REGINALD HILL
FELL OF DARK

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 1971

Copyright © Reginald Hill 1971

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007334797

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007389162

Version: 2015-09-16

DEDICATION

For my mother

EPIGRAPH

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw.

—G. M. Hopkins

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

ONE

I possess the Englishman’s usual ambivalent attitude to the police. They are at once protectors and persecutors. They tell you the way, but they make you feel guilty for asking.

I watch, or I used to watch, most of the ‘realistic’ TV series based on police-work with that fascinated revulsion which makes them so compelling. But I had often wondered why innocent people allowed themselves so readily to be manipulated by the police, why invitations to proceed to the station were not more frequently refused.

Now I knew. Or at least I knew in my case. From the moment we had been stopped, a terrible passivity had begun to settle on me. It was a feeling that the quickest and surest way of getting back to normal was to sit very quietly and do as I was requested. It was rather like a child with a visit to the dentist in the offing, sitting as small as possible, hoping to be unnoticed, trying desperately not to obtrude.

There hadn’t been any suggestion that we were doing anything but ‘helping with enquiries’. No question of our guilt or innocence seemed to be involved. I didn’t see how it possibly could be involved. But I didn’t feel innocent. And with Peter it was worse. Sitting pushed up against the car door (locked, I suspected), his unseeing gaze fixed on the rain-spattered window-pane, he didn’t even look innocent. I was much more concerned about him than I was about myself.

At least that was what I liked to think. That was what I had been telling myself for a long time now. It was true! I assured myself fiercely. Of course it was true!

If I looked back into the past, I would be able to prove quite convincingly that what had brought me to this police car, boring steadily through the rain up into the Lakeland fells, was a combination of my own altruism and the accidents of fate.

Convincingly to anyone other than Janet, my wife, perhaps. And perhaps the police.

And myself, perhaps.

TWO

Janet disliked Peter from the start. As his interests were in quite other directions, he never really expressed any opinion of her.

I met them both at about the same time, early during my three years at Oxford. Peter attracted my attention instantly. He was charming, witty, entirely unselfconscious, impulsive in his actions, generous in his attitudes. At least he seemed so to some of us. The sight of his slightly-overlong, over-thin figure, hands and arms waving in a graceful semaphore, was enough to make us smile with pleasure.

But to others he seemed like ‘a third rate actor cocking-up the role of Shelley’. I forget whether the words were Janet’s, but the attitude certainly was.

My relationship with Janet took much longer to develop. At first she seemed merely a pleasant enough girl, rather vain, capable of being amusingly bitchy about most of her fellows; a not uncommon type in university life. It was a chance meeting during my first summer vacation that started our relationship. It took place, by one of life’s little ironies, in the town towards which the police-car was now bearing my reluctant body, Keswick.

I had known vaguely that Jan was a Cumbrian. She had often made us all scream with laughter as she enacted in an almost incomprehensibly broad dialect ‘typical’ scenes of rural life, involving incest, witch-burning, or the pursuit of sheep.

Here, far from all the pressure of her position as a college wit, she was very different. I was on holiday, touring with my father for a couple of weeks before going off to France with Peter and some others for the rest of the vacation. She obviously envied my money, or rather my father’s. I gave her a lift home at the end of a very pleasant afternoon. She lived in a tiny village some distance to the north. At first she seemed reluctant to invite me into the small, not very picturesque cottage outside which we stopped. But when her father came to the door and stared at us suspiciously and with open curiosity, she introduced me.

He was a farm labourer, utterly content with his lot, but by no means a stupid or uneducated man. He questioned me closely about myself and my background, demonstrating an acuteness of mind and economy of language which I recognized in a more sophisticated form in his daughter.

Jan, who usually delighted to shock, was obviously very distressed by his uninhibited curiosity. I got up to go.

‘Have you bedded her?’ he asked casually, jerking his head at his daughter.

‘No!’ I denied with undue emphasis.

‘Aye, well,’ he said. ‘She needs it.’

This became a catch-phrase for us later, but then it obviously was not in the least comic to her. This was the source of the tension between them. As far as old Will was concerned, women were created only to look after men. His wife, Mary, was perfect in this role, a bright-eyed determined little woman who watched over the needs of her husband with desperate care. A strong-minded school staff had got Jan to where she was, but her father continued to treat her as he would any woman, that is, he acknowledged domestic and biological needs, but intellectually, spiritually, she hardly began to exist. It was the complete lack of response to her arguments, protests and outbursts that frustrated Jan the most.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said as I got back into the car.

‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘Look, if you ever do need it, come to me first!’

That brought a faint smile to her face. But it was I who sought her out right at the start of next term. Some seed had been sown during those hours in Keswick and I needed her.

We were married two years later after we had finished with Oxford. Peter was best man. She refused to be married in her parish church. ‘They baptize pigs there if they’re doubtful about their parentage,’ she maintained. So we made do with a registry office. Mary came, but Will didn’t. He sent me a letter, however, neatly penned, cordially phrased, full of advice. I didn’t dare show it to Jan.

After the honeymoon, I started work in Leeds, in the Northern Area office of my father’s business. We deal in stationery and associated products. We were near enough to Cumberland to make visits there fairly easy, but Jan refused. I had practically to drag her home once a year, and we never stayed there overnight.

Peter stayed on at Oxford to do some research and two years later was appointed to a lectureship in the Midlands. I saw him infrequently over the next couple of years and got the impression that he was becoming involved with some rather unsavoury people. But it seemed none of my business at the time. He came to stay with us a couple of times and would obviously have liked to come more often but Jan was still not keen, so I preserved the peace. Then my father died and we moved to London. I was so involved with gathering up the various threads of the business and steering through a series of crises which had arisen partly because of my father’s death and partly coincidentally, that I hardly had any time for Jan, let alone Peter.

The next year was the hardest of my life. For Jan it must have been even harder. She had enjoyed queening it in the provinces as the boss’s son’s wife. Now as the boss’s wife in London she found herself more and more neglected. I had little time for friendships old or new and the kind of people she met through me were business contacts only.

She began to voice her dissatisfactions, mildly enough at first I suppose (I don’t recollect ever noticing) but more and more vociferously after a while. All I wanted was peace and quiet after a long hard day. I never seemed to get it. I started coming home later to avoid the rows. The rows increased proportionately in intensity. She ended up by accusing me of being worse than her father. I ended up by telling her that my sympathies were now entirely with old Will.

When Peter turned up very late one night, haggard, unshaven, with no luggage, he was at first almost a welcome diversion. But not for long.

A scandal had blown up at the University. It involved drugs and homosexuality. We never learned the full details as Peter was never wholly forthcoming about it and no court case was brought. But Peter had been emotionally involved with a young student whose ‘moral tutor’ he was. His parents, people of wealth and influence, had come across some letters Peter had foolishly written – ‘things of charm and beauty, flowerily Elizabethan in style, almost Platonic in tone’, he was able to describe them later – and this had been the first crack which brought the whole edifice tumbling down. Peter, who had been sucked into the group as much as any of the younger members, somehow became labelled the ring-leader. More distressing still, the young man concerned, probably in an effort to divert his father’s wrath, confessed to far more than had ever happened and shifted the blame completely on to Peter, who was too shattered emotionally to be able to deny anything.

Also he had obviously been on some kind of drugs and was still suffering from the effect of these when he came to us, or the effect of being deprived of them.

We put him to bed. He woke up crying in the early hours of the morning. During the day, he said little, but sat staring vacantly at the window, as now he was sitting beside me in the police car. This pattern was repeated for three days, at the end of which Jan told me that either I got him out of our flat, or she went.

On our doctor’s advice, he was moved into a nursing home the next day. As far as Jan was concerned, that was that. I accused her of complete callousness and started visiting Peter more frequently than was strictly necessary, just to rub it in. The thing spiralled, Janet’s protests plus the doctor’s assurance of the beneficial effects of my visits to Peter took me to the Home nearly every night for an hour at least. Some weeks I hardly saw Jan at all. I took to sleeping in the guest room to avoid disturbing her if I arrived home very late. I was not encouraged to move out.

Finally early in the summer after Peter had spent nearly two months in the nursing home, things came to a head. He had made tremendous progress in the last fortnight and the doctor was sure he was ready to be discharged. ‘He’s not coming here,’ said Jan flatly, unemotionally. I didn’t argue.

‘The best thing in the world for him,’ the doctor had told me, ‘would be a holiday. Fresh air. Sunshine. Lots of exercise.’

