A Short Time to Live (Miss Pink Book 4)

by Gwen Moffat

  *

  Her behaviour was deliberately repetitive. She approached High Hollins, the Nobles’ house, by its backyard, walked round the side peering in at windows, stripped off her waterproofs in its porch and opened the front door. No one appeared in the dark hall.

  ‘Is anyone here?’ she fluted in the dimness.

  There was a movement from the room on her right. ‘Who’s that?’ A woman came to the doorway: a bulky little figure against the light.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to remove my boots,’ Miss Pink suggested.

  ‘Why, dear?’

  ‘They’ll spoil your carpet.’ She bent and started to untie her laces. There was no sound from the watcher. She put the boots in the porch, closed the door and advanced across the hall.

  ‘I feel such a fool, padding about like a hippie,’ she gushed, ‘Now—I’m dying for a drink.’

  Weak bloodshot eyes peered at her and the woman stepped back—which she was forced to do in the face of the other’s confident approach.

  Miss Pink entered the drawing room boldly and halted. ‘Oh, I’m not dressed for the lounge; I thought you had a cocktail bar.’

  The woman giggled. ‘No bar, dear; we drink in comfort in this establishment. Sit down.’

  ‘I don’t. . . . Are you the—? No.’ Her gaze took in the room. ‘But this is a private house! I do beg your pardon . . . what appalling manners!’ She made to retreat, her face red, but the woman barred the way.

  ‘No, don’t go. Stay and have a drink now that you’re here; after all, it’s what you came for. Sit down.’ The tone was amused but wistful. ‘The name’s Noble. It’s unusual to have visitors but you’re very welcome.’

  ‘I couldn’t trespass—’

  Sarah had crossed to the sideboard. ‘Whisky, gin, brandy?’

  Miss Pink gave an embarrassed little laugh. ‘Well, at least I must introduce myself. My name is Pink and I’m staying at Sandale House.’

  ‘With the Rumneys? How nice; I adore Grannie. Now, what will you have?’

  ‘A very small brandy.’

  She saw now that Sarah was a thin little person, the bulky appearance being the result of a number of sweaters worn over wide trousers. Her hair looked as if it hadn’t been combed since she’d got out of bed, and as she crossed the room, intent on not spilling the contents of Miss Pink’s glass, she took quick tottering steps. With her head poked forward from hunched shoulders she gave the impression of an anxious old tortoise.

  The glass was half full and Miss Pink looked alarmed. ‘You need this if you’ve been out all day,’ Sarah said with a maternal air. ‘Personally,’ she added drily, ‘I need it if I’m in all day.’ There was another glass on the coffee table in front of the fire. She sat down and looked at her visitor with interest. ‘My company can’t be worse than Mossop’s,’ she remarked.

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t. Mossop?’

  ‘The man at Storms: the hotel you must have been making for. It’s next door; you came down to the wrong house, that’s all.’

  ‘I see.’

  There was a pause. ‘One shouldn’t drink alone anyway,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s morbid. But it’s more discreet than going to pubs and making an exhibition of oneself; besides, one has to drive. . . .’ She leaned forward and poked the fire. ‘I’m an alcoholic; I suppose they’ve told you?’ As Miss Pink sought for words, the other went on: ‘Yes, they have. Naturally. Warned, I should have said.’

  ‘A warning is against danger,’ Miss Pink said inanely.

  ‘Or boredom.’

  ‘Boredom is worse than insecurity.’

  ‘Ah, a wise woman.’ Was there a hint of sarcasm in the tone? ‘What are your vices?’

  Miss Pink considered. ‘Inquisitiveness.’

  ‘Are you indulging that now? My God! You’ve got plenty of opportunity in this place!’ When Miss Pink didn’t respond, the other pressed: ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘Quite a lot.’

  ‘Staying with Rumney, you said. Did he send you?’

  ‘Why should he send me?’

  ‘You tell me, dear.’

  Miss Pink asked: ‘Why did no one go to the police about the anonymous letters? Or just tell them when they were here investigating the murder?’

  ‘You think there’s a connection?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘That’s why you wrote to Rumney.’

