by Mary Stewart
‘He’s not back either,’ said Hubert Hay.
There was a little silence. I sensed discomfort and uneasiness growing.
‘Neither he is,’ said Alma Corrigan, rather stupidly. ‘Well, I suppose—’
‘Where’s your husband?’ asked Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson.
The question sounded abrupt, but there was nothing in it to make Alma Corrigan flush scarlet, as she did. ‘He – he went out walking.’
She was so obviously embarrassed that everybody else began to feel embarrassed too, without knowing the reason. Alastair said quickly: ‘We all went out after lunch to walk up to the ridge for the view over Loch Slapin. I brought Mrs. Corrigan back but Hart went further.’
‘Oh, you went that way? Did you see the women, then, on Blaven?’ asked Colonel Cowdray-Simpson.
‘Not a sign. We saw someone – I believe it was Drury – in the distance, but not another living soul.’
‘I wasn’t on Blaven,’ said Nicholas, ‘so I didn’t see them either.’
Roderick Grant put down his coffee cup and got to his feet. ‘It’s only eight-thirty, and I don’t personally think we need to worry yet, but they certainly should have got back by now. I think I’ll have a word with Bill. They may have told him if they were going to be late.’
He went quickly into the hall, where I could see him leaning over the office counter, in earnest conversation with Major Persimmon.
‘Sensible chap,’ said Colonel Cowdray-Simpson. ‘No point in starting a fuss.’
But Marcia was not to be stopped so easily. ‘This is too ghastly, isn’t it? What d’you suppose could have happened to them?’
‘Plenty of things can happen in the Cuillin,’ said Alma Corrigan, rather tartly, ‘and altogether too many things have been happening lately.’
‘That affair?’ said Alastair. ‘That can hardly have any connection—’
‘I’m not talking about the murder,’ said Alma brutally. I heard Marcia give a little gasp. ‘I’m talking about climbing accidents.’ She looked round the circle of faces, her fine eyes serious and a little frightened. ‘Do you realize how many people have been killed by the Cuillin, this year alone?’
Her use of the preposition gave the sentence an oddly macabre twist, and I saw Marcia glance over her shoulder to where the great hills towered against the massed clouds of evening. ‘Is it – a lot?’ She sounded a little awe-stricken.
‘Four,’ said Alma Corrigan, and added, almost absently, ‘so far . . .’
I felt the little cold caress of fear along the back of my neck, and was grateful for the Colonel’s brisk interposition. ‘Well,’ he said, practically, ‘if people will go wandering out in these mountains with only the haziest ideas about how to climb them, they must expect accidents. In almost every case these mishaps are brought about by ignorance or carelessness, and I’m sure we can acquit both Beagle and Miss Bradford on both those grounds. We’re making an unnecessary fuss, and I think we’d better stop talking about it and frightening ourselves.’
He turned to Alastair with some remark about tomorrow’s sport, and in a few minutes tension seemed to be relieved, and people were chatting generally.
I turned to Marcia Maling. ‘Where did you go today?’
‘To Portree, my dear’ – her face lit up with the familiar warm gamine charm – ‘along the most ghastly roads, with poor dear Fergus snarling like a tom-cat all the way because he’d just washed the car!’
‘I thought there was an excellent road from Broad-ford?’
‘Oh, there is. But it goes snaking about with the most ghastly hairpin bends and cliffs and things—’
‘But, Marcia, the views—’
The views were dismissed with a wave of her cigarette. ‘It was divine, of course,’ she said quickly, ‘only it was raining. And then Portree on a Sunday is the utter end. But I got some marvellous tweed there on Friday; I’ll show it to you tonight. It’s a sort of misty purple, and quite gorgeous.’
But here Roderick came back into the lounge, and there was a lull in the conversation as eyes turned towards him.
‘Bill Persimmon says there’s no earthly reason to worry,’ he said reassuringly, but, as he crossed the room towards me, I thought I saw uneasiness in the glance he cast at the sky outside.
Someone switched on the radio, and the lugubrious weather-report insinuated itself into the conversation. Colonel Cowdray-Simpson moved nearer to listen.
