Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever

by Ann Cleeves

  Again she was astounded by the folly of his confession. It was possible, of course, that he had no memory of meeting Greg Franks in the hostel, though the memory of the fire meant they must have been there at the same time. Alternatively, if he was the killer and the murder stemmed from the meeting four years before, perhaps he thought it wise to admit to staying there. If he was not aware that all the records had been lost in the fire, he would assume that the police would find out anyway. Most likely, she thought, looking at his brown, blank, ordinary face, he had been trapped by a coincidence the superintendent would never believe, and for a moment she felt ashamed of her part in it. She even considered letting him go back to the cottage, but she had her career to think of and decided it would be safer to keep him there. They would have to search the place before they allowed him back.

  In Myrtle Cottage they were sitting round the table after a late supper when the car came to take Jane Pym to the police station. Rose had cleared most of the plates but had become distracted halfway through the task, and there were still empty wine bottles, glasses, a plate of cheese, a bowl of fruit. During the meal there was little conversation. Each person seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts. They talked in occasional bursts about the weather, foreign travel, and with more commitment about seabirds. Roger reported Gwen Pullen’s theory that the petrel had come from an isolated colony on the Aleutian Islands and discussed ideas for raising money for an expedition during the following breeding season. It was as if murder, the wearing day’s interviews, had never taken place. They were tired and drained.

  The first interruption to the evening came with George’s phone call to Molly. Rose answered it quickly, as if she were expecting the telephone to ring, then called Molly to the phone. When Molly returned to the table, the others looked at her eagerly, though they were too polite, too exhausted, to ask for news. They knew about George’s reputation and hoped for some miraculous end to their misery. They were like a group of ex-patriots trapped in some bleak and hostile country, waiting for information from the civilised world. George had escaped the tedious police questioning and the irritation of continuous shared company. They were a little jealous and thought he should be there to endure it with them.

  “He’s not coming back tonight,” Molly said, and sensed their disappointment, “He said the traffic’s too heavy. It’s the bank holiday.”

  “I’m sorry,” Roger Pym said languidly. “It would have been pleasant to have someone new to talk to.”

  “Where will he stay?” Rose asked. She seemed obliged still to look after them all.

  “There’s an hotel,” Molly said. “ It’s near the village where he was phoning from. I think it’s called Rashwood Hall. Do you know it, Duncan? It must be quite close to your home.”

  Startled from thought of his own, surprised, it seemed, to be spoken to, James blinked and nodded.

  Yes, he said. He had heard of it. He hoped George would be comfortable there.

  “What will the inspector say about his not coming back?” Jane Pym asked. “She didn’t seem very positive when I asked when we could go home.” She was very tense, petulant. She would have liked to explain the importance of her work, to tell them it was vital she return, but the words would not come, and embarrassed, she shrank back into her seat. No one gave her an answer.

  Later, when the meal was over and they could think of nothing more to say, the sound of the front doorbell came as a relief.

  “Perhaps old George has made it back after all,” Roger Pym said. Then the others joined in with a desperate optimism. Perhaps the traffic had cleared. Perhaps George had heard the long-term weather forecast which predicted the tail end of hurricane Erin crossing the Atlantic with a series of heavy depressions. George liked seabirds more than any of them. He would not want to miss a good blow.

  Only Jane Pym remained silent, as if she had a premonition of what was to follow. She watched Rose Pengelly leave the table to answer the door.

  The sight of Sergeant Berry, quiet, apologetic but somehow intimidating in his calm, stopped the chatter. He said that Inspector Bingham was sorry to interrupt their evening, but she would be grateful if she could have a few words with Mrs. Pym. He had a car with him and would bring her back when the interview was over. It was only a routine matter, and they weren’t to worry at all.

  Jane Pym stared at the sergeant, bewildered and unmoving. It was Roger who replied first. “I’ll come, too,” he said. “I’ll not have you bullying Jane. She’ll need someone with her.”

