Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand

by Ann Cleeves

  It was so cold out there, Ella said. The fog had come in from the sea, quite suddenly. Over the village it was very warm and clear, but across the marsh the weather was raw and damp. She shook the drops of moisture from her dark curls to prove it, and insisted on a hot drink for herself and Barnaby.

  Sally felt an irresistible urge to talk about Peter.

  “Ella,” she said suddenly, “ do you know Peter Littleton?”

  “Of course I do,” Ella answered with possessive pride. “ He was one of my first twitchers. He’s a dear.”

  “I used to know him very well,” Sally said. “ Oh Ella, he’s come back from Scotland, and he wants to meet me in about an hour. Do you mind?”

  “Now don’t be silly. Of course I don’t mind. Has he been in then? Did I miss him?”

  “No, he sent one of the birdwatchers with a message.”

  Ella protested at first when Sally wrapped up Barnaby and put him in his pushchair to go with her to see Peter, but Sally was insistent. She said that there was a very good reason why Peter would want to see Barnaby too, and Ella finally seemed to understand. She held the door open for Sally to negotiate the way out of the building, and gave a faint, romantic sigh as she waved them out into the fog.

  It was with some surprise, then, that Ella saw George Palmer-Jones and Peter Littleton come into the Windmill thirty minutes later, and it was with some anger that she said to Peter.

  “You’ve not left that girl and that baby out there on the marsh in this fog?”

  She noticed that he seemed unwell, ill at ease, and as she spoke all the colour drained from his face.

  “What do you mean, Ella?” he asked quietly.

  “Sally,” she said impatiently. “ You sent a message that you wanted to see her out on the marsh. She took the baby with her.”

  George looked questioningly at Peter, who shook his head.

  “I was going to ask her to meet me outside,” he said. “ Then the fog came down and I thought it wouldn’t be fair, so I waited until I knew it would be quieter here, and built up my courage to come in.”

  “Do you know who brought the message?” George asked.

  “No.” Ella seemed not to sense that it was important. “Sally just said it was one of the birdwatchers. Because the message came from Peter, I presumed that Rob had been in. Did you see Mrs. Black?”

  “Yes. I suppose Molly and Adam are out on the marsh?”

  “I think so. I gave Molly your message. Adam sat out on the bank for a long while talking to the other lads, then they both went off towards the village.”

  “What about Rob Earl or Tina? Have you seen them?”

  “That Tina was in earlier. She was looking for you too. She said something about arrangements for going ringing tomorrow. She hasn’t been gone long. She went out soon after Sally and Barnaby. I haven’t seen Rob at all.”

  George turned, without a word, and went out. Peter hesitated for a moment, then followed him. Ella shook her head and hoped that Barnaby would not catch a cold.

  Sally found her way to the north hide quite easily despite the mist. There was a solid boardwalk, and it was easy to push the chair along it. The mist made the encounter more exciting. Far away there was the heart-rending call of a fog horn and the hollow sound of the pushchair on the boardwalk echoed around the marsh. She had thought that he would be in the hide to meet her and when it was empty she was a little disappointed, but she sat to wait. She opened the flaps, but could see nothing outside except for a small pool of water. The noise of the fog horn was repeated very close to her by the boom of a bittern, and the sound shocked her. The fog seemed to be growing thicker and as she sat waiting, with nothing to do, she began to feel uneasy. Barnaby was unusually quiet and would not respond to her games. She longed to hear footsteps along the boardwalk, for Peter to climb the ramp into the hide, and yet she became more and more convinced that he would not come.

  It never occurred to her to go back to the Windmill. She did not think that she might see Peter another time. More than anything in the world she wanted to see him now. Perhaps she had made a mistake, and this was not the north hide. Perhaps Peter was waiting for her in the other hide, thinking that she did not care and had refused to meet him. She imagined his distress at her callousness, and it became suddenly so real, so intense that she felt that she must find him and comfort him. She was convinced that he was waiting for her in the other hide and that he needed her. Although she had only a limited idea of the position of the hides, she pushed the chair down the ramp and on to the boardwalk. She realized immediately that the fog was much thicker than it had been on her arrival.

