by Gwen Moffat
‘Who is it? Come on in.’ Sinatra was cut off as he started again.
She was turning meat in a bowl, spooning liquid over small joints. ‘Rabbit,’ she said coldly, seeing his interest. ‘I’m marinading it.’ Her attitude was one of barely suppressed hostility and she didn’t ask him to sit down.
He indicated the stereo. ‘Your husband doesn’t object to music when he’s working?’
‘He likes it himself as background, but he’s away right now.’
‘When do you expect him back?’
‘I don’t keep tabs on him, Inspector.’
He should have anticipated this; a glorious day: an innocent man would be on the hill. And a guilty one could be on the run. ‘So,’ he announced, forcing a light note, ‘when you’ve finished there I’ll pick your brains instead.’
‘Oh yes? Sit down.’ It was grudging and no refreshment was offered.
He asked to use the bathroom, determined to find out if she was lying. She showed no surprise at the request and he found every door open on the upstairs landing, every room empty. Blamire wasn’t in the house.
In the kitchen she sat facing the passage and the open front door. Nothing in that, but her position gave the impression of watchfulness. As he allowed himself a brief moment of silence he was wondering what kind of accomplice she would make. That masculine cast to the face might be echoed in mental – and physical – strength. Combine that with cunning …
‘What was it you wanted to know?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure that your husband’s been entirely frank with us.’
‘About what?’
‘The business of the forged letter: the salmonella hoax.’
Her eyebrows went up. She said nothing but then he hadn’t asked a question.
‘Could Isa use a computer?’ he asked.
She gave a small gasp of amusement. ‘Hardly. She was a bit stressed in that department.’
‘What department is that?’
‘Operating a computer, thinking up the content of that letter.’
‘It’s something you could have done yourself?’
‘I could, but why should I?’
‘If Eleanor had annoyed you?’
‘Possibly, but I wouldn’t get a kick out of that kind of retaliation. It’s petty.’
‘How would you retaliate?’
‘If someone had annoyed me I’d have a blazing row with them or’ – she sparkled and he was struck by the transformation of slightly heavy features into those of an attractive woman – ‘or I’d put them in a book: get my own back that way. I write.’
He refused to be diverted. ‘If you didn’t forge the letter and Isa wasn’t capable of it –’ He stopped.
‘He’ll tell you all about it when he comes home. I can’t speak for him.’
‘He’s admitted it to you?’
‘Not exactly; he’s a bit childish like that; he thinks that if he doesn’t actually admit something, then he can deny any future accusation.’
‘He was quite specific with us; he said Isa forged the letter.’
‘No, he said he didn’t know what she was doing on the computer. It was rather more than a hint without actually accusing her.’
‘I see.’ And he did. Hadn’t the fellow hinted that his own wife could have killed Isa? ‘What other hints has he dropped?’ he asked.
‘About what?’
‘About Isa for a start.’
‘Well, he said she was promiscuous, which was predictable; it got him off the hook, letting me know she was no more than a passing –’ A shadow darkened the passage and she stood up. ‘I have another visitor,’ she said, so calmly that Gibson guessed she’d been expecting this. Sewell came in, escorted by the collie.
‘Did he get out again?’ Jean was fussing. ‘I’m going to have to find that gap and plug it. Thank God he doesn’t chase sheep. Sit down. I’ll make some coffee.’
‘Have they taken it?’ Gibson asked.
Sewell glanced at Jean’s back. ‘Yes.’
‘And he didn’t use a phone?’
‘No.’ Sewell was mystified. This in front of the woman?
She turned from the stove to reach for mugs. She placed sugar and biscuits on the table. ‘Help yourself, the biscuits are hazelnut and date.’
‘We’ve impounded Paxton’s Land Rover,’ Gibson told her.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It’ll be examined by Forensics to see if there are any traces.’ She looked puzzled. ‘What were you doing yesterday week?’ he asked.
Her jaw dropped. She looked from one to the other, startled, wryly amused, sobering as she saw that they were waiting for an answer. ‘I was here,’ she said slowly. ‘All day. Why?’
‘How can you be so certain?’
