A Short Time to Live (Miss Pink Book 4) Read online

  ‘Won’t you take your coat off?’ he asked, then frowned at himself. Peta sat down, still staring at him.

  ‘I rang earlier. She said she’d tell you. I should have known she wouldn’t.’

  Noble asked helplessly of Lucy, ‘What ought we to do?’

  She stood up, collecting the plates. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’

  He picked up a dish and followed her out to the kitchen. ‘What shall we do?’ he whispered urgently. ‘Is she drunk? What did she ring about?’

  ‘She was hysterical—like she is now. A brandy might calm her down, then I’ll get rid of her. She’s out to make trouble.’

  ‘Shall I ring Miles to come and fetch her?’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, darling.’

  She looked up. The girl stood in the doorway, and now there was feeling in her eyes. She regarded Lucy malevolently.

  ‘I know you’re talking about me—’

  ‘We could hardly talk in front of you,’ Lucy said reasonably. She advanced on the other with the coffee tray. ‘You’ll stay and have coffee with us before you go?’

  Peta stood aside and followed her back to the table. Lucy took a bottle of brandy from the cupboard and poured a generous measure for the girl.

  ‘Sit down; you look cold. Did you walk here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Peta tasted the brandy and then drank half of it. Noble gave her a cigarette. He lit it and she leaned back, sighing and exhaling smoke. Her eyes were calmer, too calm.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come.’ No one responded to that. ‘Although,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘brandy and a smoke couldn’t make me relax in the flat; I know: I tried it. I flipped. It’s all right now, at this moment, even with you there—’ She looked across the table at Lucy whose expression was coolly attentive as she poured coffee. Noble sat down carefully, halfway between the two women. ‘But when I get back to the flat,’ Peta went on, ‘and start waiting for the telephone to ring, I can’t stand it—and I shan’t sleep even with the pills. . . .’ She looked round the room. ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ she told Noble. ‘You’ve got it made; you’re all so sure of yourselves, even your wife.’

  ‘My wife!’

  Her lip curled. ‘Oh, we’ve spoken—occasionally. She doesn’t care about anything, does she? An alcoholic, money to burn, and hard as nails. What’s she got to lose? Why should she be afraid of me?’

  ‘Why should anyone?’ Lucy asked.

  The girl looked at her with hatred. ‘Someone sent me a letter.’

  ‘Oh.’ Noble stiffened and turned to Lucy. ‘D’you think—?’ She shook her head at him. ‘What did it say?’ he asked, turning back.

  A shutter came down over Peta’s eyes and she drank the rest of her brandy. ‘It’s not just the letter,’ she said, not answering the question. ‘There are telephone calls.’ She looked at him deliberately. ‘The caller never says anything, just holds the phone and after a while he puts it down.’ She shuddered.

  ‘There were telephone calls before,’ Noble said sternly, ‘weren’t there?’

  ‘Not really.’ She was apathetic. ‘I imagined them.’ Her head sank into her shoulders again, like a rabbit waiting for the stoat.

  ‘Has anything ever been said on the telephone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing happens?’

  ‘Just breathing.’ She sighed loudly. ‘No, maybe I made that up, about the breathing. I can’t be sure. Silence,’ she went on. ‘He never speaks. It’s driving me crazy.’ She put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. Noble and Lucy exchanged glances. He indicated the brandy and she shrugged. He half-filled the girl’s glass, spilling some.

  ‘And these anonymous letters?’ he pressed, ‘what did they say?’

  Peta raised her head and stared at him, then looked meaningly at the other woman.

  ‘Have you brought them with you?’ Noble asked.

  ‘I only had one. I lost it.’

  ‘You lost it.’ His tone was heavy with irony.

  ‘I put it in my handbag and it disappeared.’

  He opened his mouth to expostulate but thought better of it. ‘Have you told Miles?’

  ‘You’re mad!’

  Suddenly he had a revelation. ‘Have you told Quentin?’

  She had been pale when she entered, had recovered some colour sitting close to the fire, but now the blood drained out of her face and her eyes were stark with something like fear.

  ‘But I think he’s just the person,’ Noble protested. ‘He’s your doctor, and a good one; he knows your history—I mean, we all have a history, don’t we? How about going to Quentin first thing tomorrow, eh?’ The tone was avuncular.