‘Waiting for news of Everest,’ said Roderick to me with a grin. ‘That, with the notable absence of fish in the rivers, seems to be the Colonel’s main preoccupation.’
‘He’s rather sweet,’ I said. ‘I’d hate him to be disappointed, but, you know, I have the oddest feeling about Everest . . . I believe I’d be almost sorry to see it climbed.’
‘Sorry?’ He looked at me curiously. ‘Why on earth?’
I laughed. ‘Not really, I suppose. But I’d always imagined it as the last inviolate spot that arrogant man hadn’t smeared himself over, sort of remote and white and unattainable. Immaculate, that’s the word I want. I somehow think it would be a pity to see man’s foot marks in the snow.’
‘I didn’t know you were a poet, Gianetta,’ said Nicholas’ voice above me, lazily mocking. He had come over to the window just behind my chair.
I felt myself flushing, and Roderick looked a little annoyed.
‘Why should you? I didn’t know you knew Miss Brooke.’
His voice was curt. Nicholas eyed him for a moment.
‘Why should you?’ he echoed, unpleasantly, and turned away to the window. ‘And here, if I’m not mistaken, is our friend Beagle at last.’
‘Alone?’ asked Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson.
‘Yes . . . that’s odd.’
‘What’s odd?’ asked Alastair, joining him.
‘He’s coming down the glen from Loch na Creitheach. I thought he went up Sgurr nan Gillean,’ said Nicholas thoughtfully. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to come down the west side of the glen and over the stepping-stones?’
‘There’s nothing in it,’ said Alastair. ‘That’s a shorter way, certainly, but the going’s terrible, while there’s a path down the Blaven side of Creitheach.’
Roderick said: ‘He may have seen the two women, if he’s come along the glen. It’s still light enough to see someone on the south ridge.’
But Beagle, when he came in, denied that he had seen anyone. And the worried look that came over his face when he heard that the two girls were still out, brought back with a rush the apprehensions that we had been trying to dismiss. He went to change and eat a late meal, and we all sat, talking in fits and starts, and trying not to look out of the window too often, for another half-hour of steadily mounting anxiety.
By half-past nine it was pretty dark. Rain-clouds had massed in great indigo banks right across the sky, shutting out any speck of residual light that might linger in the west. Wisps of wet mist scudded underneath the higher cloud, and the fingers of the gusty wind clawed at the windows, flinging rain in spasmodic handfuls against the glass. By now everybody, I think, was convinced that something had happened to the two women, and it was almost a relief when, at nine-thirty exactly, Bill Persimmon came into the lounge and said, without preamble:
‘I think we’d better go out and look for them. Mr. Corrigan has just come in with Dougal, and they say there’s still no sign of them coming down the glen.’
The men were on their feet.
‘You’re sure they went up Blaven?’
Persimmon said: ‘Certain. They—’
‘They might have changed their minds,’ said Nicholas.
Bill Persimmon looked at him, queerly, I thought. He said, slowly: ‘They went to Blaven, all right. They were seen on it.’
‘Seen?’ said Roderick. ‘When? Whereabouts?’
‘At the Sputan Dhu,’ said Persimmon dryly.
Ronald Beagle started forward. ‘At the – but my God, man, that’s no place for a beginner! The Black Spout! T
hat’s a devilish tricky climb. Are you sure, Persimmon?’
We all stared at Bill Persimmon, while our imagined fears gradually assumed a horrible reality.
‘Who saw them?’ asked Nicholas quickly.
Bill looked at him again. ‘Dougal Macrae. He saw them making for the gully at about four o’clock. All three of them.’
My throat was suddenly dry. I heard myself say in a strange voice: ‘All three of them?’
He nodded, and his eyes went round the group of faces where a new sort of fear was beginning to dawn. He said: ‘Dougal says there were three. And . . . everybody else is back. Odd, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps they had a guide,’ said Nicholas.
‘They set out without one,’ said Roderick.
Bill Persimmon backed to the swing door, thrusting it open with his shoulder. ‘We’ll discuss it after we’ve found them and brought them in,’ he said. ‘The ladies would be well advised to stay indoors. Will the men be ready in five minutes? Come along to the kitchen then, and my wife’ll have sandwiches and coffee ready.’