‘We don’t entertain much. I’d remember if we’d gone out or had people here. I can’t say exactly what I was doing but it’ll be in the diary. Everything’s recorded.’
‘Why is that?’
‘You don’t garden, do you? How would you know when you’d sown seed, how heavy the crop was –’
‘You were gardening all day?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you. It’s a full-time job. I don’t write till it’s dark.’
‘And your husband can confirm that you were here that Sunday?’
‘Oh, my God, you think I was up to something! What happened?’ She grinned in the face of their silence. ‘No, he can’t, Inspector; no one can. I was alone all day – except for Whisk here and he’s not talking. Martin was on the hill.’
‘On the hill?’ Gibson repeated, as if he’d never heard the term before.
‘He was fell-walking – not for fun, he was working out a route for safari trips he’s going to run when my dad retires and we take over Sleylands.’
‘So that day he was out in a Land Rover –’
‘No, I said: he was on foot. We have a van but it’s not four-wheel-drive. So he has to walk, like he’s doing today. I don’t know what time he’ll be back but he won’t have gone far because he didn’t take the van.’
‘Sunday?’ Gemma said. ‘I haven’t the faintest. Miss Pink was here – Oh, that Sunday! How can I remember over a week ago? I’d have been out on my bike: Jollybeard, Ashgill, Sunder, you name it.’
‘With Dwayne Paxton?’
They were in the garden at Borrans, Walter hovering unhappily, having taken the day off work. ‘You don’t have to talk to them, Gemma,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ She stared at him and turned back to Sewell. ‘It’s not as if I’ve done anything criminal.’ She was contemptuous.
‘Did you see Dwayne on your travels?’
She shrugged. ‘Probably.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. At the Lamb perhaps.’
‘You don’t go in the Lamb!’ Walter was horrified.
‘People sit outside. One sees them as one goes past. It’s what he does: sits at a table half-naked, showing off his pecs.’ She stared pointedly at Sewell’s chest.
‘Were you at Blind Keld?’ He was harsh.
‘Maybe.’ She caught her brother’s expression. ‘I was helping him build up the garden wall there,’ she said defiantly. ‘Anything criminal about that?’
‘That Sunday?’ Sewell pressed.
‘I tell you, I don’t know! I was often there.’ She glared at both of them. ‘Dwayne was my friend, and that’s it!’
‘There was no camera and no binoculars.’ Misella addressed Miss Pink; she had no time for police in any shape or form and ignored Rosie. ‘If he’d have found them he’d have told me, wouldn’t you, son?’
Bobby, subdued and sullen, glowered and muttered. Misella pounced. ‘What were that? Speak up if you got summat to say.’
‘It’s not fair!’ The lower lip was trembling.
‘Nothing ever is,’ Miss Pink said. ‘But if you come up to Ashgill I’ll give you another cap. It’s a bit worn and it smells of horses. I found it on the Bozeman Trail when we were bringing cattle do
wn off the open range before the snows came.’ She took in Bobby’s saucer eyes, seeing that, if he didn’t believe a word of it, he liked the imagery. ‘You can have that one,’ she assured him. ‘You deserve it for finding the other one.’
‘I didna find the camera,’ he insisted. ‘Nor them binoclers.’
‘I know you didn’t.’
‘You like kids,’ Rosie said later. They had walked up to Ashgill and Bobby had been sent home with a cap embroidered with a rider on a bucking bronco and the legend ‘Rattlesnake Hills Rodeo’ on the front.
‘Not really. Treat them like animals, that’s the answer.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Oh yes: treat them all the same; animals are people too.’
‘I see. Like Bobby and Cooper and the Blamires’ collie – and me? You treat us all the same?’
‘There are differences. I’m tired. We’re both tired. Can I give you a meal before you start back to town?’
‘I’d better call Gibson and tell him I’m back. He’ll be expecting a report.’
She went out to her car. Miss Pink put the kettle on and poured herself a lager. Cooper entered the kitchen and a few steps behind him came Sewell. ‘Just in time.’ She stifled a sigh. ‘Will you have a lager?’
He sighed. ‘I’d love one, but I may be driving later.’