  ‘I wrote to Zeke? What makes you think that?’

  ‘It was an educated person, and one who was almost certainly a victim herself.’

  ‘It could have been Lucy Fell, the doctor or his wife, or my husband, or Zeke himself; even Arabella.’

  Miss Pink thought this over seriously and then asked, ‘Is the writer of the other letters an educated person?’

  Sarah lit a cigarette, taking a long time about it. ‘I’ve not had any letters myself but I’ve seen one. They are not very literate but they’re clever—or perhaps I should say cunning.’ She twisted her wedding ring. ‘I understand that the person who sends them combines them with telephone calls.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it goes on, dear—indefinitely, and sometimes he wants the money taken to a new place.’ Miss Pink held her breath. ‘You didn’t know that,’ Sarah said.

  ‘I didn’t. How much is demanded at a time?’

  ‘Small sums—I believe; as I said: he’s cunning.’

  ‘“He”?’

  ‘They said it’s a man.’

  ‘When did this thing start?’

  ‘I—’ Sarah flushed. ‘Some months ago: back in the summer; June, I believe.’

  ‘How many letters did Peta have?’

  ‘I don’t know if she had any; she had the telephone calls so, since the two seem to go together, one assumes she had at least one letter to begin with.’

  ‘Why was she being blackmailed?’

  Sarah was surprised. ‘But you couldn’t blackmail Peta! She had no money, and he was crafty; I mean, if he only asked what he knew people could afford, he’d never try to victimise a poor person, would he?’

  ‘Unless the blackmailer was Peta herself. Everyone agrees that she was short of money and there’s only her word for it that she was a victim.’

  ‘But it was a man on the phone!’

  ‘A man’s voice. That’s easily imitated. If it had been Peta that would explain why there have been no more letters or telephone calls since she was killed.’ It was a guess which emerged as a statement. The other nodded, staring at the table. Miss Pink looked away and heard Sarah’s voice, a careful voice: ‘Have there been no more then?’

  ‘Could you imagine her as a blackmailer?’ Miss Pink asked.

  The other gave this serious consideration. ‘She was selfish and neurotic. Certainly she needed money but she could get that quite easily from men. My husband had a brief relationship with her, very brief.’ She was objective, not bitter. ‘I don’t think Peta would have—could have been a blackmailer on her own; only if she’d been doing it for someone else.’

  ‘Miles Mossop?’

  ‘He was the only person who was close to her.’

  A car drew up outside. ‘You’ve got visitors,’ Miss Pink said, without embarrassment, quite herself again.

  ‘It’s my husband, but there’s no need to go.’

  ‘I’ve trespassed on your hospitality for long enough—’ but Denis Noble appeared in the doorway and paused at the sight of the visitor. His wife introduced them.

  Noble said, ‘I went out for a bit of rough shooting and got one pigeon! What a terrible afternoon it’s turned out. Don’t go, please; we don’t have many visitors.’ He retreated and Miss Pink realised that she was being studied by her hostess.

  ‘Are you on holiday?’ Sarah asked politely.

  ‘I’m looking for a cottage.’

  ‘Are there any in Sandale?’

  ‘Coneygarth may be vacant soon, if Jackson Wren goes.’

  ‘Is he going? I didn’t know.’
/>   ‘I think now that Arabella has terminated the affair he may be persona non grata.’

  ‘I didn’t know Arabella had terminated the affair. That’s a euphemism for a quarrel, I take it.’ She was amused. ‘We don’t really know Jackson; his father’s the Council roadman.’

  Noble came back and went to the sideboard. ‘Not the best weather for walking,’ he observed, coming to the fire with a full glass, eyeing Miss Pink’s breeches. ‘Would you like a pair of my slippers?’ She declined gracefully.

  ‘Miss Pink says people have been getting anonymous letters, Denis.’

  He grimaced. ‘All over the dale, is it? That’s a bad show.’

  ‘Did you know anything, darling?’

  ‘Well—’ He stretched his legs. ‘Lucy had one. Nasty thing, she burned it.’ No one pressed him for details. ‘Who else has been getting them?’ he asked of Miss Pink.

  ‘Peta Mossop.’

