by Ann Cleeves
“My husband has a passion for books,” she said as she filled the kettle. “ But then he was so bored when he retired that I was glad when he developed an interest.”
“Does he have any other interests?” Molly asked. “Apart from birdwatching, of course.”
“I don’t think that he is especially interested in birdwatching. Not any more. But he does enjoy going over to the island. It’s good for him. I do hope this unpleasantness doesn’t spoil it for him.”
“It must have been a great shock.”
“Yes. Although he has taken it better than I would have imagined. Of course shock presents itself in many forms.”
Molly said nothing.
Marjory continued: “You see, we knew them both quite well, the … victims. Charles was a great character and Paul worked with him very closely when he was buying the island. They had their little arguments, but really they got on so well.” Again she could have been talking about children. “And of course Pamela was one of Paul’s receptionists. That was just before we were married and I never met her then. Unfortunately she left the practice soon after, and they didn’t bump into each other again until they met on the island. We have become very fond of her children, Edward and Sian. You see, we were late marrying, and we never had children. I think, in many ways, that it was fortunate. Paul doesn’t find it easy to mix socially. But he did enjoy the company of the children. Perhaps he was a little foolish—he did tend to spoil them so, especially Sian—but there was no harm in it.”
So you do know about his infatuation, Molly thought, but you indulge him in it, as you indulge him in everything else.
“How did you meet him?” she asked, too curious to be concerned by the impudence of asking.
“I was matron of a rest home for the elderly,” she said. “A small, private home, my own business. His mother was one of our residents. He visited her regularly. When she passed away, he asked me to marry him.”
That’s it, Molly thought, identifying at last the nature of the relationship between Paul and Marjory Derbyshire. She treats him, not like a child, but like a very old, slightly demented gentleman whose fantasies must be humoured and who must be protected from his own mischief.
Paul Derbyshire had taken George Palmer-Jones into a small room. It must, George thought, be very similar to his surgery. There was a desk with a card index, and on the walls rows of books. Half of them were medical, academic, half of them concerned with natural history. A large, glossy book lay on a sheet of brown paper on the desk. They discussed it briefly.
George did not want to frighten the doctor into immediate denial.
“I believe that Charlie had something which belonged to you, when he died,” George said carefully.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t wish to tell you that. I want to know how it was returned to you.”
But Paul Derbyshire did not answer the question.
“Did he talk about it to anyone?” he said wildly. “How could he understand? He never cared for anyone but himself. Well, it’s too late. I’ve burnt it. No one can prove anything now.”
George tried not to show, not to feel, distaste. “I don’t think,” he said, “that it’s a matter of proving anything. But I need to know how it was returned to you. I do not wish to involve the police.”
Again the doctor reacted irrationally. “Tell the police. No one can touch me now. It is burnt, and Charlie is dead.” He grew more calm. “Besides,” he said sadly, looking up at George through the straight shank of white hair which had fallen over his forehead, “nothing ever happened, you know. Nothing ever happened.”
It had been a strange conversation. There had been no direct questions, no proper answers, but George thought that they had understood each other. He understood, at least, that Paul Derbyshire would talk no more about it. He stood up.
“I would like everyone to be on the island the day after tomorrow. Will you come?”
It was as if the previous exchange between them had never happened.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “Give me the details, and I’ll come.”
Elizabeth was waiting for them in the Land Rover. She was reading a library book. There was an empty sandwich box on the seat beside her. It seemed that she had been there for some time. All three of them sat in the front, squeezed together in relative comfort. She drove down the slipway on to the sand. The sun was very low in the sky. They drove directly towards it. The island was a silhouette suspended between sky and shore. Elizabeth spoke for the first time.
“Not even two murders can spoil it,” she said. “It’s more important, somehow, than that.”
Chapter Fifteen
George and Molly lit a fire in the common room that evening. They burnt pitch pine, which had been washed up at the north end of the island. It burned beautifully, and smelled of creosote and spice. Elizabeth came to find them there. Molly was knitting and George was reading.
Why weren’t my parents like that? Elizabeth thought with pain and resentment.
“I collected the mail from the post office today,” she said casually. “There was a letter for you.”
She would have liked to join them, but it was clear that they wanted to be alone. She went back to the flat.
It had been delivered to the post office by hand. The envelope was addressed in a strong upright script, as if painted with a brush. The letter was short and direct:
“Dear sir, I understand that you are interested in my affairs. If you come to my home tomorrow at 11.00 a.m. I might be able to help you.”
It was signed A. Todd.
“So,” George said, “ perhaps I won’t need Connibear after all.”
“If Albert tells you what is going on.”
“Why else would he want to see me?”
“To find out what you know.”
“Yes,” George said. “ There is that. But there must be something going on. Why else would he have written to me? If he’s curious about me, that’s interesting in itself, don’t you think?”
Molly counted the stitches on the knitting needle.
“You are sure that it all began with the Todds’ business?” “Yes,” George said. “ That’s the one thing I am sure about.”
