Come Death and High Water (George & Molly Palmer-Jones)

by Ann Cleeves

  “And Mr. Packham?”

  “We were all sitting down at the table when Jerry came in. He muttered something about oversleeping.”

  “Had he been out?”

  “He didn’t look as if he had.”

  “And that was the first time you’d seen him? You hadn’t been together earlier in the day?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Superintendent,” she said calmly. “ I first saw Jerry Packham this morning when he came in late to breakfast.”

  He seemed about to question her, to make perhaps some teasing comment, then he changed his mind, looked at his watch and stood up to dismiss her.

  “Oh well,” he said easily. “I’ll be speaking to Mr. Packham this afternoon, I expect.”

  She looked at him defiantly and walked out.

  Savage stretched back in his chair and motioned Connibear to sit opposite to him.

  “She was lying,” he said. “ But perhaps she was just worried about her fancy man. How long have we got, before we need to leave the island?”

  “Until five this afternoon, sir. Otherwise, it’ll mean staying until nearly midnight.”

  “I’ll try to finish by five.”

  There was a knock on the door and a uniformed constable came in. “The pathologist and some of the scene-of-crime team have finished, sir. Can they get the body off now?”

  “You take them off in the old Land Rover. Get some food—you’d better start taking orders—and come straight back. I’ll see if I can negotiate for a pot of tea. I expect the local press will be on to the case by now. If there are any reporters on the quay tell them that I’ll have a few words at about five-thirty. We don’t want them trying to make their own way over here. But don’t say anything else to them.”

  “Sir.”

  For the first time since Savage had arrived they were without a police presence. The constable who had been sitting with them in the common room had not followed into the dining room. Elizabeth ladled out a thick vegetable soup. There was home-baked bread which she had retrieved from the freezer and put into the oven to warm, and cheese and fruit. They all seemed to be hungry and to be enjoying the food. The absence of the policeman had made them all curiously light-hearted, light headed even. The wind had dropped a little, and that too was a relief. There was a general murmur of conversation, but they all heard the Land Rover start.

  “What’s that?” John said. “Are they going already? It would have been polite to come and tell us.”

  “Oh I don’t think they’ll be going yet,” George said. “They’ll be taking off the body. In any event, they’ll certainly be coming back. You do understand, don’t you, that someone here killed Charlie Todd? The police won’t go away until they find out who that was.”

  Chapter Five

  Albert Todd sat at the table by the window and waited for his dinner. He had always eaten the main meal at midday, and affluence had not altered his habits or changed his use of words. Lunch was a snack which children took to school to eat in the playground. Dinner was what he wanted now. The window was streaked with rain. The lawn outside was littered with twigs, blown from the yews at the end of the garden. There were clumps of overgrown shrubs with dark shiny green leaves. He did not mind much that the garden was a mess. He didn’t often go out there now. It did not affect his comfort. The rhododendrons and the heavy velvet curtains at each side of the window shut out the little light that there was. In the room the electric light was on, shrouded by a red plastic shade, and the gas fire hummed. There was central heating, and that was on too. Albert felt the cold. He had moved into the ugly, yellow-brick villa fifty years before, and by now he had things arranged to his satisfaction, to provide for his comfort. He and Alice had bought the house because it was near to the park, for the children. Now he still went to the park to watch the bowling. He would never move from the house. It had everything that he needed, and he was in charge there. He had been persuaded to go into a nursing home for a month, after a replacement hip operation, but the stay had not been a success. The staff had been as pleased to see him leave as he had been to go. There had been complaints from the other residents, who had said that he was common.

  Albert looked at the clock in the bulging wooden frame which sat on the mantelshelf. It ticked so loudly that he could hear it above the noise of the wind. It was only ten to one. At one o’clock Elsie would bring in the meal. Elsie was the wife of his middle son, Laurence. She was always on time. She knew that it pleased him. Albert considered that Laurence had married well. Elsie was big-busted, down to earth, with a barmaid’s easy sympathy and more brain than she was given credit for. Her only ambition was on behalf of her son, who was at university and wanted to be a lawyer. Before her marriage she had worked as a housekeeper. At The Laurels her duties were less arduous, her rewards greater, but she was just as conscientious. Albert never understood what Elsie had seen in Laurence; they seemed fond enough of each other.

  She came in then, carrying a tray, pushing open the door with a round, tightly covered buttock, which still caught his attention, made him remember other days when he would have done more than look. There was steak and kidney pie for dinner. The kidneys had a sweet, fertile smell, which stirred more memories, made him look again at Elsie, at the rich fullness of her squeezed into the cheap clothes. She did not notice that he was staring, or if she did, she was so used to it that it was not important.

  “There’s a lovely piece of chuck steak in this,” she said. “ I told him I didn’t want any of the rubbish he sent up last week.”

