Wildfire at Midnight (10 page)

"What's odd?" asked Alastair, joining him.

"He's coming down the glen from Loch na Creitheach. I thought he went up Sgurr nan Gillean," said Nicholas thoughtfully. "Wouldn't it have been easier for him to come down the west side of the glen and over the stepping-stones?"

"There's nothing in it," said Alastair. "That's a shorter way, certainly, but the going's terrible, while there's a path down the Blaven side of Creitheach."

Roderick said: "He may have seen the two women, if he's come along the glen. It's still light enough to see someone on the south ridge."

But Beagle, when he came in, denied that he had seen anyone. And the worried look that came over his face when he heard that the two girls were still out, brought back with a rush the apprehensions that we had been trying to dismiss.

He went to change and eat a late meal, and we all sat, talking in fits and starts, and trying not to look out of the window too often, for another half hour of steadily mounting anxiety.

By half past nine it was pretty dark. Rain clouds had massed in great indigo banks right across the sky, shutting out any speck of residual light that might linger in the west. Wisps of wet mist scudded underneath the higher cloud, and the fingers of the gusty wind clawed at the windows, flinging rain in spasmodic handfuls against the glass. By now everybody, I think, was convinced that something had happened to the two women, and it was almost a relief when, at nine thirty exactly, Bill Persimmon came into the lounge and said, without preamble:

"I think we'd better go out and look for them. Mr. Corrigan has just come in with Dougal, and they say there's still no sign of them coming down the glen."

The men were on their feet.

"You're sure they went up Blaven?"

Persimmon said: "Certain. They—"

"They might have changed their minds," said Nicholas.

Bill Persimmon looked at him, queerly, I thought. He said slowly: "They went to Blaven, all right. They were seen on it."

"Seen?" said Roderick. "When? Whereabouts?"

"At the Sputan Dhu," said Persimmon dryly.

Ronald Beagle started forward. "At the—but my God, man, that's no place for a beginner! The Black Spout! That's a devilish tricky climb. Are you sure, Persimmon?'"

We all stared at Bill Persimmon, while our imagined fears gradually assumed a horrible reality.

"Who saw them?" asked Nicholas quickly.

Bill looked at him again "Dougal Macrae. He saw them making for the gull) at about four o'clock. All three of them."

My throat was suddenly dry. I heard myself say in a strange voice: "All three of them?"

He nodded and his eyes went round the group of faces where a new sort of fear was beginning to dawn. He said:

"Dougal says there were three. And . . . everybody else is back. Odd, isn't it?"

"Perhaps they had a guide," said Nicholas.

"They set out without one," said Roderick.

Bill Persimmon backed to the swing door, thrusting it open with his shoulder. "We'll discuss it after we've found them and brought them in," he said. "The ladies would be well advised to stay indoors. Will the men be ready in five minutes? Come along to the kitchen then, and my wife'll have sandwiches and coffee ready."

I got up. "Can't we help there?"

"That would be very good of you, ma'am. I expect she'd be glad of a hand."

Then he pushed through the door with the other men after him.

When, at length, they had all gone out into the gusty dark, 1 went slowly back to the lounge. I was thinking, not very coherently, about Dougal Macrae's story. Three climbers? Three?

There could be no possible connection, of course—but I found myself wondering what Jamesy Farlane looked like.

Alma Corrigan had gone to bed, and Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson was upstairs with her mother-in-law. Marcia and I were alone again in the lounge. The curtains had been drawn to shut out the storm, but the rain was hurtling against the windows in fistfuls, and the wind sounded vicious. Behind its spasmodic bursts of violence droned the steady sound of'-the sea.

Marcia shivered, and stretched her legs to the fire. Her eyes looked big and scared.

"Isn't this too utterly ghastly?'' she said, and through the outworn extravagance of the phrase I could hear the strain plucking at her throat.

"I'm afraid it does look as if something had happened," I said. "Look, 1 brought us both a drink, Marcia."

"Oh, you angel." She took the glass and drank a generous mouthful. "My God, I needed that!" She leaned forward in her chair. The big eyes seemed bigger than ever. "Janet, do you believe there is a hoodoo on the mountain?"

