Wildfire at Midnight

by Mary Stewart

  ‘Well!’ said Mrs. Corrigan, on an odd note which was three parts relief and one of something else I could not identify; ‘I can’t pretend I’m broken-hearted to see her go. She’s only been here five days, and’ – she broke off and sent me a sidelong glance up from under her long lashes – ‘you’d understand how I feel, if you were a married woman, Miss Brooke.’

  ‘No doubt.’ I added gently: ‘She couldn’t help it, you know . . . She’s been spoiled, I suppose, and she is such a lovely creature.’

  ‘You’re more charitable than I am,’ said Alma Corrigan, a little grimly. ‘But then, you haven’t so much to lose.’

  I didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. ‘She had to have men’s admiration,’ I said, ‘all the time, no matter who got hurt in the process. I – forgive me, but I’d put it behind you, if I were you. Can’t you begin to pretend it never happened?’

  She laughed a little, hardly. ‘It’s easy to see you don’t know much about dealing with men.’

  I didn’t speak for a moment. I wondered irritably why married women so often adopted that tone, almost, of superior satisfaction in the things they had to suffer. Then I told myself that she was probably right. I had after all failed utterly to deal with the man I had married, so who was I to give her advice? I thought wryly that nobody ever wanted advice anyway: all that most people sought was a ratification of their own views.

  We were passing the Coronation bonfire, and I changed the subject. ‘I suppose they’ll hardly light that bonfire now: I mean, celebrations won’t exactly be in keeping, if anything’s happened to these two girls.’

  She said morosely: ‘The sticks’ll be wet, anyway,’ and added, with the determined gloom of a mouse returning to its accustomed treadmill: ‘But how can Hart just expect to go on the way he has? He’s been following her round like a lap-dog, making a fool of me, ever since she came. Oh, you haven’t seen much of it: she switched to that Drury man last night, but really – I mean, everybody must have noticed. It’s all very well saying she can’t help it, but what about Hart? Why should Hart be allowed to get away with that sort of thing? I’ve a damned good mind to—’

  I said abruptly: ‘Do you want to keep your husband or don’t you?’

  ‘I – of course I want to keep him! What a silly question!’

  ‘Then leave him alone,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know yet that there’s no room for pride in marriage? You have to choose between the two. If you can’t keep quiet, then you must make up your mind to lose him. If you want him, then swallow your pride and shut up. It’ll heal over; everything does, given time enough and a bit of peace.’

  She opened her mouth, probably to ask me what I knew about it anyway.

  ‘We’re getting left behind,’ I said, almost roughly. ‘Let’s hurry.’

  I broke away from her and forged ahead up the rapidly steepening path.

  We had climbed to a good height already, and I was thankful to notice, as we began to thread our way up the deer-tracks on the westerly flanks of Blaven itself, that the force of the wind was lessening. The gusts were less frequent and less violent, and, by the time we had reached the base of the first scree slopes, the rain had stopped, shut off as suddenly as if by the turning of a tap.

  The party was strung out now in single file, forging at a steeply climbing angle along the mountainside. Most of the men carried packs; several had coils of rope. The going got harder: the deer-paths narrowed and steepened. These were foot-wide depressions – no more – in the knee-deep heather, and they were treacherous with the rain. Occasionally we found ourselves having to skirt great outcrops of rock, clinging precariously to roots and tufts of heather, with our feet slithering, slipping on the narrow ledge of mud which was all that remained of the path.

  Above us towered the enormous cliffs of the south ridge, gleaming-black with rain, rearing steeply out of the precipitous scree like a roach-backed monster from the waves. The scree itself was terrifying enough. It fell away from the foot of the upper cliffs, hundreds of feet of fallen stone, slippery and overgrown and treacherous with hidden holes and loose rocks, which looked as if a false step might bring half the mountainside down in one murderous avalanche.

