“I see, I see!” I said. “Yes, now you put it like that, I can see you’re probably right!”
The journalist’s motto is, he who writes and runs away lives to write another day. Occasionally my colleagues have gone to jail for a few days rather than reveal their sources, but if there’d been a bit of pain involved, there’d have been more spilt beans than at a spastics’ tea-party. Me, I was as far away from Joan of Arc as you can get. Oh yes, me lud, it’s them bloody bell-ringers, and I’ll certainly have my ears syringed!
So I poured myself another drink and showered Craik with praise for his masterly analysis of my behaviour in the face of his most kind and courteous assault on me the night before.
For a few moments he modestly accepted my plaudits, then his face went all solemn and that narrow look appeared again.
“But you did go the police, didn’t you? I heard you talking to those people who came back with you tonight. You’d told them, too. You were trying to get me caught. That doesn’t fit.”
“Good Lord!” I said, with a light laugh. “You don’t want to take any notice of that.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
I shook my head at him sorrowfully. I was getting quite good at this.
“Of course I went to the police. It wasn’t that I was really bothered by what had happened. And I understand why I wasn’t bothered now you’ve explained it to me. But I’m a journalist, aren’t I? Like you said, there’s good copy in this for me, especially coming right after my series. But I can hardly claim to have been raped if I didn’t go the police about it, can I? I mean, it’d sound a bit thin!”
His look became less narrow, but only marginally. My creative powers were bubbling merrily, however.
“And another thing,” I went on. “You know what? Now I see you again, Patrick, I realize I gave the police an entirely misleading description of you. Not deliberately, you understand. But deep down, I can’t have wanted you to be caught. I told them you were ginger. Would you credit it? With sort of greeny eyes and a hooked nose!”
“Like Jimmy?” he said.
“You’re right!” I cried. “Just like dear old Jimmy.”
He began to laugh. I began to laugh, too. Soon we were both howling hysterically. Heathcliff opened both his eyes and regarded me scornfully from Patrick’s shoulders. I roared even louder. It was the laughter of relief. There was still a long way to go, but I felt that the danger of this loony killing me had now been reduced to a minimum.
“You know,” said Craik, wiping away his mirthful tears, “I think I’ll have another drink now.”
I reached the whisky bottle over to him, but he shook his head.
“Could I have a brandy, please? Just to round off the evening?”
I’d have uncorked a thousand-pound claret if I’d had one and he’d asked for it! I got up, went over to the sideboard, produced a huge balloon glass, sloshed a couple of inches of the fine champagne into it, and turned, still chortling.
I found myself looking down the barrels of my shotgun. And Craik had stopped laughing.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
He shook his head sadly.
“As with all women and most journalists,” he said, “you have only a very coarse appreciation of the way that human beings work. I think that of all the reasons you give me for disliking you, and they are many, the most offensive is the insultingly obvious way you have tried to humour me. Now you imagine I’m going to sip my brandy and then go out into the night which you will fill with sleepy policemen at the first opportunity. But you’re wrong.”
“Am I?” I said. “That’s twice in a year!”
“Indeed you are. I got to thinking last night after I’d left here that I’d put myself in your hands. The hands of a vicious opinionated female!”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” I said.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I’d thought of you all day, but the picture I had was of your finger pointing at me and your hysterical voice screeching, “That was the man!” I have a reputation, a wife, a family to think of. You have all the power of an immoral and irresponsible press behind you. I came back tonight to finish what I really ought to have finished last night. I wasn’t very hopeful, I must confess. It didn’t seem likely I’d find you still here, and certainly not alone!”
“Perhaps I was hoping you’d return,” I said. “Perhaps I was expecting it.”
“Still humouring me?” he said. “It’s absurd, isn’t it, that something so trivial and unimportant as a man behaving as nature intended should be able to destroy his whole life? Don’t you agree?”
“You’re right, you’re right. Or a woman’s either. Let’s call it quits,” I said eagerly.
