Persons Unknown (Miss Pink Book 5) by Gwen Moffat

Author:Gwen Moffat [Moffat, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2018-11-22T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Miss Pink awoke with a sense of doom and lay staring at the drawn curtains recalling her conversation with Rachel yesterday. Had something she’d said precipitated that ghastly hallucination? For that was what she thought it was. When the girl had been carried upstairs to the room she shared with her husband, the bed was made, the counterpane uncreased. If she’d had a nightmare, she hadn’t been sleeping here, although that was what they’d told Norman when he appeared on the landing as they struggled up the stairs: that Rachel had had a nightmare.

Samuel and Miss Pink had come down to the kitchen as a car drove into the yard. Doors slammed, there was a flurry in the passage and Doreen whirled in.

‘What happened? Rupert said Rachel tore down to the quay like a mad thing and you two piled in. . . . Well, what has happened?’

Roderick stumped in after her, looking pathetically tired.

‘She had a horrible dream,’ Miss Pink said. ‘A nightmare.’

‘So what?’ Doreen snapped. ‘She wasn’t alone up here, was she?’

‘Iris heard her drive away. She thought she was upset about something. Norman was around.’

‘When?’ He appeared behind them in the doorway. He sighed. ‘Hello Doreen, Rod; they’ve told you then. Iris is with her now. She’s come round.’ He slumped into a chair.

‘Had you been quarrelling with her?’ Doreen asked viciously.

‘What? When she passed out? I haven’t seen her all evening—yes, I have; I went in the drawing room about—Christ!’ He dropped his head in his hands. ‘Oh, nine-ish, I guess. She was in there then.’

‘What was she doing?’ Doreen asked.

‘Drinking,’ he said resignedly.

*

Miss Pink got out of bed and parted her curtains. The sea was bland and beautiful and her spirits rose a little. All problems were capable of solution. Perhaps Rachel’s youth would make the solution easier, or easier to find. Nevertheless she had no doubt that the problem was neither tranquillisers nor alcohol; they were merely symptoms.

She swam before breakfast: working hard, concentrating on her rhythm and, as she turned for the shore and waded out, two gulls came swooping along the edge of the water, screaming and diving.

She stood dripping, her shoulders heaving, and peered at the flapping birds. On the wet sand a tiny black and white object checked, ran, crouched at a gull’s steep plunge and she heard, above the wash of low waves, a spitting hiss. She lunged forward, whirling her arms.

‘Get off, you bastards!’

Caithness scuttled to her and crept, quivering, on to her feet. She knelt and he jumped on her thighs. He was boned like a robin, too small to fondle. Where had he been? As she rose he fastened his claws in her swimsuit and clung like a burr. She walked back to her wrap, the kitten immobile and silent in a wide-eyed trance.

The french window was open on the patio. She called to Samuel from the graveyard side of the wall, handed Caithness over and went away quickly, leaving him to croon over the prodigal.

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