Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise (11 page)

At half past three Maggie called over the wall at her.

“I’m going to collect the children from school, then I’m going on to meet the boat. Will you come?”

Sarah went inside to wash her hands and change her shoes. Maggie was still looking over the wall when she returned.

“You’ve cleared a good lot there,” Maggie said grudgingly, and it seemed to Sarah that she was disappointed.

They were a little early at the school and waited at the gate.

“I suppose that Neil will have been messing with paint and glue with Mrs. Drysdale again,” Maggie said. “ It’s not right. She’s not qualified, you see. He should be properly taught. That’s what Drysdale’s been paid for. If they want an infants’ teacher, they should advertise.”

Sarah remembered that Maggie had been a teacher. Perhaps she was hoping for a job in the school.

“She won’t be there today,” Sarah said. “She went on the
Ruth Isabella.
“

“Did she then? I wonder how long she’ll be away for. They should both leave. For good. Neither of them fits in here.”

It occurred to Sarah then that there was a more personal animosity between Maggie and Sylvia. She remembered suddenly how Alec had waltzed with Sylvia at the party, holding her very close, and realized that she recognized a note of jealousy in Maggie’s voice.

The school bell rang and the children ran out.

As the
Ruth Isabella
approached the harbour Sarah watched Jim with pride. He seemed so surefooted, so competent. He saw her and smiled. She wished that some outsider was there so that she could have pointed to Jim and said: “ That’s my man. He belongs here and so do I.” She looked around for George Palmer-Jones. He would have done, but he was not there. She assumed that he was embarrassed about his foolish allegation that Mary had been murdered. His silence that morning proved that he had changed his mind. She turned back to the boat and waited for Jim to come ashore.

Ben Dance did not go home immediately after school. He wanted to hurt his mother because she had not been there in the morning to have breakfast with him or to see him off to school. He followed the other children down the road towards the harbour, but on the way he was distracted and played alone until long past teatime.

On Ellie’s Head George searched the rocky outcrops and peered down the geos looking for a cheap green scarf. Then he climbed down the rabbit track to the beach below, moving the shingle with his Wellingtons and scouring the rock pools, until it was too dark to see.

Sandy Stennet and Kenneth Dance decided together that they would have the Hill Gather. They met, like elder statesmen on neutral territory, by the church early in the morning and looked at the sky, and lifted fingers to the wind. The fine weather would hold, they decided. They would share responsibility for holding the Hill Gather. All summer the hill sheep had been left to wander. Now they had to be collected for dipping, and each family would be allocated their share of the hill lambs. It was a formidable task to round up the sheep. The hill covered an area of nearly two square miles. The men and dogs would stand at the north end of Kinness, near the lighthouse and over the hill in a line, driving the sheep before them. Just north of Kell a stone wall had been built from the road to the west cliffs. The sheep would be driven down that and collected into one of Kell’s fields. There they would be dipped and sorted.

Alec had mended the lorry, and collected all the men—Stennets and Dances—and took them to the lighthouse. Sarah was the only woman there. They allowed her to come because she was new, and she had no other responsibilities—no animals at the croft or children, but some of the older men grumbled at her presence. It was felt to be not quite lucky. The lorry stopped by the school house and Alec went to the door and asked George Palmer-Jones if he would like to help. The operation depended on having enough men to cover the hill, and with Will back at school they would be short of people. In previous times the school had been closed for the Hill Gather and they had used the older boys to fill the gaps, but no one approached Jonathan Drysdale to ask for his cooperation. They were certain that he would refuse.

It was a bright, sunny day with a gusty breeze which broke the surface of the pools on the hill, so that the reflected light scattered in all directions. There was white spume from the waves on the sea and the fulmars and kittiwakes seemed to be playing in the wind. Sandy Stennet arranged the men on the hill, meticulously checking with Kenneth Dance that he agreed with the way the men had been placed. He put George Palmer-Jones at the end of the line, nearest the west cliffs. The land was flatter there, and not so boggy. It would be easier walking, with fewer sheep. George knew why he had been placed there and it added to his sense of helplessness. He remembered the ridicule in Sylvia’s voice, and being placed at the end of the line, next to old Robert, seemed to him an added insult.