“Really? Perhaps before I finish it, I’ll test the sincerity of your conversion,” he said. “Come here.”
He beckoned me with the gun. I approached slowly.
“Stop there,” he said when I was right in front of him. “Now, take your clothes off.”
I was ready to do it. Anything which would delay matters long enough to let a chance of escape present itself. But I couldn’t start undoing buttons while I still had the brandy in my hand. I offered it to him but his eyes were hot for the strip-show now and he impatiently motioned it away with the gun barrel.
So instead I threw it in his face.
I was as bad a shot with the brandy as I’d been with the gun. I just about missed him altogether as he jerked his head aside. But Heathcliff I didn’t miss. The fiery liquid caught him full in his startled and dignified face. And his howl of protest turned to a scream of pain as the spirit burned in his eyes. His feet shot out and his claws ripped bloody channels down Patrick’s cheek. The man shrieked and half rose, trying to dislodge the cat. But Heathcliff was not about to let himself be hurled to dangers he could not see and he anchored himself firmly into Patrick’s neck and face and sank his teeth into the man’s nose for extra purchase.
There was no way for Craik to resist that onslaught and keep hold of the shotgun, too. He couldn’t use it against the cat without blowing his own head off, so he dropped it and tried to drag Heathcliff loose with his bare hands. I let it lie on the floor for a few moments while man and cat spun together around the room in a snarling, swearing, bloodstained dance. Furniture went flying, ornaments were shattered, the drinks tray overturned. I had read of the cat of Barnburgh which killed the armoured knight and now I could well believe it. Finally Craik tripped and fell heavily and Heathcliff, sensing the nearness of the floor, released his grip and scuttled under the sideboard.
Now I flung myself toward and grabbed at the shotgun. Not that Craik was offering much competition. He staggered to his feet with his bloody hands clutched to his face. I was glad I couldn’t see what lay beneath them. I levelled the gun, but he ignored it. I don’t know whether he believed what he’d said earlier about my reluctance to use it, or whether he was having as much difficulty as Heathcliff in seeing. Whatever the case, he moved drunkenly towards the door and though I shrieked at him to stop, this time I wasn’t able to pull the trigger. I followed him to the doorway. It was a wild gusty night, and what looked like a tremendous storm was bubbling up out of Ennerdale. Already the low clouds were trailing wild tresses across the brow of the humble fell behind the cottage. This was the direction the shambling figure of the wounded rapist took. I guessed he had his car parked on the track which ran up the next little valley, a distance of less than two miles and a pleasant stroll at most times, but not a journey I would have cared to undertake now. He disappeared from view very quickly, not because of the speed at which he was moving but because of the speed at which the cloud was rolling down the fell. Well, he would have to look after himself. I had someone more important to worry about.
Anxiously I re-entered the cottage, fearful that the brandy and the fight might have seriously injured Heathcliff. It was with great relief that I saw he had emerged from under the sideboard and was busy foraging among the debris for the p
eanuts and crisps which had fallen to the floor with the drinks tray. He turned a pair of very bloodshot but obviously functioning eyes on me and miaowed reproachfully. I could find no sign of injury on his body, though I shuddered when I looked closely at his claws. Half an hour later with his eyes bathed, his fur brushed and his claws cleaned, he was willing to accept a tin of pilchards from me as a sufficient mark of atonement and I was able to start clearing up the room.
As I busied myself straightening rugs, moving furniture and sweeping up broken glass, I debated my next move. I knew that what I ought to do was get in the car and go and roust Ambler out of his bed so that Patrick Craik could be caught, red-faced if not red-handed, before the night was out. But the howl of the wind and the lash of rain against the windows, combined with the thought of all that explaining, those looks of disbelief, the ghastly hours spent hanging around that musty police station, all this was strong argument in favour of a postponement till the morning. The day had started with me being raped and it had finished with me being almost murdered. Surely that was enough for any single day!
