A Short Time to Live (Miss Pink Book 4)

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘You think George won’t let her come?’ Arabella exclaimed. ‘Now why all the mystery? Why is he so anti-social?’

  ‘He isn’t; he had a drink with me last Friday.’

  ‘I thought he never went out. Last Friday! Of course he did; he brought your eggs down. But that was when—’

  ‘He looked in early, before dinner, and he was quite amiable.’ Lucy smiled at Miss Pink. ‘Has Arabella told you about our visitors?’

  ‘This is the man from Surrey? Yes, she has told me. He’s not such a recluse then if he visits you.’

  ‘Of course he’s not a recluse. Arabella exaggerates. George came to my party in September and mixed quite happily.’

  ‘What I mean is—’ Arabella began, but at this point there was a knock at the outside door. Lucy rose and went out. There was a sound of greetings in the passage and Arabella mimed anticipation at Miss Pink.

  They weren’t disappointed. The visitor from Burblethwaite had long legs and a mass of russet hair, much of it falling casually over one eye. She wore coral-coloured lamé: pants, smock and camisole, and gold boots. She was pretty rather than beautiful, with an expression modelled on Marilyn Monroe but with none of Monroe’s blatant sex appeal. The eyes were wide and innocent, the lips not quite closed. She was ornamental rather than functional, like a Playboy photograph, and she acknowledged the introductions in a strong Cockney accent that was good enough to be genuine.

  Behind her George Harper appeared proud and anxious at the same time. She was his daughter and her name was Caroline. She was a model. Arabella looked meaningly at Miss Pink. So far there were no great surprises, discounting the lamé.

  Lucy served drinks. She was the type of woman which improves in the face of opposition. Arabella, with no claims to conventional beauty and no self-consciousness, was unrecognised as competition, but Caroline Harper was a rival: young and slim and strikingly dressed. Even the accent competed.

  In the face of this Lucy glowed with confidence, drawing the girl out, stylishly amused, and Caroline chattered in a breathless accent while Harper listened, Miss Pink watched benignly, and Arabella appeared to withdraw, her dark little face sinking into the black frills at her throat.

  Caroline said that she was leaving the next day. Lucy was shocked. ‘But you’ve only just arrived!’

  ‘I’ve got a very full week from Monday on,’ Caroline explained. ‘If I drive home tomorrow I can sleep all day Sunday. But I’ll be down again soon if Dad’ll have me.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ he assured her. ‘You’re always welcome; you know that.’

  It was touching, even intimate; Miss Pink had the feeling that she was eavesdropping.

  ‘Who do you model for?’ Arabella asked.

  Caroline hesitated. ‘I’m only just starting,’ she confessed, ‘but I got next week off and this guy’s going to do some special pictures of me for free. I’m an air hostess really but I done some modelling for mail order firms. What I really want to do is get with a Paris house, Givenchy or Bohan or one of those. I done a bit for Warners—that’s just underwear and stuff, but I’d love to be with a couturier.’

  ‘I don’t think you should have any trouble,’ Arabella said sincerely, her eyes on the coral suit.

  ‘You shouldn’t have hidden away while you’ve been here,’ Lucy chided. ‘We’ve seen nothing of you, and you’re highly decorative, for Sandale.’ She glanced at Arabella and grimaced. ‘Although we could hardly have raised people to have a young party, could we?’

  ‘Why young?’ Arabella asked with hostility. ‘I like people mixed. Zeke and Quentin are great fun, and Grannie comes out with the most astonishing things. . . . Sandale can make up a very good party just as it stands.’ She paused, and added, ‘With one or two exceptions.’

  When no one else commented Caroline asked brightly: ‘Who are they?’

  ‘The drunks and the wife-beaters,’ Arabella said and stopped, turning horrified eyes on Miss Pink who smiled and shook her head in disbelief.

  ‘That’s one thing you don’t have in the Lake District,’ she said smugly. ‘The crime rate drops like a stone as soon as you leave the urban conurbations.’

  ‘Drunks aren’t criminals,’ Arabella pointed out.

