Unknown (2 page)

'Wade's farm,' she murmured vexedly. She did not think she had come so far out of her way. And she did not particularly want to cross the Wades' land if she could help it. She knew the family slightly. She usually tried to avoid Zilla Wade if she could, but it was difficult when the village only boasted the one shop-cum-Post Office, and the proprietress looked upon each of her customers as a heaven-sent opportunity for a gossip, which the sharp-tongued, middle-aged farmer's wife was never reluctant to indulge in.

Aaron Wade was as surly as his wife was shrill, and the son seemed to Marion to be an unprepossessing mixture of the two. She had seen both the men in the Fleece from time to time. It looked like Benjamin Wade in the field immediately below her now. She could see a black-haired youth with a cringing dog at his heels, shutting a gate on a small flock of blearing sheep that looked as if they might have come from a high-sided lorry parked nearby.

She turned away, taking another sheep-track that she hoped would bring her down further along the beck and so miss the farmer's son, but Ms dog must have noticed her movement because it looked up and challenged her, and she frowned as its master, too, turned and saw her.

'Oh well....' She shrugged and continued on her way. 'Ben can only be unpleasant if I'm trespassing. Thank goodness it's the son, and not the father.'

'I was watching the helicopter, and missed the path down,' she called out as she neared him. Attack seemed to be her best form of defence, and she spoke first. Ben remained where he was, obviously waiting for her to descend, and to her chagrin the sheep-track she followed turned sharply down towards him, giving her no choice of route unless she picked her way across a patch of bog. Ben was better than getting her feet wet, she decided, and she greeted him with forced cheerfulness. 'I wonder what they've come across this way for? I thought they usually carried out their exercises over the coast,' she indicated the helicopter still hovering over the tops.

'Looking for lost hikers, as like as not.' At least Ben did not seem disposed to be unpleasant, she thought thankfully. She supposed in his rough, gypsy fashion he might even be attractive, if he tidied himself up. Not that he had got much incentive in this isolated spot, she thought with a flash of sympathy for the youth. She imagined him to be about twenty-two, roughly three years younger than she was herself, and already he seemed to be developing his father's surly nature, which the enforced loneliness of his home life would do nothing to help. There was little enough for young people to do in Fallbeck, and it was a long journey into Dale End.

'We'll all have to keep a lookout,' she suggested, and Ben's face darkened into a scowl.

'I've got suthin' better to do'n go searching for lost hikers,' he growled. 'Though from the looks of it, they might have found what they came looking for, anyway.' He jerked his head upwards, and Marion followed his gaze.

'I didn't see anybody on the other slope while I was on the tops,' she commented in a puzzled voice.

The helicopter still hovered, but now a dark blob appeared out of its belly. It straightened out into the form of a man, and faintly Marion could see the thin line of a rope of some kind from which he appeared to be suspended.

'I wish I'd stayed on top and watched.' She began to regret her impulsive departure. The descending figure disappeared out of sight as it neared the ground, and after what seemed a long wait it reappeared again over the edge of the ridge, hanging like a spider on the end of a web, Some mechanism inside the machine drew its burden upwards, and the man disappeared inside.

'It couldn't have been a hiker,' Ben commented, 'he'd got no one else with him going back up.'

'Perhaps he's just practising,' Marion suggested vaguely, and the youth gave a scornful snort.

'Pity some folks haven't got anything better to do.' He snapped impatient fingers at his dog, and without a backwards glance he slouched off towards the lorry, and left Marion standing where she was.

'Isolation doesn't help his manners, either,' she decided, sharply critical. She did not expect Ben to offer her a lift into Fallbeck, the Wades were not known locally for their generosity. 'Close,' Mrs Pugh called them. But at least he could have bade her a civil goodbye.

She thrust the unwelcome encounter out of her mind with a shrug. It was part and parcel of a spoiled afternoon. What with the helicopter, and losing her drawing, to say nothing of her hairband, it had been a wasted journey to the fell. If the weather remained fine she would try to get back to make another sketch of the clump of harebells, before the end of the week. She wanted the harebells for a corner of the woodcut. She glanced up at the sky. It looked settled enough. It was high, and blue, with only a few small white clouds floating across it. And the dark speck of the helicopter, still there as well. Marion frowned.

