Wildfire at Midnight (14 page)

This information was relayed to me hastily by Bill Persimmon, as he led me to a little sitting room beside the residents'

lounge, where the Inspector had his temporary headquarters.

Absurdly enough, I was nervous, and was in no way reassured when the Inspector turned out to be a kind-looking middle-aged man with greying hair and deeply set grey eyes, their corners crinkled as if he laughed a good deal. He got up when I entered, and we shook hands formally. I sat down in the chair he indicated, so that we faced each other across a small table. At his elbow the enormous redheaded sergeant, solemnly waiting with a notebook, dwarfed the table, his own spindly chair, and, indeed, the whole room.

"Well now, Miss Brooke...." The Inspector glanced down at a pile of papers in front of him, as if he were vague about my identity, and had to reassure himself. "I understand that you only arrived here on Saturday afternoon?"

"Yes, Inspector."

"And, before you came here, had you heard anything about the murder of Heather Macrae?"

I was surprised, and showed it. "Why—no." "Not even read about it in the papers?" "Not that I recollect."

"Ah. . . ." He was still looking down at the table, talking casually. "And who told you about it?"

I said carefully, wondering what he was getting at: "I gathered, from hints that various people let drop, that something awful had happened, so I asked Mr. Grant about it, and he told me."

"That would be Mr. Roderick Grant?" He flicked over a couple of papers, and the sergeant made a note.

"Yes. And then Mr. Hay talked of it again next morning." I added politely, to the sergeant: "Mr. Hubert Hay.

Footloose."

"Quite so." The Inspector's eyes crinkled momentarily at the corners. "Well, we'll let that go for the moment. I understand that it was you who found Mr. Beagle's body on the bonfire last night?"

"Yes. At least, I was first on the scene. I don't know who pulled him off the bonfire."

The Inspector looked straight at me for the first time, and I saw that his eyes were quite impersonal, remote, even, and very cold. The effect, in his homely pleasant face, was disconcerting and a little frightening. He said: "When was it that you first noticed that the fire had been lit?"

"Not until I was quite close to it. Do you know the hill, Inspector Mackenzie?"

"I've been on it a good bit in the past three weeks."

"Of course. How stupid of me."

He smiled suddenly. "And Hecky and I have a map. Now, Miss Brooke, just tell me in your own words what happened on your way down from the hill."

So I told him. He listened quietly, his grey eyes placidly inquiring. At his elbow the redheaded sergeant—equally placid—made notes in a competent shorthand.

"... And then I saw a shadow, like a man, near the bonfire."

"Only one?"

"Yes."

"I take it that you didn't recognize him?" "No."

"Was he carrying or hauling a body then?"

"Oh no. He was just moving about on the fringe of the smoke—it was billowing here and there, you know, in the wind. I remembered the—the other murder, and I thought it was Roberta being murdered this time—"

"Roberta?"

"Roberta Symes, the girl who's missing. Inspector, oughtn't we all to be out looking—?"

He said quietly: "There are men out now on the hill. Go on."

"That's all there is. I just ran towards the bonfire. I don't know what 1 imagined I could do. I saw there was something—a body—on top of it, and then just as I tried to get to the body before the fire did, the murderer attacked me."

"In actual fact," said the Inspector calmly, "it was Jamesy Farlane who attacked you."

I stared at him. "I know that. Surely—?"

He interrupted me. "Now. Let's get this picture right. You realize no doubt that Mr. Beagle cannot have been killed very long before you found him. You met or passed nobody at all on your way down to An't Sron?"

"No one."

"Did you hear anything? Any footsteps, or—?"

"Nothing. I could hear the men shouting occasionally away above on the scree, but nothing else. When I saw the bonfire and screamed, someone shouted quite close behind me, but I hadn't heard him till then. The wind was strongish, you see, and—"

"Quite so." Once more he appeared to contemplate the table in front of him. "You last saw Mr. Beagle alive when the group broke up for the final search last night?"

"I—Are you allowed to ask leading questions, Inspector?"

He grinned. "I've already heard the answer to this one a dozen times. I'm saving time. Did you?" "Yes."

"Did you see which way he went?"

"Downhill."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Sure?"

I regarded him levelly. "Quite."

