Miss Pink Investigates series Box Set Part Two Page 4

  ‘Good gracious! For how long?’

  ‘I mean, just when he’s away for a few hours. He’s got a friend—’ the tone hardened, ‘—in the woods. A visiting . . . A kind of visitor. Not something we like to publicise actually.’ She was trying to sound adult and patronising but her voice cracked. ‘A—’ She hesitated. Miss Pink’s brows rose. The girl’s eyes were wide and her mouth twisted.

  ‘She’s a bloody whore!’

  Chapter Four

  A sweet child, but unruly.’ Samuel reversed the mincer and extracted a piece of bone. ‘Her grandfather calls her a tomboy. Curious word. What was she doing?’ Miss Pink had given him to understand that she’d met Rachel in the fields.

  ‘Looking at flowers.’

  ‘Yes?’ His kitten, sitting to attention on the fridge, parted tiny jaws in mute admonishment to him to get on with the job of preparing supper. ‘Manners,’ Samuel said absently and turned to Miss Pink. ‘Were you able to help her?’

  ‘I knew a few things that she didn’t, but she’s quite knowledgeable; self-taught, I suppose. Not always a good thing; mistakes get perpetuated.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘There’s no one more experienced to push you into the right channels.’

  He ran his tongue over his lips, his concentration riveted on mixing a spoonful of chicken with a few shreds of carrot.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ Miss Pink asked brutally.

  He threw her a furtive look. ‘Well—nineteen, you know; still virtually adolescent, isn’t it? And just married?’ His voice rose with each question as if he were testing it out on her. He tried another tack: ‘And the campaign against the nuclear power people—’ he was rallying, ‘—Lord! That would send anyone round the bend! The ultimate, isn’t it? Have you read On the Beach—the atomic cloud approaching New Zealand? I’ll lend it to you. Caithness! Supper—and don’t gobble. He’s sick when he gobbles. Come and have a sherry. I do love that caftan, dear; you look like one of those splendid ladies in a Somerset Maugham story.’

  He ushered her into his living room: a large light place extending the depth of the house, with wicker furniture and sisal matting, and Van Gogh’s ‘Ravine’ on an ivory wall. She watched his face as he poured the drinks. He was less ingenuous than he appeared. He was quite glamorous this evening, in a crisp parody of khaki drill with a cravat in printed silk: a smart outfit curiously at variance with the bluff face and innocent eyes. Innocent? How could they be with that furtive manner? It was obvious that he was dissimulating.

  ‘There was a boy rolling stones down the cliffs,’ she said, and for a moment those eyes were vulnerable before they emptied of expression and she was reminded of a reptile house and other eyes: behind strike-proof glass.

  ‘The idea is to frighten trippers to death.’

  ‘Since no one else was there,’ she lied, ‘he was trying to get me.’

  ‘Really.’ He exhaled slowly. ‘How far will he go? Did you catch him?’

  ‘No. I told Rachel about it. She didn’t seem all that surprised.’ She was interested to see that mention of Rachel in this context didn’t disturb him.

  ‘We all know Jakey’s rolling-stone trick.’ He was preoccupied but not wary. ‘All except Roderick. He’s too old to know . . . That’s what Rachel maintains, and Doreen. But someone has to come up with a way of dealing with Jakey Jones. He’s a monster in his own way.’

  ‘It’s disturbing. Is there no one who has any influence with him?’

  ‘Oddly enough, Rachel has. She’s not afraid of him, and he’s got some kind of respect for her. He’s scared of heights for one thing; he’ll never go on the cliffs, always stays at the top to drop his rocks, but Rachel trots all over those ghastly slopes; I’ve seen her.’

  ‘On the cliffs?’

  ‘Oh no! On the grass slopes—but they’re just as dangerous. I don’t like it.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Time we were moving.’

  Miss Pink put down her half-finished drink and picked up her handbag. He locked the cottage and they set out across the green carrying their presents. Hers was a picture of the Weisshorn, his a new pair of climbing breeches, he’d confided, copied from a pair taken from the old man’s wardrobe.

  Seated on the parapet of the bridge, two boys watched their approach, the one with fine, almost feminine features, the other plump and bovine, but the expressions of both blank and disturbing. Samuel said ‘Good evening, Ossie,’ but neither lad responded.

