Passion in the Peak

by John Buxton Hilton

  Ricarda Mommsen was restless, more restless than usual. Jane Seymour had looked for hours at the ugly yet strangely sensitive face. She felt she knew the patient intimately, every twitch and tremor, without knowing the most elementary thing about her. She desperately wanted to get into the mind of this woman, wanted to know—and not just for the case report.

  ‘Staff!’

  Jane called Staff Nurse Bentham over.

  ‘She’s talking more tonight. She’s trying to get something out.’

  The staff nurse leaned down close with her ear. ‘Sorry. Can’t help. It sounds like German. Means nothing to me.’

  ‘Nor me. But I do have this.’

  Jane Seymour laid a pocket-size recorder down by Ricarda Mommsen’s pillow.

  ‘Gib mir die Hand—’

  A huge physical effort. And so near to the English cognate words that anyone could understand it.

  ‘—und komm—’

  No difficulty there, either.

  ‘Wir werden sie uns pflücken gehen—’

  That defeated Jane. And so did the last line, a passionate whisper after a considerable pause.

  ‘Sie werden wohl die letzten sein.’

  Ricarda Mommsen died about twenty minutes later without saying anything else articulate.

  Gleed tried through every local linguist that he knew of to get the quotation identified, but it was not within the capacity of anyone within his reach. It was only next day, when he ordered a full search of the few possessions in Miss Mommsen’s room, that they found the poem, marked in an anthology. It was from Cäsar Flaischlen, a turn of the century symbolist poet, picking the last roses of the season with the implication that there were no more seasons to come.

  Jane reported personally to Gleed, who had asked to see her, since she was the last person to hear anything at all from Ricarda Mommsen’s lips. The Superintendent had Kenworthy in his office with him, a character whom all Gleed’s minions found enigmatic.

  ‘It isn’t like this in books, is it?’ Kenworthy said. ‘It would be a rotten story that ended, We shall never know.’

  ‘Well, we shan’t,’ Gleed said. ‘I suppose some women are capable of her kind of loving—especially a woman with a tradition of persecution in her very bloodstream.’

  ‘I think she was very conscious of that. She knew—she must have known—how wretchedly Larner had treated her. Literally, one night of love—and only because, in the true Larner tradition, she was so unlovable that she appealed to his devious vanity. Then he dropped her—but she didn’t drop him. If she hadn’t lost her life signalling to him that night, maybe he’d have lost his a little earlier than he did. And we still don’t know how she found out what Alfie Tandy was planning.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Twelve degrees right.’

  ‘Obstruction. I’ll bring her back, start again.’

  Kenworthy, lying painfully on his side on a bed of loose stones, was trying to prompt from Julian Harpur’s notes with one arm crushed against the wall. What one would endure to try to prove a theory!’

  Opportunism: he had seen Julian Harpur leaving the village, carrying his now completed submarine.

  ‘Need any help?’

  Harpur’s reaction had been to glower as if he resented being spoken to.

  ‘She’s in full working order now, is she?’

  Harpur’s grunt said yes—but wished that Kenworthy would go away.

  ‘I’d like to see you put her through her paces.’

  The outcome was that Kenworthy was now dictating from Harpur’s notes while the youth set the boat at the task that obsessed him. Meeting House Dale was not one of the Wonders of the High Peak. It was not more than a shallow cleft in the steep hillside in which one of Peak Low’s Nonconformist chapels nestled. And what Julian Harpur had called a water-swallow was no show cave. More properly he should have called it a rock-shelter—not much more than the entrance to a cave not yet formed. But it did swallow water—the agglomerated trickles of several hill-springs, and that water ran away into the furthest extremity of the opening, suggesting the possibility of a more developed system of water-courses within. But as the channel through which the rivulet entered the rock was not more than nine inches high, there could be no thought of human exploration. Young Harpur was anxious to chart this channel, and he hoped to do it by plotting precisely the course on which he steered his submarine. He became relatively talkative about it.

