The Mill on the Shore (8 page)

Ruth, who had been watching Aidan’s reactions carefully, saw that he was still troubled.

‘How do you know that the book’s disappeared?’ she asked.

‘Your mother asked Jane if she’d seen it,’ Rosie said. ‘ We helped her to look for it in the study and the flat but we couldn’t find it.’

‘Why did Mother want it anyway?’ Caitlin demanded. ‘She’s never been interested in James’ work.’

The question went unanswered.

‘Meg didn’t tell me about the autobiography,’ Aidan said. ‘ I’ve been working on the jacket. You’d have thought she’d have let me know.’

Of course, Ruth thought. That’s why he was so interested in James’ book. He’s been working on the jacket design ever since he arrived. ‘What will happen to your drawing now?’ she asked.

‘I’ll finish it anyway,’ he said. ‘ It’ll make a reasonable painting. I could give it to Meg as a present. Besides, the book might turn up. James was never very organized.’

‘I don’t think it’s at the Mill,’ Rosie said. ‘Meg made us look everywhere. She wanted to be sure it had gone, you see, before she brought in Mr Palmer-Jones.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see.’ He felt absent-mindedly in his pocket for his wallet and went to the bar to buy another round of drinks. When he returned with a tray they were still talking about the autobiography.

‘But I don’t understand,’ Caitlin was saying, ‘what the book going missing has to do with James dying. Why did Mum think she had to rush out and hire private detectives? It’s completely bizarre.’ She looked around the group for a response. ‘Or am I just being dense?’

Jane answered gently. ‘Perhaps he was prepared to dish the dirt in his book. He must have come across information during his career which would have been embarrassing …’

‘Like politicians, you mean? Or film stars?’ Caitlin was intrigued by the notion.

‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘Something like that.’

‘And he was killed to stop him revealing all?’ She was incredulous.

‘I think that might be the way Meg’s mind is working.’

‘Well,’ Caitlin said. ‘I wish I’d taken more notice of the bloody book now.’

‘It seems very unlikely to me,’ Aidan said diffidently. ‘Any embarrassment caused by the book would have been to large corporations or government departments, bodies whose inefficiency or greed had a cost in conservation terms. For example, he might have been interested in following up a lead on the company which owned the
Braer
, the tanker that went aground on Shetland. But he’d hardly have given out embarrassing information about individuals.’

Ruth, who had experience of her stepfather’s capacity for mischief, wasn’t so sure. What did he say about us? she wondered. Or Mother? She certainly wasn’t sorry that the notebooks had gone missing.

‘Meg didn’t want to believe James had killed himself,’ Jane said. ‘The disappearance of the autobiography just confirmed her view. It didn’t have a lot to do with logic.’

Rosie nodded in agreement. ‘The inquest verdict was suicide,’ she said. ‘If Mr Palmer-Jones is as perceptive as Aidan says he’ll soon realize that it was right. The problem will be to convince Meg of that.’

They stayed in the pub until closing time and then drove back to the Mill, crammed inside Jane’s Mini.

‘You should let me drive,’ Caitlin said. ‘I’m the only one who’s not been drinking.’

‘You must be joking,’ Rosie said. ‘Jane could find her way from the Dog to the Mill blindfold. Come to that the car could probably drive itself.’

Ruth, in the back of the car, found herself sitting next to Aidan. As the car hurtled round the sharp bends in the road she was thrown against him. She could smell the wool of his jersey. She wished she had the courage to reach out and take his hand but even the drinks in the Dead Dog had not made her sufficiently brave for that.

Molly would have liked to go to the pub after they had finished with Meg Morrissey. She was already finding the atmosphere of the Mill oppressive and would have liked to get away for a couple of hours, a beer, some normal conversation. But when she suggested it to George he shook his head disapprovingly.

‘Meg already thinks we’re treating this like a holiday camp,’ he said.

‘It’s not Colditz,’ she retorted. ‘She’ll let us out occasionally.’

‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘ Really. I think we have things to discuss. Where we won’t be overheard.’

