Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand (22 page)

“Do you know if Mr. Littleton saw any other women while he was married to your daughter?” George asked, still looking at the magnificent view, wondering if the island had worked its magic twice for Peter. Was it here that he had first fallen in love with Sally, as well as with Barbara? Because, despite the lack of proof, he was convinced that Peter and Sally had been in love. He knew that Peter was Barnaby’s father.

“Him?” Ted Baxter almost spat with disgust. “ He wouldn’t have had it in him. Who would have wanted another woman when he could have had my daughter? I tell you. You don’t know these birdwatchers. They don’t care about anything else except their birds.”

“So there were never any rumours about Mr. Littleton and another woman?”

“Rumours. There may have been rumours. There are always rumours in a place like this. There have been rumours enough about Barbara and none of them are true. Not one of them. She was a good wife to him.”

The back door leading to the farmyard opened then, and a young woman walked in. She was wearing jeans and leather boots and a loose jersey. She had been riding. She was beautiful, in the conventional way that a model is beautiful. Her tan was too deep, her lashes too long to be natural. Her hair was windswept, but when she shook it, it settled back into its ordained shape. She raised her eyebrows at their visitor with an attempt at sophisticated curiosity, but when she spoke, the simple, friendly girl described by Charlotte Cavanagh showed through.

“Who’s our visitor, Dad? Is there any tea in the pot, Mum?”

George saw no sign of the strain described by Ted Baxter, the dependence on tranquillizers. She looked healthy; pampered. In middle age she would grow fat.

“This is Mr. Palmer-Jones, my love,” said her father, as if he were talking to an invalid. “ He’s come to ask some questions about that husband of yours. You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to. We don’t want you to upset yourself.”

“He’s my ex-husband, Dad,” she said. “And I don’t care at all about answering any questions. What’s he done? Been in trouble with the police again, has he?”

The last question seemed to be a malicious attempt to bring her father to anger. She shot a defiant look at him as she spoke. But Baxter misunderstood her, and thought that she was accusing him of telling the police about Peter’s final fling on the island. He answered defensively.

“Why are you talking about the police? I promised that I wouldn’t go to the police and I never did. And I paid off Mary at the post office so she wouldn’t make a fuss. He’s never been in trouble with the police. Not because of me at any rate.”

“I didn’t say because of you, Dad,” she said with another failed attempt at sophistication. “ He’d been in court before he came to the island that first summer.”

Before Ted Baxter could use this information as yet another indication of his opinion of Peter Littleton, George interrupted.

“Did he tell you why he’d been in court?” George asked, knowing already what the answer would be.

“Drugs,” she said flatly. “ He’d been in trouble for taking dope.”

“Did you know that when you married him?” Ted Baxter was flushed with rage but, in an attempt not to upset his daughter, he tried to restrain his anger. “You knew he was a junkie and you married him. I’ve had a drug addict under my roof?”

“Oh, Dad,” she said condescendingly. “ He wasn’t a drug addict. Everyone does it these days. It’s nothing-to make a fuss about.”

Ted Baxter, luckily, seemed able to find no reply to this, and George asked:

“Did he use drugs when you knew him, when you were married?”

“Not much.”

She spoke with regret, as if admitting an indiscretion. Perhaps she thought it was sophisticated to take drugs.

“I think sometimes the birdwatchers brought him some. I know that he smoked occasionally at parties.”

“Did you ever meet any of his friends?”

“I certainly did,” she said petulantly. “They came to stay every spring and autumn. They made a terrible mess all over the house. There were sleeping bags everywhere. I even found one of those twitchers sleeping in the bath. I stuck it for two years and then I put my foot down. Peter brought them home for meals sometimes, usually when I was out, but I wouldn’t have them to stay.”

“Did any of them become your friends?”

She tried to look amused.

“They hardly seemed to notice that I was there. They only ever talked about birds.”

“Did you meet Tom French or Rob Earl?”

“I remember Rob Earl. He’s the good-looking one. He looks like that old-fashioned film star … What’s his name? He was in all the westerns on the television. Rob got drunk at our wedding. I’ve heard of Tom French, but I can’t remember what he looks like.”

