Come Death and High Water (George & Molly Palmer-Jones)

by Ann Cleeves

  “George,” he said. “ George, my dear man, what is the matter? You look ill.”

  He turned away and when he faced George once more, he had replaced his teeth, but the ghost of the toothless face remained and George could not recognize him as quite the same person.

  “How long have you been here?” George asked suddenly. “Have you been in here since you came upstairs?”

  “Why do you want to know? Has something happened?”

  “Yes, something’s happened. Have you been in your room since you came upstairs?”

  “No. I had a shower and washed my hair. But I didn’t want to go to bed until it was dry, so I’ve been reading.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Which bathroom did you use?”

  “There’s a shower room next door. That’s why I like this room. It’s most convenient.”

  “Thank you,” George said. “Thank you.” He shut the door, pretending not to hear the doctor’s questions, his gabbled demands for explanation.

  The shower room next to Paul Derbyshire’s bedroom was the most southerly room in the corridor. George turned back. Martindale was in Pamela Marshall’s room with Nicholas Mardle. The door was open. Jerry Packham and Mark were sitting together in Mark’s room. They were talking quietly together. George walked down the stairs, through to the kitchen and back up to the Lansdowns’ flat. He banged on the door. Almost immediately Elizabeth answered. She was wearing a nightdress and a thick brown dressing gown with a hood, like a monk’s habit.

  “Where have you been?” George asked. “ Have you been out?”

  “No,” she said. She seemed bewildered, a little angry at the interruption. “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to disturb John, so I’ve been listening to the radio in the living room. Why?” she asked. “Why? What has happened?”

  “Has John been in bed all that time? Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she almost shouted. “I’m sure. Do you want to see him?”

  But there was no need to call John. He emerged from the bedroom, naked and tousled, demanding to know what the noise was all about.

  George stood on the doorstep and explained quickly and precisely that Pamela Marshall was dead, that Nicholas seemed to have confessed, that Martindale was talking to him.

  “Nicholas!” Elizabeth said. “ Does that mean that he killed Charlie?”

  George dismissed the question as if he didn’t have time to consider it properly. He looked at his watch. It was half past midnight.

  “The police will be able to get over now,” he said. “I expect Savage will want to see everyone. But I don’t see why you shouldn’t stay here until then. Try to get some sleep.”

  He went back to the landing. Martindale was in the corridor, with Nicholas beside him. He was shutting Pamela Marshall’s door. Paul Derbyshire had joined Jerry and Mark. George presumed that Jasmine Carson was still asleep. Martindale looked at Palmer-Jones with relief and a little reproach.

  “There you are, sir,” he said. “I was wondering where you’d gone to. I was thinking I should telephone the superintendent. Could you keep an eye …”

  He nodded towards Nicholas, who was standing dazed, silent except for a stifled sob. He was leaning back against the wall as if he did not have the strength to support himself.

  “Of course,” George said. “ Do you think I could clean him up? There isn’t any doubt where the blood came from.”

  “Yes,” the policeman said gratefully. “Yes, I think you could do that.”

  It occurred to Palmer-Jones that the two young men were probably of the same age, that they might even have known each other socially.

  “Did you know him?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Played rugby against him at school.”

  Martindale turned, as if he were going down the stairs to the ringing room and the telephone, then faced Palmer-Jones again.

  “I haven’t been able to get any sense out of him,” he said. “ He doesn’t seem able to hear me. But perhaps I’m not very good at it. I haven’t got the experience. Would you try to get through to him? Before Superintendent Savage gets here.”

  He spoke gently as if the boy were a patient, a victim. He was very upset. George nodded and the constable went downstairs. George took Nicholas by the arm and led him to a bathroom. He took a flannel, left behind by some forgotten visitor, from the bath, soaked it, and washed the boy’s hands and face. Still he did not respond. He allowed himself to be washed, moved when George told him to, but gave no sign that he was aware of what was happening to him. He was shaking. George began talking to him calmly and firmly, trying to break through the barrier of shock and hysteria.

  “This has been very upsetting,” he said. “ But it won’t help to behave like a baby. I will help you. Now breathe deeply. Breathe now … And now … And now …”

  The boy did as he was told. The shallow breathing, the sobbing calmed. He was standing without support and the colour had returned to his face. At last George said: “Do you feel better?”

  The boy nodded. “ I’m sorry,” he said. “ It was horrible. Like a nightmare. I couldn’t face it.”

  “Don’t talk now,” George said. “We’ll go downstairs and find Martindale. Then I’ll ask you some questions. Did you hear him explain that you don’t have to say anything?”

  “Yes,” Nicholas said, “ and that makes it worse. He thinks that I killed her. Doesn’t he? You all do.”

