Death on Lindisfarne

by Fay Sampson

  “Cheer up.” Lucy smiled. “You’ve been wonderful with her. Yesterday you had her singing in the car half the way up the motorway. I’ve rarely seen her look so happy. I thought we were getting somewhere. Then, once we got here, everything changed.”

  She remembered uneasily that there had been a different brightness about Rachel last night. Lucy had come back from the lounge to find her brilliant-eyed and defiant, refusing to say where she had been.

  “There!” she called to the others. “That’s Hobthrush Island. The building you can see is Saxon, but it’s later than Aidan and Cuthbert.”

  A simple wooden cross marked the low spit of rock. Stone walls stood not far from it. The tide still ran between the litter of stones and seaweed that separated the islet from the beach where they were standing. A much wider strait cut it off from the mainland beyond.

  “I bet I could get over there. If I jumped across the stones.” Melangell was looking speculatively at the receding shallows and the emerging mud.

  “You’ll do better waiting till this afternoon. Keep your feet dry,” Aidan said.

  Lucy watched him warily. She had felt shaken by his anger last night. But she saw how his eyes strayed past his daughter, as though he was searching along the shore for another girl. Could she count him as an ally, after all?

  She caught up with her thoughts so sharply it was as if she had slapped herself. This wasn’t about her. This wasn’t about who was or was not on her side. All that mattered at that moment was Rachel. Could something, someone, have pushed her over the edge of what she would find bearable?

  There was an empty chair at the dining table between Aidan and Lucy.

  Mrs Batley swept in, bearing steaming plates of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

  “Will she be coming?” she said sharply to Lucy. “I hate to see good food going to waste.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Batley. I know it’s difficult for you, but I really don’t know where she is.”

  A spatter of rain threw itself against the windows.

  Lucy’s knife rang against her glass. The conversation stilled.

  “Today, you’ve got a free afternoon to explore the island. Some of you may want to go across to Hobthrush while the tide’s out. You should be safe for the afternoon. The forecast is for scattered showers, so go prepared. Or you could spend time in the Priory Museum. Or you might just want to sleep off Mrs Batley’s excellent lunch.”

  The kitchen door was partly open. Their hostess must have heard.

  “It’s a good job I brought plenty of knitting, if we’re going to get rained on,” Frances said.

  “We’ll meet again this evening at eight o’clock in the lounge. I want to tell you more about the kind of man St Aidan was, and how he died.”

  When conversation resumed, the living Aidan leaned across the gap and spoke in a low voice. “I know you and Peter are worried about Rachel. I would be. If it’s any help, Melangell and I will keep an eye out for her. Is there any part of the island you’d particularly like us to check?”

  He could see the relief in the minister’s eyes.

  “She could be anywhere. As I said yesterday, she’s officially a grown woman. She came back last night before too long. She’s only been gone a couple of hours. A bit early to call out the Coastguard and Rescue Service.” She gave him a wry smile.

  He could imagine the arguments going on within her. The worried pastor against the practical policewoman she had once been. She could only have been in the force a few years. What had compelled her to make the life-changing decision to leave that and train for the ministry? It was not the sort of question he could ask her at the lunch table.

  Did he have the right to ask her at all? He had fiercely resented any attempt from her to question his own private life.

  “Well, partner.” Aidan turned to Melangell with a brighter smile. “What do you fancy? Going across to Hobthrush Island?”

  “The castle.” The reply was eager and determined.

  “It’s only a small castle. And not all that old. Just a few hundred years.”

  “This is a small island. So its castle ought to be small, oughtn’t it?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  He looked up and caught Valerie’s amused smile.

  “Don’t forget your waterproofs,” she said.

  He raised his eyes to Lucy again. “We’ll keep our eyes open for Rachel.”

  Aidan was surprised to see the number of people setting out. In view of the weather, he had thought the Cavendishes at least might have settled for the comfort of the armchairs in the lounge. But Fran was there with David. She had changed her heels for more sensible shoes, with a green raincoat and a headscarf. He watched them heading for the car park in front of the guesthouse. To his surprise, they climbed into a red Honda CR-V. It had not occurred to him that such a suburban-seeming couple would drive a 4x4.

