The Old Contemptibles (30 page)

“Graham’s doctor?” Jury thought back over Plant’s report. “Viner? Is that her name?”

“I think so. When it happened, she wrote me a long letter, just the once. I got the impression she felt very guilty, very, about her own patient killing himself. And she was concerned about Millie.”

“I’m surprised she’d write to such a termagant as Millie described.”

“Oh, I doubt the doctor believed all of that. Anyway, I never heard from her again.”

Wiggins was back with the tea, setting out the cups, being mother.

“Delicious,” said Tommy, as she sipped.

Wiggins beamed under her smile and returned to his notebook and pen. He had found a large mug for himself.

“Do you see Millie often?” asked Jury.

“I did. Until this.” She patted the brace. “I haven’t seen her in two years.”

“But I’m surprised she wouldn’t come to you. If, as you say, she’s so loyal.”

“Well, she doesn’t know, does she?” said Tommy, briskly enough to hide the turmoil she was clearly feeling. “I’ve never told her. And when she wanted to visit, I put her off. Millie still thinks I have my old, much larger flat; my old, much better job; my old, rather handsome fiancé. Now just an old flame.” Her smile was false.

For a moment, Jury was silent, sensing something he didn’t much want to hear. “What happened to the old flame?”

“This.” Again, she patted the brace. “We were in an accident. He had to drive his brand-new Alpha-Romeo at a hundred-per, didn’t he? He got out without a scratch. I didn’t.” She shrugged. “He left. His name was Ronnie.”

There was a drawn-out silence during which Jury felt ill.

Wiggins stared. “Frankly, miss, I could kill Ronnie.” He dropped his eyes, then, blushing for the unprofessionalism of it.

“If she ever found out, Millie
would,
Sergeant.”

And she laughed that exuberant laugh.

Wast Water couldn’t begin to compare with Windermere in length, and yet about a mile along the road, with the giant, reddish screes rising above the opposite shore, Melrose wondered how a lake could be so long, or how mountains could look so close and yet be so far. Great Gable was probably a good two miles beyond the pikes of Scafell, yet looked as if it were wedged between. Had he been out for a view he would have admitted that, yes, this was one worth seeing, unprettified, desolate, grim and even creepy. The lake was not the inviting blue of Windermere but a cold, dark gray, the mood of which Fellowes had captured perfectly.

Melrose pulled the car over in a lay-by, braking beside some American car as long as a caravan—what was it? Cadillac? no, a Buick—and got out to stretch his legs in the chill wind and have a look at Fellowes’s map, which he didn’t know whether to trust or not. God, those mountains looked forbidding, yet they were as much for walkers as for climbers. More, really.

A couple strolled by the shoreline, hand-in-hand. Coming toward him was an elderly man with a stick. When he drew nearer, Melrose put him down as one of the locals; he looked hardy as the Swaledale rams. His face was so seamed from his pursuits in the open it was leathery.

The old man didn’t smile (they didn’t much, unless their glasses were empty) but politely touched his cap. “Hoo do?”

“Very well, thanks. Just out for a walk.”

“Droppy day.” He looked up at the heavy clouds. “Be gettin’ reean.” He looked across the lake. “Ya wasn’t about to walk along scree side, was ya? Looks easy, but ’tain’t. Toorns from scree to boulders arf’ter bit.”

“I’m driving.”

“Smert.”

“Going up Scafell to Broad Stand.” He pronounced it “Scaw-fell.”

“Doomb.” The old man pushed back his cap. “Anyways, ’tis ‘Scarf’l,’ ’tain’t no ward ‘scaw’; ’tis ‘sea’; means ‘steep’ y’see; steep fell.”

Melrose was in no mood for a lesson in etymology. He poked the map in front of the elder and said, “Does that route look right?”

The old man studied it, nodded. “T’Lard’s Rake’ll be hard after two thousand foot. Ya cud go round by Rake’s Progress, there.” He stubbed his finger into the map.

“Thanks,” said Melrose.

Again the man put his finger to his cap. Then he got in the Buick Le Sabre, gunned it up and drove off.

 • • • 

He had left the hamlet of Wasdale Head behind him over an hour ago. He looked at his printed map—the one that pointed out the rescue posts and kits—kits? Was it a do-it-yourself first-aid station? Did you mend your own broken leg?

