Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise (8 page)

Melissa sat at the back of the church. She had arrived late so that she need talk to no one, but she would have to see Agnes before she and James returned to Kell. Agnes had lost a child now. They had something in common again. As she listened to the children singing she began to weep, and she wondered if the sound of the sweet, high voices was having the same effect on Agnes.

When the service was over, the worshippers stayed in their seats until James had walked down the kirk to the door so that he could greet them as they left.

On the other side of the aisle from the Stennets, Kenneth Dance was talking to his daughter. She sat still and upright with her son close by her side.

“I see that they haven’t come from the school house today. You’d think that they’d make the effort this once.”

But she was not listening. She was watching Jim Stennet take the hand of his pretty young wife and hold it discreetly under the shelf meant for hymn books and gloves.

“Father,” she said suddenly. “It’s all been a mistake. I can’t stay.”

“You don’t want to go back to see Gordon?” he whispered. He was horrified.

“No. Not that. But I can’t stay on the island.”

Annie had heard her. “ You’ve nothing to go back to. Not now. You must stay.”

Robert was wondering if someone might invite him back to dinner. Agnes and Sandy did sometimes, but he supposed that the family would be there today. As soon as the service was over and James had opened the door, he loped up the aisle to be there first, and stood there, in the sunshine, with a vacant, begging leer. They all knew what he was doing, but no one took pity on him.

Melissa did not have to find the courage to approach Agnes, because Agnes came to her. Melissa was still sitting in the pew at the back of the church, and Agnes broke way from the rest of the family and sat beside her.

“It was good of you to come,” Agnes said.

“I had to come today.”

“Mary would have liked the service. She couldn’t join in but she liked to watch the children singing. James spoke well. He’s a great comfort.”

Melissa did not want Agnes to be too comfortable.

“I have to go now,” she said. “James will be waiting.”

“You won’t come back for dinner?”

“No.” She could feel the old panic. She had to be out of the church. She had made the effort, and now she had to be away. She stood up.

“Oh well,” Agnes said. “Another time, then.”

Melissa hurried outside and waited for her husband at a distance from the others so that she would not have to speak to them.

Outside they stood, talking together in the sunshine, the Stennets and the Dances, but when they started walking away down the hill to the houses, they split into separate family groups and each went their own way.

At Sandwick Sarah felt in the way. Maggie was helping Agnes in the kitchen and her own offer of help was refused. The men were talking about sheep. It seemed impossible to her that they could talk about sheep after such a tragedy. In the end she went outside and played with Maggie and Alec’s children, until they were all called in for lunch. Then she felt childish and irresponsible.

Over the meal Maggie tried to organize the domestic affairs at Unsta.

“We’ve put some of our meat in your freezer, but you’ll need to order more from the butcher in Baltasay, until your beasts go for slaughter in the spring. You’ll have to buy groceries through the shop here—Kenneth Dance has some arrangement with the wholesaler over there, some fiddle, and they won’t sell directly to individuals.”

Sarah listened to the lecture, tried to be interested. Nobody mentioned Mary. It was as if she had never existed.

They all sat crowded round a table which was not big enough, in a room too small and hot. The men piled their plates with food. After the meal Sarah was allowed to help with the washing up. She watched Agnes absentmindedly blowing her nose on a tea towel and felt that she had seen enough of Jim’s family.

She had expected it to be different. The short space of time on Kinness had been as crowded with events as the Sandwick kitchen was with people. She needed to be on her own for a while.

“I think I’ll go for a walk,” she said, “while it’s still light.”

“Shall I come with you?” Jim was looking at plans with Alec. He would not have minded going, but he was interested in Alec’s ideas and he was pleased when she said she would go alone.

