Snare (23 page)

‘Kenya?' she repeated, subsiding in an easy chair. ‘What's this?'

Flora blinked at the interruption, even Beatrice looked a trifle disconcerted. Miss Pink realised that she could have drunk too much Tio Pepe; it was unusual for her to force herself on others but then, she thought, it is a party and one circulates at parties. Beatrice was saying, ‘Flora was suggesting I go abroad for the winter. We were discussing possibilities, such as Kenya. I've always wanted to see big game. Have you been on safari, Melinda?' Although taken aback, Miss Pink forced herself to concentrate. ‘Not as such. I've seen puma and grizzlies in the States, of course. Why don't you go? It would be just the thing; get away from this awful climate.'

‘Distance myself from the climate of violence?' Beatrice suggested.

‘That too. But why not? You have no pets, and the garden can take care of itself at this time of year. Kenya's relatively cheap.'

‘There speaks the career woman! Flora takes the same view – and that's the heiress talking. Oh yes, you are, my dear –' as the girl shifted impatiently – ‘Do you know the cost of a safari, Melinda? Two thousand pounds! I've made enquiries.'

‘Sell something,' Miss Pink suggested.

Beatrice looked at her sternly and Flora said, ‘Lateral thinking's the answer. Consider the situation from a different angle.'

‘Such as?' Beatrice asked with interest.

‘Look at it this way: the Highlands are uncongenial at this time of year.' She grinned. ‘Right now they're actually unsafe, particularly for people on their own.'

‘Your contemporaries call that going over the top.'

‘I'm only thinking of your welfare.'

‘I'm sure you are.' Beatrice patted the girl's hand. She looked at Miss Pink. ‘Two thousand pounds isn't a lot to raise when you consider all your options,' she admitted. ‘Would you come with me?'

Flora stood up. ‘Mum's making signals. I'm probably needed in the kitchen. We'll get rid of the fuzz and then we'll eat.'

‘Fuzz,' Beatrice repeated when she'd gone. ‘How do they think of these words?'

Pagan, noticing movement on the part of his hosts, collected Anne and Esme and left, his flock under his wing. Behind him a flash of hysterical amusement subsided and during the subsequent meal people played raggedly with the new hypotheses – the significance of the streaker, Hamish's homosexuality – and allowed them to drop. Dinner was a subdued affair and the evening was not protracted. After coffee in the drawing room, the guests pleaded fatigue and took their leave.

‘I'm falling asleep,' Beatrice said, collapsing in the car.

Miss Pink, recognising that this was not the moment for serious matters, made light conversation. ‘We must talk about Kenya tomorrow. Are there other countries one might consider – less commercialised perhaps?'

‘Possibly.'

‘Why the sudden interest in badgers? Surely there must be a dozen species claiming precedence in Africa?'

‘Who's interested in badgers?'

‘Why, you. You were talking to Flora about them.'

After a few moments Beatrice asked, ‘is your hearing quite all it should be?'

‘I have excellent hearing.' There was a pause. ‘The hearing in one ear is slightly inferior to the other.'

‘So is mine. It's not always easy to locate sound. You heard someone make a remark and it seemed to come from me.'

Miss Pink drove to Feartag, but declined the offer of a nightcap. They were both exhausted. A good night's sleep, they said, and they would meet in the morning. Beatrice promised to bolt her front door as soon as she was inside, and Miss Pink drove back to her little cottage, parked on the grass verge and went indoors.

She was so tired that she could hardly face the thought of reading in bed, but knew that if she didn't follow her nightly custom she would not unwind. Sighing heavily, she put a saucepan of milk on the stove and, ten minutes later, went upstairs with a cup of cocoa and the latest Tony Hillerman.

Usually she read a few pages while she drank the cocoa, and one more page afterwards. Then words started to blur, she would mark her place, remove the cardigan that protected her from the frosty air and put out the light.

Tonight was different. She had finished the cocoa and started on that last ritual page when, very distantly, she heard a familiar sound – although at first it was only the subconscious mind that was aware of it. The sound continued rhythmic, persistent, and she became aware of other factors – constriction, cold, a flood of light. She opened her eyes resentfully. The bedside light glared and she was lolling sideways on her pillows, still wearing her cardigan, Hillerman open on the quilt. Downstairs the telephone was ringing; it was one o'clock.

