Miss Pink Investigates- Part Four

by Gwen Moffat

  Dorcas sipped her Martell thoughtfully. ‘She wasn’t daft,’ she said.

  Ralph blinked. ‘Who?’

  ‘Phoebe o’ course. Who else?’

  ‘She were gey careless.’

  ‘How d’you make that out?’

  ‘She’d tackle anyone: Swinburn for not burying sheep, Dwayne Paxton for cheating on –’

  ‘For taking cash just.’

  ‘So? You paid, didn’t you? And she laid into Sherrel for being on benefit.’

  ‘Benefit’s legal – mostly. What Phoebe took exception to was Sherrel having all them kids.’

  ‘Having kids is illegal?’

  ‘And who’s t’father of this un?’

  ‘Eh? Sherrel? Again?’

  Dorcas stared at him. He swallowed and fidgeted. ‘Could be anyone,’ he muttered.

  ‘And that’s just as well.’ The tone was loaded.

  ‘What’s Sherrel got to do with Phoebe going missing?’

  ‘It was you who said she was careless.’

  ‘Who? Phoebe or Sherrel?’

  Dorcas’s dry brown cheeks cracked in a reptilian grin. ‘Both of ’em, but what I meant was Phoebe put folks’ backs up. Snake in the grass. Plenty’ll be glad to see t’back of that one.’

  Isa Lambert didn’t hear her husband come home but it would have made no difference if she had. She was sprawled on the sofa in their living room watching Neighbours and drinking Cranberry Pressé. With her long blonde hair sleeked to her scalp, framing high cheekbones and a swan neck, with the big grey eyes and sulky mouth, she had the look of a bored adolescent, which was near enough the truth. Married for only two years to a local government employee ten years her senior, now she watched happy people frolicking in a pool in Australia and thought she would go mad with despair, stuck with Walter and his cranky sister in a dead-end dale where nothing ever happened. Well, nothing unless you made it happen yourself.

  He came in the door then, carrying his briefcase and a stack of files. Dropping them on the table he came over and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘All right, love? You smell nice.’

  She stood up slowly. ‘This heat’s killing me. We ought to have a pool.’

  She drifted to the kitchen to find something for his tea. He had a cooked meal in town at lunch time, and for that she was devoutly thankful. She liked the idea of dinner at night but not the chore of preparing it.

  Walter watched her dithering at the fridge, mystified by her boredom, by his own inability to alleviate it. Although dales born and bred, he didn’t look it: pale-faced, pale-eyed, with bloodless lips and lank hair poorly cut, he was tall but gangling with large hands and feet. He was a homely fellow, a keen gardener but otherwise with a leaning towards desk work rather than physical activity.

  ‘Where’s Gemma?’ he asked from the kitchen doorway.

  ‘She didn’t tell me where she was going.’ A tea bag fell on the floor. Isa retrieved it and dropped it in a mug.

  ‘I wish she would tell you. She’s only fifteen.’

  ‘She can’t come to much harm in the village.’

  ‘Dwayne Paxton is twenty-one,’ he said heavily. ‘And he’s the last person to be bothered that she’s under age.’

  ‘You’re saying I should speak to her?’

  ‘She won’t take it from me, Isa. You’re close to her age –’

  ‘She’s your sister –’

  ‘Half-sister –’

  ‘It’s the same thing. All right then, speak to Dwayne.’ She was suddenly casual, thinking that he’d never dare approach a hunk like Dwayne Paxton, then wondering if he might at that. He could sometimes be quite stern. ‘You could threaten him,’ she suggested. ‘You work for the Council, tell him what the penalties are for sex with minors.’

  ‘Oh no!’ He was aghast. ‘You don’t think they’re having – that they have a relationship!’

  ‘Come on, Walter! You think they sit in his truck and talk about the telly? It was you said she was under age. Under age for what? You know what’s going on; you’re blocking it out.’

  ‘I only heard last week. I wouldn’t have known then if you hadn’t told me. And all you said was they’d been seen together in his Land Rover.’

  ‘That was Phoebe Metcalf; she told me.’ She grinned slyly. ‘Now there’s one who wouldn’t be bothered about speaking to Dwayne –’

  ‘Good Lord! Phoebe! I’d forgotten – Is there any news?’

