For Death Comes Softly

by Hilary Bonner

  Frank regarded me coolly. ‘I don’t reckon Mr Robin would be too ‘appy about that,’ he said in a level voice.

  ‘Well, maybe he needn’t know about it,’ I said.

  ‘What,’ countered Frank. ‘On this island?’ He gave a wry chuckle.

  It was my turn to shrug. ‘If there are any problems I’ll carry the can,’ I said.

  ‘Hmph,’ he responded. For a moment or too he stared at the flat water. If anything the sea was even calmer than it had been on the November day when Jason had abandoned me on the rock. Certainly Frank couldn’t use weather conditions as an excuse, even though we were at the height of winter.

  ‘Don’t suppose it makes much bleddy odds anyway,’ he said eventually. ‘’E’s not the boss for much longer, is ’e?’

  Abruptly he turned away from me again, covered the short distance to the boat in a couple of easy strides, dumped the driftwood into the bow, and began to push the little vessel out into the water.

  ‘C’mon then,’ he called over his shoulder.

  The nearer we got to the Pencil the more I regretted my impetuous behaviour. And once again it was mostly my determination not to be seen to back down which made me force myself to go through with it.

  I could clearly hear the thump of my heart in my chest as Frank held the little boat steady before the Pencil’s precarious channel, waiting for that seventh wave to take us in over the rocky outcrop. My mouth felt dry. I swallowed moisturelessly.

  Frank had tipped up the outboard and had the oar ready to guide the boat into just the right position, just as his son had done on my previous fateful visit to the phallic rock.

  He was studying the water carefully, but at the last moment he turned to look at me, and he would have had to be blind not to see how tense I was.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘You know I’ll ’ave to take ’er out again and come back for ’ee, don’t ’ee? Just like always. There’s no choice ’bout that.’

  I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak.

  ‘Right then.’

  Deftly he positioned the little craft on the crest of a wave, steered her bow just right into the channel and then used his oar to fend off to the right as we surfed alongside the Pencil’s only landing place by the ledge where I had spent all those terrified hours. Frank was very assured, but then, I remembered, so had been his son.

  He lopped the mooring line around the same rock outcrop which I recalled so well and prepared to help me clamber up onto the ledge. I swallowed hard and forced myself forwards and upwards.

  ‘I’ll be just a few yards out, and I’ll be looking out for ’ee,’ he called as he turned the boat to catch the outward roll of a wave.

  I waved as confidently as I could, and stood for a moment watching him depart and wondering what on earth I thought I was playing at. The water lapped against the rock a yard or so below my feet, and I forced myself not to think about the last time. Not to panic.

  I busied myself with what I suppose had always been the subconscious purpose of my return to the Pencil. I began to methodically check out the rock, looking for anything which might in any way help to solve the mystery of Natasha’s death. If it was a mystery. Stupid of me really, I suppose, to think that I would find anything when the entire might of the Devon and Cornwall’s Scenes of Crime team had already been at work – although they had missed the carving of Robin’s name on their first visit, I reminded myself. It was predictable that to begin with all I gained was a nasty bruise on the head when I jerked upright at just the wrong moment as I crawled through the tunnel to the far side of the Pencil.

  The view was as spectacular as ever, even without either dolphins or seals. Why is it that great beauty and great tragedy seem so often to be intrinsically linked?

  When I re-emerged on the ledge which doubled as the rough and ready landing stage I was relieved, in spite of knowing really that there could be no doubt this time, to see that Frank Tucker was still hovering just twenty yards or so away. And as he turned his boat around and began to manoeuvre the little craft in to me, I looked up at the rock face to where I knew the carving must be.

  It should not have been a shock to see it but it was. Robin’s name looked so stark and accusing there. And the carving, in an outcrop of softer slate running in a generous fault through the hard granite of the Pencil, was higher up the rock than I had expected, a good three or four feet above the top of the tunnel entrance. I could imagine all too clearly how absolutely desperate for survival Natasha must have been to have managed to climb so far up a sheer rock face, and I shivered at the vivid picture which suddenly presented itself to me.

  The letters were roughly scratched but unmistakably formed the name Robin – although the N at the end was not completed. Had Natasha fallen into the sea, numb with cold and fear, unable to hang on any more, before she could finish it, I wondered. The thought made me shiver all the more.

  I remembered all too clearly what Todd Mallett had asked. Would the last act of a young woman in fear of her life really be to scratch her lover’s name on a cliff face? Would she really waste her precious last energy on doing that unless she were trying to say something?

  The very bleakness of it was shocking. If I had been looking for some kind of solace I had found anything but. I fervently wished I had not asked Frank to bring me out here. And I wished it all the more when we returned to Abri.

  Robin was waiting on Pencil Beach when we returned. Frank had been going to take me straight back to Home Bay, but as we motored into the lee of the island the figure of Robin, waving furiously, dominated our view, demanded our swift presence, and could not be ignored.

  He waded out towards the dinghy. His face was like thunder. At first he did not even look at me.

  ‘Frank, I thought I told you never, never, to take visitors out to the Pencil again,’ he shouted.