He went the next day, alone. He left Molly detailed instructions. She tried not to resent them, but watched him off with relief. He had been so restless, so tiresome in the repetition of his orders. John and Elizabeth seemed to have maintained their peace, although Molly thought that Elizabeth had still not given any explanation for her secret trips to the mainland. They spoke very little to each other, as if the peace were fragile and could be shattered by one thoughtless word. She was wearing a loose dress—the first public expression of her pregnancy. John had offered to take George to the mainland in the Land Rover, but George had insisted that he would walk.
Molly walked to the Beacon to watch him go. She stayed there long after he had reached the mainland. It was very calm. The incoming tide crawled in one smooth movement up the shore. There was none of the usual ebb and flow, no breaking waves, no noise.
The lull before the storm, Molly thought, and the cliché dominated her thoughts, so that all day she was tense, waiting for a crisis, and when none occurred, she was left drained, wretched and disappointed.
In one of the houses in Laurel Avenue there was a nursery school. As George got out of the car, the children raced out of the front door to play in the garden. They chased across the grass and threw armfuls of dead leaves at each other. Above the sound of children’s voices a church clock chimed eleven times.
The Todds’ house stood on a corner and was the biggest in the quiet street. George knocked on the door. It was opened immediately by a motherly, middle-aged woman. She seemed embarrassed, and in the hall she introduced herself as Elsie, Albert’s daughter-in-law.
Then she whispered: “You mustn’t mind him. Don’t be offended. He gets peculiar ideas. It’s his age.”
She showed him into a small sittin
g room. George had expected to see a frail and elderly man. He was surprised at once by the size and the power of Albert Todd. He was large and fleshy with rather short legs, so he was stranded on his high chair, like a whale on a beach, but he did not seem ridiculous. He had his eyes shut. That gave an impression not of rest, but of regeneration. He did not acknowledge George’s presence in the room, but George was sure that the old man knew he was there. The eyes opened slowly and were fixed, unblinking, on George’s face.
“You’ve been asking questions about me,” the old man said. His voice was deep, his accent broad, unchanged since childhood. “ Why was that then?”
He spoke slowly, but his eyes were alert and angry.
“Not about you,” George said. “About your sons’ business.”
“It’s my business.” The reply was loud and furious.
“I’m sorry,” George said. “If I had realized I should have come to you first.”
“They should all remember that I still own the business. I’m not dead yet.”
Then he leaned back on his chair, the anger past.
“Well,” he said, speaking slowly again. “ You’re here now, so ask away.”
But George would not go straight to the point. He would not allow himself to be bullied by this formidable old man.
“How did you know that I was asking questions about the business?”
“There’s not much about the business that I don’t know. At least, there never used to be.”
“So you didn’t know what was going on between Charlie and your other sons?”
Albert did not answer, but George knew that he had scored a point.
“Did your sons tell you that I’d been asking questions?”
“Laurence said you’d been into the office. I’ve got other friends who said that someone was being nosy.”
“So you know the questions I’ve been asking. I wanted to know if Charlie had been blackmailing the family. I’ve been asking if there has been any irregularity or fraud which could have been used against you. I still want to know.”
Albert shut yellow, reptilian eyelids. He was thinking. He was obviously coming to a difficult decision. George did not interrupt. He waited until the eyes opened again.
“Are you a friend of young Mardle?” the old man asked sharply.
“Yes,” George said. “ I suppose that I am.”
“Is this in confidence? You won’t go bleating to the police?”
“Not unless it’s relevant to the murder.”
“So that’s why you’re interested. You don’t think that Mardle did it either. I told Savage that the boy wouldn’t have killed Charlie. He didn’t take any notice. When I heard that you’d been asking questions, I started asking some of my own. They knew that I wouldn’t have approved. That’s why they didn’t tell me. I don’t blame Laurence. I don’t think he liked it any more than I did.”
For the first time Albert was showing signs of his age. The eyes closed again. He was collecting his thoughts. Sunlight slanted through the small window on to his face. His eyes remained shut as he continued to talk.
“There was a planning matter. A certain development in a sensitive position. There would have been objections, bound to have been. They wanted to make sure that it all went through quickly. Ernest knew someone on the council, played golf with the senior planning officer. I don’t know any details. I’ve told you, I wouldn’t have approved. But promises were made. We have interests abroad. There were offers of holidays, talk of a share of a villa in Spain. I’ve stopped it all now. There’d be no point anyway, as things turned out. But if the press got to hear of it, we’d be ruined. There’s no need now for anyone to know.”
“But Charlie knew what was going on, didn’t he? That’s why he went to the office the Friday before he went north.”
Albert opened his eyes. Bloodshot and triumphant, they stared at George.
“Charlie knew all about it. But he wasn’t trying to blackmail us. Quite the opposite. The … negotiations I’ve described. They were all Charlie’s idea.”
