Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise (22 page)

“I’m coming in now,” he said. “ There’s no need to be afraid.”

There was a door into the room where the lightkeepers must have stayed when they were on watch. It was slightly open.

“I’m coming in now,” he repeated.

He pushed the door wider with one hand, but he did not go in. In the round room there was nothing. No furniture and no murderer. A short flight of metal stairs led to a balcony where the lenses and enormous stack of batteries were. He could not see the complete circle of the balcony, just a small segment through the open door.

“Why don’t you come down?” he said quietly. “I won’t hurt you.”

He stepped into the room. There was the rustle of clothes behind him. Hiding behind the door, George thought, but he had no time to move. As he lost consciousness there was a feeling of astonishment that he could have been so foolish.

When he woke he knew that he had only been unconscious for a short time. He knew where he was at once. Sarah was bending over him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I followed you. I thought you must have come in here.”

“Did you see who it was?”

“No. They must have run away just before I got here.”

“What are the others doing?”

“They say that they’re looking for whoever fired the shots, but they’re making so much noise that they’ve no chance.”

“I think,” George said, “that I must have been hit by the gun.”

He raised himself on to one elbow and felt sick.

“You’d better help me up,” he said. “ I have things to do.”

“Not tonight.” She was quite firm. She could have been in a hospital ward.

“I’m a nurse, don’t forget. And …” She hesitated.

“And I’m an old man,” he said.

It was exactly what she had been going to say, and she laughed.

“All the same,” she said. “You must rest tonight, or you’ll have headaches and dizziness for months.”

“When the old nurse retires here,” he said, “ you could take her place.”

“I could, couldn’t I?” It was like a promise, a future she could look forward to and enjoy, a way of not losing touch with her past. She felt grateful to him.

“Do you know who it was?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Who was it?”

He sat up carefully.

“I thought,” he said, “ that I was supposed to rest.”

By the time he had walked with Sarah’s help down the steps and was outside, Jonathan, Sylvia, and Will were waiting by the Land Rover.

“It’s no good,” Jonathan said. “They’ll be halfway down the island by now.”

Then they saw that George was hurt. Sylvia took no part in the general demand for explanation of his injury, the concern.

“Who was it?” she asked, interrupting the others. “ Did you see who it was?”

George ignored her question and allowed himself to be lifted into the Land Rover. There he swore them all to secrecy. No one on the island must know about the gunshots. He wanted no panic, no one making wild guesses, taking the law into their own hands. Despite the stabbing headache and waves of nausea, he felt in control.

“Please,” he said, “ don’t tell anyone. It won’t be much longer now. Tomorrow it will all be over. I’d finish it tonight but Sarah won’t let me.”

They took him back to the school house. He asked Jonathan to help him to bed.

“Don’t let Sylvia go out tonight,” he said when they were alone. “Keep her with you.”

“Why should she want to go out now? What is it all about?”

“Tomorrow,” George said. “You’ll know tomorrow,” and he sent Jonathan away before he undressed.

Now he was quite sure what had happened, and he slept.

It was Sunday. The death of an old man and the interference of the police would make no difference to the domestic Sunday ritual. The older women would have prepared all the food a day before. The tradition was beginning to change and Maggie would cook a traditional roast lunch for the whole family after church, but no one would dare to hang washing on a line or be seen working in a garden. They would all go to church in the morning, have a family midday meal, then in the afternoon if the sun was shining they would walk up the island, solemnly, like Edwardians taking the air at a seaside promenade. The children would be allowed to run on the beach and wear themselves out so that they would sit quietly through the evening service at the church. There was no television on a Sunday.

At Kell Melissa milked the cow, while James sat in white starched shirt sleeves at the kitchen table and put the finishing touches to his sermon. They were a critical congregation on Kinness, and genuinely devout. They would discuss his sermon at their lunch tables and if they disagreed with the sentiments expressed in it he would get to hear of it.

He was happy to let Melissa milk the cow. She had been up before him, and when he came downstairs he noticed that her waterproofs were wet from the drizzle which had persisted all night. There was a pan of porridge ready on the stove. He did not want to look too closely for an explanation for the dramatic change in her. She was content and that was the most important thing. He tried to clear his mind of anything else.

Ben had woken, early in the morning, with nightmares. Elspeth heard him screaming and screaming, and rushed to comfort him. She tried to take him in her arms but he pushed her away, even after he had woken. She thought that he was quiet and had gone back to her own bed but he had begun screaming again and this time had raised the whole household. He had slept at last in Annie’s and Kenneth’s bed.

Because of the disturbed night they were late waking and it was a rush to have breakfast and to dress for church. There was no question that they would miss the morning service. That would have been unthinkable. Yet rather than looking forward to the worship as a time of peace, they were dreading it.

“I’m going to tell everyone,” Elspeth had said. “After church.”

“No,” said Kenneth, horrified. “You don’t know what it will mean to us. You must consider again.”

“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.