She went down the stairs carefully, knowing the dangers of haste in the small hours. She lifted the phone.

‘Melinda? It's Beatrice. Can you come? I've shot him. The intruder. I heard him downstairs and I came down and – it must have been the glass I heard – he broke it: the glass pane in the french window – you know those windows –'

‘Is he dead?' Miss Pink asked roughly.

‘Oh. Oh, I hope not. I don't like to go near –'

‘Stay there. If he moves, shoot him in the legs. I'll be with you in a moment.'

She grabbed her car keys and, in dressing gown and slippers, drove like a fury to Feartag, pulling up with a long skid on the gravel before the front door. Beatrice was on the step, holding a rifle.

‘He hasn't moved,' she said. ‘He's in the sitting room.'

Miss Pink took the rifle and went along the passage. The lights were on in the sitting room; one french window was open and sprawled on its face on the floor was a dark figure.

Miss Pink dropped to her knees and felt for a pulse in the neck. ‘Help me get this thing off his head; it must be interfering with his breathing, if he's alive. No, don't turn him on his back, just free –' She stopped talking. They had peeled the black ski mask over the head and Flora's blank eyes stared along the jewelled carpet.

‘How could the girl be so
silly
– on this night of all nights?' The question was not rhetorical; across the kitchen table Beatrice pleaded for an answer. Miss Pink looked away: at the window, the stove, the brandy bottle between them. ‘Everyone knew about Robert's guns,' Beatrice persisted. ‘What could have possessed her?'

‘Death wish?' hazarded Miss Pink. ‘A compulsion towards self-destruction, or just a craving for high risks?'

‘She was always taking risks.'

‘The guns made it supremely exciting.'

‘She didn't come here
because
I had the guns.'

‘Pagan is going to ask why –' There was a pounding at the front door. ‘Talk of the devil –' She left Beatrice and admitted the police herself. She gestured to the sitting room, ‘It's there.'

‘Where's Miss Swan?' Pagan asked, ‘In the kitchen.'

He went along the passage, followed by Steer. She rejoined Beatrice. ‘Have you any idea why Flora should come here?' she asked.

‘None.' It was curt, as if Beatrice refused to consider a motive. She went on, ‘Masked too, and gloved. Did you see those great thick gloves?'

‘For breaking windows.'

Beatrice stared at the table. ‘Unsuitable for autumn wear.'

Miss Pink said sharply, ‘I'll put the kettle on again. There'll be a run on your tea and coffee tonight – this morning rather. I'd go back to bed if I were you, after Pagan has spoken to us. I'll stay, of course.'

‘Are you suggesting I'd be able to sleep?'

‘The body's at rest even if it's only lying down.' She winced at her own unfortunate wording.

Pagan loomed in the doorway, Steer behind him. ‘Good morning, ma'am.'

‘Morning?' Beatrice repeated stupidly.

‘A nasty shock for you.' He looked at Miss Pink, who asked them to sit down. They pulled out chairs and all sat at the scrubbed wooden table like actors in a Christie play: the ladies in their warm dressing-gowns, Steer correctly dressed except for the absence of a tie, Pagan with his pyjama sleeves showing below the cuffs of his jacket.

‘Did you move the body?' he asked.

‘Only to get the mask off,' Miss Pink told him, ‘and to free the airway. I wasn't sure, you see ... I'd already seen the exit wound –
a
wound, I mean, in the back – no, a tear – but even with the dark anorak there was so much blood ...' She was gabbling.

‘Quite.' Pagan turned back to Beatrice. ‘Do you feel up to telling us what happened?' he asked gently.

After a while she said, ‘I never thought I'd have to use it, you know. I locked and bolted everywhere so carefully, and then I thought how ridiculous all these precautions were; he had only to break a window and one would be at his mercy, as they say. I realised that I was totally helpless; that we all were – except yourselves. Presumably you're armed? You'd told us to stay indoors, bolt the doors, secure the windows, but you knew all along that there wasn't any security for us. I was very angry.' She looked at him steadily, then at Steer. No one was taking notes.

