Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise (12 page)

“No,” George said seriously.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all right then. I didn’t like her very much, but I wouldn’t have wanted it to hurt.”

“Did she tell you what her secret was?”

“No, she talked about it a lot, but she didn’t tell me what it was. I did think …”

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing. I’d better go in now.”

He stood briefly in front of George, shook the man’s hand, then ran indoors.

At Kell they had finished dipping. It had turned into something of a party. There were more lambs than anyone had expected. Some of the men had cans of beer. They stood leaning against the sheep pen laughing and gossiping. They were in no hurry to go home. James wished that they would go. He was in no mood for gossip and laughter. Years ago it had been a great day, the Hill Gather. He and Melissa had invited everyone on Kinness into their house, when it was all finished. There had been whisky and fiddle music into the evening. Now he wanted it all to be over. All the people turned Kell into a prison for Melissa. She would not come out while they were there.

At last they began to drift away to their homes and their wives. Sarah was the first to go. She left Jim there, talking to Alec, drinking beer. George met her by the school-house gate.

“I’ve found the scarf,” he said.

She was surprised. She thought that nonsense was all over.

“Where?” she said. “Was it down on the beach?”

“No, it was in Taft, the empty croft near the road.”

“How did it get there?”

“If we knew that we would know who pushed Mary Stennet over Ellie’s Head.”

“So you still think that she was pushed?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Now that I’ve found the scarf there’s no other explanation.”

The next day was colder. The wild geese came, the pink-footed geese from Iceland, and the men went out to shoot them. Jim did not go. He said that he was too busy, though Sarah thought he had stayed at home to spare her feelings. She had seen the geese flying over the house and heard them calling.

Alec came to ask Jim to go with him.

“I thought you wanted to start the second-cut silage,” Jim said. “There’s too much to do.”

“You go,” Sarah said. “ I don’t mind.”

But she was pleased when he stuck it out and insisted he was too busy.

“You’re getting soft,” Alec jeered. “ You’ve been too long in the south. You’ll have to come to supper one night and taste what you’re missing.”

It was a still, clear day. It’s already winter here, Sarah thought, and in my parents’ house the leaves will hardly have changed colour.

“Can I help you?” she asked Jim. He was sitting on the wooden chair by the kitchen door, pulling Wellington boots over long knitted socks. He was in a hurry because Alec had kept him talking, and he hardly looked up.

“No,” he said. “There’s nothing for you to do. If you’re bored you could go to see Mother. She would like to see you.”

Robert heard the geese and watched the men go after them. Nobody asked him to go, too. Even when he was younger he was left out of expeditions like that. They had always laughed at him. He had always been left out. It was because he had no family of his own. It would be different if he had married and he had sons to the house who said: “Father, we’re off after the geese. You come with us,” or daughters to cook a goose and ask him to dinner to share it.

He had always liked the girls and would have asked any one of them to marry him, but he knew that they would only laugh at him. Perhaps it was his leg, white and withered with polio, that made them laugh. Sometimes he wanted to show them that he was a man like other men, take the smiles off their pretty faces.

The geese would be on the lochan at Kell. There would be no point in going that way. Now that they all had freezers in their houses there was never a bird to be given away, no matter how many they shot. It was then that he remembered the people he had seen in Taft, on the foggy morning when the lorry broke down. That information might be worth a goose, he thought, remembering the frantic, intimate whispers. Someone might give me a goose to keep quiet about that. But that would have to wait until later. Now he would bring his wood up Ellie’s Geo and begin to saw it into logs for the winter.

He was dragging one long and awkward plank down the hill to Tain when he saw the girl from Unsta, Jim Stennet’s new wife. He thought how pretty she was. She’ll be making all the other women jealous, he thought with satisfaction. She was sitting on Ellie’s Head looking out to sea, and she did not see him. He took pleasure in watching her, without her being aware of it. Although it was so cold, she was not wearing a coat and her sweater was tight. No other woman on the island had a sweater like it, and he thought that soon they would all be searching through their mail-order catalogues to find clothes like the girl from Unsta wore. Suddenly she got up and turned to walk down the hill. She must have seen him looking at her. He turned away quickly and limped on, dragging the wood behind him.