  Nearly everyone seemed to be setting out for the village or the shore. Only Peter and Lucy were missing. Aidan guessed they might already be out looking for Rachel.

  As he and Melangell turned their faces towards the castle there was rain on the wind. But the sky showed bright blue in the gaps between the clouds. Light danced across puddles. The walk to the castle took them out of the village. The path past the curve of the harbour was less than a mile. They could have covered the ground quickly if Aidan had not kept lifting his camera to catch the bright reflections in standing water. Along the sandy ridge beside them, upturned boats, converted to sheds, were irresistibly photogenic. Their keels made sharp-edged roof ridges against the sky. They passed the blue-painted doors of the Coastguard Service hut.

  The Castle Rock reared ahead of them. Turrets rose above the curtain wall, which ran diagonally down its ridge like a dragon’s back. The house within was almost hidden.

  A storm of rain caught them when they were out in the open, on the grassy flat between the village and the rock. They pulled up their hoods and ran to shelter in the lee of the boatsheds. As they stood panting, with their backs against the planks, Aidan wondered where Rachel was now. Lindisfarne was almost treeless, except for the avenue planted along the road from the car park to the village. Buildings elsewhere were few. Most of the island was either fields or the long spit of sand dunes to the east that stretched towards the causeway and beyond. There was little shelter.

  The shower swept over and the sun broke through again.

  “We’re in luck,” Aidan said. “They’re flying the National Trust flag from the castle. That means it’s open for visitors.”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  “Depends on the tide. Everything does on Holy Island. They open when visitors can get across the causeway.”

  “Or the sands. Like us.”

  “Of course.”

  They climbed the ramp to the gate and bought their tickets. From the lower battery they stepped down into the massively pillared entrance hall. Aidan knew that, to Melangell, Lutyens’ Edwardian renovation must look satisfyingly medieval.

  He followed her eager steps through successive rooms, letting her choose which displays to linger over. But he couldn’t let her miss the little scullery, which still had the pulleys and weights to raise the portcullis.

  “So it is a real castle, isn’t it?”

  She ran down the long shallow steps to the Ship Room, where a model of a three-masted merchantman hung from the ceiling. They climbed the stairs to the Long Gallery and found the bedroom whose painted door revealed that it had once been used as a gunpowder store.

  At last they came out onto the roof and the upper battery. High up, the wind caught them and blew Melangell several steps backwards. Light hit them. Brilliant sun illuminated the North Sea. It made the approaching bank of cloud even blacker. Once more, Aidan had his camera out, trying to capture that dramatic contrast.

  At last he put it away reluctantly. “I don’t know about you, but I think it’s time we were heading back, or we’ll get a soaking.”

  “It’
s a good job Lucy’s doing her next story indoors, isn’t it?”

  Aidan paused to look over the parapet. Not far away, he could see the walled garden Gertrude Jekyll had designed. It seemed to be deserted.

  They had turned to begin their descent when a voice Aidan recognized rose from the steep grassy slopes immediately below them.

  “I was not pursuing her. For heaven’s sake, Sue! She’s a child of God who needs rescuing. And I can’t imagine that a woolly liberal like Lucy Pargeter is going to do it. What that girl needs is a real fear of hellfire.”

  “So why is it always teenage girls?” Sue’s voice protested. “Elspeth’s been far more outspoken about atheism. But I don’t notice you turning on the charm to try and save her from hell. You didn’t drag her off for a walk on the sands on your own the moment you arrived.”

  “Be reasonable, Sue. Elspeth Haccombe is a hardened sinner. She’s thrown up a wall like granite around her. Rachel’s young. She’s not set in her ways yet. I can get through to her, I know I can.”

