by Ann Cleeves
“Robert probably thought that he would be able to use the information—not just to make mischief like Mary—but for some sort of gain. I don’t suppose he connected the relationship between Sylvia and James with Mary’s death, so he didn’t realize how dangerous it was to blackmail James.”
“He will have asked for a goose,” Sandy said suddenly. “He was always thinking of his stomach, the greedy old man, and we were all too mean to give him one.”
“Whatever it was, he went that afternoon after you’d all been out shooting the geese. Perhaps he saw James down on the Loons. James would still have had his shotgun with him. It was too easy. James didn’t have time to think.
“When I went to Baltasay, I told Sylvia that Robert had been murdered and that he had been on the hill above her when she had been meeting at Taft. Then she realized, I think, that James must have been the murderer.”
“Why didn’t she say anything to you?” Sarah asked.
“I’m sure that she would have done eventually, when she was less confused. But she loved him. She would have seen it as a betrayal.”
“Love!” Agnes snapped. “ She doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
George answered gently. “She did love him, you know. All the secrecy was on his behalf, not her own. She only flirted with Alec so that you wouldn’t think of looking elsewhere for someone to associate her with. She knew what a reputation she has.”
“It was James who shot at you, when we were out ringing the swans,” Sarah said.
“Yes. It was a foolish thing to do. I think by that time he was insane with fear and worry. He must have heard that I’d gone out to Baltasay on the plane. Perhaps he thought that I’d given up the investigation and gone home. Then I turned up on the Ruth Isabella. With Sylvia. I don’t know who he was trying to hit then, up on the hill—Sylvia or me. Perhaps he was trying to frighten her into keeping quiet about their relationship or perhaps he was trying to frighten me away altogether. By that time I don’t think he knew what he was doing. I don’t think that he can have meant to kill either of us. He could have done that easily enough if he’d tried. After all, when I wandered into the lighthouse, I had a gentle tap on the head, not a bellyful of shot.”
“You knew who it was at that time?” asked Sarah.
“Yes, though I had only worked it out that evening, as we were getting ready to ring the swans. Before that I thought that Mary’s secret was quite different.”
“Something to do with Elspeth?”
“Yes. But it turned out to be quite irrelevant. So I went back to the scarf. Whoever had been talking to Sylvia had dropped the scarf. From her attitude it was most likely to be a man, a lover. There weren’t that many candidates. If it had been Alec, he would have been rather proud to let the island know what was going on. It had to be someone of sufficient standing for it to matter desperately if the secret came out. That meant Sandy, Kenneth Dance, or James. Then I remembered Melissa’s extreme reaction when I showed her the scarf at Kell, and James’ attitude to Sylvia—he emphasized over and over again how much he disapproved of her—and the thing became clear. I was certain when I realized that whoever was in the lighthouse had a key to the padlock on the door. I knew he’d been the assistant keeper there. The Northern Lights Board were most likely to choose him as a caretaker.
“I really thought that it was Melissa,” Sarah said. “All day I’ve been thinking that it was her and that James killed himself through shame or a second-hand guilt.” She looked around the room. “She was so convincing,” she said, almost apologetically. “I believed every word she said.”
“James couldn’t let her take the blame,” George said. “I’m sure that she would have gone through with it if he’d let her. She’d worked out her story to the last detail. She told me that she was an actress once, when she was young, before she came to Baltasay. Perhaps that’s why her story was so plausible.”
“But why did she want to protect him?” Sarah asked. “After all he’d done. He’d been unfaithful to her.”
“She felt responsible. She told me that she’d never been able to do anything for James. It was her opportunity to repay him. She was proud to do it.”
“Did she go out to the hall that night, as she said?”
“Yes, but only to watch you walk up from Unsta. She never saw Mary.” He chose his words carefully. “Most of what she said was true. She was jealous of Agnes, desperate for a child, a little mad. She did write the note and pin it to your dress. If they’d lived somewhere different, it might have been easier. James had so much to live up to here. People expected too much from him.”
It was an accusation. They sat in silence, considering what he had said. The fire had burned down and Sandy got up to put on more coal.
“We can’t change too quickly here,” he said. “ We’ve too much to lose.”