Sarah had been thinking of Mary. It had been a shock to see the old man staring at her. She walked quicker than he did and soon caught him up.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

He was surprised. He had thought that she would be cross with him for staring, but she was so pretty that he supposed that she was used to the men looking at her. He accepted her offer of help immediately before she changed her mind. Usually he had to beg for assistance. Help on Kinness was only freely given to family.

She took one end of the plank and they walked together, carrying the wood between them, towards Tain. He did not speak. She was surprised by how strong he was. Several times she had to ask him to stop so that she could rest. When they got to the house he showed her where they could leave the plank. He stood and looked at her, smiling, twisting his flat cap between his hands. It was a peculiar smile, frankly admiring, almost innocent. He was, Sarah thought, a little strange.

“You’ll take some tea?” he asked. “ Or a dram?”

“I’d like some tea,” she said.

He hopped into the house, followed by his dog, and held the door open for her to go in. He was obviously pleased that she had accepted his invitation, but he was awkward now and a little shy. He showed her into a small dark room which could not have changed much since he was a child. Under the window was a square table covered with oil cloth. A black cast-iron stove jutted into the room from one wall. On shelves at either side of it were some religious books, an ugly wooden clock, an ornamental plate showing the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and an assortment of glass animals. Two high-backed chairs made from driftwood in the island pattern stood by the stove, and in one corner was a spinning wheel. The room was tidy, but dusty. The window was dirty and allowed in little light. When Robert came in from the scullery after filling the kettle, she was still looking at the spinning wheel.

“That was my mother’s,” he said. “ She was a fine spinner. She kept the wool as even as can be and never broke the yam.”

He put the kettle on the stove. The dog, which lay on the black sheepskin hearth rug, did not look up.

“I make the best tea in Kinness,” he said proudly. “It’s the Tain water.”

She had to concentrate to understand him. He made no concession in his speech. She sat in one of the chairs. He took the other.

“It’ll take a while to boil,” he said. They looked at each other for a moment in silence, and then he began to talk.

“I was sorry about the lassie,” he said. “ It will have spoiled your wedding party.”

“I was sorry,” she said, “but not because of that.”

“Wasn’t it peculiar that it happened on the same day as the storm? And that she fell over Ellie’s Head?”

“The storm?”

That was all that it took for him to start the story. It was as if he had rehearsed what he had to say. It came out as a set piece—remembered by heart and recited when an audience could be found. Perhaps it was like that. Certainly he had told the story before—to American tourists and to a lady from the Baltasay museum who came with a tape recorder—but it seemed to Sarah that he specially wanted to tell it to her.

“I am the only one left who remembers it,” he said. “I was only a boy. The men saw some French boats out to the south, and thought that they could trade with them. They would take out chicken, mutton, dried fish and bring back tea, salt, perhaps even brandy. Trading like that happened often in those days. All the men went out. They preferred to be out with the boats to staying here and working on the harvest. The harvest was late that year. It was thought to be women’s work. Even boys of my age went with them, but they wouldn’t let me go and I had to stay with my mother and my sisters.

“It was a fine day. We watched the men row off towards the ships. They were all in good spirits, thinking of the drams they would have there and the brandy they would bring back. I wanted to be with them. We were in the field, stacking the sheaves into stooks to dry. We were working all afternoon. Then, all of a sudden there was such a wind that all the stooks were blown flat. I have never known a wind like it, coming out of nothing. It blew all night and it was so fierce that we were frightened to go outside. Our hen house was blown right away with all the birds inside it. The men did not come home. The wind blew the next day as strong as ever. Eventually the boats started to come back but most of the men were lost. My father was drowned, and my uncle and my brother. Some boats had just one man alive inside. Most were washed up empty. It was a terrible time.

