The Mill on the Shore Read online

  ‘This is a serious commission,’ she had said sharply. ‘Not a family outing.’

  ‘Of course,’ he had said, ‘but we work together. I couldn’t contemplate taking on the investigation without Molly’s assistance.’

  There had been a silence and he almost expected her to say that it was all a mistake or she would find someone else to complete the investigation. But she had said grudgingly:

  ‘Very well then. I agree to your terms. I really feel I have very little choice.’ But she implied, don’t expect me to like it.

  The image they had of Meg Morrissey when Tim pushed open the door of the family living room was calculated to confirm all Molly’s prejudices. She sat in a low chair by the fire with a wicker sewing basket beside her and a pile of mending on her knee. Molly had never darned a sock in her life. The room was warmly lit by the fire, the last of the daylight reflected from the water through the large uncurtained window and a single spot which shone over Meg’s shoulder on to her work. As they came in she stood up, set the jeans she was patching on the arm of the chair and slipped a thimble from her finger. She wore a calf-length cord skirt and a hand-knitted, blackberry coloured sweater. Very cosy and domestic, Molly thought. The perfect picture of a wonder mother. She probably bakes her own bread too. Then she remembered that the woman had only recently lost her husband and wondered that she could be so bitchy.

  ‘George!’ Meg said. ‘It is nice to see you. It’s been such a long time. And Mrs Palmer-Jones. I’m very pleased to meet you after all these years.’

  Her words were cordial. She looked tired but she was putting on a good show. George thought optimistically that the women might get on after all. The boy stood fidgeting just inside the door, bored by the adult politeness. Meg turned to him.

  ‘Why don’t you join Emily in the schoolroom, Tim,’ she said. Her words were calm and reasonable. This was a mother who would never lose her temper. ‘I’ll send Caitlin down too when she’s done her practice. I’d like that history project finished before supper. I’ll come down in half an hour and see how you’re getting on.’

  ‘I was hoping to start on the lugworm samples,’ he said, sulkily.

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that tomorrow,’ Meg said and Molly was struck by her confidence. She was quite certain that the boy would obey her, without argument. Molly’s relations with her own children had never been that simple. Tim shrugged and left the room.

  ‘Now,’ Meg said brightly. ‘What can I get you? I expect you’d like some tea. Even now that the students have gone we usually eat in the refectory downstairs. It’s easier for Rosie and Jane who do the cooking. But I made sure that I had a little kitchen of my own in the flat. Tea, I can manage.’

  She stopped abruptly, aware perhaps that she was talking too much, and disappeared from the room without waiting for them to answer.

  George stood by the window. The bay was already lit by pale moonlight. ‘What a place!’ he said, almost to himself. ‘ I’ve heard of it of course from people who’ve stayed at the field centre as students but I hadn’t expected anything on such a scale.’

  ‘Quite an enterprise to take on in retirement,’ Molly said. ‘Especially after a serious accident.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘ I think Meg was behind the organization.’

  ‘I bet she was,’ Molly said under her breath, forgetting for a moment that she had decided to be compassionate.

  Meg came in then carrying a tray which she set on a small table close to the hearth. Molly saw fine china, a plate of homemade biscuits.

  ‘We were just admiring the view,’ George said. ‘ It’s quite splendid!’

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Meg said automatically, then, sensing that more was expected of her, ‘It’s a great comfort at a time like this.’

  She paused as if she expected an expression of sympathy. There was a moment of silence, as the fire spat and sparks flew up the chimney.

  ‘Perhaps you could explain why you asked us to come,’ George said gently. ‘It wasn’t quite clear from your letter …’

  ‘It’s simple,’ Meg said. ‘James didn’t commit suicide. He wouldn’t have done. Not now. I’m hiring you to find out how he died …’

  ‘There must have been a post mortem report,’ Molly said.

