Wildfire at Midnight (9 page)

I said, before I realized what I was saying: "Was that you with Marcia Maling last night?"

His eyes flickered, and then went blank. He said: "Yes."

I walked past him out of the room.

The oracles had been right. By eleven o'clock the rain had cleared, and the clouds began to lift with startling rapidity.

I saw Marion Bradford and Roberta set off up the valley about half an hour later, and, not long afterwards, Nicholas went out along the track towards Strathaird.

Shortly before noon, the sun struggled out, and, in a moment, it seemed, the sky was clear and blue, and the mist was melting from the mountain tops like snow. Sedge and heather glittered with a mass of jewels, and the frail gossamers sagged between the heather tips weighted with a Titania's ransom of diamonds.

Hubert Hay and I set out with Bill Persimmon's spaniel soon after lunch. We went down through the little birch grove to the steppingstones which spanned the Camasunary River. The birches were old and lichened, but they moved lightly in the wind, censing the bright air with raindrops, an intermittent sun-shower that we had to dodge as we took a short cut through the grove towards the river, picking our way over the wet bilberry leaves and mosses and the scattered chunks of fungus that had fallen from the trees.

We crossed the river by the steppingstones, and, after an hour or so of steep but not too difficult walking, reached the crest of Sgurr na Stri. Hubert Hay, for all his rotundity, was light on his feet, and proved, a little to my surprise, to be an entertaining companion. His knowledge and love of the countryside was not as superficial as our conversation had led me to expect; he talked knowingly of birds and deer and hill foxes, and knew, it appeared, a good deal about plants. He babbled on as he chose his "picture" and set his camera, and though he talked incessantly in clichés, I could sense that his satisfaction in what he called "the great outdoors" was deep and genuine. His resemblance to a cocky little robin became every minute more remarkable, but the quality that Marcia had called "sorbo" was, I discovered, due to an irrepressible gaiety, a delighted curiosity about everything, rather than to self-satisfaction. He was, in fact, a rather attractive little man.

We took three photographs. From the top of Sgurr na Stri you can see the whole range of the Black Cuifiin, the forbidding arc that sweeps from Garsven in the south to Sgurr nan Gillean in the north, with Loch Coruisk, black as an inkwell, cupped in the roots of the mountains. I posed with the spaniel, an aristocratic but witless beast, against mountain, sky and loch in turn, while Hubert Hay fussed with his camera and darted from one point to another with little cries of polite satisfaction.

When at length he had finished we sat down together on a rock, and lit cigarettes. He seemed to have something on his mind, and smoked jerkily for a bit. Then he said:

"Miss Brooke, do you—-d'you mind me saying something to you?"

"Of course not. What is it?"

"You're here alone, aren't you?"

"Yes."

His round face was worried as he looked at me earnestly. "Don't go out by yourself with anyone, Miss Brooke.

You're all right with me, here, today, of course, but you weren't to know that." His rather absurd voice was somehow scarifying in its vehemence. "But don't go with anyone else. It's not safe."

I said nothing for a moment. I realized that I had, actually, since breakfast that morning, forgotten the sort of danger that was walking these hills.

"You don't mind me saying?1' asked Hubert Hay anxiously

"Of course not. You're perfectly right. I promise you 111 be careful." There was a certain irony about the admonition, repeating as it did Roderick Grant's warning of the night before. Could I. then, eliminate two of the suspects among the

"gentlemen from the hotel," or were these warnings some subtle kind of double bluff? If I went on going for walks with the "gentlemen," no doubt I should find out soon enough. I shivered a little, and pulled the dog's ears. "It's not a very pleasant thought, is it?"

His face flushed dark red. "It's damnable! I—I beg your pardon, I'm sure. But that's the only word I can think of. Miss Brooke"—he turned to me with a queer, almost violent gesture—"that girl, Heather Macrae—she was only eighteen!"

I said nothing.

"It was her birthday." His funny high little voice held a note almost of savagery. "Her eighteenth birthday." He took a pull at his cigarette, and then spoke more calmly: "I feel it a bit, Miss Brooke. You see, I knew her."

"You knew her? Well?"