  “Not now,” George snapped, curbing the returning hysteria. “I don’t want you to say anything now. I want the policeman to hear everything that you say.”

  They walked together down the corridor to the stairs. The three men in the tiny bedroom watched them through the open door. Mark seemed about to say something, to approach his friend, but George shook his head slightly, and he did nothing. When they reached the ringing room, Martindale had finished talking to Savage. He was sitting at the superintendent’s desk, staring blankly in front of him. He was able to control his panic better, thought Palmer-Jones, but he was probably nearly as worried and shocked as Nicholas.

  “They’ll be about three-quarters of an hour,” he said. “There’s some problem with the Land Rover.”

  “Nicholas is ready to answer some questions,” George said. “But if you prefer, we can wait for the superintendent.”

  “No,” Nick said. “No. I want to talk now. I want to talk to you.”

  George looked at Martindale. He nodded his consent and switched on the tape-recorder. George and Nicholas were sitting on the same side of the desk. The tilly on the desk threw strange shadows over their faces. George wondered if he should go to start the generator, so that they had proper light, but Nicholas was starting to talk.

  “I hated the Todds,” he said. “ They killed my mother. Morally they killed her. Not by stabbing her with a knife, but by exploiting her, then deserting her when she needed them.” He spoke the melodramatic words as if they were familiar, as if he had repeated them often to himself. “They exploited her all her working life, then when she wasn’t any use to them, they got rid of her. I’ve dreamed about killing them. When it’s quiet at work I plan ways of murdering them, and if I can’t sleep at night I lie awake and think about it. It became a sort of game, planning how to kill them without getting caught. I never did anything about it. I suppose that I never really meant to do it. It was just something to stop me having to think about my mother’s death. I made all sorts of threats about it, but I never meant to do it. I’d even stopped thinking about it quite so often. Then Charlie threatened to sell the island, and it brought everything back. It was as if it was happening all over again. He’d bought the place, exploited it, made us dependent on him, then because he got fed up with it, he just decided to get rid of it. It never occurred to him to consider anyone else, to wonder what we might feel.”

  He had run out of indignation, and sat quietly.

  “Nicholas,” said George Palmer-Jones, “did you kill Ch
arlie?”

  “No,” he said. “No. I’m trying to explain. I dreamed about it. I thought about it. But I didn’t kill him. That’s why I was so shocked to see his body. To see him actually dead. It was as if I had killed him just by thinking about it. But when I saw him dead, I realized how terrible it was. I was sorry, really sorry. And guilty that I could ever have wanted it in the first place. Do you understand?”

  “I think so,” George said.

  “That’s why I went to see Pamela. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry that Charlie was dead. I’d threatened her family. I wanted to tell her that I hadn’t meant it, that I didn’t really want anything to happen to them.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything, you fool.” He was screaming. “She was already dead. Someone had killed her with my knife. It was like a nightmare. I went in. The tilly was lit over her bed and I saw straight away, but I couldn’t believe it. I tried to wake her. I did try. I took the knife out. I suppose it was an instinctive reaction. But it just made more blood. I didn’t know what to do. I had wanted to tell her that I was sorry, and she was dead.”

  George Palmer-Jones spoke very calmly and quietly: “If what you say is true, she must have been dead for a very short time when you found her. Did you see anyone?”

  “It was dark.” Nicholas Mardle’s voice was still high-pitched. “I left the candle with Mark. I didn’t see anyone in the corridor, but someone could have been there. I wouldn’t have been able to tell. If her room had been dark I wouldn’t have gone in, but I could see the light. The door wasn’t properly shut.”

  “Did you knock?”

  “Yes, but only quietly. I didn’t want anyone else to know that I was there. Then I just looked in.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Did Mark know where you were going?”

  “No. He wasn’t there. He’d gone to the bathroom.”

  “Did you start screaming as soon as you’d got there?”

  “I don’t know.” He was crying, quietly. “ I don’t know.”

  “When did you last have your knife?”

  “I had it last night when I was ringing. Sometimes, if a bird gets very tangled, you have to cut it out of the net. I expect I left it in the ringing room. I don’t remember having it today.”

  Palmer-Jones looked at Martindale, inviting him to put a question. The young policeman spoke awkwardly.

  “Why did you touch the knife?” he asked. “ It must have been obvious that she was dead.”

  Mardle’s eyes flickered towards him before he answered. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I wasn’t acting logically. I wasn’t thinking rationally. It was so horrible there. The knife had hurt her? It just seemed that if I took it out it might make her better. It seems insane now, but perhaps I was insane.”

  “When we found you, you said that you didn’t mean to do it. Why did you say that if you didn’t kill her?”

