Wildfire at Midnight (13 page)

"Roderick"—I used his name without thinking—"you were down in the gully. You saw Marion's climbing rope. That cut rope can only mean one thing, can't it?"

He dragged hard on his cigarette, and expelled a cloud of smoke like a great sigh. "Yes. Murder—again. ..."

I said slowly: "And Dougal swears there was a third climber, but whether it was a man or woman he can't say."

He made a slight impatient gesture. "If he's to be believed."

"Oh, I think he is. If anyone in this world's dependable, I'd say it was Dougal Macrae. If there wasn't a third climber, then we've got to believe mat it was Roberta who cut the rope, and that's fantastic." "But is it?"

My eyes widened. "You can't believe that Roberta—"

"She was a beginner. If Marion fell, and was pulling her loose from her hold, she might panic, and—"

"I don't believe it! And what's more, neither do you!"

He gave a wry little smile. "No."

"So there was a third climber," I said, "and he cut the rope, so he's a murderer. He was there when Marion fell. And Roberta—whether she fell or not—can't be found. It doesn't add up to anything very pretty, does it?"

"You think the murderer removed Roberta?"

"What else can we think? We can't find her. If she was dead, he could safely have left her. If she was only injured, he'd have to silence her. He may have killed her and hidden her, hoping that the delay in finding the bodies would help him in some way or other." I fetched a sigh. "I don't know. I'm just in a dreary sort of whirl, praying she's all right and—oh God, yes, knowing all the time she can't be."

I got to my feet.

"Let's get on with this," I said.

The dark drew down, and all along the mountain slopes, indefatigably, the searchers toiled. Beagle and Rhodri MacDowell, who had been down with the stretcher, returned bringing food, soup, coffee, and torches from the hotel.

We ate and drank, standing round in the gathering darkness. There was not much said: the men's faces were drawn and strained, their movements heavy. What little conversation there was related simply to accounts of areas searched and suggestions for further reconnaissance.

I found myself beside Ronald Beagle, who, despite the exacting role he had played in the rescue, was showing very little sign of strain. He was draining his mug of hot coffee as Alastair came up, seeming to loom over the smaller man in the darkness.

"That gully below the Sputan Dhu," he said abruptly. "What's the bottom like?"

Beagle glanced up at him. There was mild surprise in his voice. "Pretty rough. All devil's potholes and fallen boulders.

The stream drops down a series of cascades to the foot of the scree. Why? I assure you we couldn't have missed her."

"Any caves or fissures in the sides of the gully?"

"Plenty." Ronald Beagle bent to put his coffee mug in the hotel's basket. "But there were four of us, and I assure you—"

"Can you assure me," said Alastair evenly, "that at least two of you searched each of these fissures?"

There was silence for a moment; I saw the rapid glow and fade, glow and fade, of Alastair's cigarette. Then another cigarette glowed beside it. Roderick's voice spoke from behind it.

"Why? What are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that one of us here is a murderer," said Alastair brutally.

Hartley Corrigan's voice broke in. "That's a filthy thing to say! It's tantamount to accusing Beagle or Grant or Drury—"

"He's quite right, you know," said Beagle mildly. "It could quite easily be one of us. But why should it be in the murderer's interest to conceal the second body, once the first was found? It would certainly be to his interest to be the first to find her if she were still alive, so that he could silence her." He looked up at Alastair again. "But he didn't. I imagine every crevice in that gully was searched, solo and chorus, by every one of us."

"And that's a fact." Rhodri MacDowell spoke unexpectedly out of the darkness.

"Okay, okay," said Alastair. He looked at Beagle. "You know how it is...."

"I know. It's quite all right."

The group was moving now, breaking and re-forming its knots of shadow-shapes, as men gathered once more into their parties for the search. I found Nicholas beside me.

He said shortly, his voice rough with fatigue: "This is absurd, Gianetta. Get back to the hotel at once."

I was too tired to resent his tone. "I can't give up yet," I said dully. "I couldn't stand sitting about waiting, listening with the Cowdray-Simpsons for the Everest news, and just wondering and wondering what was happening on the hill."

