by Ann Cleeves
“So you wrote to the children’s parents and told them that Tom was a drug addict. How did you know that he had taken drugs?”
“I heard some of the birdwatchers talking about Tom French. A group of the young ones, no more than children themselves, were in one of the hides. They had the flaps open and I could hear what they were saying. He thought that he was their hero, but they could see through him, just like I did. They said that he lectured them about taking drugs, but he’d been in court for it himself. It was a sign. Don’t you see?” He looked eagerly at Molly. “ They’d given me the information I needed. It was a sign that I ought to act.”
“So,” Molly repeated, “ you wrote to the parents. But what about the other letters, Bernard, the letters to Tom’s girlfriend, to Sally Johnson? You wrote to her too, didn’t you?”
“It was for her own good,” he said wildly. “Don’t you see? That man was corrupting her. She’s a good woman, a beautiful woman. She didn’t need him, I had to warn her off.”
“But after he died, Bernard? What was the point of writing to her then?” George thought that Molly was losing a little of her social worker’s self-control, but perhaps the hint of accusation in her voice was intended.
“I enjoyed it,” the man said simply. “ I did it when Mother was in bed. It was exciting. It made me excited to think that I was writing to her.”
“Didn’t you think that she might be frightened?”
“That was all part of it. I imagined her lying in bed, frightened. Because of me.”
“But you haven’t written to her for a while now. Did you realize that it was wrong, that, it was hurting her, and that you would have to stop?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t write to her. I had an accident and hurt my arm so that I couldn’t write. But it didn’t stop me thinking about her. I lie awake every night and think about her.”
His eyes were gleaming with the memory of his pleasure and desire. George watched with distaste, then looked at Molly, whose face expressed only interest, understanding. How does she do it? he wondered, she seems almost to be encouraging him, by sitting there so calmly and acceptingly.
“Do you like seeing people frightened, Bernard?” she said. “Other people?”
He shook his head. “It was only her. I didn’t write to anyone else. I couldn’t forget her. I dreamt about her.”
“But what about the birdwatchers? I think you like making them frightened. Didn’t you shoot at them on the marsh to make them scared?”
He laughed with sudden delight and George realized how disturbed he was. “ That’s different,” Bernard said. Then, more calmly, “ I never meant to hit them.”
Molly persisted, her voice still gentle but very firm. “When we came in, you and your mother were having an argument. You were very angry. Do you often get angry?”
“No,” he said very quickly, “not very often.”
“Perhaps when you get angry,” she persisted, “ you do things that you regret. Perhaps then you feel ashamed and you lie about it, and then it’s difficult to explain what you did and why you did it. Has that ever happened, Bernard?”
Reluctantly he nodded his head. It was as if Molly still held him in her spell. He had to tell her the truth.
George was puzzled. He was certain who had killed Tom French, so what could Bernard Cranshaw have to confess?
“Why don’t you tell me all about it?” Molly’s soothing voice broke into his thoughts.
Cranshaw mumbled now. He had become quite inarticulate. Even the gestures, the fidgeting and sniffling, were those of a naughty boy.
“The day that Tom French died …?” he began.
No, George thought, swept by a sudden panic. It can’t have been him. I can’t have been wrong. Instinct and reason had led him to the same conclusion. If he was wrong, he would lose faith in his judgement, in himself.
Cranshaw finished his sentence in a rush of words:?
“The day that Mother fell down the stairs, I pushed her. I wanted her to die.”
“Tell me about it,” Molly said.
“I was up and dressed. She got up to go to the bathroom. She saw me and started talking to me. She didn’t want me to go out on the marsh. She was standing at the top of the stairs. It seemed so easy. I pushed her.”
“And you’ve been worrying about it ever since,” Molly said. Then, with a very subjective unprofessional expression of bitterness:
“I don’t suppose that your mother would let you forget it?”
“It’s been driving me mad.” He was calmer, the nerve in his forehead was still. “You will help me, won’t you? You will help me to get away from here?”
“Of course I’ll help you,” she said. “But first I want you to help us. We want to find out who killed Tom French. Can you tell us anything about that, anything at all? It would help Sally too.”
“He was killed with a telescope,” the man said suddenly and clearly. “I found it. It was covered with blood. I didn’t touch it.”
George wanted desperately to interrupt and to take over the interview, but he felt that it was only Molly who held the man’s concentration.
“Where was it?” Molly asked. “By the pool on the marsh where Tom’s body was found?”
“No, it was in the Lodge park, quite near to the hotel, under a bush. I didn’t feel like going out on to the marsh that day. I was upset. I was looking for owl pellets. That’s how I saw it.”
So it was there, George thought. I was right. That’s where it happened.
“Are you sure that you didn’t touch it?” Molly asked. “The police searched that area very carefully, and didn’t find it.”
“Well, they wouldn’t have done,” he said scornfully. “It had gone. When I went back later that morning it had gone.”
Now George found it impossible to keep quiet. Molly had been asking all the right questions, but he could not sit and watch any longer.