My mind was churning like a washing-machine. I had to put a stop to it. I took a couple of the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed when the divorce was at its most unpleasant. They must have reacted in a most peculiar way with all the scotch I had swilled. For a few moments I thought the house had taken off in the storm and was flying out towards the Irish Sea. Then everything stopped and began to go dark and I scarcely had time to reach my bed, and certainly no time to get in it, before I fell asleep.
I was awoken the next day by a furious knocking at the door and voices anxiously calling my name.
When I got downstairs I found it was Mike and Sheila, who greeted me with the mingled relief, indignation, and covert disappointment of those who have been made to worry unnecessarily.
“You said you’d come and have coffee with me,” said Sheila. “When it got to lunch-time I began to get worried.”
“Lunch-time!” I said. My watch had stopped, but through the window, in the well-washed denim-blue sky which the storm had left behind, I could see the sun was in a most peculiar place for nine a.m., my usual rising time.
“Yes, it’s half past two,” said Mike accusingly. “I should have been showing a client round a house!”
“Oh, shut up, Mike,” said Sheila. “Cora, are you all right? You look a bit distraught.”
“Hang-over,” I said. “I had a nightcap and took a couple of pills. They didn’t mix!”
I wasn’t lying, merely postponing the moment when I told them what had taken place the previous night. Perhaps I should talk to Ambler first in any case. But I could see him looking at his watch in vast disbelief and saying, “He tried to murder you last night and you’ve waited till tea-time before reporting it!”
But the interview with Ambler was to take place before that. As Sheila busied herself in the kitchen making coffee and Mike sat next to me on the sofa with his hand on my knee preparatory (I presumed) to a second get-back-in-the-saddle-straightaway pep-talk, another car came bumping up the lonning and the sergeant got out.
“Come to see I survived the night, Sergeant?” I asked as I opened the door. I thought I might provoke some little ironic rejoinder which he’d be thoroughly ashamed of when he heard about my experiences. Instead he addressed me in a manner which was almost apologetic and asked if he might have a word.
“The thing is, Mrs. Lincoln—er, Grant—first thing this morning Tom Graham, you’ll know him, the farmer you bought your cottage from, well, he was out on the backside of the fell there, checking how his sheep had weathered the storm, when he found a man’s body.”
“Good God,” said Mike. “Anyone we know?”
Ambler ignored him.
“He was quite close to the foot of the fell and in the lonning that runs down to the main road there was a car parked. It looks as if this fellow had got out of his car and gone for a walk up the hill for some reason or other.”
“Wanted a pee. Or just liked fell-walking. A lot of people do,” said Mike.
“Oh, shut up, Mike,” said Sheila, who’d come in from the kitchen with a tray full of coffee things. “What did he die of, Sergeant? A fall?”
“No,” said Ambler. “He was drowned.”
“Drowned?”
“Yes. He must have fallen and banged his head. He was in a shallow channel, you know, the kind of thing which usually carries just a trickle of water. But last night’s rain turned everything into a torrent for a while. And unfortunately for him his head was facing uphill with his mouth open.”
“Ugh,” said Sheila.
“Yes. Nasty. A funny thing was his face was very badly scratched, too, as though he’d been attacked by some wild animal. Perhaps after he’d died, something had had a go at him.”
“Ugh, again,” said Sheila. “Do you know who he is? Was.”
“Yes. That was easy. Stuff he had on him and in the car. A Mr. Patrick Craik. He was from Manchester. Had been staying in Carlisle on business, it seems. He went out yesterday evening and just didn’t come back.”
“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” observed Mike.
“Does the name mean anything to you, Mrs. Grant?” asked Ambler.
This was the first time I’d been invited to contribute. My mind was doing its washing-machine churn again. I had to tell him, I supposed, but before I could speak Mike decided to do his protective friend act and said in his most pukka voice, “Just what has this got to do with Cora, Sergeant? After what she’s been through, I think she needs a bit of peace and rest.”
“I agree, sir,” said Ambler. “It’s just that this man Craik, well, he bears some resemblance to the description Mrs. Grant gave me of the man who assaulted her. And as he was found not too far from the cottage as the crow flies, I thought that …”
“You’d like me to take a look at the body, Sergeant,” I said.
