Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand Page 11

  “Were you on your own?”

  “Yes, I don’t like birding in a crowd. I met people in the copse and the Lodge park, but only to ask them if anything had been seen.”

  George lay back in his chair, forming his words carefully.

  “You know the younger birders better than I do. Has anyone noticed anything odd?”

  Adam seemed pleased to be consulted.

  “No, nobody’s said anything to me and I haven’t heard anything on the grapevine. No rumours.”

  He seemed uncertain about whether he should continue. George said nothing.

  “There is one point … I wasn’t sure if I should say anything … Do you remember I met you at Trekewick, at the greenish?”

  George nodded.

  “There was a friend of Rob Earl’s at the bird. I’d never seen him before. His name’s Pete Littleton. He gave the impression that he’d just got to the mainland from the Scillies and that it was his first trip into the field since he’d got here.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Well, it wasn’t his first trip into the field. I’m sure that he was at Rushy on that Saturday afternoon, the day Tom died. I saw him at the Lodge park and he asked me if I’d seen anything. I wondered who he was. He seemed to know what he was talking about.”

  Adam stopped, knowing that again he was talking too much, too loudly. He looked at George, whose face showed no surprise, no reaction at all.

  Another connection, George was thinking. Too many connections. Tom’s mood changed when Ella told him that Pete was moving back to the mainland, and Adam saw Pete on the afternoon of the day Tom died. But what real connection is there between Pete Littleton and Tom French?

  He said: “ Is there anything else you think I should know about Tom?”

  “He’d been in court,” Adam answered quickly. “But I expect you’ll have found out about that. He’s been in court for smoking dope.”

  “So you know about that? Did Tom tell you?”

  “Only because he had to. I was at Sally’s cottage with him one afternoon when his probation officer turned up. They were all really embarrassed. It was awful. He just told me that he’d been done for possession of cannabis. That’s all.”

  “Did you tell anyone about it?”

  “Of course not.” But he was blushing, and there was the nervous twitch to flick the hair from his eyes.

  “Someone gave Bernard Cranshaw the idea that Tom was a drug addict. That was mentioned in the letter which he wrote to the parents of the children Tom was taking birdwatching. You don’t know anything about it?”

  Adam shook his head to emphasize his denial.

  “Do you use cannabis yourself?” There was real interest and no judgement in the question.

  “Only occasionally.” He paused. “ You won’t tell my father.” It was a statement not a question, and no response was necessary.

  “What sort of ’scope do you use?” asked George, acknowledging nothing odd in the sudden change of topic.

  “One of the new Optylons.”

  “That’s one of the short, stocky models?”

  Adam agreed.

  “The description of the murder weapon could fit a telescope. Have any of the twitchers changed their ‘scope recently? Or have you noticed one that’s out of alignment, damaged in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have one of the old, heavy, brass telescopes?”

  Adam answered without hesitation. “ Yes, it was my first ’scope. I don’t use it now.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In my room at home.”

  George gave no other explanation for the series of questions. He got up to go to the kitchen to fetch the bottle of sloe gin. As if by magic, Molly woke. Adam suspected that perhaps she had not been so deeply asleep after all. To finish the evening they talked about pleasant things, favourite birds, and birds which they most wanted to see, and favourite places.

  “St. Agnes,” Adam said, “ and not just because of the birds. I like going in the spring when there aren’t too many birdwatchers and the islanders are more friendly. Everything’s on a small scale—little fields and pretty cottages. It’s safe there. I love the Scillies.”

  “Fair Isle,” said George. “Magnificent cliffs, all the seabird colonies, and a comfortable bird observatory with a licence. And a good many ticks.”

  “Bardsey,” said Molly. “Because it’s totally remote. No telephone, no newspapers, no television. And because the mountain is so dramatic, and because of the choughs.”

  “Isn’t it strange,” said Adam, pleased that they had something in common, “ that we all like islands?”

  He left then. Despite the alcohol and the warmth, he felt strangely clear-headed. He concentrated on leaving slowly, politely, on giving no impression of panic. George walked with him down the garden path to the gate. As with his father, Adam felt the impulse to ask for protection. But when, at the gate, George waited as if he expected some confidence, fear overcame the boy. It was too late for confidence. He walked away.

  George and Molly sat in the kitchen in the midst of the dirty plates and pans, and drank from big, round cups of tea.

  “I’m worried about that child,” said Molly, and George was surprised because she seemed so anxious and so serious. “You realize that he’s frightened.”

  “Social workers don’t have a monopoly on perception.”

  “Do you think that he killed Tom French?”

  “Ah, so that occurred to you.”

  “Will you answer my question?”

  “I think that it’s possible. He’s certainly very worried. He had the opportunity. He admits that he was alone on the morning of the murder, and he owns two telescopes, either of which could have been the weapon. But he’s very slight and thin, and he doesn’t own a car, so I can’t imagine how he would have moved the body. And why would he have wanted to murder Tom? They were friends.”

  Molly seemed only a little reassured.

  “What are you going to do about him?”