When she left the house she hesitated, uncertain of which way to go. She was used to signposted footpaths on her walks, and was frightened of damaging crops or offending people’s privacy. She was beginning to find her bearings on the island, but decided to follow the road north towards the harbour where they had landed the day before. In such a strange place it was reassuring to take a road she already knew. She walked quickly and quite soon passed the school house. Then the island became wilder, less cultivated. On one side of the road was the hill, bare but for heather and sheep, and to the east a low marsh crossd with ditches. There, just by the side of the road was a derelict croft, roofless, much of its walls pulled down, the stone used for building the dyke which marked the beginning of the Kell land. Kell was built into the hill, windswept and exposed to north-easterly winds, sheltered only to the west. The fields around the house were small, surrounded by high walls. It stood well away from the road beyond a small lochan. On the other side of the water she could see James. He was leaning against a gate, smoking a pipe. He had changed out of his suit. He waved and shouted hello, but he did not ask her in.

She walked on as far as the harbour and sat there for a moment on the sandy beach. North of the harbour the road petered into a track which led to the airstrip and eventually to the lighthouse. It rose steeply through bare, windswept grassland and seemed uninviting, rather daunting. She told herself she must have something to explore later, and retraced her steps. Just north of the school house the road forked. She knew that it joined again near Buness. The track which she knew went to the west past Sandwick. She took the easterly road. It, too, followed the fertile area of the island. There were small fields of oats, grass, and vegetables. There was a steep incline and then in a small valley, right next to the road, end on to it, a low grey house. It had a red post box in the wall and a small sign which said: Kinness Post Office and General Stores.

There was no display window. A small boy, Ben, was kicking a football against the wall with intense concentration.

“Hello!” she said. She liked children.

He stared at her but said nothing, then scuttled indoors like a frightened animal.

As she drew level with the kirk the sun was beginning to set below the west cliffs. From every point on the island there was a sight of the sea. She walked off the road and up the hill to the church to get a better view. The pink light of the sun caught the gravestones in the small cemetery, and threw long shadows, so that they could have been prehistoric standing stones. She went over to them and began to read the inscriptions on them. Nearly all of them remembered Stennets, Dances, or Andersons. With pleasure she read the old names—Jacobina, Jerome, Alexander, which recurred generation after generation. Then she saw a name which she recognized and she stopped the idle movement from one stone to another, without reading them carefully. The stone was in a corner, near the protecting wall, and seemed not to have weathered like the others. “ Elspeth Dance 1900—1925,” it said. Then underneath: “We remember her as she was once and forgive her. The shame is with us all. He should have been hers.”

The last phrase was familiar to Sarah. Elspeth must be about twenty-five now, she thought. What can have happened to the poor woman sixty years ago?

Before she could think clearly why she felt that she had seen the last phrase recently, she heard someone coming up behind her and she fumed round, startled.

For George Palmer-Jones it had been an unsatisfactory day. He had not slept well. In his mind he had repeated the details of Mary’s death, looking for some other fact which might explain it differently. He had found none. And the problem—the need to come to a decision about his future—had not been replaced by the new one. As he tried to sleep the two subjects became linked in his mind, as if the discovery of a logical explanation of the child’s death was a test of competence, and if he failed at that, the new venture of his own business would be a failure. If I knew her secret, he thought. If only I knew her secret.

Then there had been the dilemma of whether or not to go to church. It was not that he had no faith. He was church warden in his parish church and he had a strong, though idiosyncratic, commitment. It was a matter of delicacy. He was not sure that he would be welcome. Jonathan and Sylvia never attended services. He knew that when they first came to Kinness they were under considerable pressure to go. Jonathan had even been expected to preach. They had seen it as a matter of principle, and never went, even when the children from school were performing.

Sylvia did not appear for breakfast. The two men sat at the pine table in the small, immaculate kitchen, drank percolated coffee from expensive hand-thrown mugs. George felt a deep nostalgia for the large untidy kitchen at home, for tea from a jumble-sale teapot, and for Molly.

“I’m sorry that Molly couldn’t come this year,” he said.

“So am I. Sylvia misses the company.”