  ‘He was poisoned by the anti-depressants he’d been prescribed,’ Meg said sharply. George was suddenly aware again of the hostility between the women. ‘A post mortem can’t tell us how he came to take them.’

  ‘I can’t see,’ Molly said, ‘that he could have taken them by accident. Unless perhaps he’d been drinking. Had he been drinking?’

  ‘He’d taken some alcohol,’ Meg said dismissively, ‘but not enough to cloud his judgement.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Molly demanded. ‘That your husband was murdered?’

  Meg turned in her chair to face her. ‘ Yes,’ she said. ‘I think that is what I’m saying.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ George said, interrupting, not wanting any overt confrontation between the women, ‘ you could explain why you believe that. You must have a reason.’ He paused, then added apologetically: ‘It wouldn’t be easy, you know, to forcefeed an unwilling adult enough pills to kill him.’

  ‘Of course I have a reason.’ She sat back in the chair and looked into the fire.

  ‘You must tell us,’ George said at last, ‘if you have any suspicions.’

  But she seemed unwilling to answer directly.

  ‘James wasn’t depressed all the time,’ she said. ‘Not even after the accident. He could go for months without needing any medication at all, then, without any apparent reason, he’d hit a low time. It was guilt, I suppose, about Hannah.’

  ‘Hannah?’ George prompted. He knew about Hannah but he wanted to hear it from Meg.

  ‘She was his daughter,’ Meg said. ‘From his first marriage to Cathy. She was killed in the road accident which caused his spinal injury.’

  ‘How did the accident happen?’ Molly asked. Meg looked at her with disapproval as if the question was impolite, but answered.

  ‘Cathy was already married to Phil and living in Salter’s Cottage. Hannah lived there too, but came occasionally for holidays to her father. She enjoyed coming to stay with us. It was exciting, I suppose. James was still editor of Green Scenes then, something of a celebrity. On the night of the accident he had collected her and was driving her back to London. The crash happened before they even reached the motorway. No other cars were involved.’

  ‘Did you ever find out what caused the accident?’

  She shook her head. ‘The police could find nothing wrong with the car but it was such a mess that they couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t some freak mechanical failure. James couldn’t remember anything about it. He was unconscious after the crash and lost his memory of everything that happened after leaving Salter’s Cottage.

  He blamed himself of course. He’d been tired, thought even that he might have fallen asleep at the wheel.’

  ‘And after the accident he changed,’ George said. It was not a question. He remembered his last encounter with Jimmy Morrissey in the pub in Whitehall, the sense that something important had been left unsaid. Had he wanted to talk about his daughter? Was it a need for confession which had prompted him to invite George for the drink?

  ‘Yes,’ Meg said. ‘He changed.’

  ‘And the decision to leave Green Scenes?’ George said. ‘Was that the result of the accident? There was nothing else?’ He remembered again the meeting in the pub, Jimmy’s reluctance to leave the venture behind him.

  ‘It was too much for him,’ Meg said sharply. ‘ He couldn’t stand the stress. Not on top of everything else.’

  ‘I’d always thought Jimmy thrived on stress,’ George said mildly.

  ‘Not after the accident,’ she said. ‘You said yourself: he changed.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘You said that he had periods of depression.’ Molly spoke carefully. ‘Had he been
depressed recently?’

  ‘No,’ Meg said. ‘ Not for months. The tablets came from an old prescription. He hadn’t felt the need to complete the course of treatment. Since the autumn he’s almost been his old self.’

  ‘Can you account for the change of mood?’

  ‘It was the Mill,’ she said. ‘I knew that the move would be good for him in the end.’

  But George was not convinced. They had been at Markham Mill for two years and the Jimmy he knew would have been bored by spending that long in one place, even a place as beautiful and full of birds as this.

  ‘There wasn’t any new project,’ he said, ‘something to excite him?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘There was his autobiography,’ she said. ‘That was his latest enthusiasm.’ She spoke with a bitterness which surprised George. An autobiography seemed a tame enough project. It would at least keep him at home which, he suspected, was all Meg had wanted. He said nothing and allowed her to continue.