I felt like a holiday myself. I had worked too hard, too long. I don’t think there was any malice in my choice of the Lake District. It was an area I was fond of, familiar with, and had seen too little of since marrying Jan.

She took it badly. I don’t think she really believed I would go at first. And when I suggested she should come too, she exploded.

‘You go with him,’ she said after a while. ‘You take him off, your precious boy-friend. I’ll make my own arrangements. Don’t send me any cards. I won’t be here to read them.’

Sunshine, fresh air, peace and quiet suddenly seemed best of all things. I left the room without a word.

The following day Peter and I caught the train north.

THREE

The rain was beating down with tremendous violence now. The car’s wipers could hardly cope. The windows steamed up. Nobody spoke. It was hard to believe we were in the same area as we had been for the past few days. Only the ease with which the earth was drinking up the downpour told of the sunshine we had enjoyed since the start of the week.

I had been beset by doubts and guilt feelings throughout the train journey, though Peter’s infectious excitement and delight had helped to convince me I was doing the right thing. But once we started the holiday proper, the perfect weather and the beauty of the landscape made London and Janet seem a thousand miles away.

I had booked rooms in an hotel south of Keswick overlooking Derwentwater. Our plan was to spend a few nights there, then to move on where the fancy took us. We had come equipped for walking and our belongings were all packed into a couple of large knapsacks of rather old-fashioned design. They went well with the walking-sticks and stout brogues we affected as a corrective to the pretensions of the lederhosen-and-climbing-boots brigade.

We quickly established a pattern, walking all day, taking a packed lunch with us, and returning to the hotel for dinner, followed by an hour in the bar. It seemed impossible that anything could interrupt the perfection of the weather or the even tenor of our existence.

Nothing did until our last night at the hotel, and that was more comic than disruptive. At least so it seemed in retrospect.

We got drunk. We had no intention of doing so. It just happened. Perhaps we were getting fitter and no longer felt the need to fall into bed well before ten.

The bar was crowded that night. The hotel itself was packed and there were also some drinkers from the youth hostel about a quarter of a mile down the road. Some of them looked very young to be there. I received a cheery wave from one blond-haired, open-faced lad of about eighteen. I recalled he and his friends had overtaken us coming down off Glaramara that afternoon. We had been resting by the track as the boys strode by, arrogant in their youthful fitness. I had to admit their shorts had certain advantages in this weather. They had obviously found us a little amusing and a line of laughter had drifted back up the fellside. At least they had had the courtesy to contain it till they were almost out of earshot.

I waved back and looked for a seat. A couple of girls stood up nearby, revealing very short shorts and these long, tanned, flawless, and somehow sexless legs that go with them.

‘Are you going?’ I asked politely.

One spoke to the other in a language I did not recognize. The other grinned and they moved away. I sat down and waited for Peter to fight his way from the bar with the drinks.

‘Where tomorrow, b’wana?’ he asked. ‘I rather fancy a bit of the briny. All these mountains can press rather close.’

‘All right,’ I said equably. ‘We’ll trot along to Seathwaite, scramble up Scafell and drop down into Eskdale. There we’ll catch a train to the seaside.’

‘A train?’ queried Peter. ‘In the middle of nowhere? And what about our walking resolution?’

‘This train is just like walking,’ I said firmly. ‘And you’ll have had enough by the time we reach it. Let’s have another drink.’

This time we managed to catch the eye of one of the barwaiters. He was only a youngster. To my surprise, Peter seemed to know him.

‘Hello, Clive,’ he said. ‘Bring us a couple of Scotches, will you? Harry, this is Clive. He’s reading Modern Languages at Bristol.’

‘And when did you strike up that acquaintance?’ I asked after the boy had left us.

‘I have my methods,’ he said, smiling. But I got the impression he was taking careful note of my reactions.

We sat drinking till midnight. It wasn’t till I stood up that I realized how drunk I was. Peter staggered against me and giggled.

‘Shall we dance?’ he said.

I wasn’t that drunk.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ I answered.

‘Don’t rush me,’ he said.

I pushed him out of the door ahead of me.

‘Can I help?’ asked Clive from the bar, a look of concern on his face.

‘No, thanks. My God! What’s that?’

It was the dinner-gong being struck with unprecedented violence. The air seemed to shake against my ear-drums.

‘J. Arthur Rank presents!’ cried Peter, and brought down the hammer once more.

I forget the exact content of our interview with the manager, a small, fleshy-faced man named Stirling. I remember walking side by side with Peter up towards what looked like a great poppy-field of faces, red with indignation, which peered down from the hotel’s two landings.

I laughed myself to sleep.

I think our fragile state in the morning might have induced us to spend another day in Borrowdale after all, but now it seemed politic to leave. We paid our bill, shouldered our knapsacks, and strode away with great dignity. Once out of sight of the hotel, however, we laughed so much we had to sit by the roadside till we recovered.

Then we set off in real earnest, to cover as much ground as we could while the sun was still relatively low. It was obviously going to be another very hot day. Soon we had removed our jackets and tied them, rolled, to our knapsacks. After only half an hour I had suggested that we should abandon our notion of going up Scafell and should merely admire it from afar. Our plan was to go up Styhead, cut across to Sprinkling Tarn and thence via Esk Hause to drop down into Eskdale.

We stopped for a rest. Ahead towered the immense crags of Great End, above us to the right was the stony sharpness of Great Gable. Welay back and looked behind us down into Borrowdale. Far below I could see the minute figures of half a dozen other walkers. A bird sang violently overhead for a minute, then was silent.

Peter stood up and peered down the slope, shading his eyes with one of his extraordinarily large hands.

‘Can’t you rest?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, and moved between me and the sun. For a second he seemed strangely menacing. Then quite close I heard the sound of boot on stone. Peter swung round. Approaching us were the blond-headed boy and his friends. They passed quite close.

‘Hello again,’ I said. ‘Warm enough for you?’

‘Yes indeed,’ he said.

Peter said nothing and watched them out of sight. He obviously wasn’t going to settle, so I stood up and put my knapsack on.

‘Come on,’ I said.

We didn’t stop again till we reached the top of the Hause (the top, as far as we were concerned, being the lowest point at which we could cross!), where we rested again before the descent which I knew could be more strenuous than climbing up. Peter regarded it as a kind of bonus, however, and let out little cries of excitement as he rushed away in front of me, carried on by his own weight and momentum.

I shouted at him to be careful, then laughed at myself for sounding like an old woman.

But when he got out of sight and I hadn’t caught up with him a few minutes later, I began to shout again.

‘Over here,’ came a voice from my left.

There was still no sign of Peter and a faint stirring of worry began in my stomach, and suddenly it churned violently as I caught sight of his knapsack, abandoned on the ground.

I ran up to it. It was near the edge of a deep, narrow, precipitous gully with a dried-up stream bed at the bottom. From about thirty feet down, Peter’s face looked back up at me. For a second I thought he had fallen, but almost immediately realized what he was doing. Just below him, apparently wedged in a crack in the rock-face was a sheep, its trapped legs bent at an angle that made me sick to see. It rolled its head up at Peter and let out a rattling bleat.

‘For God’s sake, Peter!’ I said. ‘Come back up! We’ll tell someone when we get down the valley.’

He looked undecided, then turned as if to start climbing. The sheep, disturbed perhaps by the movement – though I must say it looked horrifyingly like a start of protest against our leaving – twisted sharply, half freed itself and fell outwards, its hideously broken foreleg now revealed plainly, dangling like a broken branch held only by the bark.

I turned away. When I looked back Peter was beside the animal, bending over it with a thick-bladed bowie-knife (the object of much amusement earlier) in his hand.

‘For God’s sake, Peter!’ I called again.

‘I can’t just leave it!’ he snarled and stabbed down. The beast struggled violently, a great spurt of blood jetted out and ran up Peter’s arm, then it went dreadfully slack.

‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ said Peter, leaning back against the rockface and taking great gulps of air.

‘Now, please, Peter, please come up.’

He turned without demur and began to climb towards me, his face white and set. Most of the strength seemed to have left his limbs and by the time he reached the slight overhang at the top of the gully, I began seriously to doubt whether he could make it without help.

I lay down, leaned forward, took one of his hands in mine and began to pull. He seemed a dead weight.

I was so immersed in what I was doing that when a voice spoke in my ear I almost let go.

‘Hello,’ it said. ‘Want a hand?’

I turned my head and my nose almost brushed against a remarkably fine pair of breasts. Or the nearer one at least. They were covered only by a flimsy bra over which they strained voluptuously.