“Why,” he asked in as controlled and quiet a voice as he could manage, “didn’t you tell the police about this? Or you could have told me.”
Bernard Cranshaw accepted the interruption as a matter of course.
“I couldn’t tell the police,” he said, frightened. “They would have found out about Mother. I couldn’t have had the police around here.”
He began to show signs of tension and excitement again, moving a heavy ash tray, which stood on a small, occasional table. He moved it backwards and forwards with a frantic energy, so that it scratched the table. Molly leant over and took the object from him. He subsided again into his chair, retreating from them.
“Tell me about the telescope,” George said quietly. “What kind of ‘scope was it? Did you recognize the make?”
“It was a new one,” the man said eagerly. “Not like mine. I always wanted a new one.” His face clouded over. “Mother said that it would have been a waste of money. But I would have looked after it.”
He stood up suddenly, shuffled to a cupboard in the corner, and lovingly brought out his telescope. It was solid brass and beautifully cared for.
“It was one of the new ones,” he repeated as he carried his telescope back to his chair. “One of the short ones, that you need a tripod for.”
“What colour was it?” George asked. “Was it with a tripod?”
The man shook his head.
“I can’t remember the colour. Grey or green. It was very messy. I was upset. I didn’t see a tripod.”
He seemed to lose all concentration then, and sat nursing the old brass telescope, rubbing patches of dull or tarnished metal with his handkerchief.
Molly waited with Bernard until the doctor came, but George left. Outside it was sticky and humid, and the storm clouds he had seen earlier in the day had spread, so that the sky was dark. There seemed to be no air and no light. His knowledge seemed to him an intolerable burden, but until the group of birdwatchers returned from Scotland there was nothing that he could do. Bernard Cranshaw had given his theory more weight, but
he had no real proof. He started out for the village.
In the Cranshaws’ house no one spoke. It was so dark that Molly switched on the electric light. In a corner Mrs. Cranshaw sat silent, sullen and recriminating, her eyes blaming not her son, but Molly. Bernard Cranshaw had accepted the idea of a period in hospital with relief, until his mother had returned to the room, and then he had protested that she would need him. He could not leave her. For the benefit of them both Molly explained that Mrs. Cranshaw would be well looked after, but when the doctor arrived, and Molly helped Bernard into the car, his mother stayed where she was and did not say a word. Now the silence was as compulsive as the words had previously been. When, after watching the car drive away, Molly went back into the house, Mrs. Cranshaw turned her face to the wall and waited for the intruder to go away.
As George walked back to the Windmill he devised a plan.
Ella had opened all the windows and the door of the snack bar, but inside it was hot and steaming. A group of young birdwatchers stood laughing around the blackboard. George took Ella into the kitchen and spoke to her. When they returned her eyes were gleaming with excitement. She was singing loudly and tunefully.
George joined the lads and they became quieter, respectful.
“Anything about?” he asked.
A large, unkempt boy with painful acne shock his head.
“I suppose it’s getting a bit late to expect much now.”
George grinned: “ I think that the middle of June is a good time for a real rarity, for something really special.”
He looked at the debris of cameras, telescopes and binoculars on the tables. Without exception all the telescopes were short, fixed-focus models.
“Do you know if anyone has had a ‘scope repaired lately?” he asked generally. “Mine seems to be out of alignment and I wasn’t sure where to get it mended.”
There was a lot of advice about where best to have optical equipment repaired, but no useful information.
As he left he called to Ella: “Molly and I will be spending tonight at the White Lodge. Let us know if anything turns up.”
From the hotel George phoned the police station. It was an embarrassing phone call and he nearly lost his temper several times. He spoke first with a polite, rather slow-witted sergeant and then to an arrogant detective who, but for his prejudices, would have been reasonably intelligent. George, ignoring the man’s sneers about amateurs and the Home Office, explained his interest in the case.
He tried to explain that he had received some information which he was certain would assist the police in their inquiries.
The news about the telescope and its description seemed at last to force the detective to take George seriously. But when he asked where this witness might be questioned, and George gave the address of the local psychiatric hospital, he laughed out loud. He made no pretence of accepting George’s story. George had been talking to a loony. A loony might be a murderer. In fact he could tell George in confidence that their main suspect for this murder was a loony—Terry Biddle who had disappeared from the village—but no way could a loony be considered a reliable witness. With a great gesture of generosity, the detective agreed to send a constable out to the mental hospital some time the next day to talk to Mr. Cranshaw but made it clear that he would prefer to concentrate his efforts on finding Terry Biddle. Finally, he said that while a telescope was a possible murder weapon, the only forensic evidence was that it was a smooth cylindrical object. George just restained himself from shouting that he had seen a copy of the police report, and the detective rang off.
That night George and Molly had a quiet meal in the hotel restaurant. Each was preoccupied. George was considering the details of his plan, not allowing himself to consider the final outcome. Molly was thinking of Bernard Cranshaw, and wondering how the thing would end. When they did speak the conversation seemed hushed, intimate, because outside, even with the thick curtains drawn, they could hear the sound of rain and thunder. Later the electricity supply failed and the dining room was lit only by candles and the flashes of lightning.
