Miss Pink Investigates Part One

by Gwen Moffat

  ‘Certainly.’ He stood back and motioned her inside.

  She looked with interest at the paraphernalia of rescue: rucksacks, pack frames, radio sets, a pile of plastic bags. Below a wall map was a telephone and clipboard, and three stretchers were suspended from beams by an ingenious system of pulleys. It looked very professional.

  ‘It’s fascinating to see how different people organise a Post,’ she admitted. ‘Tell me—’ her hand rested on a shelf but now she lifted it with a look of horror. ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ she murmured, ‘I’ve left a print.’

  ‘The police have finished in here; that’s how I come to be replacing the stuff. They’ve gone over the place with a tooth comb but they’ve come up with nothing that shouldn’t be here. I understand the same thing’s happened with personal pack frames. Only four of us have them: the guides, Irwin and myself.’

  ‘But the frames will be covered with their owners’ prints.’

  ‘Well.’ He coughed in deference to the gentler sex. ‘They were looking for traces, d’you see, hairs and things.’

  She considered this and then remarked that a survival bag was concerned too. He looked guilty.

  ‘I’m naughty about inventories; there could be a bag missing, I can’t be certain. But the police seemed sure that there were no strange prints in here. However, I suppose he could have worn gloves?’

  ‘Glove prints will show.’

  ‘Is that so? Intriguing, this fingerprint business. Did you have yours taken?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  He was sly. ‘So even you are a suspect, ma’am.’

  ‘Possibly, but I would think they took them for elimination purposes. I was at Largo, you see.’

  ‘You were? When?’

  ‘Yesterday morning.’

  ‘Of course. I was wondering if you’d gone across the previous night.’

  ‘No.’ She regarded him levelly. ‘When I said goodnight to you on Monday evening, I was on my way to bed.’

  He clapped a hand to his forehead with a theatrical gesture. ‘People’s movements! I’m starting to act like a detective myself! They keep asking me where everyone was, as if I were a kind of spider at the centre of a web. I know where they are when they’re in the cocktail lounge, that’s all.’

  She smiled in sympathy. ‘Did you know that Willie MacNeill had gone to the police station?’

  It took him a moment to assimilate this. ‘Did he go voluntarily?’

  ‘No. He assaulted Watkins.’

  He sighed in exasperation. ‘I told you so: only yesterday. No discipline, you see, no self-control; all these closed communities are the same; they were all right while the old values held and the community had leaders for whom—’

  ‘Colonel!’ He stopped in mid-flight and gaped at her. ‘Forget about Glen Shira for a moment,’ she ordered sternly, ‘George Watkins comes from an urban environment but he had considerably less control. The only way he could end a relationship he found unsatisfactory was to use violence. Willie’s thrashing Watkins was perfectly natural; I don’t blame him a bit.’

  ‘Ha!’ He’d recovered and was jovial although he didn’t look amused. ‘You approve of primitive instincts?’ He shook his head seriously. ‘But we can’t have it in a civilised community, d’you see. They make the mistake of thinking of freedom as licence, but freedom carries obligations; even animals are very highly organised.’ He smiled at her. ‘We can’t have people taking the law into their own hands, that’s anarchy. What I always say is: it doesn’t matter what you do so long as you don’t hurt anyone. Now I admit that sounds like licence but you think about it, dear lady, you think!’

  ‘Generalisations can be dangerous,’ she murmured.

  He hardly heard her. ‘There is nothing you can do that doesn’t affect someone else—unless you’re stuck on a desert island. We’re all interdependent, and in a place like this any lack of consideration sticks out like a sore thumb. It isn’t just bad manners then; it becomes anti-social behaviour. Look at that tip in Scarf Geo! There are dead sheep down there, ma’am! That’s illegal. But, as you say, it’s not only the crofters—’ he looked startled. ‘In fact, they may not be so bad; it’s possible I’ve been doing them an injustice. The visitors are city folk: marginally better educated perhaps, but look at them: transistors on the shore, stealing produce from the garden, lighting fires in the woods—’ his eyes became more protuberant. ‘You have the same situation in Cornwall; the police have a load of trouble with artists and drugs in St Ives.’

  ‘Britain is such a small country; there’s so little room for people to enjoy—’

  ‘There are too many people!’