I got up. ‘Can’t we help there?’
‘That would be very good of you, ma’am. I expect she’d be glad of a hand.’
Then he pushed through the door with the other men after him.
When, at length, they had all gone out into the gusty dark, I went slowly back to the lounge. I was thinking, not very coherently, about Dougal Macrae’s story. Three climbers? Three?
There could be no possible connection, of course – but I found myself wondering what Jamesy Farlane looked like.
Alma Corrigan had gone to bed, and Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson was upstairs with her mother-in-law. Marcia and I were alone again in the lounge. The curtains had been drawn to shut out the storm, but the rain was hurtling against the windows in fistfuls, and the wind sounded vicious. Behind its spasmodic bursts of violence droned the steady sound of the sea.
Marcia shivered, and stretched her legs to the fire. Her eyes looked big and scared.
‘Isn’t this too utterly ghastly?’ she said, and through the outworn extravagance of the phrase I could hear the strain plucking at her throat.
‘I’m afraid it does look as if something had happened,’ I said. ‘Look, I brought us both a drink, Marcia.’
‘Oh, you angel.’ She took the glass and drank a generous mouthful. ‘My God, I needed that!’ She leaned forward in her chair. The big eyes seemed bigger than ever. ‘Janet, do you believe there is a hoodoo on that mountain?’
I gave a laugh that was probably not very convincing. ‘No, of course not. They just went climbing in too hard a place and got stuck. It’s always happening. They’ll turn up all right.’
‘But – the other climber?’
‘Whoever it was,’ I said robustly, ‘it certainly wasn’t a ghost.’
She gave a little sigh. ‘Well, the quicker they’re found the sooner to sleep. I hope to heaven nothing’s happened to that Roberta child. She’s rather sweet – pathetic, in a way. I wonder—’
‘It was the other one I found pathetic,’ I said, and then realized with a shock that I had spoken in the past tense.
But Marcia had not noticed. ‘That ghastly Bradford woman? But my dear, she’s impossible! Not that I’d want anything to happen to her, but really—!’
‘She must be a very unhappy woman,’ I said, ‘to be like that. She must know she’s making everybody dislike her, and yet some devil inside her drives her perpetually to antagonize everyone she meets.’
‘Frustrated,’ said Marcia cruelly, ‘and how. She’s in love with Roderick Grant.’
I set down my glass with a click, and spoke almost angrily. ‘Marcia! That’s absurd!’
She giggled. She looked like a very pretty cat. ‘It is not. Haven’t you seen the way she looks at him?’
I said sharply: ‘Don’t talk nonsense. She was abominably rude to him, both last night and this morning. I heard her.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Marcia, on a rising note of mockery. ‘All the same, you watch the way she looks at him. It’s just about as noticeable as the way he doesn’t look at her – just looks down his nose in that charming well-bred way he has, and then jumps at the chance of taking you for a walk! If I were you, darling, I’d keep out of her range.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ I said again, feeling horribly uncomfortable. I got up. ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’
Marcia uncurled herself, and drained her glass. ‘I’ll come too. I’m certainly not going to sit down here alone. I imagine we’ll hear them coming back, and’ll find out what’s happened then.’
She linked her arm in mine as we went up the stairs, and grinned at me. ‘Annoyed with me?’
‘Of course not. Why should I be?’
‘Honey, on account of I say things I oughtn’t. And that reminds me – I’m afraid I gave you away tonight. I didn’t mean to.’
‘Gave me away? What d’you mean?’
‘I let out to Roderick Grant that you and Nicky had been divorced. I forget how it came up – it was during the shemozzle tonight, when you were in the kitchen. I’m sorry, truly I am.’
‘It’s all right.’ Nicky, I thought. Nicky. I’ll bet she spells it Nikki . . .
‘I hope it doesn’t matter,’ said Marcia.
I laughed. ‘Why should it? I don’t suppose he’ll tell anyone else.’
‘Oh, well . . .’ We had reached the stair-head. ‘That’s all right, then. Come and see my tweed before you go to bed.’