Terry was terrified by the storm. He watched the huge clouds roll in from the sea like giant waves. He did not understand what was happening. He had no memory of any other storm. The house he had built was no protection against the noise of thunder and lightning and the rain. He crouched under the dripping gorse bushes and the rain ran in a stream across his feet. The wind blew straight into his face and lifted the corrugated iron roof at one corner so that it banged. He felt cold and miserable. Then there came a gust of wind so strong that it lifted the roof away from the bushes and Terry watched with horror as it was carried down the hill, bouncing and twisting as if it were no heavier than a piece of cardboard. Now there was nothing between him and the sky and the lightning. He forgot his discomfort and felt only terror. His fear of the storm was stronger than any vague, previous fear.
He remembered suddenly and vividly Mrs. Black and the solid house in the village. He thought of warm food and he wanted to go home. He ran down the hill, exposed, the only person in the world, it seemed, who was out in the storm. On the road between Skeffingham and Rushy a van driver stopped and gave him a lift home.
When the electricity went off Mrs. Black lit candles and thanked heaven for the coal stove. There was a knock on the door and she carried a candle with her to answer it. It would be the police, she thought. Who else would be out on such a night? But even as she went to answer it, daring not to hope, she thought that it was a sheepish knock, not a policeman’s knock. Terry stood there, grinning, pushing his dripping hair away from his eyes with his fist.
“I’m sorry,” he said automatically, the grin becoming guilty. Then with excitement: “I ran away.”
He was surprised because she did not scold him. She held him to her just for a moment, then took him in and ran him a bath, and fed him. He talked about running away, and the house he had built. He had already forgotten the storm. She listened and then talked to him about his reasons for running away. They were sitting in the dark by the fire. She talked to him about Tom French, taking him back to the morning of the murder, slowly gaining from him information which he never knew he had. She tried to telephone George Palmer-Jones, but there was no reply. Only then did she contact the police station. When a police car came to take Terry away, she went with him.
Ella sat by the telephone all evening. It rang incessantly. The birdwatchers had discovered her home phone number years ago and she had never been able to discourage them from using it. It was always busy on Friday nights, when they were deciding where to go for the weekend, but tonight, it was exceptional. She played her part well. She had always been a good actress. George would be proud of her.
Chapter Fourteen
No one ever knew for certain who started the rumour of the blue-cheeked bee-eater. Later, George Palmer-Jones denied all knowledge of it. He just shrugged his shoulders and smiled, reminding his friends of other rumours: the gyrfalcon in South Wales, the black-throated thrush in Lancashire. Ella’s version of the story was uncharacteristically vague. She claimed that someone had phoned her from the village on the Friday evening and that she had written the details on the board. She had passed on the information from the board as she always did.
Whatever the origin of the rumour, by late that Friday evening the news that a blue-cheeked bee-eater had been seen near Rushy had become widespread. The species had not been seen in Britain since 1951, but that had been in the middle of June and it was perfectly possible that it should occur again. And the rumour was so detailed, with its exact position, the names of the observers and the time when it had been seen, that it was accepted without question. The names of the observers were unfamiliar, but the story was that the bird had not been seen at Rushy, but on a local authority reserve a couple of miles inland, so it was assumed that the observers were the reserve wardens, or knowledgeable locals, not twitchers. Afterwards, when the hoax had been discovered, it was decided that the story had been too c
leverly constructed, too plausible, for the rumour to have been created by accident.
On the Friday night the news was received and passed along the grapevine with intense excitement. Anxious parents consulted timetables, packed up sandwiches and let schoolboy sons, rude and uncommunicative in their fear that the bird might have gone, spend their first night away from home. Students waited until pub closing time, walked through evening streets to motorway exits, and began to hitch-hike to Norfolk. Responsible family men cancelled family plans, filled their cars with students and schoolboys and drove across the country, revelling in the irresponsibility of the night-time drive, the madness and the expense of it all. That was the attraction of twitching: the escape from anxious parents, lectures and essays, work and families, the knowledge that, despite all the effort and the movement, in the morning the bird might have gone.
By dawn on the Saturday morning the big car park at the Windmill was full of cars. There were even two mini-buses and a coach. A few people slept, curled up in sleeping bags on the back seats of their cars, but generally it was a social occasion, a time to drink coffee from a flask and catch up on news. At dawn they drove in convoy to the place where the bird had been found, an area of disused gravel pits, small ponds with a patch of deciduous woodland, which had been designated a nature reserve by the council. A systematic search was organized throughout the area, but nothing was seen. By the time the warden arrived at nine, his visitor centre was besieged by hostile twitchers who wanted to know why they had been deceived into visiting a reserve which supported only common breeding birds. His bewilderment and obvious lack of ornithological knowledge were so genuine—he repeated endlessly: “I’m sorry, I’m a mammal man myself”—that finally most of them left him alone. It was only when this crowd of birders drifted back to Rushy, to the Windmill and the pub, that the village realized it had been invaded.