  ‘She had one? She said she had but we didn’t believe her.’

  ‘Miss Pink says the letters ask for money.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He was astounded. ‘Lucy didn’t say anything about money. But that’s criminal. No one could blackmail Peta, of course; no money there. Anyone else?’

  ‘Zeke Rumney,’ Miss Pink said.

  ‘Zeke! How did he take it?’

  ‘Seriously. His letter wasn’t in the same vein; it was warning him that there were others.’ Miss Pink caught Sarah’s eye but no message was exchanged.

  ‘Someone has their heart in the right place, but why couldn’t this second chap come out in the open and say who the first one was?’

  ‘I doubt if he knew, but he hopes that someone else will investigate and put a stop to it.’

  ‘Bit of a tall order, that. How many people have had them: the unpleasant ones?’

  ‘There must have been more besides Lucy and Peta, but the victims aren’t likely to talk about it.’

  He nodded gloomily. ‘Everyone’s got something to hide.’

  When she left High Hollins he accompanied her to the packhorse track. Arrived on the level he turned and faced her.

  ‘Is Lucy being blackmailed?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t like it. Who d’you think’s behind it? Has Rumney any ideas?’

  ‘Everyone’s puzzled. What do you think yourself?’

  ‘No idea.’ He wasn’t really listening. ‘I usually go to Thornbarrow on Friday evenings,’ he said with an embarrassed air, ‘but she wasn’t feeling too good last night. Is she worried about this business?’

  ‘The anonymous letters?’

  ‘Of course. What else is there?’

  ‘Well, there’s Peta’s death. It must have been a great shock to both of you, so soon after you were talking to her.’

  He wiped the rain out of his eyes. ‘To tell you the truth, I remember very little about that night; I’d had rather too much to drink. All I’m certain about was my feeling that she must see a doctor, and if she wouldn’t, then I was going to have a word with Quentin Bright myself about the state she was in. My God, we’ve got some neurotics in this place! Don’t know what you can be thinking of us. And now there’s these letters. . . . This thing has to be squashed. Wonder who it can be? What d’you think of that Harper fellow? Have you met him?’

  ‘A harmless little man, I thought. He doesn’t know anything about the countryside and he’s wrapped up in his daughter. My impressions went no further than that.’

  ‘Oh? I didn’t know he had a family.’

  ‘I find it difficult to visualise him writing anonymous letters.’

  ‘He’s not what he seems though.’

  ‘And where would he get the knowledge of local people to blackmail them?’

  ‘Well, he’s guessing, isn’t he?’

  She studied the rather bovine face with the rain running down his forehead. The eyes were guileless and anxious. She remembered the broken window in Quentin Bright’s surgery.

  ‘I don’t think this person’s guessing. He knows.’

  And there was the break-in at Harper’s cottage, she thought as she walked slowly home, and there was Jackson Wren. It would appear that someone in Sandale was looking for more than medical records.

  The beck coming down from Shivery Knott was in spate and the daylight was almost gone. She found her headlamp at the bottom of her rucksack and, fastening it round her head, put the battery in her pocket and surveyed the white water. It was very noisy and one could imagine that there were animals in the woods. She heard a crash from the crag above, and the sound of scree running, but then she thought it was probably the swell of a waterfall borne on a gust of air. Gritting her teeth she started to wade, feeling for the bottom with her boots. The icy water flowed over her ankles. On the other side she forced herself to sit down, empty the boots, put them on again with no wrinkles in the socks, and to lace them carefully. She stood up and squelched down the path.

  There was no light in Coneygarth and she hesitated below its garden gate. She was cold, wet and exhausted. Below, the hamlet spelled warmth and comfort. The storm lantern glowed in the cow-house, metal rang on stone, there was a smell of smoke, a door closed quietly. She moved down the green; she would leave Jackson Wren until the morning.

  Chapter Ten

  For her age Miss Pink had excellent powers of recuperation. When she walked into the Rumney kitchen Grannie’s mouth had tightened at sight of the other’s drawn face. ‘Fetch a glass of brandy,’ she snapped at Arabella.

