Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand (8 page)

Despite herself, Sally listened avidly. Apparently the police had interviewed the staff at the White Lodge hotel, even Mr. Yates, the manager, and they had talked to all the birdwatchers who lived locally. Ella paused, and in a confidential way, as if it were a gift and bound to provide reassurance, passed to Sally the information that George Palmer-Jones had been asked to find out if any of the birdwatchers were involved in Tom’s death.

In some strange way the news was reassuring. Sally had never met George Palmer-Jones, but she had heard of him. He was a vague figure in twitching mythology and, listening to Ella speaking of him with reverence, he grew even more unreal, fantastic to Sally. For a moment there was an intense panic, when the dream again spilled over into her waking thoughts, and she believed for a while that she had something to hide, something more terrible than the secrets she had kept to herself for so long, and in that moment she knew that the omniscient Palmer-Jones would find her out. But then, more rationally, she realized how much she wanted the person who had murdered Tom to be caught, not for revenge, but because then the affair would be decently over and she would be free. She had grown wary of making important decisions on impulse, but on the bus on the way back to Fenquay she decided to contact Palmer-Jones. It would be the first constructive thing she had ever done for Tom.

On the morning after his return from Rushy George spoke to Sally on the telephone and arranged to meet her the following weekend. She was a little nervous, very friendly and only told him not to expect too much from the meeting:

“There’s nothing much that I can tell you, but I thought you might like to meet me.”

Then he phoned the White Lodge to book a room for Molly and himself for the weekend. He sensed a feeling of relief, almost of gratitude in the voice that answered. He supposed that Tom’s death would have had a bad effect on trade.

Sally had invited them to tea, and they drove straight to Fenquay. It was very hot, very sunny, and there was a heavy, sleepy feel to the day. The cottage was right in the middle of the village, crammed in a terrace, but it backed on to a stream, so the garden was not directly overlooked. Sally met them and took them through the two downstairs rooms to the garden. The rooms were colourful, comfortable, sparsely furnished. In one there was a big wooden box of toys, many of them home-made. On the patch of grass there was a tiny apple tree, pink with blossom. The small garden, surrounded by a high brick wall, seemed full of its scent. They sat on a patchwork blanket on the grass and drank tea and ate chocolate cake, while Barnaby showed off his new skill of walking.

George felt drowsy in the heavy atmosphere and throughout the afternoon found it hard to concentrate on what was being said. His mind wandered. He had expected to find in Sally a neurotic girl, and his first thought was that she was a woman. She was anxious and preoccupied, but still controlled and self-possessed. She must have been older than Tom and was perhaps thirty. She had wide, high cheekbones, and all her features were a little too big. Her straight fine hair was long and unstyled. The child looked at her often, uncertain in the presence of these strangers, but seemed happy and well cared for. George found himself watching her, staring as if he were invisible. She was not slim, but she was graceful, utterly feminine. He could understand Tom’s infatuation. She saw that their plates were full, gave Barnaby a plastic cup of orange juice, then sat on the grass, her legs tucked under her.

George felt that he should take the initiative in the interview, but his lethargy was such that Sally spoke first.

“I want to help you find out who killed Tom,” she said in answer to an unasked question. “ It’s the only way I can come to terms with the fact that he’s dead.”

“You must have cared for him very much,” said Molly gently.

“No,” Sally replied. “Not very much at all. But he was so kind to me … He gave me more than I was ever able to return. If I had been able to give him some real affection, if he had been able to believe that I loved him, perhaps I wouldn’t feel so dreadful now. But I wanted to be free of him and he died. It feels as if I killed him. So now I want to do something to show that I did care, in a way. Besides, I’ve got my own reasons for needing to know who killed him.”

She took three brown envelopes from her bag. One was still unopened. George read the two notes and, after Sally had nodded her approval, he handed them to Molly. He looked carefully at the envelopes.

“When did these arrive?” he asked.

“One on the morning that Tom died, and one on Monday. This,” she held up the unopened letter, her hand trembling, “came the day I phoned you.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

She took a deep breath. “I’ll open it now. It’s no good just pretending that this isn’t happening.”