  There was a long silence during which Peta looked round the room and avoided Lucy’s gaze. Once or twice she opened her mouth as if to say something but didn’t.

  ‘You have to think of yourself,’ Lucy told her.

  The girl stood up and said spitefully, ‘I’m sorry I intruded. Don’t get up; I’ll let myself out.’

  Noble was still struggling to his feet as she opened the door. When they heard the latch click into place he turned to Lucy in horror. ‘She’s round the bend!’ She nodded unhappily. ‘What’s she after? Attention, sympathy?’

  ‘Or you?’ But she wasn’t joking; she was preoccupied.

  ‘Could be,’ he agreed without self-consciousness, and shivered. ‘Quentin will deal with her. After all, he had her before—treated her, I mean, when she had that first breakdown. He’ll send her back to the same specialist. Wonder why she’s gone like this again? You know, if she’s made it all up—I mean, we know the phone calls are imaginary, so the anonymous letter—? There was the one you had. . . . It looks as if she’s writing them, doesn’t it? You don’t lose anonymous letters; you keep them or you burn them, but they’re far too valuable—or incriminating—to lose.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Such a pretty girl too; how she’s spoilt herself. I blame Mossop for a lot of it. She hasn’t a penny to spend on herself; has to go to him on her knees for the price of a pair of tights.’

  Lucy said coldly, ‘Well, if she goes on her knees. . . . But that slit-sided number she had on at my party, the night she did the Mata Hari act with you, cost all of fifty quid, even made in Hong Kong.’

  ‘Oh yes, she told me it cost a bomb, but he paid for it. He likes to see her well dressed, says it’s an advertisement for the place.’ Lucy stood up and started to stack the coffee tray. ‘Of course, they should have had children,’ he went on. ‘Makes all the difference.’ He beamed vacuously at his brandy. ‘I’ll have a word with Quentin tomorrow. He should know about this because she may not go to him unless she’s pushed, and I feel a certain respons . . .’ He checked and threw a startled glance towards the kitchen, then got to his feet heavily. ‘It’s a pity,’ he said, ‘a great pity.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘I had a rough night,’ Jackson Wren told Rumney, ‘I couldn’t eat me breakfast.’

  ‘You can eat it when we get back,’ Rumney said sourly. ‘We’re late starting as it is.’

  They were taking some sheep down to winter on the doctor’s meadows. At this hour of the morning there was no sun in the bottom and the fields were white with frost. The sky held a pallid glare but it was hardly bright enough to warrant Jackson Wren’s dark glasses. He was a large brawny fellow with fair hair cut short, a deep tan and a scrubby moustache. He could have been a warrant officer from a good foot regiment. He was dressed in breeches, navy socks with white snowflakes, lightweight boots and an immense scarlet padded jacket. He walked with a lurch, his hands in his pockets and his head low.

  Beside him Zeke Rumney had the same hunched stoop though his came not from any studied imitation of hard men but from carelessness. All Arabella’s insistence on good posture passed over her uncle’s head. Seen in the daylight Rumney was a powerful man in his sixties, more than six feet tall, taller than Wren who was half his age. Wisps of grey hair stuck out from u
nder his battered cap but his eyebrows were dark and heavy, the eyes a blue from which most of the colour had gone. Despite the bitterness of this November morning he wore an ancient jersey under bib-and-brace overalls, and a decrepit jacket with the elbows gone, of a shade between earth and dung. It had no buttons and it had been made for him when he was up at Oxford. Now he eyed the other’s duvet jacket thoughtfully.

  Wren was immediately aware of the interest. ‘Same as they wear on Everest,’ he said casually, extending an arm. ‘Thirty-five quid.’

  ‘It looks like it. You could have bought a pony for that.’

  ‘I’ve got no cold-weather gear. For rescues, I mean.’

  Rumney turned back to his sheep: hoggs, and young gimmers which wouldn’t be breeding this year. He thought that the animals had gone back a bit; there was no grass left for them on the tops—but they’d pick up on Quentin Bright’s meadows.