  “Peter! Peter!” she called. “ It’s Sally. I’m here. Where are you?”

  She tried to keep the panic from her voice, but Barnaby began to whimper.

  She followed the boardwalk further into the marsh. The noise of the pushchair wheels on wood was solid, reassuring. She tried to shake away her panic. She was quite safe. She was not even lost. All she had to do was to turn round and follow the walk back to the Rushy road. She would try to find the other hide. If the boardwalk came to an end, she would turn back and return to Rushy. Perhaps Peter had decided that it was too foggy to bring her out. She would just check the other hide and then she would go back. But when she stopped walking, when there was no sound of the pushchair wheels rattling on the wooden planks, her panic returned. In the silence she heard strange noises. She peered into the fog and saw strange shapes.

  It was in one of those moments of silent panic that she heard the footsteps on the boardwalk behind her. She bent over the pushchair as the tension left her, in a thankful collapse.

  “Peter!” the tears of relief rolled down her cheeks. “ I thought you weren’t coming. I’ve been so scared.”

  There was no reply.

  “Peter, can’t you hear me?”

  The voice that answered seemed closer than the footsteps. It spoke, with quiet hatred, a list of obscenities. That such words could be spoken with such control made the speaker inhuman, quite unnatural. Sally screamed and the voice laughed.

  Then it was just like her nightmare. As she ran along the walk, the sodden reeds tangled around the pushchair’s wheels and caught at her legs. She was wearing jeans and as they got wet they clung to her legs and restricted her movement. She could hear the footsteps behind her come closer and closer. The path was becoming narrower and less firm underfoot. She knew that the pursuer would catch up with her. Then the chair wheel caught in a rut, it skewed off the path and tipped over. Barnaby was crying, quietly, as if he were frightened to make too much noise. As in her dreams, she bent down to take him into her arms to comfort him and to wait for the person who was following her.

  The murderer must have reached her as she bent over the pushchair. She felt something tight about her neck and as she gasped for breath the picture of Barnaby’s face, white and crumpled with distress, turned for a moment into Tom’s face.

  Just before she fainted she heard a woman’s voice.

  “Adam,” Molly shouted. “Adam, don’t listen to those voices. Don’t listen to them. Listen to me.”

  Adam had a leather strap around Sally’s neck. Barnaby was crying, but Sally was still and quiet. The boy turned and saw Molly, and dropped his hands from Sally’s neck. George and Peter arrived then, but neither Molly nor Adam saw them. While George skillfully cared for Sally, and Peter awkwardly comforted the baby, Adam held out his hand to Molly as if he were drowning. She took it and held it tight while he cried.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next day they all sat on the lawn behind Sally Johnson’s cottage. Sally was supposed to be resting and lay back on an ancient, precarious deckchair. The bruises on her neck were starting to show, but she did not appear to be ill or upset.

  Barnaby sat on her knee. He was very quiet and held her tight. That night he had not slept. He was sucking his thumb.

  The others were sprawled on the grass. Rob was lying on his back in his usual pose o
f total relaxation. Tina sat with her hands around her knees. She looked tense, tired, but she had been ringing early that morning with George’s friend. Peter sat at Sally’s feet, not touching her, not even looking at her very often. George and Molly were a little apart from the rest.

  There was a sense of sadness, of shock, but also of excited curiosity. It reminded George Palmer-Jones of a funeral. The relatives are mourning the loss of a person they knew well, but are eager to hear the contents of the will.

  Only Molly seemed utterly depressed, empty. She had gone to the police station with Adam and had been up for most of the night. It was she who spoke first, breaking through the conversation about Tina’s ringing expedition.

  “You mustn’t hate him,” she said. “It wasn’t Adam. Not the Adam we all knew. He heard voices. They told him to kill Tom and try to kill Sally.”

  There, was a pause. Molly was remembering the night in the police station.