  Instead of turning left along the fish quay, they kept straight ahead, up the slope on a dusty track which climbed and then curved to contour the hill towards Riffli’s woods. They passed through a gate beside a cattle grid and Miss Pink, glancing back, saw that the two figures still sat immobile on the bridge, their faces turned to the hill. Samuel, too, looked back.

  ‘Is that Jakey Jones?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His hand trembled as he latched the gate. Miss Pink was well aware that violence bred violence, also that sometimes the current might be short-circuited. ‘Tell me something about the people I’m going to meet,’ she demanded as they turned to the track.

  He blinked and frowned, surfacing from some strange depths. ‘You know Roderick, and you’ve met Rachel. Rupert, her father, is just what he seems: no dark waters there; he enjoys playing mine host, particularly in the season when the pub’s crowded. He’s gregarious, not over-fond of hard work—demanding work, that is. He was some kind of oil executive but it wasn’t his scene. His wife’s a good business woman, a little—flamboyant—’ he glanced at her, ‘—rather prickly, the kind of person who’s good with the help but doesn’t get on all that well with other ladies—nearer her own station.’ His tone implied that she wasn’t meant to take this as a joke. ‘Of course, Rupert’s a charmer,’ he added as if in extenuation. ‘Then there’s Norman Kemp. Twenty-five . . .’ His eyes moved from the woods to the sea. ‘Attractive.’ There was a further pause then, smoothly: ‘Thick pale hair, reckless eyes set rather far apart, a long thin mouth, hard body; mad on power boats—’ his voice dropped, ‘—but no boat. Rachel only married him three months ago. Brought him home after the honeymoon and they’ve been at Riffli ever since.’

  ‘What’s his background?’

  He regarded her steadily. ‘He was managing a hotel in Scotland. They met when she was ski-ing at Aviemore and they were married within weeks. Rachel’s impulsive.’ The words hung in the air.

  ‘He must have ability,’ Miss Pink said, ‘to be a manager at twenty-five.’

  ‘Yes,’—flatly.

  ‘And what does he do here?’

  ‘He—looks after things. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but Rachel will come into the land, and the big house, when Roderick dies. It’s an open secret.’ He saw her surprise. ‘You see, her father’s not interested in the land. He’s found his niche at the pub. Roderick owns that too and it must be worth a bomb. Not nearly so much as the land and all the cottages, of course, but none of that can be realised. Rupert will inherit the hotel but all Rachel will get is liabilities. The rents don’t cover the outgoings. I warn you: don’t let Roderick get on to taxes!’

  ‘How much land is there?’

  ‘Upwards of two thousand acres. Probably worth a hundred thousand or so.’

  ‘Some people sell part to keep the bulk going,’ she murmured.

  ‘Not Roderick! He says the peninsula and the mountain—this high ground above us with the fort on top—have been one unit since his people came here and it’s going to stay that way. Did you know he traces his ancestry back to prehistoric times?’ He giggled. ‘But he’s got the features, you know: that long head and the prominent brow ridges and the big jaw. It’s in Rupert and Rachel too, less in Rupert.’

  ‘Ownership of land can excite intense passion.’

  He glanced at her sharply, saw that this was not ridicule and burst out: ‘The worst of it was: compulsory purchase!’

  ‘What! Oh, you mean when the site was required for a nuclear power
station. They could have forced him to sell.’

  ‘Exactly. No one dared to mention it except the Press. He told them that the site would be acquired over his dead body—and Rachel’s.’

  ‘What was her feeling about that?’

  ‘The same. To Rachel the Corn cromlech and the fort on Cam Goch are family. She and Roderick talk about the Old People as if they were next-door neighbours. It makes my scalp creep on a moonlit night when I walk home down this track.’ They had come to the woods. A baby rabbit ran a few paces and froze, sunlight in the shell-pink ears. ‘She said nothing to you on these lines?’ he pressed.

  ‘We were more concerned with flora and fauna.’

  There was silence for a while. The rabbit nipped into the undergrowth, the dust was soft under their feet. ‘Are you interested in wildlife, Mr Honey?’ she asked politely.

