Miss Pink Investigates Part One

by Gwen Moffat

  Chapter Ten

  Over lunch the guests were subdued, discussing, in a desultory fashion, whether it was worth going on the hill for what was left of the day. There was a feeling that Madge had been favoured in being allowed to move out of the house and to go on the ridge, and Miss Pink was in the position of an Aunt Sally at whom questions were fired in attempts to discover what was in Merrick’s mind.

  She escaped after lunch and strolled down through the trees to the river bank where she paused, ostensibly watching a grey wagtail, but at the same time noting that there was still a uniformed man outside Largo’s open door.

  The air was heavy and there were high cirrus clouds. In the corries the haze was dissolving so that the peaks crept closer in the hard light, and this sense of movement in a world that should be inanimate was disturbing.

  She went left down the river bank and came to a stile over the wall which marked the boundary of the colonel’s land. On the other side a plank bridge crossed a burn, and then came the track leading to the camp site. Ida Hunt was coming down the track from the front entrance of Glen Shira House.

  ‘You come the long way round.’ Miss Pink stated the obvious.

  Ida bit her lip. ‘Not much longer.’ She added with a rush: ‘And ’tis much easier on the road if you’re wearing heels.’

  Miss Pink’s glance passed over the other’s sensible sandals but she was old-maidish as she confided: ‘I’ve been having a look at the ground.’ In the face of the other’s blank look she went on: ‘I mean, if he went through the wood. But then that’s not the only way of approaching Largo; there’s the bridge—which you don’t have to use with the river so low—and one might come down the forestry road from the top of the glen. It comes almost as far as Largo. He could have used a car there if the gate at the other end isn’t locked.’

  ‘It isn’t. Are they thinking he came in from outside—a stranger?’

  ‘Well, not a stranger to her.’

  They moved down the track.

  ‘Perhaps someone followed her from London?’ Ida ventured. ‘Why did they take all our fingerprints then? My man said—’ She trailed off, then continued in the same tone, ‘—they had to look as though they was doing something.’

  ‘And then they had to make sure that no local person had left his prints in Largo.’ Ida stared stiffly ahead. ‘By “local” I mean everyone who was staying here, of course,’ Miss Pink added politely.

  Above Rahane’s ford they came to Sletta, the Hunts’ bungalow. It was new and symmetrical with grass on either side of a pebble path leading to the front door, and two beds of roses suffering from salt and drought.

  ‘Will you come away in?’ Ida didn’t sound enthusiastic but Miss Pink made up for that deficiency by the eagerness with which she approached the gate.

  They went to the front door and Ida turned the handle. Nothing happened and she was embarrassed out of all proportion to the cause.

  At the back door they found Captain Hunt sitting on a bench, smoking and contemplating a saw horse. A tiny apricot poodle erupted from behind his thigh boots and flew at its mistress with piercing squeals.

  Miss Pink was taken indoors to a spotless sitting room with wall-to-wall carpeting and a view across the camp site to the mountains of Rum. She remarked on the numerous cars parked along the track and the captain told her they belonged to the Press.

  ‘Where are the reporters?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘They’s everywhere, ma’am, and times they collect in one place. . . . You’ll know what a pack of lambs is like all scampering round a field? That’s them.’ He jerked his head at the camp site. ‘Of course,’ he added sanctimoniously, ‘they’s only doing their job. There they go now, see: after Willie.’ A string of figures trailed across the dunes behind the tractor. ‘He is tipping the rubbish in a hole in the river bank,’ the captain explained, ‘since they will no’ let him tip at Scarf although the body is gone.’

  ‘When was it taken?’

  ‘About midday, ma’am.’

  ‘And how many police are left?’

  ‘There is two in Largo, and one guarding the door makes three. The photographers who took pictures in the geo is gone. There may be one or two poliss on the camp site although Colin and that Watkins has been spoken to.’

  ‘Is Colin Irwin on the camp site?’

  ‘He has put a wee tent on the dunes near Shedog. He will go back to Largo once the poliss is finished there.’

  Ida came in with tea, preceded by the neurotic poodle.