“She did want to come, but there was a crisis in the refuge for battered wives where our daughter works. One of her staff is sick. Molly said she’d help for a while. I’m not sure that she’s settled to retirement.”

Nor have I, he thought. He said:

“I thought I might go to church this morning.”

Jonathan was disappointed, offended. “I was planning a walk,” he said, “see if the wind brought in anything interesting.”

“I’ll come with you then.” It was easier that way. He was the Drysdales’ guest. He supposed that Jonathan enjoyed his company on these walks around the island. It was hard to tell. The previous visits to Kinness had been different. Molly mixed with everyone. She had made them all laugh. There had been a sense that they were on holiday. It occurred to him that he was there under false pretences—he had only been invited in the past because of Molly’s ability to make them happy. The least he could do was to go birdwatching with his host. He must be unsettled, he thought. He never usually needed an excuse to go birdwatcbing.

It was a depressing walk. There were no birds.

“It’s like this sometimes,” Jonathan said, “then the wind goes south-east and something unusual turns up. Of course I miss a lot.”

“It must be difficult to get an accurate record when you’re on your own here.”

“Impossible. I’ve tried to get Sylvia involved, but she doesn’t seem interested. Then the big falls of birds always seem to happen during the week while I’m at school.”

“When does term start again?”

“It’s already started. The older ones were supposed to go out on the boat two weeks ago, but they were allowed to stay on becaue of the party. The crew are doing a special run to Baltasay tomorrow to take Will Stennet and the others out. That will make covering the island more difficult, too. Will is quite keen on natural history. He’s more of a botanist than an ornithologist but he knows all the regular migrants and he’s improving all the time. He helped a lot with seabird ringing earlier this season. He’s very handy to have on the cliffs—an excellent climber.”

They were back at the school house in time for lunch. Sylvia was spreading a floral print cloth over the dining-room table. The house smelled of English Sundays. She was wearing a soft white wool dress. She had done her hair differently—it was piled on to her head and fastened with combs—and she was wearing make-up. She offered them sherry.

“This is very civilized,” George said.

“We don’t entertain very often. I like to make the most of it when we do. It isn’t worth making the effort for Jon. He only cares about auks.”

“What did you say?” Jonathan had gone straight to his bookshelf and had taken down a copy of
Birds of the Western Palearctic.
He and George had been discussing snowy owls and there was something he wanted to check. He had not been listening to his wife.

Sylvia laughed, went over to her husband, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

“You see? He’s incorrigible. What can I do with him?”

The food was good and Palmer-Jones enjoyed talking about birds with Jonathan and the island with Sylvia. She could capture the individuals of Kinness with one witty phrase—cruel, but amusing.

After the meal they sat by the fire, drank coffee, and read. It was very peaceful. I’m an old man, George thought. This is how I should be spending my time. After all, it’s not my problem. But he could not leave it alone. There were two questions—had Mary been murdered? And if so, what should he do about it?

He got up from his seat by the fire and went to stand by the window. He looked towards Kell and the steep, grey hill beyond. Someone was walking past the deserted croft by Kell. It was Jim Stennet’s new wife. She was lost to his view beyond the post office. She stopped and looked about her, then hurried on.

“I think I’ll go for a walk,” he said. “ Get some fresh air and walk off some of that delicious lunch.”

Sylvia looked up from her book and smiled. He was afraid for a moment that she was going to offer to accompany him, but she only nodded. Jonathan was still absorbed and seemed not to hear him.

He found Sarah in the graveyard. She was studying one of the gravestones and seemed engrossed in the inscription. She turned suddenly and he realized that he had startled her.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“That’s all right. I’m just enjoying the last of the sun.” She felt foolish, standing in the graveyard.

“And the peace. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

Suddenly she was pleased to see him. He seemed very English and ordinary. Very familiar.

“I think perhaps we should walk on down to the road past the school house,” he said. “I came to find you. I need your help.”

“But I’ve told you. I don’t know anything about birds. I shouldn’t be any help.”