Die Like a Dog (19 page)

‘She's gone mad,' Miss Pink said weakly. ‘Brothels?'

‘She's paranoid. By foreigners she means ourselves: us and the Evanses: incomers. Apparently that's how he used to talk to her. Now she imagines there was a conspiracy against us, centred on Maggie Seale. The fact that the girl's been here only a few days doesn't signify; as you say, she's irrational. And since the cottage that Joss Lloyd lives in belongs to the estate, Ellen has dreamed up this way of getting rid of both Lloyd and Seale: of evicting them on the grounds that it's being used as a brothel. Ellen says that Bart Banks and Dewi Owen go up there. She goes on like this all the time, with variations.'

‘Has she seen a doctor?'

‘She's always seeing the doctor: for her nerves.'

‘You ought to go away for a time.'

Gladys put down the tea pot with an air of finality.

‘You know, there are times when I feel that Heaven is no more than ten miles down the valley: at some place, any place, on the sea cliffs. Not a positive feeling, just negative – because Ellen wouldn't be there.'

‘Why don't you go?'

‘There are things to do here. You know how it is.'

‘Look,' Miss Pink said. ‘It's quite early; there are hours of daylight left. Shall we go for a drive and have dinner at The Brigantine? It will get us away for a few hours.'

‘How kind of you. You must forgive me if I don't seem wildly enthusiastic, but I do appreciate the gesture.'

‘It wasn't merely politeness. I'd like to drive down to the coast myself – and The Brigantine has a reputation for good food. May I use your telephone to book a table?'

In her time Miss Pink had been involved in a number of murders but she had not, despite her reputation among people like Pryce and Ted Roberts, solved them, although she had contributed to the solution. She was a fair judge of character, she thought, and of motives, not only concerning why people killed but what made them tick. The motive for Evans's murder was elimination – he knew too much; in the case of Judson it was sex. His murder was a
crime passionnel.

The term was a cliché; one envisaged an engaging lover, a beautiful woman, a jealous husband, a shot in the night and a wild flight across the moors. The uninvolved person would not have heard Ellen, constant as Chinese water torture, reminding her employer of something which her roses and ordinary people might be helping her to forget. An objective person wouldn't know that when Gladys was forced to identify her husband, the law had been waived and where the head should have been, there was a cloth; that Gladys had asked the reason for the cloth and been told. Pryce had said that the victims should not be forgotten, but as Miss Pink drove down the valley that hot afternoon she reflected that Gladys was as much a victim as Judson or Evans. More so; she was still alive.

For a time neither of them spoke. The windows were down, there was a pleasant breeze, they were part of the stream of traffic that drifts along the roads of national parks in high summer, aimless and slow, the occupants half asleep. Beside her Miss Pink could sense her passenger relaxing.

‘How much longer do you have at the Bridge?' Gladys asked.

‘I'm leaving tomorrow. I've been here a week.'

The words hung in the air. Miss Pink could think of nothing to say that would not be charged with innuendo. This time last week Judson had been alive, and Evans too, although it was unlikely that Gladys was much concerned about Evans. A week ago Seale had been about to hit Dinas. What an appropriate term, thought Miss Pink; metaphorically speaking, it might well have been Seale's impact on Judson that had precipitated matters – or had given a new twist to an old relationship.

‘How is Anna?' Gladys asked.

‘I haven't seen her today.'

‘And George Waring?'

What
was
George Waring? Crowded by the Press, uncertain of the effects of the publicity on his business, angry with Anna? Resigned?

‘He's taking it in his stride.'

‘He would. George is a steady man. Not a lot of feeling there but one can't have much affection for a commercial concern, surely. I mean, he cares only for the hotel – but he behaves correctly.'

‘Oh yes?' Miss Pink was puzzled but Gladys did not elucidate.

At five o'clock they reached the restaurant, parked the car and started a leisurely amble along the cliff path. This was turfy, level, and way back from the edge so that they had the best of both worlds: space without exposure.

