Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise (3 page)

James stopped outside Unsta—their new home—but did not leave the lorry, and drove away at once. The house stood above a pebble beach which Jim called the Haven. There was a small garden in the front surrounded by a drystone wall. A bench made from driftwood stood against the whitewashed wall of the house. There was a storm porch in the middle of the house, with doors on either side.

“That’s in case of a gale,” Jim said. “You’d never be able to open a door straight into the wind.”

She waited outside for a moment, hoping that he might carry her in, but he seemed not to think of it. Perhaps lifting her on to the island from the boat had served the same purpose for him. She followed him into the house. It was small.

“There’s no bathroom,” he said immediately. “I explained to you that there’s no bathroom.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “ Really it’s no problem.”

“If we decide to stay I can build one.”

“Of course we’ll decide to stay.”

The front door led into a narrow passage. There were only two rooms. On one side was the bedroom and on the other the kitchen, with a small scullery at the back. In the kitchen there was a range. The fire was ready to light. Sarah suddenly felt chilled, and tried not to shiver. There was a little essential furniture in the room—a kitchen table, a couple of chairs—but it looked cold and bare.

“Alec and Maggie gave us this,” Jim said. “For the time being. The old man who was here moved to the mainland to live with his sister and he took everything with him. Alec will bring our things on the tractor and trailer later.”

“It’ll be fun to start from scratch.”

Everything was spotlessly clean, but the net curtains which hung at the windows were frayed and tatty, and the lino had lost all its colour.

“It’s lovely,” she said. “Really. It’s lovely.”

He took her hand and led her towards the bedroom. He stopped her at the door, picked her up, and carried her inside.

George and Jonathan walked back slowly to the school house. Jonathan had lingered at the quay, looking out at the gannets fishing over the sea until the islanders had gone. George felt awkward. He had made friends on Kinness and would have liked to walk down the island with them.

“How’s Sylvia?” he asked

“Fine.”

He had never found Jonathan easy to talk to. Every time he visited Kinness he felt that he was in the school house on sufferance. Drysdale was polite but George felt that the politeness was an effort. Yet each year the invitation came, and after he left there was a warm and friendly letter saying how much Jonathan and Sylvia enjoyed Palmer-Jones’ visit.

“Did you have a good spring?” George asked.

Jonathan considered. “Not bad,” he said in the end. “ I broke my record for ringing auks. We didn’t have any very special migrants.”

He had a clipped, rather affected accent, which George found irritating. He must have been thirty-five but he still looked and sounded like a public-school boy. Molly, George’s wife, thought that Jonathan was shy, but that had never seemed to George a reasonable excuse for rudeness.

“I’ve been invited to the party tonight,” George said. “Sandy wrote to me specially. Will you and Sylvia be going?”

“We’ve been invited,” he said. “ Everyone on the island’s been invited. I suppose that we’ll have to go. Sylvia’s very keen. And as I said, I’ve been told to participate in community affairs.”

The school house was in the middle of the island. The classroom was in the same building. The house was grey, two-storeyed. They could see it from the road which wound round from the harbour. Nothing else broke the horizon. To the left of the road built into the hill, beyond a lochan smooth and round as a mirror, was Kell, the croft where James Stennet lived. It was immaculate, freshly whitewashed, with a neat pile of driftwood stacked by the back door. Then the road fell sharply past the low marshy area known as the Loons. In the spring it was covered with long grasses and flowers. Beyond that were the green folds of the clifftop and the sea. George forgot that Jonathan irritated him and enjoyed being on Kinness.

Sylvia had seen them coming and was at the door to meet them. For the first time since his arrival George felt welcome. She had long chestnut curls and a warm wide smile. There was tea made and hot scones and a fire in the grate in the living room.

“It is so nice to see you,” Sylvia said, and she approached George to be kissed. Her hair smelled of the hot scones and the fire.

She led them into the living room. It was light, a mix of traditional island croft and modern comfort. Sylvia sat on a sheepskin rug by the fire and gestured the others to sit down.