The girl reached over the edge of the gully and seized Peter’s other hand.

‘Heave ho!’ she said.

Whether it was the extra pulling power of the girl’s hands or the attraction of the rest of her, I don’t know, but Peter popped up like a jack-in-the-box.

He sat there, getting his breath back, and I stood up to thank our helper. But surprises were not over. There were two of them. I realized at once they were the foreign girls whose seats we had taken in the bar the previous night. But their legs were no longer the eye-catching feature. Above their mini-shorts, all they wore were their bras. They had a small haversack with them and I could see their blouses tucked through the straps.

They both wore their hair long and might almost have been twins. The only instant way I saw of separating them was that Peter’s saviour wore a white bra and the other a deep blue one.

I must have stared too hard at the difference for suddenly White-bra giggled and put her hands up to her breasts. She was obviously nearer sixteen than the twenty-five her figure could have claimed. I noticed with a start her right hand had blood on it. From the sheep by the way of Peter, whose left arm was caked with a dusty red.

He stood up now.

‘Are you all right?’ the girl asked sympathetically.

‘Yes, thank you, dear,’ said Peter. ‘It was very gracious of you to help.’

He solemnly kissed her hand. White-bra giggled again and said something to Blue-bra in the language I had heard the previous night. Blue-bra giggled back.

I must have looked puzzled.

‘Olga’s my pen-friend, from Sweden,’ White-bra explained.

‘A fine country,’ said Peter, who had never been anywhere near it. ‘Thank you both again, for the help you have given me, and the spiritual stimulus you have given this old gentleman here.’

Well, you’re fully recovered, I thought, and set about dragging him away before his whimsy took him too far. He saw what I was at and strode ahead with a broad grin on his face. I murmured my own thanks and set off after him. After fifty yards or so, I glanced back and waved.

They waved back, two arms over four circles; two blue, two white.

I smiled at the thought of the odd impression they must have of us, and hoped we wouldn’t meet them again.

It was a hope the realization of which was never to give me any pleasure.

FOUR

We stopped twice more on our descent into Eskdale, the first time to eat the stringy ham sandwiches Stirling had probably picked personally to go into our packed lunch. To wash them down I had a super-sized flask which I had filled with iced lager by courtesy of Peter’s waiter. I mentioned this.

‘Clive?’ he said. ‘That was nice of him especially when we were in such disgrace.’

We laughed once more at the memory. Peter seemed to have recovered completely from the episode with the sheep.

Our second halt was in the valley. We had diverted slightly to have a look at Cam Spout as it poured down from Mickledore and had followed the stream down to Esk Falls where it mingled with another which came trickling down from Bowfell. Here the track levelled out and we were able to take our ease after the exertions of the steep descent. Eventually we reached a spot where the waters broadened into a pool about a dozen feet across. Peter decided he wanted to bathe. There was no one around, but I don’t think it would have mattered if there had been. Quite unselfconsciously he took off his clothes and stepped in.

‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘The water’s lovely.’

Prudence, or prudery, made me hesitate a moment. Then my clothes were off and I leapt in beside him.

Peter flung a handful of water at me with a laugh and next minute we were engaged in a splashing match which soon degenerated into a wrestling match. Eventually, half drowned, we relaxed again and let the sun warm all that was uncovered by the water. My eyes were closed, but suddenly I sensed a shadow on my skin and looking up I saw a man standing on the bank. He was dressed for walking and looked an imposing figure as he tood there, my angle of view making him seem taller than he was. His broad sunburnt face and thick grey-red beard added to the general impression of forcefulness and power. I was sure I had seen him before.

‘Good day to you,’ he said with a slight Scottish accent. ‘If I wasn’t so modest, I’d join you.’

‘Please do,’ I replied.

‘No, no.’ He grinned. ‘I’m getting old. I couldn’t stand the comparison. Good day.’

So saying, he touched his stick to the floppy hat he wore and strode away down the track.

Shortly after this, we clambered out and dressed ourselves. I noticed Peter did not put back on the shirt with the blood-stained sleeve, but replaced it by another.

It was only a few miles now to the village of Boot. There was a fairly large inn nearby with hotel pretensions in the summer. We were both now feeling very tired.

‘If,’ I said, ‘if they can fit us in, I suggest we leave the seaside till tomorrow. It won’t go away.’

By luck, there was a double room available, a cancellation, almost a miracle at this time of year, the manager assured us. An expensive miracle, it appeared when we enquired the cost. But I hadn’t got the will-power to go any further now.

We were shown upstairs to our room and I collapsed on the nearest bed and closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. Or so I thought.

When I woke Peter was standing over me dressed in his ‘respectable’ kit.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘or we’ll miss dinner. I’ve been down already and it smells gorgeous.’

‘Borrowdale seems a million years ago,’ I commented as I sipped a well-diluted scotch in the bar.

‘Yes, doesn’t it? I bet it’s raining in Seathwaite.’

An anxious little waiter stuck his head round the bar door and waved at Peter.

‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘do you always make friends with the most unimportant members of the domestic staff?’

‘That,’ he said, ‘is Marco. He is Italian. He is here for the season. He is telling me that if we really want our dinner, we’d better get a move on or else the chef, a man with a vicious tongue and I suspect a gangrene on his shin will run amuck. I have ordered for you.’

We went in. Nearly everybody else was at the pudding stage. Over in a corner with a rather pretty young girl was the bearded man who had passed us as we bathed. His semi-formal attire made him look even more distinguished but older too. He must have been well over fifty at least.

He had his back to us but to my surprise the girl on seeing us enter reached over and touched his arm and he turned to look.

With the attractive smile I had remarked earlier, he waved genially, then returned to his food. The girl watched us to our seats, though not blatantly.

The mystery was explained when we sat down.

‘That,’ said Peter, with a flicker of his left cheek muscle in the direction of the bearded man, ‘is Richard Ferguson, the bird-man. With him is Annie Ferguson, the bird.’

‘His wife?’

‘His daughter, you fool. It’s no use looking for reassurance that your advancing years have not put you on the shelf. They’re v. devoted, almost incestuously so. His wife, I believe, is an invalid. Might even be dead.’

I had heard of Richard Ferguson, had even listened to a radio talk of his on one occasion when I had been too comfortable to reach out of my bath to change the station on my transistor. He was much sought after, so I gathered, as a broadcasting pundit. Some accident of chance had led the BBC to adopt him as one of their panel game and quiz team ‘characters’. It seemed almost incidental now that he was also one of the country’s leading ornithologists.

‘How did you meet him?’ I asked.

‘Introduced myself in the bar. When a man’s seen you naked, you’ve taken the first step to friendship after all.’

‘From the way his daughter’s looking at us, he’s obviously described the scene to her too.’

‘Well, it’s too good a tale not to be retold.’

Our soup arrived in the slim brown hands of Marco. I ate with gusto.

Peter’s suggestion that we had a couple of drinks in the bar after dinner I firmly refused. I left him there and watched the telly for a while, struck up a conversation with a couple from London, read half a page of the Daily Telegraph, then went to bed.

It had been a splendid day. I had a self-congratulatory sense of physical achievement. I was well fed, pleasantly sleepy and lay in a comfortable bed. To cap it all, a large yellow moon shone right outside my window. I saluted it and fell asleep.

I don’t know what time Peter came up but when the knock came at our door in the morning he was already up and dressed. He looked pale and told me as we went down to breakfast that he was suffering from sunburn as a result of our bathing party the day before.

‘I can’t walk today,’ he said. ‘I doubt if I’ll ever walk again.’

Marco’s smiling greetings had gone almost unacknowledged and the little Italian did not look at all happy when he brought us our bacon and eggs.

‘Not to worry,’ I grinned. ‘Today we go by train.’

Marco slammed Peter’s plate down in front of him. His thumb was in the fringe of the egg. As he removed his hand the egg came with it, then sliding free, it fell towards Peter’s lap. Peter with the casual rightness so hated by Jan lifted the edge of the tablecloth and caught the greasy object. He looked expressionlessly at Marco, then spoke.

‘Marco, can’t you organize something that makes sense out of this chaos?’

Marco’s underlip suddenly shot out and he began to gabble in Italian, lowly at first, but soon swelling in volume till everyone in the room was looking at us. Ferguson and his daughter, I noticed, had just come in and were standing by the door openly observing the scene with great interest.

Marco reached some kind of climax and halted. I thought of applauding, but a look at his face made me think again. He was very angry. Peter still sat there holding the tablecloth like a bridal train.

