Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise

by Ann Cleeves

  “I’m going for a walk,” she said. “Don’t follow me. I won’t do anything foolish. I will think about it and see you in church.”

  Ben watched the conversation, red-eyed and tired behind a bowl of cornflakes, as if he did not know what they were talking about. Will hated the mornings. In the hostel he always missed breakfast. He made instant coffee in his room and arrived at school at half past nine after assembly had finished. It was breaking the rules but allowance was made for sixth formers.

  Agnes tried to get him out of bed to have breakfast with the rest of the family. His disgust at being woken from a deep sleep gave him the words which he had been struggling to find since he had returned home. He spoke without thinking. She should leave him alone, he said. He did not want to be there anyway. He had only come back because she had been so insistent and he was going back to school as soon as there was an available plane. Then he turned over and went back to sleep. Agnes stood in the kitchen and wept. She had lost Mary and Will. Nothing would be the same again.

  In Buness the boys were in their room changing into their Sunday-best clothes. Maggie was washing the breakfast dishes and Alec was polishing his shoes.

  “You should have done that last night,” she said.

  “I know.” He was irritated. “I forgot.”

  “So Sylvia Drysdale came back on the boat yesterday,” she said, working on the petty irritation he already felt, trying to provoke a reaction.

  “Look,” he said. “I’ve told you. There never was anything to that. It was just gossip.”

  “No,” she said. “ You never did tell me.”

  “Well I’m telling you now. There was never anything in it.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, “ that you’ve told me.” But it did not help her and she felt uneasy and tense.

  Sarah took it for granted that they were going to church, but Jim refused.

  “No,” he said, “we agreed. We decided to go last week because Mother was so upset, but that was all. We wouldn’t go again.”

  He was adamant.

  “You can go,” he said, “but I won’t think a lot of you if you do. It’ll only be for appearances.”

  She was surprised because he took it so seriously.

  “Did you enjoy yourself last night?” he asked, to change the subject.

  “Oh,” she said vaguely, “I’ll tell you all about it later. Do you think that Alec would lend me his car?”

  George woke early. He got out of bed and opened the curtains. The cloud was still low over the hill. There would be no chance of the police coming in by plane. There was no movement in the house. He dressed and went downstairs, then left the house quietly. It was just as well, he thought, not to have an audience.

  As he went through the gate on to the road a car pulled up and stopped. It was Sarah in Alec’s car.

  “You shouldn’t be walking,” she said. “ I thought you could do with a lift.”

  “Nonsense. Fresh air and exercise is good for concussion. You’re afraid of missing something.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “I didn’t want anything else to happen to you. At the beginning I thought you were just a crank, and that Mary’s death was an accident. Then Robert died and the police were here with their questions and you seemed to know so much more than them. Then when I found you last night, I thought you were dead, too. It was horrible.”

  Has it come to this? he thought. A girl younger than my daughter thinks that she can protect me! But he said nothing. He got into the car and told her where to go.

  “Do you want me to stay in the car?” she asked when they arrived.

  “Would you prefer that?”

  “No.”

  “Come on in then. It might be useful to have a witness.”

  He was glad that she was there.

  They sat in the kitchen at Kell, much as they had done on their previous visit. Melissa had changed into her best dress for church, but she made tea for them. James watched her with anxious, protective eyes. He had put on the jacket of his suit, and when they came in he looked at his watch. He did not want to be late for the service.

  George slowly took the green silk scarf from his pocket and laid it on the table. He touched it carefully, laid it out so that they would see the pattern and the colours. James’ eyes seemed drawn to it, but he looked at his watch again.

  “Last time I came,” George said, “I asked you about this scarf. You had no opportunity to answer then. I’ll ask you again. Did you see it after Mary died?”

  He spoke to James. There was silence. The window was open and they could hear the hens in the yard outside. They were looking at James and it came as a shock when Melissa spoke.

  “You’ll have to tell them, James.”

  He looked at her, unsure, upset. He looked very distinguished, Sarah thought. A small, trim man with grey hair and a dark suit. He could have been a judge or a retired admiral.

  “I don’t want any more lies,” Melissa said. She seemed relieved to be speaking, completely relaxed. “ He found it in my things. He never talked about it, but he took it away. I thought perhaps he’d burnt it. Then you brought it back here. I thought you must know what had happened. I was afraid even that James had taken the scarf to you and told you where he found it, but I should have known better than that. Since then I’ve been waiting for you to come again. I’m glad that it’s over.”

  “I don’t understand …” Sarah supposed that she should leave it all to George, but she was too involved to remain silent.

  “Why I did it? I regretted it, you know, the moment it was done. I have been a little mad for a long time now. It was so unfair that Agnes should have had so many children while I had none. Mary should have been my child. I would have cared for her properly. She wouldn’t have been a wild, unkind girl if she had been my daughter.”

  “You wrote the note pinned to my wedding dress,” Sarah said. “You thought that Jim should have belonged to you, too.”

  Melissa seemed angry that she had been interrupted. It was as if she had prepared her speech and Sarah had spoiled he performance. But she answered.