“Oh,” she said, very quietly. “Oh, it’s horrible.”

It was written in the same uneven capitals. She was blinking back the tears. She showed them.

“Because of you, Tom French is dead,” it said. “ Perhaps you will be next.”

“Have you told the police about these?”

She shook her head, still very upset.

“The police came to interview me, after Tom died. They weren’t very sympathetic. I just answered their questions. A letter calling me a whore seemed pretty unimportant compared with Tom’s death.”

“You’ll have to tell them now.”

“I suppose I will.”

“Have you any idea who could have sent them?”

She shook her head helplessly. She was too distressed to think constructively. “ Do you think they were sent by the same person who killed Tom?”

“I don’t know,” George said slowly, “I really don’t know. Have you ever heard of Bernard Cranshaw?”

“I can’t remember meeting him. I’ve heard Tom talk about him. It always sounded to me as if he was jealous of Tom.”

“I’m sure that you’re right. I’m asking because he’s the only person I’ve met who ever expressed any antipathy towards Tom.”

Sally did not respond at all.

“Is there anything else you can tell us which might help us to find out who killed him?”

She made an effort to pull herself together, to collect her thoughts.

“No, nothing specific. But I know that something happened the week before he died. About two months ago he was offered the chance of working full time for a tour company, leading bird watching holidays abroad. He hated working in the White Lodge and although he loved Rushy he was starting to get restless. It was the sort of thing he’d always wanted to do. The tour company was based in Bristol and he would have had to move there. He very much wanted to take the job—it was a good one and I think there’d been a lot of competition for it. I know that Rob Earl was angry. He felt that it should have been offered to him. Tom was worried about Barnaby and me.”

She gave a wry smile. “He usually was worried about Barnaby and me. It took him a long time, but finally he decided to take the job, although I made it clear that I was not prepared to move to Bristol. I was very pleased. It gave me the chance to be independent of him, without seeming ungrateful. He knew that we had settled here. It gave him the chance to be independent of me too.

“Then, a few days before he died, suddenly he seemed to change his mind. He said that I wouldn’t be able to look after Barnaby on my own. He asked me to marry him, to go to Bristol with him. When I refused he got really angry, crazy angry. I think that he’d been drinking. He said that he would get Barnaby taken into care, that he would say he was the father, and apply for custody himself. At first I was frightened. I’d never seen him like that before. He said a lot of cruel things, personal things. Then I lost my temper and told him that I never wanted to see him again. I never did.”

“Did you tell the police about your argument?”

“I didn’t need to. The walls of the cottage are very thin and they interviewed the neighbours before they came to see me.”

“And nothing he said gave you any indication of what had changed his mind?”

She shook her head.

“I got the impression that it had been a very sudden change of heart through, that it wasn’t something that he’d thought out clearly. The evening of the row he was late getting here. He’d been having a meal with Ella and Jack, but Ella would have been the last person to try to persuade him not to take the job. She’d understand what it meant to him.”

“Did you hear from Tom again?”

“Yes, he phoned the night before he died.”

“You spoke to him? Even though you had been so angry just a couple of days before?”

“Yes. You must understand that I had no right to be angry with him. I owed him so much. When he phoned it was as if I’d never lost my temper. There was the same concern, the same worry about me. He phoned to say that he wouldn’t be coming to see me that night. He was going birdwatching early the next morning.”

“So you knew that he would be out on the marsh early on the day he died?”

“Yes, I knew.” She understood perfectly the implication of his question.

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“No, I didn’t see anyone else.”

“Where were you on the Saturday morning that Tom died?”

“I was here. The police don’t believe me. Someone phoned from the hotel to find out why Tom wasn’t at work, and there was no reply. I heard the phone but I was bathing Barnaby. I couldn’t leave him on his own in the bath, and by the time I took him out and reached the phone it had stopped ringing. I told the police but I could tell that they didn’t believe me.”

Barnaby was sitting on the grass at her side, reaching forward between his bare feet, pulling the heads off daisies. Sally pulled him closer to her, held him tight. He chortled as if it were a game, but she did not seem to be playing.