Molly was walking around the island, following the hightide line. She walked slowly. Occasionally she stopped and crouched to pull a piece of smooth thick glass from the drying seaweed, before discarding it and continuing her walk. Then she found what George had told her to look for. It had been washed on to the sand and was still quite intact. It was the size and shape of a honey jar and the screw top was still tightly in place. There was no label, no trace of glue on the glass where a label might once have been. She was not sure, at first, what to do with it. Surely all the fingerprints would have been washed off by now. But why then did George think that it was so important? Finally she took out a rather grubby handkerchief, and with that lifted the jar into her small canvas rucksack. The tide was full in now. There was no more that she could do until George came back.
George knew that he would have to see Savage, but he delayed the interview. He drove north along the coast into the steep, wooded valley where Jerry Packham lived and where Charlie Todd had owned a cottage. He could have telephoned. He knew that the trip was an indulgence, a diversion, but he needed time to form his argument before he saw Savage. He could go no further without the police. The valley ran inland, at right angles to the sea. The road twisted down to a cluster of cottages and a small harbour, but Jerry’s house was built into the hillside, at the head of the valley. The land fell away beneath the cottage so that despite the trees there was a fine view and a clear light.
Jerry was working. He had a preoccupied air and stained fingers, but he found George a can of beer. He tried not to show how much he minded leaving his easel.
“I’d heard that you were still here,” he said. “Have you been able to do much ringing?”
“A bit. But that’s not why I’m still on the island.”
“You don’t think that Nick was the murderer?”
“No.”
“How can I help?”
“I wanted to ask you about some rumours. Have you heard any gossip about Paul Derbyshire?”
“I’ve heard rumours about everyone.”
“Please, Jerry. It might be important.”
“Pam was always rather cruel about him. She knew him before he was married. She was his receptionist before she had the children.”
“What did she say about the doctor?”
“That he made a fool of himself over a couple of the young female patients. Idealized them. Wrote poetry to them.”
“Did he take any of them out?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. That would have been quite normal. That was the point.”
“You’ve not heard anything recently?”
“Oh no. I think that Marjory keeps him on a very tight rein.”
“Had Pamela kept in touch with him, socially?”
“They didn’t have much in common, except the island, and the RSPB local members’ group, but Pamela used Paul and Marjory to babysit quite often, when the children were small. Sian and Edward are very fond of them. The Todds are a peculiar family and William’s parents are dead, so Paul and Marjory have become sort of replacement grandparents.”
“I gathered that it was something like that. Did Charlie ever talk about Paul or ever have a go at him, tease him?”
“Not specially.”
“Are you usually good at getting up in the morning?”
“What do you mean?”
“Could the murderer have taken a chance that you would oversleep? Do you often do it?”
“I’m not at my best in the mornings, but I’m usually reasonably punctual. I think I know why I slept in last weekend. I’ve had a lousy cold ever since. I may have had a bit of a temperature.”
“Can you get over to the island tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I’m very busy. I’ve this plate to finish by the end of the month.”
His eyes were already straying back to his work. George knew that he was losing concentration.
“Do you know w
hy Elizabeth Richards should be visiting William Marshall?”
He said it to shock, to regain Jerry’s attention.
“No,” Jerry said. “ I’m sure that there can be no personal involvement. William’s very respectable. Not Elizabeth’s type at all.”
“Will you come to the island tomorrow? I won’t need to trouble you again.”
Jerry laughed. “ Yes,” he said. “I’ll come.”
There was no excuse now not to go straight to the police station, but George drove slowly up the valley. I should have left all this to the police, he thought, not very seriously. Then there would be nothing to stop me walking through the woods, checking the warblers on the brambles down by the harbour. A bit of gentle birdwatching on a still autumn day is more suited to an elderly gentleman than this.
How can I be right? And if I am right can I prove it? Then he remembered Nicholas, and he thought: If I cannot trust my own logic and my own intelligence, I will never enjoy birdwatching again. If I cannot trust my instinct in this, how will I know, when I see a glaucous gull or a marsh warbler, that it is what I believe it to be? This thing is just as simple. Either Nicholas Mardle killed two people or he did not. Either a bird is a glaucous gull or a herring gull. If ever a time comes when I cannot definitely identify a bird, then I will give it all up. And I know that Nicholas did not kill anyone.
He did not know why he was so daunted at the prospect of an interview with Savage. He was, by this time, quite sure who had killed Charlie Todd and Pamela Marshall. Did he expect Savage to shake his confidence? Rather he was afraid of losing his confidence in the policeman. If the superintendent showed himself to be a complete fool, things would be very awkward.
He drove into the town and parked by the police station. Just outside the building he met Connibear. The detective did not attempt to avoid him.
“I’m sorry that it’s taken so long to get the information you wanted,” he said. “ I was going to get in touch today. I’ve checked with the Inland Revenue and VAT. They’ve never had any suspicions about Todd Leisure. Ernie employs a clever accountant but it’s all quite legal.”