  “Keep an eye on him, try to get to know him better, gain his trust and find out why he’s so scared. And talk again to the other people who were at Rushy that day to see if we can build up an alibi for him.”

  “All evening I was expecting him to say something important,” Molly said, “some dramatic revelation. Maybe we’re overreacting, and we’re just not used to teenagers any more.” She lapsed into nostalgia for the time when her children were teenagers, gawky and rebellious and still dependent.

  She felt tired and uneasy, but knew he would not leave the matter alone. The only occasions of real ill feeling within their family had occurred because of his insistence on getting to the root of problems. The children, as adolescents, had deeply resented the intrusion, the endless inquests, their father’s flawless and irritating reason.

  She watched her husband and felt a deep and overwhelming tenderness as he shuffled his notes on the table before him. He could have been an undergraduate again, revising mindlessly for finals, reading texts he knew already by memory. The demands were his own and she knew that she could not share the responsibility, but she knew too, by experience, that she could help him.

  “What conclusions have you reached?” she asked, dragging his attention away from the abstract words on the pages.

  “None,” he said angrily. “I’m incompetent. They were right to retire me.”

  “Tell me how far you’ve got.”

  He knew quite well what she was doing, that she could sense his panic, the fruitless activity. She was trying to soothe him. But she was not patronizing; she did want to know.

  “I’ve written down the sequence of events on the morning of the murder, a kind of timetable for everyone who might have been involved. That’s quite straightforward. It’s the connection between all the people which has been obsessing me. Of course, most of them are birdwatchers, but I have a feeling that there’s more to it than that. There’s some emotional connection. I can se
e a tension between them. They’re more aware of each other than they’re pretending …”

  He hesitated. “ Do you think that we can persuade Terry to talk to us again?”

  There was an edge of desperation in his voice.

  “He might talk to someone he trusts,” Molly said.

  “There’s Mrs. Black, his landlady. He might be prepared to talk to her.”

  “We must find out what he knows. He’s in danger himself. The murderer might have seen him.”

  “Make a note to speak to Mrs. Black.” She spoke softly, but it was enough to stem the rising anxiety. She continued quickly:

  “Which of those people had any reason to kill Tom French?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. At first I thought that there could be no convincing motive. I didn’t know him very well, but he came across as being the last person in the world to be a murder victim. He was gentle, very softly spoken—as Rob said, he seemed to be a hippie out of his time. Now, almost too many people seem to have disliked him or to have been afraid of him. That just doesn’t make sense. It’s not in keeping with the man I knew. And does dislike provide an adequate motive for murder? Bernard Cranshaw disliked him because Tom usurped his position as local expert. Sally was afraid of him because he threatened to have her baby taken into care. The fact that Dennis put pressure on Terry not to talk to us indicates that he may have some motive. Rob Earl saw him as a rival for the job in Bristol. And Adam and Pete Littleton are involved because they both knew him, and because they were both there. And because somehow I sense that they’re involved.

  “At the moment the conviction for possession of cannabis seems to be the only factor which links them all together. I’m certain that Dennis uses drugs. It seems that he and Tom used to drink together, but I find it hard to believe that they were particularly friendly. Sally knows more about Tom’s court appearance than she’s told us. Adam wanted to make sure that I knew that Tom had been in court and Cranshaw used it in his fight to stop Tom taking the children on to the marsh.”

  He was talking very quickly, it seemed almost at random, but he was talking with enthusiasm and interest. The sense of panic and helplessness had passed. With a sudden burst of energy George stood up and made a token attempt to tidy the plates for washing up—his ritual rebuke to Molly.

  She did not respond with anger or sarcasm as she usually did. She caught his eye and smiled, relieved. Now that the crisis had passed, she relaxed and allowed her thoughts to return to Adam Anderson. She would try to find an opportunity to speak to him again. She was quite confident that she could persuade him to confide in her.

  Chapter Eight

  The next day Adam Anderson disappeared. He was in his room all night, because when his father knocked on his door to say goodbye at eight in the morning his son replied. Clive Anderson presumed that he was still in bed. But when Mrs. Pargeter came out of the kitchen at eight thirty to pick up the mail, she noticed that the front door was not properly closed. She had not heard Adam come down the stairs, and it did not occur to her then that he had left the house. Perhaps the door was not tightly shut because Adam had been afraid that it would make a noise and that then the housekeeper would come out and ask where he was going. When Mrs. Pargeter went to make the beds and realized that Adam was not in, she was not worried. Adam was sometimes away for days, for weeks at a time without letting anyone know. She was not paid to concern herself with her employer’s son’s manners. As usual the bed was already made and the room was tidy.

  When Clive Anderson came home from work to discover that his son was not there, he seemed to experience a little guilty relief. He told himself that it had been a hard day at work and that Adam’s presence always added to the stress. His son’s unprepossessing appearance, his apparent inability to communicate, always reminded him that, as a father, he was a failure. Tonight there would be no forced conversation over dinner, he would have to pretend no interest in what his son had been doing. After the meal he allowed himself a brandy to celebrate the luxury of being alone.