The air was soft and radiant but after they had walked about a mile Gladys suggested that they sit down. Miss Pink thought the woman looked exhausted and wondered whether she'd done the right thing in suggesting this outing, then she remembered Ellen's mad monologue and felt that anything was preferable to that. Gladys confirmed the thought.

‘I wish I didn't have to go back.'

‘Don't you have a relative who would come and stay for a while?'

‘There are some cousins of Richard's, but it would be difficult. They'd ask questions.' She grimaced. ‘If I didn't answer them, Ellen would.'

‘Ellen should –' Miss Pink checked.

‘Ellen should have a long holiday,' Gladys supplied. ‘We ought to go our separate ways after the funeral, for a time at least. The horse must be sold and the house shut up. I don't know where I shall go.'

‘Where would you like to go?'

‘Nowhere. Nowhere attracts me. If someone were to say: “We leave tomorrow – for New Zealand or Cape Town or British Columbia”, I'd go like a shot – providing that person were firm enough and made all the arrangements and told me what to do. There's no incentive left, you know? I've never been a very pushy person but I have joined in, once Richard started the ball rolling. We had lovely times abroad – and at home too. I like someone else to take the initiative. I think that must mean I have a lazy mind, but I did enjoy going to different places so long as he did everything for me. Now it's all gone. I don't care. Nothing attracts me.'

‘Feeling comes back. Or so I've heard. It must do. One meets people some years after they've been bereaved and they're taking pleasure in things again.'

‘Of course. Even this walk has some kind of positive quality: there's the smell of thyme, and lovely, lovely air ... You're the first person I've talked to since –' She stopped in mid-sentence.

Miss Pink considered this confidence.

‘But have you no local friends? Didn't you entertain?'

‘We used to: quite a lot, but I'm not as young as I was; it was rather a strain to give dinner parties with no help in the kitchen – Ellen has no idea of how to cook – and as for going to other people's houses: when you're out all day you like to put your feet up in the evening, don't you?'

Miss Pink, who was active until late every evening but who had never suffered from the activities of a neglectful husband, agreed.

‘I was quite happy at home,' Gladys insisted. ‘I don't like crowds.'

Miss Pink smiled. ‘Wales isn't terribly crowded in the winter months.'

‘I should have made the effort. Richard liked going out.' She sighed. ‘One couldn't restrain Richard.'

‘No.'

‘It was a combination of circumstances, you see.' There was no emotion in her voice; Gladys was stating facts, as she saw them. ‘I fed him well, and he liked good wines, but you can't drink wine by the glass in a bar so, after dinner at home, he'd go to the Bridge for his brandy. The bar was a substitute for company at his own table. It was a dull life for someone who'd been brought up as Richard had been. Women adapt much more easily, don't they? After dinner there's the washing-up, breakfast to be laid, then television. They say the standard is very low but you don't have to think; you can watch or go to sleep. Richard got very cross with television but he had an active brain. That was the trouble.'

‘It was?' Miss Pink observed, seeing some comment was expected of her.

‘You met him,' Gladys pointed out. ‘If we'd been living in the shires there would have been outlets for his energy; he'd have hunted and shot, he'd have had the companionship of men like himself.'

‘Didn't he have high blood pressure?'

Gladys met her eye and looked guilty. She agreed that Richard had suffered from blood pressure. ‘Poor Richard,' she sighed.

‘He lived how he wanted to.'

‘Oh no.' His widow was surprisingly firm. ‘Everything he did was on a small scale; it was a substitute for how he would have liked to live: all that hacking round the Reserve, an hour in the pub in the evening listening to the village people and the trippers! Richard was a frustrated man.'

‘Was he?'

‘I know what you're thinking: that I'm a silly woman, even blind. That I can't come to terms with that cottage on the moors even though Superintendent Pryce has told me all about it, so it has to be true. But the cottage was one of the substitutes: part of a fantasy life, something private and exciting that he had to keep from me, like a little boy with a secret cave where he plays cowboys and indians. You do see?'

‘But the little boy is playing a solitary game and no one gets hurt. Your husband's activities involved real people.'