  “Like you get through to all those girls at True Gospel? You have your fan club drooling over you, all hoping for a special smile from those big blue eyes. Don’t think I haven’t seen you taking them off to the vestry. For personal shepherding, was it?”

  “Sue! That’s an outrageous suggestion. I’m doing the Lord’s work.”

  Aidan came to suddenly. He shouldn’t be here with Melangell, listening to this. He started to hurry her down the steps.

  A last shout floated back to him.

  “Sue! Come back here!”

  They set off down the cobbled ramp, heading back towards the village.

  The plump figure of Sue was already hurrying away from the castle. But not along the road that would lead her back past the harbour to St Colman’s House. In spite of the approaching storm, she was taking the footpath that headed north between the fields and the rocky eastern shore.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You’re back, then.”

  Mrs Batley was setting out teacups in the lounge. There was no one else about at St Colman’s House.

  “Perhaps the others are taking shelter in the Priory Museum or a teashop,” Aidan suggested.

  “Or they’ve gone to their rooms to get dry.” Melangell squeezed the rain from her fringe expressively.

  “Point taken. We’ll be down in a minute, Mrs Batley. That chocolate cake looks good.”

  Up in his room, he changed into dry trousers. He’d have done better to stick to the shorts he had worn in yesterday’s sunshine.

  When he and Melangell came downstairs again, there were two people in the hall, shaking rain from their waterproofs: Lucy and Peter. One look at their faces told Aidan all he needed to know.

  “You haven’t found her?”

  Lucy shook her head. He was alarmed to see how exhausted she looked. He was already regretting his behaviour towards her last night.

  Peter was trying to sound cheerful, though the naturally lugubrious downturn of his face made it hard to be convincing. “Holy Island’s bigger than you think. We checked the village and the shoreline out to Castle Point. It’s rocks and stones all the way north to the light at Emmanuel Head. Then you’re into a wilderness of sand dunes and more rocks. There’s any number of gulleys, caves and things. We couldn’t do it all.”

  Lucy sighed. “She might have gone the other way – east along the coast road and the dunes out on the Snook.”

  “We were up on the castle roof,” Aidan offered. “We didn’t see a sign of her. Or on the way back.”

  “Sue and James were there,” Melangell said. “They were quarrelling.”

  Lucy was hesitating. “I know what I said, about it being too early to report her missing. But I’m getting a bad feeling about this. There aren’t any police on the island, are there, Mrs Batley?”

  “No, it’s the Coastguard and Rescue people get called out if someone’s missing. I didn’t like the look of that girl when she first arrived. That peaky face, and she’d never look at you straight, behind all that hair. That girl’s trouble, I said to myself.”

  “I’m worried about what might have happened to her. Not what she might have done,” Lucy snapped. “She’s not a criminal. At least…”

  She’ll have a police record, Aidan thought. Even if it’s only for shoplifting. Possession of drugs? What else?

  He had little idea of the murky lives teenagers like Rachel lived. Lucy had said she’d been in care. But how caring was that? Would she have had anyone she could turn to, once she had passed sixteen?

  Lucy was in a corner of the lounge, talking quietly into her mobile. Aidan helped himself to tea and cake, watching her, but trying not to make it obvious.

  She snapped her mobile shut with a sigh. “Predictable. I’d have said the same myself. ‘She’s eighteen? How long has she been gone, madam? Since mid-morning? Has she done this before? And she’s always come back? Then I don’t think that warrants sending out a search party just yet. Don’t worry. She’ll probably come back when it gets dark.’ He said I could call him again if she doesn’t. Thanks! I should have asked for the coastguards straight away.”

  She pulled off her raincoat and poured herself a cup of tea. Rain had made her fair hair darker. Beads of moisture dripped from the tips of it.

  Aidan felt helpless. “Do you want more of us to go out looking? I’m sure James and Sue would, if they’re back. And probably Valerie and Elspeth.” He was less sure that he could imagine Frances Cavendish combing the sand dunes in the rain.

  Lucy sank into a sofa. Mrs Batley had gone.