  ‘The reporters must get under your feet,’ Miss Pink observed.

  ‘Ach no!’ the captain said comfortably. ‘Silly questions is what you might call an occupational hazard in Glen Shira. Are there people living on the ridge? Is the deer dangerous? How did we get our food before the road was built?’

  ‘Those will not be the questions asked of Watkins, Willie and Irwin.’

  He regarded her without expression. ‘They can only answer the truth, ma’am—to reporters or poliss. Watkins was drunk, Colin was in his tent at Sligachan.’

  ‘And Willie?’

  He was grimly amused as he glanced out of the window where neither reporters nor tractor were to be seen. ‘Willie has made his statement and if the newspapermen has got any sense, they’ll leave him be.’

  Ida turned to her husband. ‘The lady says the one who killed the girl could have come down the forestry road in a car.’

  He was silent for a moment, assimilating this and studying Miss Pink. ‘Ay? He could have. Would the poliss be thinking that, or just yourself, ma’am?’

  She ignored the gist of the question. ‘When you consider all the approaches, that one must be taken into account.’

  ‘So it could have been a stranger,’ Ida told her husband.

  A figure passed the window and the poodle indulged in a paroxysm of yapping. It was bundled inside a broom cupboard where it could be heard remotely, working itself into hysterics. Miss Pink followed her hostess to the kitchen as if she were about to take her leave.

  An old man with fierce eyebrows, wearing breeches and a deerstalker, came in the back door. It was Malcolm MacNeill, Willie’s father.

  Edging round the table, Miss Pink beamed at the company and repeated inanely: ‘So it could have been a stranger.’

  Ida felt forced to explain to the newcomer. ‘The lady said that one who killed the girl could have come down the forestry road.’

  ‘Oh ay,’ said old MacNeill.

  ‘We’ve known that all along,’ the captain growled. ‘It doesna have to be one of us.’ He stared at his wife.

  A shutter came down over Ida’s face. ‘It could be anyone,’ she agreed.

  There was an unnatural silence, then the captain said, ‘We had no way of knowing what was going to happen. No one went across there, by daylight.’

  ‘Except Willie.’

  ‘No one to hurt, I mean.’

  Miss Pink said silkily, ‘Is that what you were thinking yesterday morning when you told me she’d had no visitors and you forgot Willie?’

  ‘I remembered him afterwards. I told the poliss.’ None of them was disconcerted, least of all old MacNeill who was standing so that he could see through the doorway and the sitting-room window. He kept shooting glances towards the dunes.

  ‘If a visitor meant harm to her,’ Miss Pink mused, ‘he wouldn’t have gone in daylight.’

  ‘You don’t expect murder in Glen Shira,’ the captain told her.

  Miss Pink raised her eyebrows. ‘You don’t think she was asking for trouble: the way she dressed?’

  The captain said casually, ‘We’re used to that in the glen; in summer half the campers don’t wear clothes, or just half their clothes. Topless, they calls it.’

  Old MacNeill said, ‘I’m no’ worried if they goes mother-naked; ’tis my gates I worries about, and breaking down my fences, but her wasna here long enough to do harm to anyone, poor soul. Willie,’ he said with relish, ‘is after beating that Watkins to a pul
p.’

  ‘Go on!’ The captain was grimly pleased.

  ‘He has nearly killed him.’

  ‘Dear knows,’ Ida observed, ‘but he asked for it.’

  ‘And then he took and rolled the tractor over and over that man’s tent until now all the tent and whatever was inside is rolled into the sand and broken.’

  ‘Willie is always fighting over girls,’ the captain explained to Miss Pink. ‘What shape is the other one in?’ he asked of old MacNeill.

  ‘He canna stand up. I doubt they’ll be after taking him away to the hospital. I was wondering now would one of you come and help me with my cows?’

  There was a flat silence.

  ‘What’s wrong with Willie?’ the captain asked, too casually.

  ‘Well, now.’ Old MacNeill was equally casual. ‘I was after thinking they’ll be taking him in for assault.’

  The others exchanged looks. They seemed remarkably happy. Miss Pink shifted her feet amiably, knowing they were dying for her to leave.