‘One lager’s not going to hurt. Where will you be driving?’ She brought a can from the fridge and handed him a glass.
‘We’re waiting for Blamire to come home. You didn’t see him?’ He hadn’t answered the question.
‘No, we’ve been on the hill all day.’ Didn’t he remember they’d gone to Gowk Pass? ‘Where’s Mr Gibson?’ she asked.
‘He’s back at the station. I saw Rosie on the phone. Isn’t she speaking to him?’
‘I suppose so.’ The words were mundane and uninformative but behind the exchange there was a powerful sense of urgency. ‘A biscuit?’ she suggested, rather too loudly. ‘Or would you prefer a sandwich? You don’t know how long you’ll be.’ She blinked. ‘Without food,’ she added.
‘I’m fine, ma’am. We’ve asked the lady at Jollybeard to provide us with a meal.’
‘ “We”?’
‘There’s a number of us.’
Rosie appeared in the doorway. ‘We’ve to go to Bailrigg.’ She was addressing Miss Pink.
‘Have a coffee before you leave, and something to eat.’
‘We have to go now.’ Rosie looked embarrassed. ‘He wants to see you too.’
‘Me? Why does Gibson want me?’
Rosie gestured limply. She was exhausted. ‘We were both up there: on the fell.’
‘Hill,’ Miss Pink said absently, ‘on the hill.’ She looked at Sewell. ‘Where’s Blamire?’
‘According to his wife, he’s on the hill too, ma’am.’
‘That’s what she says.’ Gibson waited while a constable served them with coffee in styrofoam cups. ‘And she could believe it herself, but I’ve got a feeling he’s not coming back. Now what did you discover on the pass?’
They managed to give a factual account of their day, Rosie appealing to the expert for the kind of details only a mountain person would register, such as distances and the state of the ground. It was a bleak account and he asked, as they’d known he would, what significance they attached to any of it. At first tentatively, then more firmly, Miss Pink outlined her theory. ‘From everything I’ve heard about Phoebe her reaction would be predictable once she’d come on the ruined orchids. Perhaps she saw the Land Rover’s number through the binoculars but then she overtook it and discovered that Blamire was the driver. She admired the man for his rescue work but that wouldn’t have stopped her speaking her mind about the orchids. In fact the more disappointed she was in him, the greater the anger. And if he lost his temper as a result things could have deteriorated.’ She paused, she had all his attention. ‘Although,’ she went on, less certainly, ‘it’s difficult to imagine how matters could have escalated to such an extent that he could run her down – if he did. A sudden flare of rage perhaps – as in road rage?’
They waited for his comments: no evidence, no proof.
‘He had Isa with him,’ he said, astonishing them. ‘And if Phoebe – already angry as you suggest – if she questioned what he was doing there with his neighbour’s wife, there could have been hell to pay. Martin had a lot at stake: he was expecting to take over Sleylands from his father-in-law, but not if Jean kicked him out.’
‘I’d forgotten that,’ Miss Pink said, adding quietly, ‘but where’s the proof?’
‘We have the Land Rover.’ Gibson explained about that. ‘They’re going over it for traces and tomorrow Forensics will be in Phoebe’s cottage looking for matches: hair, fibres, fingerprints. You’ll know the drill.’
‘You were right,’ Rosie said, suddenly fierce. ‘The man’s done a runner; he’ll have walked over the hills and hitched down the A6. He could be in Manchester by now, even London.’
‘He can’t get away,’ Gibson said firmly. ‘All the airports and ferry terminals will be watched. Besides, he has no money. We’ll catch him.’
Miss Pink was silent, remembering the ones who’d got away.
Chapter Seventeen
Blamire didn’t come back that night and the police, waiting discreetly in unmarked cars, were kept awake by Eleanor’s coffee until, in the small hours, she went to bed, leaving them with full flasks.
Phoebe’s cottage had been sealed, even to the cat-flap, and Cooper spent the night coiled against Miss Pink’s spine, which was mutual comfort in the cold and dewy dawn.