I gave a laugh that was probably not very convincing. "No, of course not. They just went climbing in too hard a place and got stuck. It's always happening. They'll turn up all right."

"But—the other climber?"

"Whoever it was," I said robustly, "it certainly wasn't a ghost."

She gave a little sigh. "Well, the quicker they're found the sooner to sleep. I hope to heaven nothing's happened to that Roberta child. She's rather sweet—pathetic, in a way. I wonder—"

"It was the other one I found pathetic," I said, and then realized with a shock that I had spoken in the past tense.

But Marcia had not noticed. "That ghastly Bradford woman? But, my dear, she impossible! Not that I'd want anything to happen to her, but really—!"

"She must be a very unhappy woman," I said, "to be like that. She must know she's making everybody dislike her, and yet some devil inside her drives her perpetually to antagonize everyone she meets."

"Frustrated," said Marcia cruelly, "and how. She's in love with Roderick Grant."

I set down my glass with a click, and spoke almost angrily. "Marcia! That's absurd!"

She giggled. She looked like a very pretty cat. "It is not. Haven't you seen the way she looks at him?"

I said sharply: "Don't talk nonsense. She was abominably rude to him, both last night and this morning. I heard her."

"Uh-huh," said Marcia, on a rising note of mockery. "All the same, you watch the way she looks at him. It's just about as noticeable as the way he doesn't look at her —just looks down his nose in that charming well-bred way he has, and then jumps at the chance of taking you for a walk! If I were you, darling, I'd keep out of her range."

"Oh, nonsense,*' I said again, feeling horribly uncomfortable. I got up. "I think I'll go to bed."

Marcia uncurled herself, and drained her glass. "I'll come too. I'm certainly not going to sit down here alone. I imagine we'll hear them coming back, and'll find out what's happened then."

She linked her arm in mine as we went up the stairs, and grinned at me. "Annoyed with me?"

"Of course not. Why should I be?"

"Honey, on account of I say things I oughtn't. And that reminds me—I'm afraid I gave you away tonight. I didn't mean to."

"Gave me away? What d'you mean?"

"I let out to Roderick Grant that you and Nicky had been divorced. I forget how it came up—it was during the shemozzle tonight, when you were in the kitchen. I'm sorry, truly I am."

"It's all right." Nicky, I thought. Nicky. I'll bet she spells it Nikki

"I hope it doesn't matter," said Marcia.

I laughed. "Why should it? I don't suppose he'll tell anyone else."

"Oh, well. ..." We had reached the stairhead. "That's all right, then. Come and see my tweed before you go to bed."

I followed her along the passage to her room. The window at the end showed, tonight, only a square of roaring grey against which our reflections glimmered, distorted and pale. Marcia pushed her door open and went in, groping for the light switch.

"Just a sec, I'll see—" The light went on.

I heard her gasp. She was standing as if frozen, her back to me, her hands up to her throat.

Then she screamed, a high, tearing scream.

For a paralyzed, horrified moment I couldn't move. My body turned to ice and I stood there, without breath.

Then she screamed again, and whirled round to face me, one hand flung out in a gesture of terror, the other clutching her throat.

I moved then. I jumped forward and seized the hand. I said: "Marcia, for God's sake, what is it?"

Her breath came roughly, in gasps. "The murderer. Oh my Ood, the murderer. . . ." "Marcia, there's no one here."

She was shaking violently. She grabbed my arm and held it tightly. She pointed to the bed, her lips shaking so much that she couldn't speak coherently.

I stared down at the bed, while the slow goose flesh pricked up my spine.

Lying on the coverlet was a doll, the kind of frivolous doll in a flounced skirt that the Marcias of this world love to have sprawling about on divans and sofas among the satin cushions. I had seen dozens of them—flaxen-headed, blue-eyed, pink and white and silken.

But this one was different.

It was lying flat on its back on the bed, with its legs straight out and its hands crossed on its breast. The contents of an ash tray had been scattered over it, and a great red gash gleamed across its neck, where its throat was cut from ear to ear.

THEY FOUND NO TRACE, that night, of either Marion Bradford or Roberta.