He nodded.
“I’ll get myself ready,” I said, and left the room.
I suppose you could say that the journalist and the private person were fighting inside me. The journalist knew she had a super story, the private person would be happy to get quietly out of this without any fanfares of publicity. I postponed a verdict till I’d seen the remains. For all I knew there was some other completely different bearded man with a face covered with scratches roaming around the fells last night!
But it was him all right. I looked down at that face and tried to hate it and could only manage a very small twinge.
“Well?” said Ambler impatiently.
A uniformed sergeant came in at that moment and whispered in his ear. Ambler frowned and nodded.
“Will you come outside now, Mrs. Grant?” he said to me.
As we went along the corridor, a door opened and a pale-faced woman with a frightened-looking boy of about sixteen holding her arm stepped out. The uniformed sergeant addressed her.
“This way please, Mrs. Craik.”
I looked at Ambler.
“His wife. And son. There’s two younger daughters, too, I believe.”
“Tough on them,” I said. “Still, it happens all the time, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t make it any less painful,” he said. “Well, Mrs. Grant. Was that the man?”
He regarded me steadily. Not narrowly, just steadily. I thought of my story and I thought of that pale-faced woman and the frightened boy and the two girls probably still in school, not yet knowing what might have happened to them.
“Oh no,” I said. “You’ll have to keep on looking, Sergeant. That certainly wasn’t my boy.”
“You’re sure?”
“You seem to find it very hard to take my word for anything, Sergeant,” I said.
“I’m sorry if I give that impression, Mrs. Grant,” he said. “Coincidence then?”
“What? Oh, you mean the beard? They’re more common than bare faces these days, surely!”
“The beard, yes. Coincidence enough,” he said, frowning at
a sheet of paper he had produced from his pocket. “But there can’t be all that many men walking the fells wearing leather jerkins with half a dozen pellets of lead shot embedded in them.”
So my aim hadn’t been totally inaccurate after all! For a second I wished Craik had been alive to hear that I really had tried to kill him.
“Coincidences happen, Sergeant,” I said. “Police and newspapermen should know that better than most.”
“True,” he said. “Tell me, Mrs. Grant. Normally in matters like this, we’re very discreet. But in your case, being a journalist and all, I wondered if we’re likely to be getting a lot of questions asked.”
He studied the ground at his feet as he spoke. He really did look as if he needed a tonic!
“Not through me you’re not,” I assured him. “As far as I’m concerned, you can close the file and get back to parking offences.”
Now he looked straight at me and smiled. It altered his face as the fresh air and open vistas of High Ghyll had done.
“I’m sorry we had to meet in such circumstances, Mrs. Grant,” he said. “But I’m pleased to have made your acquaintance. I’ll look out for your articles in future. Are you working on anything special at the moment?”
“I’m thinking of doing something on conservation. You know, threatened species, that sort of thing. Like peregrines and golden eagles in the fells.”
He looked at me in alarm.
“You won’t be mentioning locations of nests, will you?” he said anxiously. “Once they know where it is, there’s some people will stop at nothing to rob a nest. Especially up here where everything’s so exposed.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said.
Snowball
Alice had been baking jam tarts. If there was one thing Alice could do really well, it was bake. If you wanted another thing she could do really well, you were in trouble. But she was certainly a great baker.
I smelt the tarts even before I entered the kitchen after my morning walk. I always took a morning walk when I stayed at Rose Cottage, not because I liked the exercise but because it gave me a chance to get rid of Alice’s breakfast out of my Times. Normally I’m a Mirror man, but a tabloid’s no good for concealing a breakfast. Alice’s jam tarts were superb, but her fried eggs defied description. Or dissolution, as I had discovered after an unhappy half-hour trying to flush one down the loo on my first visit the previous summer. So I had had to seek other methods of disposal and now the countryside round the village of Millthwaite was littered with caches of Alice’s fried eggs.
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