Ferguson moved over to us and spoke sharply in Italian. Marco caught the remnants of the egg up in his hand, flung it on to the plate and strode away to the kitchen.

‘Thank you,’ said Peter, releasing the tablecloth and standing up, partly to avoid the last oozings of the egg yolk, partly in acknowledgment of Miss Ferguson who was hovering behind her father. ‘That was kind. May I introduce my friend, Harry Bentink.’

‘Hello, Bentink. We have met in a manner of speaking. And I heard a great deal about you last night.’

‘How do you do,’ I said, half standing up with a bit of fried bread impaled on my fork which I waved nonchalantly at the girl. The bread fell on to the table.

‘You’re not having much luck with this table, are you?’ said Ferguson. ‘Come and share ours.’

He did not stay for an answer but moved across to the corner where he had been sitting the night before. We followed.

‘My daughter, Annie,’ he said. The girl smiled politely but said nothing. I got the impression she was scrutinizing me very closely behind her impassive façade.

‘Are you here on holiday or business?’ I asked.

‘Bit of both,’ he said. ‘Never know what you’ll see on the mountains.’

‘That’s true,’ said Peter in what I recognized as his facetious tone. ‘We saw a blue and a white tit only yesterday, didn’t we, Harry?’

He kicked my leg gleefully under the table. I lashed back and caught the girl’s ankle. She drew away in greater unease than I felt the situation warranted.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Will you excuse me?’

She rose and left. She’d only had a thimbleful of grapefruit juice. I let my practised eye recreate the limbs under the skirt as I watched her go through the door and smiled approvingly.

She did not come back and we finished the meal practically in silence.

Replete, Ferguson folded his napkin neatly, looked at each of us in turn and asked, ‘What are your plans today?’

‘We’re going to see the sea,’ said Peter. ‘But first we’re going on a mysterious train journey.’

Ferguson laughed.

‘Oh, Lile Rattie,’ he said.

‘What?’ said Peter.

‘The miniature railway. It’s great fun if the weather’s fine. And it runs to time.’

Peter looked across at me and raised his eye-brows apologetically at having spoilt my surprise. I grinned back and looked suggestively at my watch. He nodded.

‘Well, Mr Ferguson, thank you for the use of your table. We must be off, however, while the day is young.’

We all stood up and shook hands.

‘Enjoy yourselves,’ said Ferguson.

‘You too.’

As we went out of the dining-room I looked at Peter curiously.

‘Why didn’t you answer Marco?’ I knew he spoke excellent Italian.

He shrugged.

‘He was just being rude.’

‘What did Ferguson say to him, then?’

Peter laughed.

‘He told him to bugger off or risk losing his unmentionables!’

Half an hour later we were striding down the road into the railway station. More than a station, it is a terminus and the incongruity of both setting and proportion have always endeared the place to me. Peter looked without comment at the narrow track and the low platform. There were not many people around at this time of the morning, I mean not many waiting to catch the train to Ravenglass, though when the train itself arrived it was quite full of trippers and hikers. They got out and dispersed. We put our knapsacks in one of the tiny open compartments and walked up the track to inspect the locomotive. Peter examined everything very closely, full of amused delight.

‘It’s marvellous, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s not an intrusion into the place. Not like all those bloody motor-cars you find parked all over the place. You could run up Helvellyn in something like this and even Wordsworth wouldn’t object.’

The exhilaration of feeling the rush of air on your face, of being able literally to lean out and pick flowers as you pass is almost indescribable. Perhaps the sense of inhabiting in reality for a while the imaginative world of childhood has something to do with it. Certainly the (so it seemed) inevitable sun, the royal blue sky, the smell of things growing, to which the occasional whiff of steam or smoke seemed a natural addition, all these contributed to the enchantment of the moment. Peter looked like a child on a perfect birthday.

‘Thalatta, thalatta,’ he murmured softly to himself, eyes straining ahead to take everything in. ‘Soon we will see the sea.’

I nodded happily, acquiescingly. Soon we would see the sea.

Beckfoot came and went. Then Eskdale Green, Irton Road and the descent down the flank of a wooded fell to Muncaster. All too soon it seemed our journey was over and the sturdy little engine pulled us round an easy bend into the Ravenglass terminus.

I sat back for a few seconds, reluctant to move. But Peter was already on his feet.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I can smell it.’

‘All right.’ I took my knapsack and we walked slowly up to the small booking-kiosk and the exit.

There were two men standing by the gate. They were dressed in rather shabby grey suits cut in a style that was archaic by London standards and must have been a bit behind the times even for Ravenglass.

One was reading a newspaper. The other, a smaller, altogether less restful-looking man, registered our approach and touched his companion on the arm. I was reminded of the Fergusons when we came into dinner the previous night.

The larger man glanced up, folded his newspaper into a squat little packet and thrust it into his jacket pocket. The anxious little man was already heading towards us. The big man strolled in his wake.

‘Not more waiters, I hope,’ I said to Peter.

He laughed. ‘Not mine if they are.’

It was obvious that the men were heading for us. There hadn’t been many people on the train and most of those had already disappeared.

‘I think they are policemen,’ said Peter.

I felt a sudden panic. To intercept us on holiday like this meant something pretty urgent. Something at the office? Hardly. A fire at home? Something happened to Jan?

‘Mr Bentink? Mr Thorne? We are police officers, I am Detective-Constable Armstrong and this is Detective-Constable Lazonby.’

Peter and I nodded inanely. For a moment, overlaying worry, came the thought of how amusing it would be if we all shook hands and then went our separate ways. But only for a moment.

‘We wonder if you would mind helping us in some enquiries we are making.’

‘Certainly, if I can,’ said I, my relief that none of my personal fears seemed to be realized making me more enthusiastic than I normally am in my dealings with the police.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said little Armstrong. ‘Then if you’d come this way. We have a car.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Can’t we chat here just as easily as in a car?’

Armstrong stood on his toes in his anxiety.

‘I wasn’t thinking of talking in the car, Mr Bentink.’

‘No,’ said Lazonby in a much less conciliatory tone. ‘We’d like you to come to the station.’

I didn’t like the sound of that, but what followed I liked even less.

‘In Keswick,’ added Armstrong with reluctant honesty.

‘Keswick!’ Peter screeched.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Armstrong. I found to my surprise we were moving quite rapidly towards the car-park.

‘Detective-Superintendent Melton would like you to assist him with an enquiry he is in charge of.’

Superintendent. I knew enough to know this meant it wasn’t trivial.

‘Look here,’ I said. ‘Just what is this case, and how can we help?’

Armstrong looked at Lazonby with dog-like appeal.

‘Detective-Superintendent Melton is in charge of the investigation into the deaths of Miss Olga Lindstrom and Miss Sarah Herbert. He thinks you may be able to help him with his enquiries,’ recited Lazonby.

‘Which girls? Oh, not those girls – the Swedish pen friend and – but how did they die? An accident on the fells?’

‘Accident?’ said Lazonby. ‘If you can strangle somebody by accident, and rape them by accident, then it might be a bloody accident. Come on.’

Stunned, we followed. A few minutes later we were in a police car on the road to Keswick.

Some time later as the car began to labour up into the fells we thought we had turned our backs on, it began to rain.

FIVE

We had been driving for more than half an hour before I summoned up courage to speak. I prefaced it with an offer of cigarettes. Lazonby accepted.

With an effort to sound casual (an effort all the harder because of my sense of how stupid it was that I should have to try at all) I asked, ‘What exactly happened to the girls?’

Lazonby took so long in replying that I thought he was just going to ignore the question. But finally he said, ‘Exactly, we don’t know. But we will know, eventually. At the moment all we know is that some time last night they were raped. Then strangled. Then thrown in a gully. Probably in that order. That’s all we know.’

He looked me full in the face.

‘But it’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think, Mr Bentink?’

I nodded foolishly and decided to try to turn the conversation yet again.

‘What kind of man is Mr Melton?’ I asked.

Lazonby thought a long time about this too.

‘He’s a good policeman. Oh yes. He’s a good policeman,’ was all that he said in the end.

But now we were fast approaching Keswick. The rain was still beating down on the windscreen almost too hard for the wipers to clean a space, but Armstrong kept his foot down on the accelerator. This seemed rather out of character for so nervous a man, but I caught him glancing at his watch, and guessed that some kind of deadline was involved. I was recovered sufficiently to be able to smile wryly at the thought of deadlines in a murder case.