  ‘Samuel, please. Not the really wild life, dear; the kind you have to perch on the edge of a precipice to observe. I like to look at the birds but from a nice safe boat. I had my fill of thrills in the Air Force. I trot out to the headland occasionally but I approach it through the fields. Those grass slopes above the cliffs petrify me! If I see a sheep down there, I can’t bear to look, even though I’m on level ground at the top. All that space! And the wheeling birds! It gives me vertigo. This is my idea of Nature—’ he waved an arm at the trees and the white scuts twinkling through the bluebell leaves. ‘Baby rabbits: charming.’

  Masonry showed ahead and the open space of a yard, but he drew her aside and along a path under huge rhododendrons where the sun failed to penetrate. They emerged on a lawn strewn with daisies, and above them rose the façade of the house.

  It was built of local stone and was tall, appearing taller by virtue of its towering chimneys set at either end of the high roof. In places slates had slipped and now projected beyond the gutters. The windows were large, many-paned, and of a later date than the house which was probably sixteenth century. The woodwork would have been the better for a coat of paint, but the shabbiness was endearing. The arch of the main doorway was of moulded stone and the door was oak. It stood ajar.

  They stepped into a panelled hall and heard distant sounds of activity: music, the clatter of dishes, a burst of laughter. Glancing at a doorway on the left, Samuel called: ‘Are you in there, Roderick?’

  Miss Pink heard a familiar voice shout to them to come in. She entered the drawing room and was shocked to find her diminutive host, even smaller than she remembered him, engaged in a painful struggle to rise from a sofa. Hurrying forward, she took his hand, her greetings lost in his protests.

  ‘I can stand up! They haven’t finished me off yet!’ But he sank back and glared at her. ‘Never greeted a lady before stuck on me rump! By jove, but you’re a fine figure of a woman, Melinda, and that gown does yer justice.’ He leered at her. ‘Still single? Not married that lawyer feller, Roberts? Watcher doing standing there, Sam? Get me guest a drink.’

  ‘Miss Pink!’ Rachel hurried in, wearing floating blue chiffon which looked incongruous on her sturdy frame. ‘How lovely to see you. Drinks, Grandad?’

  ‘Time it came,’ he growled. ‘I’m gasping. Dammit, it’s me birthday! Know what they did, Mel? Locked the cellar door!’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to move from this room,’ Rachel protested. ‘How did you know the cellar door was locked?’

  ‘It’s me own cellar, isn’t it?’

  Samuel patted her bottom and pushed her out of the room. Suddenly he looked very happy. ‘We’ll bring the booze,’ he assured them, and followed. Miss Pink repeated her congratulations to her host.

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’ His voice sank. ‘You see me risen from me death bed.’

  ‘Don’t try to fool me, Roderick. You’ve had far worse falls in your time. How far was it?’

  ‘They’ve told you. Fifteen feet.’ He leaned towards her and whispered: ‘I was pushed!’

  She regarded him expectantly but without concern.

  ‘Not to say pushed,’ he amended. ‘Have they told you exactly what happened? No. They won’t have it. I’ll tell you. I was watching a pair of tawnies in the dusk. Nest box outside the granary window. Been watching every night since the young hatched. Everyone knew about me owls. Got too dark to see any more, came out, took a step and trod on a bloody great branch! Off I went; if I hadn’t gone sideways and down the steps, I’d have gone straight over the edge and landed on a pile of rocks. It would have meant a broken thigh at best. Done deliberately, Melinda; that branch was put there. There was no wind.’

  ‘Is there a tree near?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Was the branch rotten?’

  ‘A big one, Melinda. I’d have heard it come down. They’re saying me hearing’s not what it was. Dammit, a great branch like that! Why, I can hear the howlets cheeping in the nest box.’

  Miss Pink was silent.

  ‘It’s right up your street.’ The faded eyes gleamed slyly at her. ‘Any ideas?’

  There were only two things she could think of to say.

  ‘Have you any enemies?’

  ‘Dozens.’ He grinned fiercely.

  ‘Who stands to gain?’

  He was pulled up short. There was a swift moment of astonishment then—blankness, followed by simulated greed. ‘What yer brought for me, eh?’

  It was a credible imitation of senility. She glanced round the room where presents were stacked on flat surfaces. She rose and leaned her parcel against the panelling.

  ‘You have to wait to open them all together.’ She was deliberately maternal, paying him back. ‘No cheating.’

  They regarded each other carefully. She knew he was tempted to ask her to forget about the branch, to forget what he’d said, but there was a sound of people approaching and Samuel entered with champagne in a silver bucket. He was followed by a slim young man in a dark suit, cream shirt and a plain black tie.