  ‘If they don’t find her before dark they’re going to need as many men as they can get tomorrow.’

  He frowned, pondering. ‘I’ve got a meeting in Carlisle in the morning. In any case I can’t keep up with the team, Martin knows that.’

  ‘That’s what I told them – that you had a meeting tomorrow.’

  He wandered out to the garden. On this warm evening the cottage walls were giving up their stored heat of the day. There was no breeze, he could hear Sherrel’s kids playing in the beck. Too young for the beck, he thought – and try telling Sherrel that, it would be as effective as telling Gemma she was too young for boys – for men, rather. And there was Phoebe lost on the fells; young and old, suddenly everyone in Borascal seemed to be at risk. Behind him Isa shouted that his tea was ready.

  It was pizza. He eyed the hot pepperoni and melting cheese without enthusiasm. Her expression hardened.

  ‘I did wrong. Again.’

  ‘It’s just that, on a warm day … A salad might have been a better idea.’

  ‘Right!’ She snatched up the pizza, stalked to the kitchen and the lid of the pedal bin crashed back against the wall. He smothered a sigh, crossed to the ornate bread cupboard that took up one side of the living room and reached for the bottle of Glenlivet. At the sink, adding a few drops of water to his modest measure of malt, he saw that she was trying to slice a tomato with a blunt knife. There were wilted lettuce leaves on a plate, obviously unwashed. He went back to the bread cupboard and topped up his drink, trusting that a stiff measure would neutralize the bacteria in unwashed lettuce. And suddenly, unbidden and unwelcome, the memory of a recent television drama surfaced: the wife adding aconite to horseradish sauce to accompany the beef for her husband’s dinner. He shook his head; he was watching the wrong kind of television.

  ‘When did the team come down?’ he asked as she slammed a plate on the table.

  ‘I don’t know. Did they?’

  ‘Well, how did they tell you I might be needed?’

  ‘They’ve got mobiles!’ There was a pause. ‘Actually Martin called.’

  ‘Called here? Then why did he come down?’

  ‘I don’t know how Mountain Rescue works! All I know is he came here and said they needed more people tomorrow. You don’t have to go if you can’t keep up.’

  ‘Martin said that!’

  ‘No – well – I mean, it didn’t sound all that urgent.’ She knew she had gone too far.

  He studied her, savouring the whisky, conscious of the brilliance of the evening, the heady scent of wisteria, all heightened perceptions … ‘He didn’t come for that,’ he said.

  She swallowed. ‘So what did he come for?’

  He thought how pretty she was when she showed emotion, even fear. He sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter?’ she shrilled. ‘What are you insinuating?’

  ‘I’m not insinuating anything. I’m wondering what brought him down from the hill. Where’s the rest of the team?’

  She was confused. ‘Still out,’ she said weakly. ‘He left them on Blaze Fell.’ Her tone quickened: ‘He had to drive the Land Rover round to meet them on the other side.’

  She eyed him hopefully. ‘That’s why he came down. He called here just as an afterthought – to tell me you were needed.’

  He smiled, not unkindly. ‘You’re not an afterthought, love. Not to anyone.’

  The property called Blind Keld had been bought by incomers who planned to use the house as a holiday home and to let the land for grazing. Local firms wer
e doing the renovating and Dwayne Paxton was employed on the less specialized work. At the moment he was rebuilding the garden wall; that was when Gemma didn’t arrive and they retired to the master bedroom, a bare place smelling of plaster and new wood, empty except for Dwayne’s sleeping bag on the parquet floor.

  At twenty-one the local Don Juan had the kind of chiselled features and cool green eyes that could have been used to sell any upmarket product and, as if that weren’t enough, he had the body of a young Stallone but, alas, the intelligence of an ape, and Gemma was growing tired of him. This evening at Blind Keld she sat up, ran her fingers through her hair and contemplated the valley, or as much of it as she could see through the fancy iron railings outside the french windows. She had violet eyes, hair like blonde chrysanthemum petals, and purple nails. She wore a necklace of moonstones and lapis lazuli and nothing else.

  ‘You got a back like a boy,’ he said lazily, propped on one elbow on the sleeping bag.