My new complacency was shattered, however, as we pulled into the small courtyard of the Keswick police station. Despite the rain, a small crowd had gathered there and as I got out of the car, I was horrified to hear from two or three throats a low baying noise, half growl, half boo, which rose in volume as Lazonby seized me by the arm and hustled me into the building.

I wrenched my arm away from him and asked in some anger, ‘What do you think you’re doing? And what was all that din about?’

Lazonby looked apologetic, or at least as apologetic as his solid impassive face permitted.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Bentink, but you always get a funny type of person hanging around the station on cases like this. They want a glimpse of the murderer. I had to rush you in. There was a photographer there, and I’m sure you didn’t want your picture in the papers, did you?’

‘Why no,’ I said, still feeling uneasy about the whole incident. I looked around.

We were standing in a kind of foyer about twelve feet square. There was a counter running the length of it, topped by frosted glass with a couple of compartments in it, like the windows of a railway booking office. One of these was open and through it two uniformed policemen eyed us with undisguised interest. The door which led through this partition into the office behind it opened and a sergeant came out. Armstrong stepped forward and spoke to him. He nodded and disappeared again.

‘Won’t keep you a moment,’ said Armstrong brightly, obviously pleased at the prospect of getting rid of us.

I turned to Peter. He had slumped down on to the bench which ran along the wall opposite the partition. He looked, I thought with horror, the picture of guilt overtaken by conscience. But before I could think what to do to rearrange this allegorical picture, a door opened at the far end of the room and through it came Marco.

He stopped dead when he saw Peter. I might not have been there. Then he set off for the exit door and I thought he was going to rush through it without a word. But he stopped with his hand on the knob, turned and looked down at Peter who stared back with no discernible emotion on his face, then cried:

‘Pardon me, Peter. I was so angry.’ This was followed by a few sentences in very rapid and emotional Italian, then he flung open the door and rushed out.

Peter, with one of those rapid transitions of mood which I realized I had noticed previously but which only now began to cause me some unease, looked up at me and winked. I glanced round quickly to see if anyone had noticed. The two constables behind the counter were chatting away to each other with great verve, Lazonby was staring thoughtfully at the door which was just swinging slowly shut on its spring. Armstrong was looking to the other end of the room where in the open doorway through which Marco had appeared stood a new figure. He was looking straight at Peter.

Something told me immediately this was Melton. Yet he looked nothing like my mental picture of the man. Perhaps I had been conditioned by television, but I had expected a large man, solid, impassive and like Lazonby except larger and cleverer. But this man was nothing like that. Short, thin, wearing an ill-fitting blue suit and, most unsuitably in every sense of the word, a green and orange checked waist-coat, he had a triangular face swelling from a narrow chin to broad expanse of forehead, accentuated by a far-receded hairline. He wore spectacles, round, cheap-framed, with bi-focal lenses.

He stepped into the room.

‘Emotional creatures, these foreigners, aren’t they? Mr Bentink? Mr Thorne? Thought I had you spotted. Yes, emotional. Easily upset. Show it all. Not like you and me, Mr Thorne, eh?’

His voice was high-pitched, but perfectly controlled, lacking entirely the over-rapid pace and near squeakiness of the normal high male tone.

‘It’s good of you to come. I’m Detective-Superintendent Melton. We’ll try not to keep you any longer than is necessary. Though on a day like this you might as well be here as anywhere, eh?’

‘It was sunny in Ravenglass,’ said Peter in a childishly sullen kind of voice.

‘Yes, yes. I dare say it was. Come along now.’

He turned and walked back through the door. We followed him into a long corridor with several doors leading off. One of these was open and sitting behind a desk there was a figure cast much more in the mould I had expected. He was a big solid man, about sixteen stones of him I reckoned; he made Lazonby seem a puny youth.

‘Ah, Inspector Copley. Just the man. I wonder if you would have a chat with Mr Thorne here and take his statement. In you go, Mr Thorne.’

‘Aren’t you coming too, Harry?’ asked Peter appealingly. I could see signs of strain on his face like those which had seemed permanently etched there during the first weeks after his breakdown.

‘Mr Bentink will come with me,’ said Melton politely but firmly. ‘We’ll get things done much more quickly that way. We don’t want to keep you hanging about, do we?’

He turned away, but Peter still stood in the doorway, his hand tightening on the jamb till his knuckles whitened.

‘I don’t see how we can help anyway,’ he said in a high, strained voice, looking straight at me. ‘We only saw the girls once, in the hotel bar. We never saw them again.’

His gaze fixed on me for a few moments longer, then he turned into the room and the door closed behind him.

I stood in bewilderment. What Peter meant by his last comment seemed clear enough to me. He wanted me to enter into conspiracy with him to conceal our second meeting with the girls. But why should he want this? Why?

‘Come along, please, Mr Bentink,’ said Melton. ‘Let’s see if we can find somewhere to stow ourselves.’

He led the way further down the corridor and stopped at the last door.

‘Here we are. This will do, I think.’

He opened the door and waved me in. I stepped forward, then stopped dead. Sitting there reading a large type-written sheet was Ferguson. He looked up.

‘Hello, Bentink,’ he said.

‘How on earth did you get here?’ I asked.

He grinned.

‘Our policemen are wonderful,’ he said.

‘I am sorry,’ said Melton. ‘Come along, Mr Bentink. We must obviously look further afield.’

We turned the corner at the end of the corridor and went up a flight of stairs. Up here we were obviously on a different plane of existence. There was a carpet on the floor, not luxurious but sufficient, and the room he finally took me into was very different from the bare functional boxes I had had a glimpse of below. Again, it was not luxurious, but it was reasonably spacious and the emulsioned walls looked bright and fresh. The furniture just consisted of a large desk and three or four chairs, but even these looked solid and reasonably expensive compared with the flimsy hardboard affairs below. And the room’s biggest advantage was that it had a real window. I went to it and peered out. The rain was slackening off a bit it seemed and visibility had improved, but it was hard to believe in the brilliant sunshine of the previous day.

Melton had come to stand beside me and he seemed to catch the tail-end of my thought and take it further.

‘If it had been like this yesterday, those girls might still be alive.’

We stood in silence after that looking out on the rain-washed landscape.

The police station was a fairly new building situated on the outskirts of the town and it backed on to some open fields which stretched away to the near fell-slopes. As I looked up at the dimly discernible heights, I felt I could imagine all kinds of sinister and dreadful happenings taking place there, but not what had happened the day before. That seemed somehow too urban, native to those stretches of heath or parkland which pass for the countryside near large towns rather than this wilderness whose terrors were not made by man.

‘Shall we proceed now, Mr Bentink?’

I shook off my mood of abstraction and took the proffered chair. Melton smiled at me, placed the fingertips of his hands carefully against one another and stared down at the resulting pinnacle.

‘Now, Mr Bentink,’ he said. ‘What can you tell me about the deaths of Miss Olga Lindstrom and Miss Sarah Herbert?’

‘Absolutely nothing,’ I said.

There was a long pause. I began to feel rather embarrassed for Melton, who was waggling his fingers around now as if rather uncertain how to go on.

Finally he took a deep breath and spoke.

‘Obviously I did not get you to come all this way, at considerable expense to the taxpayer, just so that you could tell me absolutely nothing.’

‘Obviously,’ I agreed.

‘Then why did I fetch you?’ he asked.

‘You tell me,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You tell me. You did come, after all. Voluntarily. Why did you come?’

‘Why, to help you with your enquiries.’ I cursed myself for mouthing the well-worn phrase. He smiled.

‘And did you feel you could help?’

‘No,’ I began, but was quickly interrupted.

‘Then I am indeed grateful that you’ve come all this way despite your conviction that your journey was useless. That was very good of you.’

I began to grow angry.

‘Look, Superintendent, if you want to translate cooperation with the police as a confession of guilt, that’s your business.’

Again he interrupted me.

‘Forgive me, Mr Bentink. I was just interested to know if there was anything relevant to the case which you felt you yourself would like to mention. That’s all. We don’t encourage amateur detectives but the ideas of intelligent men, especially those who have been on the spot at important times, are never ignored by us. I’m sorry you feel suspicious of my motives. All I want is information. All the information. All the little bits you might have stored away, quite unknown to your conscious mind. I set no traps. I just want to help you remember.’

‘Remember what?’

‘If I knew that, I would not need to trouble you any further. Perhaps a little confirmation to start with. You are Henry Aldgate Bentink of Flat 67, Montagu House, W.C.I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Splendid. It’s not often that people are so precise or legible in their entries in hotel registers.’

‘A mark in my favour?’