  “Tell us all about it, George,” Sally said gently. “ I don’t understand what happened. Why should he have wanted to kill Tom? Tom was always kind to Adam. They didn’t even know each other very well.”

  The others were relieved. No one had wanted to bring up the subject for fear of distressing Sally, but they had all wanted to know. They all wanted to talk about it.

  “Of course he’s mad,” George said. “ Whatever long words Molly may use to describe him, he’s mad. That’s why I took so long to realize what had happened. I was looking for a real motive, a strong motive, but there wasn’t one.

  “Adam killed Tom because he didn’t like him. Sally told me, when we first met, that Tom was patronizing towards the younger birdwatchers and that they resented it, but I was shamefully obtuse and I didn’t follow it up. I always knew that Adam was disturbed—he was always too controlled and calm—and I knew that he was very frightened, but I thought, as you know, that he was frightened of someone else.

  “All Tom’s birdwatching acquaintances tried to be kind about Tom, everyone said how generous and likeable he was. It was only when I interviewed Dennis Shawcroft, one of the chefs at the White Lodge, that I had an objective impression. Then I realized how much someone as disturbed and insecure as Adam would be affected by his attitude. It took me all that time to see that the motive might have been one of pure dislike, fuelled by Tom’s insensitivity.

  “It came to me quite suddenly. Something triggered Adam to action. When I realized what that was, the whole thing became obvious. But still I had no proof and I hadn’t been able to talk to Peter and Rob to eliminate them. The only witness was Terry Biddle and he had disappeared. All I could do was to make sure that it did not happen again, and I did try to keep Adam with me, but then Terry Biddle came back. His landlady, Mrs. Black, wanted to see me urgently, so I had to leave Adam with Molly.” He looked apologetically at Sally. “Of course, if I’d known what would happen …”

  Sally smiled. George Palmer-Jones took his wife’s hand and said very softly, just to her: “You’ve talked to Adam. Do you mind telling them what happened?”

  “Birdwatching was the only thing that Adam was good at,” Molly said. “It was the only thing that mattered to him. The day of Tom’s death he had gone to Rushy convinced that he was going to find a rare bird, something so rare that it would make him famous. But when he went into the field, Tom French had already found the rarity.”

  “Tom French found the bimaculated lark?” Rob asked.

  George interrupted: “ That was the trigger, you see. Once I linked Tom French to the bimaculated lark, Adam had to be the murderer.”

  Molly continued: “Tom must have seen the bird almost as soon as he left the hotel building, and he followed it to the edge of the park, where you all saw it later in the day. Adam found him there, watching it. Adam believed implicitly that he was meant to find the bird, and that Tom French had in some way tricked or betrayed him by getting there first.

  “If Tom had let him play a part in it, had consulted him about the bird and shared it with him, perhaps Adam would never have lost control. It’s impossible to say, irrelevant even. Adam was very disturbed and would have broken down some time. But Tom irritated Adam. He lectured to him about the lark. He talked to Adam as if he were a child, as if he knew nothing about birds. Adam says that he did not mean to kill Tom when he hit him. He lost his temper. Tom would not stop talking.”

  “So Tom French found the bimaculated lark,” Rob repeated. He was very impressed, almost envious. He turned to George:

  “You see, it’s like I said. ‘ Once a twitcher, always a twitcher.’ He wasn’t played out after all.”

  There was a silence. It was a tribute to Tom’s ability as a birder.

  George continued his explanation.

  “Because of the way the body was lying, we knew that Tom hadn’t been killed where he was found. We couldn’t decide how the murderer carried the body to the pool. It’s about three-quarters of a mile from the White Lodge, too far for one person to carry a dead weight. But Adam was seen with the body by one person. That person was Terry Biddle who works in the White Lodge, in the kitchens. He’s a little mentally defective, but it seemed that his evidence was reliable. He knew Tom. Terry told us that he had seen someone with Tom’s body going up the marsh track, but then Terry ran away before he could give us any details.

  “The next day Molly saw Terry again, but still she couldn’t persuade him to describe the murderer.