‘I can see why you'd be angry, ma'am,' Pagan said.

‘It would never have happened when my brother was alive,' Beatrice continued. ‘I asked myself what he would have done – although no one would have dared to approach this house knowing Robert was inside. A man of great courage, Inspector; he was the Arctic explorer, Robert Swan. I'm sorry, I'm rambling. My brother would have slept with a loaded gun beside him, as he did abroad when dangerous predators were about. So I loaded his Winchester and put it by my bed. That made me feel much more secure.'

‘It would,' Pagan said. ‘What time would that be?'

‘When?'

‘When you went to bed.'

‘The first time was shortly after Miss Pink brought me home, and that would have been about ten o'clock. But I couldn't sleep and it must have been about half an hour later that I got up and unlocked the gun cabinet. Even then it wasn't easy to get to sleep, but I must have done so eventually because I was wakened by something – I don't know what – and I was wide awake immediately. After a while, I picked up the rifle and went to the top of the stairs. I stayed there, listening, but I couldn't hear anything. All the windows were closed, so the river was scarcely audible. Then I heard the glass break – quite loud really. The noise came from the sitting room. Suddenly I was angry again. I didn't think of myself, only that this monster – as I thought – was about to destroy
my
property. For some reason, I thought of petrol bombs. I was quite convinced that a bottle had been thrown into the sitting room, or would be thrown through the broken window.' She made a helpless gesture. ‘Old people get very attached to their possessions, Inspector, more so than they are to their own bodies perhaps. So I came downstairs in a rage, prepared to shoot as soon as I saw him. By the time I reached the sitting room he was inside and silhouetted against the glow of the street light. There's one on the bridge; it's only a faint glow but my eyes were accustomed to the dark by then. I fired straight at him. Had I thought about it, I might have aimed for the legs, but you don't think in a situation like that. I'd heard the glass break and here was the person responsible. And there was a murderer in the village.' She spread her hands. ‘That's all.' Suddenly her face changed, became fiercely intense. ‘But why Flora?' she demanded. ‘Why?'

* * *

‘There has to be a connection between her and Hamish,' Miss Pink said.

Six hours later, Feartag was in a quiet state of siege. While Beatrice and Miss Pink slept, or at least retired to rooms upstairs, various authorities had dealt with the body, finally removing it along with the carpet. The Press had been chivvied away from the drive, the gates closed and Knox stationed outside them in a police car guarding the property while he himself was in clear view of most people in the street, including other police officers. Miss Pink had discovered his presence when she got up to make a pot of coffee and glimpsed the car on the other side of the gates. From her angle, it looked as if it were blocking the exit from Feartag as much as protecting the occupants from curiosity seekers.

They breakfasted in the kitchen, but it wasn't until Beatrice was on her second cup of coffee and Miss Pink had assured her that, except for the missing window pane, all evidence of the night's events had been removed – not until then did she refer to the most astonishing aspect: a criminal connection between Flora and Hamish.

‘They dressed similarly,' Beatrice agreed. ‘At least when they broke into houses. What else is there to prove a connection?'

‘There's not much proof of anything in this business,' Miss Pink said with unwonted vehemence. She had been thinking that there had been three violent deaths and the only one where the killer was known had been an accident. ‘There were connections,' she went on. ‘Hamish's telephone call to Flora – and since last night, I suspect that the reason for that call was much more important than to ask her for money.'

‘He made it after he burned down Campbell's cottage.'

‘And what effect would that information have on her? It would depend on why he set fire to the place. Was it to destroy his prints or to destroy Campbell? He – or they – wanted Campbell dead, because he was killed the following night. Why wasn't he killed the same night?'

‘Because Hamish wasn't strong enough to kill a grown man.'

‘What made him stronger the second night?'

‘He'd acquired a gun then. His father has a shotgun.'

‘Campbell wasn't shot.'

‘You can use the threat of a gun to control a victim while you engineer his murder in some other way, a way that can't be traced back to you.'