The Long Kill

Small the Lake District might be, but three days’ exploration was scarcely enough to scratch the surface of its great variety and when Parker greeted him on Sunday evening with the excited news, ‘She’s made up her mind! Miss Wilson. She’s definitely going. I can arrange for you to see Rigg Cottage tomorrow!’ Jaysmith felt surprisingly put out.

He had what looked like a perfectly splendid walk mapped out for Monday and it was most irritating to be forced to postpone it for what was now an unnecessary piece of role-playing.

Doris Parker who was standing alongside her husband sensed his hesitation. She was a pleasant, calm, down-to-earth woman who was used to coping with her husband’s enthusiasms.

‘Don’t take any notice of Philip’s hard sell, Mr Hutton,’ she said. ‘There’s not need to look at Rigg Cottage unless and until you want to. I only heard at church tonight that Miss Wilson is definitely selling.’

‘But the whole point is for Mr Hutton to get in quick before it comes on the open market,’ protested Parker.

‘It might be worthwhile,’ conceded his wife. ‘She’ll certainly not be happy about paying an agent’s commission. But it’s up to Mr Hutton if he wants to see it, dear.’

Her broad-set grey eyes fixed speculatively on Jaysmith and he smiled at her and said, ‘Of course I’d like to, if you can arrange it. I’m really very grateful.’

Triumphantly Parker went to the telephone and returned a few minutes later with the news that eleven o’clock the following morning would suit Miss Wilson very well.

Jaysmith nodded his agreement. He’d have preferred to get the tedious business out of the way even sooner, but at least he would have the whole afternoon for the mountains. In any case, he could stay as long as he liked. The mountains weren’t going anywhere without him!

The next morning he used his unexpected post-breakfast period of non-activity to read the newspapers in detail. There was no reference to any violent death in St-John’s-in-the-Vale and there had been nothing on the local TV and radio news either. Presumably Jacob had not been able to make new arrangements before the deadline elapsed. That would not please him.

He put the thought out of his mind and drove up the winding road out of the village to keep his appointment.

Miss Wilson was curiously almost exactly as he had pictured her. Anything between seventy and ninety, she had snow-white hair and clear blue eyes in a cider-apple face. But any impression of gentle cosiness was soon dissipated. She carried her five feet three inches as straight as a guardsman, albeit with some help from a stick, and when she spoke it was in a clipped, brusque, no-nonsense tone.

‘I’d not be moving from here if it wasn’t for this leg,’ she informed him sternly, as if he had hinted suspicion of some less creditable motive. ‘Now the place is getting too big for me, the garden’s taking over, and the hill’s too steep. Not that I can’t climb it, but it takes me twice as long as it once did, and me mind’s back here already doing me jobs while me body’s still halfway up the bank, and there’s nowt so ageing as always letting your mind race on ahead of itself.’

Politely Jaysmith agreed, which seemed to surprise her, not because she anticipated disagreement but because she could see no need for a mere man to affirm that she spoke plain truth.

She proved remarkably unsentimental about Rigg Cottage and talked about it as if it were already settled that he would buy.

‘The sitting room fire smokes in an east wind,’ she said. ‘I’ve been meaning to get it fixed these thirty years. That’ll be your job now.’

She sounded almost gleeful.

It occurred to Jaysmith that this was a house whose faults could be freely pointed out because its more than compensatory attractions advertised themselves. Built of grey-green Lakeland slate, it stood foursquare to the east, as simple and appealing as a child’s drawing. The sloping garden which overlooked the lake was full of shrubs, mainly rhododendrons and azaleas whose blossom in June, Miss Wilson proudly and poetically assured him, burned like a bonfire. Now, however, the colours of autumn were beginning to glow, with Michaelmas daisies challenging the turning leaves to match their rich orange, while mountain ash and pyracantha were pearled with red berries which the blackbirds would soon devour.

It also occurred to him that if he really were looking for a house in the Lake District, this might very well be the kind of house he was looking for.

A thought stirred in his mind.

Why not?

He dismissed it instantly. It was once again the voice of that forgotten young man who played the ostler twenty-odd years ago. Jaysmith, however, knew the dangers of sentiment and impulse. It was one thing to decide on the spur of the moment to treat himself to an extra week in the Lake District, quite another to invest a large sum of money and, by implication, a large piece of his life here.

