Miss Pink Investigates series Box Set Part Two Page 2

  ‘Not me, dear. I didn’t like him working himself into a rage though, for his own sake. We’ve got to make allowances. He’s a little selfish, like Norman says.’

  ‘But not senile.’ Rachel turned to her husband. ‘He just likes scenes. I don’t know how the party’s going to go. I bet he’s got something planned, something naughty. I mean, he is naughty, isn’t he, darling?’

  ‘We’ll cope,’ he said firmly. ‘After all, we’re all family. If we sense him building up to something, we can all gang up on him: a kind of flattening conspiracy.’

  She looked at him darkly. ‘Don’t kid yourself. You’ve not known him as long as I have. He’s got the telephone in his room; how do you know what he’s planned? And anyway, we won’t all be family at the party. Samuel’s all right, but there’s the new tenant at Captain’s Cottage and she’s not even what you’d call a close friend. He says he hasn’t seen her for seven years.’

  ‘She’s all to the good then. He told me he’d asked her to the party because it may be his last—typical! —and his last chance of talking about the Alps to someone who’s climbed them, so what they’ll do is get in a huddle in a corner and all we have to do is leave them to it, making sure there are no bottles in reach or he’ll get plastered.’

  ‘Suppose she’s an alcoholic?’ Iris put in.

  ‘Oh Iris!’ Rachel sparkled. ‘She’s frumpish and fat and she wears brown tweeds—’

  ‘In this heat!’ Norman was aghast.

  ‘She’ll wear a brown linen costume then, and she’s a J.P. and she writes for magazines—women’s weeklies, stuff like that.’

  ‘Nothing to say she’s not an alcoholic,’ Iris persisted.

  ‘A J.P.?’ Norman grinned. ‘You’re quite a cynic. Seriously, she sounds just right for the old man. And then there’s Samuel who’d be oil on any troubled waters, well: oily—hello, car coming.’

  ‘It sounds like Mum.’

  A big white Mercedes swept into the sunlit yard and stopped, punishing its springs. A woman with red hair that was a shade too red got out and came towards the windows carrying a package. ‘Hello darlings,’ she called. ‘How is he?’

  She didn’t wait for an answer and a moment later her steps could be heard in the passage. She appeared in the doorway, a darkly tanned woman in a cream trouser suit. Round her thin throat and wrists gold chains and bangles clashed elegantly with her movements. She gave her daughter a perfunctory peck on the cheek.

  ‘You look tired, sweetie; it’s this heat. Why don’t you two go down to the beach for a while? I’m sure Iris can manage on her own. How are you, Norman? How’s Roderick?’

  ‘Straining at the leash. Is that his present?’

  ‘The tripod for his new binoculars—yes. Rupert wouldn’t let me bring those; he said they’d fall off the seat, the way I drove. However. I’ll put this with the rest of the stuff in the drawing room, then I’ll go up.’

  ‘You stay down here until we’ve got him dressed,’ Rachel told her. ‘He’d hate you to see him in bed. Coming, Norman?’

  Doreen Bowen raised her eyebrows at their backs, then shrugged and turned to the housekeeper quietly assembling her equipment for baking.

  ‘You’ve got a lot on your hands today, Iris. How’s it going?’

  ‘We’re managing.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you doing anything else.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hold a job down long if I panicked when there was a bit of entertaining.’

  ‘No. You’re a good worker, I’ll say that for you. Can’t be much fun here all the same.’ Doreen looked round the old-fashioned kitchen with disparagement. ‘Getting paid regularly?’

  ‘I’m paid.’

  ‘It is my business.’ The cool gaze was designed to leave the other in no doubt concerning her own position in the household. ‘There’s no money here, you know.’

  ‘It’s quiet.’ Iris was phlegmatic. ‘The hotel was too much for me.’

  ‘So you said. The pay was good though.’

  ‘We’re both at the same time of life, Mrs Bowen; a hot hotel kitchen’s not my cup of tea in the season. I’m not over-paid here, but I’m my own boss and I can cope with your father-in-law.’

  ‘I’m sure you can. And he’s grown fond of you.’

  ‘That makes things run smoothly. No friction.’

  ‘A cushy billet.’

  ‘It’s a comfortable position well enough.’