‘It depends where in your scale of values you put precision and legibility, Mr Bentink. You are at present on a walking holiday with Peter Charles Thorne, you arrived at the Derwent Hotel last Monday evening and stayed there till Wednesday, that is yesterday morning?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why did you stay there till yesterday morning, rather than, say, this morning? Or tomorrow morning?’

I did not understand his motives for this line of questioning and this worried me. What on earth could the length of our stay at the Derwent have to do with the case? I decided to be as unforthcoming as I could till he had revealed his hand.

‘No reason in particular.’

Melton stood up and took a turn round the room.

‘Mr Bentink, I take it you are an intelligent man, probably a University man.’

‘Yes.’

‘One of the penalties of intelligence is the difficulty of simulating unintelligence. It is so incongruous. Why will you not attempt to be frank with me? Either it was part of your overall holiday plan or it was an improvisation, a whim, a decision taken at the hotel. Whatever it was, there was a reason. No one suggests it was a sinister reason. Ninety-nine per cent of the people I talk to look for sinister reasons for all my questions when there are usually none. I know what it feels like. But let me repeat, I set no traps.’

He sat down again and looked at me almost pleadingly. I began to feel more at home, not because I believed a word of his protestation, but because this was a kind of tablemanship I was used to. Much of my working day was spent in just such confrontations and I mentally reviewed the list of preliminary self-questionings which I had learnt almost literally at my father’s knee. The main question was usually whether to attack or defend. Or rather, when to attack.

Well, I did not know Melton well enough yet to decide who was stronger, but I felt reluctant to commit myself to the truth. I gather that this is a not uncommon phenomenon in criminal cases and perhaps the reason is what I felt on that day. I felt myself somehow threatened and the truth was a final and impregnable bastion of defence. I did not wish to come to it too soon. Do not think I felt any serious concern for myself. The crime was a dreadful one, but I had nothing to do with it. And I was rational enough to recognize my own irrationality. And also my one real reason for holding the superintendent at arm’s length. This was my ignorance of what Peter was saying downstairs. He had implied that he was going to claim we had only seen the girls once, very briefly, in the hotel bar. Why?

‘Well, Mr Bentink. The hotel,’ he said gently.

He must know why we left when we did. He must have talked to Stirling and everyone else at the hotel. Questions about guests, time of alibis, recent departures.

I could not see any harm in his knowing, or anyone’s knowing, as long as Peter was telling it too. And there was no reason why he should not be.

‘We decided to leave yesterday morning because we thought we’d head across to the coast and spend some of this fine weather by the sea. We had decided this the previous night, but there was an unfortunate incident during the night which, though it did not make up our minds for us, certainly prevented us from changing them. But that can have no bearing on the case.’

‘I gather Mr Stirling was not amused.’

‘You knew,’ I said accusingly.

‘Ah yes. But you knew I knew. What interests me is why you bothered to work it out. Do you often get as drunk as that, Mr Bentink?’

‘Not often.’

‘Had you been celebrating anything special?’

‘No.’

‘I see.’

The stress was on the ‘I’. He took off his spectacles and rubbed them on his sleeve. Then put them back on and looked at an open file which lay on the desk before him. What the hell could he need time to think about, I wondered.

‘It was during this celebration that you exchanged words with the deceased girls, I believe. Would you tell me about that.’

‘It was nothing really. I just asked them if they were coming back to their seats or leaving. They didn’t reply, just jabbered away to each other in Swedish, then off they went.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘No.’

‘Do you speak Swedish? Could you understand what they said?’

‘No. No.’

‘But you knew it was Swedish?’

‘Well no. It sounded vaguely Scandinavian, if you know what I mean. And they looked Swedish.’

‘I see. Did you see them again?’

This was the crunch. I postponed the moment of positive decision by attempting to imply rather than state outright that I had not seen them ever again.

‘They left immediately and to the best of my knowledge never came near the hotel again.’

I thought I had got away with it, then cursed him as, appearing to want something to say rather than an answer, he repeated, ‘So you never saw them again.’

‘No,’ I mumbled.

My reasoning was simple. Peter wanted to be kept out of this business so much that he was prepared to lie about it. If he felt so strongly, it did not matter what the reason was. In fact, the less important the reason, the more important it seemed to support him. The doctor had said he was not ready for the kind of emotional pressure the recent past had put him under. This day had brought other pressures just as powerful to a mending mind. He felt himself threatened without reason, but the lack of reason could not be explained to him until his mind recognized the lack of threat. The sooner we got away from there the better.

I am not of the cast of mind which automatically puts personal loyalties before the public good. I am not quite sure what I would do it I discovered a close friend was a spy or a criminal. But in this instance I saw things fairly clearly. Nothing I could tell Melton about our meeting with the girls around midday could possibly throw any light on what happened to them six or seven hours later.

And in the back of my mind was the smug thought that in fact to be found out in this lie would almost redound to my credit.

But I still didn’t really like it, and muttered my ‘no’, and was heartily glad when the superintendent seemed satisfied.

‘Who else was in the bar that evening, Mr Bentink?’

‘I don’t know any names, I’m afraid. You see we’d only been there a day and spent most of that time out on the fells so there wasn’t much time to get to know people.’

I realized I was becoming garrulous in my efforts to display my eagerness to help, and I took a deep breath.

‘There were a lot of people I’d seen in the dining-room. A fat middle-aged woman with a thin grey man. I can’t be more exact. He was just grey.’

He smiled and sorted out a bit of paper.

‘Mr and Mrs Mannering. I have them here.’

‘And there was a family – two teenage sons and their parents.’

‘The Fosters.’

I screwed my eyes up in the effort to recall.

‘There was a party of walkers, young lads, probably from the hostel. I remember a very blond boy.’

‘Ah yes. The Wyrton Boys’ Club party. We have them here.’

‘The manager. Stirling, wasn’t it? I think he poked his head in.’

‘Hardly a very startling intrusion, I shouldn’t have thought.’

‘Oh. Well, that’s about my limit I’m afraid.’

‘Really? That’s not very good, is it? I mean you said the place was absolutely crowded, so crowded that the only way to get a seat was to nip in sharply as soon as anyone showed signs of leaving.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He stood up.

‘Think a bit more. Some other faces might come back, I know that memory’s a very odd thing. Would you excuse me a moment?’

He went out. I heard his footsteps recede down the corridor and wondered where he had gone. I toyed with images of two-way mirrors and secret peep-holes through which he could peer to see if I started rifling his desk as soon as he left. The thought amused me so I smiled and wondered what he would make of my smile. But it faded away as I thought that most probably he had gone to see how Inspector Copley was getting on with Peter. But in the end I shrugged that away too and smiled again at the thought that he had very likely just gone to the loo. He looked the kind of nervous little man whose bowels might be affected by the tension of such a responsibility as his.

But I had other things to think of, besides Melton’s character, though perhaps his character played a large part in the answer to the number one question which was, why had we been brought here? The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became, though I could not see any possible reason for uneasiness, apart from the lie about our second meeting. But that lie did not exist when we had been summoned.

It had been this discussion of the crowded bar which had suddenly brought it home forcibly to me how many people were involved. A hotelful and a hostelful, plus any casuals who had been around. The superintendent could hardly have interviewed all these. Could hardly intend interviewing all these. His men would take statements. He would sift through the statements and … he would want to see some people personally. But why us? Why not statements first from us?

Perhaps we were mentioned in other statements and his interest had been roused. Perhaps Stirling had indicated us as suspicious characters. The bastard! I felt I had arrived at part of the answer.

But the time factor still worried me. It was only 11:30 now. We had caught the 10 a.m. train from Boot. And had been met at 10:25. How long had Melton been on the case? There was an urgency here I did not like.

But what suspicion could attach itself to us? Could it be that Melton did not know where we had been the previous evening? But he must have checked with the Boot Inn to have been able to have Armstrong and Lazonby waiting for us at Ravenglass.

I told myself I was being too subtle about the whole thing. It probably did boil down to a matter of character in the end. Melton, nervous little Melton, must have the kind of quirk which demanded that he should put himself in personal contact with everyone on the case. Perhaps he could not delegate. Probably that was why he had had to leave me. He wanted to check up on his underlings, to see what was going on.

He would be downstairs in one of the little boxes talking perhaps to Peter.

The thought did not altogether please. But it was followed by another which pleased even less.

Or to Ferguson.

What was Ferguson’s part in all this? Why was he here? The only obvious connection he had with the case was not with the girls, but with us. With Peter and myself.