  ‘Robin, it was my fault,’ I interrupted, perhaps unwisely. ‘I asked Frank to take me . . .’

  Robin ignored me. In any case Frank seemed quite unconcerned. He no longer looked at Robin in the warm respectful way that I had observed when I first saw them together.

  ‘Didn’t think ’er was a visitor, exactly,’ he said.

  Robin glowered at him but said no more. Instead he turned his attentions to me.

  ‘C’mon,’ he snapped, and he reached forward, grabbed my arm and half-lifted me out of the little boat. I landed with a plop in about a foot of icy sea water and would have fallen forward were his grip on my arm not so tight. But as we waded ashore I was uncertain really whether he was dragging me or helping me.

  ‘You go on back to the landing beach, Frank,’ he called over his shoulder.

  Frank made no reply. I suspected by now that he had nothing more to say to the man I was to marry.

  Robin waited until the little boat had disappeared around the headline before he vented his fury on me. The Daveys, even in moments of high dudgeon, were not the kind of people who rowed in front of the servants, which to me was the way Robin had always seemed to have regarded the tenants of Abri, even though his great affection for them was without question. I had little time, however, to reflect on the curiosities of life in a feudal community. I had never seen Robin so angry. He was almost hysterical.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you were up to?’ he stormed.

  I tried to calm him, but my heart was in my mouth. I was shivering too, which wasn’t surprising as my jeans were now soaked to the knees and my trainers were sodden. Robin’s own feet and legs were also wet through, but he didn’t seem even to have noticed, and he certainly hadn’t been interested in keeping me dry.

  ‘Robin, I just wanted to go back to the place, I can’t explain why exactly . . .’

  ‘Can’t you? What did you think you were going to find out there for God’s sake?’

  ‘Well, nothing, nothing of course. I just wanted to go back there, conquer my fears, maybe . . .’

  ‘Rubbish!’ he snarled. And he stepped forward, eyes
blazing, his arms hanging loose by his sides. For a terrible moment I thought he was going to hit me. He didn’t, of course. It wasn’t in his nature or his breeding to hit a woman, but I doubted he had ever been much closer. ‘Don’t you know how I feel about that damn rock?’ he continued. ‘The one good thing about leasing Abri is that I won’t have to see the bloody thing every day of my working life. How could you go out there like that?’

  ‘Robin, I’m so sorry,’ I said. And I was. This was our first row and I wasn’t enjoying it. I was used only to tenderness from him, understanding, and, of course, passion. I couldn’t bear him to be ranting and raving at me like that. Julia always maintained that the first row in a relationship was even more important than the first sex. That was when you really began to learn the truth about a lover, she said.

  He backed away, shoulders slumped, not shouting at me any more. It was as if the storm had blown itself wearily out.

  I could see the familiar pain in his eyes, only thinly masked by his anger, and was ashamed of myself for what I had done. Indeed, what had I thought I was going to find on the Pencil? And why had I had the need to go there again. I really had to put the past behind me. I was going to marry this man. I loved him, and love calls for total trust.

  Suddenly all I wanted to do was to comfort him, to reassure him – and to reassure myself too, I suppose.

  I went to him, my feet squelching on the shingles, and wrapped my arms around him. ‘I love you so much,’ I whispered. ‘We mustn’t fight. Wouldn’t you rather make love? Let’s go back, shall we?’

  I suppose it was a pretty crass approach. It was just that our lovemaking was always so good, and I thought, if I thought at all, that it was the one thing sure to put things right between us.

  I felt Robin stiffen, and he pushed me quite violently away.

  ‘I do have a heart and a brain as well as a cock you know,’ he said. He was no longer shouting. His voice was very cold.

  I flinched from him. I could feel the colour rising in my cheeks. I swallowed hard, fighting back the tears.

  He watched me for a moment. Then his face began to soften. As suddenly as the mood had come over him it went away.

  This time he came to me and reached out for me. I couldn’t stop myself crying then. He wiped my tears with the back of one hand and the words of apology poured from him.

  ‘I never want to hurt you, Rose, never,’ he whispered fervently. ‘I was just so afraid of losing you. I know it’s stupid, but when I realised you had gone to the Pencil, I was so frightened. I couldn’t bear any more tragedy, I really couldn’t.’

  He began to kiss my eyes, licking the tears off my face. My love and desire for him overwhelmed me. In spite of his earlier words I could feel how much he wanted me again. He began to hold me so tightly that my breath came in short sharp gasps.

  He walked me backwards up the beach until we were inside a small shallow cave in the cliff side which I had not even known was there. His face was no longer dark with anger but with desire. He pulled at my clothes and his own. I had stopped crying. My heart was soaring again. I lay down on the sandy floor of the cave and he lowered himself on top of me. I was still shivering with the cold and wet, but I knew he would warm me, make me glow. We remained half-clothed, yet somehow he contrived to be inside me almost at once. It was quick and vital and so very sweet. When we had finished we fell back from each other panting, and I found that I was smiling again.

  ‘Was that your brain in action then?’ I asked innocently.