At last Sandy was satisfied and the men began to move. There was a noise of dogs barking and men clapping and whistling to send the sheep forward. Despite his hurt pride at being given the easiest position on the line George began to enjoy himself. There was some warmth in the sun and he had the spectacular view of the cliffs and the sea. He felt close to the sky. Robert’s dog was chasing madly between them, doing their work for them. They walked slowly so that the men who had to climb the steep rise of the hill could keep up with them. George could see them still in line, like a row of telegraph poles. The island was wider here, and the whistling and calling became more frantic as sheep escaped behind them. There would be another gather, later in the month, to collect the sheep they had missed.

Then they could see the wall and there seemed to be hundreds of sheep jostling in front of them. The sheep were usually white but there were a good number of more valuable black and brown animals among them. The noise of bleating sheep was added to that of the dogs and the men. As the sheep hit the wall some of them ran west towards George and he ran towards them shouting and waving his arms like the other men.

As he approached the wall he saw someone walking along the cliffs on the other side of it. It was Elspeth Dance. He recognized the tangled curly hair, the fur coat. He recognized, too, the green silk scarf, which she wore around her neck and which the wind caught and blew out like a streamer.

George waited for her at the wall. The sheep were easier to control now. They were already running down the side of the wall, and some had reached the field at Kell. He was no longer needed. When she saw him, she began to turn away as if she wanted to avoid conversation, but he climbed over the wall, proud of his agility in front of her, and he joined her in her walk back along the cliffs.

“You don’t mind if I join you,” he said, in such a way that she could not refuse. She did not answer and seemed so preoccupied that he wondered if she had heard him.

“Would you mind telling me,” he said, “where you found the scarf?”

“Do you know who it belongs to?” she asked. “ My son gave it to me. He promised that he hadn’t stolen it.”

“You don’t recognize it?” She shook her head.

“When did he give it to you?”

“Yesterday. He was late home from school. It was a kind of peace offering.”

“Did he tell you where he found it?”

“No. He wouldn’t say.”

“It was Mary’s,” he said. “ She was wearing it at the party. Just before she died.”

She seemed bewildered.

“Then why did he have it?”

“I don’t know. Would you mind if I asked him? I told the police that I was worried because the scarf hadn’t been found. It would tie up all sorts of loose ends if I could clear it up.”

“I don’t know.” She did genuinely seem to want to help. “He’s been through a lot lately. I wouldn’t want to upset him.”

“I would be very gentle. I have a grandson of about his age.”

She seemed reassured. “ Very well then. He’ll be at school now, but if you meet me at the school house at a quarter to four, you can see him then.”

He would have been happy to walk down the island with her, but she seemed to want to be on her own.

“Could I keep the scarf?” he said before she went. “ I’m sorry, but the police may want it.”

“Ben will be sad,” she said. “ He was so proud to have a present to give me.”

She removed the scarf and handed it to him, then said goodbye and walked off, along the path by the cliff.

Sarah was enjoying herself immensely. This was what island life was all about, she thought, a communal effort for the good of the whole island. She walked over the hill beside Jim and felt excited as the sheep approached the wall and were driven into the field. She joined in the cheers as the gate was closed behind them. This is better than working inside, in a hospital ward, she thought, wondering how she could ever have doubted that she would settle on Kinness. But as she walked past Kell with Jim, on her way home to Unsta for lunch, she saw Melissa’s sad, frightened face at a dark window and suddenly she was not quite so certain.

Once Elspeth was out of sight of George Palmer-Jones she stopped, and sat on the spongy soil at the top of the cliff where the puffin holes and rabbit burrows seemed only to be held together by the roots of the thrift. She thought of the story of Ellie, her namesake, who had died by jumping over the cliff in 1925. If I were going to commit suicide, she thought, that’s how it would be. There must be an exhilaration in the act of jumping, in the speed of the air. It must be like flying. But she knew that it was impossible for her to think of dying. She had Ben to care for and he had lost enough.