She shrugged and followed George to their room. The bedrooms at Markham had nothing in common with Colditz. They would not have been out of place in a smart hotel and were nothing like the field centre rooms where George had stayed in the past, and where rows of beds and moth-eaten blankets had reminded him of the deprivations of National Service. There
were
dormitories at Markham Mill, discreetly hidden away at the end of corridors, where for a discount school and college groups could stay, but the emphasis here was on style and comfort. There was a wide double-glazed window with a view over the bay, Scandinavian furniture, an oatmeal-coloured carpet and a folk-weave bedspread. On a low pine table there was a tray with kettle, earthenware mugs decorated with hand-painted oystercatchers, sachets of instant coffee, teabags on strings and plastic pots of vile UHT milk. Molly made tea – without milk – and they sat by the window and watched the flashing marker buoy on the end of Salter’s Spit.

‘Even if this place was nearly derelict and cheap to buy it must have cost a fortune to do it up,’ Molly said. ‘Where do you think they got the money?’

George seemed mesmerized by the flashing light and Molly had to wait for an answer. ‘James sold his controlling interest in
Green Scenes
when he retired,’ he said. ‘One of the conglomerate publishers which prints everything from the
Methodist Times
to
Angling Today
took it on. They’d been interested in buying him out for some time and would have paid well for it. Then there was a big house in Putney where the family was living before they moved. James inherited that from his parents and they sold just before the property market crashed. That must have given them sufficient working capital to get started. And now the Mill is curiously successful despite the recession. It fills a gap in the market. There are lots of people who want the atmosphere but not the discomfort of a traditional field centre and who are prepared to pay.’

‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘ I suppose so.’ But Markham Mill seemed to her less a successful business than a monstrous white elephant, created simply to provide Meg with the lifestyle she had wanted for her children. The place might have space, stimulating company, security – everything Meg wanted for her family – but what had it provided for Jimmy Morrissey and why had he gone along with her plans?

‘I wish I’d seen him more recently,’ George said suddenly, his train of thought following hers. ‘I wish I’d come here when he was still alive …’

‘Do you really think he came here of his own free will?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I’ve never known Jimmy do anything for any other reason,’ he said. ‘He was the most selfish man I’ve ever met. Charming of course but quite selfish. I can’t believe that he’d respond to the sort of emotional blackmail Meg may have tried about the move being best for the children. Not unless the accident changed him dramatically.’

‘Ah yes,’ Molly said sceptically. ‘The accident. I don’t believe anyone changes that much. Do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ George said. ‘The last time I met him he was certainly different, less sure of himself’

‘But not so insecure, surely, that he would volunteer to move here, to become a glorified hotelier, just because Meg wanted him to?’

‘What are you saying then?’ George demanded. ‘That he had his own reasons for choosing to retire here? Or that he was put under so much pressure that he couldn’t refuse?’

‘The latter,’ Molly said quickly. ‘He must have seen that it would be like a prison for him. Even if he were depressed he wouldn’t have chosen that. So we’ll need to find out what Meg used to put pressure on him, why he couldn’t stand up to her or just run away.’

‘I can’t believe that Meg forced Jimmy into a situation when she knew he would be unhappy,’ George said. ‘She loved him. She must genuinely have thought he’d find it easier to get well here.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ Molly demanded.

He thought romantically of the gentle woman sitting by the fire.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

‘Then you’re more of a fool than I took you for,’ she said.

They woke to another clear, freezing day. There was ice on the mudflats and a thick frost on the grass. The tension of the previous night remained between George and Molly though neither mentioned the disagreement. They treated each other politely, with detachment, and went to the dining room without discussing James Morrissey’s death.

Aidan Moore sat alone at the large table, eating muesli in a preoccupied, mechanical way. When he saw them come in he stood awkwardly.

‘We didn’t have a chance to talk last night,’ George said. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you again even under these circumstances. Perhaps you don’t remember but we met a few times at Cley. Nancy introduced us.’ Nancy had run a small café patronized by birders.

‘Yes,’ Aidan said. ‘I remember.’ He returned to his breakfast. George helped himself to porridge from a heated dish.

‘We never bumped into each other at
Green Scenes
,’ George went on, ‘though Jimmy always showed me your latest contribution, and I’ve admired all your illustrations. The plates for the
Estuaries
book are my favourites. You must have taken some inspiration from the bay here. I hadn’t realized before of course. It’s a wonderful place for a field centre.’