“But it’s not a museum,” Sarah said, taking Jim’s hand. The words had never seemed more relevant.
“James wouldn’t have had it any different here,” Sandy said, stubborn, his face red in the flames. “ He believed in it, too.
“But it killed your daughter.”
“No,” Sandy said fiercely, getting to his feet. “ James killed my daughter, James, my brother. Not Melissa or the church. He knew that he’d done an evil thing and he did what he could to put it right. He had to pay.”
He walked from the room. Agnes pulled the knitting needle from the belt round her waist, laid the knitting on her lap.
“He’s upset,” she said. “It was his brother. They were too close for him to be generous. You’re young. Kinness will be yours and you’ll live here in whichever way you choose.”
She got to her feet, like an old lady, carefully folded her knitting, and put it in a bag, then followed her husband.
Sarah and Jim turned to George for advice, for support in their desire for change, but he deserted them, too. He let himself out of the house and they were left in the stuffy, brightly lit room. As he walked through the yard he watched Sarah draw the curtains and throw open a window.
George left the next day with the Drysdales and Will Stennet. The cloud had gone and the sun was shining. It was mild, like a spring day.
Until a new teacher could be found, Maggie Stennet took over the school. She found it harder work than she had expected, and when the new teacher came there was no criticism about the standard of lessons.
The island came to know about Elspeth and why she had left Glasgow so suddenly. Kenneth Dance made no difficulty about her explaining her past. A Stennet had murdered two people. Watching a child being battered was a minor crime in comparison. So the Dances and Stennets continued to lead their separate lives and neither family felt that it had a superior moral status to the other.
Another Dance, a distant relative, moved into Robert’s old croft, Tain, and two years later he and Elspeth were married, and had children of their own. After watching James jump to his death at Kell Geo, Elspeth seemed stronger, more decisive. She and Sarah became friends in a quiet, unemotional way.
Melissa stayed on at Kell. They had all expected her to leave Kinness, but she decided that she had nowhere else to go. There was pressure for her to leave the croft. Sandy offered to build her a bungalow at the south of the island. It was not right, it was said, for a woman to have land which could be worked by a man, which might support a family. Agnes thought that Will should have Kell. But Sarah fought on Melissa’s behalf, and when Melissa grew too old and frail to do much on the croft, Jim did it all for her. She never mixed much with people on the island, but Sarah felt that it was because she chose not to, and not because she was frightened. She died at Kell, quite suddenly, when she was nearly seventy.
Even then Will did not come back. He had gone to university in Edinburgh, and when he had taken his degree he stayed on to do post-graduate work. He loved Edinburgh. When he got drunk, he talked with affection of Kinness to his pretty young girlfriends, but he only went home occasionally for holidays. He remai
ned at the university as a lecturer.
In the spring after she had moved on to Kinness Sarah became pregnant. Jim built on to the back of Unsta a bathroom and more bedrooms. Sarah filled the house with pretty things. Jim and Alec worked their land together in a flexible partnership. They worked well together. They had the same ideas. They became quite prosperous. Sarah had twin daughters, and later she had a son. When the children had started school, the nurse retired, at last, and Sarah took over the job. Jim was still serious, still unsure whether he should admire or disapprove of her frivolous ways, but they were happy.
So everything continued on Kinness as Sandy predicted it would. Just two weeks after James had died they had a Halloween party for the children in the school, because there always was a party at Halloween. At Christmas there was carol singing and at new year there was guising. In the spring the lambs came and then it was time for ploughing and sowing. The whole island turned out for the harvest. As the years passed the story of the murders and James’ suicide became a story like the Great Storm, told and retold until it lost its power to shock. At first Jim and Sarah refused to go to church, but when the children were old enough they demanded to go to Sunday school like their friends, and it was hard then to stay away. They called their son James.
Sarah wrote to George Palmer-Jones several times after he left the island and he always replied. He was pleased, he said, to hear the Kinness news. But he never accepted her invitation to come and stay with them at Unsta. He was busy, with his new business to run.
Copyright
First published in 1988 by Century
This edition published 2013 by Bello
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Copyright © Ann Cleeves, 1988
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