I followed her to her room. The window at the end of the passage showed, tonight, only a square of roaring grey against which our reflections glimmered, distorted and pale. Marcia pushed her door open and went in, groping for the light-switch.
‘Just a sec., I’ll see—’ The light went on.
I heard her gasp. She was standing as if frozen, her back to me, her hands up to her throat.
Then she screamed, a high, tearing scream.
For a paralysed, horrified moment I couldn’t move. My body turned to ice and I stood there, without breath.
Then she screamed again, and whirled round to face me, one hand flung out in a gesture of terror, the other clutching her throat.
I moved then. I jumped forward and seized the hand. I said: ‘Marcia, for God’s sake, what is it?’
Her breath came roughly, in gasps. ‘The murderer. Oh my God, the murderer . . .’
‘Marcia, there’s no one here.’
She was shaking violently. She grabbed my arm and held it tightly. She pointed to the bed, her lips shaking so much that she couldn’t speak coherently.
I stared down at the bed, while the slow gooseflesh pricked up my spine.
Lying on the coverlet was a doll, the kind of frivolous doll in a flounced skirt that the Marcias of this world love to have sprawling about on divans and sofas among the satin cushions. I had seen dozens of them – flaxen-headed, blue-eyed, pink and white and silken.
But this one was different.
It was lying flat on its back on the bed, with its legs straight out and its hands crossed on its breast. The contents of an ashtray had been scattered over it, and a great red gash gleamed across its neck, cutting its throat from ear to ear.
9
Sputan Dhu
They found no trace, that night, of either Marion Bradford or Roberta.
The night had been black and wild, and, after several fruitless and exhausting hours of climbing and shouting in the blustering darkness, the searchers had straggled home in the early hours of day-light, to snatch food and a little sleep before setting out, haggard-eyed and weary, for a further search. Bill Persimmon had telephoned for the local rescue team, and, at about nine the next morning, a force some twenty strong set out once again for what must now certainly be reckoned the scene of an accident.
This time, I went with them. Even if I couldn’t rock-climb, I would at least provide another pair of eyes, and I could help to cover some of the vast areas of scree and rough heather bordering the Black Spout.
The morning – I remembered with vague surprise that it was the eve of Coronation Day – had broken grey and forbidding. The wind still lurched among the cairns and heather-braes with inconsequent violence, and the frequent showers of rain were arrow-sharp and heavy. We were all muffled to the eyes, and trudged our way up the sodden glen with heads bent to meet the vicious stabbing of the rain.
It was a little better as we came under the shelter of the hill where Roderick and I had talked two nights ago, but, as we struggled on to the crest of it, the wind met us again in force. The rain-drops drove like nails before it, and I turned my back to it for a moment’s respite. The storm-gust leaped past me, wrenching at my coat, and fled down the valley towards the sea.
The hotel looked far away and small and lonely, with, behind it, the sea-loch whitening under the racing feet of the wind. I saw a car move slowly away from the porch, and creep along the storm-lashed track to Strathaird. It was a big car, cream, with a black convertible top.
‘Marcia Maling’s car,’ said a voice at my elbow. It was Alma Corrigan, looking business-like in Burberry and scarlet scarf and enormous nailed boots. She looked also, I noticed, decidedly attractive, now that the wind had whipped red into her cheeks and a sparkle into her fine eyes. She added, with a touch of contempt, as we turned to make our way along the top of the spur: ‘I suppose it would be too much to expect her to come along as well but she needn’t have taken the chauffeur away with her. Every man we can get—’
‘She’s leaving,’ I said.
She checked in her stride. ‘Leaving? You mean going home?’
‘Yes. She’s going back to London. She told me so last night.’
‘But I thought she planned to stay a week at least! I suppose this affair, on top of the other business—’
‘I suppose so,’ I said, noncommittally. I was certainly not going to tell anyone the reason for Marcia’s sudden decision. Mrs. Persimmon knew, and Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson, but if Marcia’s hysterics had not disturbed Alma Corrigan the night before, so much the better. And I was more than ever certain that I, myself, was going home tomorrow. But since I had not, like Marcia, been, so to speak, warned away, I felt I could hardly go without finding out what had happened to Marion and Roberta.