Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever (25 page)

There was another pause.

“I don’t understand why Jane Pym showed her hand.” Berry spoke quietly. He had taken so little part in the conversation that the words surprised them. “Why did she go to Rosco’s on the day of the storm? If she’d kept quiet, no one could have proved her guilt.”

“Rosco was at the hostel at the same time as Franks,” George said, “though he was so wrapped up in his plans for the
Jessie Ellen
that he didn’t notice Greg or Jane Pym. He was there on the night of the fire. When we suspected that Jane had killed Greg Franks, I asked Rosco to write to her. The letter said he recognised her as the warden of the hostel, so he knew why Greg had died. She presumed that Rosco was blackmailing her and was so distraught by then that she decided to confront him about it.”

“But what could she hope to do?” Claire Bingham said. “She couldn’t expect to kill him, too.”

“She was very irrational,” George said vaguely. “ I don’t think she had any plans.”

He did not say that Rosco had come close to death. Throughout the investigation which had followed Jane Pym’s death he had said nothing about Rosco’s revolver. Louis had been through enough, he thought. He was entitled to the opportunity to start a new life with Rose and Matilda without more questions from the police. Even Molly knew nothing about the gun.

They looked at each other. Richard Bingham came round again with the wine, and George noticed that as Berry took a glass of fruit juice, there was a moment of disapproval or perhaps complacence. Was he thinking that alcohol had been Jane Pym’s downfall? That she was a wicked woman because she had succumbed to the demon drink? George knew that it was all more complicated than that.

The telephone broke the silence, and there was a sudden relief because they no longer knew what to say to each other. Claire Bingham went to answer it and returned almost immediately.

“It’s for you,” she said to George and smiled flirtatiously. “It’s a woman.”

The woman was Gwen Pullen, apologetic and enthusiastic at the same time, rather loud.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, George,” she said. “ It took a lot of detective work to track you down actually. But I thought you’d want to know. I’ve just come back from Amsterdam. I’ve been sorting through a pile of skins at the museum. There was one that they never identified. They always thought it was a sort of aberrant mutation. It was a petrel, actually, with red feet.”

She paused, expecting some response from George, and when none came, she continued: “ The bird was remarkably well documented, and this is the most exciting thing. It was donated to the museum by an ordinary seaman who had sailed with a British explorer. I’ve checked everything out, and he was on the Aleutian Islands expedition. He must have been a better shot than the Englishman, don’t you think? The seaman’s name was Damus, which has rather a ring to it. So, if everything is approved by the appropriate bodies, I suggest that your bird is known as Damus’ petrel.… George? Are you there?”

George, who had been holding the receiver away from his ear to prevent himself from being deafened, said that he was there. And he liked the name Damus’ petrel, too.

First published in 1993 by Macmillan

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