The night had been black and wild, and after several fruitless and exhausting hours of climbing and shouting in the blustering darkness, the searchers had straggled home in the early hours of daylight, to snatch food and a little sleep before setting out, haggard-eyed and weary, for a further search. Bill Persimmon had telephoned for the local rescue team, and, at about nine the next morning, a force some twenty strong set out once again for what must now certainly be reckoned the scene of an accident.

This time, I went with them. Even if I couldn't rock-climb, I would at least provide another pair of eyes, and I could help to cover some of the vast areas of scree and rough heather bordering the Black Spout.

The morning—I remembered with vague surprise that it was the eve of Coronation Day—had broken grey and forbidding. The wind still lurched among the cairns and heather braes with inconsequent violence, and the frequent showers of rain were arrow-sharp and heavy. We were all muffled to the eyes, and trudged our way up the sodden glen with heads bent to meet the vicious stabbing of the rain.

It was a little better as we came under the shelter of the hill where Roderick and 1 had talked two nights ago, but, as we struggled on to the crest of it, the wind met us again in force. The raindrops drove like nails before it, and I turned my back to it for a moment's respite. The storm gust leaped past me, wrenching at my coat, and fled down the valley towards the sea.

The hotel looked far away and small and lonely, with, behind it, the sea loch whitening under the racing feet of the wind. I saw a car move slowly away from the porch, and creep along the storm-lashed track to Strathaird. It was a big car, cream, with a black convertible top.

"Marcia Maling's car," said a voice at my elbow. It was Alma Corrigan, looking businesslike in Burberry and scarlet scarf and enormous nailed boots. She looked also, I noticed, decidedly attractive, now that the wind had whipped red into her cheeks and a sparkle into her fine eyes. She added, with a touch of contempt, as we turned to make our way along the top of the spur: "I suppose it would be too much to expect her to come along as well, but she needn't have taken the chauffeur away with her. Every man we can get—"

"She's leaving," I said.

She checked in her stride. "Leaving? You mean going home?"

"Yes. She's going back to London. She told me so last night." .

"But I thought she planned to stay a week at least! I suppose this affair, on top of the other business—"

"I suppose so," I said, noncommittally. I was certainly not going to tell anyone the reason for Marcia's sudden decision. Mrs. Persimmon knew, and Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson, but if Marcia's hysterics had not disturbed Alma Corrigan the night before, so much the better. And I was more than ever certain that I, myself, was going home tomorrow. But since I had not, like Marcia, been, so to speak, warned away, I felt I could hardly go without finding out what had happened to Marion and Roberta.

"Well!" said Mrs. Corrigan, on an odd note which was three parts relief and one of something else I could not identify.

"I can't pretend I'm brokenhearted to see her go. She's only been here five days, and"—she broke off and sent me a sidelong glance up from under her long lashes—"you'd understand how I feel, if you were a married woman, Miss Brooke."

"No doubt."' 1 added gently: "She couldn't help it, you know. . . . She's been spoiled, I suppose, and she is such a lovely creature."

"You're more charitable than I am," said Alma Corrigan, a little grimly. "But then, you haven't so much to lose."

I didn't pretend to misunderstand her. "She had to have men's admiration," I said, "all the time, no matter who got hurt in the process. I—forgive me, but I'd put it behind you, if I were you. Can't you begin to pretend it never happened?"

She laughed a little, hardly. "It's easy to see you don't know much about dealing with men."

I didn't speak for a moment. I wondered irritably why married women so often adopted that tone, almost of superior satisfaction in the things they had to suffer. Then I told myself that she was probably right. I had after all failed utterly to deal with the man I had married, so who was I to give her advice? I thought wryly that nobody ever wanted advice anyway; all that most people sought was a ratification of their own views.

We were passing the Coronation bonfire, and I changed the subject. "I suppose they'll hardly light that bonfire now.

I mean, celebrations won't exactly be in keeping, if anything's happened to these two girls."

She said morosely: "The sticks'll be wet, anyway," and added, with the determined gloom of a mouse returning to its accustomed treadmill: "But how can Hart just expect to go on the way he has? He's been following her round like a lap dog, making a fool of me, ever since she came. Oh, you haven't seen much of it. She switched to that Drury man last night, but really—I mean, everybody must have noticed. It's all very well saying she can't help it, but what about Hart?