"Oh dear no. Only to speak to, as you might say. I'd stopped at the croft a couple of times, when I was out walking, and she'd made me a pot of tea. She was a pretty girl, gay and a bit cheeky, and kind of full of life. There wasn't a bit of badness in her. Nothing to ask for—what she got."

"You didn't get any hint as to who she was going with?" It was a silly question, of course, as the police would have gone over the ground with meticulous thoroughness, but he answered without impatience: "No, none at all."

But his voice had altered subtly, so that I glanced at him. "You got something?"

"A very little hint," he said carefully. "I told her that I was writing a book, of course, and she was interested. People usually are. . . . She said that quite a lot of folks came around the crofts, one way or another, asking questions about local customs and superstitions and the like. I asked her if she had any special superstitions—just joking-like— and she said no, of course not, she was a modern girl. Then I said wasn't there any magic still going on in the Islands like there used to be, and"—he turned pale round eyes on me—"she shut up like an oyster, and pretty near hustled me out of the kitchen."

"Magic?" I said. "But that's absurd!"

He nodded. "I know. But, you know, I can't help having a feeling about this murder. It must have been all planned, you see. The stuff he'd used for the bonfire must have been taken up there, bit by bit, quite deliberately. There was heather and peat and branches of birchwood, and a big chunk of oak hardly charred, and a lot of that dry fungus—

agaric—that you get on birch trees."

I made an exclamation, but he hadn't heard me. "Then, when he is ready, he gets the girl up there. . . . Just think a minute, if you'll excuse me bringing it up again . . . the fire, and the shoes and things in a neat pile, all tidy, and the girl laid out with her throat cut and her hands crossed, and ashes on her face. . . . Why, it's like a—a sacrifice!"

The last word came out with a jerk. I was on my feet staring down at him, with my spine prickling.

"But that's crazy V

The pale, troubled eyes glanced up. "That's just it, isn't it? Whoever did it must be just plain crazy. And he looks and acts just as sane as you or me . . . except sometimes." He got to his feet and regarded me solemnly. "So I wouldn't go for walks with anybody, if I was you."

"I won't" I said fervently. "In fact, I'm beginning to think that I might go back to London, after all."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea, at that," said he, picking up his camera, and turning to follow me down the hill.

I WAS STILL WONDERING IF IT WOULDN'T, after all, be wisest to leave the hotel, when something happened that made me decide, at any rate for the time being, that I must stay.

It was in the lounge, after dinner, that the first stirring of a new uneasiness began to make itself plain. Alastair Braine, carrying coffee cups, paused in the middle of the room and said, on a slight note of surprise: "Hullo, aren't the climbers back yet?"

"They weren't at dinner," said Alma Corrigan.

Colonel Cowdray-Simpson said: Good God, neither were they. I hope there's nothing amiss."

"That fool woman!" said Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson, roundly. "She shouldn't have gone up on a day like this."

Alastair said reassuringly: "I shouldn't worry. They've probably only gone a little farther than they meant to, and after all, it's still light."

Nicholas looked up from a letter he was writing. "The weather was clearing nicely when they went, and there's been no mist on Blaven this afternoon. They'll be all right."

"If only," said Marcia Maling, "if only that awful woman hasn't gone and done something silly, just to impress! That poor child Roberta—"

Roderick Grant said quietly: "Miss Bradford is actually a very accomplished climber. She wouldn't take any risks with a beginner. And Drury is quite right about the weather. After all, Ronald Beagle went up Sgurr nan Gillean, and he certainly wouldn't have gone if it hadn't been all right."

"He's not back either," said Hubert Hay.

There was a little silence. I sensed discomfort and uneasiness growing.

"Neither is he," said Alma Corrigan, rather stupidly. "Well, I suppose—"

"Where's your husband?" asked Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson.

The question sounded abrupt, but there was nothing in it to make Alma Corrigan flush scarlet, as she did. "He— he went out walking."

She was so obviously embarrassed that everybody else began to feel embarrassed too, without knowing the reason.

Alastair said quickly: "We all went out after lunch to walk up to the ridge for the view over Loch Slapin. I brought Mrs.

Corrigan back, but Hart went farther."

"Oh, you went that way? Did you see the women, then, on Blaven?" asked Colonel Cowdray-Simpson.

