by Gwen Moffat
‘Where was Miss Hamilton?’
‘With her sister at Glenaffric.’
‘So she left her house guest alone all day?’
‘No. I was with Kramer from the hotel. I went back to meet her in the apartment for lunch.’ Only a marginal lie.
‘And Val Jardine and her brother?’
She couldn’t resist a glance across the line of the river. ‘They were clearing the trail, out there somewhere.’ She gestured vaguely, aware once again that he would know all this already.
Breslow came sliding down through the trees. He looked at Hilton. ‘A horse come down there,’ he said.
Hilton looked at Miss Pink. ‘That would be you, ma’am?’
‘I didn’t even know there was a way down there. When we came here on the search we came the same way as today: to come out on the rim towards where the stallion was trapped.’
He wasn’t listening. He was staring up the slope, and now Cole had caught on and his eyes were shining. Benefit lay over the top and a man on a sure-footed horse could drop down this slope and return the same way as quick and quiet as a deer. Of course he would have to know that Charlie would be at the cabin. Jen Ryan had known. Miss Pink tried to ease her facial muscles. She said inanely, ‘We haven’t found his other boot.’
Hilton’s mind returned to her. ‘It’s not important.’
No, they didn’t need the other boot, they had enough. Hilton had his motive: a multimillion-dollar fortune, and he was focusing on the suspect who would receive the lion’s share, and her husband.
With suspect courtesy he suggested that she might like to go back to the horses and rest a while, maybe eat a sandwich — he had brought food for all of them. The others were going to climb the cliff. By that he meant the break in the cliffs. She suggested it might be safer if she remained with the party since this was bear country. He said blandly that she was quite safe, any old bear would steer clear if she made plenty of noise as she walked. He wanted her out of the way. She wanted to point out that a horse’s tracks could have been made at any time: by poachers, hunters, day trippers, all could come down this slope from Benefit, thus avoiding the dangers of the lower canyon. She said nothing, aware of the risk of protesting too much.
On her return she found the missing boot. It lay below the path, drifted with silt. It told her nothing. She looked back and down the slope, and saw that the cabin was still in view, appearing curiously abandoned in its wild setting. Her eye travelled up the fringe of the forest to the break where presumably the men were now conferring, speculating on the identity of the rider whose track they were following. But if he — or she — had come this way to meet Charlie with the intention of killing him, wouldn’t he have been more careful about leaving tracks? Not necessarily; in a place such as this, horse tracks were the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, the courts would need something considerably more substantial on which to convict a suspect. And Byer came to mind; did he possess the kind of evidence needed, was that the nature of his hold over Val?
A movement caught her eye. Figures were emerging from the timber. Two of them started down the slope in the direction of the cabin while the third moved towards her — Hilton to judge by his heavy walk.
He arrived, sweating profusely. ‘I’m not built for this kinda country,’ he complained.
‘You could have ridden.’ She was tart.
‘You’re right, ma’am; I made a mistake there. But I figured the going could get tough for a horse.’
Her eyes went to the timbered skyline. ‘Someone managed it.’
‘Oh, yes. You can’t miss the tracks. It’s the shoes: they make scratches on the rock, easy enough for an old hunter like Breslow to see.’ She was looking meaningly at the figures moving down the slope. ‘He reckons they went to the cabin.’
‘They?’
‘The tracks, ma’am.’
‘Why didn’t you go with them?’
‘I’m far too old for that slope. I come back for my horse — and to let you know what’s happening, ease your mind.’
She took that at face value. ‘I’m quite happy since you’re sure there are no bears around.’
‘Good, good. So tell me how you come to be here, in the wilds of Montana. The Black Canyon’s not on the tourist route. Yellowstone, yes, but what brings you to Ballard?’
He was in no hurry to reach the horses. He appeared to be engrossed in the progress of his men but she knew that this exchange hadn’t come about by chance. His purpose was to pump her, although the first question could have been innocent, the kind any curious native might ask of a visitor. She told him how she’d met Sophie, that her staying at the Rothbury was no more than return for hospitality she’d extended in Cornwall.