  The place where Dougal Macrae had seen the climbers was about halfway along Blaven’s western face. There the crest of the mountain stands up above the scree in an enormous hog’s-back of serrated peaks, two thousand feet and more of grim and naked rock, shouldering up the scudding sky. I stopped and looked up. Streams of windtorn mist raced and broke round the buttresses of the dreadful rock; against its sheer precipices the driven clouds wrecked themselves in swirls of smoke; and, black and terrible, above the movement of the storm, behind the racing riot of grey cloud, loomed and vanished and loomed again the great devil’s pinnacles that broke the sky and split the winds into streaming rack. Blaven flew its storms like a banner.

  And from some high black corrie among the peaks spilled the tiny trickle of water that was to form the gully of the Sputan Dhu. I could just see it, away up on some remote and fearful face of rock – a thin white line, no more, traced across the grey, a slender, steady line that seemed not to move at all save when the force of the wind took it and made it waver a little, like gossamer in the breeze. And the slowly falling gossamer-line of white water had cut, century by century, deep into the living rock, slashing a dark fissure for itself down the side of the mountain. Through this it slid, and rushed, and slid again, now hidden, now leaping clear, but all the time growing and loudening and gathering force until it reached the lowest pitch of the mountain and sank clamorously out of sight in the cleft that split the upper edge of the precipice above the scree.

  And then at last it sprang free of the mountain. From the base of the cleft, some hundred feet up the face, it leaped as from a gutter-spout, a narrow jet of roaring water that jumped clear of the rock to plunge the last hundred feet in one sheer white leap of foam. And then it vanished into the loud depths of the gully it had bitten through the scree.

  Up the edge of this gully the rescue party slowly picked its way. At intervals, someone shouted, but the only answer was the bark of a started raven, which wheeled out from the cliff above, calling hoarsely among the mocking echoes.

  I clawed my way over the wet rocks, my shoes slipping on slimy tufts of grass and thrift, my breath coming in uneven gasps, my face damp and burning with exertion in spite of the intermittent buffets of the chill wet wind. The men forged steadily ahead, their careless-seeming slouch covering the ground at a remarkable speed. I clambered and gasped in their wake, lifting my eyes occasionally to the menace of those black cliffs ahead that rode, implacably grim and remote, above the flying tails of the storm. Down to our left, at the bottom of the gully, the water brawled and bellowed and swirled in its devil’s pot-holes. Here was a veritable demon’s cleft; a black fissure, seventy feet deep, bisecting the scree slope. Its walls were sheer, black and dripping, its floor a mass of boulders and wrestling water.

  Suddenly, and for the first time clearly, I realized that somewhere here, in this wilderness of cruel rock and weltering water, two young women were probably lying dead. Or, at best, alive and maimed and unable, above the intermittent roar of wind and water, to make themselves heard.

  I found myself repeating, breathlessly, stupidly, in a whisper: ‘Roberta . . . Roberta . . .’

  The man directly in front of me was Alastair. He turned and gave me a quick, reassuring smile, and reached out a big hand to steady me up the slope.

  ‘Don’t go too near the edge, Janet . . . that’s better. We’ll soon get them now, if Dougal was right. These rescue chaps know every inch of the place, you know.’

  ‘But . . . Alastair’ – exertion had made me only half articulate – ‘they can’t be alive still. They must have – must be—’

  ‘If they managed to creep into shelter, they could quite easily be alive, providing they weren’t seriously hurt by a fall. It wasn’t cold last night.’

  ‘Do you believe there
were three of them?’

  ‘Dougal Macrae isn’t exactly given to flights of fancy,’ said Alastair.

  ‘Are any of the local men missing?’

  ‘I’m told not.’

  ‘Then, if there were three people, the third climber must be someone from the hotel. And nobody’s missing from there either.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Alastair, in a blank noncommittal sort of voice.

  ‘And if nobody from the hotel reported the accident, then it means—’

  ‘Exactly so,’ said Alastair again. He paused and took my arm. Then with his free hand he pointed upwards, and a little to the right of where we were standing.

  ‘That’s where the bonfire was, that night,’ he said. Then he dropped my arm and addressed himself to the climb again.