"I see. Now let's get back to the bonfire, shall we? You ran towards it, and screamed. Did you recognize the shout that answered you—from close behind you, I think you said?"

"No, I didn't. But I assumed it was Alastair—Mr. Braine—because it was he who pulled Jamesy Farlane off me. He must have got there pretty quickly. Dougal Macrae was there too."

"Mr. Alastair Braine, then, was first on the scene—and very prompt." His voice was contemplative and pleasant. I felt my muscles tightening. "Who else was there?"

"Mr. Corrigan. He was standing by the bonfire. He—he must have pulled the body off." I swallowed, and added quickly: "He and Alastair probably came down together."

"No," said the Inspector gently to the table top. "Both gentlemen tell me they arrived independently." His grey eyes lifted to mine, suddenly hard and bright. "Who else was there?"

"Why—nobody."

"Jamesy Farlane and Dougal Macrae, Mr. Braine and Mr. Corrigan, all there within seconds of your scream. Who else?"

I looked at him. "That was all. I saw nobody else."

The grey eyes regarded me, then dropped. "Just so," said the Inspector vaguely, but I had the most uncomfortable impression of some conclusion reached in the last five minutes which was anything but vague. He shuffled a few papers in a desultory way, and said, without looking at me: "You booked your room a week ago?"

"I—yes."

"After the murder of Heather Macrae."

"I suppose so. I didn't know—"

"Quite. Sergeant Munro has your statement to that effect.. .. You booked your room, Miss Brooke, in the name of Drury, Mrs. Nicholas Drury."

It was absurd that he should be treating me as if I were a hostile witness, absurd that I should sit there with jumping nerves and tight-clasped hands just because his manner was no longer friendly.

I said, sounding both guilty and defiant: "That is my name."

"Then why did you change it to Brooke as soon as you got here? And why have you and your husband been at some pains to ignore one another's presence?"

"He's—not my husband." I found myself hurrying to explain. "We were divorced four years ago. I didn't know he was here. When I saw him the first evening I was horribly embarrassed, and I changed to my maiden name to avoid questions."

"I—see." Then, suddenly, he smiled. "I'm sorry if I've distressed you, Miss Brooke. And you've been very helpful—very helpful indeed."

But this, oddly enough, was far from reassuring me. I said sharply: "But why does all this matter? Surely it's all settled? You've got the murderer, and—"

His brows shot up, "Got the murderer?"

"Jamesy Farlane!" I cried. "Jamesy Farlane! Who else could it be? He was at the bonfire, and he attacked me there.

What more do you want?"

"A bit more," said Inspector Mackenzie, with a little smile. "Farlane's story is that he was going back from the hotel after bringing the stretcher in. He was at the foot of An't Srdn when he saw the bonfire go up. He went up the hill as fast as he could, and was nearly at the top when he heard you scream, and then you came running and, he says, flung yourself at the bonfire. He thought you were going to be burned, and he jumped in and hauled you off. You hit at him, and in the ensuing struggle you both fell down the heather slope.... Is that right, Hecky?"

"That's right, sir." Hector Munro nodded his red head.

"You see?" said Inspector Mackenzie to me.

"It might even be true," I said.

He grinned. "So it might. Especially as Dougal Macrae was with him at the time."

There was a sharp little silence. Then he rose and began to gather up his papers. I stood up.

"If I may," he said, "I'll see you again later, but just at present I'd better get up onto An't Sron." He held the door for me with punctilious courtesy. "You'll be about all day, I take it?"

"I'll be up on the hill myself," I said, and was unable to keep the asperity out of my voice. "There's still somebody missing, you know."

"I hadn't forgotten," he said gravely, and shut the door behind me.

Two NIGHTS AND A DAY—it was a very long time to be out on the mountainside. It think that, by now, we had all given up all prospect of finding Roberta alive. I had, - to begin with, built a lot of hope upon the fact that there had been no trace of her within range of Marion Bradford's dead body. A direct fall in the same place must have killed her.

The fact that she was nowhere near appeared to indicate some not-to-serious injury which had allowed her to crawl away into shelter. But, of course, if she were still conscious, she must have heard the search parties. And two nights and a day, even in summer weather, was a very long time....