  ‘All part of the same mores.’ Miss Pink’s eyes gleamed as she got into her stride. She and Arabella were in shadow on a sofa and now the girl felt a slight pressure on her thigh. The pernickety voice continued: ‘All statistics can be read whichever way one wants to read them and I agree that crime rates may appear to be high merely because there are more convictions or, if you like, fewer people get away with it. The statistics may, in fact, only be proving that criminals are more clever in the countryside but this can’t be so because there is little evidence of rural crime. There may be more after-hours drinking—’ she shook her head reprovingly, ‘—but that is where it stops.’ Arabella was eyeing her coldly. Miss Pink drew breath. ‘Rats in close confinement have been known—’

  ‘We had a murder last week,’ Arabella said loudly, ‘and they questioned the husband for forty-eight hours, and then they questioned her lov——’ She gasped and stared at Lucy who closed her eyes in mock despair.

  ‘Arabella! No party could be a bore with you present!’ She glanced calmly at Miss Pink. ‘She’s right; a girl was murdered last weekend and they’ve not yet found the person who did it.’

  ‘Dad said she was here, in this house.’ Caroline was awed.

  ‘Yes.’ Lucy addressed George Harper. ‘You were here when she rang that evening; I haven’t seen you since. She came along after dinner and she was quite distraught. Denis and I were the last people to speak to her, with the exception of the man who killed her, of course.’

  ‘How do they know it was a man?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘She wasn’t killed where she was found; she had to be carried there, or transported somehow. Women can’t heave other women around, you know.’

  ‘That’s right.’ The girl nodded eagerly. ‘You try getting girls into bed when they’re stoned. It’s a hell of a job. Yeah, you’re quite right; it must have been a man. The husband’s always the first suspect,’ she assured Miss Pink earnestly.

  ‘That may be so,’ Harper put in with unexpected aggressiveness. ‘That doesn’t mean he’s always the murderer. There are plenty of vicious wives about. The police can’t look farther than their noses sometimes.’

  ‘Come off it, Dad; we was only joking.’

  Miss Pink looked confused. ‘Joking?’

  ‘Not really.’ Arabella sighed. ‘Our murder wasn’t a joke. I don’t expect Lucy thought it was a joke. Didn’t she give any indication, Lucy?’

  ‘Of what, for heaven’s sake? It wasn’t suicide. People hardly give indications that they’re going to be murdered.’ Lucy’s temper seemed to be not far below the surface.

  ‘Why, of course they don’t.’ Caroline stared at the other girl in reproof.

  Arabella opened her mouth. Miss Pink asked: ‘Why was she so late?’

  There was a small silence then Lucy asked: ‘Late for what?’

  ‘Dinner,’ Miss Pink said, appearing a little flustered. ‘Didn’t you say she came in after dinner? Or didn’t you invite her?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Lucy sounded strained. ‘She wasn’t invited.’

  ‘Then why did she come?’ Arabella asked.

  Lucy said, as if she had repeated it many times: ‘She was drunk and hysterical; she said she was getting telephone calls and Denis suggested she should see her doctor the following day. That’s all.’

  ‘But she was killed before she could see the doctor,’ Caroline pointed out, as if it were a game.

  ‘She was killed that night,’ Lucy agreed and Miss Pink’s spectacles focused on her.

  ‘So someone wanted to stop her going to the doctor.’ Caroline looked round the circle in triumph. ‘I like detective stories,’ she explained.

  George Harper nodded morosely. ‘It could have been that. It was a queer business al
together; I’ve found it a bit upsetting.’

  ‘I think you should come back to town with me, Dad,’ Caroline said, concerned.

  Lucy rose to fill people’s glasses and Miss Pink followed to admire the bread cupboard at close quarters. The butterfly hinges were brought to her attention and, sadly, the place where the central shelf had deteriorated because it was sap wood, not heart wood. Miss Pink evinced sympathy. As Lucy talked, now without much animation, her eyes travelled beyond her guest and suddenly her face was suffused with that questing excitement which had been so obvious when they’d arrived. Miss Pink turned and saw a stranger in the doorway.

  ‘You must meet my neighbour, Jackson Wren,’ Lucy said.

  The newcomer approached: a big man in breeches and a trendy jersey with a horizontal stripe across the chest. He was faintly embarrassed but when he smiled he seemed open, boyish, genuinely pleased to meet a visitor. As Miss Pink made conversation she noticed, without appearing to do so, that Arabella was watching them with consternation. At the same time George Harper observed Arabella while his daughter stared with parted lips at Wren.