  ‘I wasn’t sure it was a good idea,’ she said at last. ‘To relive all those experiences of the past when he was so much more active. I thought it would only make him more depressed. But Grace encouraged him. I suppose she was right. He seemed very keen.’

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘Grace Sharland, a community nurse attached to our GP’s practice. She visited occasionally. She seemed to amuse James.’

  ‘How far had he got with the book?’ George asked.

  ‘It was nearly finished. He’d written it all out in long-hand. He’d never taken to computers. He wouldn’t let any of us see it. It would be a surprise to us all, he said. A revelation. I believe a number of publishers had expressed interest in it.’

  ‘You won’t have any objection to our looking at it?’ George said. ‘It might help in our enquiry …’

  He phrased the request carefully. He was reluctant to encourage Meg in the belief that James had been murdered.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t have any objection. But I’m afraid you won’t be able to see it. James’ notebooks have all disappeared.’

  She spoke flatly, without any sense of making a dramatic revelation.

  ‘And that’s why you believe James was murdered?’ asked George. ‘Because of the theft?’ He thought she must realize the implication of the notebooks’ disappearance. Why else had she called them in?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to think any more. But you must find the autobiography. That’s obvious, isn’t it.’

  Then she put her head in her hands as if the strain of the previous few days had been too much for her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘ I can’t think straight. It’s all been a nightmare.’

  George looked at her with sympathy. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  But Molly, sitting at some distance from the woman, was not convinced by the grief. She thought, cynically, that Meg had simply decided she did not want to answer any more of George’s questions.

  Chapter Four

  ‘He doesn’t look like a detective,’ Tim said. ‘He’s old.’

  ‘What’s his wife like?’ Emily looked up from a collage of a Viking boat. She was sticking milk-bottle tops along its side to make shields.

  ‘She’s old too. And scruffy. Very short hair and specs. Caitlin said that the detectives were coming today so it must be them.’

  ‘Schoolroom’ sounded quaint and Victorian which was what Meg intended, but this was filled with equipment many schools would have been proud of. There were two computer terminals and screens, an overhead projector and a flip chart. Each child had his or her own space marked out with the sort of screen you find in a high-tech open-plan office. Emily’s had a box of Lego and a construction kit, a shelf of Roald Dahls, a tray of felt pens and paints, mounds of coloured paper. Vikings figured largely – Meg tried to follow the National Curriculum, though not too closely, and the subject was a Year Four topic. There was a model helmet made of papier mâché and a street plan of Viking York.

  Tim’s space had a children’s series of natural history field guides, a lizard in an aquarium and a tank full of stick insects. There was a faintly reptilian smell. One shelf held a collection of bird skulls – mostly mute swan and oystercatcher.

  Caitlin’s project concerned a play she had written, a fantasy tale of knights and ladies. There were shoe boxes made into three-dimensional stage sets, a huge easel with the costume designs, scraps of fabric. Everything was piled into a chaotic heap. Meg nagged her routinely for being untidy.

  Ruth had surprised her mother by deciding to go in for A levels. Her corner was designed to resemble an undergraduate’s study. There were shelves of textbooks, a file of previous exam papers which she was slowly working through and a tape recorder so she could practise her French.

  Tim and Emily were sitting at a large table in the middle of the room. Tim was supposed to be working on the Vikings too but his attention was not on the book in front of him.

  ‘Ruth!’ He raised his voice so it penetrated her corner. ‘ Do you think they’re detectives?’

  Ruth sighed, put a bookmark between the pages of La Peste and went to join them. She thought Meg was making a dreadful mistake. The outburst after the memorial service had been embarrassing but understandable. To pursue the matter by hiring private detectives was so bizarre that she wondered about her mother’s sanity. She must have known that the children’s interest would be aroused. How did she think she could explain the couple’s presence?