  Her mind was elsewhere. ‘She’s not going to stay much longer.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Isa. She hates him.’ After a moment she added, ‘Hates me too.’

  ‘Why’d she marry him?’

  Gemma shrugged. ‘Walter’s got a white collar job and she’d have thought he’d have cash. Her brothers are lorry drivers.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with it, but our house is a step up from a back street in Carlisle.’

  ‘Nothing happens here though. She wants to party, right?’

  ‘Of course she does, she’s a townie. And Walter’s not what you’d call sexy. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go to bed with him.’

  ‘Where’s she getting it then?’

  ‘Who knows? You maybe?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, woman. I’ve got you.’

  ‘Dream on, Dwayne Paxton; I’m my own woman, not yours, nor anyone else’s. I’m hungry, I’m going home.’

  She stood up, pulling on her jeans and T-shirt, not in any particular hurry, merely finished with him for this evening, and needing to eat.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Bless you,’ Eleanor exclaimed as Miss Pink poured the whisky. ‘I’m dead on my feet. By three o’clock I had to start baking again and they were eating the scones straight out of the oven. By six there was only tea but by then everyone left because the Lamb was open.’

  They were in Jollybeard’s kitchen, pint mugs of tea before them and an almost empty bottle of The Macallan. A thrush was singing full throttle in the garden, watched intently from the window sill by Cooper, the marmalade cat.

  ‘How did you manage with only one waitress?’ Miss Pink asked.

  ‘Don’t ask. Sherrel was sick and her mother came. I don’t make a habit of employing Misella but today was exceptional. Anyway the press and the tourists were too excited to notice who was waiting on them.’

  ‘Something wrong with her?’

  Eleanor looked uncomfortable. ‘Not really. It’s just that she’s not exactly tearoom material. Doesn’t change to come up here and she smells of babies – and – well, they’re – they were travelling people, you know?’

  ‘Travelling – ?’

  ‘Gypsy types. Look, I’m not prejudiced; I employ Sherrel, for heaven’s sake, but Misella – I mean – handling food and so on …’ She snatched at her whisky and drank rather than sipped.

  ‘This must be the family in the cottage on the beck,’ Miss Pink observed. ‘I can hear children playing down there. How did they come to settle in Borascal?’

  Eleanor got up to move the kettle off the hotplate. With her back to the visitor she started to fidget with a tea towel. She turned and said quickly, ‘With all those children it was better to settle. They do that: the travellers. The children can go to school.’ There was an air of defiance about her.

  ‘And the father continues to travel,’ Miss Pink said politely.

  ‘There’s no father.’ Eleanor’s shoulders dropped. ‘Different fathers,’ she added, ‘which makes it worse. They survive on benefit.’

  ‘You contribute. The mother – grandmother – would have done well for tips today.’

  ‘It wouldn’t make up for the weeks of lost custom –’ Eleanor stopped suddenly.

  ‘I know about the salmonella.’ Miss Pink was full of sympathy. ‘That was a shocking thing to happen. Have you any idea who was responsible?’

  Eleanor’s face crumpled. ‘No one. I’ve gone over and over it in my mind. Personally I think it was a joke.’

  ‘It wasn’t funny.’ Miss Pink thought about it. ‘Perhaps you’re right. There’s a certain kind of twisted mind that derives amusement from inflicting cruelty. Perhaps he – or she – would get relief that way. Relief from what? Unbearable pressure? It could be.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like anyone in Borascal. We’re a pretty stolid lot.’

  Miss Pink’s eyebrows rose a fraction. Cooper stood up, stretched luxuriously and jumped down into the garden.

  ‘He’s gone to see if she’s come home.’ Eleanor looked forlorn. ‘And there’s still no sign of her anywhere.’

  ‘If mountaineers refuse to stop going on the hill, at some point this is bound to happen.’

  ‘But there’s nothing wrong with her! Well, apart from her eyes and a touch of arthritis, but we all –’

  ‘What about her eyes?’

  ‘She has cataracts. She wears those reactive glasses but she can see perfectly well. She still drives.’

  Miss Pink was thoughtful. ‘Even then,’ she murmured, ‘and with stiff joints, even if she had fallen, they’d have found her. On the other hand I’m sure they didn’t have time to search properly. Suppose there had been a rock fall?’