  Elsie had cooked the meal. The cleaning lady would wash it up, but she did all the cooking. She sat with Albert at the table, set a plate on each of the cork place mats, and they began to eat. They were comfortable together. It was as if they were the married couple. They appreciated each other. She never knew, though, what he was thinking. Albert was a great one for secrets. She still did not know how he had first made the money to buy the Grand. Perhaps no one knew. So she waited for him to speak, to tell her how he had taken the news of his son’s death. She could not guess what his reaction would be.

  “So Charlie’s gone before me,” he said with satisfaction. He was a big man, broad-bodied, wide-faced, soft and boneless as a cuddly toy. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his belly. He could have been talking about the food. “ I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

  “But murder!” She was naively shocked and distressed. She had not known Charlie well. She suffered nothing by his death, yet she felt a real, unselfish, impersonal grief. Her sense of propriety was offended by Albert’s complacency, but because he had always believed that he was right about everything, she began to suspect that her distress was inappropriate. She wondered if her sadness were silly.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” Albert repeated. “Some people bring bad luck on to themselves.”

  They continued to eat rice pudding in silence. The wind blew a branch against the window. The lights flickered in threat of a power cut. The clock carried on ticking. Albert cleared his dish with relish and placed the spoon squarely in the middle of it. He looked slyly at Elsie. Perhaps it was to tease her, to shock her, that he said with such boyish excitement:

  “I wonder who killed him.”

  If it was an attempt to shock, he succeeded. She felt a spasm of revulsion. Charlie had been Albert’s son. They might not have been friendly, but this should be a day for regret, respect. Then the habit of acceptance returned. He’s an old man, she thought. He’s eighty-six. What can you expect?

  Vaguely, to humour him, she said: “ It will have been one of those maniacs. You often read about them in the papers.”

  “If Ernest had been killed, I could have understood it,” Albert continued, as if she had not spoken. “There’s a few that would like to see Ernest out of the way.”

  “Now Dad,” she said. “That’s no way to talk.”

  “It’s true though.” He was certainly teasing her, was laughing at her discomfort an
d embarrassment. The fleshy stomach seemed to ripple with suppressed mirth. “There was young Nick, Mary Mardle’s boy. He threatened Ernest with all sorts when Mary had to leave the cottage. He saw Laurence about it, didn’t he? And he came here to see me. He was in a proper temper when he was here.” The laughter could no longer be contained, seemed to splutter from the round cheeks like a mouthful of food. “ More like Old Nick he was then. Like Old Nick himself.”

  Elsie fought her confusion at the old man’s peculiar reaction to his son’s death, by treating the matter seriously.

  “I thought Ernest was hard on Mary Mardle,” she said carefully. “She started working at the Grand at the same time as me. That’s a long time. And the guests thought the world of her.”

  They had had the conversation before, and despite himself, Albert could not make light of it. He had to follow the old argument through.

  “Maybe. But that cottage went with the job of caretaker. She understood that she’d have to move if anything happened to Fred.”

  “It was wrong to make her leave when Fred died, especially when she was so ill.”

  “If she thought it was wrong, she could have gone to the tribunal.”

  “Ernest knew that Mary wouldn’t have gone to any tribunal. She wasn’t the sort. And she wasn’t the sort to live in a council flat.” She looked, with some reproach, at Albert. “ You could have had a word with Ernest.”

  “I could have done,” he said, “ but it wouldn’t have done any good. You know Ernest.”

  There was a silence. They both knew Ernest.

  “Besides,” he said. “ It would have been wrong. I made him manager. I had to let him manage.”

  “What did Nick say when he came to see you?” she said, perturbed but curious. She had never had the courage before to ask him. “Laurence would never tell me.”

  “He said…” Albert spoke slowly, with emphasis. “He said that this family were a bunch of murderers. If ever he thought he could get away with it, he would murder us one by one.”

  And the old man began to laugh again, rocking backwards and forwards in his chair, until he choked and she had to bring him water.

  “Of course,” Helen said. “ You’ll tell the police about the Mardle boy.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ernest Todd. “We’ve got to think about the publicity. All the business about the cottage is bound to come out. There are other things it’s best to keep secret. And of course, Mardle does still work for us.”

  “I told you at the time that it was a mistake to keep him on.”

  “And I told you that it wasn’t my decision. The old man felt very strongly about it.”

  “The old man!” The contempt in her voice was directed at him as much as at his father.

  “He does still own fifty percent of the business, and he can always call on Laurence for support. It puts me in a very difficult position.”

  “So you’re always telling me.”

  They stopped speaking as the waitress approached. They met most lunchtimes in the restaurant of the Grand. The food was often indifferent, but it was a free meal, and she enjoyed the special attention, the panic of the staff who had to serve the boss and his wife.

  Ernest Todd was a heavy man, built like his father. He was in his late fifties with a red, always slightly shiny face. There was no trace of his native accent. He was one of the ruling members of the golf club, sang with the operatic society. He drank a lot and liked his secretaries to be very young. When he was not drunk, he was shrewd, intelligent. His wife Helen was fifteen years younger than he was. She had been his secretary. She knew his habits. She had worn well, dressed smartly, but she could not compete with his pink-haired, tight-skirted girl Fridays. Her father had been a doctor. She had been privately educated and although she had married her employer and money, it was considered that she had married beneath her. She was a magistrate, enjoyed good works and power, but her power over her husband was limited.

