Death on Lindisfarne

by Fay Sampson

  “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,” Simon soothed her. “But there’s a lot of truth in that beam, whether it’s the right one or not. St Aidan’s death was a reproach against the highest power in the land. Against the greed and power and callousness that led to the moment of King Oswin’s murder. A cry for the innocent.”

  Aidan studied the storyteller’s face. The bright eyes were still watching the group, willing them to understand.

  At last Aidan said, picking his words with difficulty, “You told us that story tonight for a reason, didn’t you? Are you saying that’s what Rachel’s death is? A reproach against someone? Against all of us, perhaps?”

  For a moment, a spark of triumph flashed in Brother Simon’s eyes.

  Then he said carefully, “Interpret it as you wish. It may mean different things to different people here.”

  “Hmmph!” said Elspeth dismissively. “I hardly knew the girl.”

  Aidan summoned up a smile for Melangell’s benefit. “Bedtime for you, young lady.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “Of course.” He put a reassuring arm around her.

  Outside in the hall, they found Sue sitting at the foot of the stairs. There were marks of tears on her face. Had she heard Brother Simon’s story?

  “Any news about James?”

  “Nothing,” she hiccupped. “They said to ring again in the morning.”

  Lucy sat in the chalet bedroom. The single bedside lamp she had lit cast shadows into the further reaches of the room. The shapes of Rachel’s clothes, thrown on the other bed or dropped on the floor, could have contained a human form.

  They never would now.

  Her instincts longed to pick them up and tidy them away. To clear the bathroom of anything that was not her own. To confine these reminders of Rachel to the single bright pink holdall Lucy had bought her.

  But something else in her forbade it. Her police training told her to leave the evidence untouched.

  Evidence of what?

  A girl too depressed and unsure of herself to cope any longer. A high point on a rock and the cold North Sea below. A jump that would end it all and bring her peace.

  That was all it was, wasn’t it? The sort of tragic ending Lucy had often feared as she tried to break through Rachel’s defences and pour into her the healing she so needed. She had tried and failed. It was over.

  Then why did she feel she must leave Rachel’s things exactly as she found them, until the rest of the CID team arrived?

  The words of the coastguard came back to her: “She’d have been washed back onto the rocks. Or the current would have taken her east.”

  Would there be enough in DC Chappell’s report to classify this as a suspicious death? Not an accident, not suicide. But if not either of those, then what?

  She was being ridiculous. Apart from herself and Peter, Rachel had never met any of the group before. It wasn’t possible that in so short a time she could have formed a relationship with any one of them that might have ended in such a violent way.

  Lucy got up with an effort and went to the bathroom. The merciless neon light illuminated more evidence of Rachel’s all-too-recent presence: toothpaste, flannel, eye-liner, a packet of pills. Rachel had never had much money. She had not cared enough about herself to spend her meagre income on the array of lotions and make-up that most teenage girls regarded as indispensable. Except for the rare days when she hit a high, it was as though she had accepted that her lank hair and sallow skin were part of the burden she carried with her for life; that she had no right to be pretty and attractive like other girls.

  Lucy touched the eye-liner sadly. Rachel’s one concession to vanity.

  She sighed and went to bed. She turned out the bedside lamp and tried not to think about the crumpled clothes on the opposite bed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LUCY RAN WITH THE COLD MORNING BREEZE whipping her face. To her right, the tide was rising. In another hour or two it would be over the causeway. Early sun glinted on the gently rippling waves.

  “Father, make James well. Comfort Sue. May the police find the truth about this whole sorry story of Rachel’s death. And help me to help everyone else.”

  She knew it was unconventional to say her prayers on her early morning run. Some people retired to their study with Bible and devotional notes. Some knelt before a cross or an icon. Others sat, spines erect, concentrating on their breathing, or reflected out of doors surrounded by flowers and birdsong.

  Lucy’s feet drove her body and her thoughts. She needed to be doing something.

  She ran alternately on the hard surface of the south shore road and on the softer sand beside it. She swung round a bend and came in sight of the car park. A few more minutes and she would be back at St Colman’s House. She tried not to be scared by the drop in her spirits. Yesterday had happened. She could not roll back the calendar to the time when Rachel was alive and Lucy had really thought she was getting better. Would the others want to leave? The Cavendishes, maybe.

  Would James be released after his night in hospital?

  Could whatever had happened between James and Sue have anything to do with Rachel’s death?

  DC Chappell would have made his report. There might be more CID arriving this morning. Would they all have to face another round of questioning?

  There was a figure on top of a sand dune ahead of her. He was wearing khaki shorts and holding a camera to his eye. This, and the long lens, suggested a serious photographer, not just a holidaymaker staring down at the screen of his automatic.

  As she came into sight, he swung the camera round towards her running figure, then swiftly dropped it to his chest. She saw the pointed foxy beard and ginger hair of Aidan Davison.

  Lucy pulled up short. Her mind leaped back to that first evening, when she had made that crass remark about Jenny Davison running the course better than she could. She winced as she remembered Aidan’s outburst. She had almost felt the sparks coming off him.

  But yesterday he had shown real concern in his search for Rachel and for Lucy’s grief.