  Doreen licked her lips. ‘Well, you’ll be keeping a close eye on him today; he can’t take much more excitement after the campaign. And his accident.’

  Iris opened the oven door and tested the temperature with her hand. ‘He’s still saying he was pushed.’

  ‘Everyone goes a little odd with age. Even middle age—with some. I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it, dear, but you’ve split a seam: under the arm. No, the left one.’

  ‘I’m putting on weight,’ Iris said ruefully.

  ‘You could do with a new dress, but I don’t suppose it matters, in the kitchen.’

  ‘Cooks don’t have much call to bother about their appearance.’

  ‘Quite. Not terribly hygienic though, is it?’ Doreen stared pointedly at a grease stain on the front of the brown dress. ‘Perhaps I could find you some old thing of mine—if you could get into it.’

  ‘Don’t trouble, Mrs Bowen; I’m a bit particular about the feel of stuff. This dress is silk.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  Doreen turned and sauntered out of the kitchen. Behind her the housekeeper switched on her transistor and measured flour into a pastry bowl. Her face was expressionless. Pop from Radio One filled the room while outside the wide windows the heat built up for another sweltering June day.

  Chapter Two

  Down in the village, in Captain’s Cottage, Melinda Pink, J.P., was starting to unpack on the first day of her holiday, if one discounted the travelling time. The journey from Cornwall to West Wales cannot be done comfortably in one day, and she had spent the night in Welshpool, breakfasting in her room on coffee and Health Food biscuits, and pushing on early this morning as the river mists started to dissolve in the sun.

  Before nine o’clock, and still ahead of the tourist traffic, she’d stopped on the last pass for the view. Ahead and below, the bulk of Wales fined down to a long arm flung out in the Celtic Sea. On its southerly coast there were sandy bays and small resorts, the bays diminishing in size and number towards the west, and each demarcated by peninsulas with headlands, and islands in the sea.

  Inland a pattern of fields was broken by isolated groups of spiky hills. Even at this hour the land was hazy and had the animate yet sluggish air of an animal drowsing away the morning with the knowledge that activity would be pointless, blasted by the heat.

  So Miss Pink thought, drinking coffee from her vacuum flask with all the windows open and the jacket of her safari suit sticking to her back. Blissfully she looked forward to the week’s rest: idling along the cliffs and watching birds where the closest she would come to stress would be vicarious fear at sight of a patrolling predator. A car passed in a stench of fumes. It was time to move on.

  She ran down through a village set on a shelf below the pass where the tar was already softening, and then she was among the patterned fields, and drystone walls gave way to high banks which appeared to be of earth, but where the soil had eroded, the basic structure was revealed in uniform rows of rounded stones. The tops of the banks were covered with wild flowers: pink and white and blue and lemon. No one had sprayed poison, no Council lengthman had been here with his sickle. There was a scent of honeysuckle and baking earth.

  The haze increased and out of it loomed the summits of Riffli’s range. She passed the last of the inland villages and now there were only scattered farmsteads bare and bright in a treeless landscape where, exposed to winter gales, nothing grew higher than the hawthorns, and they were distorted, their branches brown with faded blossom and all strained towards the east.

  Her junc
tion was marked by a shabby signpost. ABERSAINT, it said in scarcely legible print. No mileage was given; that was irrelevant. The lane dipped to a combe under the flank of the stony hills and there was nothing beyond Abersaint but the sea. The water was a molten expanse at the mouth of the valley, but the shore was hidden by woods which climbed the combe like a stippled pelt. On her right, through gateways to fields the size of paddocks and overgrown by bracken, she caught glimpses of a river glinting in its rocky bed.

  The combe narrowed to a ravine and the lane dived into a tunnel formed by massive sycamores. The aspect was south and the woods sheltered by the hills. Birdsong was loud in the chequered depths.

  She passed no house after she left the main road and, but for the rickety gates, she might have been in the wilderness. Even the lane had an air of mystery, its surface evidence of man’s passing but scarcely of his existence. And then, suddenly, the trees stopped and she emerged to a dazzle of sunlight and civilisation.