  ‘Bitch!’ he said, but his voice was gentle and his eyes were dancing. He kissed me long and slow.

  ‘You are the love of my life,’ he said.

  I felt the tears pricking again, but so differently from before.

  Thirteen

  The next morning, the day Robin finally handed Abri over to the Japanese, brought weather that was much more typical for January on the island. It was wet and windy, and the wind was so strong that it was blowing the rain almost horizontal.

  I had taken an extra day off in order to be there with Robin, and although it had been the last thing I had wanted to do – I had known it wasn’t going to be much fun and more importantly I had troubles of my own professionally, the pressures at work seemed to be growing greater every day – I realised that he needed me there.

  A few islanders turned up at the helicopter pad and they stood quietly in a huddle, as if trying to protect each other from the weather and goodness knows what else, as Robin tried not all that effectively to sparkle and radiate confidence. It was a sad day and everyone knew it. Robin more than anyone, if the truth be known.

  ‘I’m not really leaving Abri you know,’ he said rather unconvincingly. ‘I’ll be to and fro all the time, just like always.’

  But it wouldn’t be just like always, and we all knew it. Robin would no longer be managing the island. He had handed over control completely. When he visited Highpoint it would be as a guest, no different to any other guest on the island. I wasn’t even sure how much time he was going to want to spend on Abri under those conditions.

  Frank Tucker was conspicuous by his absence. Mrs Cotley, whom Robin was maintaining as his housekeeper to keep Highpoint running smoothly in his absence, was there; and for once her mood almost certainly matched the grimness of her appearance. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she would never allow herself to be seen to weep in public.

  Robin gave her a big warm hug.

  ‘We’ll miss you, Mr Robin,’ she muttered, and as far as I was aware it was the only nice thing anybody said to him that day.

  ‘I keep telling you, I’ll be back all the time Mrs C,’ he responded.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she said.

  He did, of course. And so did I.

  He proceeded to shake hands with everyone who had gathered there. His face was very pale in spite of his forced brightness. I understood absolutely that the worst thing for him was the knowledge that the people of Abri continued to think that he had deserted them in spite of all his efforts to convince them otherwise – and indeed, as I saw it, his genuine determination to ensure their futures as much as his own. Robin had not signed the island over to the highest bidder, I knew, but to the one he thought would be best for Abri.

  We clambered aboard the chopper and there was none of the usual banter between Robin and pilot Eddie Brown, who, with his natural awareness and sensitivity, merely concentrated on his job.

  Robin remained morosely silent throughout the flight back to Bristol, and barely bothered even to say goodbye to Eddie, who winked at me reassuringly when I glanced uneasily back at him over my shoulder as we walked away from the aircraft.

  We were in the process of buying the Clifton house which Robin had told me about – I had loved it every bit as much as he had, which had somehow been predictable, although it was far grander than any place I had ever expected to become my home – but the sale had yet to be completed. For the time being we continued to live in my apartment, and with Robin now about to be there virtually full-time the place was not going to be nearly big enough. Fortunately Robin was confident that the deal on our new house would soon be finalised so that we could complete the work we wanted to do on the place in time for our April wedding, and, when we arrived back from Abri that day, I began to hope with particular fervour that would prove to be the case.

  Robin went straight into the living room, flopped down on the sofa and switched on the TV. The flat felt smaller than ever, and his morose presence seemed to fill its every corner.

  ‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ I asked lamely after watching him for half an hour or so during which he did not speak once.

  He looked at me as if I was mad and shook his head. I made one or two further desolate attempts at conversation which he more or less ignored. He was apparently intent on spending the entire afternoon in front of the TV, surfing mindlessly through the satellite channels. I was disappointed because we had flown back from Abri quite early in the morning and I was
free for the rest of the day, not due to return to my duties at Kingswood until Tuesday morning. Stephen Jeffries was still missing. We continued to make little or no progress. The case continued to torment me and I was beginning to realise that the only way I could stop myself from becoming dangerously obsessive was to take breaks occasionally. But this had not been the kind of break I needed. It had proven to be every bit as stressful as the job – at least when I was working I knew exactly what was going on and wasn’t fretting about not being at the helm. In addition, as I never had nearly enough time to spend alone with Robin, a wasted minute seemed tragic, and this day, it appeared, was to be wasted entirely.

  I finally gave up on my attempts to jolly him out of his ill humour and instead tried to read, but I found it even harder than usual to settle into a book. His mood wrapped itself around me like a blanket of black fog.

  Sometime around seven o’clock I made a final attempt at resurrecting at least a part of the day.

  ‘Do you fancy going out to dinner?’ I enquired without a great deal of optimism.

  At least this time he bothered to reply properly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rose, I just don’t feel like being with people, and I don’t feel like talking either, not even to you,’ he said.

  He then returned his attentions to the TV set and I took myself off to fetch a take-away curry without wasting any energy asking him what he would like. I could have phoned for something but I felt like a brief change of scene. Not that things had improved any by the time I returned. The curry was not a success. Robin ate hardly anything, and even I had very little appetite.