  She watched Aidan hesitate for a moment, and knew that he too was reluctant. Then he came down the side of the dune, slithering in the loose sand.

  “Morning,” he greeted her without smiling. “Do you always run before breakfast?”

  “I pray better on my feet.” The words were out before she realized. Had she wanted to share her secret with this man? “And you?”

  He gave a forced laugh. “Trying to recover some sense of normality. Photography is what I do – choosing lenses and apertures and shutter speeds. It blots out all the other things I don’t want to think about. And there’s something about the early morning light. The quality of stillness on the water. The colours of wet mud. You’d never believe it had so many shades.”

  They both stood facing the strait between them and the mainland, drinking in its tranquillity. Lucy felt how hard they were both trying to hold on to that unspoiled magic. To use it as a defence against the reality that was closing in on them.

  She began to breathe more easily. Could he have forgotten that clash between them?

  By unspoken agreement they started to walk back together. The big car park ahead was almost empty. Though the causeway was open, it was too early for most day trippers to take advantage of it. Only the really keen and well-organized would get across this morning before the rising tide closed it again.

  A single vehicle was coming down the road towards them from the village. Lucy recognized the black and yellow of the Coastguard and Rescue Land Rover.

  “Not another shout for the rescue service?” Aidan asked.

  “No,” said Lucy as the Land Rover approached them. She had recognized John, the big coastguard driving it, but not the man beside him and the woman in the seat behind. As it rolled past, she saw DC Chappell, also in the back seat, turn round to watch them. He raised a hand. Lucy gave a small wave back.

  “So the big shots from CID are here bright an
d early,” she explained to Aidan. “Did you see our DC Chappell in the back? He’ll be taking them out to see where you found Rachel.” She shook herself briskly, casting the thought behind her. “Come on then. We’d better get some breakfast before they start questioning us again.”

  Aidan walked with her in silence for a while.

  “Does it really need detective work? You’re pretty sure it was suicide, aren’t you?”

  “Ever since I’ve known Rachel, it’s what I’ve been dreading. I’ve been trying my best to convince her there’s something worth living for – people who really care about her. But she’s bipolar. She has… had… black moods when nothing got through. At times like that, she was always vulnerable.”

  “I thought… I know it sounds awful to say this… that Constable Chappell was almost hoping for something worse. Don’t get me wrong, suicide’s bad enough, but he seemed very keen to latch on to what the coastguards said about it not looking like a typical suicide by drowning.”

  “I know… I thought at first she might have thrown herself off Snipe Point.”

  “How high is it?”

  “Well, it’s not Beachy Head, if that’s what you mean. But there are rocks below.”

  Aidan stirred the sand with his boot. “There was something else. Something that older coastguard said.” He looked sideways at her with those keen, grey-blue eyes.

  “I know,” she said quietly. “A falling tide would have carried her eastwards quite quickly. An incoming one would have just washed her back onto the rocks. There’s no way the current could have carried her west to that beach where you found her.”

  They walked on. Lucy felt the stillness of the island’s beauty become one of chilling knowledge.

  “So. She died there. On that beach… How? There were no stones in her pockets. She didn’t just walk out into the sea to drown.” She turned to Aidan in bewilderment.

  He looked straight ahead of him, across the filling strait.

  “You’re the policewoman. Or you were. Is it possible she was already dead when she went into the water?”

  Lucy stared at him with the blankness of horror.

  “That would mean…”

  “It doesn’t make sense, does it? From what you say, Rachel had reason to kill herself. But why would anyone else want to kill her?”

  The running waves were making Lucy feel giddy.

  “I can’t believe that. She didn’t know anyone here, except me and Peter.”

  The wind shivered in the long grass.

  Aidan seemed to shake himself back to the present. “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have bothered you with this. You’ve enough to cope with as it is.”

  “No.” She heard her own voice, abrupt and breathless. “It’s not just you. I’ve been thinking about it half the night.”

  “The police will handle it. The coastguard will tell them what he told us. Right now, I need to get back and see if Melangell’s up yet.”

  “You didn’t bring her with you?”

  “I left her in bed. Lazy monkey. But she was awake. I told her I’d be back before breakfast and I’d better find her dressed.”

  “How is she taking this? She’s awfully young to have a death like this thrust upon her.”

  “Melangell, sadly, is no stranger to death.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lucy held her tongue, waiting to see if he wanted to tell her more. She looked sideways at him. He was staring down at the pavement ahead of him as he strode forward.

  They turned into St Colman’s House without Aidan explaining what he meant.

  They were just in time to meet Elspeth and Valerie coming into the hall from the garden door.

  “Well,” Elspeth greeted them heartily, “you two have stolen a march on us. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing like a good mystery for whipping up an appetite, never mind exercise.”

  “Elspeth!” Valerie said quietly. “I’m not sure that’s appropriate, under the circumstances.”

  “Why not? Can’t bring the poor girl back to life, can we? And I’d still love to know how Jamie boy got that nasty knock on the head. If that po-faced acolyte of his did it, she’s got more gumption than I credited her with.”

  “Elspeth!”