  The heart of Abersaint was a few cottages grouped on two sides of a square green which was suffering from the drought. On the left, set back a little, was a store which doubled as the Post Office. It was long and whitewashed under a slate roof. The door was open and on a rack outside was a collection of paperback books while the walls were hung with nets of coloured balls, columns of postcards and guidebooks, and a sheaf of plastic kites.

  Beyond the Post Office was a terraced row of single-storey cottages, their trim painted in varying pastel shades, their chimneys substantial but squat, and fronted by brilliant patches of gardens. Their windows were open, swimsuits and towels drying on the sills. These would be holiday cottages. Beyond them, in the far corner of the green, was a long house with three dormer windows and behind it a belfry showed at the end of a roof: the kind of belfry that is merely an open structure to hold the bell. Dark tombstones stood stark against the sea.

  Miss Pink stopped below the Post Office to get her bearings. She had come here once, many years ago, on a wet autumnal day with a gale so strong as to preclude bird-watching from high cliffs. She had returned up the combe to walk inland where it was safe. Now she looked round benignly, relishing an atmosphere reminiscent of childhood holidays.

  There was a fine double-arched bridge with the river a brawling stream above it but below broadening to a tidal basin where a number of boats, from dinghies to small yachts, were mirrored on a sheet like glass. Every mast supported a statuesque gull and, for a moment, nothing moved except the traveller stepping from her car and smoothing creases on her powerful thighs. Then a dark plump woman appeared at the door of the Post Office and approached, smiling diffidently.

  ‘Would you be Miss Pink, the lady that’s taken Captain’s Cottage? I’m Mrs Hughes, the postmistress. The key’s at the hotel. That’s the big place across the water.’

  Miss Pink thanked her and commented on the lovely weather.

  ‘Hot,’ Mrs Hughes qualified, ‘I’m glad to get out from them freezers. We need air-conditioning in that shop.’ She laughed, treating it as a joke, and for a few moments they exchanged platitudes on the need for rain and the problems of gardeners, while each assessed the other with the steady regard of ladies hailing from different villages. An inquisitive but basically good-natured body, Miss Pink thought as she returned to her car and drove across the bridge and along the quay to a tall white building on the edge of the strand.

  An angular receptionist with green eye shadow told her that Mr Bowen would be down with the key. She went back to her office and could be heard telephoning.

  Miss Pink peeped through doorways, discovering a comfortable bar and a television lounge, their windows fronting on the quay. There was thick carpeting, soft armchairs, heavy polished tables and bowls of flowers. She was admiring a framed chart in the hall when a man came down the stairs and introduced himself as Rupert Bowen.

  He was a stout fellow with a large nose but although he carried too much weight he looked as if he lived out of doors a good deal. His thinning hair was auburn against a brick-red skull, the forehead and fleshy cheeks roughened by exposure to the weather. He resembled a genial bloodhound and when he moved to the door with her she noted that he had the easy grace possessed by some stout men.

  He apologised for the absence of his wife who had gone to Riffli to pay her respects to old Roderick on his birthday. He would go up himself when Doreen returned to the hotel.

  ‘In that case,’ Miss Pink remarked, ‘I’ll postpone my own appearance until this evening. He won’t want a lot of excitement before his party.’

  ‘What my father wants and what he should have are at opposite poles.’ Rupert gave a throaty chuckle. ‘Here he’s been running the campaign against the Atomic Energy people for months. . . . You know about that?’

  ‘I followed it carefully.’

  ‘Wrote to your M.P., I hope?’

  ‘My own, and yours, and, of course, the Minister. I’ve an official standing too, as a director of Plas Mawr Adventure Centre.’

  ‘Of course. Prevailing winds and all that, what? Radioactive particles wafting over Snowdonia. Strontium 90 in the kids’ joints? We’ve all become experts on pollution since the campaign. I was saying: he organised that, and now he’s had this fall—’

  ‘I didn’t know. Was he hurt?’

  ‘Colours like a mackerel all down one side, but nothing broken, fortunately. Fell down the granary steps three nights ago.’

  ‘I am sorry. Does that mean the party’s postponed?’

  ‘He won’t hear of it. I suggested last night that we have a buffet in his room and he blew up! Called me a namby-pamby! “Right,” I said, “We’ll eat downstairs as arranged—” and left it hanging, implying, you know, that he should make a brief appearance. He said quietly—and if you know the old man, he’s never quiet unless he’s cooking something up—said in a rather pathetic tone that “that would be very nice”. He’s as cunning as a weasel.’