  “No.” Nick was shouting again. “I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean the threats. I hadn’t meant that I wanted them all to die.”

  They sat in silence. In the distance there was the faint rumble of the Land Rover. It approached like thunder. Then there was the flash of torch light and Savage arrived in the room. Outside they could hear the sound of heavy boots on the stairs.

  “Can we get any proper light in here?” Savage asked cheerfully as soon as he entered. “ They’ll need it upstairs.”

  “I’ll go and put the generator on,” Palmer-Jones said, relieved to have an excuse to leave. Savage was looking at Nicholas with an air of triumph and success. If George stayed he would feel tempted to interfere.

  When he returned Martindale and Nick were alone again in the ringing room. Savage had gone to Pamela Marshall’s room.

  Martindale was talking quietly to Nick: “ You understand what the superintendent said, don’t you? He wants to take you to the police station to talk to you.”

  “I understand,” Nick said. “ I’ll be helping the police with their inquiries. Is he going to charge me?”

  “You’ll have to talk to the superintendent about that,” the young policeman said.

  Savage came in then, rubbing his hands, full of energy, as if he were at the start of a working day. George thought that he must have shaved before coming to the island. He looked very clean, very healthy. George suddenly felt tired and grey.

  “Could I have a word with you, Superintendent,” he asked, “before you speak to Mr. Mardle?”

  They went into the common room. The embers of the fire were still glowing. Savage poked them restlessly while George was talking.

  “Pamela Marshall came to see me,” he said. “She thought she had some information about Charlie’s death. She admitted that she’d been to see Charlie last night, though she wouldn’t say why.”

  “Oh. What was the information?” He was listening as intently as ever, but only out of courtesy. It really wasn’t relevant now. He wanted to get the boy at the station, the formalities over with.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t get the opportunity to speak to her again alone. I was waiting until the morning to see her.”

  “Too late then,” the policeman said, obviously and callously.

  “The boy won’t admit to it.”

  For the first time Savage took a serious interest. “ I thought he already had.”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  “The murder weapon was his knife.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then.” Savage looked cheerful. He didn’t like things to be too easy. It was a challenge. He had enough evidence to charge the boy. They could be in court on Monday and he could get a week’s remand to the police cells for further investigation. He’d get his confession in that time. “I’ll be on my way back to the mainland.”

  “Don’t you want to talk to anyone else?” George was starting to become frustrated by the policeman’s blinkered interpretation of the case.

  “No,” Savage said. “That’ll do in the morning. We can take statements then.”

  Palmer-Jones’s surprise registered with Savage. “ You won’t know,” he said, “but the boy threatened to do away with the whole bloody family. We’ve got witnesses. I would have had him in anyway. This …” He nodded his head towards the stairs. “ This is just the icing on the cake.”

  Palmer-Jones was no longer useful to him. He dismissed the older man from his thoughts as he had dismissed all the other suspects. George followed him through to the ringing room.

  “Come on then, lad,” the policeman said to Nick. “ Let’s get you back to dry land.” He left the room and waited just outside the door.

  The boy stood up to follow. He did not argue. He was still very pale, but quite calm.

  George went to the desk, took the cassette from the tape-recorder and gave it to Martindale, who nodded.

  “I’ll give it to the superintendent,” he said.

  Nick spoke to George. “I didn’t do it. I don’t know if I can make them believe me.”

  “Don’t worry,” George said. “ Don’t worry.” Then he realized how ridiculous that was. But it seemed to comfort Nick. He walked out, between the two policemen, to the Land Rover.

  Chapter Ten

  After Savage had gone George Palmer-Jones went back to his room. He still did not feel ready to sleep. There were muffled sounds in the corridor, voices. Eventually everything went quiet. Presumably the policemen had finished. He undressed and got into bed, but still he did not sleep. Previously his commitment to the investigation had been limited. His involvement had been selfish. It had been a personal challenge. He had wanted to find out who had killed Charlie Todd, but there had been no urgency. It was not really his responsibility. It had not mattered because the police would succeed even if he failed. Now it mattered a great deal. He did not believe that Nicholas Mardle had killed Charlie Todd, and he was quite certain that the boy had not killed Pamela Marshall. In many ways Savage was a good p
oliceman. He was determined, energetic and honest. But he had too much faith in his own judgement. He believed that Nicholas Mardle was a murderer. Unless he was faced with an obvious, a very obvious fact which contradicted the theory, he would interpret all the evidence to strengthen his belief. Now George Palmer-Jones did feel responsible. Savage was stubborn. George had no faith that he would be able to persuade the policeman that Nick might be innocent. So he had to find a fact, a very obvious fact, with which to confront him. Or the murderer.