  Lucy brought him a whisky on the rocks. He thanked her and for a second their eyes locked. Arabella turned to Caroline. Miss Pink asked Wren if he climbed.

  ‘I get out as often as I can,’ he told her. ‘At the moment we’re all praying for the snow: to get some ice climbing in.’

  They turned to the fire and he nodded to Arabella then stared at Caroline. Her father introduced her.

  ‘Are you really a mountain climber?’ she asked breathlessly and Arabella winced.

  Wren was not in the least put out. He started to explain that he was a rock climber and there ensued one of those embarrassing conversations familiar to the initiated. Miss Pink’s face was composed, Arabella looked bored, George Harper a little anxious, but that seemed to be his habitual expression. Only Wren blossomed in the warmth of adulation—which was not surprising since it was directed at him.

  Lucy came looking for someone to open a bottle of wine and took Harper away. Miss Pink, regretting her recent supper, remarked to Arabella that it looked as if they were expected to eat.

  ‘I can always eat.’ Arabella stood up. ‘Lucy’s canapés are divine. I’ll give her a hand.’

  Harper remained in the kitchen and Miss Pink caught a glimpse of him fiddling with some gadget on the table. She looked placidly at Wren and Caroline, admired the andirons and took a reflective sip of her cognac.

  ‘. . . nothing to it,’ Wren was saying. ‘You reach up—not at full stretch, mind—’ he showed her, ‘—and all the holds are there, waiting for you: right where you need them. It’s just the same for the feet: like climbing a ladder, and the rope makes it dead safe. The leader’s got you tight all the time, see; it’s impossible to fall!’ He stopped and studied her. ‘You’d make a nice little climber,’ he said casually, ‘not in that gear though.’

  ‘I’ve got some jeans.’

  ‘You mean you’d like to try?’

  ‘Well, sometime.’

  ‘Huh! Chicken!’

  ‘Oh no, honestly! I’d love it; it’s just that I—’ She bit her lip and glanced towards the kitchen, her eyes those of a naughty child, greatly daring. She leaned towards him and whispered.

  Miss Pink reached for the tongs, peering at them as if through bi-focals. She had good hearing and although the whisper was beyond her, she caught his low reply.

  ‘You’d have to wear boots.’

  ‘I could buy those in Carnthorpe.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He started to tell her about the Alps and avalanches and getting up before the dawn. She was enthralled.

  Meanwhile Arabella was bringing plates of food to Lucy’s dining table. Occasionally she glanced at the hearth but it was the look of a preoccupied housewife wondering about fuel and falling logs, without emotion. Someone shut the kitchen door and behind it a coffee-mill went into action. Miss Pink craned her neck to see what there was to eat. Wren was demonstrating a layback on the side of the settle and Caroline was spellbound.

  ‘You’d have to wear a helmet,’ he said, returning to her.

  ‘No! Like them on telly: real climbers?’

  ‘You’ll look gorgeous in a helmet; I’ll take some pictures. I’ve got a Leica.’

  Miss Pink started to turn the pages of Vogue as Arabella had done earlier but she wasn’t bored. On the other side of the hearth the chatter went on; like two children planning an escapade, she thought.

  At length the others came in and Lucy’s eyes went straight to Wren. Miss Pink saw the lids drop fractionally, then lift, but the fire had gone. Now they were basilisk eyes, flat as green slate, and they passed over Miss Pink as if she were a chair.

  *

  The Rumney kitchen was bright and warm; scrubbed clean and abandoned for the night. On a rug under the table the oldest collie thumped the floor with his tail, and the feline Bosch had separated into its units and was draped in a frieze round the Aga: true tortoiseshell, black, white, pied and marmalade.

  ‘Come on,’ Arabella said impatiently as Miss Pink admired the new design. ‘We’ll talk in the house.’ ‘House’ being Cumbrian for the living room.

  They were alone. Grannie had gone to bed and they’d peeped in the lighted cow-house to find Rumney half asleep on a milking stool, still waiting for Penelope.

  The range was banked for the night and they drew their chairs close to its stored heat. It was Miss Pink who started the ball rolling with congratulations on Arabella’s studied indiscretions at Thornbarrow.

  ‘We didn’t learn anything,’ the girl pointed out.

