Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise (23 page)

“No,” he said. “ It’s not the only way.”

“Mary did have a secret,” George said, very quietly, “didn’t she, Melissa?”

As George turned his attention from James to Melissa, James got up and walked out of the room. It’s been too much for him, Sarah thought. He’s lived with this woman for more than thirty years. He believed that he knew her and now he’s found out that she killed two people. He can’t face it. She thought, even, that he might be physically sick. He looked very ill. When George got up and almost ran after James, she thought he was being insensitive. The man obviously wanted to be on his own.

“Don’t be a fool, man,” Melissa screamed after her husband. “I’ve told you. It’s the only way.”

James was a little younger than George and much fitter. He still worked the croft. I’ve spent too long sitting behind a desk, George thought. I won’t catch him.

James knew exactly where he was going. He ran round the back of the house, past the sheep pen, and through a field of oats. He had still not buttoned the black jacket of his suit and it flapped at the sides as he ran. He looks like a hooded crow with a sleek grey head and black wings, George thought as he walked through the wet stalks of the oats. He went as fast as he could, hoping James might wait for him, that he might after all want to talk.

After the fields of the croft the land sloped down to the sea. George watched James run to the edge of the cliff, to Kell Geo where all the rubbish from the island was dumped, because the water was so deep—all the tin cans, and the rusty cars that would go no more. He watched James pause for a second at the top, then saw him fling himself over to land with the garbage underneath the sea.

George walked slowly to the cliff edge. As soon as James left Kell, George knew that it would end like this. He had been incompetent. He should have foreseen it, but since his arrival at Kell nothing had gone as he had planned. He heard a movement behind him and turned round. He had expected to see Sarah, but it was Elspeth:

“You saw James?” he said.

“Yes. He meant to do it, didn’t he? He did it on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He killed an old man. And a child.”

When he returned to Kell, the two women were still sitting, staring at each other across the kitchen table. It was as if they were waiting for him before resuming their conversation. Sarah heard George coming and looked up with relief. Her psychiatric training had only been for six weeks. It had not equipped her to deal with murderers. But George ignored her.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Melissa. “ He was too fast for me.”

“He’s dead,” she said. It was a statement, not a question, and it did not need an answer.

“Would you leave us alone, Sarah?” he said.

She got up.

“I’ll leave you the car,” she said. “ I’ll walk.” Then: “I don’t know what to tell them all.”

“Tell them nothing.”

She walked down the island. The church bell was ringing for the morning service. She imagined the congregation sitting, waiting for James to stand before them to offer the usual words of the Christian peace and reassurance.

“He won’t come!” she shouted to the sheep. She lurched out of the mist on to the road. “ He’s dead.”

She went home to Unsta, and she saw no one.

It was evening before George was ready to speak to them to explain it all. He was with Melissa all morning. He hardly spoke, but he listened intently to what she was saying. When James did not arrive at church, Sandy telephoned Kell to find out where he was. Melissa and George were so engrossed in their conversation that they let the telephone ring. Kenneth Dance took the service.

Then George went to the school house. He phoned the nurse from there and asked her to go to Kell to be with Melissa. He talked to Sylvia and Jonathan. First he spoke to Sylvia alone. It was the most difficult interview of his career. Afterwards he went out and walked in the playground, pacing backwards and forwards.

I knew who it was, he thought. I was right about that. But I botched it at the end.

When he went back in, the Drysdales had decided to leave, as soon as the mist had cleared for a plane to come to collect them. Sylvia was starting to pack.

He told Sandy that he would go to Sandwick to explain it and he had expected all the Stennets to be there, but it was only Sandy and Agnes, Sarah and Jim. Will, too, was packing, hoping to get a plane back to school the next day, and Alec and Maggie had not been invited.

It was not dark outside, but the electric light was on in the sitting room and the heavy curtains were drawn. There was an enormous fire in the grate and the room was very hot. Agnes sat in a rocking chair near to the fire and was knitting. She would never usually have picked up her knitting on a Sunday, but she needed the comfort of it and thought that the Lord would understand. Sarah sat on the floor beside her. Jim let George into the house and Sandy rushed out of the sitting room to greet him. When they had all sat down, he said:

“George, who killed our daughter?”