She looked at her watch. It was nearly lunchtime and her parents would be worried about her. She should try to do more for them, she thought, help in the shop. She owed them that at least. If she had married Jim, everything would have been different. She remembered the letter she had written to him from Glasgow, all the lies. It had been the kindest thing to do. But that wouldn’t have worked either. She had been right in deciding that.

When she got back to the post office, the windows were open. She could hear her parents talking.

“It’s not natural,” Kenneth Dance was saying. “She’s my only daughter and I love her, but there’s something wrong with her. What happened in Glasgow wasn’t natural, and nor is this wandering round the cliffs on her own all day. She should snap herself out of it. She should think of the child, after all he’s been through.”

“We must be patient,” Annie said. “We can’t know what it was like there in Glagow with no one to turn to.”

“She could have turned to us,” he shouted. “She had only to pick up a phone and we would have helped her. Why didn’t she do that?”

Why didn’t I? Elspeth asked herself. She had asked the same question a hundred times. Tears began to fall down her cheeks and she had to compose herself before she went in to join her parents.

George found it very difficult to persuade Elspeth to allow him to speak to Ben alone. She was happy for him to see Ben, but she wanted to be there, too. Ben seemed to be a peculiarly polite boy. He stood and listened patiently while the adults discussed him. The other children had run home, or up to Kell to watch the last of the dipping. At last Ben interrupted:

“There’s no need to worry, Mummy,” he said. “I’ll be good. I won’t chatter.”

Reluctantly Elspeth went back to the post office. They watched her go.

“She does fuss,” Ben said. “There’s no need.”

“You gave her a scarf for a present,” George said. “Can you show me where you found it?”

“Of course,” Ben said. Then: “It wasn’t stealing, was it?”

“No. But it did belong to someone else. Can’t you remember seeing Mary wearing it?”

“I do now that you’ve told me, but I didn’t when I found it. I just thought that it was pretty.”

The boy started walking along the road towards Kell and the harbour.

“I didn’t go straight to school yesterday after I left home,” he said. “ Mummy wasn’t there and Grandpa and Grandma are always busy in the mornings, because they have to be ready to open the shop. I played by myself instead.”

“Where did you play?”

“In here.”

They had come to the derelict croft where George had heard voices the morning before. “ I came after school too, when everyone else went to watch the
Ruth Isabella
in. I pretend that it’s my house,” Ben said. “ I come here quite often.”

“You found the scarf in here?”

“Yes. In the morning. I left it here till after school.” Ben led the way in through the hole in the wall which had once been a door.

“Was it hidden?”

“No. It was caught on this nail. It looked as if it had been left here by accident.”

Part of the door frame was intact and a bent nail stuck from the rotting wood, at about waist height. If someone had left the building in a hurry, George thought, they might not have noticed that the scarf was left behind. The boy stood quietly by his side. It seemed not to occur to him that he might not be believed.

“What time did you get up on Saturday morning?” George asked suddenly.

“Late,” Ben said, “because I was so late going to bed after the party.”

“What time is late?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not very good at telling the time. It was nearly dinnertime.”

“So you didn’t go down to the beach or on to Ellie’s Head on Saturday morning?”

“No.”

“Did Mary tell you where she was going on Friday night?”

“No.” He hesitated. “She was a bit bossy. I wanted to be on my own for a bit, so I hid in the toilet. I know it wasn’t very nice but she’d been chasing me around all evening. When I came out she’d gone.”

“Had the dancing stopped for the interval when you came out?”

“They were just stopping.”

“Thank you, Ben,” George said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

The boy seemed pleased.

They walked back south down the road. They were almost at the post office when the boy touched George’s arm.

“Mr. Palmer-Jones,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“When Mary fell,” he said, “ would it have hurt?”