  She divined what was coming and edged towards the door. He raised his voice in an effort to detain her: ‘The fact is that the lower their intelligence, the more prolific they are, and in poor Catholic countries you see it at its worst. Look at Ireland! This modern emphasis on population control: two children to every family! It’s suicidal! D’you know what will happen? The middle classes will limit their numbers and the masses will breed like rabbits—and in a few generations they’ll have bred us out of existence!’

  Miss Pink said weakly, ‘So what do you suggest?’

  Suddenly he looked tired and old, and ashamed. ‘It’s the crunch, isn’t it? And I talk about positive thinking!’ He was obviously suffering. ‘I’m glad we had no children. What would it be like for our grandchildren? Have you seen a pop concert on television?’ His tone was flat. ‘The audience isn’t even adolescent; they are little girls. And they’re the future mothers of the race. And when you see those . . . those animals posturing on the stage, manipulating them. . . .’ He stared at her. He was breathing heavily. ‘That is not decadence, ma’am, the decadence lies in the people manipulating the puppets. We have reached the stage of free bread and circuses, d’you see?’ Suddenly he gave a boyish grin. ‘They’ll be putting drugs in the drinking water next. Of course, we’ve got our own supply.’ It was self-parody and Miss Pink smiled faintly.

  ‘What can you do?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I cultivate my garden. I’m self-sufficient for vegetables and fruit; I keep bees. . . .’

  ‘Drop in the ocean,’ he said, following her into the yard. ‘When you hear that louts have put a girder on the line in front of an express train, I suppose you go out and transplant the lettuces?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’

  Chapter Eleven

  At five minutes to six the weather forecast was still unsettled and Miss Pink regarded the gloom outside her windows with scepticism. It looked like a November evening and she could no longer see Largo. At six o’clock she smelt peat smoke and went downstairs to find that the fires had been lit.

  Maynard was in the cocktail lounge, and Hamlyn behind the bar. Maynard had been for a row in Captain Hunt’s dinghy but, seeing the fog coming in, he’d retreated hastily and had been invited to take a dram with the captain. Thus he had heard about the fracas on the camp site although his version had it that Watkins was in custody too. At this point Hamlyn remarked that the glen would be a better place for the loss of its trouble makers. Maynard stared at him.

  ‘If neither young MacNeill nor Watkins is the murderer,’ he observed, ‘then the worst trouble maker—’ he stressed the words ironically, ‘—is still here. He could be one of us.’

  Hamlyn gaped at him then turned for help to Miss Pink. Maynard, enjoying his host’s consternation, said, ‘Right, so it isn’t Watkins or Willie. Let’s say, excluding the hostel people—and I reckon we do: they’re outwith our cosy little community—there are—’ he lapsed into a mumbled calculation on his fingers while Hamlyn glared belligerently, ‘—it leaves six men unaccounted for.’

  His listeners’ eyes glazed predictably. Miss Pink responded first, ‘That is correct, but only if you include the crofters.’

  ‘Which you don’t,’ Maynard said easily. ‘No motive. So excluding them, you’re left with Lindsay
, Irwin, me—’ he smiled gaily at Hamlyn, ‘—and you.’

  Hamlyn said, ‘What motive did I have?’

  ‘Oh, sex.’ The other’s tone was earnest. ‘It was a sex crime.’

  Betty Lindsay came in wearing a khaki safari suit which made her look like a navvy. As he turned from Hamlyn, Miss Pink saw that Maynard was not really amused. Tonight his baiting of the colonel was a defence mechanism.

  ‘And there is Betty,’ he remarked outrageously, ‘who is as strong as a man.’

  She was preoccupied. ‘What’s that, sweetie?’

  ‘You’re a likely candidate for the killer.’

  ‘Really? I’ll have a large gin, Gordon. Why me?’ she continued, folding a pound note and tapping it on the bar.

  ‘Why anyone?’ Maynard lost interest and turned to Miss Pink. ‘I’m going on the hill tomorrow, no matter what the police say. I’ve only got two more days and I’m not staying down in the glen for another of them. This place gives me the willies. Will you come out with me?’

  ‘I should like that. Madge is hoping to do the ridge and I’d enjoy seeing her go past. From the right spot we should be able to watch her for a long way.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Betty put in.

  Ken blinked but his tone was pleasant. ‘We’ll make up a party then. Where do you suggest we go?’