  ‘They’re sort of detectives,’ Ruth said at last. ‘Mum wants to find out how your father died so she’s asked these people to come and look into it. That’s all.’

  ‘But the police came before,’ Tim said. ‘That morning we found him. The fat one must have been a detective because he wasn’t wearing uniform.’ The logic seemed to him unanswerable. He considered. ‘ He didn’t do very much though,’ he said at last. ‘He sat in the kitchen with Rosie and Jane all morning drinking tea and eating flapjacks. He talked to Mum in the flat but he didn’t see anyone else. Not as far as I know.’

  And he would know, Ruth thought. Tim knew everything that went on at the Mill.

  ‘Mr Palmer-Jones isn’t that sort of detective,’ she said. ‘ He’s not a policeman. He’ll have time to ask questions and find out what actually happened.’

  ‘But we know what happened,’ Tim objected. ‘Dad killed himself some time that evening when we thought he was in the study working on his book.’ His face was pinched and Ruth thought that uncertainty and muddle would make it harder for him to accept James’ death. What was Meg thinking of?

  Emily had finished her picture. She set the paper aside and began to peel strips of dried glue from her fingers.

  ‘I don’t think he killed himself,’ she said calmly. ‘I think Mum’s right.’

  She stood up and went to wash her hands in the deep sink under the window. Before Ruth could ask what she meant the bell rang for dinner and the children ran off.

  They ate in the field centre dining room which could hold eighty people at six large tables. Now only one was laid. It was covered by a white linen cloth and set with heavy cutlery and glasses. Most of the lights in the room had been switched off. The table where they sat was in one corner, lit by a single bulb on a long flex covered by a wicker shade and by candles. The shadowy space beyond them seemed vast. The room was rather cold and their voices seemed to echo.

  Molly wondered at the formality of the occasion. With such a small number wouldn’t it have been easier to eat in the kitchen? At least there it might have been warm. But Meg seemed concerned to maintain the ritual of the Markham communal meal. She had changed from her sweater and skirt into a soft grey wool frock and there were pearls around her neck. Molly, who had felt liberated from the need to consider clothes with the coming to fashion of the track suit and who was still in the navy joggers and sweatshirt she had worn for travelling, felt decidedly underdressed.

  ‘We always try to eat together in th
e evening,’ Meg was saying as the children came in. ‘Family and students together when the courses are running. I like to think it typifies the atmosphere of the place. Now let me introduce you to my wonderful brood.’

  And they were, Molly saw at once, all too wonderful for words. It was as if each child had been moulded with a different personality only to reflect Meg’s creativity and range of interests. There was Ruth of the good sense and the brains, artistic Caitlin, the boy who was being groomed to be a biologist. And the youngest girl? Molly wondered. What does Meg intend for her? Then it came to her in a flash that Emily would be the carer, the home-maker. She would be expected to look after her mother in her old age. The work of art that was Meg’s family was complete.

  ‘Ruth’s preparing for A levels,’ Meg was saying, completing the introductions. ‘We’re very proud of her. She’s hoping to go to York to read French. I’m not convinced of the value of A levels of course – so much rote learning still – but the way the university entrance system’s organized at the moment I suppose exams are essential.’ She beamed at them all.

  Where did Jimmy fit into all this? Molly wondered. What need did these children have of a father? She felt suddenly as she had done when her own children were teenagers. Each Christmas a school friend sent a circular letter extolling the virtues of her model family, their achievements during the year, the exams they had passed, the musical instruments they played. Molly had read these letters with a mixture of envy, guilt and shame. Where had she gone wrong? Her children dabbled in drugs, got drunk and threw up on the carpet, threatened to drop out of college. They had turned out all right in the end of course, were now almost frighteningly decent and respectable, but then she had read the woman’s smug letters with fury, as if their complacency were an accusation of her own incompetence. Meg aroused the same emotion.