‘It’s the best way to do it.’ He nodded approval. ‘Visit with folk in their own homes: the best way to get to know a new country. Do they strike you as very different from folk at home? I guess you have lots of houses like Glenaffric in England.’
She was amused. Nice day, nice man — now sitting down, herself following suit: nice man sitting on a bank fishing, herself the big fish and well aware of the hook inside the bait. ‘You mean Scotland,’ she said. ‘Glenaffric is in the Highlands, where Charlie Gunn’s people came from originally. Actually, Scottish houses of similar size would be very different.’
‘Not so much money around, maybe. Charlie was a multi-millionaire. Did you —’
‘Oh, just as much money,’ she exclaimed, blocking his question by rushing to the defence of Victorian entrepreneurs. ‘But darker, you know? Glenaffric, at least on the outside, is bright, quite dazzling, in fact. A large house in Scotland would be built of granite, not whitewashed, very dull, with dark slate roofs and shrubberies. A little brighter inside: no blinds but cluttered. There it would be like Glenaffric: full of ornaments and stuffed heads.’
‘You didn’t like Charlie.’
A slight pause. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘You’d have said “trophies” if you admired his den.’
‘And by extension, him? His den? Sounds like a bear. Actually I didn’t know him.’
‘You met him, ma’am.’ A statement, not a question.
‘Once. We were invited to supper when Miss Hamilton was buying some horses.’
‘A family meal?’
‘Quite.’
‘I mean, you met the whole family there?’
‘Just his wife.’
‘Not the son?’
‘No, Clyde has his own house, down by the bridge over Bear Creek.’
‘Ah. And he doesn’t eat with the family?’ Miss Pink refused to hear that as a question. There was a trace of impatience in his voice now, but it was a hot day, the sun climbing. ‘So he was eating at home,’ he said.
‘Presumably.’ She considered. ‘I forgot; that was the first day of their trip to clear the trail. He was in the mountains with his sister.’
‘Where exactly?’
It wasn’t a stupid question to ask of this particular stranger to the area. From here they could see a vast distance, not so much on the near side of the river because the forest and a great spur blocked the lower canyon from view but opposite, west of the river, they could see from the Bobcat Hills to the peaks this side of Yellowstone. He’d done his homework, discovered she was a mountaineer; he guessed that, given times and distances, she’d have a rough idea of the route taken by Val and Clyde even though she didn’t know the ground. But in asking the question he’d shown his hand. He’d been checking up on her.
‘Three days,’ she murmured, playing for time. ‘I have no idea where they camped for the two nights. We saw them leave and we passed them on the third day in the canyon. The stretch between is an unknown quantity.’ They looked upriver and she waited for him to push it, to probe further, expecting him to ask how far away they’d been on their second day out, the day Charlie was at the cabin.
‘When you were looking for Charlie,’ he said, ‘where was Paul Skinner?’
She frowned. ‘Skinner? He wasn’t with us.’
‘Jen Ryan? Where was she?’
Her eyes flickered. ‘She wasn’t on the search either.’
‘Where was Ryan?’
‘We met him on top and I think he went down by way of that very steep drop this side of the landslip. You know the canyon? Yes, well, that would be the only way down except above the lake.’ She looked back to the timbered break. ‘And there, in the trees. No doubt there are more places.’
‘What did you do after you met him?’
‘We came down close to where we did today.’
‘So if Ryan came down this way’ — he nodded towards the break — ‘he’d have been travelling close to you, virtually with you, in fact.’ She said nothing. He was saying that if Ryan descended close to the landslide on the day of the search, as she maintained, then he used the timbered break on another occasion: the crucial one. His next question would concern Ryan’s reaction when they found the body — but he had found it first, no one had seen his immediate reaction.
‘He had a visitor,’ he said flatly, focused on the cabin.
She stared blankly, reorienting. Hilton was back with Charlie. ‘It crossed my mind,’ she admitted. ‘But if so, it had nothing to do with his death. He died over a mile from the cabin.’