  “All the same,” she said. “ I think that you should tell the police. It’s your duty.”

  Ernest sighed. He did hate her self-righteous mood. She had been to some charity meeting, and looked like a well-dressed schoolmistress in her pleated navy skirt and jacket. He wished she would not bully him.

  “I thought that you didn’t like Charlie,” he said patiently. “You never exactly made him welcome.”

  “But that’s not the point. I wouldn’t have strangled him. Do you think that Nicholas Mardle did kill him?”

  “I don’t know.” It was the least important point. He had not considered it. “Yes, probably. He was very unbalanced. And he was there.”

  “In that case, you must tell the police.”

  It was fruitless to argue. “Yes Helen. I suppose that I must.”

  “Do we know what was in the will?” She spoke casually, pretended not to be really interested, but he was not fooled. She was very interested in money.

  “Yes,” he said. “ I know.”

  “Well?”

  “He leaves the island to his friends at the observatory, and the remainder to the children.”

  “Children? What children?”

  “He always called them the children, but they’re named in his will. His nephew and niece. Pamela and Jonathan.”

  She hid her disappointment with scorn. “Pamela Marshall’s got children of her own and Jonathan is in his final year at university. Hardly a child.”

  “It’s quite logical, you know,” he said gently. He still felt a remnant of affection for her. “They are his only younger relatives. If we had had children, I’m sure that they would have been included. Besides, I don’t think that he had much to leave.”

  “Well, Elsie will be pleased,” she said, “although I think that she has already ruined that precious brat Jonathan.”

  Then she brought her face and voice under control. She always pretended to have no interest in Elsie and bitchiness did not match her image of charitable benefactor.

  “You will go to the police this afternoon, Ernest?”

  “Yes,” he said. “ Yes. I’ll go.”

  But Ernest did not go straight to the police station. He watched Helen drive away in her car then buttoned his sheepskin jacket and started to walk along the promenade towards his office. He did not walk very often and he found the effort uncomfortable. Helen had offered him a lift, but she would have dropped him at the police station and watched him go in. The wind blew straight along the promenade, scattering summer litter and sand. He walked past the new development on the front and saw with satisfaction that all the flats had been sold. The tide was out and in the poor light the stretch of sand and water looked grey, unattractive. Whoever would want to live here? he thought. When I retire I want a bit of sun in the winter. He did not even glance at Gillibry, would never have understood if Jasmine Carson had explained why she had been persuaded to buy one of his luxury apartments.

  He turned into the High Street, which rose steeply away from the promenade. The shops were crowded together, the usual shabby seaside mix: gift shops, cafés, one supermarket. There were no tourists. He recognized most of the people he passed.

  The office was above one of the shops which they owned. Laurence dealt with the financial side of the operation and he had insisted on an office away from the hotel. Ernest was responsible for more immediate decisions concerning the business. He appointed the staff, inspected properties, was concerned with advertising, marketing. He did not use the place as much as Laurence. Laurence was always there, even on a Saturday.

  Laurence had had his lunch in the office and there was an empty plate on his desk. Elsie always made him sandwiches. He had been out once, but only to walk to the paper shop to collect his railway magazine. He was a steam enthusiast. His desk was by the window overlooking the High Street, and he was reading from a computer visual display unit. As he went into the office Ernest switched on the light, and Laurence looked round, blinking. He was a small, dapper man. Helen always said that he looked li
ke a tailor. His face was long in comparison with his body, and Ernest thought he looked more like a character from a children’s television cartoon. He had never seen a tailor with such a big head. They had been together in the office when Elsie had phoned with the news of their brother’s death.

  Ernest cleared a space on Laurence’s desk, leaned against it and said: “About Charlie.”

  “Yes,” Laurence said. “ I’ve been thinking about it all morning. I can’t concentrate on anything else.”

  “We’ve got to decide what we’re going to tell the police.”

  Laurence thought. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I see.”

  “It wouldn’t do for them to find out about our visitor last Friday.”

  “I’ve told you,” Laurence said, “how I feel about that.”

  “But you won’t mention it to the police?”

  “No.”

  “Helen says that I must tell them about Nick Mardle’s threats to the family.”

  “Does she? I don’t think that they were serious, you know. He was very young. But I suppose that we must trust the police to make a proper judgement about that. I don’t think we should make too much of it.”

  “No. Perhaps not. He’s an unpleasant young man, all the same. It’s not Mardle that I’m most concerned with. We don’t want the police looking into our affairs. Or the press. Especially the press. Not yet. And then there’s the family. You know that Pamela and Jonathan are beneficiaries under his will.”

  “Yes, I knew. Charlie made no secret of it. There’s no reason to keep that from the police. They’ll see the will anyway. I don’t have any anxiety about Jonathan. He wasn’t anywhere near Gillibry. He went up to London last weekend. He wanted to have a few weeks to work on his own before term starts.”