  ‘I think we should go to Mhic Coinnich or Alasdair,’ Miss Pink said. ‘She’s cached some food on Banachdich so, to encourage her, we ought to meet her halfway between the start, at Gars Bheinn, and the cache.’

  ‘The start is her tent,’ Maynard said.

  ‘What’s a cache?’ Betty asked.

  ‘Some food and water; she’s put it under a stone on the Banachdich pass.’

  ‘I hope she can find it again,’ Hamlyn said.

  ‘There’s an obvious perched block on the north side of the pass with a hole about six feet from its base. She could come straight down to her tent from there if she decided for some reason not to continue.’

  ‘Will she be in for dinner?’ Betty asked innocently. Apparently she knew nothing of the under-currents in the house. The men remained silent and Hamlyn busied himself with a glass cloth.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Miss Pink said. ‘She’ll be up before dawn so I expect she’ll have an early night.’

  Betty glanced at Maynard suspiciously. She would be remembering that his engagement with Madge had two days to run but she didn’t comment. Instead she said loudly, ‘That’s fixed then—for tomorrow? But how are we going to find her if this doesn’t clear?’ She gestured towards the window.

  ‘It’ll clear,’ Hamlyn told her. ‘It’s only a sea fog.’

  Andrew Lindsay slouched into the room. His eyes were rimmed with red and he ordered a large whisky without speaking to any of the guests. Betty exclaimed brightly, ‘I must go and put things together,’ and left the bar. Maynard made nervous grimaces and eyed Miss Pink.

  ‘Where is Lavender?’ she asked with a sinking heart, dreading that she might be contributing to the tension.

  ‘Not feeling too good; she won’t be down for dinner.’

  Hamlyn looked concerned. ‘Can we do anything? Broth, toast . . . She must have something.’

  ‘I’ll ask her later. She had some toast at tea time.’

  *

  Dinner was a silent meal with the Lindsays hardly speaking to each other, and Miss Pink and Maynard alone at their tables. Afterwards, Lindsay went out in the grounds and the others drifted back to the lounge to find a coffee tray on the table in the window but no one behind the bar.

  ‘I’m for brandy,’ Betty announced truculently. ‘Miss Pink, what can I get you?’

  ‘A Cointreau, please.’

  ‘Ken?’

  ‘Brandy, dear.’ He spoke absently. He stood in the window, jingling coins in his pocket and staring at the fog.

  Betty rang the bell on the counter. The door behind the bar opened and Euphemia looked in. ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you!’ In her surprise Betty sounded rude. ‘We want drinks.’

  ‘Mrs Hamlyn’s upstairs in their sitting room.’

  ‘Well, where’s the colonel?’

  ‘In the stable. Will I be after fetching him?’

  ‘If you will.’

  Euphemia backed out. Two minutes later Hamlyn bustled in.

  ‘So sorry,’ he breathed, ‘didn’t think you’d finish so soon. I’m trying to get the rescue equipment sorted.’

  ‘If you’ll just attend to us, you can go back to it.’ Betty’s tone was acid and Maynard raised expressive eyebrows at Miss Pink. The sarcasm failed to rile Hamlyn.

  ‘Not at all,’ he countered comfortably. ‘While my guests are in the bar, I’m here to serve them. There’s plenty of time for the gear.’

  ‘It’s just this kind of weather you might have an accident,’ Betty pointed out, still unpleasantly, but he didn’t respond, merely served their drinks with the deft movements of a barman.

  After a while Andrew Lindsay came in from the hall, stood at the bar making desultory conversation with Hamlyn, then drifted out again. Vera put her head round the door, smiled at the guests and asked her husband who was in the stable.

  ‘No one. Why?’

  ‘The light’s on.’

  ‘Yes, I left it on. I was working out there.’

  Maynard was at the bar now. ‘Serve this round,’ he told the other firmly, ‘and go out and finish it. We can spare you.’

  ‘I’ll relieve you as soon as we’re finished in the kitchen,’ Vera promised. ‘Give me a quarter of an hour.’

  Betty excused herself, saying she was going to write letters. Hamlyn went away and Maynard and Miss Pink were left alone.

  ‘We’re all very restless,’ he observed.

  ‘How is Lavender?’