‘Yes,’ Aidan said. ‘ It is.’

‘You’d normally be teaching a course now?’ George persisted. He was surprised by the monosyllabic answers. He would have expected more co-operation. Aidan owed his career to Jimmy Morrissey.

‘Normally yes. When Jimmy died we sent all the students home but Meg asked me to stay. Perhaps now you’re here she won’t mind if I go …’ His voice trailed off.

‘It couldn’t have been easy,’ George said, ‘teaching amateurs. Quite a different skill from the painting itself.’

‘It was dreadful!’ Aidan replied spontaneously at last. ‘ They expected me to talk, to explain, to criticize. As if that mattered. But they wouldn’t just stand still and
look.
’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t very patient.’

‘Why did you agree to come,’ George asked cheerfully, ‘if it was such a trial? It can’t have been because you needed the money. Not now.’

‘It wasn’t for the money,’ Aidan said. ‘It was because Jimmy asked me. You know what he was like. I couldn’t refuse him anything.’

‘And I suppose while you were here you did get a chance to do your own work too?’

Aidan nodded. ‘ It was only that which kept me sane.’

‘What are you working on now?’

He hesitated. ‘The jacket for a book of Jimmy’s,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem likely now that it’ll be published but I’d like to finish it.’

‘He commissioned you to design the jacket for his autobiography?’

‘Yes, he wrote to me about it in the autumn.’

‘You know the book’s disappeared?’

Aidan nodded.

‘Did he talk to you about the book at all?’

Aidan looked up sharply. ‘No, not specifically. Why should he?’

‘If you were designing the jacket he might talk about the contents, even let you see a draft of the text …’

‘No,’ Aidan said vehemently. ‘There was no need for that. He wanted a picture of the Mill. That was clear from the beginning.’

‘Why did he choose the Mill?’ George asked. ‘ Because he’d been specially happy here?’

‘I don’t know,’ Aidan said abruptly. ‘He never said. He just gave me the commission. Now I’ll try to get it finished so I can go away and leave Meg in peace.’

‘
Was
he happy here?’ George asked.

There was a shocked silence. Aidan looked up and met his eyes. But before he could answer Meg and the children arrived at the table with a scraping of chairs and a babble of murmured greetings. Aidan excused himself and left.

Molly had been listening to the conversation with interest. There was, she thought, in Aidan’s attitude to Jimmy Morrissey an ambiguity. There was admiration certainly but a resentment too, a sense of impotence perhaps because he did not have the courage to stand up to the older man. Frustration. Neither did it escape her notice that Ruth watched Aidan’s departure with disappointment.

Meg nodded to them as she sat down but seemed not to feel the need for constant conversation as she had at dinner. The children were quiet and morose and Molly wondered if there had been a family row. With some guilt she realized that the thought gave her considerable pleasure. She passed her empty plate to Jane and turned to George thinking that this coldness between them was childish. She would not allow Meg to come between them. But George, with his breakfast finished, had turned his chair to face the window and was staring at the birds on the shore. As he watched Aidan Moore appeared, silhouetted against the startling morning light and made his way slowly down Salter’s Spit. He focused the binoculars which he had brought to the table with him on a flock of waders. Molly might as well not have been there.

If I asked him to choose, she thought, between me and the birds, I wonder which way he would go.

The thought had not occurred to her for thirty years since the babies were young and demanding and she was working full time. George had recognized that she never had a minute to herself but still found time to go birding every weekend even if it were only to a piece of local woodland or a nearby reservoir. She had not dared to ask him to make the choice then, had seen, except in her most desperate moments, that the demand would be unreasonable. She supposed it was too late now. Perhaps Meg Morrissey had found more courage. Perhaps she had expected James to commit himself to the family and choose between the ruling passion of his interest in natural history and his love for her.

George took the binoculars, a pair of East German Zeiss he had bought before the wall went down and the prices went up, from his eyes. But he kept the strap round his neck and she could tell that he wanted to be outside. He turned back to the room, unaware that she had been watching him.