  “No need for that,” Berry said; his voice was firm and gentle. “I’ll look after her for you.”

  And before anyone else could protest, Jane walked towards the sergeant, as if in a trance, and was out of the room. They heard the front door slam and the car drive away. There was a silence.

  Molly could sense then a general frustration. The remaining people were more awake, quite excited. Most of the gathering wished that Roger would leave the table. They were eager to discuss the implication of Jane’s summons, to indulge in the delight and relief of gossip, but it was hardly tactful to speculate that a woman might be a murderer while her husband was sitting in the same room.

  Claire had asked to speak to the woman because she thought she might remember Rosco from the hostel and fill in the gaps from the records lost in the fire. But as the interview progressed, she became aware slowly that the woman had been drinking. At first she seemed quite calm and controlled. She showed little resentment at having been dragged from her supper table out into the night. She did seem to Claire to have aged since the interview in the morning. The lines on her forehead were more noticeable, her hair more lank and untidy. She was easier to intimidate.

  Then the indications of drunkenness became more apparent. Listening to the inspector’s patient questions, Jane’s eyes glazed, and Claire had to repeat herself. She mumbled occasional replies. Some of her responses were slightly incoherent and irrational. There were bursts of aggression. Claire wondered then if she had been taking drugs rather than alcohol, but Jane was a respected probation officer, and at first the idea seemed impossible.

  “You told me that you worked for a while at the probation hostel in Bristol,” the inspector said.

  “Yes,” Jane said. “Just for a few months while the warden was on maternity leave.”

  “Can you tell me when that was?”

  There was a pause and a mumbled reply, so the inspector had to repeat the question.

  “Four years ago, I think,” Jane said. Her head was spinning, and she was finding it impossible to plan what to say. “Yes, it was in the summer four years ago.”

  “And you think you saw Greg Franks there?”

  “I thought so,” Jane said. “ I was almost sure. You’d be able to check on his records. There must be a file somewhere, even if he wasn’t convicted.”

  “We’ve been in touch with the hostel,” Claire said, “but apparently there was a fire, and all the records were lost. It makes things difficult.”

  “Yes,” Jane said. She was staring vacantly in front of her. “ I remember the fire. It was just after I left. I’m sure the wardens have done everything they can to help the police.…” Her voice faded into incoherence.

  “It’s a pity they’ve not been more effective,” Claire said. “ Though I suppose it’s not their responsibility. Neither of them was there four years ago. None of the field officers can remember Franks, either, though.”

  Then Jane Pym’s voice changed and became sharp and hostile, as if Claire had insulted her personally. “You can’t blame probation officers for not remembering all their clients,” she said. “If you knew how many people we see in a year. Some men only stopped in the hostel for a few days. And we do hundreds of social enquiry reports on people coming up to court. It’s a thankless enough job as it is without all this criticism.”

  Claire ignored the anger. “Could one of the men who stayed in the hostel that summer have been Louis Rosco?” she asked. She was beginning
to wonder if Jane Pym was being deliberately obstructive, to imagine even some form of collaboration between the woman and the two clients of the probation service. Her caseload must be full of addicts, and the opportunity of dealing in drugs would be enormous.

  “Why?” Jane Pym asked suddenly. She was shocked, it seemed, out of her alcoholic blur. “Was he there?”

  “So he says. He remembers the fire, so it must have been at the same time as Greg.”

  “No,” Jane said slowly. “ I don’t remember. As I’ve told you, I had left before the fire. Perhaps I’d gone before he arrived.”

  “Doesn’t that seem rather an odd coincidence? That three of you on the Jessie Ellen might have been together in a probation hostel in Bristol and no one recognised each other?”

  “I recognised Greg,” Jane said defensively. “ I thought I knew him.”

  “But not Rosco?”

  “No!” But the idea of Louis Rosco seemed to trouble her, and she withdrew into a dispirited and unhelpful lethargy, answering the inspector’s questions with monosyllables, making it clear that she only wanted the interview to be over.