  I followed, numbly. Murder? Again? Who on earth would want to murder Marion and Roberta? It was absurd. But then what reason could there have been for the murder of Heather Macrae – and such a murder? But again (I told myself) between the two incidents there could be no possible similarity. The disappearance of two climbers was, if not normal, at any rate not tainted with the fantastic, almost ritual air of the other death. Or was it? When we found the bodies . . .

  I pushed the wet hair back from my face with an unsteady hand, and looked up.

  The men ahead had stopped climbing, and were gathered on the edge of the gully at the point where the waterfall leaped its final hundred feet or so from the upper cliff. Someone was pointing downwards. Ropes were being uncoiled.

  I hauled myself up the last step of rock and paused. Then I walked slowly forward to join them.

  I was afraid, horribly afraid. I felt that no power on earth would make me look down over that edge of rock to see Roberta staring up at me with sightless eyes, with her throat cut like that of Marcia’s silken doll, and the bright blood splashed into pink by the rain, crawling between the clumps of blossoming thrift.

  But it appeared that no sign of either Roberta or Marion had yet been seen, though anxious eyes scanned the depths of the black gully. Dougal Macrae pointed out to the rest of the men the place where he had seen the climbers – he had not, it is true, seen them actually on the cliff, but they were making for it at an angle which suggested that they intended either to climb on the face of the Spout itself or to cross above the fall by the upper rocks.

  Roderick Grant turned his head and saw me, and came over, tugging a battered carton of cigarettes from some inner pocket. He handed me one, and we lit up – no easy process this, as the force of the gusty wind had not appreciably diminished.

  ‘What are they going to do?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘If Dougal’s right, and they were starting to climb across the Spout, then the first move is to do the same climb. There may be some traces in the rocks above the gully, or the climbers may be able to see down below the fall.’

  ‘Did you get this far last night?’

  ‘Yes, but of course it was no use in the dark. All we could do was shout.’

  I looked down into the cleft, where the white water leaped and wrangled. The sides of the gully gleamed and dripped, the hanging tufts of fern and heather tossing in the currents of wind that roared up the cleft like air in a wind-tunnel. With each gust the water of the fall was blown back, and flattened in its own spray against the rock. The echo was uncanny.

  I shivered, and then looked up again at the grim pitch above us. ‘Is it a very bad place to climb?’

  He was grave. ‘It’s pretty bad for anyone, and for a beginner it’s – well, it’s sheer lunacy.’

  ‘Can the men get down into the gully if they – if they have to?’ I asked fearfully.

  ‘Oh yes. Beagle says he’ll go, and Rhodri MacDowell is going with him. He’s a local chap and a pretty good climber.’

  I peered down again into the echoing depths. ‘Doesn’t the gully flatten out further down the mountain? I mean, couldn’t they start down there, and work their way up the bottom of it?’

  ‘This is quicker. It would take hours to work up from below. The stream goes down in leaps, you see – anything from seven to twenty feet at a time. It’s much simpler to go straight down here.’

  Operations were beginning at the foot of the cliff. Three of the men, of whom Beagle was one, were roping themselves together, preparatory to making the climb across the Spout. The rest of the group had split up, and small parties of men seemed to be casting back along the hillside, among the smaller clefts and fissures in the scree.

  ‘What do we do?’ I asked Roderick.

  ‘I should wait here. If they do find them, injured, you might be able to help.’ He smiled at me reassuringly. ‘The odds aren’t quite as bad as they look, Janet. It won’t be long before we have them safely back at the hotel.’

  Then he was gone, and I was left with Alma Corrigan and the little group of men who remained to watch the climb across the gully.

  10

  The Echoing Tomb

  I don’t pretend to know anything about the art of rock-climbing. The three men who were climbing out across the face of the Sputan Dhu were all, it appeared, experts at the job; and indeed, they moved so easily and smoothly on the rock that it was hard to believe the traverse was as dangerous as Roderick had made out.