Rosie appeared at breakfast time, fresh and clean, relieved to find Cooper on hand. It was too soon for a proper report on Dwayne’s Land Rover but the lab people had found coarse red hairs, almost certainly animal and very likely feline. She regarded Cooper with satisfaction: ‘We’re going to need samples.’
‘He wanders,’ Miss Pink pointed out. ‘He could have climbed inside the Land Rover on his own initiative. It’s the kind of thing defence counsel would pick on.’
‘There will be other traces: her hair, fibres from her clothes. And Blamire hasn’t come back. That’s the clincher.’
But Miss Pink had slept on her own theory. ‘He could have murdered Isa, but you have only Dwayne’s word for it that Blamire took the ‘Rover on Sunday. And Dwayne has no alibi for Phoebe’s death.’
There she was wrong. Gemma, unwontedly scrupulous, had consulted her diary and discovered that she’d been at Blind Keld for part of Sunday morning, and she remembered that Blamire’s old van and Isa’s MG were there, as was Dwayne of course, but not his Land Rover. They’d worked on the garden wall, she told Rosie artlessly. Rosie didn’t believe her but Gemma couldn’t be intimidated into retracting any more than she would retract her alibi for Walter on Wednesday night, when she maintained she’d been up and down all night and had heard him in his room.
‘They’re still sniffing about round Walter,’ Gemma protested to Miss Pink. ‘They’ve got their murderer now, or rather they will have him if he doesn’t slip through the net.’
‘I imagine Rosie was more concerned with Dwayne and the alibi you give him.’ Miss Pink’s tone was loaded.
‘Well, he’s cleared now, but what I had on Martin could be fatal. I told Rosie …’
Miss Pink found Rosie talking to the occupants of a police car and drew her away. ‘I’ve been thinking about times,’ she said. ‘Gemma told you that Blamire went to Borrans at least twice after Phoebe’s murder, is that right?’ Rosie nodded. ‘The first time,’ Miss Pink went on, ‘was when he left the team on Blaze Fell. He’d seen me and he thought I was taking too much interest in the quarry. He didn’t like that and he came down to the village to warn Isa, to impress on her how essential it was to keep quiet.’
‘I suppose that’s possible.’
‘But he was far more emphatic the second time,’ Miss Pink insisted. ‘He didn’t trust Isa. It was after he learned that she
’d been working in the Lamb that he went straight to Borrans and had the row with her that Gemma overheard, or overheard part of. Blamire was terrified that if Isa was mixing with media people she could reveal that she knew more about Phoebe’s death than an innocent person could know. I think Blamire told her to stop going to the pub. She objected but she was close to the end of her tether and then, at some point, she learned that Phoebe had drowned, that she hadn’t been dead when they pushed her down the slope. She could face disposing of a body but not murder. She would contact Blamire, perhaps suggesting they make a run for it, and they drove to Waterhouses.’
‘There’s a gap in the timing here,’ Rosie pointed out. ‘She was gone by the time Walter came home that evening. There were hours of daylight left. You can’t tell me they drove in an open-top sports car, in daylight, to Waterhouses.’
‘She must have picked him up outside the village and they went – anywhere, a barn or a wood. She didn’t go to Elfhow because Jean was there. She could have phoned him and perhaps, terrified of a charge of murder, she was drinking already. That would give him the idea of how to deal with her. When they met he brought more whisky. All he had to do was keep her drunk until dark or – more likely – he strangled her and then waited until dark before driving to Waterhouses, pushing down the wall and sending the car into the river.’
Rosie pondered. ‘At least part of it could be true; it’s a useful tool anyway, it could be used to break him down, make him confess when we catch up with him.’
That afternoon Jean avoided the watchers in the lane by climbing the garden wall in order to visit Miss Pink. She looked drawn but defiant and, on the face of it, unconcerned that her husband had been out all night. Miss Pink pointed out that when a mountaineer doesn’t come home, the first thought is that he’s come to grief on the hill. Jean said that Martin could take care of himself.
‘Then what do you think has happened to him?’ Miss Pink asked. Jean spread her hands. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘That won’t do. If he were on the hill your reaction would be to call in the rescue team. You haven’t, so logic says he isn’t on the hill.’
‘He could be with a woman.’