  ‘Nobody knows where the water goes, see? They’ve tried dyes, but no one has ever seen coloured water come out anywhere.’

  He was not in a friendly mood, and was deeply absorbed in controlling his craft. He did not appear to hold a very high opinion of Kenworthy’s brain, and clearly doubted his ability to carry out the simple instructions he had given him. And for his part, Kenworthy had to admit that he was anything but clear about the boy’s calculations. It seemed to be a clear case of delusions of grandeur. Harpur was convinced that he was about to make an exclusive scientific discovery.

  The climax came after about an hour, when he lost radio contact with his model. After increasingly feverish activity, he had to admit that he had lost his submarine too. There was little likelihood that he would ever get it back. Kenworthy felt sorry for him, but it was a sympathy offset by the fury of the boy’s reaction, which harked back to the emotional responses of infancy: he blamed Kenworthy because it had happened. This was not the way that Kenworthy had wanted the afternoon to develop.

  ‘You know, one of these days, Julian, you’re going to come up against someone who’s just not prepared to put up with the way you carry on.’

  Kenworthy could not have predicted the effect of this very carefully controlled rebuke. Harpur’s attitude changed. He seemed to try to take a grip on himself. But this did not turn him at once into a civilized being: he sulked.

  ‘You know, I’m expecting to be here for several days, and there are any number of things I’d like you to show me. But how can you expect anyone to want your company if you can’t be consistent for ten minutes together?’

  Harpur looked as if he were on the verge of crying. He was a case of protracted infancy. Kenworthy decided to go for the main chance at once.

  ‘I don’t care for people who tell me lies, either.’

  Harpur looked at him as if he were unaware of what offence he might have committed now.

  ‘Those iron spikes that I picked up from your work-bench. You told me that someone must have been in and left them there. But I know now where you got them from.’

  Harpur looked as if he feared drastic reprisals.

  ‘And I do happen to know why you didn’t want to tell me the truth. You do know that I used to be a detective, don’t you? And there’s nothing magic in being a detective—but it did teach me to look at the patterns of things. I always look at patterns, Julian—and ask myself what they can teach me.’

  Harpur was beginning to be curious about what he was getting at.

  ‘I had a good look at your house last time I passed it, and I worked out which must be your bedroom window. The one with the Boeing B-17B on the sill? So I had no difficulty in spotting which drainpipe you come down by. Did you know that your weight has loosened one of the brackets? It’s beginning to come away from the wall. And I could see where you put one foot on the top edge of the water-butt to jump down to the ground. Do you know there’s a concavity beginning to show in the rim?’

  Harpur was now showing apprehension.

  ‘Oh, don’t think that I blame you. You’re big enough and old enough to be allowed out alone. If you were my son, you wouldn’t have to climb out, because I wouldn’t mind if you were out. I’d trust you. But what I’m coming to is this: you didn’t tell the truth about those spikes because you didn’t want anyone to know that you were out of the house after midnight on Saturday.’

  Harpur’s response was the sort of silence that is an admission of guilt in mature criminals, as well as wayward children.

  ‘I’
m right, am I, in assuming that you picked up those spikes up Brackdale Hill, not very long after they had been put down?’

  ‘Only three,’ Harpur said.

  ‘So did you see who put them down?’

  ‘M’m.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  But Harpur could only shrug.

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘He always carries a guitar about with him.’

  ‘I know the man. It isn’t a guitar—it’s a banjo.’

  ‘He had the spikes in the case.’

  ‘I guessed as much. Now listen, Julian. This is important, because it will help me to work out what happened. Where were you at the actual moment when this man—his name’s Tandy, by the way—was scattering the horrible things?

  What I mean is, how come he didn’t see you?’

  ‘There are bushes at the side of the road. I was behind one of them. And it was dark.’

  ‘So you saw the car—the Lotus—crash?’

  ‘M’m.’