  “I wrote the note. They brought the dress up here for me to iron it. They know that I’m good with my hands. It wasn’t a tactful thing to have done. I have no children to dress up on their wedding day. And she should never have named the lad after my husband. I would have used that name if I’d had a son.”

  “But you never went out that night,” Sarah said. “You were at home all evening.”

  “I went to watch. I wanted to see what you looked like. I wanted to see what was going on. If my son was being married, I should have been there.”

  “What happened?” Again it was Sarah who asked the question. George Palmer-Jones watched the conversation between the women in silence. It was impossible to guess what he was thinking.

  “Mary was running around the hall in some sort of game. The music was still playing. I was about to go home. There was nothing more to see and I knew that soon it would be the interval and the people would come out.”

  “She must have been hiding from Maggie,” Sarah said. “ She was supposed to be helping her.”

  “She must have heard my footsteps on the road because she saw me. She called me a witch, a spying old witch. Children can be cruel to people they don’t belong to. She came at me, calling names. I didn’t want to face her, so I ran off up the hill?”

  “Up Ellie’s Head?”

  “Yes. But she chased after me, calling names all the time. She followed me right to the edge and I pushed her. I thought; now Agnes knows what it is like to lose a child.”

  “And Robert? Why did you kill him?” Sarah spoke again, because she wanted to know and because George was remaining resolutely, infuriatingly silent.

  “He saw me outside the hall that night and later he guessed. He came to see me.”

  At the beginning James had looked bewildered, but confusion was turning to horror. Tears were rolling down his face. He stood up
.

  “No!” he shouted at her. “ No.” He simply wanted to stop her talking, as if silence would erase the meaning of what she had said.

  “Sit down, James,” she said calmly. “ It’s the only way.”

  “So Mary never had a secret,” Sarah said. “We were wrong all the time.”

  James seemed not to hear her.

  “No,” he said. “ It’s not the only way.”

  “Mary did have a secret,” George said, very quietly, “didn’t she, Melissa?”

  As George turned his attention from James to Melissa, James got up and walked out of the room. It’s been too much for him, Sarah thought. He’s lived with this woman for more than thirty years. He believed that he knew her and now he’s found out that she killed two people. He can’t face it. She thought, even, that he might be physically sick. He looked very ill. When George got up and almost ran after James, she thought he was being insensitive. The man obviously wanted to be on his own.

  “Don’t be a fool, man,” Melissa screamed after her husband. “I’ve told you. It’s the only way.”

  James was a little younger than George and much fitter. He still worked the croft. I’ve spent too long sitting behind a desk, George thought. I won’t catch him.

  James knew exactly where he was going. He ran round the back of the house, past the sheep pen, and through a field of oats. He had still not buttoned the black jacket of his suit and it flapped at the sides as he ran. He looks like a hooded crow with a sleek grey head and black wings, George thought as he walked through the wet stalks of the oats. He went as fast as he could, hoping James might wait for him, that he might after all want to talk.

  After the fields of the croft the land sloped down to the sea. George watched James run to the edge of the cliff, to Kell Geo where all the rubbish from the island was dumped, because the water was so deep—all the tin cans, and the rusty cars that would go no more. He watched James pause for a second at the top, then saw him fling himself over to land with the garbage underneath the sea.

  George walked slowly to the cliff edge. As soon as James left Kell, George knew that it would end like this. He had been incompetent. He should have foreseen it, but since his arrival at Kell nothing had gone as he had planned. He heard a movement behind him and turned round. He had expected to see Sarah, but it was Elspeth:

  “You saw James?” he said.

  “Yes. He meant to do it, didn’t he? He did it on purpose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He killed an old man. And a child.”

  When he returned to Kell, the two women were still sitting, staring at each other across the kitchen table. It was as if they were waiting for him before resuming their conversation. Sarah heard George coming and looked up with relief. Her psychiatric training had only been for six weeks. It had not equipped her to deal with murderers. But George ignored her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Melissa. “ He was too fast for me.”

  “He’s dead,” she said. It was a statement, not a question, and it did not need an answer.

  “Would you leave us alone, Sarah?” he said.

  She got up.

  “I’ll leave you the car,” she said. “ I’ll walk.” Then: “I don’t know what to tell them all.”

  “Tell them nothing.”

  She walked down the island. The church bell was ringing for the morning service. She imagined the congregation sitting, waiting for James to stand before them to offer the usual words of the Christian peace and reassurance.

  “He won’t come!” she shouted to the sheep. She lurched out of the mist on to the road. “ He’s dead.”

  She went home to Unsta, and she saw no one.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was evening before George was ready to speak to them to explain it all. He was with Melissa all morning. He hardly spoke, but he listened intently to what she was saying. When James did not arrive at church, Sandy telephoned Kell to find out where he was. Melissa and George were so engrossed in their conversation that they let the telephone ring. Kenneth Dance took the service.

  Then George went to the school house. He phoned the nurse from there and asked her to go to Kell to be with Melissa. He talked to Sylvia and Jonathan. First he spoke to Sylvia alone. It was the most difficult interview of his career. Afterwards he went out and walked in the playground, pacing backwards and forwards.