  ‘Young Colin can milk,’ the captain said. ‘Go down to his tent and take him back with you.’

  ‘A very satisfactory arrangement,’ Miss Pink observed. ‘He will be company for you, Mr MacNeill.’ She glanced across the sitting room. ‘But then, he can’t be company for Euphemia tonight, can he?’ She smiled at them. ‘Did none of you see or hear anything on Monday night?’

  Old MacNeill said, ‘I was fast asleep.’

  ‘Our bedroom faces the sea,’ the captain told her. ‘We didna hear a thing.’

  *

  ‘They’re frightened,’ Miss Pink maintained. ‘They’re locking their doors and not sleeping alone.’

  She was standing with Merrick on the raised dunes which faced the sea. He had come down from Largo when he learned that Willie was thrashing George Watkins.

  ‘They’re all on edge,’ he told her. ‘That’s how I like it; they’ll talk better. This assault of Willie’s now: gives us justification for taking him in. It’s possible he’ll find the atmosphere of a police station—when a murder investigation’s in progress—a bit more intimidating than his own farmyard.’

  ‘I don’t think he did it.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Whether he did or didn’t, I’m hoping he’s going to remember a sight more about that night than what he’s told us.’

  ‘What the crofters are hoping is that you’ll hold him.’

  He studied her keenly. ‘It needn’t mean they think the murderer’s still here, you know. Watkins is only going to hospital to be stitched up; he could come back. And Willie attacked Watkins. The fellow was just sitting outside his tent and Willie jumped off his tractor and went for him. The reporters saw it all. And when he’d thrashed the man soundly, he destroyed all his gear.’

  ‘That could have been in return for Watkins’ beating Terry; it doesn’t mean Willie thinks the man killed her. But the crofters are afraid; why, Ida Hunt won’t go through the wood in daylight! And they know everything that goes on, yet on Monday evening they saw and heard nothing. Even if they are ignorant, they must have speculated, but they’re as tight as clams. Except when I suggested a stranger might have come to the glen on Monday evening, using the forestry road to approach Largo.’

  Merrick was immediately alert. ‘He couldn’t be a stranger to the glen. . . . A friend of the girl’s? But the last anyone outside the glen knew was that she was coming here to join Watkins. How could she have got word out that she’d moved in with Irwin? Only the people in the glen knew that she was alone at Largo that night. Even if anyone outside did know she was at Largo, it would be too much of a coincidence if he also knew that Irwin would be away on Monday night. No, it was an inside job, there’s no doubt about that.’

  *

  On the site of Watkins’ tent, a plainclothes man and a uniformed constable were gingerly retrieving battered objects from the turf. They acknowledged her presence with diffident mumbles but continued with their work. As she stood there, idly wondering whether to return to the house for an early tea or to pay a visit to Shedog, someone gasped, ‘Oh, my God!’ and Andrew Lindsay blundered past her to stand irresolute behind the constable who was prising a cooking stove out of the sand. Lindsay turned horrified and appealing eyes on Miss Pink.

  ‘Did you see what he did to him? He nearly killed him! He can’t walk! They had to bring him up to the house by car, and now they’ve taken him to hospital. He’s a hospital case!’

  The detective was listening avidly and the uniformed man was merely making motions with his hands but Lindsay wouldn’t have been concerned if they’d been recording him.

  Miss Pink said soothingly, ‘Perhaps there was some resentment between them; it could have cleared the air.’

  There was a prolonged silence after this inanity. The police made meaningless passes over the chaos in the turf and the horror died in Lindsay’s face.

  ‘I see,’ he said at last and sulkily. ‘You think it was over the girl. Jealousy.’ His eyes blazed again. ‘What? He thinks George killed her?’ Miss Pink had said nothing and now, dreading the moment when he would dry up in the presence of the Law, she moved away. He followed, clutching at her sleeve. ‘But that’s mad! George was over at Sligachan; he got drunk that night. In any case, he didn’t care who she went to; it was all over between them.’ He walked on with bowed head, absently kicking the daisies. After a while he continued unpleasantly, ‘This hasn’t done MacNeill any good, just the opposite: it’s clinched the case against him. They’ve taken him in; he’ll be charged with assault.’ His voice was rising again. ‘George—’ he choked on the name, ‘—he’s lost several teeth . . . they might have gone down his throat—he could have killed him!’

