Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand Read online

  She had looked away from the letter—watched detached, unable to stop him as Barnaby tipped a bag of sugar on to the floor—stepped over the mess to the phone. A friendly, polite voice on the other end of the line said that Miss Kenning was not expected back that afternoon and then would be unavailable. She would be interviewing in the office the following morning and would be at a team meeting in the afternoon. But if it was urgent, perhaps someone else could help? Sally put the phone down without replying.

  In the kitchen Barnaby was earnestly tipping flour on to the sugar and looked at his mother with such pride in his creation that she laughed. She cleaned him up and fed him and survived the evening by inventing new games to entertain him. For the first time since he was a very small baby, that night she took him to bed with her. It did not stop her dreaming. As she ran across the marsh the hunter called after her: “Whore! Whore!”

  She had woken, still tense and tired, with the same feeling of guilt which always followed the dream. Barnaby was still asleep, curled up against her. The sun came through the bedroom window and made the baby’s skin warm, peach-coloured. It reassured her to feel him there and she lay back, trying to rest before he woke. She listened to the early-morning sounds of birds in the garden and of cows being led from a nearby field to be milked. She and Tom had never enjoyed this early-morning time together. If he had been with her he had been restless. Dawn was the best time for bird watching.

  She thought of Barnaby’s father. She could remember all that without bitterness now, the memories were a pleasant dream, an indulgence. It was sad that it had all ended so messily. When Barnaby was born things had started to go wrong. She was still convinced that it was not his birth which had caused her depression, but the sense that as her pregnancy ended, so did all contact with the man she had loved. She did not know what had made her decide to kill herself. She knew that she would not do it again. She could not remember taking the overdose. She was never sure if that forgetfulness had been caused by the drugs she had been given in the hospital. There had been so many drugs. Despite her attempts to conjure pleasant and restful memories her thoughts returned to the hospital. She had hated it. It was ugly, a collection of bleak Nissen huts, grey-painted, which only emphasized the feeling of imprisonment. Tom had brought colour with him at visiting time: flowers, posters which she hung on the wall above her bed, the wool which she had knitted into the jumper he was wearing at the time of his death. She owed Tom so much, and wasn’t that just what had made her resent him?

  She got out of bed and walked to the open window. The bare floor was cold to her feet. It was a sunny, gusty day, an early-spring sort of day, a day to be busy. Her movement had disturbed Barnaby. He stirred and woke. When he saw her he smiled. She carried him to the window and stood with him, looking out. She suddenly wanted to get out, to get away from the cottage and from Fenquay. She felt trapped in the cottage by the guilt which was the cause and the result of her dream, and knew that if she were to lead a normal life she would have to go out now while the impulse was still strong.

  She dressed herself and Barnaby and they had a hurried picnic breakfast as she gathered together spare nappies, bib, orange juice, so that they could stay out all day. She hurried because she wanted to catch the bus to Skeffingham, and her only anxiety was that they would miss it. The postman was late. The mail arrived just as she was pulling the baby into his outdoor clothes. There was a plain brown envelope, with her name and address written in scrawled capitals. She left it on the mat where it was, carefully stepping over it, to open the door and carry Barnaby outside.

  It was market day in Skeffingham and the bus was crowded. She felt very safe among the country women with their big, motherly bodies and their talk of the farm, children and home. She did not mind the stares and the whispered explanations from one woman to another behind her, that she was the girlfriend of that birdwatcher from Rushy that “got himself killed.” Surely none of these women would send threatening letters in plain brown envelopes. The bus conductor had winked at her, and carried Barnaby’s pushchair on and off the bus. She felt very safe and at home.

  In Skeffingham the stalls spilled out from the market hall into the wide streets. The houses were tall, red-bricked and stately. The town was crowded. Friends from different parts of the county met and talked, and the purchase of vegetables, cloth, a cake, was less important than the gossip. Some of the stalls had been taken over by incomers, young people who sold home-made things—jewellery, basketwork, leatherwork, clothes. At first Sally was suspicious of anyone who looked at her, or jostled into her, or bent to talk to Barnaby. But the market was full of pretty things. It was a kaleidoscope of colour, and her attention was caught by the bright things and she was cheered by the sense of celebration. She spoiled herself and bought an Indian silk scarf, and a pair of quilted dungarees for the baby. With a wonderful and wicked sense of extravagance, she decided to treat herself to coffee.

  When Ella saw her she was sitting in the cramped tea shop in the High Street, feeding Barnaby illicit chocolate buttons to keep him quiet while she ate a toasted tea cake. So fortified, Sally felt able to face the older woman. Even through the window she could tell that Ella was preparing a performance. As she swept into the shop towards her, Sally prepared herself to be a good audience. Ella was genuinely upset by Tom’s death—before starting work at the White Lodge he had spent a lot of time in the Windmill, and had been one of her favourites—but she expressed her grief through a flamboyant mix of compassion and curiosity which in anyone else would have been offensive. She reminded Sally, loudly, of all Tom’s virtues, then wiped her eyes at the thought that Barnaby would be deprived of such a wonderful father figure. In this there was an element of question which Sally refused to answer. At last the performance was over and Ella felt able to sit with Sally, slip off her shoes, drink tea and pass on all the news and gossip relevant to Tom’s death.

  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 th
ey 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.”