William Hutton, holiday-maker and property-seeker, would have to speak soon. Miss Wilson had shown him the outside first, as if reluctant to miss any moment of this glorious autumn morning. Now they moved indoors, and all was exactly as it should be, the right old furniture in rooms of the right dimensions, with just enough of light coming through the leaded windows and just enough of heat coming from the small fire in the huge grate.

‘Old bones need a fire almost all the year round,’ she said, seeing his glance. ‘That’s what we started with, that’s what we end with.’

Curiously he had no difficulty in understanding this enigmatic statement. Man’s move away from the beast was emblematized by a group crouching around a fire. And Jaysmith had felt the need of that fire in many a long cold hour spent in patient, motionless waiting.

The door bell rang. Miss Wilson left him and returned a moment later with another woman whom, with that tendency to instant mini-biography he had already noted in denizens of the area, she introduced as her niece, Annie Wilson, a widow, who lived out Keswick way, just back from her holidays and come for lunch.

Jaysmith was presented in similar terms with all of William Hutton’s known and assumed background and purposes spelt out. He guessed that Parker had been rigorously cross-examined.

The newcomer shook his hand. He put her age as early to mid-thirties. She had a long, narrow, not unpleasantly vulpine face, with a sallow complexion, watchful brown eyes and thin nose, slightly upturned, giving the impression that her nostrils were flared to catch the scent of danger. She was dressed in gloomy autumn colours, dark brown slacks and a russet shirt, with her long brown hair pulled back severely from her brow and held back with a casually knotted red ribbon. Her body was lean and rangy and she moved with athletic ease.

Jaysmith felt she regarded him with considerable suspicion. Its cause soon emerged.

‘You’re selling Rigg Cottage!’ she exclaimed to her aunt.

‘That’s right. I’ve talked about it often enough.’

‘I know, but it’s so sudden. Didn’t you discuss it with anyone? With pappy or Granddad Wilson?’

‘No I didn’t,’ said Miss Wilson tartly. ‘As you well know, else your father would have told you when you got back and James would have told you when you were staying with him. I’ve always made up me own mind and always will, so there’s an end to it. Now tell me about you and young Jimmy. When’s he coming to see me? I thought he might come with you today.’

Annie Wilson laughed and suddenly a decade was wiped off her face. Jaysmith watched, fascinated by the transformation.

‘He started back at school today, auntie. He’ll be round next Sunday as usual, I promise you.’

‘Just see he is,’ grumbled the old lady. ‘He could have been here yesterday if you’d got back earlier. It’s not right leaving it till the day before school starts. Too much of a rush.’

‘Granddad Wilson wanted us to stay as long as possible,’ said the young woman. ‘He doesn’t see much of Jimmy.’

‘Then he should get himself up here more often,’ retorted Miss Wilson. ‘The wedding, the christening and the funeral, that’s been about the strength of it these past few years.’

Annie Wilson’s face lost its animation and the ten years came back with whatever was causing the pain visible in the depths of her eyes.

‘Jimmy bought you a present in London,’ she said abruptly. ‘He asked me to give it to you.’

She handed over a packet in gaily coloured wrapping paper.

Miss Wilson said, ‘I’ll look at it later. I’ve got to show Mr Hutton upstairs yet.’

‘I’ll show him,’ offered the younger woman. ‘You sit down and open your present.’

For a second the old woman looked doubtful, then she agreed. Jaysmith guessed that despite her independence, she might value her niece’s opinion of him as a prospective buyer, and he guessed also that Annie Wilson wanted a chance to check him out for herself.

He played William Hutton to the best of his ability as she showed him round the bedrooms, enthusing over the view from the main bedroom window. It looked out over the valley, across the lake to Town End with the great swell of Seat Sandal looming behind.

‘Yes it’s hard to beat anywhere in the world,’ she said. ‘Have you set your heart on Grasmere, Mr Hutton, or will anywhere in the Lakes do?’

He almost admitted that his knowledge of the area was limited to what he’d been able to garner in the past three days, but this would have sounded very strange from William Hutton, prospective resident and eager house-hunter.

‘I love it all,’ he said expansively. ‘But Grasmere best of all.’