“Isn’t it lucky,” she said, “ that you could make it in time for the wedding party?”

She began to chat about the preparations for the evening. Jonathan got up and stood by the window. He said nothing.

Elspeth Dance sat in her parents’ home at the post office with her son on her knee. They were in the kitchen. Kenneth was sorting the mail on the table. Anne was putting the final decorations on the cakes which she had promised for the party.

“No one has told him that I’m back,” Elspeth said. “He was surprised to see me.”

“Does it matter?” Kenneth said. “ Surely not after all this time.”

“It matters to me,” Elspeth said. “ Someone should have told him. He should have been given the choice.”

“What choice? Do you really think it would have made any difference?”

“I don’t know. We were so close.”

Annie looked up from the cakes she was decorating meticulously.

“You’re making too much of it,” she said sternly. “ It’s all over. It was over years ago. Don’t you go stirring it up again.”

“Should I go to the party tonight then?”

“Of course you’ll go. You mustn’t disappoint Ben.” Annie looked tenderly at her grandson.

“Do you think Jim knows what happened?” Elspeth sounded frightened.

“How could he know?”

“I’m warning you,” Elspeth said. “There’ll be trouble.”

“Should I go over and see if they’ve everything they need?” Alec said.

“No. They’ve only been married a week. They surely want to be on their own. They’ve got everything they need. I’ve never seen such a fuss.”

Maggie was sandy-haired and sensible. She had been an infant teacher on Baltasay before they married. They had been to school together. She had no illusions about Alec or about the island when she moved to Kinness. “We didn’t have all that carry-on when we were wed,” she said, with a touch of regret.

“Would you have wanted it? We had the party.”

“I wouldn’t have had it any different.”

“Where are the boys?”

“In the garden playing. I’ll bring them in right at the last minute to get them changed and ready. Otherwise they’ll get dirty again.”

“Do you think that they’ll settle?”

“The boys?”

“No. Jim and Sarah.”

“I expect so. Given time. We did. Why?”

“If they moved off there’d be nothing to stop me buying the Unsta land. We need more land if we’re going to make any sort of living.”

She had heard it all before.

“Your father managed and he has less land than us.”

“Things have to change.”

“Things will change. Sandy and Agnes won’t be able to stay at Sandwick forever. Especially when Will goes. Then they’ll need someone to work their land. But this isn’t the time to discuss it with Jim. There’ll be time enough for that.”

“But what will happen when Mum and Dad do have to leave Sandwick? You know what’s in the will. You know what arrangements will be made if they move somewhere smaller. They’re besotted by that child. I want more land. You want a bigger house with more room for the boys. But I’m not prepared to pay their price to get it.”

She thought that he still looked very young, much younger than her. He had very thick dark hair. His wasn’t an island face. It was dark, southern, brooding.

“Let it be for tonight,” she said. “ It’ll have to be sorted out, but not today.”

He shrugged agreement.

“And behave yourself this evening. Don’t have too much to drink. You always show yourself up.”

He took no notice. No woman was going to tell him how to behave. He went out into the yard to switch on the generator. His new tractor was there. It comforted him and encouraged him. Progress was possible on Kinness. He had proved it.

In Sandwick Will sat in his bedroom, keeping out of the way, until it was time to go to the party. Downstairs there was a muddle of preparation. His parents were always so disorganized, he thought with intolerance. Everything at Sandwick was so messy, chaotic. He would be glad to go back to school. He missed his friends, the conversations in the hostel late at night, his status as a sixth former. Here, the only debate was about sheep and fish. He wondered how the Drysdales, who had experience of more civilized ways, could stand it.

Outside in the passage he heard Mary screaming as Agnes tried to brush her hair.

Mother’s so weak, he thought, listening to Agnes’ fraught, ineffectual words, and so dependent on Dad. My wife will be independent, a person in her own right.

He picked up his guitar and began to play, humming a folk tune to the chords.

“I hate you,” Mary was screaming. “I hate both of you.”