  ‘Melinda! There are no cliffs around here. And she didn’t go into the central fells because she had to be back to feed Cooper. I tell you there are no cliffs except in that gully above Closewater, and you said they were searching there.’

  ‘There are cliffs in the quarry.’

  ‘But you said the team went there too. Anyway, why should she go in the quarry?’

  ‘To look for a rare flower, or a fern … suppose she’d seen a peregrine’s nest? She had a camera because she was going to photograph – Eleanor, the orchids are finished; vehicles have crushed them into the peat. They’ll never recover.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a disaster! Can’t any of them be saved?’

  ‘One or two perhaps. Blamire suggested they might be transplanted to a safe site.’

  ‘It’s an idea but I doubt that they’d take. That track has become far too popular for off-road vehicles. It should be banned to all traffic; even horses can damage fragile ecosystems. Yes, we should try to save the remaining orchids. And you met Martin; he’s a good chap, something of a local hero.’ She was beaming.

  ‘So his wife gave me to understand. Role models.’ In the face of the other’s surprise Miss Pink elaborated: ‘For the local youth. One rescuer put it to me that becoming a member of a rescue team is an alternative to joining a gang. Glamorous too, and by the time new recruits discover that bringing a casualty down on a stormy winter’s night is sheer hard labour they’re caught up in the camaraderie. Not so different from a gang actually. And, of course, the team leader is a god. Blamire’s wife seems to think so. A very tough girl, I imagine.’

  Eleanor nodded. ‘She adores him. They make a fine couple, don’t you think? It’s amusing in these times to find a powerful woman: the epitome of a feminist, you’d say, in thrall to her man.’

  Miss Pink’s jaw dropped. ‘In thrall?’

  Eleanor blushed. ‘ “La belle dame sans merci”? “Has me in thrall”?’

  ‘You have it the wrong way round; it’s Jean Blamire who’s in thrall, not her husband.’

  ‘No matter. It’s the “thrall” bit I like. What does it mean?’

  ‘Shackled.’

  A faint rumble seemed to permeate the thick walls. ‘Plane?’ Eleanor hazarded.

  ‘Thunder. It was
too hot this afternoon, you could feel something brewing. It’s only a summer storm: soon over.’ But Miss Pink was thinking that if Phoebe were alive and injured, a drenching could prove the last straw.

  ‘I do wish Misella wouldn’t let the little ones play in the beck,’ Eleanor said. ‘The water rises too quickly in a storm.’

  ‘It’s quite high at the moment. I had to wade the stream above the quarry. There’s a drowned sheep plastered against the watergate. Where does Borascal get its water?’

  ‘Not that side, fortunately. There’s a reservoir across the dale that supplies our water. Jacob grazes the ground above the quarry. He’ll have to move that sheep; it’s disgusting, actually in the beck, you say? Phoebe will go mad. It’s one of her bêtes noires: Jacob leaving sheep out to rot. It’s all right on the tops where the eagles can get at them but in water? Never.’

  ‘Mabel said something about her husband having confrontations with Phoebe.’

  ‘Oh yes. Where most of us would write to the Council about abuses, even make anonymous phone calls, Phoebe wades straight in: unburied animals, drums of sheep dip in his tip – I tell you, if Martin Blamire’s the local hero, Phoebe’s our resident fury: goes marching in like a dragon breathing fire. She’s afraid of no one.’

  ‘And of nothing?’ Miss Pink muttered. Their eyes met across the table. ‘Is she a keen photographer?’

  ‘Why? She’s a very good one. Come, I’ll show you.’

  Miss Pink followed her into the tearoom where subtle Lakeland watercolours were foils to one black and white print. The viewer looked down through the shadowed walls of a chasm to the sunlit floor of a dale.

  ‘That’s the quarry!’ Miss Pink exclaimed. ‘I love the contrast in the lighting.’

  ‘I said she’s good.’

  Miss Pink continued to stare at the print. ‘I’m going up there.’

  ‘But they searched –’

  ‘They didn’t have the time to make a proper job of it. And look at that’ – indicating the picture – ‘good photographers are always going back to sensational subjects. With the mist evaporating yesterday afternoon the lighting effects would have been thrilling. I think she could have gone into the quarry.’