Melrose had purchased heavy walking shoes (which he doubted he would ever use again) and a rucksack (about which there was no doubt at all) in which he had stowed Fellowes’s painting, Millie’s sandwiches and little compass, and binoculars.

He’d got past Brown Tongue to the Hollow Stones and he was already picking scree from his shoes, pulling off a sock and inspecting two toes for imminent corns and his heel for a blister. He was sitting (masochistically, he supposed) near the cross that marked a fatal accident to four walkers around the turn of the century. He thought of that other one they’d told him about—where was it? Red-something—the climber who’d fallen to his death and was for weeks watched over by his faithful dog. If Melrose fell off a precipice, he’d be watched over by a faithful buzzard.

Rake’s Progress, which he had given up on, was as apt a name for the follies of walking as Hogarth had made it for the follies of drinking.
That route had cost him a good mile and an hour and a half on his hands and knees (because of sliding stones) before he’d retraced his steps and decided to follow his original route after all.

What was annoying about this harebrained walk was not so much that its object—a look at Broad Stand—would probably reveal nothing to him, but that there was all of this
physical
activity involved. And even
that
wouldn’t be so bad if, after he’d done it, he could stride—brave mountaineer—into the Old Contemptibles and tell them he’d planted a flag on top of one of the Scafell pikes. Hell’s bells, Wordsworth had picnics up there and Coleridge ambled up to write a letter. Coleridge had been an inveterate climber with little sense of danger.

Rain was coming down steadily in splinters, and he was sorry he hadn’t got himself a cape. He was soaked through. He slogged on up the scree-gulley called Lord’s Rake and was made a little happier by seeing two walkers slogging down it in rubber capes. As they passed, the other two greeted him, happy as clams, and calling the whole thing absolutely “grand.” Melrose wished he had been a man for a view instead of a man for a fire, a snoring dog and a glass of Graham’s port.

It took him two more hours to go up and over and up and over until he came, finally, to a fell and descended Scafell Crag. It wasn’t easy, but at least it was near the end.

Finally, he came to it: one end of the Mickledore traverse and the steep pitch of rock where Virginia Holdsworth had gone over. Broad Stand did not look all that difficult as a means to get to Scafell Pike. But Melrose certainly wasn’t going to try to find out. He turned and went east for several yards until he saw the cleft in the crag called “Fat Man’s Agony.” It was deep and could easily accommodate someone of his build. He only wished he could get Agatha up here and try her out.

Melrose went through it to a platform. The walls were smooth stone and there was no way up or out that he could see unless, perhaps, one were a real climber.

He went out and scrutinized the scene at the place where Francis Fellowes had set up his easel; Melrose took the painting from the rucksack. Fortunately, the rain had let up so that he could see something of the play of light and shadow. When Fellowes had done this, there had been more light, more of a contrast of light and shade.
Melrose took the Polaroid out and shot three pictures from different vantage points.

There was no question at all about it. No way out, no way down, no way back except by the dangerous Broad Stand or a retreat back the way one had come.

It was late afternoon by now. Melrose packed up his gear and retreated.

“Bootle?” asked the girl in the tourist information office in Grasmere. “That’d be on the other side of Coniston Water.”

“No. Boone. It’s only a hamlet,” said Jury. “Near Wasdale Head or Wast Water.”

The girl, who had hair the color of daffodils and eyes the color of Ullswater, puckered her eyebrows over the map. “Yes. It’s here. But that means a longish sort of drive. On the ferry you could at least get across Lake Windermere to Hawkshead.” She looked up at Jury, smiling brightly.

“So where do we get the ferry?”

“It isn’t working.”

“Then, I expect,” said Jury, trying to be patient, “we can’t take it.”

Her smile dimmed. “It’s not in service till April. This is still March.”

Since her tone was imploring, as if he might think she was to blame for the order of months, he asked her kindly, “How should we go to Boone, then?”

“Umm?” The pretty girl seemed to be memorizing Jury’s face as she twisted a strand of daffodil hair round her finger.

“Boone. Wast Water. And we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

One would not have felt any urgency from watching Wiggins, who
was slowly moving the postcard turnstile, taking out a card, putting it back, taking out another.

“Oh. Yes.” Again she bent over the map spread on the glass case that housed souvenirs of the Lake District. “By way of Ravenglass, I expect. That’d take you along Windermere, down and up—”

“But that road goes north and we’re wanting to go southwest.”