"There's no sense in your staying here," said Ronald Beagle. "You want to get back and rest, and find some way of taking your mind off this business. And talking of Everest—" He gave a jerk to his haversack, and raised his voice. I saw his teeth gleam in an unexpected grin.

"I forgot to tell you,1' he said to the dim groups scattered round him, "that the news came through on the A.F.N, a short while ago. They've done it. By God they have. They've climbed Everest."

There was a buzz of excitement, and for a moment the grim nature of the quest on which we were engaged was forgotten, as a host of eager questions was flung at him. He answered with his usual calm, but soon moved off, alone, and immediately afterwards the group broke up, and the parties vanished in various directions in the darkness to resume their search. I heard their voices as they moved away, animatedly discussing Beagle's announcement. He had, it seemed to me, deliberately kept back his news and then used it to galvanize the weary searchers into fresh activity.

My respect for him increased.

Beside me, Nicholas spoke again, angrily: "Now look here, Gianetta—"

Roderick broke across it: "Leave her alone."

"What the hell do you mean?"

Torches were flashing nearby, and in their fitful flickering I could see Roderick's face. It was quite white, and blazing with a kind of nervous fury. His eyes were on Nicholas, and in that light they looked black and dangerous.

"What I said. What Janet does is nothing to do with you, and I rather fancy she prefers you to leave her alone."

It was a nasty, snarling little scene, and it had all blown up so quickly that I stood, gaping, between the pair of them, for a good fifteen seconds before I realized what was happening. This was Marcia's doing, blast her.

"Stop it, you two," I said sharply. "What I do is my own affair and nobody else's." I took hold of Roderick's arm, and gave it a little shake. "But he's right, Roderick. I'm no use here, and I'm going back now. So both of you leave me alone." I pulled my woolen gloves out of a pocket and began to drag them on over cold hands. "We're all tired and edgy, so for heaven's sake don't let's have a scene. I'm going to pack these thermos flasks and things, and take them straight down to the hotel, and then I'm going to bed."

I knelt down and began to pack mugs into the basket. I hadn't even glanced at Nicholas. He didn't say a word, but I saw him pitch his cigarette savagely down the hillside, then he turned in silence and plunged off into the darkness after Ronald Beagle. Above me, Roderick said hesitatingly:

"Have you got a torch?"

"Yes," I said. "Don't worry about me, I know my way. Go and help the others." I looked up then at him uncertainly.

"And—Roderick."

"Yes?" His voice was still tight and grim.

"Find her, won't you?"

"I'll try." Then he, too, was gone. I packed all the debris I could find by the light of my torch, and then I sat down for a few minutes and lit another cigarette. I had just finished smoking one, but my nerves were still jumping, and the last little scene, with all its curious overtones, had upset me more than I wanted to admit.

It was quite dark now. Behind me the hill flashed with scattered torchlight, and I could hear, distorted by the gusts of wind, the occasional shouts of the searchers. In the intervals of the wind I heard the scrape of boots on rock, and, twice, away to my left, a sharp bark that I took to be the cry of a hill fox.

I got up at last, ground out my cigarette with my heel, lifted the basket, and began to pick my way down the mountainside. I gave the gully a very wide berth, and scrambled slowly and carefully, with the aid of my torch, down through the tumbled boulders of the scree. Halfway down, I knew, I would come upon the deer track that led, roughly but safely, to the lower spur of An't Sron. Away below, a flock of oyster catchers flew up the glen from the shore, wrangling noisily among themselves. I could hear their cheery vulgar chirking echoing along the water of the loch, then falling silent. The wind blew strongly on my face, with its clear tang of sea and grass and peat. I let myself carefully down onto a muddy ledge and found that I was on the deer track.

Going was easier now, but I still went slowly and cautiously, hampered by basket and torch, which left me no hand free in case I slipped. It must have been well over an hour after I started my journey back, before I found myself, with relief, walking on the heather of the ridge that joined Blaven with An't Sron.

I had been so afraid of stumbling, or of losing the deer track, that I had come down the hillside with my eyes glued to the little circle of ground that my torch fit at my feet. But as I reached the level heather of the ridge, I became conscious of a new element in the tangy wind that blew against my face- Even when I identified this as the smell of smoke, I still walked forward unalarmed, unrealizing.