  He was accompanied by four dogs: three Border collies and a brindled lurcher. The oldest collie had a grizzled muzzle and a limp but its face was brilliant with concentration. The other two were siblings: young and so eager that they had to keep circling tightly to avoid over-running the sheep.

  ‘I don’t know why you needed me,’ Wren remarked with forced joviality. ‘You could have had t’dogs going ahead to warn traffic.’

  ‘The post comes early,’ Rumney reminded him. ‘I’m not having my best dogs killed by yon daft driver belting round Storms’ bend—and hitting a few of our fat lambs into t’bargain.’

  ‘Fat lambs! Reckon them what’s missing got blown away if these is anything to go by.’

  Rumney turned cold eyes on him. ‘Who told you Ah were missing sheep?’

  Wren slashed at a bramble with his stick and the lurcher jumped backwards. ‘Someone,’ he said airily, the dark glasses giving nothing away. ‘You’re missing some, aren’t you?’

  Rumney’s jaw set hard but he said nothing further at that moment. Ahead of the flock the bottom of a drive showed on the right of the lane, with a track climbing the hill among mature and well-spaced trees.

  He sent the old dog forward. The sheep blocked the way and the collie jumped up and ran lightly over their backs. The animals trotted on unconcerned, bearing leftwards a little, giving the gateway a respectable berth where the dog stood with straddled forelegs and a fierce grin.

  ‘Time you got in front,’ Rumney said. ‘Post van tears round this bend like a hell’s—’

  ‘He’s got to slow down to turn in Storms’ drive.’

  ‘What’s up then?’ Rumney was staring ahead.

  The foremost sheep which, after the entrance to the drive, had spread back to fill the lane, were shouldering leftwards again, then trying to turn back.

  ‘There’s no car coming,’ Wren protested.

  The rear half of the flock, pushed by dogs and men, crowded the front ranks and these, unable to force a way back, were burrowing and pushing sideways so that the pattern, fluid as water, became concave, then broke as they raced away up the left side of the lane, brushing the hedge and leaping high in the air as they passed one point.

  ‘Sod it,’ Wren exclaimed, uncomprehending.

  ‘There must be something in the ditch over there,’ Rumney said, advancing. ‘There is; it’s an old coat.’

  Three of the dogs watched his face to see what they were meant to do about the sheep but the fourth, receiving no orders, darted to the ditch and the dark green coat (which the men saw now was not old at all), and they heard his claws scrabble as he braked. Then his head and tail went down and he yelped and ran: back up the lane towards Sandale House.

  Rumney flicked a finger at the remaining dogs and they tore down the lane to turn the sheep. He stooped to the coat but where his original intention had been to pick it up, it was now obvious that he couldn’t. There was someone inside it, fitting the ditch too well, one trousered leg visible from the knee to the foot in a red suède shoe and the leg in too strained a position for the owner to be asleep. The coat hid the head but they realised that what had looked like a swathe of bright straw was hair.

  ‘She’s been hit by a car,’ Wren was saying. He sounded terrified. ‘I saw her last night: up t’lane a ways; her was weaving all over t’road. That’s t’second in this spot. Is she all right?’

  The sheep pattered back to halt in a heaving barrier across the lane.

  ‘Watch they don’t get by,’ Rumney muttered.

  He knelt on one knee and gently eased down the needle-cord collar. Behind him Wren gasped. The profile was unmarked, the lips parted and the eyes wide but the hair on top of the skull was matted with blood. Rumney covered the head again and got to his feet. Wren was on his knees on the grass verge.

  ‘We’ve got to get these gimmers off t’road,’ Rumney said. ‘Look sharp, Jackson, and go an’ open t’gate.’

  The other shook his head dumbly, still bowed over the grass retching. Rumney’s lips set, he looked beyond the sheep to his dogs and called back the old collie. Dog and man changed places neatly and the farmer lumbered ahead of the flock round the almost right-angled corner they called Storms’ bend. A hundred yards ahead there was a gate into the meadows on the left. Beyond the gate the road was clear and he slowed to a walk.

  The dogs held the sheep between them while he opened the gate, then the flock streamed through and Wren appeared round the bend his lurch less obvious, his face grey.

  ‘I should have had me breakfast,’ he complained.

  ‘Go and get t’doctor. I’ll stay down here.’