  Roderick was introducing Norman Kemp when Rachel returned. Behind her came a man with grizzled hair and sideboards, wearing evening dress. No one paid him any attention. Miss Pink listened to Norman Kemp enthusing about the weather.

  Roderick had his eye on his presents. He caught her watching him and she knew he wasn’t thinking about presents. Norman drew up a chair without interrupting the easy flow of his conversation. Rachel subsided on a pouffe, the chiffon settling like coloured feathers about her feet. The stranger in evening dress crossed the room bearing a loaded tray and presented it stiffly. His face was wooden. ‘Thank you, Jones,’ Roderick said. Rachel watched Miss Pink. Norman was explaining how to get on a surf board.

  A woman in green and gold bustled into the room in a swirl of Chanel and tinkling bracelets. She was followed by Rupert Bowen.

  ‘Good evening, Doreen.’ Roderick made to rise but was restrained by his son’s wife who stooped gracefully and laid her cheek to his. He looked uncomfortable.

  The introductions over, the presents ceremony began, and Miss Pink moved so that they could be stacked on the sofa. The guests eddied, the attentive Jones circulated with the champagne, they drank Roderick’s health. Outside, beyond the shadowed lawn, two Scots pines framed an expanse of blue water where a white sail was almost stationary. The stump of the far headland was hazy in the evening light.

  Roderick opened Miss Pink’s gift first and held it on his knees to stare at it. For a moment he was speechless and his eyes were moist. Samuel had to hang it at once, taking down the Eiger which hung between the windows.

  ‘You’ve made the old gentleman very happy, madam.’ It was smooth and respectful but carried an air of patronage. She met the bright eyes of Jones as he passed on his way to the sideboard.

  A large woman in a white overall came to the door, glanced towards the sofa and retreated silently.

  ‘Who was that?’ Doreen asked. ‘Iris?’

  ‘A large woman in an overall.’

  ‘Iris MacNally, the housekeeper.’ Doreen took a step nearer. ‘She used to cook for us at the hotel but
she left after Easter; said she couldn’t face the season. Of course, she’s getting on.’

  ‘I see. Have you managed to replace her?’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got an excellent man now. Iris is a good cook but not quite at home in the kitchen. I imagine she thinks she should be a step higher on the ladder.’ Doreen smiled thinly and adjusted a curl with a jangle of bracelets. ‘With Jones pretending he’s the butler, his wife livid at being treated as the scullery maid, and Iris thinking she’s a cut above cooking, this kitchen must be like a zoo. Servants are a trial, aren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t have them,’ Miss Pink said pleasantly, ‘I have an excellent housekeeper. We work as a team.’

  ‘Really. Few people can afford them nowadays, of course, unless they’re in Roderick’s position.’

  The presents ceremony concluded, they crossed the hall to another panelled room, lit by wall-lights, with a refectory table and tall candles in branched silver sticks. Dinner was served by the deft and soft-footed Jones, obviously in his element and, observing his handling of the hock, Miss Pink found herself wondering what Jakey was up to at this moment.

  Through the salmon and the delicious ducklings which followed, Roderick drew her out on the activities of her adventure centre, and on the travels of her friend and co-director, Ted Roberts, now in the Pyrenees. From there they proceeded, metaphorically speaking, to the Alps: the Eiger, the Weisshorn, the Matterhorn, and all the time she knew that the old man’s heart wasn’t in this talk of snow and ice but much nearer home. She was unhappy. He really was worried about that branch on the granary steps. Her eyes followed Jones. Could his son be that bad?

  On their return to the drawing room Roderick sent for the kitchen staff. Rachel looked meaningly at Miss Pink. Mrs Jones was a tall bony person with haunted eyes who was obviously embarrassed by the company. On the other hand, Iris MacNally held herself with assurance as they drank their employer’s health. She had removed her overall and now, in a tight black frock, one could guess that not so long ago she would have had a good body; the kind of brawny, broad-hipped form that Fuseli drew. Her hair had been set for the occasion, her eyebrows were finely plucked and her mouth was a bright slash of lipstick. Black lace was strained over massive shoulders; it was a cocktail dress: a little worn, like the wearer. There was an air of the fading slattern about her, but one who knew her place.