“It was James.”

Agnes looked up, but continued to knit ferociously.

“Tell us about it,” she said. “Why did he do it?”

“Because she knew his secret and he was afraid that she would tell.”

“What was his secret?” Jim asked. “Do you know?”

“He and Sylvia Drysdale were lovers.”

“No,” Agnes said sharply. “He was a religious man.”

“He was a frustrated man,” Jim said. “ You must have seen Melissa and James together, Mother. Even when she still came down the island with him to the dances, she would never let him touch her.”

“He would never have gone with a woman like Sylvia Drysdale.”

“She is very attractive,” George said, “and she did care for him. It’s been going on for a long time. I think he tried to stop it, more than once, but they had become dependent on each other. He needed the physical contact and she liked to feel that she was wanted. Melissa guessed, I think, what was happening. She was perhaps even a little relieved.”

“They must have been very careful,” Sarah said. “ It can’t be easy to keep a secret on Kinness.”

“It started when Melissa sent James to ask Sylvia to visit her,” George said, “ but Sylvia and James very rarely met in the school house after that. James still had a key to the lighthouse. He was paid to do maintenance work up there, and that’s where they met. Probably in one of the cottages. Mary must have seen them on one of the few occasions when he went to the school house. She used to wander into Sylvia’s room and try on her jewellery and make-up. Perhaps it was a time when they thought they were safe, during school hours. Perhaps Mary wandered up in one of her breaks and saw them together. I think that’s what must have happened. They didn’t even know she’d seen them. Mary didn’t say anything to Sylvia, but she began to drop hints to James. He realized that she must know. He couldn’t face the shame of the affair being public knowledge. He had spent his life on Kinness telling people how to behave. It was unthinkable for his secret to come out. So he arranged to meet Mary in the interval of the dance on Ellie’s Head. It had to be then because he was playing in the band. Perhaps he bribed her with a present, or more information. She waited for him by the cliff. She was deaf, so she wouldn’t have heard him coming. It would have been very easy. As I found out today, he was fit. It was quite possible for him to run back to the hall to start the music for the second half of the party.

“He would probably have got away with it, if he hadn’t gone back for the scarf.”

“Why did he do that?” Jim asked.

“It was Sylvia’s scarf. I think he went back later, when he was supposed to be searching for Mary on the hill. He knew that the relationship with Sylvia was over, and he had to have something of hers. He had a desperate passion for her. He didn’t think that anyone would notice that the scarf was gone. He put it in his pocket.”

George turned to Sarah.

“Do you remember when we went to talk to James and Melissa after Robert died: Melissa was quite calm until I showed her the scarf, then the panic attack started? She had seen it in James’ pocket, I think, without realizing the implication of it.”

“Yes,” Sarah said, “ I remember.”

“When I first started asking questions about Mary’s death, Sylvia didn’t take me seriously. She didn’t know, you see, that Mary had discovered her secret. She thought that the child had slipped accidentally and that I was playing detective through boredom. Perhaps I was.”

“Then why did she decide to leave the island suddenly, when the
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took the children out to school?”

“Because I was asking about secrets. As I’ve said, she cared for James. She was afraid that I might have found out about them. It wouldn’t have mattered too much for her—she had a dreadful reputation anyway—but she knew that it would have ruined him. So she decided to get out to Baltasay where she’d be well away from any questions. I must stress that she had no idea at that time that James had murdered Mary.

“On her way out to the boat James met her in the deserted croft by the road. Perhaps he had decided that he could not do without her, and he begged her to stay. Certainly he was so upset that when he left the croft he did not notice that he had dropped the silk scarf. When he went back for it later, it had gone. Ben Dance had gone to play in there before school and had found it.”

“Why did he kill Robert?” Sandy, said. “He was an old fool, but he was not a threat to James.”

“Robert was up on the hill the morning that James and Sylvia met in Taft. It must have been clear that there was an attachment between them. As I say, I think that James was devastated to learn that Sylvia was planning to leave the island. When she got to Baltasay, he phoned her at the hotel, probably to ask her to come back to Kinness. Perhaps they kissed, and Robert saw them. Perhaps he actually heard what they said to each other.

“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?”