  ‘And the driver wasn’t hurt?’

  ‘He got out. He looked drunk.’

  ‘How could you see him on such a dark night?’

  ‘The man Tandy had a torch.’

  ‘So what did the driver do next?’

  ‘He walked up the road.’

  ‘He joined Tandy?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him again. The torch had gone out.’

  ‘Was there anyone else about at the top of Brackdale Hill?’

  ‘There was a woman. I don’t know her name. She tried to stop the car—the first car.’

  ‘The first car?’

  ‘The Lotus. There was another car, coming down the hill. It stopped before it got to the crash and Wayne Larner got in it.’

  ‘Julian—I’d like you to come with me to Brackdale Hill now. I want to know exactly where people were standing, where they were hiding—and any other possible hiding places that there might be. Because places have patterns that tell me things. I expect you’ve read Sherlock Holmes?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Well, I don’t pretend I’m as clever as he was—but wherever any man has been, he leaves something. The question always is, is it something you can see?’

  So they went back to Brackdale, but while they were still some way off the site of the crash, it was obvious from parked cars and a group of men that activity was going on. Fewter and Nall, with a couple of juniors, were engaged in a field exercise—searching the wooded side of the road, and obviously trying to establish key-points at the top edge of the ravine. As soon as he recognized them, Kenworthy tried to withdraw Harpur and himself away from them, but he was too late. Fewter had spotted them, and beckoned.

  ‘I see you’ve got yourself a new assistant.’

  ‘And a very helpful one too,’ Kenworthy said. ‘We’ve just had a very useful little talk.’

  ‘We talked to him for forty-eight hours.’

  Harpur was beginning to hang back.

  ‘Show this gentleman exactly where you were standing when the car came up the hill, Julian.’

  Reluctantly, Harpur showed them a clump of brushwood about five yards back from the road. Kenworthy went and stood there, taking good care to register how much of the road the position commanded.

  ‘Now show us where Mr Tandy waited.’

  Harpur walked back several yards and pointed to a rising contour where all manner of weeds had taken possession of a broken wall.

  ‘And Miss Mommsen?’

  She had waited twenty yards lower down, on what would have been Larner’s near side. So she must have dashed across to the wall when she heard his engine.

  ‘Are you suggesting,’ Fewter said, ‘that this youngster was out and about and up here last Saturday night?’

  ‘You just heard what he said.’

  ‘It’s not what he had to say before.’

  Fewter turned his irascibility direct on Harpur.

  ‘You’ve got some explaining to do—and some written statements to retract. Superintendent Gleed is going to love you.’

  Harpur looked covertly at Kenworthy for protection.

  ‘Just what you were doing out of doors at that time of night?’

  ‘He wasn’t breaking the laws of the land,’ Kenworthy said.

  ‘I’m asking him.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t, if I were you. I don’t know his reasons, but I suspect they are perfectly legal—and personally embarrassing. And what are you going to get out of him if you rub him up the wrong way?’

  ‘I think you’ve retired, haven’t you, Kenworthy? Would you like to retire from this conversation, too?’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When Joan Culver’s brother settled on an idea, it was difficult to dislodge it, and repetition never seemed to weary him. This morning he kept on about her foolhardiness in continuing as a temporary Mary Magdalene. He was overwhelmed by what the Press was saying: the cheaper papers were making a major news item of her.

  VILLAGE GIRL COCKS SNOOK AT

  JOKER—JOAN UNJOLTED.

  No threat by stage-side vandals is strong enough to weaken the

  pull of the footlights for pretty Joan Culver—

  She was annoyed when a group of excitable journalists came to the back door while she was in the middle of clearing the breakfast things.

  ‘Are you really going to go through with this, Miss Culver?’

  ‘Are you hoping that they’ll give you the full part after all this?’

  ‘May we quote you as saying—?’

  She could not stop them pressing through the door. She blinked at their electronic flashes, did as they asked when they wanted her to pose with her back to the kitchen sink.