“Most of the men that came back alive were Stennets, and the Dances who were left said that the Stennets let their men drown to save themselves. I think it was just chance. They say that the Stennets and the Dances have never been friendly since, but myself, I don’t think that was caused by the storm. I remember rows between them before then. There was a lot of bad feeling when Ellie Dance went sick in the head. She was engaged to be married to Stuart, her first cousin, and he was one of the men that were lost. Perhaps it was because there were no other young men left for her to marry that she went so mad. She never seemed to sleep. She was so mad that they had to lock her up in the post office, and she howled like a chained dog. I can still remember the howling. Then one night she got loose and threw herself over the cliff. That’s why it was named Ellie’s Head.”

At first Sarah could not believe what he was saying. It was just a good story.

“She’s buried in the graveyard,” she said. “ When it says ‘he should have been hers,’ it’s talking about Stuart.”

“Yes.”

She thought again of the note on the wedding dress:

“He should have been mine.” Perhaps the Stennets had prevented Elspeth marrying Jim, just as the Dances believed that the Stennets had been responsible for the first Ellie not marrying her Stuart.

“Jim never told me about the storm,” she said.

“He will know about it all the same.”

“There’s still ill feeling between the Stennets and the Dances, isn’t there? But that couldn’t have had anything to do with Mary’s death.”

“No,” he said, almost regretfully, because it would have been such a good story. “That most just have been coincidence. Kenneth Dance says that the Stennets could run the boat better and that the freight charge is too high. The Stennets say that Kenneth Dance charges too much for the things in his shop. That’s how it is now. It’s money that comes between them.” He paused, then continued slowly: “Kenneth and Annie did name their daughter after the poor girl that went mad. That seemed an unlucky thing to me.”

He got up and poured boiling water into a small china teapot.

When she got back to Unsta, George Palmer-Jones was already there, waiting for her. He was sitting outside on the wooden bench. She was not sure that she wanted to see him, but she let him in.

He took the green and white scarf from his pocket and put it on the kitchen table between them.

“I’m going to see Sandy and Agnes,” he said, “ to tell them that I’ve found the scarf, and to ask their permission to investigate their daughter’s death.”

I’m going to give them the responsibility for the decision, he thought. It’s too much for me now.

“Have you any more idea what can have happened?” she asked.

“Whoever pushed Mary took the scarf, either before she died or afterwards. We don’t know why. On Monday morning, before the boat went out, Sylvia Drysdale was talking to someone in the derelict croft next to the road. She decided to leave the island suddenly when I asked her about anyone here who might have a secret. Later the scarf was found in the croft. It looked as if it had been dropped by accident. It could have been left by Sylvia, but more likely, I should think, by whoever she was talking to.”

“You couldn’t recognize the voice?”

“No. It could have been a man or a woman. It’s difficult to tell with a whisper. Did any of the boat crew mention having met Sylvia that morning?”

“No.”

“Robert might be able to help us,” George said. “ He was up on the hill above the croft that morning. He might have seen or heard something. We’ll go there when we’ve been to Sandwick.”

“You want me to come with you?”

“It would be useful. It’s always helpful to have two people. You might pick up something which I’ve missed, but I’ll quite understand if you prefer not to.”

“No. I’ll come.”

At least I can be useful to someone, she thought as she put a cold lunch on a plate for Jim and cut a sandwich for herself, then walked up the road towards Sandwick with George. Jim had not wanted her help.

They met Sandy in the yard outside the house. He was on his way into Sandwick for lunch. Sandy beamed when he saw Sarah and took her in his arms.

“George is keeping you company,” he said. “Now that is good. I saw Jim working in the top field and I thought you might be lonely.”

“I’d like to talk to you,” George said. “But it can wait until later if your lunch is ready.”

“No. Come in. Come in.”

They could hear Agnes in the kitchen, but George did not ask to speak to her, too, and Sandy did not suggest it.