  ‘I have sat on committees with him,’ she said meaningly.

  ‘I know; that would be when you lived in Snowdonia. He gets worse with age. How do you like Cornwall?’

  ‘Pleasant, but too far from the hills.’

  ‘Ah, you climbers are all the same. Doing any climbing here?’

  ‘Not on the sea cliffs,’ she assured him firmly.

  ‘Thank God. They’re unclimbable. I take the guests in close to the Head to see the birds. It’s a frightening spot. Engine packed in once underneath them; calm sea and a full tide luckily, but when I’d got her going again and we were pottering along below, I took a closer look at them and reckoned that if we’d had to go ashore there wasn’t anywhere that we could have scaled them. Terrible place for a shipwreck. You’ll have to come out with us some time.’

  ‘That would be delightful.’ Her tone was lukewarm.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got a new engine now. Can’t take risks with the guests, you know.’

  They smiled. The receptionist appeared in the doorway. ‘Telephone, Mr Bowen.’

  ‘I mustn’t keep you,’ Miss Pink said.

  ‘That’s all right. Look, there’s your cottage.’ He pointed. ‘Across the river beyond the church. We’ve stocked the fridge and if there’s anything you need, let us know. You’re having your main meal here, except tonight, aren’t you? This is the front door key. The back door opens on the terrace and the key for that’s in the lock. There’s a note about switches and things on the wall beside the fridge. The immersion heater’s on for a bath.’

  ‘Really,’ Miss Pink beamed, ‘You’ve been most accommodating.’

  ‘No trouble, dear lady, none at all.’

  ‘And when you go to Riffli, please give your father my regards and tell him I’m looking forward to this evening.’

  She drove back along the quay, nosed through the square where, on the seaward side, the tar was drifted with sand, and turning through the gap, stopped outside a gate bearing a neat board: “Captain’s Cottage”. Crimson fuchsia hung over the wall and through the gate there w
as a glimpse of a roof on a lower level. The lane was narrow and she remembered tardily that Rupert Bowen had forgotten to tell her where to leave the car.

  She walked down the length of the garden wall. It abutted against the gable-end of the long cottage facing up the green. On the other side of the lane were two modern garages with up-and-over doors, both of which were closed. She was pondering these when a voice said: ‘Can I help you?’

  A thickset man who could be in his mid-forties was smiling from the doorway of the long house. He wore neat blue jeans and a navy shirt.

  ‘You must be Miss Pink. I’m Samuel Honey. The top one’s your garage. The key’s in the house. Let me help you unload the car.’

  He insisted on seeing her into the cottage, talking all the time, delighted to be of assistance. He took her bags to the best bedroom which fronted on the sea; the other, he pointed out, looked over the graveyard. He opened the fridge to reveal a crammed interior, showed her the immersion heater switch, the window that stuck and how to ease it open, and lastly, unlocked the kitchen door and displayed the terrace: flagged, with an iron table and chairs, and another fuchsia hedge that ensured privacy from people on the sand twenty feet below. In the corner was a small gate: her personal way to the beach. There was a second at the bottom of the steps which was kept padlocked. She asked him to stay for a cup of tea.

  They sat on the terrace drinking Lapsang Souchong and he told her that the house had been built in the eighteenth century by a sea captain who had made his fortune in the slave trade. Honey, himself, had lived next door for five years after being invalided out of the R.A.F. ‘Spinal compression,’ he explained: ‘Ejection seats—whoomph!’

  ‘Welsh winters must be quite a trial. Backs are always happier in a dry climate.’

  ‘Ah, Malta!’ He sighed. ‘But the cost of living. . . . And Roderick’s so feudal: strips the visitors for all they’re worth, and charges his friends a peppercorn rent. And I’ve got ties here. . . .’ A curious expression creased his eyes, passed, and he stretched his legs extravagantly. ‘I understand you’re joining us for the party tonight. You’ll enjoy it.’ He realised she had caught a note of doubt in this and he qualified it: ‘We—that is, the company are a mixed bag. I don’t know if you’ve met the family?’