‘And you walk, of course?’

He gestured towards the eastern heights.

‘It’s the only way to get up there, isn’t it?’

She nodded, and suddenly thirsty for more of her approval, he went on, ‘I wouldn’t like to count the happy hours and the glorious miles I’ve passed on the tops.’

Which was quite true, he told himself ironically. The reward for his boast was to make her laugh and shed those years once more.

‘You’re as keen as that, are you?’ she said, gently mocking his grandiloquence. ‘You’ll be telling me you’re Wainwright next.’

He didn’t know if he succeeded in not registering his shock. Wainwright was a cover name he’d used on the Austrian job. How the hell did this woman know …? Then it came to him that, of course, she didn’t. The name had some significance he didn’t grasp, that was all.

He smiled and said lightly, ‘Just plain William Hutton. Is this the last bedroom?’

She nodded, her face losing its rejuvenating lines of laughter and settling to the stillness of a mountain tarn, momentarily disturbed by a breeze. He wondered if she’d noticed something odd in his reaction after all. But when she opened the bedroom door and motioned him in, something about her stillness focused his attention on the room itself. It was small with a single bed and a south-facing casement window with a copper beech almost rubbing against the glass. On the walls hung several photographs of what he saw were early climbing groups, young men, often moustachioed and bearded, garlanded with ropes and wearing broad-rimmed hats and long laced-up boots, standing with the rigid insouciance required by early cameramen. The background hills were unmistakable. Even his limited acquaintance enabled him to recognize the neanderthal brow of Scafell and the broad, nippled swell of Scafell Pike. The pictures apart, there was no sense of the personality of the occupier of this room, or indeed any signs of recent occupation. But twenty years of nervous living had honed his sensitivity to atmosphere and suddenly he heard himself saying, ‘Your aunt brought up your husband, didn’t she?’

She looked at him in amazement and said, ‘Why? What has she said?’

‘Nothing,’ he assured her. ‘She said nothing. I just got the feeling that once this had been his room, that’s all.’

Now there was anger alongside the surprise and all her initial distrust was back in her eyes.

‘What are you, Mr Hutton?’ she demanded. ‘Some kind of policeman keeping his hand in on holiday?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to be offensive. I just …’

But she was walking away.

‘That’s all up here, Mr Hutton,’ she said coldly. ‘We’d better get back downstairs to my aunt. She’ll be wanting to get lunch ready. I hope you’re as quick with decisions as deductions.’

He was very angry with himself. The remark had just slipped out and Jaysmith was not accustomed to anything but complete self-control.

Miss Wilson was holding a small pot replica of Big Ben in her lap.

‘Tell Jimmy it’s very nice, dear,’ she said. ‘Now, Mr Hutton, what do you think?’

He hesitated. When he’d arrived, he’d had it all worked out. A delightful house, but not quite what I was looking for. But now this formula would cut him off from Miss Wilson and her niece for ever. That was something he discovered he didn’t want to do, at least not without a chance for further thought.

He said, ‘Would it be possible to come back this afternoon? It’s hard to take everything in at a single viewing. You can often get mistaken impressions at a single encounter, can’t you?’

He glanced at Annie Wilson as he spoke, but got nothing in return.

Miss Wilson regarded him thoughtfully, then turned to her niece.

‘Well, I daresay we can put up with you trampling round again, can’t we, Annie? But give us time to enjoy our lunch. Three o’clock, let’s say.’

‘Fine,’ said Jaysmith. ‘Three o’clock.’

The old lady showed him out, Annie Wilson having disappeared with a perfunctory farewell into the kitchen.

‘One thing,’ said Miss Wilson on the doorstep. ‘You’ve not asked me price, young man. It may be too high for you.’

He rather liked her directness. It also occurred to him that he would rather like her good opinion.

He said, ‘If you really think of me as a young man, Miss Wilson, then I’ll be happy to accept any estimate of the house’s value based on the same principle.’

A sunbeam of amusement warmed the old face. Then she closed the door. There was a little red Fiat in the drive, presumably belonging to Annie Wilson. Carefully he backed the BMW past it and drove down the hill to the Crag Hotel.

Chapter 4

Jaysmith ate a snack lunch in the hotel bar and told the openly curious Parker that he had liked Rigg Cottage, but needed a second look.

