by Gwen Moffat
Miss Pink felt the hair move on the back of her neck.
“You do all this?”
“Oh, no, indeed. There are numbers of us at work all over the country and in the Commonwealth. We exchange information. Nothing escapes us . . .”
Miss Pink sat and sipped her coffee, listening to the sound of the beautiful voice, wondering if anything would be said which had a bearing on her own interests, wondering if anyone she knew merited a dossier. She hoped not.
When the time came to go, Mrs Wolkoff insisted on accompanying her guest to her car. Miss Pink protested but, realising that the old lady was determined to have another look at the police, she didn’t argue and they set off together.
On the other side of the bridge Miss Pink looked back at the cottage and asked with just the right degree of interest what species of bird were in the area. She noted that telephone wires entered the house from a pole on the inland side.
“A pair of buzzards,” Mrs Wolkoff said with enthusiasm, “Pied flycatchers, common redstarts; it’s possible —”
A jay screamed and came streaking towards them from the wooded slope behind the cottage. The old woman stopped talking so suddenly that Miss Pink turned and saw another kind of excitement replace the enthusiasm for birds.
“Someone about,” Miss Pink said.
Mrs Wolkoff turned her wide gaze on her visitor.
“There’s a wild cat in the woods,” she said.
“Really.” Miss Pink stared hard at the slope behind the cottage.
“Come along,” Mrs Wolkoff urged, “I’m keeping you from your duties.” She touched the other’s elbow and chivvied her up the path.
They returned to the cliffs with the younger woman still trying to lure her hostess away from the dangers of world government. In this she was unsuccessful until they came in sight of the now familiar passing-place and before she had time to notice anything out of the ordinary, Mrs Wolkoff remarked:
“And now what’s the game?”
Miss Pink followed the direction of her glance.
“I don’t see anyone,” she said, “and the cars have gone.”
“Quite. Do you know why they were here?”
“I assume the Jaguar was parked here.”
“But it wasn’t,” Mrs Wolkoff said in the tone of a child being superior: “It was at the next lay-by.”
“So you were here.” Miss Pink smiled at her.
The old woman smiled back roguishly and wagged her finger.
“Oh no, indeed I wasn’t, but I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and I’ve had nearly three days to find out where that car was parked. I didn’t tell the tec though. We must keep them on their toes, musn’t we?”
“How did you find out?”
“Tracks. There’s the mark of a tyre on the cliff path; the same tyre has made marks behind the gorse at the next lay-by. I see someone’s cottoned on to it; there’s a car here.”
“That’s my car,” Miss Pink said.
“Indeed? And who is in it?”
“Charles Martin.”
The old woman looked at her without expression, then her face became animated again. “Come here,” she ordered, “I’ll show you the tyre mark.”
With amazing agility she trotted down the steep grass to the imprint which Miss Pink had noticed the day before. Miss Pink studied the pattern, nodded, and they climbed the bank again and walked to the car. Martin was still asleep.
Behind the gorse Mrs Wolkoff moved over the turf in little rushes like a hen looking for corn. There was quite a lot of litter: cigarette stubs, scraps of paper. Something cleaner, lighter than the rest showed in a patch of sandy earth. Miss Pink stooped to pick it up. It was metal and was embedded in the ground. She prised it out without difficulty. It was a cigarette lighter.
Mrs Wolkoff came and peered at it then at Miss Pink.
“Now how did I come to miss that?” she asked, “you must take it to the police. Here is that tyre mark, come and look.”
Miss Pink stared at the print and saw that it was similar to the other on the cliff path. No doubt the police would compare moulds or photographs. She assured the old lady that she would tell them about it and, ascertaining that she couldn’t give the other a lift (thus confirming her belief that the second excursion to the cliff had the same purpose as the first: curiosity), she said goodbye.
She watched Martin carefully as she slipped the lighter under some maps on the parcel shelf but his eyes didn’t open. It was only when she sat on the diver’s seat, rocking the car, that he woke. She didn’t allow him time to recover his senses before telling him to sit in the front. Mrs Wolkoff watched these proceedings with intense interest but as Miss Pink turned and drove away, the old lady gave a wave that was almost absentminded and in the mirror Miss Pink saw her start to walk quickly back towards Porth Bach.
A police car was parked at the junction where the road went off to the headland and the Schooner. She didn’t stop. Martin took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and extracted one.
“Lighter under the maps,” she said, pointing.
He leaned forward and picked it out, checked, offered her a cigarette which she declined, and fumbled with the lighter. She drove slowly, watching his hands. After a moment he lit it, and his cigarette, and drew smoke deep into his lungs. He replaced the lighter, stretched his legs as far as was possible and said with the ghost of a chuckle: “I see you were trapped by Mrs Wolkoff . . .”
Chapter Ten
The table top was pale green and spotless. Mudstains on the lighter made it look incongruous lying on the formica and, if you knew where it had been found, even a little sinister.
Hughes laughed.
“Well, thanks,” he said, “where did you find it?”
“It is yours?”
“Oh yes, it’s mine. Didn’t you know?”
“No, I didn’t know.”