'I thought the wretched thing had gone away,' she muttered, irritated by its persistence. It seemed to be coming along her own route, following the line of the beck —almost, she thought crossly, as if it was following her. She quickened her steps, but by the time she gained the village street it was still there. Fallbeck possessed only one street, the made-up road came to an end at the entrance to the Wades' holding, the bleak rise of Fellbeck Scar just beyond, bisected by the white ribbon of a waterfall that gave birth to the beck, effectively blocked off the valley at one end, so that the road makers found it easier to tale their highway through Merevale, a shallower and more gently contoured valley on the other side of the watershed, which did not offer the competition of a river.

'Look, Miss Dorman! It's a whirlybird!'

A group of children called out to her from where they clustered round the gate of their school, too interested in the unusual appearance of the helicopter to bother that it was home time. Marion smiled at their elderly tutor. The dozen children were his entire school, but despite the isolation of their valley they had all the modern television jargon off pat, she thought with amusement.

1 wonder what they're doing over here?' John Cornish spoke pleasantly, as interested as his pupils.

'Ben Wade seemed to think it might be a lost hiker,' Marion joined the group looking up.

'I think we'd have heard, if it was. The police always used to get in touch if there was anyone missing on the fells.'

'I don't remember any searches being carried out since I've been back at the Fleece,' Marion answered.

'We don't get many walkers hereabouts now, not since the bus service was discontinued,' the schoolmaster said regretfully. 'That must be over two years ago, long before you came to stay with your uncle.'

'Perhaps they're thinking of starting a helicopter service instead,' Marion suggested with a mischievous look towards the children.

1 doubt it, but you've certainly started something,' John Cornish laughed at the instant clamour that arose from round him. 'Miss Dorman was only joking,' he stilled it into disappointed groans. 'But if there's anything of the kind going on, I expect the children will hear about it long before we do,' he predicted ruefully.

'Pass on the news when you get it,' Marion begged, smiling. 'I mustn't stay here and watch any longer, I promised to help Mrs Pugh with the dinner.' She did not want to remain and watch the helicopter. Her nerves still prickled from their encounter on the hilltop, and she turned across the street, thankful that she was within yards of the shelter of home. She actually stood on the step of the Fleece, with her hand on the door knob, when a shriek from the children spun her round and riveted her attention first on them, and then on the sky again. She followed their excitedly pointing fingers.

'He's coming down, look! He's landing!'

He was not, but he was very low, she thought, frowning. The harsh rattle of the rotor blades seemed to fill the village street. It bounced back from the stone-walled cottages, the echo intensifying the noise into what, to Marion's heightened sensitivity, seemed to be deafening proportions. Instinctively she raised her hands to her ears, forgetting she still carried her sketchbook. The corner of it caught her sharply on her cheek, and she let it go. She grabbed at it hastily and missed, and it slid to the step with a clatter.

'For goodness' sake!' Would the machine and its dreadful occupants haunt her for the rest of the day? she wondered furiously. She raised angry eyes towards it as it hovered at little more than roof height, cruising slowly towards her along the length of the village street, and her breath caught in her throat as, for the second time that afternoon, she met the piercing regard of the man sitting next to 'the pilot. It lanced downwards and seemed to spear right through her, rooting her to the spot She felt like the hare, exposed, and defenceless. She shivered, and the movement brought her to life. Unlike the hare, she had a refuge to run to.

In a blind panic, of which she was to feel ashamed minutes later, she wrenched at the knob in her hand and flung the door open with a resounding crash, which met the echo of a second bang as she fled inside and slammed the door behind her.

'Whatever's going on?'

Marion palled herself off the door as Mrs Pugh's voice came from along the stone Sagged corridor leading from the kitchen.