  ‘She’s feeling better now; she’s had some toast and chicken broth.’ Miss Pink didn’t comment. ‘We all have our drugs,’ he said, and downed his brandy at a gulp. ‘Lavender’s is ill-health. And now I’ve finished my drink, do I wait to be served? Like hell I do.’ He got up and went behind the bar to pour himself a Martell. He returned to his seat.

  ‘Brandy isn’t your drug,’ Miss Pink said thoughtfully.

  ‘No.’ His mouth twitched but he didn’t smile. ‘This is a superficial palliative . . . but not for a superficial sorrow, would you say?’ He slumped in his chair. ‘No, you wouldn’t. She was beautiful and young and innocent but she was nothing to do with me; I didn’t even want to go across to Largo. The tragedy is: I don’t care.’

  ‘Why are you drinking then?’

  ‘Because of that. I’m burned out. Because a beautiful being has been wantonly destroyed and all I’m concerned about is that I’ve missed a day’s climbing.’

  ‘Why do you think the murder was wanton?’

  ‘Surely the destruction of beauty is always that?’

  ‘Not necessarily. There could have been a good reason for killing her.’

  He opened his mouth to reply but at that moment Vera Hamlyn came in. She glanced round the bar in rueful concern at its emptiness, then poured herself a gin. Maynard stood up.

  ‘You can’t stay behind the bar, dear; come and join us.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Do come, Mrs Hamlyn.’ Miss Pink added her persuasion.

  Vera came across. ‘I’ll draw these curtains then; it’s such a miserable night.’ She looked round the lounge again. ‘How quiet we are,’ she said, and shivered.

  ‘The nights are drawing in,’ Miss Pink observed, and thought how tired the other looked.

  ‘It’s been an exhausting day, what with the police—and everything.’

  ‘Why do you think she was killed?’ Maynard asked of Miss Pink. Vera stared at him, blinked, and transferred her gaze to the older woman who made a helpless gesture.

  ‘Who can tell? We’ve been speculating since yesterday. Quite frankly, I’m drained of ideas and prefer to stick to facts. It seems obvious that she was strangled, a
nd most probably at Largo; those aren’t facts but they’ll do until we know the results of the autopsy.’

  ‘When will that be?’ Vera asked.

  ‘I believe a pathologist was arriving today. We should know tomorrow.’

  Vera said, ‘Did you get any joy from the crofters?’ Miss Pink was startled and the other smiled wryly. ‘Euphemia has put herself on the pay-roll again; she said you were at Sletta.’

  ‘And me?’ Maynard asked.

  ‘You went rowing before the fog came in, then had half an hour at Sletta.’

  ‘Good God!’ He grinned nastily. ‘The fog will stop them; they can’t see through that.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it; they say news runs through the grass in Glen Shira.’ For the second time she shivered.

  Miss Pink appeared to be following her own line of thought, sparked off by an earlier question. ‘I don’t think the crofters care enough.’

  ‘To kill,’ Maynard elaborated.

  ‘Someone cared.’ Vera said. ‘A lover presumably.’

  ‘A former lover?’ Maynard hazarded. ‘One who never made it? A young man on the make, a middle-aged roué obstructed, or old age killing what it hated?’

  Vera frowned. ‘Is that brandy, Ken?’

  ‘Yes, dear; a double, please.’

  ‘Are you climbing tomorrow?’

  He hesitated. ‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘I’m going to cheer Madge along the ridge.’

  His glass wasn’t empty but Vera picked it up and went to the bar.

  ‘Your friend,’ he emphasised, following her. Miss Pink sat like a cat by a mouse hole. He put both hands on the counter. ‘Your friend Madge,’ he repeated.

  ‘I think you should go to bed after this one.’ Vera put his glass on the counter. She was a bad colour under her tan.

  ‘You know you’re in the wrong, don’t you?’ he told her earnestly.

  ‘I’m not talking about it.’ Her voice was rising.

  He snorted derision. ‘Gordon and Madge! Don’t give me that!’

  ‘You’re being impertinent—’

  ‘You’re fond of her! What’s she done that you suddenly—’ He stopped as if switched off and the silence drew out agonisingly. Miss Pink watched his rigid back and, in the mirror, his staring eyes, and Vera’s eyes, not staring but watching carefully, flicking towards the window and back to Maynard.