  “I really hope she’s back for supper. I know it sounds petty, but I can’t face the thought of apologizing to Mrs Batley for her missing three meals in a row.”

  “She was here for breakfast,” said Melangell.

  “But she hardly touched a thing,” Peter countered.

  “Did something happen to upset her?” Aidan was aware that he was treading on delicate ground.

  “I don’t know.” Lucy frowned. “She seemed really cheerful in the car coming up here. She was looking forward to it. She’s never had much in the way of holidays. I know Lindisfarne may not be the most exciting place for a teenager, but at least it was somewhere different. And then… we’d hardly got here before her mood changed.”

  “Could she have met someone? Somebody in the group who said the wrong thing? … James?”

  “I could screw his neck if it was him. Oh, gosh! I shouldn’t be talking like this, should I? I’m getting into police mode, and forgetting I’m a Methodist minister now. And even as a policewoman, I ought to be more detached than I am. I feel responsible.”

  Aidan looked past her at the window. “Look, there’s an edge of brighter sky out to the west. Let’s wait for this storm to blow over, then we’ll split up the island between us and go over the rest.”

  “Perhaps she’s gone away.” Melangell’s high voice broke in. “Across the causeway. Or the sands.”

  Silence fell over the room.

  “It’s possible,” Lucy said reluctantly. “Anything is.”

  Lucy nerved herself to take command of the situation. She sent Aidan and Peter to do a round of the rooms, recruiting everyone they could find to look for Rachel. Some of the group had shown up for Mrs Batley’s afternoon tea. Some had not. The square hall at the foot of the stairs was filling. Elspeth, in a voluminous waterproof cape over her tweeds, seemed to take up an inordinate amount of the space. Valerie, slender beside her, looked grave and businesslike. David Cavendish was flushed. Lucy had half heard an argument between him and Frances. But he was buttoning up his beige raincoat, determined to come.

  Peter came in from the chalets. “I can’t find James.”

  At the same time, Aidan was coming downstairs, followed by an uncharacteristically sulky-looking Melangell. She was trailing her yellow and pink waterproof jacket.

  “I can come. I’m not a bit tired,” she said to Aidan’s back.

  “I know. But it�
�s hard work, walking over sand. And there are a good few miles to cover, if we do it thoroughly.”

  Frances put a possessive hand on Melangell’s shoulder. “You can leave her with me. I’ll look after her. We’ll have a nice time together, won’t we, sweetheart?”

  Melangell wriggled away. “I want to go.”

  “No, love,” Aidan sighed. “That’s an order. Thanks, Fran.”

  He turned his harassed face to Lucy. “Everyone accounted for upstairs except Sue. She’s not in her room. We saw her when we were at the castle earlier. But she was heading away from the village then. Out towards Emmanuel Head.”

  “James is with her, I suppose.”

  “Not when we saw them. I think there was a row… Over Rachel,” he added awkwardly.

  Lucy digested the news in silence. Then she straightened up. “So, that leaves – what? – six of us. I was hoping for eight. I’m going to need to call in some help. Still, let’s see how to divide the island up between us.”

  She led the way into the lounge and spread the map out on the table, where Mrs Batley had cleared the teacups and cake plates. “Elspeth and Valerie, perhaps you could take the village. I know several of us have been around that area this afternoon, and haven’t seen her, but you could ask around. Gift shops and cafés. And try the harbour again. If one of the sheds is unlocked, she might have gone in out of the rain.”

  “Will do,” Elspeth responded firmly.

  “I need to go out to Snipe Point, and check the caves there.”

  “I’ll come!” Peter put in eagerly.

  “No. I have a couple of friends in the village I’m going to call on. I want you and Aidan to take the North Shore and as much of the dunes to the east as you can. If anything happened to her on the south coast, I’m hoping someone would see her from the road. The tide’s down, so you can take Aidan’s car for a mile or so.”

  “Sorry!” She saw him start. “I’m fine to search that area, but I don’t have the car with me. We walked across the sands.”