  Lucy watched Aidan circumnavigate the small group and bound upstairs to find Melangell.

  She stood in the hall, overcome with the enormity of what they had just discussed.

  Lucy forced herself to put the horror of how Rachel might have died behind her. CID were here. Surely she could leave it to them. Somehow she must fulfil her duty to the people she had brought here.

  Still, she was more nervous than she would have been facing a drunken brawl on the city streets in the small hours of the morning. It needed courage of a different sort to think that she could lead a course on Celtic and Anglo-Saxon saints for a group of total strangers, in the face of what had happened. She wasn’t a historian. All she had was a personal enthusiasm for the saints of Northumbria and a love of its islands and hilltop fortresses.

  She had planned a trip to Bamburgh Castle for this afternoon. She’d been prepared to hire a minibus, but it looked as if there would be enough cars between them for so small a number. Now she was irresolute. How long would it take the detective inspector to ask all the questions he needed? Was it possible she was wrong? Would he ignore the coastguards and decide that Rachel’s death was a simple human tragedy? Nothing more.

  Meanwhile, what should she tell the others round the breakfast table?

  She rapped her coffee cup to get their attention.

  “Sorry, folks. This isn’t what any of us expected when we came here. Detective Inspector Harland has rung me to say he’ll want to interview us this morning, when he’s back from where they found Rachel. I doubt if any of us can tell him more than we told DC Chappell yesterday, but he’ll want to be sure. Meanwhile…” She swallowed an enormous lump in her throat and made herself continue. “We’ll do our best to get back to normality. I spoke to some of you car drivers yesterday about a visit to Bamburgh, where the kings of northern Northumbria had their capital. Not the medieval castle you see today, of course, but you can get an idea of its splendid situation even in Anglo-Saxon times. And the church where St Aidan died. I’m hoping that CID will be through with us before lunch. The causeway’s closed this morning, anyway. So I suggest you make yourselves available to DI Harland and then you’re free till lunchtime. I’ll save the story I was going to tell you this morning till a better time.”

  She was aware of a restiveness in the group around the table. She looked round at the faces she was beginning to know. Some, like Peter, of course, and Valerie, with her wise smile, and, she had to admit, Aidan Davison now, were looking at her with sympathy, anxious to be supportive. But the Cavendishes looked put out. It was almost as though it was Lucy’s fault that such a dark cloud had been cast over their holiday. She would have to make an extra effort to see that the visit to Bamburgh Castle this afternoon lived up to their expectations.

  Elspeth was a different problem. The older woman, with her air of dismissive superiority, made Lucy acutely conscious of how inferior her own education was to this scholar’s. Sometimes she blushed with embarrassment to think that she was attempting to give the Oxford don lessons in history. Lucy had gone straight into the police force after A-levels. It was only ministerial training that had taken her to university. And even then, she had been no more than an average student as far as the academic part of the course went.

  She couldn’t read Elspeth’s expression this morning. The big woman was leaning back in her chair. Her head was tilted, so that she seemed to be looking down her rather large nose at Lucy. There was a curl of her lip that could have been contempt.

  Uneasily, Lucy’s mind went back to their first evening. Elspeth had known, without being told, that Lucy was worried about Rachel’s absence from their room. She had known, before Lucy did, that Rachel had returned. And there had been that strange, transien
t brightness about Rachel’s mood, a flash of aggression, to be followed by black depression next morning. Was it remotely possible that Elspeth had anything to do with that?

  The history lecturer’s sharp blue eyes challenged her. Something defiant. Almost, though it was shocking to even think it in the circumstances, amused.

  She tore her eyes away. James, of course, was absent. If anyone challenged Lucy’s authority more than Elspeth, it was him. She tried to fight down a wave of exasperation. Why had he come here if he thought so little of her and her ability as a pastor?

  It had been Sue’s doing. A misunderstanding about the subject of the course.

  Lucy told herself grimly, James is hurt. He’s in hospital. We don’t even know if he’s going to be OK. They’ve had him under observation overnight. It all depends how he wakes this morning. I should be praying for him, not seeing him as my enemy.

  Was he Rachel’s enemy?

  She shook that blacker thought away.

  And what about Sue? Lucy just had time to register Sue’s absence for the first time when the overweight young woman walked into the dining room.

  Her broad plain face was sunny this morning. Lucy didn’t need to wait to hear it from Sue to know that the news was good.

  “I rang the hospital.” Her eyes were alight with joy. “He’s had a good night. I can go and fetch him this morning.”

  “Just one small problem.” Aidan spoke up from the end of the table. “It’s high tide. The causeway’s closed till midday.”

  Sue’s face fell. She turned to Lucy, almost as if she hoped the course leader could override the tides.

  Lucy smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry. Aidan’s right. I’ve scheduled our trip to Bamburgh for this afternoon because nobody can get off the island till lunchtime. And anyway, we’re all in for another round of questioning. The inspector in charge of Rachel’s case came over early, before the causeway closed – Detective Inspector Harland.”

  “The CID are still on the case?” Elspeth leaned forward, suddenly interested. “Does that mean they think it’s a suspicious death?”