“He had a party on St. Mary’s a year ago last September. Peter went to it. Did you go with him?”

“No,” she said definitely. “I never went to any of the birdwatchers’ parties. I was never made to feel welcome.”

George walked back to the quay the long way round, along the cliffs. The scent of gorse blossom was sweet and heavy, and the light was very clear. Gulls and guillemots, unusually lazy, sat in ledges on the cliffs, or glided below him. Further away, he could see his boat waiting for him and the boatman sitting on the sand, apparently asleep.

He sat on the short grass and tried to evaluate the information he had gained since coming to the island. There was really nothing new, nothing tangible. He knew now that Sally had become involved with some man while she was working on Tresco, and that she had left suddenly because she was pregnant. He could have deduced that from Barnaby’s age. He had learnt that the police wanted to question her about drugs found at a party she had attended. Surely he could infer that the party had been Tom’s. It coincided exactly with the date of Tom’s court appearance. Why, then, was he so convinced that Peter and not Tom was the father of Sally’s child? Because of the way that Sally and Tom’s relationship had developed and because she had never allowed Tom to be considered the father. But he still had no real evidence of any connection between Peter and Sally, apart from the coincidence that both had been on Scilly and both had been in love. He had learnt that Peter had been prosecuted in the past for drug abuse, and that he still occasionally took cannabis. Did that have any relevance? Had he planted the drug on Tom at the party? That was aimless speculation.

The heat was making George drowsy and muddled his thoughts. He stood up quickly and walked back towards the boat. He had wasted enough time. Perhaps the young people would be back from Scotland and he had more questions now to ask them.

He was walking down the lane towards the quay when Charlotte Cavanagh caught up with him. She moved strongly and purposefully, like a man.

“George, my dear. I’m so glad that you’re still here. I was afraid that I’d miss you. I’ve remembered something. It doesn’t look very good for Peter, but I suppose that I should tell you. Peter had a rival in his love for the girl. He used to laugh about it and about how slow and timid this other boy was. ‘She doesn’t even know that he fancies her,’ Peter said to me. ‘And yet he’s so lovesick that he doesn’t think about anything else. Perhaps I should leave her alone, to give him a chance. He’d be better for her than me. But I can’t do it.’ Oh George, I’m sure that the name of the boy was Tom. I’m certain of it. He was a birdwatcher and he was staying on St. Mary’s.”

So the trip had been worth while. He had made the vital connection between Tom, Peter and Sally. They had all been together on the Scillies and they had all been in Norfolk on the day of Tom’s death. For the moment that was enough for him. In the small boat, with the breeze blowing against his face and the low sun reflected on the water, the magic of the Scillies began to work for him again and he was untroubled.

Molly woke to the smell of frying bacon and mushrooms. George was home then. She roused slowly from a deep sleep, comfortable because George was back. He had not come to bed; she hoped that he had slept in the train. He had a remarkable facility for managing without sleep, but she could not understand it, and she was anxious about him. She sat up.

The bedroom was appallingly untidy, furnished from auctions and jumble sales. Her clothes were spilling out of drawers and were piled on the unsteady wooden bedside table, which her eldest son had made in his school woodwork class. George’s wardrobe was firmly shut and his side of the bed clear of debris, but everywhere was very dusty. Molly did not notice. It was never any different. She tried to tell, from the kitchen sounds, if George had had a successful trip. She had learnt to manage his depressions, but she still dreaded them. She dreaded them on his account because of the pain of his self-doubt, his loneliness and guilt, and on her own account, because the effort of getting through to him, to reassure him, drained and exhausted her.

She heard footsteps on the stairs, then the door opened and George was bringing her tea. After all the years of marriage, she was still deeply pleased to see him. He opened the curtains and the sunlight almost blinded her, so that she still could not tell from his face if he was happy or disappointed. He cleared some of her clothes from the table on to the floor, then placed the tea beside her.

“Tell me what happened,” she said. “Did you find out what you wanted?”

“Breakfast is ready.” he said. “I’ll tell you in the kitchen.”