‘Quite right, old boy,’ said Parker. ‘Never rush into these things. On the other hand, don’t hang about either. There is a tide and all that.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Jaysmith, finishing his beer. ‘By the way, who is Wainwright?’

‘Wainwright? You mean the walking chappie?’

‘Probably.’

Parker was regarding him with considerable surprise.

‘How odd,’ he said.

‘Odd?’

‘That someone as keen on the Lakes as you hasn’t heard of Wainwright! He’s the author of probably the best-known series of walkers’ guides ever written. You must be pulling my leg, Mr Hutton. Every second person you meet on the fells is clutching the relevant volume of Wainwright!’

‘Of course, I know the books you mean,’ lied Jaysmith. ‘Me, I’ve always managed very well with the OS maps.’

He left the hotel a few minutes later and strolled through the sun-hazed village to a bookshop he had noticed on a corner. There he found shelves packed full of the Wainwright guide books. He bought Book Three, entitled The Central Fells, which included much of the terrain around Grasmere. A glance through it explained its popularity: detailed routes, pleasing illustrations, lively text; there was possibly something here even for the man who lived by map and compass.

It was after two-thirty. Slipping the book into his pocket, he set out to walk up the hill to Rigg Cottage. It was a good distance and a steepish incline and he found himself admiring the old lady for having stayed on so long.

At the house he was relieved to see the little Fiat still in place, but there was no sign of Annie Wilson as Miss Wilson showed him round the ground floor once again.

‘Has your niece gone?’ he asked casually.

‘No, she’s out in the garden.’

‘You mentioned a boy, Jimmy. Are there any other children?’

‘You’ve got sharp ears and a long nose, young man,’ said Miss Wilson reprovingly.

‘If I’m going to become an inhabitant, I need to adapt to local customs,’ smiled Jaysmith.

His impudence paid off.

‘No, just the one,’ said the old lady abruptly. ‘They’d been married barely seven years when Edward died. It was just before Christmas last year.’

Nine months and still grieving. Grief could last forever unless life wrenched you out of its course. And even then you could not be certain if you were really living or just escaping.

‘You look around upstairs by yourself,’ instructed Miss Wilson. ‘I don’t bother with the stairs unless I have to.’

He spotted the younger woman from the window of the room with the mountaineering pictures. She was reclining in a deck chair at the bottom of the garden with her feet up on an ornamental wall, her eyes closed against the slanting sun. He stood for a while, watching, till she shifted slightly. Suddenly fearful she might glance up and see him at this particular window, he turned away and went downstairs.

‘Well?’ said Miss Wilson. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘We haven’t talked about a price,’ delayed Jaysmith.

‘I thought you said you’d leave that to me,’ she replied, her lips crinkling. ‘Well here’s what the agent reckoned he’d advertise it for if I put it with him, which I’m going to do tomorrow if it’s not sold today.’

She mentioned a figure. It was hefty, but, from the little bit of expertise Jaysmith had had to gather to keep up his end in conversations with Phil Parker, it seemed reasonable.

Miss Wilson added, ‘But for the pleasure of not paying an agent’s fee and not having hordes of strangers and more than a few nosey local devils tramping around the place, I’d knock a thousand off that, Mr Hutton.’

He scratched his chin and whistled softly.

‘That’s very generous of you,’ he said. ‘Very generous.’

He hoped that Annie Wilson would materialize at some point to show a protective interest in her aunt. But he saw now that the old lady would not take kindly to being protected and that the niece would remain determinedly absent till negotiations were concluded.

And if the conclusion were no sale, he would be politely shown the door and his chance would have been missed.

His chance for what? He wasn’t quite sure, but Parker’s words rang in his ears … there is a tide in the affairs of men …

He said, ‘On the other hand, I rather feel that for a cash sale, no property chain to worry about, no pressure to complete, or delay when you are ready either, all this guaranteed, you might come down a little lower.’

‘How much lower did you have in mind, Mr Hutton?’

‘Oh, another couple of thousand, I’d have thought.’

She looked outraged but he also saw behind the outrage what he had already guessed at – the haggler’s spirit burning bright.

They went at it hard for another fifteen minutes.

‘I’ll need to go out and talk to Annie,’ she said at one point.