"Not a sign. We saw someone—I believe it was Drury— in the distance, but not another living soul."

"I wasn't on Blaven," said Nicholas, "so I didn't see them either."

Roderick Grant put down his coffee cup and got to his feet. "It's only eight-thirty, and I don't personally think we need to worry yet, but they certainly should have got back by this. I think I'll have a word with Bill. They may have told him if they were going to be late."

He went quickly into the hall, where I could see him leaning over die office counter, in earnest conversation with Major Persimmon.

"Sensible chap," said Colonel Cowdray-Simpson. "No point in our starting a fuss."

But Marcia was not to be stopped so easily. "This is too ghastly, isn't it? What d'you suppose could have happened to them?"

"Plenty of things can happen in the Cuilhn,'' said Alma Corrigan, rather tartly, "and altogether too many things have been happening lately."

"That affair?" said Alastair. "That can hardly have any connection—"

"I'm not talking about the murder," said Alma brutally. I heard Marcia give a little gasp. "I'm talking about climbing accidents." She looked round the circle of faces, her fine eyes serious and a little frightened. "Do you realize how many people have been killed by the Cuillin, this year alone?"

Her use of the preposition gave the sentence an oddly macabre twist, and I saw Marcia glance over her shoulder to where the great hills towered against the massed clouds of evening "Is it—a lot?" She sounded a little awe-stricken.

"Four," said Alma Corrigan, and added, almost absently, "so far."

I felt the little cold caress of fear along the back of my neck, and was grateful for the Colonel's brisk interposition.

"Well," he said, practically, "if people will go wandering out in these mountains with only the haziest ideas about how to climb them, they must expect accidents. In almost every case these mishaps are brought about by ignorance or carelessness, and I'm sure we can acquit Beagle and Miss Bradford on both these grounds. We're making an unnecessary fuss, and I think we'd better stop talking about it and frightening ourselves."

He turned to Alastair with some remark about tomorrow's sport, and in a few minutes tension seemed to be relieved, and people were chatting generally.

I turned to Marcia Maling. "Where did you go today?"

"To Portree, my dear"—her face lit up with the familiar warm gamine charm—"along the most ghastly roads, with poor dear Fergus snarling like a tomcat all the way because he'd just washed the car."

"I thought there was an excellent road from Broadford?"

"Oh, there is. But it goes snaking about with the most ghastly hairpin bends and cliffs and things—" "But, Marcia, the views—"

The views were dismissed with a wave of her cigarette, "It was divine, of course," she said quickly, "only it was raining. And then Portree on Sunday is the utter end. But I got some marvellous tweed there on Friday. I'll show it to you tonight. It's a sort of misty purple, and quite gorgeous."

But here Roderick came back into the lounge, and there was a lull in the conversation as eyes turned towards him.

"Bill Persimmon says there's no earthly reason to worry," he said reassuringly, but, as he crossed the room towards me, I though I saw uneasiness in the glance he cast at the sky outside.

Someone switched on the radio, and the lugubrious weather report insinuated itself into the conversation. Colonel Cowdray-Simpson moved nearer to listen.

"Waiting for news of Everest," said Roderick to me with a grin. "That, with the notable absence of fish in the rivers, seems to be the Colonel's main preoccupation."

"He's rather sweet," I said. "I'd hate him to be disappointed, but, you know, I have the oddest feeling about Everest.

... I believe I'd be almost sorry to see it climbed."

"Sorry?" He looked at me curiously. "Why on earth?"

I laughed. "Not really, I suppose. But I'd always imagined it as the last inviolate spot that arrogant man hadn't smeared himself over, sort of remote and white and unattainable. Immaculate, that's the word I want. I somehow think it would be a pity to see man's footmarks in the snow."

"I didn't know you were a poet, Gianetta," said Nicholas's voice above me, lazily mocking. He had come over to the window just behind my chair.

I felt myself flushing, and Roderick looked a little annoyed.

"Why should you? I didn't know you knew Miss Brooke."

His voice was curt. Nicholas eyed him for a moment.

"Why should you?" he echoed, unpleasantly, and turned away to the window. "And here, if I'm not mistaken, is our friend Beagle at last."

"Alone?" asked Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson.

"Yes . . . that's odd."