  Jane was driven home by a uniformed policewoman she had never seen before, and the journey passed in silence. She was pleased. Sergeant Berry made her feel strangely and irrationally guilty, and she felt that in his presence there was a danger she would break down and confess to grave and unimagined sins. The constable dropped her outside Myrtle Cottage, then drove on down the valley to turn the car. Jane stood outside the house, breathing deeply, trying to compose herself before going inside. It was still not late, and she pictured them all there, as she had left them, sitting round the kitchen table waiting with a ghoulish excitement to find out what had happened, perhaps even to accuse her. She suspected that Roger’s offer to accompany her to the police station was caused by curiosity rather than a wish to give her support. It was a pleasant surprise when she lifted the latch on the kitchen door to find the room empty. The living room beyond was dark and quiet, too. They had been so exhausted that everyone, even Roger, must have given up waiting and gone to bed.

  She sat in the dark on the rocking chair in the kitchen and began to cry.

  The old woman must have been standing in the doorway for some time before Jane realised she was there. She stood, quite unembarrassed by the tears, and made no move to come into the room or retreat. When she saw Jane look up, she spoke.

  “Was it quite dreadful!” she said.

  “I suppose not,” she said. “ Just confusing.”

  “Tell me,” Molly said.

  Then the temptation to spill it all out was too much, and Jane explained about Greg and Rosco having been at the hostel, about the fire which had destroyed the records.

  “I was there, too,” Jane said. “I was working in the hostel that summer. The warden was on maternity leave, and I took over. The inspector thinks it’s too much of a coincidence, and that I must in some way be implicated.”

  Molly said nothing. She allowed Jane her righteous indignation. But she thought the inspector was probably right. The coincidence was incredible.

  Molly went to her room then, but she could not sleep. She tried to piece together the overheard conversations, the whispered confessions, the suppressed antagonism, to make some pattern, but it was impossible. At some time after midnight there was a knock on her door, and Rose stood there, like the heroine of some Victorian bodice-ripper, in a long white nightgown and a white shawl. Her hair was tangled and untidy, and there was mud on the hem of her nightdress.

  “Come in,” Molly said mildly. “ What’s the matter?”

  “It’s Louis,” Rose said. She began to cry. “They’ve taken him into custody.”

  “Have they charged him?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

  “What happened?”

  Then Rose began to talk, the words spilling out in random phrases. It was part of a declaration of love, part an explanation of her fear, and only when Molly prompted her, did it become a detailed account of what had happened that evening.

  “I didn’t realise,” she said, “ how much I cared for him. I mean, I fancied him right from the beginning, from the moment he moved into the cottage and I saw him down there, working on the Jessie Ellen, getting her ready for the sea. I mean, I knew then that I wanted to have his baby. But that was all. I didn’t want to get involved. I’d been hurt before. Only safe, unfanciable men like Gerald Matthews for me, I thought. I told Louis that. No involvement, I said, I can’t handle involvement. He told me he’d been to prison. I wasn’t surprised. I mean, there were so many rumours in Heanor about him, I’d have been ready to believe anything. Now look at me. I’m as involved as hell.”

  “What has happened?” Molly asked again. “Where have you been?”

  “Down to the cottage, of course,” Rose said. “ I heard the cars go down some time ago. I thought it was the police bringing Louis home. But you should see what they’re doing there! They’re going through the cottage searching his things. They think he killed Greg Franks. I came back here and phoned the police station. They told me they were keeping Louis in custody overnight.”

  She began to cry. Molly could tell that the hours of waiting for Louis to return to Porthkennan had been a terrible strain.

  “You must do something,” she said. “Louis didn’t kill Greg. He had no reason to. You can help us. I know about you and George. Everyone who comes to stay talks about the Tom French murder. Please get Louis home for me.”

  Molly waited until the tears and hysteria had subsided.