  I had gone further up the scree to a point near the start of the climb, and sat, watching and nervously smoking, while the three climbers moved steadily, turn and turn about, across the wet cliff. The route they followed took them at a steep angle up the rock-face, at one point straddling the narrow cleft above the spout of water. Even to my ignorant eyes it was obvious that the wet rock and gusty wind must add considerably to the risks of the climb, but the climbers appeared unaffected by the conditions. Ronald Beagle was first on the rope, leading with a smooth precision that was beautiful to watch. The other two, Rhodri MacDowell and a lad called Iain, were members of the local rescue team. All three – it seemed to me – took the climb very slowly, with long pauses between each man’s move, when, I imagine, they were looking for traces of the other climbers. They gave no sign, however, of having found any, but moved on, unhurriedly, up and across the dreadful gap.

  Dougal Macrae said, just behind me: ‘That’s a bonny climber.’

  Ronald Beagle was halfway up what looked like a perpendicular slab of gleaming rock – a hideously exposed pitch, as the slab was set clear above the gully. He climbed rhythmically and easily, making for the next stance, which was an in-tilted ledge some fifteen feet above him.

  ‘I think he’s wonderful,’ I said warmly. ‘I don’t know anything about climbing, but it looks uncommonly tricky to me.’

  ‘It’s a fery nasty place,’ said Dougal. ‘And that bit that Mr. Beagle is on now – that is the worst.’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘He must be right out over the gully. Ah, he’s up. He’s belaying now.’

  Beagle had swung himself easily on to the ledge, and was busy looping himself in some way to a jut of rock beside him. Then he turned and called down something to the men below. I couldn’t hear what it was, but he must have been telling them to wait, for neither of them moved from their stances. Beagle turned to face outwards and, crouching in the support of the belayed rope, he bent to peer down into the gully.

  I cried out involuntarily: ‘But they can’t be down there, Mr. Macrae! It’s impossible!’

  He looked sombrely down over his pipe. ‘If they fell from yon piece of rock that’s where they’ll be.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’ I fumbled with chilled fingers for another cigarette. ‘They’d never have crossed that piece of rock. That girl, Roberta Symes – she’d never have tackled a climb like that. She’d never climbed before!’

  His brows drew down. ‘D’ye say so?’

  ‘That’s what she told us. And Miss Bradford was apparently a good climber; she’d never have let Roberta try this route – surely she wouldn’t!’

  ‘No. You’d think not.’ He raised troubled eyes again to the dan
gerous pitch. ‘No. But it was for this place they were making when I saw them. It did look indeed as if they were planning to cross the Sputan Dhu – ah, they’ve moved again.’

  Rhodri MacDowell, the middle man, was now on Beagle’s ledge, while Beagle himself was out of sight round an over-hang which beetled over the far side of the gully. Iain, who was last on the rope, was moving up.

  I dragged on my cigarette with a nervous movement, and shifted on the wet stone. ‘I – I wonder if they’ve seen anything – down there?’ The words, tremulous and reluctant, were snatched into nothing by the wet wind.

  ‘We’ll hope ye’re right, and that they’d never let the lassie try the place. It may be—’

  ‘They?’ I turned on him quickly. ‘It was you who said there were three climbers, wasn’t it? I suppose you couldn’t have made a mistake, could you? You’re really sure about it?’

  ‘Oh aye.’ The soft voice was decisive. ‘There were three, sure enough.’

  ‘And the third one – was it a man or a woman?’

  ‘I don’t know. At that distance I could not tell very much about them, and nowadays all the ladies wear trousers on the hill, it seems. There was not anything I could be picking out, except that the middle one had a red jacket on.’

  ‘That would be Miss Symes,’ I said, and remembered with a pang how the scarlet windcheater had suited Roberta’s bright Dutch-doll face and black hair.

  ‘It would make it easy enough to find her now, you’d think,’ said Dougal.

  ‘I – I suppose so.’ The second climber had disappeared now. The rope gleamed in a pale pencilled line across the overhang to where Iain was working his way up to the ledge. He gained it presently, and belayed. I heard him call something and soon Ronald Beagle reappeared some way beyond him, making for what looked like the end of the climb, a widish ledge above the scree at the far side of the gully, from which the descent was only an easy scramble.