  “Unfortunately, I’d given Dennis, who is rather an unpleasant person, the impression that I was interested in the presence of cannabis on the hotel premises, and he told Terry not to speak to us. Before I could dispel the misunderstanding Terry disappeared. I gather that he saw a birdwatcher in the village, it reminded him of what had happened to Tom, he was frightened and ran away.

  “It was only on the night of the storm, when Terry came home, that he told his landlady, Mrs. Black, exactly what he had seen. She tried to phone me that night, but I was in Rushy, and she couldn’t get in touch. She tried to explain to the police what Terry claimed to have seen, but she must have been upset and not very articulate, and they could not link the bicycle with Adam. If they had, we might have saved Sally an unpleasant experience.”

  “Bicycle? I don’t understand.” Sally once more accepted the implied apology.

  “Often when he went birdwatching, Adam used to take a small, fold-away bicycle. Terry saw a young person pushing the bicycle with Tom’s body bent double over the front. The young person was wearing binoculars. It would have been hard work, pushing the body like that, and it would have been dangerous, but it would have been possible. He couldn’t have done it, though, if he’d been carrying a heavy telescope at the same time. His is an Optylon. It’s short, but very heavy. He left the telescope where it was, planning to return for it later. We know now that Bernard Cranshaw found it, but he was feeling so guilty about having caused his mother to fall down the stairs, and so frightened of the police, that he did nothing about it.”

  “Another loony,” said Rob unsympathetically.

  George nodded.

  “But not quite as dangerous as Adam.”

  “I don’t understand why Adam moved the body,” Peter said. “ It seems a crazy risk to have taken.”

  “He had to move it away from the bimaculated lark, because he was desperate to claim the lark as his own. If he had left the body where it was, one of the birdwatchers was certain to find it. Because of the lark, everyone would know that Adam had been in the area. Besides, Adam didn’t want to detract from his glory in finding the bird. The drama of a body might have done that. It was well hidden in the pool, and he timed his announcement of the bird just as the fog was clearing, so that as soon as it was possible to see anything all the birdwatchers were drawn away from the marsh.

  “I’m still not quite sure why Clive Anderson asked me to investigate the case. Perhaps something about Adam’s manner made him suspicious. Perhaps, like us, he just thought that Adam was very upset.”

 
Rob interrupted: “But when he found the bimaculated lark he seemed so normal and natural. He must be a bloody good actor.”

  Molly shook her head.

  “By then he would have convinced himself that he had found it, that he hadn’t killed Tom, that his voices had been the killer’s. Last night he kept saying: ‘They killed Tom.’”

  George continued with a steady, detached voice, as if he hoped that an explanation of the facts would calm Molly, and that he could replace some of the emotion with reason:

  “When Adam came for a meal with us, I told him that somebody had seen the murderer on the marsh track with Tom’s body. Perhaps he thought that we suspected him, or at least that we had a description of the murderer. He felt that he had to divert attention away from himself.”

  “So he wasn’t pushed down the well,” Tina said. She was angry. “I was so sorry for him. He seemed so frightened. I thought he needed me to protect him. And it was all acting. He climbed down.”

  “That’s not possible.” Rob was adamant. “ I can’t believe it. You said that he was terrified when they got him up, and he couldn’t have climbed down there. Not without a rope.”

  “He used a rope,” George said. “ His father was quite famous as a mountaineer, and he used to take Adam with him, when Adam was younger. There’s a mark in the wood of one of the uprights on the windmill. It puzzled me at the time. It was caused by the rope biting into the wood. Adam must have doubled it around the post, so that he could pull it after him. Then he would have thrown it down into the well. Of course he was terrified. It was dark down there. Perhaps he panicked when everyone arrived at the party, but nobody heard him. I presume that by then he had pulled down the rope and thrown it away. It would have been impossible for him to climb out on his own.

  “If you remember, we thought it strange that he’d left his binoculars and telescope at home that day. I should have realized then that the whole thing was planned. He was afraid of losing them or damaging them. But I liked him. It stopped me thinking straight.”