Gladys shrugged. ‘The women knew what they were doing, I take it they haven't suffered. You saw Anna and Maggie Seale that evening after the girl showed her slides. I don't think either of them is malicious but they're both selfish women, aren't they?'

‘You could be right,' Miss Pink said, amazed that Gladys had seen this in Seale.

‘Maggie, of course, was the substitute for the daughter he never had.'

‘Oh, come!'

Gladys didn't elaborate and now Miss Pink started to wonder what fantastic notion the woman would put forward next, for it was obvious that she had built an edifice on the basis of the intelligent small boy who had been misunderstood by casual adults. Sadists always had their masochists. Resignedly, she guessed what was coming.

‘Don't think I blame myself,' Gladys assured her. ‘If I'd served him less rich food and less of it, he'd have gone to Lucy for his meals – and there was no way I could have stopped him stocking his cellar; I didn't even try. But I did encourage him to get out all he could, and I was pleased in a way that his horse was young. Richard never had a quiet ride on that horse. Anything, I thought, to keep the arteries open, but it was a losing battle. And I'm afraid my concern must have showed. I'm a poor liar.'

‘I'm sure you did all you could.'

‘I was frightened. He kept that gun loaded.'

‘Whatever for?'

‘For burglars, he said.'

‘Are you suggesting that – what happened at the cottage was an accident?'

Gladys shook her head. ‘I'm not implying anything, just talking. You don't know what a relief it is to talk. What happened is immaterial. He's gone now, and how he went is unimportant.'

‘Are you sure about that?'

‘Absolutely.'

They faced each other, Miss Pink distressed, Gladys the one who attempted to offer reassurance.

‘I see you've never lost a person who was very close to you,' she said. ‘It's the
loss
that dominates: a great void where someone was before. How it happened has nothing to do with the situation as it exists now. If he had an accident with a loaded gun, or did it deliberately, or was careless – which could amount to the same thing, even if – someone else was responsible –' she shook her head helplessly, ‘– it doesn't matter. Pryce asked if I didn't think the person responsible should be punished. He said “the murderer”. It sounds unutterably melodramatic. Punished? Why should I want that? It won't bring Richard back. I haven't got any room for revenge; it would seem contrived to make room for it. I can envisage continuing to live in this village with Anna or Maggie Seale or Lucy without any trouble at all. I have no feelings about them.'

‘Lucy?' Miss Pink grabbed at something firm in this slippery jungle.

‘A wonderful cook. Richard preferred her cooking to mine.' Gladys gave a rueful smile. ‘Poor Richard; the only thing I didn't know about was the cottage. That went with the estate, once, but I thought he sold it when we came here: fifteen years ago. I'd forgotten all about it. Learning about it did surprise me – at first, but then I realised that it fitted in with this idea of the small boy playing games. I suppose in today's jargon I was a mother-figure.

She smiled genuinely then and in her eyes there was the memory of happiness.

‘He always came back to me,' she said softly.

Miss Pink hardly heard; she was wondering what explanation Gladys might have for what she would surely maintain was the suicide of Handel Evans – but she was too compassionate to ask.

ON THE RETURN
Miss Pink came to the decision that she would leave Dinas tomorrow; she would telephone Ted Roberts and try to persuade him to join her for a week's climbing in the Lake District, or even Glen Coe. She said as much to Gladys; they had to talk about something and it was a safe topic of conversation. Gladys wasn't surprised; she thought that in the circumstances the valley must seem claustrophobic. Miss Pink agreed. She did not add that there was a murderer loose in the area and that her curiosity had died. For the first time in her life she wanted to get away from an unsolved crime. I'm getting old, she thought.

When they turned into Parc's drive they saw two cars on the forecourt.

‘Lucy's here,' Gladys said casually, ‘but I don't recognise the other car. Do you?'

‘I'm afraid I do. It belongs to a reporter called Tudor Davies. He was questioning Lucy at lunch-time – although she was standing up to him pretty well. She sent him away with a flea in his ear. It looks as if he's caught up with her again. Perhaps,' she said, forgetting who she was talking to, ‘he's picked up something.'