Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise (24 page)

“Yes, but only to watch you walk up from Unsta. She never saw Mary.” He chose his words carefully. “Most of what she said was true. She was jealous of Agnes, desperate for a child, a little mad. She did write the note and pin it to your dress. If they’d lived somewhere different, it might have been easier. James had so much to live up to here. People expected too much from him.”

It was an accusation. They sat in silence, considering what he had said. The fire had burned down and Sandy got up to put on more coal.

“We can’t change too quickly here,” he said. “ We’ve too much to lose.”

“But it’s not a museum,” Sarah said, taking Jim’s hand. The words had never seemed more relevant.

“James wouldn’t have had it any different here,” Sandy said, stubborn, his face red in the flames. “ He believed in it, too.

“But it killed your daughter.”

“No,” Sandy said fiercely, getting to his feet. “ James killed my daughter, James, my brother. Not Melissa or the church. He knew that he’d done an evil thing and he did what he could to put it right. He had to pay.”

He walked from the room. Agnes pulled the knitting needle from the belt round her waist, laid the knitting on her lap.

“He’s upset,” she said. “It was his brother. They were too close for him to be generous. You’re young. Kinness will be yours and you’ll live here in whichever way you choose.”

She got to her feet, like an old lady, carefully folded her knitting, and put it in a bag, then followed her husband.

Sarah and Jim turned to George for advice, for support in their desire for change, but he deserted them, too. He let himself out of the house and they were left in the stuffy, brightly lit room. As he walked through the yard he watched Sarah draw the curtains and throw open a window.

George left the next day with the Drysdales and Will Stennet. The cloud had gone and the sun was shining. It was mild, like a spring day.

Until a new teacher could be found, Maggie Stennet took over the school. She found it harder work than she had expected, and when the new teacher came there was no criticism about the standard of lessons.

The island came to know about Elspeth and why she had left Glasgow so suddenly. Kenneth Dance made no difficulty about her explaining her past. A Stennet had murdered two people. Watching a child being battered was a minor crime in comparison. So the Dances and Stennets continued to lead their separate lives and neither family felt that it had a superior moral status to the other.

Another Dance, a distant relative, moved into Robert’s old croft, Tain, and two years later he and Elspeth were married, and had children of their own. After watching James jump to his death at Kell Geo, Elspeth seemed stronger, more decisive. She and Sarah became friends in a quiet, unemotional way.

Melissa stayed on at Kell. They had all expected her to leave Kinness, but she decided that she had nowhere else to go. There was pressure for her to leave the croft. Sandy offered to build her a bungalow at the south of the island. It was not right, it was said, for a woman to have land which could be worked by a man, which might support a family. Agnes thought that Will should have Kell. But Sarah fought on Melissa’s behalf, and when Melissa grew too old and frail to do much on the croft, Jim did it all for her. She never mixed much with people on the island, but Sarah felt that it was because she chose not to, and not because she was frightened. She died at Kell, quite suddenly, when she was nearly seventy.

Even then Will did not come back. He had gone to university in Edinburgh, and when he had taken his degree he stayed on to do post-graduate work. He loved Edinburgh. When he got drunk, he talked with affection of Kinness to his pretty young girlfriends, but he only went home occasionally for holidays. He remained at the university as a lecturer.

In the spring after she had moved on to Kinness Sarah became pregnant. Jim built on to the back of Unsta a bathroom and more bedrooms. Sarah filled the house with pretty things. Jim and Alec worked their land together in a flexible partnership. They worked well together. They had the same ideas. They became quite prosperous. Sarah had twin daughters, and later she had a son. When the children had started school, the nurse retired, at last, and Sarah took over the job. Jim was still serious, still unsure whether he should admire or disapprove of her frivolous ways, but they were happy.

So everything continued on Kinness as Sandy predicted it would. Just two weeks after James had died they had a Halloween party for the children in the school, because there always was a party at Halloween. At Christmas there was carol singing and at new year there was guising. In the spring the lambs came and then it was time for ploughing and sowing. The whole island turned out for the harvest. As the years passed the story of the murders and James’ suicide became a story like the Great Storm, told and retold until it lost its power to shock. At first Jim and Sarah refused to go to church, but when the children were old enough they demanded to go to Sunday school like their friends, and it was hard then to stay away. They called their son James.

Sarah wrote to George Palmer-Jones several times after he left the island and he always replied. He was pleased, he said, to hear the Kinness news. But he never accepted her invitation to come and stay with them at Unsta. He was busy, with his new business to run.

First published in 1988 by Century

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