The amusement left his face and he became wary.
“Where did you find it?” he repeated.
She told him.
They had been standing in the kitchen of the Hughes’ cottage. She had dropped Martin at the Goat where she learned that Ted had telephoned to say he was at the Centre. On arrival at Plas Mawr she was told that Sally, the police and Ted were in the warden’s office and not to be disturbed, and that Rowland Hughes had gone home to get some climbing equipment. Miss Pink found him alone.
He sat down in a chair. He was still staring at the lighter but he didn’t touch it. There was no expression on his face. After a while she sat down opposite him At least two minutes elapsed before she said:
“It will have to go to the police.”
Still he didn’t speak.
“It might look better if you took it,” she said.
He shook his head.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“You were there.”
“No! Sally knows!” He looked round wildly and heaved himself to his feet. “Where is she? Still with the police? I’ve got an alibi, you can’t shake that. Who do you think you are anyway? Come here raking up the mud, interfering with people’s private lives; what business is it of yours? My marriage is sacrosanct . . .” He stopped, breathing hard, staring at her. He had forgotten what he was saying. “You’ve got no right to badger . . . keep nagging at a chap . . . If we’re inefficient, O.K. we get the sack —” his face cleared, “but not for anything else; I’m telling you here and now —” his red face glowered at her as he leaned across the table, “our lives are our own outside working hours. No one ever complained before. It’s no good you sitting there sneering; you don’t know what I’m talking about. I tell you I’m happily married!”
He shouted this and brought his fist down on the table so that the lighter jumped in the air. He snatched it up, eyeing her belligerently, as if daring her to stop him.
The door opened and Sally came in quickly. He made to swing round but her hand was on his shoulder, holding him down, kneading the tweed of his jacket. Her eyes were terrified
and she was breathing hard as if she had run all the way from the school.
“Miss Pink will think you’re drunk, darling,” she said, enunciating with difficulty. She waited a moment but he said nothing. Carefully, as if ready at a sign to return to him, she came round the table so that she could look at him without Miss Pink seeing her face. The older woman watched Hughes watching his wife.
“Sit down, Sally,” Miss Pink said firmly, “I found Rowland’s lighter where the Jaguar was parked on the cliff top.”
Sally went so white that the older woman moved to catch her but the girl sat down slowly, staring at the man. He looked contrite.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, and reached to take her hand.
Sally said hopelessly to Miss Pink: “What are you going to do?”
“It will have to go to the police.”
“No one will believe me,” he said.
“They can’t prove anything, darling.”
“What?” he glared at her.
“I said —”
“I heard you: ‘they can’t prove anything’! You think I did it!”
She threw an anguished glance at Miss Pink, willing her to leave. Hughes dropped on his knees and gripped his wife’s elbows.
“You think I did it!” he repeated, “but you believed me on Sunday.”
“I still believe you.” She sounded exhausted. “Don’t worry; you didn’t do it.” She turned to Miss Pink. “Why should he do it? I knew, and we all guessed, that the Martins would be dismissed. In fact, I would have tipped you off if you hadn’t decided yourselves to sack him. So why on earth should it be Rowland? He had no motive.”
She pushed her husband back. He got up and sat on his chair again, put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Sally got up and filled a kettle at the sink. She sighed heavily. The sound was loud in the quiet room. Hughes threw her a resentful glance and fumbled in his pocket for cigarettes. He pulled out the lighter and stared at it, frowning.
“Who told you it was mine?” His tone was full of hostility.
“You’re the only one who smokes.”
“There’s Martin,” he said quickly.
There was silence as Sally stopped clattering cups in saucers.
“What was she doing last time you saw her?” Miss Pink asked.
“Who?”
“Bett.”
“She was laughing,” he said sullenly.
“At what?”
“Me feeling ill. Whisky always makes me ill.”
“How much did you drink?”
“I don’t know. We were drinking from the bottle.”
“Tell me what happened when you were ill.”
He glared at her. Sally said with thinly disguised urgency: “Tell her, darling.”
He looked at her doubtfully.
“How can I tell what I’m not sure of? You saw me sober but I’d walked it off by the time I got back: eight miles in the rain. I wasn’t just drunk on the cliff, I was ill too. It’s like a nightmare. I thought it was. I told you.”
“Tell Miss Pink what you told me.”
“It’s nothing much. The air hit me as I got out of the car. We’d been running the engine for the heater and the air seemed like a refrigerator: took my breath away, more like an anaesthetic really. I started to walk away and must have gone some distance when I fell over. It seemed to take a long time — falling. Then I went to sleep, or passed out. I don’t remember anything until I woke up feeling very cold, and soaked to the skin. It never stopped raining that night. I know. I was out in it most of the time.”
“What did you do when you woke up?” Miss Pink prompted him.
“I went back to the Jag of course, and it wasn’t there.”
He stopped. He needed a lot of encouragement.
“Did you look for it?”
“Why should I? I thought she’d gone home and when I looked at my watch it was eleven o’clock so I’d passed out for about two hours or something like that, so I just thought she’d got tired of waiting and gone.”