She was gone a couple of minutes only. Shortly after she returned they settled for a reduction of the agent’s price by fifteen hundred pounds.

She offered her hand. He took it. Her grip was firm and warm.

‘That’s settled then. You’ll have a drink. Come into the garden.’

He followed her out. Another deck chair had appeared alongside Annie’s.

‘It’ll be whisky to seal a bargain,’ said Miss Wilson, returning to the house. ‘Sit down.’

She went back inside. Annie opened her eyes.

‘You’ve bought it then,’ she said neutrally.

‘It is irresistible,’ he said.

‘Did you knock her down?’

‘Only as far as she had decided to go. Probably not as far as that,’ he said ruefully. ‘I think she was very gentle with me. If she’d really tried her hardest, I suspect I’d have been raising her price. She’s rather formidable, isn’t she?’

He had struck the right note. She smiled at him now and nodded.

‘When she came out to see you just now, what did she say?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘She just came out, got that deck chair you’re sitting on from the shed and set it up, then she went back inside. Why?’

‘She told me she was coming to consult with you,’ he said.

Slowly she began to laugh and he laughed with her. It felt like a long time since there had been such a moment of shared pleasure in his life.

‘You two sound very jolly, I must say,’ said Miss Wilson, returning with a tray on which stood a decanter and three glasses.

Jaysmith struggled to his feet to offer her the deck chair but she said, ‘No, I find them things too awkward for me nowadays. I’ll sit on the wall here if you’ll shift your feet.’

Obediently Annie removed her feet from the ornamental wall and her aunt sat down.

‘Take your jacket off, man, and enjoy the sun,’ exhorted the old lady.

Obedient in his turn, Jaysmith removed his jacket. As he draped it over the back of the deck chair, the Wainwright guide fell out of his pocket. Quickly he picked it up and replaced it, wondering if Annie Wilson’s expression of amusement only existed in his mind.

He stayed for half an hour, deftly fielding questions about his background. At the end of this time the younger woman said, ‘I really must be off now, Aunt Muriel. I promised I’d pick Jimmy up from school.’

‘You’ll spoil him.’

‘First day back. After this, it’s the bus and a nice healthy walk. I’ll bring him round this weekend.’

‘Make sure you do.’

Jaysmith rose too.

‘You can get in touch with me at the hotel when your solicitor’s ready,’ he told Miss Wilson.

‘You’re staying on then?’

‘A few more days.’

He was wondering how to keep contact with Annie Wilson when she said, ‘Like a lift down into the village, Mr Hutton? I can’t see your car.’

‘No. I walked up this afternoon.’

‘Spoken like a real enthusiast. Of course, if you want to walk back …’

‘No. Uphill was enough. Downhill’s often much harder.’

‘There speaks an expert.’

He folded himself into the tiny car, leaving the two women to take their farewells. A moment of panic hit him as he waited.

What am I doing? he asked himself. I’ve promised to buy a house just so that I can talk a little longer with a woman I’ve only just met who may turn out to be dull as ditchwater, or reckon that I’m even duller!

But the panic vanished like morning mist when she climbed into the driver’s seat.

They hardly spoke on the short descent into Grasmere. She dropped him at his hotel. To invite her in for tea or a drink was manifestly absurd when he knew she was going to pick up her son.

He held the car door open and said, ‘Thank you.’

‘A pleasure,’ she said, putting the car into gear.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’d like to see you again.’

‘If you’re coming to live up here, I daresay we’ll bump into each other,’ she said with a smile.

‘No. I mean sooner. What about tomorrow? Lunch, say.’

She stopped smiling and studied him closely.

‘I don’t often eat lunch,’ she said. ‘Except when I go to auntie’s. Otherwise I just grab a snack.’

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘So why don’t we eat our snacks together?’

She thought for a moment then nodded gravely.

‘All right. Why not? Half past twelve suit you?’

‘Fine. But where? What’s the best place round here? You’re the local. You name it.’

‘Best place?’ she echoed, letting in the clutch and beginning to move gently away. ‘Well, one of my favourites is the Lion and the Lamb. Let’s meet there, shall we? Twelve-thirty prompt. ‘Bye!’

She smiled at him, her face suddenly alive with humour and mischief, and then she was gone.