'It's only me. I let the door go, and it slammed,' she called back, her moment of weakness past. For a brief second, until she gained the shelter of the house, black terror possessed her, and she leaned against the closed door, using it as a prop to steady her shaking limbs. Shame possessed her now, in a hot flood. It lent colour to her cheeks that had been chalk-white a moment before, and she turned to her uncle's housekeeper with her confidence more or less restored.

'I pushed the door to a bit hard to shut out the noise of the helicopter,' she said, as if shutting out the noise of helicopters was an everyday occurrence. Mrs Pugh's attractive blue eyes were windows for a shrewd mind, and Marion did not feel up to the task of explaining irrational fears that she could not explain even to herself.

'What's a helicopter doing over Fallbeck, I wonder?' Mrs Pugh craned her head at the nearest window. He's going away now, whatever he came for.' The receding noise already told Marion that, but hearing the housekeeper's calm voice confirm it helped to restore her poise to normal.

'Ben Wade seemed to think it might be a lost hiker. I met him on the way down the fell,' Marion explained. She did not mention her encounter with the helicopter on the fell top. For some reason she felt reluctant to discuss it, even with Mrs Pugh.

'Did you get the sketch you wanted while you were up there?' The comfortably rounded housekeeper deserted
her post at the window as the noise of the aircraft dwindled into silence. 'I thought you took your sketchblock out with you?' Affection made the grey-haired little woman observant.

'I did. I left it on the step, I was in such a hurry to shut out the rattle of that beastly machine,' Marion said confusedly. She had forgotten her sketchblock was still on the step outside, where she dropped it. 'I'll go and pick it up.' She opened the door hurriedly before the housekeeper could question her further, and hoped fervently she would not be asked to show the results of her afternoon's work. Mrs Pugh took a keen interest in her work, and normally Marion welcomed the opportunity to talk about it. But not today. She found she did not want to talk about today, to anyone.

'I'll take it upstairs and dust it off.' She retrieved her ill-used sketchblock and the two ends of the snapped pencil, and made a pretence of rubbing her sleeve across the top page.

'Has it spoiled your sketch?' The housekeeper clicked her tongue sympathetically. 'Let me see ... oh, drat that phone!' she exclaimed as a loud summons issued from the other end of the passage. 'I'd better go and see who it is. It rang earlier on, just when I'd got my hands all Sour from the baking, and your uncle, he was that deep in his books he didn't hear it. By the time I got to the hall it had stopped.'

'And you've been wondering who it was ever since?' guessed Marion with a chuckle. She took advantage of the interruption and slipped upstairs, and tossed her sketching materials into her bedroom cupboard, safely out of the way.

'Well, I know now,' the housekeeper returned triumphantly, just as Marion came downstairs again. 'They said they'd rung us earlier and there'd been no answer, and we haven't had any other calls today.'

That was not unusual, thought Marion with a prick of worry, John Cornish had been correct when he said the discontinued bus service had affected the number of walkers who came to the valley. Fallbeck Scar offered an attractive rock climb, and at weekends the Fleece used to be fully booked with sports enthusiasts, but since she returned a year ago the hotel had only entertained an occasional visitor. Lack of public transport made the walkers seek more easily accessible country, and the trade at the hotel, and the one village shop, suffered accordingly.

The Fleece paid its way, but only just, but nowadays it did not seem to worry her uncle unduly. The pucker in Marion's forehead deepened. Since her aunt died, Miles Dorman had retreated more and more into his world of books, and so long as the hotel made an adequate return he did not seem to care greatly.

'Things are looking up.' Marion smiled at the sparkle in the older woman's eyes.

'It's about time,' Mrs Pugh declared forthrightly. Things have been over-quiet for too long. We'll be getting slack if we're not careful'

There's no chance of that.' The plump little housekeeper kept standards that would do justice to a much bigger establishment, but Marion knew she liked a bit more 'stir' round her, as she called it. She would enjoy having visitors, no matter how long they decided to stay.

'I'll go and prepare a room for them,' she offered.

Two rooms. Single ones, plus bath, both in the name of a Mr Harland,' Mrs Pugh corrected her. 'Mate sure you use the best towels out of the top shelf of the linen cupboard, they'll go with the curtains in the single rooms along the corridor from yours.'