“Leaving you to walk?”
“She did things like that. Besides she was drunk. I couldn’t have done anything even if I’d known. There was no sign — whoever had been there was well away, so she was dead long before I came round. She must have been.”
His eyes pleaded frantically. The kettle boiled and Sally switched it off, then stayed motionless. Miss Pink, who considered a guilty conscience was his just desert, asked coldly: “How did you get home?”
“Walked.”
“What time did you get in?”
“About two, wasn’t it?” He looked at Sally. She nodded.
“Could she drive the Jaguar?” Miss Pink asked.
He hesitated. “More or less.”
“Did she drive to the coast, or you?”
It was too late for blustering but habit died hard and he was visibly restraining himself.
“I drove,” he said. Then with a poor travesty of his old manner: “Only one thing worse than a woman driver: a woman learner driver!” He checked, inhaling through his nose.
“Where did she meet you?”
“At the bottom of the drive.”
Miss Pink stood up and Sally faced her. The younger woman said accusingly:
“You won’t ask any more questions because you want to spare me but I know what you’re thinking: that, giving him the benefit of the doubt, she died more or less naturally — a combination of drugs and alcohol perhaps — and when he got back to the car she was dead. So he panicked and pushed the car over the edge.”
Miss Pink watched her carefully.
“You think that’s what happened, don’t you?” Sally urged, her eyes searching the other’s face.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Miss Pink sighed and walked out of the cottage to her car. Sally turned to her husband.
“Why couldn’t it have happened like that: dying naturally from an overdose of drugs and alcohol? Lots of people must have got away with it by saying they panicked and hid the body because they thought they wouldn’t be believed.”
He looked at her with dull eyes. “She was strangled,” he said, “remember?”
*
The superintendent made no attempt to hide his disapproval.
“With something as important as this you should have brought it to us straight away, ma’am,” he said heavily, turning the lighter in his gloved hand, “and what with your prints, and Hughes’, and Martin’s, it’s hardly worth the gesture of sending it to the lab.”
She pointed out that he’d left strict instructions not to be disturbed. He grunted and went out to his car followed by the sergeant.
“Hughes.” Ted said reflectively, as they stood at the entrance to Plas Mawr watching the retreating car. “Pryce is jumping about a bit. It was Sally just now. He maintains, and he may be right, that it’s the quiet efficient women who make the best murderers — or the worst, depending how you look at it.”
She glanced at him uneasily and then behind him to the hall. By tacit agreement they started to stroll in the grounds.
“Begin at the beginning,” she ordered, once she was sure they couldn’t be overheard, “when you went away with the police early this morning. What was the purpose of that?”
“I think Pryce was flummoxed and he wanted to pick my brains for more information on the staff and wives. There isn’t enough evidence to charge Martin. In fact, there’s none. There’s an overriding motive though. Bett was having an affair —” Seeing her expression he stopped.
“He told me.”
“Yes. Well, they can’t shake his story; he was drunk when he was picked up in London and he slept during most of the journey. He wasn’t fresh when he arrived here and he was exhausted when they finished with him. But his account never varied and it’s the same in substance as what he told you Sunday afternoon. On the other hand, if he did do it, he had to have an accomplice because of the transport problem. Pryce let him go but I expect
he’s being watched, on the assumption that if someone helped, Martin will try to contact him — or her.”
“But, Sally,” Miss Pink exclaimed. “What made him think of her — as a murderer?”
“Presumably a natural progression from thinking of her as an accomplice. If she wasn’t the latter because there was no evidence against Martin, could she be the former? I pointed out that he didn’t know her character and he retorted: ‘Are you sure you do?’ which gave me an unpleasant feeling. I’d have taken my oath on her integrity.”
“Exactly — but when it comes to a conflict of loyalties the family wins. With hindsight, what she did was in character. She’d tell lies to give her husband a false alibi but it’s out of the question that she would help Martin murder his wife. I knew she was protecting Hughes when she came to the Goat last night, but I didn’t know to what extent she needed to protect him.” She told him about Sally’s visit to her room. “Sally thinks Hughes killed Bett,” she ended simply.
“Do you?”
“He’s consumed by guilt but whether that’s inspired by deceit or murder is another matter. He’s a weak, shallow man, but shrewd. He would probably think he was playing the girl along when in reality it was the reverse. By the time he realised he was embroiled, it was too late.”
“Embroiled? Oh, come!” Ted reproved gently.
“No, no. His distaste for her didn’t start with his terror of being suspected of her death, I’m certain of that. He would never jeopardize his marriage — you know the type: that plays around but never gets seriously involved with other women if it can possibly be helped. But Hughes isn’t clever enough for that game. I think Bett had a hold over him.”
“Blackmail?”
“Emotional blackmail, yes. She was bored to death, as much with the Centre’s atmosphere, I should think, as with her husband. Hughes is lazy and feckless but he was something to tide her over the gap until she could find a man who would look after her better. I don’t think there’s any doubt that he was the man she told Martin was going to marry her.”
“How would she get him to leave Sally?”
“Possibly by telling him she was pregnant — no, that’s too obvious —”