‘The guy who visited Charlie down there coulda been the same one as shot him up here.’
Motive, she thought; now he’s going to mention motive.
‘Means, motive and opportunity,’ he said and beamed at her. ‘You all had ‘em. Now what we have to do is find which one dunnit. You read detective stories, ma’am? Just my little joke.’
Dangerous ground; Charlie Gunn had liked his little jokes too and look what happened to him. ‘What could be my motive?’ she asked lightly. ‘Viewed as a joke, of course.’
‘Motives aren’t necessary; if you got the evidence you don’t need motive.’
‘Granted. And the means?’
‘Easy. You had a pistol, you shot him, you disposed of the weapon, threw it off of a bridge.’
‘Imaginative. What about opportunity? I’d have had to use a horse. And —’ She stopped. This was getting too close to the bone.
‘— And if you’d come in by the loop trail you’d need to pass Val and Clyde, and if you come in the middle way, like we did, you’d have to pass Bret and Jen’s cabin at Benefit, and if you come the bottom way, through the canyon, you’d have to go by Erik Byer’s place. There you are: collusion. Only way it coulda been done. I won’t read you your rights, ma’am, we’re only joking. That’s his boot you found? Let me relieve you of it.’
She relinquished it and he started along the path. She followed, staring sightlessly at the ground, negotiating boulders on automatic pilot. Only her own role in his scenario was a joke; everyone else was family, any or all could have acted in collusion; all had means, motive and opportunity, all had kin as alibis, all bar one.
*
‘Everything comes back to Byer,’ she said, adding lemon to her China tea. ‘He knows something, or he found something…’ She trailed off deliberately.
Sophie filled her own cup and replaced the teapot on its stand. She selected a slice of lemon and squeezed it with silver tongs. ‘I’ll ask Val,’ she said, as if she would request the loan of a book. ‘Did you learn anything new? I find it difficult to picture Hilton and Cole on that kind of ground. They managed to stay on their horses?’
‘Hilton was more unhappy on his own feet.’ Miss Pink was snappy. Horsemanship wasn’t what the day had been about. ‘In fact, Breslow and Hilton returned by that ghastly steep stretch where we came out after my first trip to the canyon.’
‘It’s only bad the first time.’
Miss Pink’s lips thinned. ‘Cole could never have ridden up there. Hilton sent him back with me, up the easy climb from the lake: the way we’d gone in.’
‘What made him split the party?’
‘He didn’t give me explanations. Anyway, you can’t believe a word the man says; when he isn’t fobbing you off, he’s being facetious. I’d hazard a guess that he split the party because he wanted to investigate another approach to the cabin from Benefit. He needed Breslow because the man has an eye for tracks. Cole couldn’t cope with that route but Hilton couldn’t send a novice back on his own so I was sent with him.’
‘Did Hilton say if he discovered anything on that route?’
‘Only that horses had been there. I reminded him that we had gone up that way, Ryan had gone down, probably others.’
‘More tea? Another slice of cake?’ It was the American version of a pound cake: redolent of brandy and spiced fruits. Sophie was the perfect hostess. ‘What did he have to say about the cabin?’ she asked politely.
‘Nothing. Just to ask was that how we found it, Val and I, when we went down for the blankets. It was, of course. No one’s been there apart from Val when she went up for Charlie’s saddle.’
‘So really you learned nothing.’ She meant about police thinking.
‘Only this pig-headed emphasis on Bret Ryan and the proximity of Benefit. The part about us all being suspects is technically correct and I’m sure Hilton knows I’m aware of that. He elaborated on it as a joke in my case — his idea of a joke.’ Miss Pink paused, then resumed, very English and ladylike, ‘And how did the funeral go?’
Sophie smiled broadly. ‘Marvellous. Oh, my appalling bad taste!’ But she was still smiling. ‘Afterwards, I mean: back at Glenaffric. We were all there: all of us, Jen and Ryan too. She’s come home again.’
‘I’m so glad.’ Miss Pink was circumspect. ‘There was no embarrassment?’