“It’s the only decent road to take you most of the way. Wast Water is so isolated. Now, nearly all of the other lakes you can get to on good roads.”

She clearly wished they’d go to some other lake. “Then give me a
bad
road. There must be one that would cut off going so far out of the way.”

She had now pulled the lock of hair through her mouth and was regarding him deeply and mournfully.

Jury pointed to a lesser road that looked like a fairly straight shoot from Ambleside, a few miles north of Grasmere. “What about this one?” It went right across to the area of Wasdale. “Wrynose Pass, it says.”

“Oh, but you wouldn’t want that.”

“Why?”

“It’s awful bumpy and twisty. And—” She looked out the window and checked her little watch. “—it might be going on for dark before you get off that road.”

Jury smiled, folded the map, and dropped a pound coin on the case. “We’re not afraid of the dark.”

He pulled Wiggins from the postcards and turned and waved to the girl. She looked worried, perhaps thinking she was sending him to certain death.

 • • • 

By the time they were over Wrynose Pass, Wiggins was chalk-white. “Bumpy?
Twisty?
Is that what you said?”

“Nice view, though,” said Jury, who wasn’t looking at it. It was too far down. He traced the road with his finger.

“Nice? We’re surrounded by mountains—” Wiggins looked up. “—and ravines.” Wiggins looked down. He had pulled the car over to a lay-by. There were a lot of them.

“Never mind, Wiggins. You’ve always been a great driver. And it’s only a few more miles.” True. But
what
miles. “Right here, see, is a pub. We can stop there for a drink—a beer, a cuppa, whatever.” Jury
proved it by showing Wiggins the map, directing his attention to the Woolpack, which stood at the end of this godforsaken road.

But he was careful to keep those innocent-looking sideways
V’
s overlying Hard Knott Pass hidden by his finger. The gradient was one-in-ten, ascending through high fells and deep gulleys.

The worst was yet to come.

 • • • 

“Never again,” said Wiggins, mopping his forehead an hour later.

Jury squeezed his eyes shut. If he said it once more—

“Never again. You’ll never get me on that road again.”

A coffee at the Woolpack hadn’t mollified him at all. He wanted his nice hot bath and his dinner at the pub in Boone.

“For God’s sake, Wiggins, it isn’t as if there weren’t other cars on that road.” Of course, the other cars had been driving at about four miles per hour, like Wiggins. “Some of the drivers even smiled and waved at us.”

“Tourists, sir. Tourists don’t care if they die, as long as they’re on holiday.”

 • • • 

At the sign of the Old Contemptibles, color returned to Wiggins’s cheeks.

After leaving the Ford in the tiny car park, they entered the pub through a door on which was scrolled
ENTRANCE
in flaking white paint, and which stood opposite the door to the bar.

The hall was dark, quiet and bare except for a heavy mahogany chair, a few bird prints, and a writing desk on which lay a register book. Beside the desk a tiny sign directed the prospective guest to push the buzzer below. Jury did.

The woman who flounced in from the back was carrying a mug of tea on a plate of biscuits and looking as hopefully at Jury as Wiggins was looking at the biscuits. They’d had no lunch and, except for the coffee at the Woolpack, no sustenance since leaving Penrith. And that had been more coffee and a stale and sticky doughnut that Wiggins had disdained, preferring to keep up his strength on charcoal biscuits.

Mrs. Fish (as she introduced herself), Manageress, went very heavy on the makeup, the necklaces, the bracelets and rings. Oh, she’d be more than happy to offer them accommodation and appeared
to be debating over the three keys hanging on a little board above the writing desk.

“You’ll be wanting a private bath, I expect.”

Wiggins nearly snapped at her. “Yes, indeed.”

“That’s all right, then. It’ll be two pounds more apiece, of course. Have you signed? Good. Just follow me.”

Up the rickety stairs they went and into a narrow little hall, companion to the one downstairs off which debouched three rooms, two one side, one the other. A fourth door faced them at the hall’s end.

“Here we are, then,” said Mrs. Fish, opening the doors to two rooms and placing the key in each lock. “Bath’s just there at the end of the hall.”

“But that’s a
public
bath!” said Wiggins, hungry, dirty and indignant.