  ‘What’ll I tell ’im?’

  ‘Just tell him there’s a body in t’ditch.’

  ‘But it’s Peta Mossop!’

  ‘Give over waffling, lad, and get cracking; we haven’t got all day.’

  Wren swallowed and started down the lane, passing the foot of the drive leading to High Hollins where the Nobles lived. Rumney and the dogs went back round Storms’ bend.

  He wouldn’t have long to wait; the doctor’s house was less than a quarter of a mile past Noble’s. It was possible that, being a Saturday morning, Quentin wouldn’t be at home, but then he remembered how early they were in bringing the sheep down and he pulled a half-hunter from an inside pocket. It was just on nine o’clock.

  The dogs hung back, and out of regard for them he stopped before he came to the body. The sun had not yet reached this side of the valley although the brackeny slopes opposite were brilliant in the light. It was bitterly cold. He looked across the water-meadows between him and the gorge they called the Throat and tried to give his attention to sheep, and the wisdom of putting animals down here at the back-end. Reflecting on the possibility of flooding was a constructive activity. Waiting by a dead body served no purpose. If it had been a sheep now, he’d have gone home for a spade, or taken an organ for the vet to analyse, or sent for the vet.

  He heard a car changing up fast behind him and, recognising the sound of the doctor’s engine, he started walking again, calling the dogs to heel. Bright’s Maxi overtook him on the bend with two people up, and stopped. As the doctor got out, Rumney called, ‘Let Jackson take the car on or you’ll cause another accident, parking here.’

  Bright turned and spoke to Wren who moved over to the driver’s seat and drove on.

  ‘Well,’ the doctor said by way of greeting. ‘What the hell!’

  He stooped to the body and lifted the coat collar. At sight of the wound he drew in his breath with an audible hiss. He touched the skin of the forehead and, putting a hand on the jaw, turned it easily towards him. An arc of false eyelashes detached itself from an eyelid and dropped in the ditch. The left cheek was reddened as if bruised, but not extensively.

  ‘A car, d’you think?’ Rumney asked in a neutral tone.

  ‘What else?’ The tone was bitter and defeated. ‘They come round this bend like bats out of hell. It’s not three months since the last one. The Council will have to take that corner off now—and two people have to be killed before they’ll make a move.’


  ‘Plenty of drivers have managed to get round here without killing anyone.’

  ‘But two people in three months!’

  Rumney nodded. ‘And they never caught the other one, but that was in summer time.’ He looked down. ‘It’s no good speculating on who did this: a local, or someone who’d had too much up at Storms, or a visitor. . . . Tourists in November? I wonder what she was doing down on the road. You’ll have to get on to the police.’

  ‘And there’s Mossop to be told.’

  ‘I’ll come with you; it’s better for two of us to be there when he’s told, just in case . . .’

  Bright covered the ghastly head and they started to walk up the lane. The dogs, who had been sitting a few yards towards Sandale in a patch of sun, got to their feet with alacrity and trotted with them.

  Quentin Bright strode jerkily and fast, not waiting for the other. He was a thin man with receding hair and passionate eyes. He worked like a horse, involved himself too much with his patients, was often ill to the point of physical debility but was saved from ultimate collapse by his nice dull managing wife. Arriving now at his car, he stared at Jackson Wren as though wondering what to do with him.

  It was Rumney who gave the orders. ‘Go back and wait there till the police come, and make sure no one interferes with it.’

  ‘Why the police?’ Wren asked anxiously, getting out of the car.

  In the act of easing into the passenger seat Rumney raised his big head and bared his teeth. ‘What time did tha see her in t’road?’

  ‘Late on; she were straying all over t’lane. I nearly—’ He stopped and the open mouth and opaque lenses were three black holes in his face.

  Rumney shrugged. ‘The police will sort it out.’

  ‘When did he see her?’ Bright asked as they drove up the Storms track.

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘Do you think he hit her? Was he drunk?’

  ‘He’d been drinking but if he’d hit her he wouldn’t have told me he’d seen her; he’s not that much of a fool. When you consider, he’s not normally nearly so silly as he’s behaving now; it’s shock—and that’s in his favour. No, he didn’t hit her—I wouldn’t think.’