Sophie shrugged. ‘Obviously — after so long away.’ Her smile faded. ‘Not with Edna and Clyde; I guess it wasn’t the first time she’d seen them since she came back. The same goes for Sam; he was at the ranch after the interment. But Val’ — her eyebrows lifted at the memory — ‘shy and stiff, you know, but fighting hard to appear natural. No hugs, of course; well, you wouldn’t expect that, would you? They actually said — this was at the church: “You’re looking well” and “You look great!” as if Jen had been on a few weeks’ vacation. At the house they talked horses, would you believe, and every now and again when Jen would start about the ranch or the homestead — once I even heard something about money — one of the others would hush her. Of course, there were lots of people at the ranch and the maids. Jen’s as indiscreet as ever.’
‘Was Paul Skinner there?’
‘Heavens no! He’s not on those kind of terms — Why d’you ask?’
‘I’m puzzled about him. Hilton mentioned him. When we went down to join the others at the cabin he was obviously on to something: looking round the interior carefully, not casually. He went to the door and looked up the slope to the escarpment. He’d already suggested that Charlie had a visitor. He’d asked about Skinner: where was he on the search? I said he wasn’t there at all. He didn’t comment on that but it left me thinking about Skinner: him and Byer.’
‘Hilton thinks Paul’s involved?’
‘No. That is, he’s pretty blatant about the family, implying all the members are suspect, but he’s going for the money motive. However, Skinner doesn’t benefit.’
‘Of course he doesn’t!’ Sophie was vehement, but then she wouldn’t want Skinner to be a suspect because if Hilton went after him, that can of worms would be opened which the family was so concerned to keep shut. But if he were ruled out through absence of one motive, he had another: he had been the butt of Charlie’s last joke.
12
The telephone calls began: Val, Clyde, even Jen, all exchanging chit-chat about the reception after the funeral, all asking after Sophie’s guest. She said that Miss Pink had had an uneventful day with the police: the ride to Mazarine Lake, a diversion to hunting camp.
At six thirty Val arrived, straight from riding. Miss Pink appreciated that she would have wanted to go round the horses after a day’s absence, but it seemed perv
erse to call on her aunt still smelling of horse. She did apologise for not having changed, she was bushed after a hard day. ‘Social life is so exhausting,’ she told Miss Pink, bright-eyed and jumpy. ‘Meeting people you haven’t seen for years, some of ‘em, having to be polite, putting on an act for my mother’s sake. Family solidarity, right, Sophie?’
Her aunt brought her a stiff bourbon. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered. ‘Take the load off your feet.’
Miss Pink sat opposite, blandly observing the younger woman. Sophie placed herself on the sofa beside Val; the arrangement had the effect of suggesting aunt and niece were ranged against her.
When the others remained silent, drinking rather than sipping, Miss Pink opened proceedings. ‘My day was less tiring,’ she told Val. ‘A pleasant ride over the tops and down to Mazarine. I could have done without the police version of a packed lunch, however: cold sausage and squashed buns.’
Val giggled wildly and Miss Pink realised that ‘buns’ might have a different meaning here from what she’d intended. Val caught herself and asked shakily, ‘Why did they take you along?’
‘I was the only person on the search who was available. Everyone else was at the funeral.’
‘Except Byer,’ Sophie put in.
‘Hilton said he was missing,’ Miss Pink said.
‘He was at Glenaffric.’ Val sounded sullen.
Sophie was suddenly irate. ‘With Clyde and your mother at the funeral? He could have made off with anything he fancied from the house.’
‘No. The maids were around. They never let him go beyond the kitchen.’
‘He has a reputation as a thief?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘In that case he may well have a record.’
‘Did Hilton mention Byer?’ Sophie asked of her. Questions and answers were loaded. ‘Byer wasn’t mentioned,’ Miss Pink said. ‘Paul Skinner was.’
‘How?’ Val asked. ‘In what respect?’
‘Hilton was interested because Paul wasn’t on the search.’
‘He wouldn’t be.’
Sophie cut in quickly: ‘That’s what I said.’