“That last letter … it seems to say that I had something to do with Tom’s death.” She was speaking softly, without drama. “The police have looked at Jenny Kenning’s records and they know about our row, so they know all about Tom’s threats to have Barnaby taken into care. When they came to see me they were very polite, but they were so suspicious.”

If that were a plea for reassurance, none came. Molly wanted to say that Sally was being silly, that of course no one could think that she had killed Tom. But George did not answer, and Molly felt that her words would be meaningless. The silence which expressed their lack of faith in Sally angered her, but George sat, still and impassive, and she dared not speak. In the village the parish bell-ringers were practising. A long way off there was the sound of a tractor. Under the apple tree the silence lingered, grew unbearable. Barnaby seemed to sense the tension and toddled away from the adults to the shady corner behind the tree and grew busy, examining dead blossoms, twigs and a cracked flower pot. It was to defend herself, to break the silence, that Sally said:

“Tom seemed very popular among the birdwatchers, but some of the younger ones resented him. He patronized them in the same way that he patronized me. He tried to tell them how to behave. He tried to show them birds they had already identified.”

“How do you know that they felt that way? Did he ever bring any of the twitchers here?”

He still spoke quietly and unassumingly, but Molly could sense Sally’s hostility and her growing panic.

“I used to go out with Tom on his day off. It embarrassed me. It was like being on a royal tour. Tom expected everyone to know him. Everyone was supposed to have heard of the famous Tom French. But he hadn’t found a rare bird for ages and that attitude doesn’t go down well with some of the younger lads. Occasionally he brought people to stay the night here. I wouldn’t have minded if it had happened more often. I enjoyed the company but Tom was afraid that it disturbed Barnaby.”

“Who did Tom bring to stay?”

“Rob Earl came most often, and there was a schoolboy who stayed a couple, of times.”

“Adam Anderson?”

“I can’t remember his name. He was very quiet.”

“Are there any other twitchers who were friends of yours, anyone you know at all well?”

Molly noticed a sudden tension, as if for a moment the panic had taken over. She thought that Sally would be unable to answer but the sensation passed so swiftly that Molly wondered if she had imagined it. Sally was replying calmly:

“No, just acquaintances I had met through Tom.”

“How did Tom get on with the other staff in the hotel?” She shrugged.

“I think that they thought he was mad. But most people think that twitchers are mad. He used to go drinking with one of the chefs called Dennis. He wasn’t specially friendly with any of them.”

“Do you know anything about his conviction for possession of cannabis?”

There was a slight hesitation before she shook her head.

“No, he never talked about it.”

It was obvious then that she wanted them to go. She began to talk about Barnaby’s bedtime and to collect together the tea things.

George stayed, refusing to take these hints, even when Barnaby began to cry in a tired, bad-tempered way. He felt oddly dissatisfied. He knew that there was an important question still to be asked, but the essence of it eluded him. He had come close to it at one point, but his attention had wandered, so that he could not focus on it, could not form it precisely. Yet, still he could not take the decision to go. Molly finally dragged him away. He felt like a stubborn, ill-tempered child as she said goodbye to Sally. She almost seemed to be apologizing for his churlish behaviour. In the car he could sense her anger.

“What’s the matter, my dear?” he asked in a voice which was meant to sound conciliatory, but sounded only tired and a little pompous.

“Why did you treat her like that? You treated her like a suspect.”

“She is a suspect.”

“But the anonymous letters … Surely they clear her of suspicion.”

“Do they? It seems odd that the first letter arrived on the day of Tom’s death. Nobody but Sally knew that he planned to be on the marsh early. It was unusual for him to go birdwatching before work and he doesn’t seem to have discussed it with anyone else. If the letter was conjured out of the same sense of hatred as the murder, then the person who committed both acts must have had the gift of second sight. I’d guess that the letter was posted on the Thursday before he died. The postmark was blurred, but it only had a second-class stamp. I doubt if Tom himself knew on Thursday that he would go out to the marsh on Saturday.”