  I knew who it was, he thought. I was right about that. But I botched it at the end.

  When he went back in, the Drysdales had decided to leave, as soon as the mist had cleared for a plane to come to collect them. Sylvia was starting to pack.

  He told Sandy that he would go to Sandwick to explain it and he had expected all the Stennets to be there, but it was only Sandy and Agnes, Sarah and Jim. Will, too, was packing, hoping to get a plane back to school the next day, and Alec and Maggie had not been invited.

  It was not dark outside, but the electric light was on in the sitting room and the heavy curtains were drawn. There was an enormous fire in the grate and the room was very hot. Agnes sat in a rocking chair near to the fire and was knitting. She would never usually have picked up her knitting on a Sunday, but she needed the comfort of it and thought that the Lord would understand. Sarah sat on the floor beside her. Jim let George into the house and Sandy rushed out of the sitting room to greet him. When they had all sat down, he said:

  “George, who killed our daughter?”

  “It was James.”

  Agnes looked up, but continued to knit ferociously.

  “Tell us about it,” she said. “Why did he do it?”

  “Because she knew his secret and he was afraid that she would tell.”

  “What was his secret?” Jim asked. “Do you know?”

  “He and Sylvia Drysdale were lovers.”

  “No,” Agnes said sharply. “He was a religious man.”

  “He was a frustrated man,” Jim said. “ You must have seen Melissa and James together, Mother. Even when she still came down the island with him to the dances, she would never let him touch her.”

  “He would never have gone with a woman like Sylvia Drysdale.”

  “She is very attractive,” George said, “and she did care for him. It’s been going on for a long time. I think he tried to stop it, more than once, but they had become dependent on each other. He needed the physical contact and she liked to feel that she was wanted. Melissa guessed, I think, what was happening. She was perhaps even a little relieved.”

  “They must have been very careful,” Sarah said. “ It can’t be easy to keep a secret on Kinness.”

  “It started when Melissa sent James to ask Sylvia to visit her,” George said, “ but Sylvia and James very rarely met in the school house after that. James still had a key to the lighthouse. He was paid to do maintenance work up there, and that’s where they met. Probably in one of the cottages. Mary must have seen them on one of the few occasions when he went to the school house. She used to wander into Sylvia’s room and try on her jewellery and make-up. Perhaps it was a time when they thought they were safe, during school hours. Perhaps Mary wandered up in one of her breaks and saw them together. I think that’s what must have happened. They didn’t even know she’d seen them. Mary didn’t say anything to Sylvia, but she began to drop hints to James. He realized that she must know. He couldn’t face the shame of the affair being public knowledge. He had spent his life on Kinness telling people how to behave. It was unthinkable for his secret to come out. So he arranged to meet Mary in the interval of the dance on Ellie’s Head. It had to be then because he was playing in the band. Perhaps he bribed her with a present, or more information. She waited for him by the cliff. She was deaf, so she wouldn’t have heard him coming. It would have been very easy. As I found out today, he was fit. It was quite possible for him to run back to the hall to start the music for the second half of the party.

  “He would probably have got away with it, if he hadn’t gone b
ack for the scarf.”

  “Why did he do that?” Jim asked.

  “It was Sylvia’s scarf. I think he went back later, when he was supposed to be searching for Mary on the hill. He knew that the relationship with Sylvia was over, and he had to have something of hers. He had a desperate passion for her. He didn’t think that anyone would notice that the scarf was gone. He put it in his pocket.”

  George turned to Sarah.

  “Do you remember when we went to talk to James and Melissa after Robert died: Melissa was quite calm until I showed her the scarf, then the panic attack started? She had seen it in James’ pocket, I think, without realizing the implication of it.”

  “Yes,” Sarah said, “ I remember.”

  “When I first started asking questions about Mary’s death, Sylvia didn’t take me seriously. She didn’t know, you see, that Mary had discovered her secret. She thought that the child had slipped accidentally and that I was playing detective through boredom. Perhaps I was.”

  “Then why did she decide to leave the island suddenly, when the Ruth Isabella took the children out to school?”

  “Because I was asking about secrets. As I’ve said, she cared for James. She was afraid that I might have found out about them. It wouldn’t have mattered too much for her—she had a dreadful reputation anyway—but she knew that it would have ruined him. So she decided to get out to Baltasay where she’d be well away from any questions. I must stress that she had no idea at that time that James had murdered Mary.

  “On her way out to the boat James met her in the deserted croft by the road. Perhaps he had decided that he could not do without her, and he begged her to stay. Certainly he was so upset that when he left the croft he did not notice that he had dropped the silk scarf. When he went back for it later, it had gone. Ben Dance had gone to play in there before school and had found it.”

  “Why did he kill Robert?” Sandy, said. “He was an old fool, but he was not a threat to James.”

  “Robert was up on the hill the morning that James and Sylvia met in Taft. It must have been clear that there was an attachment between them. As I say, I think that James was devastated to learn that Sylvia was planning to leave the island. When she got to Baltasay, he phoned her at the hotel, probably to ask her to come back to Kinness. Perhaps they kissed, and Robert saw them. Perhaps he actually heard what they said to each other.