His presence was now the most puzzling feature of all. But at least, I thought, whatever he said must be proof positive that we were securely ensconced in the Boot Inn the night before.

I smiled and lit a cigarette. The door opened and Melton came back in.

He sat down.

‘Which route did you take yesterday morning?’

‘We went down through Borrowdale and then on through Seathwaite, over Esk Hause and down into Eskdale.’

‘Sounds like a stroll in the park when you say it like that.’ He smiled.

‘It didn’t feel like it.’

‘Hot were you, then?’

‘That’s right.’

‘See many people around?’

‘One or two, I suppose there were a lot around, it was such a lovely day. But there’s a lot of fellside up there.’

‘Did you notice anyone you knew?’

I thought for a long time. The trouble with telling a lie you don’t really want to tell (which rarely happens in business) is that you feel the same distaste every time you tell it, not just the first.

‘We saw the party of lads from the hostel. The ones in the hotel bar.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes.’

Again I was forced into the lie positive.

There was a tap on the door and a young constable came in with two cups of coffee on a tray. He placed them on the desk and went out without a glance at me. But I felt he was making a great effort to avoid staring.

‘Sugar?’ asked Melton.

We sat looking at each other over the tray as we manoeuvred the implements from one to another, for all the world like two housewives taking a break from shopping.

Always pick your moment for taking the initiative very carefully, my father had told me. This seemed like it, but even as I began to speak I had a feeling that the moment had been picked for me.

‘Mr Melton,’ I said as I took a sip of the cloudy brown liquid in my cup, ‘why, when you must have an incredible amount of work to do, are you spending so much time on someone who can help you as little as I can, who only met the girls for the briefest of moments’ (the distaste again) ‘and who can by no stretch of the imagination be suspect. Please don’t be offended by my bluntness, but I find it curious.’

He smiled.

‘Well, it’s better than being told one should be out catching criminals instead of manning radar traps. But you underestimate your value to us, Mr Bentink. That’s what makes police work so difficult. People don’t know how much they can help. It’s a kind of modesty, I suppose. But something you said there interested me, Mr Bentink. Of course you’re not here as a suspect, except insofar as anyone remotely connected with the case is a suspect. But why are you so certain of your own exemption from suspicion?’

Again I found myself not altogether liking his phraseology, but I could afford to be benevolent.

‘Because, as you must know, Superintendent, I was visibly in the Boot Inn from six-thirty p.m. on.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Indeed we do know that, Mr Bentink. But I fear you are labouring under a misconception of some kind. When do you think the girls died?’

‘Between seven and ten, didn’t they?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Why, Detective-Constable Lazonby, I think it was. He implied it anyway.’

‘You must have misinterpreted him. Or he himself is misinformed.’

The fingers were now back in the steeple formation. The eyes fixed firmly on me.

‘The pathologist’s preliminary examination indicates the girls had been dead between eleven and fourteen hours when found. They were found at three a.m. That means, as I am sure you can work out, that they died – were murdered – between one o’clock and four o’clock yesterday afternoon. And you were on the fells then, Mr Bentink. So it’s not quite such an imaginative stretch after all.’

SIX

I held the coffee cup steady at my lips for as long as I decently could and cursed the slowness of my wits. I had seen men lose fortunes on the market like this. Not fully understanding what was going on, they had clung all the more tightly to their certainties, only to sink completely when these were snatched away.

Suddenly, from being in possession of a perfect abili, I had been turned adrift on the mountainside with no one except Peter able to vouch for a single second of a single one of the three vital hours. I pulled myself up mentally. There were doubtless hundreds of people in a similar position. The area must have been swarming with walkers on a day like yesterday, I thought. Lone walkers; walkers in pairs, in threes, in fours; groups of walkers, packs of walkers, columns, battalions and regiments of walkers.

‘That surprises me, Superintendent,’ I said easily. ‘How could such a thing happen in broad daylight on such a popular stretch of the fells?’

He looked down at his papers as though at notes. But though I had seen him toy with a pencil for a few seconds at a time, he never appeared to write anything.

‘You say you only saw one group of people yourself, Mr Bentink. That must have been in seven or eight hours up there.’

‘There were others in the distance.’

‘Who may or may not have seen you and almost certainly woudln’t if you sat down. Or lay down. Or were made to lie down.’

‘But noise. Screams. On a clear day.’

‘Muffled by something. A sweater. A jacket. And pressure round the throat. The rape and strangulation were apparently almost simultaneous.’

I felt ill.

‘But what kind of people … in broad daylight … The risk!’

Melton stood up and looked out through the rain-spattered window.

‘What kind of people? No special kind. At least not special in that they are going to stand out to a casual glance. Hotblooded enough to make them ignore the risk. But coldblooded enough I suspect to make them aware how little it was. This was no prolonged passionate love-making, Mr Bentink. This was a one-minute job. And then they lay there panting hard. And the girls not panting at all. All in sixty seconds.’

I sat unable to speak, or smoke, or sip coffee.

He went on.

‘Then they got up. Dragged the bodies ten, fifteen yards to a shallow gully, a dried-up stream bed. And tipped them in. No attempt was made to cover them. They just tipped them in. No one saw anything then, though as you say there were hundreds of people out walking that day. And no one came across the bodies till one of the search party found them early in the morning. No one in the hostel worried till locking-up time. Even then, they did not really start worrying. It was the finest day in living memory. The night was warm and clear. No one could be in trouble on a night like this, everyone thought. But at midnight they started wondering, at twelve-thirty they started worrying. At one they started searching. Two hours later, they found them. Quite easy, really.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘They woke me up at four-thirty.’

He turned round and yawned. I looked at my watch. It was midday.

‘We’ve done a lot since then.’

I decided the time had come to really test the situation.

‘I’m sure you must be very tired and still extremely busy. Do you want me to make any kind of statement? If so, I’ll get on with it. It won’t take long – I mean, there’s not a great deal I can state. But I mustn’t keep you back from the job.’

He looked as if he hadn’t heard a word.

‘Mr Bentink, are you married?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Mr Thorne. Is he married?’

‘No.’

‘Have you been on holiday together before?’

‘Well, yes. When we were undergraduates.’

‘You met at University?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you haven’t been on holiday together since then?’

‘No.’

‘Not, in fact, since you got married?’

‘No.’

‘Any special reason why you came this year?’

Again I was faced with a choice. Again I tried to sidestep it.

‘No, no special reason,’ I said.

If I kept everything as simple as possible perhaps we might rescue the afternoon from this nightmare.

‘Mrs Bentink did not mind, then?’

‘Mind what?’

‘Mind losing you for a week. Or a fortnight. What is it, by the way?’

‘A fortnight. Three weeks. Whatever we decide.’

‘Well, that’s very nice, I must say. You must be self-employed.’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘I own a business.’

‘What kind?’

‘A firm which deals in stationery.’

‘Writing-pads and envelopes, you mean.’

‘Among other things.’

‘Where is Mrs Bentink?’

‘At home, I suppose.’

‘Suppose?’

‘Well, she might be away.’

‘On holiday?’

‘Yes.’

‘But no firm plans?’

‘No.’

‘Not like you.’

I was growing more and more exasperated and it was only my conviction that the meek and nervous Mr Melton was deliberately aiming at this that made me keep my temper.

‘Mrs Bentink is making her own plans this year. I have made my own plans. I would be carrying them out were it not for this business. Couldn’t we hurry it up, Superintendent? It’s getting near lunch time and this mountain air gives me a splendid appetite.’

He shifted his spectacles on his nose. He used them rather like a trombone player uses his slide, to get different tones. He now looked apologetic.

‘I’m very sorry, Mr Bentink. It is getting on, isn’t it? You mustn’t miss your lunch. We have quite a good canteen here. I’ll ring down and ask them to bring something up.’

I was genuinely surprised.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want to lunch here, thank you very much.’

‘You mean, you want to leave.’

‘Exactly.’

‘But I’m not finished yet, Mr Bentink. There’s a great deal more. Of course, I can’t stop you leaving. You must do as you think best. But I would much appreciate an opportunity of continuing our talk later on.’

I was nonplussed. The trouble with the police, I thought rather bitterly, is that they are right and we are wrong. Melton pressed his advantage.

‘I feel I should warn you that there’s quite a considerable crowd outside the station. Reporters, photographers, workers with nothing better to do in their lunch-break.’

‘So?’

‘So anyone coming out of this building is going to be subjected to a lot of questions and photographing. These reporters are persistent. At least a couple would follow you to wherever you went for lunch.’

‘Isn’t there a back way?’