  “Rose,” she said. “ Was Greg Franks blackmailing Louis about his criminal record?”

  “No,” Rose said. “That’s why I’m so certain Louis didn’t kill him. Greg Franks was blackmailing me.”

  “Why?”

  “He had found out somehow who was Matilda’s father,” Rose said. “ He said he would tell the birding world I was screwing a convicted killer. ‘Who would want to stay in Myrtle Cottage then?’ he said. And ‘Who would trust Rosco to take them out in a boat?’”

  “How did he know Louis had been convicted of manslaughter?”

  “He met him in Bristol in some hostel.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t approach Louis for money, too?”

  “No,” she said. “I think he was a bit frightened of Louis.” She paused. “Gerald knew something was going on,” she said. “ He hated Greg and made me promise not to have him here again. But I couldn’t turn him away. I didn’t know what he would do.”

  “Did Gerald ever confront Greg? Tell him to keep away?”

  “No,” Rose said scornfully. “He wouldn’t have the guts.”

  Then Rose, wallowing in her muddled emotion, began to plead with Molly again to do something to free Louis so he could be returned to her. But Molly made no promise, and it was only when she had the phone call from the hospital that she decided to take more direct action.

  When the superintendent discovered the link between Rosco and Franks, he was jubilant. That was enough to keep Rosco in custody at least overnight, he said. In the meantime they would have a look at his cottage. If they could find any illegal substances, it would all be over. But the search of the cottage on the shore ended up as a farce. No one had considered that there might not be electricity, and the lanterns they found were beyond them to operate.

  They plundered the place, like burglars with torches, feeling through the drawers of the heavy old chest in the bedroom, stacking tins of soup from the kitchen cupboard in the middle of the floor. Berry lifted the mattress on the bed and felt the frame beneath, and his fingers came away scratched by rust. There was no gun.

  Although it was very late when Inspector Bingham returned to the house in the smart new estate on the hill, Richard was waiting up for her. She could tell immediately that he was angry and that in the hours of waiting he had stoked the fury with distant wrongs and imagined hurts.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “I�
��ve been worried stiff.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. It was much better, she had discovered, to apologise immediately. Sometimes an apology was enough to satisfy him, and he would become calm and gracious. “I should have phoned.”

  Tonight, however, the apology was insufficient. He had obviously been waiting, brooding on all the things he would say to her when she got in, the painful home truths it would be good for her to hear.

  She had hardly walked through the door when he began his lecture.

  “It’s a matter of priorities,” he said, so quickly that she knew the sentence had been rehearsed. “ I mean, I don’t expect to come first—I’m only your husband after all—but what about your son? You haven’t seen him for days.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “We’ve taken someone into custody. It should be over soon.”

  But that still wasn’t good enough. All the old niggling criticisms, which at another time she might have found amusing, were dragged into the row. There was the lack of ironed shirts, her failure ever to cook anything that hadn’t come out of a microwave or a freezer, the drawer in his chest full of odd socks.

  “Didn’t you realise that Mrs. Newby’s on holiday this week?” he demanded. Mrs. Newby came in twice a week to dust and Hoover and empty the dishwasher. “ The house is collapsing around us. And damm it! I had a meeting of the round table, and I couldn’t go.”

  Then she was joyously and rewardingly furious. He was like a little boy, she said, deprived of some treat. Why did men never grow up? Was he incapable of ironing shirts and cooking meals? And when it came to priorities, she happened to think that catching a murderer was a little more important than the bloody round table. She stormed to the bedroom and fell suddenly and deeply asleep. When he came to bed some time later to make his peace with her, to make love to her, she was so exhausted that he could not wake her. It was only much later that the sound of the telephone’s ringing disturbed her. She picked it up half-asleep, hardly aware of where she was, and some unfamiliar voice informed her that George Palmer-Jones had been the victim of a hit-and-run accident and was in a Bristol hospital.