  ‘No!’ Miss Pink exclaimed, ‘I’ve had too much of Sarah Noble’s—but I would appreciate a cup of tea.’

  She sank into a rocker, automatically removing a cat and placing it on her knee where it woke up, took one sniff at wet tweeds and leapt down. Despite her waterproofs, or because of them, she felt damp all over. She started to unlace her boots, explaining about the flooded beck. Arabella whisked away to draw a bath and came back to drive the guest upstairs.

  With a tea tray on a chair beside her Miss Pink lay in a hot bath like a fox with vermin, only her mask projecting above the surface and surrounded, not by drowning fleas but a steaming cloud of Lanvin’s Arpège.

  Eventually her cerebral processes reverted to normal and by the time she descended to the living room, clean, dry and exotically perfumed, she was herself again: perceptive, relaxed and comfortable, in a burgundy suit and apricot blouse.

  Rumney was in his office, the sherry and copetas at his elbow. In response to her query, he replied gravely that Penelope and her calf were well. The calf had been born in the small hours but he looked none the worse for his vigil. She sipped her sherry and recounted the events of her own day. There had been no time to talk at lunch. At the end of her report, which had not been a monologue because he interrupted occasionally for a point to be clarified, he looked at his watch, said he thought it was time to eat and asked if she would continue the discussion after supper. ‘I wouldn’t like you to spoil your food with business,’ he said reasonably, ‘and it will give me a chance to think.’

  So she talked food and animals to Grannie and Arabella while Rumney sat at the head of the table functioning on two planes. Obviously he was enjoying the spiced beef because he had two helpings, obviously he appreciated his own claret, but the greater part of his attention was elsewhere. For herself, she lay fallow, stress epitomised by the difficulty of deciding between a second helping of Spotted Dog and rejection of the blue Cheshire, or abandoning the dog in favour of the cheese.

  They returned to the office and Arabella brought coffee—wistfully, but she did no more than reproach them with looks. Miss Pink sent her a reassuring glance, implying that she should know all, and soon. But it was quicker this way: just she and Rumney, and perhaps safer; not an irrelevant contingency when a killer was on the loose.

  Rumney served the brandy and they nursed their balloons and stared at the fire. From behind the closed door came the strains of Iolanthe. Arabella had discovered Gilbert and Sullivan
.

  ‘I think the Brights are right,’ he ruminated, ‘Peta was far more likely to be a victim than a blackmailer.’ He blinked at the flames. ‘And obviously it was done with the priest.’

  ‘What priest?’

  ‘The thing hanging in Mossop’s bar with the blood on it. It’s used to give the coup de grâce to salmon, and some incumbent at Storms brought one back from Ireland. She was killed in the bar?’ He said it tentatively: a question, not a statement.

  ‘The priest suggests that. One wonders why the body wasn’t left there. Mossop’s lying—in part.’ She paused and appeared to study some inner vision. ‘If it comes to that, no one seemed completely honest, except Denis Noble—oh, and the Brights?’ Her voice rose. She could have forgotten that the doctor was Rumney’s friend.

  ‘Who was lying?’

  ‘Well, not quite lying. There were contradictions. Lucy for instance suggested that Peta was the blackmailer but I think that was more out of residual bitterness than conviction. Her attitude towards Peta appears to have been one of annoyance, like finding ants in the pantry. Suggesting that Peta wrote the letters was a good exit line; she has a strong sense of the dramatic. One feels with both her and Sarah Noble that they would prefer Peta to have been the blackmailer but their reason tells them she isn’t.’

  ‘Was Lucy being blackmailed or not?’

  ‘She says she wasn’t, that her letter was the abusive type with no demand for money. Noble bears this out and on reflection I don’t think her letter did involve blackmail. She divulged its contents and you can be certain there’s no body buried in Lucy Fell’s garden. She’s no exhibitionist, so—no body, no blackmail. There was no reason to hide the fact that someone had demanded money on a stupid assumption. Now that contradicts Sarah Noble who maintains that the letter writer is cunning.’

  ‘But semi-literate.’

  ‘It’s easy enough to imitate semi-literacy if you’ve an ear for the spoken word and a knowledge of phonetics.’