  ‘I did,’ Miss Pink said stoutly. ‘For instance, Lucy is on good terms with George Harper and, something salutory: it hadn’t occurred to me that a woman wouldn’t have been able to move Peta’s body. That must have been a man. And it’s interesting that Peta meant to see her doctor on Saturday morning.’

  ‘Do you think she could have been killed to stop her seeing Quentin?’ Miss Pink said nothing. ‘Because only Denis and Lucy knew she was going to see him,’ Arabella went on.

  ‘Not necessarily; she could have told Mossop on her return, she could have rung the doctor late that night for an appointment or merely to talk to him; he could have told his wife. . . .’

  ‘But she didn’t go back to Storms!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Mossop would have said! And anyone would have said if she’d told them she was going to see the doctor.’

  ‘Would they? Do you think the killer is telling the truth?’

  ‘Well, of course he isn’t. . . . Oh, my God!’ Miss Pink regarded her placidly. ‘You mean: if he’s one of us he’s not telling the truth!’ She was appalled. ‘It can’t be Quentin?’

  ‘No?’ Miss Pink asked pleasantly. ‘But he could have information: of the kind that people aren’t aware that they possess. What did you think of Caroline?’

  Arabella pulled herself together with an effort. ‘Dumb,’ she said flatly, then with more animation: ‘But not completely. That suit came from Dior; I know because my mother buys things there. She didn’t earn that kind of money as an air hostess.’

  ‘She said she did some part-time modelling.’

  ‘Mail order stuff and bras! That outfit cost a heap of dollars, and she didn’t pay for it.’ After a long pause she went on carefully, ‘Lucy seems to have taken up with Jackson. I’ve a feeling that’s going to make complications in the dale.’

  ‘This is comparatively recent?’ Miss Pink’s tone was light.

  ‘Quite. As Zeke may have told you, I had a relationship, of a sort, with Jackson until last Friday. How odd: that it should have ended the day Peta was killed. I can’t think of any possible connection though. That was how Jackson came to be returning from Carnthorpe alone on Friday evening. We would have been together but we had this confrontation—or rather, that day was the climax. He didn’t like me breaking it off. So now Lucy’s taken him in. Well, he has a superficial charm.’ The
tone was worldly and highly artificial.

  ‘The charm worked on Caroline; I don’t think Lucy was too pleased about that.’

  ‘How could she be? She’s old enough to be Caroline’s mother, and almost old enough for Jackson’s, but she’s very elegant, isn’t she? Didn’t you think so?’

  ‘Very, but I thought that Jackson might be more interested in her money than in herself. As soon as a strange young girl appeared on the scene he was quick enough to transfer his attentions.’

  Arabella poked the fire, heedless of its being so carefully banked. ‘Jackson is only interested in Jackson. If he can get a woman to provide money, and labour, that’s his ideal partner. Once he’s got them, the charm wears off; in fact, he’s spread so thin now, I wonder there’s enough of him left to go round.’

  ‘You’ve retained your sense of humour.’

  ‘I’ll survive. Grannie did warn me. You won’t tell them, will you? I’d be so ashamed.’

  ‘Of course I won’t, but there’s no shame attached; chalk it up to experience. You’re wiser now.’

  ‘And how! He’s married to a girl in Northampton and she’s got a small baby. He’s supporting them.’ Arabella stared at a blue flame. ‘I guess some of my money went to them but so what? Poor thing; she needed it more than me, with the baby as well.’

  ‘How did you find this out?’

  ‘Quite simple. He wants to start pony trekking and we saw a mare that really is a little beauty, and he knows where there’s a good stallion; thinking long-term, you see. So he had to have my money because he hasn’t got any, but I wanted to get married; I’m a bit Puritan that way. So I said more or less: no marriage, no money, and that’s when he had to tell me about his wife in Northampton—but he said he’d get a divorce and marry me. He did point out that he’d have to pay her alimony. I took a little time to consider the problem—’ she regarded Miss Pink earnestly, ‘but I figured that if he’d deceived me for three months, he could do it again. It was the start of the rot, you know. It’s like virginity—I mean, once trust has gone, you can never go back. And there was Grannie reminding me how rich I’d be eventually and how Jackson always was a greedy boy. . . . I reckon his going straight to Lucy proves the point. He hardly knew her a week ago but now they seem to know each other quite well, wouldn’t you say?’