I don’t hate them, Will thought. They’re kind and generous and I love them. But I can’t spend the rest of my life here. It would kill me.

“But you must come,” James said. “You promised.” His head was thundering with tension, anger, and compassion. “ You’ll enjoy it.”

“I would have enjoyed it once,” Melissa said. She took his hand and tried to make her voice sound reasonable. She had been an actress once. She tried to recall the skill, but knew that she sounded shrill and unnatural.

“Look,” she said. “ I have tried. I did want to come. But you can’t understand the panic, when I think of all those people in the hall. I can’t face it. They won’t miss me.”

He gave in immediately. He knew that there was no point in trying to persuade her. At first he had been sympathetic about her moods and depressions. There had been cause enough. Miscarriage after miscarriage. And she had been so desperate for a child. But that had been years ago.

She had not come from Kinness, not from any of the other islands. That had been part of the problem. When he first met her she had not seemed to have come from anywhere. She was getting off the big boat at the harbour on Baltasay. He was on his way home after National Service. She was very small and frail, wrapped up in a big coat. She had plenty of money.

“What brings you to the islands?” he had asked. She had been waiting on the quay, looking lost and unhappy. Her smallness and vulnerability had attracted him. The women on the island were strong and big-boned.

“I was expecting a friend,” she had said. “ He said that he’d meet me from the boat.”

“Who would that be, then? I know most of the folk here. I used to anyway.”

She had given the name of the owner of the only big hotel on Baltasay, an Englishman, who had appeared mysteriously after the war.

“That’s no problem then,” he said. “You can leave your bags with Jean in the harbour office and we’ll walk. It isn’t far.”

The Englishman had been surprised to see her but had put on a good enough show of being pleased that she was there.

James had not been able to forget her. He had used every excuse to get to Baltasay to see her. He had dressed up in the suit which was too big for him and sat in the hotel bar waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Very often she was there before him. Sometimes the Englishman was with her, loud and showing her off to his friends. Usually she was on her own. She looked around her with big black eyes, made up in a way he had never seen before, staring out of her tiny white face. Then one night he had arrived at the hotel and she had been different. She was in her place at the bar but the smudges under her eyes were caused not by make-up but by tears.

“I’ve got to leave tomorrow,” she said. “He’s told me that I’ve got to go. He’s found some other fancy woman.” She never spoke of the Englishman by name.

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know.” She had never spoken of her past. She seemed to belong nowhere.

“Have you friends to go to? Family?”

“No.”

“Come home with me. You know I would have asked you anyway if you’d been free. We’ll be married.” Then, as she hesitated: “Or I’ll come with you. Wherever you like.”

She had been his obsession. He had dreamed of touching her, of knowing her. While he waited for her to give her reply he thought that the whole thing was impossible. He had frightened her away.

“No,” she had said at last. “I’ll come with you. To Kinness.”

At that time he had never kissed her. He had only touched her to take her arm on that first day, by the harbour, to take her to the hotel.

“And we will be married?”

“If that’s what you want.” It really had not mattered to her one way or the other.

They were married quietly on the island. There had been none of the fuss of balloons and flowers. They had been happy, intensely happy until, he thought, she began to crave for a child, in the same way as he craved for her.

She was still lovely. She still had the fine features and big, dark eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve let you down again.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said.

She was sitting on a stool in the bedroom, in front of the dressing table mirror. He knelt behind her and put his arms around her, so that he was holding her tight against him. She let herself melt back into his body until he touched her breast. Then he felt her shrink away from him, though she tried not to do it. He stood up and started to get ready to go out alone, to the party.

Jim was woken by the sound of Alec’s generator. Sarah was still asleep. He could hear her breathing and feel her hair on his cheek. She thought it would all be so easy. He had never meant to come back. He had always thought that the island men who went to the mainland for a spell to find themselves a wife were no better than Viking raiders. But she had tempted him with her enthusiasm. Perhaps he should never have listened to her. He looked at his watch and shook her gently.