  She did not voice her private thoughts on that but sat down on a dry bank facing the sea. This put her in mind of Watkins sitting beside her above Eas Mor yesterday. Some of these people were incapable of dissimulation when they were disturbed. She asked gently, ‘Would George have minded if Terry had been pregnant?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have cared,’ he responded flatly. ‘She could never have proved it. She was a tart. But she wasn’t pregnant.’

  ‘Difficult to tell,’ she murmured.

  ‘She didn’t look pregnant,’ he insisted. ‘No, she couldn’t have been.’

  ‘You must have been watching her through binoculars,’ she said pleasantly.

  He glared at her. ‘Why the hell—? I never watched her. Why should I? I’m not—I wasn’t interested in her!’

  ‘How many times did you meet her?’

  ‘I never met her.’

  ‘You met her on Saturday evening; you may not have been introduced, perhaps you didn’t speak to her, but you were standing right next—’

  ‘That was the only time; I never saw her again.’

  ‘You must have done because in the dress she wore that evening you couldn’t have sworn she wasn’t pregnant, and you’re so certain. It was the style of dress women might wear when they are pregnant.’

  His eyes wandered. ‘I didn’t see her again.’

  ‘So Betty did.’

  He licked his lips and looked crafty. ‘Yes,’ he agreed carelessly, ‘Betty saw her again.’

  ‘When?’ She caught a flicker in his eyes. ‘You were on the White Slab the day that Irwin left, and that evening you quarrelled with your wife and left the dining room quickly. Where did Betty go?’

  He grinned at her. ‘You’d better ask her. I stayed in the bedroom.’

  *

  The air was thickening over Loch Shira, forming a belt of sea fog, and at the same time the corries were filling with an opaque but brilliant mist which seemed to seep like steam out of cracks in the rocks.

  As Miss Pink strolled towards the big house, these isolated patches of vapour spread and coalesced, the belt behind her moved landward, but for a few minutes the peaks stood above it, violet-coloured and appearing incredibly high.

  By the time she reached the house the atmosphere was dim and clammy. The fro
nt door was open to the fog and the place appeared empty. She walked round to the back. She had not been here before but was not surprised that there should be no sign of the squalor usually found at the rear of catering establishments. The Hamlyns’ Avenger and an old but gleaming Rescue Land Rover were parked neatly in the yard. There were no empty beer crates, no over-flowing dustbins, in fact, but for the iron fire escape, it could have been the back of a private residence, and even the fire escape might have been the work of a responsible paterfamilias.

  There was a movement inside a stable and Hamlyn appeared in the doorway, critically inspecting a helmet. His surprise at her presence was superseded by a different kind of alertness as he cocked an eye at the wraiths of fog drifting through the trees.

  ‘Now what does this mean?’ It was a rhetorical question. ‘Sea fog. Heat? But the forecast is “unsettled”. However, I don’t think it’ll come to much.’

  ‘That’s just as well, with Madge hoping to traverse the ridge tomorrow.’ She was examining a cushion of stonecrop in the stones of the mounting block. ‘Wall pepper,’ she observed. ‘It must like the lime in the mortar. Surely these buildings aren’t of limestone?’

  ‘Granite—from the Red Hills. She’s going to do the ridge tomorrow?’

  ‘So she says. I would think it will be more difficult in cloud.’

  ‘Not for someone who knows the way. I’ve done it in cloud.’

  ‘Indeed. You must have been a very active man in your prime. You’d leave most of your contemporaries behind even now.’

  He made a deprecating gesture but it was at variance with his tone. ‘Four principles: a good diet, plenty of exercise and fresh air, and positive thinking. It’s as simple as that.’ She beamed and nodded. ‘But you subscribe to that philosophy yourself,’ he pointed out as if accusing her.

  ‘As fully as I can.’ She peered inside the stable. ‘Are you restoring order? Can I see the equipment?’