I had by now abandoned my grisly theory that the murderer—the third climber—had taken Roberta away, alive or dead, for reasons of his own. If the murderer of the bonfires and the murderer of the cut climbing rope were one and the same—which was so probable as to be a certainty—then, surely, he would hardly have killed poor Beagle for his second bonfire if he had had Roberta's body handy.

That he had any real motive for killing Ronald Beagle I could not believe. It seemed more than ever certain that we were dealing with a maniac. There was a causeless crazy flavor about the killings that was nauseating. Hubert Hay's word "sacrifice" occurred to me again, with shuddering force.

But where these two apparently ritual killings fitted with the deaths of Marion and Roberta I had no idea. At least, I thought, trudging once again up the deer track behind Hubert Hay, there was something we could do. The finding of Roberta, or Roberta's body, might help the police a little in their hunt for what was patently a madman.

The sun was still brilliant in the blue heaven. Yesterday, under the heavy grey sky, it had been easy to see the mountainside as the background to tragedy, but today, with the sunlight tracing its gold-foil arabesques on the young bracken, and drawing the hot coconut smell from the gorse, Blaven was no longer the sinister mountain that it had been yesterday. It was alive with the summer. The mountain linnets were playing over scrubs of bright furze, chirping and trilling, and everywhere in the corners of the grey rock glowed the vivid rose-purple of the early bell heather.

The search parties seemed at last to have abandoned the Black Spout, and were scattered about the mountain, still searching the screes and slopes of deep heather. One of the parties* Hubert Hay told me, had climbed higher up the cliffs above the Sputan Dhu, and was out of sight in the upper reaches of the mountain. I realized, as 1 scanned once again the acre upon acre of steep rocky scree, split by its gullies and fissures, how people could lie for a week, a month, out in the mountains, and their bodies not be found. And there were still, Hubert Hay told me, climbers lost years ago, of whom no trace had yet come to light.

As we reached the point where, yesterday, I had met Roderick climbing down from the Black Spout, we heard a shout, and saw, away to our right, a small party of men, one of whom—it looked like Hartley Corrigan—waved his arm and called something.

"Do you suppose they've found her?" I asked breathlessly.

"It doesn't look like it," returned Hubert Hay. "They may have decided on some new plan of search. I'll go along and have a word with them."

He began to make his way towards the other party, and I, left alone, stood for a while gazing up at the rocks above me, I was, I noticed, almost directly below the spot where Heather Macrae had been found. For a moment I dallied with the macabre fancy that there, upon that blackened ledge, we would find Roberta lying. Then I shook the thought away like the rags of last night's bad dream, and turned my eyes instead to the more accessible route which led towards the climb over the Black Spout.

I knew that the area had been searched already; searched, moreover, by a team of men who knew far more about the hill than I. But there is something in all of us which refuses to be satisfied with another report, however reliable, that someone else has looked for something and failed to find it. We cannot rest until we have looked for ourselves. And it was surely possible, I told myself, that some corner or hole or crevice of this awful country might have been overlooked.

I began doggedly to scramble up towards the tumble of rocks and heather at the side of the Sputan Dhu.

It was terrible going. The rock was dry today, and there was no wind, but each boulder represented a major scramble, and between the rocks were treacherous holes, thinly hidden by sedge and heather. I was soon sweating freely, and my head was swimming from too much peering under slabs and down the chutes of small scree that tunneled below the larger rocks. I struggled on, without realizing how high I had climbed, until exhaustion made me pause and straighten up to look back down the way I had come.

And almost at once something caught my eye—a tiny point of light among the heather, a sparkle as of an infinitesimal amber star. 1 saw the gleam of metal, and stooped to look more closely.

It was a broach of a kind very common in souvenir shops in Scotland, a circle of silvery metal set with a cairngorm. I stooped for it, suddenly excited. Roberta— surely Roberta had been wearing this on that first evening at the hotel? 1

wiped the dirt off it, then lit a cigarette and sat down with the brooch in my hand, considering it. It meant no more, of course, than that Roberta had been this way—and that I already knew from Dougal Macrae's testimony. But for me that winking amber star had somehow the excitement of discovery about it that set me scanning the empty slopes about me with renewed hope.