‘Oh yes. But that’s reserved for people we’ve finished with.’

He smiled.

Always be a bad loser, my father had taught me, but let your badness be concealed.

I smiled back.

‘All right. You win. But if your canteen cooks like it makes coffee, I can do without it.’

He sat down, content it seemed to go on with the interrogation right away. But I had other plans.

‘I’ve got a packed lunch from the Boot Inn. It looked rather nice. I’ll settle for that, I think. It is in my knapsack.’

We had removed our knapsacks on entry into Armstrong’s car, and I had noticed Lazonby had carried them into the station with him.

‘I’ll have it sent up,’ said Melton, reaching for the phone.

‘Don’t bother. I feel like stretching my legs. I’ll go down.’

I got up and left the room before he could reply. I clattered down the stairs and turned into the narrow corridor. A few steps brought me opposite the door through which Peter had gone. I gave a perfunctory knock and shoved it open.

Inspector Copley was sitting on the edge of the desk, one leg dangling, looking down expressionlessly at Peter, who sat on a very uncomfortable-looking chair, his head thrown back and a handkerchief clutched to his face. It was covered in blood.

My first thought was of third-degree methods, police brutality, and all the other horrors which grow up in parallel with the myth of the helpful fatherly copper. But Copley did not seem at all put out by my entrance. He obviously read the accusation in my eyes, however.

‘It’s his nose,’ he said laconically.

Peter rolled his eyes round to the door, and saw me.

‘Harry,’ he said, ‘it’s my nose again. It just started.’

Nose-bleeds had been one of the physical manifestations of Peter’s nervous disturbance while he was in hospital, indeed to such an extent that he had been in need of blood transfusions at one point.

I rushed over to him. He was pale and drawn.

‘For God’s sake, man,’ I snapped at Copley, ‘can’t you see he’s ill?’

‘It’s just a bleeding nose,’ said Copley evenly. ‘I put a key down his back.’

‘Yes, Harry,’ said Peter. ‘It’s just my nose. Really it is, I’m all right.’

He looked up at me pleadingly.

‘Inspector Copley says we won’t be long now. Then we can go.’

I interpreted his glance easily. He felt the end was in sight and could hold up till then. I felt he would be better off seeing a doctor, perhaps spending a night in hospital, but I also knew that he would regard this as a defeat and instantly cease the desperate struggle he was making to remain on the surface of reality.

‘All right, Peter,’ I said. ‘See you soon.’

As I went out of the door I bumped into Melton. He carried my knapsack.

‘I got there before you after all. Here we are. I’ve had some tea sent up to the room we are using so you’ll have something to wet your throat. I’ll let you chew in peace and join you later, shall I? Do you hear that, Inspector Copley? Mr Bentink’s having his lunch here; sandwiches. He doesn’t trust our cooking. Perhaps Mr Thorne would like to do the same. See that he’s comfortable, won’t you? Come along now, Mr Bentink.’

I let myself be ushered back upstairs. Melton poured me a cup of tea and left. I unfastened my knapsack and pulled out the grease-proof paper packet of sandwiches. Then stopped with it half way out.

Below it lay my hat, neatly spread out with the crown acting as a kind of sack or support for the sandwiches.

The thing was, however, that my hat, made out of some phenomenally efficient crush- and crease-proof material, had been rolled up into a cylinder and thrust down the side when I had packed that morning.

My belongings had been unpacked and replaced since I arrived at the station.

I went through things carefully then. Nothing was missing, but now my suspicions had been aroused, I noticed many small items which were out of place. The knapsack had undoubtedly been searched.

I sat for a long time wondering why. I suddenly began to feel that matters were leaving my control. But once again, the certainty of my innocence made me laugh mockingly at myself and my overdramatization of events. Then I ripped open the sandwich packet and began eating in case Melton should return and find me sitting there, just staring into space.

I need not have hurried, however, for it was after 2 p.m. when Melton reappeared, full of apologies.

‘There’s so much to do. So much. So many little things. I’m sure you find this in business too. Now, where were we?’

‘I haven’t known where we were for the past four hours, Superintendent.’

‘Haven’t you? Perhaps that explains why you have been lying to me.’

My face settled instantly into the unemotional mask I reserve for crises, but my stomach began to bubble and pop like a panful of curry. I said nothing. I wanted to know what particular lie I was being accused of before I started defending myself.

‘Mr Thorne spent the three months up to a week last Tuesday in the Sister Moss Nursing Home near Epping in Essex. This holiday you are on is intended as a kind of buffer state between the world of the Home and the world of reality. Am I right?’

‘I’ll have that doctor struck off.’

‘I doubt it. Mrs Bentink is unobtainable at the moment, it seems. But we have it on reasonable authority that you and she parted on the worst of terms, that your friendship with Mr Thorne had long been a source of friction between you, that in fact your marriage was near breaking-point.’

I thought of a dozen worthies of both sexes and all levels who would have delighted in offering these tid-bits. It was little consolation to know that the eleven who did not get in first would be equally willing to let me know the identity of the one who did.

‘It also seems that Mr Thorne is sexually abnormal.’

I smiled.

‘You find it amusing, Mr Bentink?’

‘I find your way of expressing things amusing. Yes, Mr Thorne is a homosexual. But so are so many people that one wonders what is normal and what is abnormal.’

‘You are not homosexual yourself?’

‘No.’

‘But you do not regard Mr Thorne’s activities as in any way deplorable?’

‘No.’

‘That’s very liberal of you, Mr Bentink.’

‘I am a very liberal person.’

‘So I see. You must know, of course, that Mr Thorne made certain advances to a young waiter at the Derwent Hotel. The boy was eighteen years old. He was a first-year university student. Clever, yes, but not necessarily very mature. How liberal are you about that, Mr Bentink?’

I shrugged.

‘It came to nothing.’

‘No. The boy was mature. There was another student earlier on, wasn’t there? How liberal were you about that?’

I did not reply.

‘Then last night. Another youth. Twenty years old. Italian. Again a waiter. Did you notice anything there, Mr Bentink?’

I nodded.

‘But perhaps you were not privy to the fact that last night they slept together, they indulged in what passes for sexual intercourse between such people. Your mature, intellectual friend, convalescing from a mental breakdown, and a twenty-year-old foreigner stuck in the strangest part of a strange country. How liberal are you about that, Mr Bentink? How liberal can you get!’

He cracked his hand sharply on the desk.

I viewed him warily. I felt it was important to discover exactly how much this was a genuine display of indignation, how much a carefully controlled performance to lead me – where? My main feeling in any case was one of relief. This particular lie was not too difficult to account for. In fact, its discovery seemed to offer a new line of defence, though I did not take kindly to having to recognize I was now on the defensive.

‘Look, Superintendent, as far as I could see – in fact, can see – Mr Thorne’s illness has got no possible bearing on the case. I wished to save him embarrassment, that’s all. As it is, now you have found out, I take it that you have instructed Copley to stop badgering him?’

‘Badgering? No one is badgering. Inspector Copley is questioning a member of the public who has come voluntarily to the station to assist us. That is all.’

His recent emotion had gone and he was once again the rather dry, nervous, bird-like figure I had first acknowledged. But I knew him better now. I’m not very good on first impressions and people often exist in my mind as their own caricatures long after I first meet them. But I was quickly beginning to recognise the quality of this man.

‘Fair enough, Superintendent. As for Mr Thorne’s sex life, I did not know things had gone as far as you say with Marco. But if anything, surely this indicates the impossibility of his being connected in any way with a rape? You can’t have it both ways.’

Melton smiled at my phrase. Encouraged, I pressed on.

‘There’s nothing illegal about Mr Thorne fancying a young man. Nor anything morally reprehensible, no more so than if you or I should cast a lecherous glance at a couple of …’

I let the sentence fade away, but Melton finished it for me ‘… Teenage girls. No, you’re right. As long as it ends there. But your theory of sexual exclusiveness interests me. Your friend had the misfortune to fall out with young Marco. He was still very angry when we got him here and he was very ready to talk. Among other interesting things, he reported to us a rather curious remark passed by Mr Thorne as they talked, or rather as Mr Thorne indulged in a kind of meditative monologue which Marco only half heard and half understood. Mr Thorne commented that he found it a terrible physical strain to have a relationship with a woman. To make it at all viable, he needed some extraordinary or dangerous circumstance. What do you make of that?’

Frankly, I had not got the faintest idea what I should make of it. It referred to no part of Peter’s experience with which I was at all concerned. I smiled in as superior a fashion as I could assume.

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