Until 1 lifted my eyes and saw it, a pale climbing column of smoke, no more than a hundred yards ahead.

The bonfire, Someone had lit the bonfire. The smoke from the damp wood towered and billowed, ghostly against the black night, but there was a flickering glare at the heart of the smoke, and I heard the crackle as a flame leapt.

I suppose I stood there, looking at it, for a full half minute, while my slow brain registered the fact that somebody, who had not heard about the accident, had lit the celebration bonfire. Then another branch crackled, the smoke billowed up redly, and across in front of the glow moved the black figure of a man.

It was as if a shutter in my brain had clicked, and, in place of this, an older picture had flashed in front of me. A column of flame, with a man's shadow dancing grotesquely in front of it. A blackened pyre, with the body of a murdered girl lying across it like a careful sacrifice... .

Roberta!

It was for this that the murderer had kept Roberta.

I dropped the basket with a crash, and ran like a mad thing towards the smoking pyre. I don't know what I hoped to do. I was acting purely by instinct. I hurled myself forward, shouting as I ran, and I had the heavy torch gripped in my hand like a hammer.

There was an answering shout from the hill behind— close behind—but I hardly heeded it. I ran on, desperately, silent now but for my sobbing, tearing breath. The fire was taking hold. The smoke belched sideways in the wind, and whirled over me in a choking cloud.

I was there. The smoke swirled round me, billowing up into the black sky. The flames snaked up with the crack of little whips, and the crisscross of burning boughs stood out in front of them like bars.

I came to a slithering, choking halt at the very foot of the pyre, and tried to shield my eyes as I gazed upwards.

I saw the smoke fanning out under something that was laid across the top of the pile. I saw the glass of a wrist watch gleam red in the flame. I saw a boot dangling, the nails in the sole shining like points of fire.

I flung myself at the burning pile and clawed upwards at the arm and leg.

Then a shadow loomed behind me out of the smoke. A man's strong hands seized me and dragged me back. I whirled and struck out with the torch. He swore, and then he had me in a crippling grip. I struggled wildly, and I think I screamed. His grip crushed me. Then he tripped, and I was flung down into the wet heather, with my attacker's heavy body bearing me down.

Dimly, I heard shouting, the thud of feet, a voice saying hoarsely: "Gianetta!" Then someone dragged my assailant off me. I heard Alastair's voice say, in stupefaction: Jamesy Farlane! What goes on, in the name of God?" as he took the young man in a vicious grip. It was Dougal Macrae who hauled me onto my feet. I was shivering and, I think, crying. He said: "Are ye all right, mistress?"

I clung to him, and whispered through shaking lips: "On the fire—Roberta—hurry."

He put an arm around me. His big body was trembling too, and as I realized why, my pity for him gave me the strength to pull myself together. I said, more calmly: "Is she dead?"

Another voice spoke. I looked up hazily. There was a man standing a little way from the bonfire. It was Hartley Corrigan, and he was looking down at the thing that lay at his feet.

His voice was without expression. He said: "It's not Roberta Symes. It's Beagle. And someone has cut his throat."

I SLEPT LATE next morning, after a night of nightmares, and woke to a bright world. Mist still haunted the mountain tops, lying like snowdrifts in crevice and corrie, but the wind had dropped, and the sun was out. Blaven looked blue, and the sea sparkled.

But it was with no corresponding lift of the spirits that, at length, I went downstairs, to be met by the news that Roberta had not yet been found, and that the police had arrived, I could not eat anything, but drank coffee and stared out of the window of the empty dining room, until Bill Persimmon, looking tired and grave, came and told me that the police would like a word with me.

As luck would have it, the officer in charge of the Macrae murder had come over from Elgol that morning, to pursue some further inquiries relating to the earlier case. So, hotter upon the heels of the new development than any murderer could have expected, came the quiet-eyed Inspector Mackenzie from Inverness, and with him an enormous redheaded young sergeant called Hector Munro. A doctor, hastily summoned in the small hours by telephone, had already examined the bodies of Marion and Beagle, and a constable had been dispatched to the site of the new bonfire, to guard whatever clues might be there for the Inspector to pick up, when he should have finished his preliminary questions at the hotel.