He bent down and kissed her. She watched him go with relief, knowing that whatever had happened on Scilly, he was more at ease. She washed and dressed quickly, then followed him down. He had already eaten, but poured out coffee for them both.

“Did you find anything useful?” she demanded.

“I’ll tell you in a moment, but first have you had any news from Ella or Mrs. Black? Has Terry been found? Have Rob and the others arrived back from Scotland?”

“No to all the questions. I phoned Ella yesterday afternoon. The police seem to be doing a house-to-house search for Terry in Rushy and Fenquay and they’re moving on to Skeffingham today, but they’ve told Mrs. Black that they’ve no warrant for his arrest. They just want to talk to him, Ella hasn’t heard from Pete, Rob or Adam at all. She’s quite hurt. She’s got the impression that they’re phoning someone else for any information about birds.”

Molly looked at him over her gold-rimmed National Health spectacles.

“Well,” she said impatiently. “It’s your turn now. What did you find out?”

“That Sally Johnson has been lying to us. She left Tresco a year ago last September, apparently because she was pregnant, although there may have been other reasons. She left in a hurry. The day before she went she was at a party given by a birdwatcher who sounds very like Tom French. Later the police came to the hotel to look for her, because she had been a witness in a drugs case.”

“So Tom was Barnaby’s father after all, and that was why he was so keen for Sally to marry him and move to Bristol with him.”

“I don’t think so. According to Charlotte Cavanagh, who seems to have known Peter very well, Peter was in love at that time, not with his wife, but with a stranger. Do you remember that, when we first met Peter at the greenish warbler, he mentioned in quite an off-hand way that he only became completely disillusioned with his wife when he met someone else? I think that he was talking about Sally. Charlotte said, too, that someone else was interested in the girl. Someone called Tom.”

“But Sally had no legal ties with Tom. If she’d wanted to live with Peter she could have done. Why didn’t she? Did Peter know that she was in Norfolk?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it all means. Perhaps now that I know this much, Sally will tell me the rest. There’s another complication. According to Barbara, Peter’s ex-wife, Peter used drugs. Not often, but quite regularly. He even had a conviction for cannabis abuse.”

“Is that significant? It isn’t so unusual.”

“It’s just another coincidence, isn’t it? Tom, known never to touch drugs, got charged with possession of cannabis. I’m sure that Peter was at that party, but he got away. And talking about coincidences, I want to talk to Bernard Cranshaw about those letters, and about who told him that Tom French had been to court.”

“So you’re planning to go back to Rushy today?”

“Definitely. I want to see Bernard Cranshaw, and I must go to the remand centre where Dennis Shawcroft, the chef from the White Lodge, is being held in custody. After all he seems to have had something to do with Terry’s disappearance. He may even know where he is. He certainly made every effort to stop the lad talking to us.”

“Clive Anderson came to see you last night,” Molly said. “ He wanted to know where Adam was. Adam hasn’t been in touch since his accident, apparently. His school hasn’t heard from him. He’s supposed to be taking A-levels next week. He’s allowed the time off for revision, but he should have been into the school to discuss an essay. Poor Mr. Anderson. He was quite human. He’s very worried about Adam, you know. He wasn’t very happy that he’d disappeared to Scotland with the other three. He almost accused us of being negligent.”

“He’s right,” George said. “Does he think that Adam will come back to sit his exams?”

“He didn’t say. I got the feeling that he came to get information, not to give it.”

“Do you think that he knows more than he’ll admit?”

“It’s impossible to say. That’s why it was always so difficult to appear before him in court. His face was so impassive. You could never tell whether or not you’d got through to him. Last night he seemed very eager to find out exactly where Adam was.”

“Did you tell him?”

“I didn’t know. They’ll have seen the stork yesterday evening and could be anywhere by now.”

“I wish we knew whom Adam met in Fenquay on the morning of his accident.”

“You don’t think that it was Clive Anderson?”

“I don’t know at all. I want to talk to Sally about it. She may be able to give some description of Adam’s companion.”

George was impatient to get to Norfolk. Molly packed in a disorganized, absent-minded way, growing flustered as George urged her to hurry. It was just the same before every trip.