  It was ten o’clock when Mrs. Pargeter pointed out that Adam’s binoculars, telescope and tripod were on the table in the hall. He always left them there and she always complained about it. Adam never went out for more than a few hours without his optical equipment. Mr. Anderson tried to think of other, reasonable explanations for his son’s absence, but realized that there were none. His only friends were birdwatchers and he would not be out all day without his binoculars. Mrs. Pargeter was surprised by her employer’s anxiety. Anderson dialled George Palmer-Jones’s number and let the telephone ring and ring, long after it was reasonable to expect a reply.

  A windmill stood in the café car park and Ella had named her snack bar after it. It was not a real mill. It was, if anything, a wind pump, but the locals called it the windmill and it had become a landmark on the marshes. There was nothing attractive about Ella’s windmill: it was a rotten, wooden frame held together with enormous rusting bolts and pieces of scrap metal. It had been built twenty years previously by a group of undergraduates who wished to prove the potential of wind power. They had chosen the site because of its exposure to the north-easterly winds and because it contained an old, fresh-water well, the only relic perhaps of an ancient village, long since eroded by the sea. They decided that they would harness the wind to pump fresh water to the surface. This seemed to give the experiment some validity and did have a practical application because the cottage near to the site had no mains water. Later the coastguard service bought the cottage and converted it to house their staff. The students’ experiment had failed. The water in the well had been brackish, the structure poorly designed. The students went on to other projects.

  No one from the university came to remove the windmill, and when Ella bought the site for the snack bar it was still there, ugly as a gallows, with tatters of canvas hanging from the sails. She had always meant to have it taken down, but when the workmen came to build the café they seemed to forget it and now she was used to it. It was the tallest object on the marsh, and it broke the clean line of the shingle bank against the sky, but usually she never noticed that it was there.

  However, that day, the day of Adam’s disappearance, the dilapidated silhouette irritated her. It represented her laziness, her lack of care for the place. She should have seen to it. It was a scarecrow of a thing, a monstrosity. She focused her anger on Jack—he should have seen to it. It was his responsibility too. It would give the wrong impression. She could transform the restaurant with flowers and decorations but how could she hide that pile of scrap metal? She considered stringing it with fairy lights, then wondered for a crazy moment if she could have it removed in a day. She was, for a while, distracted by this possibility, but when she had concluded that too many problems were involved, the irritation had passed. Nothing held Ella’s attention for very long and she had too much energy to sulk. She had other, more important, more pleasant things to consider.

  She was having a party and it would be the most magnificent party ever given in Rushy. It was to be a celebration of Rushy and the marsh. The spring before, the village had been the base for an RSPB film crew, who had made a documentary film about the natural history of the area. For a while the village had pretended to ignore the film crew’s presence, but in private the strangers had been the subject of great interest and speculation. There had been real excitement when a television personality, who was to act as narrator, stayed at the White Lodge and drank in the pub. Ella, immediately, had made it her business to become indispensable to the cameramen. She made sandwiches for them, and flasks of tea. The film appealed to her theatrical nature. Through her the village learnt all about the details of filming, and Rushy became quite possessive about their film.

  It was already very successful. It had won awards and was soon to appear on television. There had been a premiere in London and members of the royal family had attended. The second public showing was to be in Rushy, as a tribute to the village. Ella,
whose party would follow the show, felt that somehow, through association, the influence of royalty should be felt. She had taken over the small buffet supper planned by the local RSPB group and transformed it into something more suitable. She had been planning the party, brooding about it, dreaming about it for months. It was to be a spectacle. The Windmill was closed for the day so that she and Sandra could lay out the tables, prepare the food. The freezer was already filled with pies and flans, other committee members were making the sweets, providing the wine. She wanted everything to be perfect and very grand. As she ran over the details of the meal in her mind, her anxiety eased. She was wonderfully confident that everything would go smoothly, and she prepared to enjoy the power of organization.

  That morning Pete Littleton woke early. On Scilly he had resented the early morning, the busy grey dawns, the earnest discussions at six in the morning about bulb prices and disease. If he had been able to contribute any skill or opinion to the operation, perhaps he would have enjoyed it more. But it had been made clear to him that he was only there to learn, that he served no useful purpose. Now, to get up early was a choice which he exercised more and more frequently, even if he did not intend to go out. After years of being attached to an extended family, even as an outsider, he found the privacy of the cottage intoxicating. The means of obtaining the privacy had been distasteful, but he knew that the unpleasantness had been worth while.

  He had rented his cottage from a middle-aged woman who lived and worked in London, and who used Rushy as a refuge for herself and her cats. The extreme simplicity of the decoration and furnishing seemed to indicate a need for an antidote to London. It suited Peter’s mood. He liked the secretive aspect of the cottage, the way it was hidden behind a jumbled screen of red roofs and flint. The entrance was from a cobbled lane through an arched door in a high wall into a flagged yard. From the lane the house was invisible. The door from the yard led straight into a large kitchen, stone floored, cold, with an enamel sink, a tap and a Calor Gas stove. The small living room was carpeted. There was one easy chair and cupboards on each side of the fireplace which were filled with books and maps. Upstairs there was one large bedroom.