dorcas’s lined face. Only Ralph appeared eager, as if waiting for some kind of conclusion, or judgement.
‘Someone pushed her?’ Misella asked.
Walter Lambert’s colleague returned from a late lunch. ‘Did you hear the news?’
‘No, I had a bite at my desk. What news?’
‘The old girl from near you: the autopsy report said she drowned.’
‘We knew that already.’
The other shrugged. ‘It’s just that the autopsy confirmed it.’
‘I didn’t really know her,’ Walter said.
Jean Blamire thought: She could be a real bitch but it was a horrible way to go all the same. I hope she didn’t know much about it, but they say time is relative.
Martin Blamire thought: If they discovered that she was pushed, who’d be the most likely candidate?
***
Isa, who didn’t drink much and had never before tasted whisky, downed a large measure of Walter’s Glenlivet, tossing it back like medicine. It was so revolting that she gagged but managed to keep it down, telling herself that the more disgusting the concoction the more good it would do. She wondered when Gemma would come back; she knew that Martin wouldn’t. He said she was going to kill herself in the MG – which was an idea. But he was wrong about her driving, she could drive as well as any woman providing no one was shouting at her. She loved her little car, when she was in it she felt like a queen: on an afternoon like this skimming through the lanes, the top down, her hair streaming, just driving – with music. She refilled the tumbler and turned on the radio.
Chapter Seven
At six o’clock on the Thursday morning Nick Dolphin, second cowman at one of the big valley farms, came fast down the lane called Waterhouses, braking at the last minute for the T-junction and the swing right to the bridge. He had it gauged to the metre, knew exactly how much pressure to apply to avoid a skid, and he was a good driver. He’d been taking this route to work for two years: over mats of dead leaves in autumn, frost in winter, but this was the last day of May and the road was dry. No problem. Not that he was thinking about hazards, he was dwelling on last night and the chick with the butterfly tattoo at the disco, which was why he nearly didn’t make it, because at the turn the scenery changed, had changed out of all recognition.
In this place the river ran below a sandstone crag – not very long, a couple of hundred yards perhaps, and only about thirty feet high. The road called River Lonning ran along the top, bounded by a drystone wall and intersected by Waterhouses Lane where, slewed across the tarmac, Nick now sat trembling in his stalled van, well aware that if he hadn’t had good brakes, if he didn’t know the road, if it had been frosty, he’d be in the river. The wall was no longer there.
‘Jesus!’ he breathed as he recovered, starting up again and easing forward, so shaken that he’d crossed the bridge before it occurred to him that there were no traffic cones at that place, nothing to show … The next guy might not be such a good driver. And then he wondered where the vehicle was that had demolished the wall.
He stopped again. To call the police just because a drunk had grazed the side and toppled the wall would make him look ridiculous; to protest because the break was unmarked was putting on side. Confused, he turned the van and went back.
As he approached on foot it was obvious that nothing had glanced off the wall; the gap was wide and clean, all the stones would be in the river. As was the car: upside down, not quite submerged, water chuckling past one wheel – not much tread left on that tyre, he saw. It was impossible to tell what make of vehicle it was, or even its colour. No doubt it had been stolen although it seemed a risky method of disposal; much easier to torch it if the thieves needed to destroy fingerprints.
Shifting the responsibility Nick told his boss at the farm who reported it immediately, not because he was concerned about a stolen car so much as being worried about the unmarked gap above the escarpment, thinking of the milk tanker going over. A patrol car was there within fifteen minutes, traffic cones and tape were put in place, but they had to wa
it for a diver to go down and determine the registration. When one did they had a shock. There was a woman strapped in the driving seat.
There were no passengers – at least, none in the car, which was an MG with the top down. Before a search was started for another occupant who might have floated clear the police were on their way to Borascal. Sergeant Rosie Winder was back but this time in the company of the CID: Detective Sergeant Sewell and a DC Holgate. For the car was registered to a Walter Lambert, and there was no identification on the woman behind the wheel. It was possible that a crime was involved.
They drove round the village looking for Borrans, the Lambert house. The Lamb had appeared dead but at Jollybeard House they could see down the flagged path to the open front door. Rosie went to inquire.
Eleanor emerged from the kitchen. ‘You’re early,’ she exclaimed, innocently wondering. ‘Come and have some coffee.’
Rosie said they were looking for Borrans.
Eleanor craned to see past her. ‘You’ve brought more –’ She checked, then went on flatly, ‘You continue along the lane, take the first right, and Lamberts’ – that is, Borrans, is the first cottage on your right.’ She paused. In normal circumstances one would ask if anything were wrong but when it was the police that sounded like fishing. Eleanor’s face revealed her embarrassment.
‘I’ll see you,’ Rosie promised, and meant it. She liked this woman. If it came to that she liked Borascal. She was a town girl and she’d been much impressed by what she saw as the affluence and ease of the lifestyle here: no crowds as in the central Lakes, no crime …
‘Where to?’ DC Holgate asked as she came back to the car. Her mind changed gear and she directed him, remembering to warn him about cats, remembering that she hadn’t met the Lamberts when she was here before. Odd that: two fatal accidents within four days of each other – if the woman in the car was from Borascal.
Walter Lambert was about to leave for work. They blocked him in as he was approaching his open gate. He said he didn’t know where his MG was, and when asked if he’d lent it to anyone, blurted that his wife drove it – under instruction, he added quickly – and no, she wasn’t at home. He refused to go back in his house when requested so they told him there, beside his car, inside his garden gate, told him where the car had been found and described the driver. Then they all went to the house.