  And they crowded round her all the way to the theatre. Did she believe that the joker had anything in store for her this morning? Didn’t she find it off-putting, trying to act with a cordon of Cantrell’s security toughs all round her? And always there was the suggestion that her heart was set on stardom. One of the dailies had come up with the story—totally false—that she had always been overlooked in school plays, and had promised herself that she would make it to neon-lights one day.

  Then Cantrell’s watch-dogs were barring their way from following her any deeper into the inner sanctums of the theatre, and she was in the quiet corridor outside the dressing-rooms, already agreeably familiar to her.

  The scene that Hajek was hoping to start pulling together today was the women’s dawn walk to the Sepulchre to annoint the body of their friend and master. According to the scriptwriter, Mary Magdalene had been the instigator and leader of this expedition. The other women—Joanna and the sisters Mary and Martha from Bethany—were older than she was, and frightened of every shadow that edged their route. Mary Magdalene was nervous too, her tension breaking through at the leap of a cat. But she had to put courage into the others as they walked between the ancient walls, waiting for the gates to be opened at sunrise. They were ordinary women, doing what they believed in, trying to ignore the dangers that they saw and felt. The walls of Jerusalem were projected on a screen behind them. The music, predominantly electronic, was full of atmosphere. ‘You know,’ Furnival said to Kenworthy in the body of the auditorium, ‘what I like about the New Testament are these episodes that touch off reality. You get the feeling that they could not have been invented. And this one—what those women did and said that morning—that has always clinched matters for me.’

  And what effect had that had on his life? Kenworthy did not bother to ask. On stage, the women were all set to go. But Hajek risked puncturing their readiness by calling them forward to the apron and repeating their briefing.

  ‘OK? OK, Sound? OK, Lights?’

  It was not Jimmy Lindop, but one of his assistants at the audio-panel this morning.

  A chord from Szolnok, and Joan began her opening aria. Oh, who shall roll away the stone? She was resolved that this time her voice should not sound weak—or if it did, then a brand of conquered timoro
usness should be the hallmark of Mary Magdalene. But Hajek was restless after the first few bars.

  ‘Never mind the song. Move on from the last line. Play us the coda, Szolnok.’

  He was treating his musical colleague with excogitated courtesy. This sometimes happened between the two when the demands of the show took on primary importance.

  Joan felt flattened: her pivoted presence on the stage was no more than a convenience to Hajek. It was difficult to maintain an illusion in the face of this kind of deflation. But then suddenly the lighting was dimmed to the first nuances of a reluctant dawn—the merest slash of slightly pinkish grey in the blackness over a crenellated city fortification. Some new menace rustled in the shadows of a house doorway. But it turned out to be only a bundle of old rags, blown a yard and a half across the cobbles. A cat sprang—and with it, it was to be hoped—every pulse in the stalls. A configuration in a minor key from a synthetic vox humana insinuated the women’s terror of the next corner. They reached the manned gate in the outer wall, and the captain of guard looked as if he had a mind to challenge them, but he was too idle. There were itinerant merchants outside the walls, waiting to come in, and the women were forced off the roadway to make way for their lethargic loaded camels. Then there was squalor beyond the city boundaries, the filth of a Middle Eastern rubbish tip at the dawn of an era. For a quarter of a mile they had to pick their way over ordure and through shadows, the sunrise still little more than obscurity.

  A bucket of refuse narrowly missed them, thrown over the city wall on their left hand. Joan Culver was gripped by the role that she was playing. She was Mary Magdalene, and the women she had persuaded to come with her were losing heart, Martha of Bethany already lagging, a fifty-year-old, past physical fitness, so that they had to let her set the pace. And there was some other fear in the air, something even greater than the conventionally macabre. It was fear of the unknown, of some pending event that they could not yet conceive, the feeling that within the next few minutes they would come upon something inexplicable and intolerable.