High Island Blues (26 page)

‘I don’t think,’ George interrupted quietly, ‘that the murder weapon has been found yet.’

She laughed. ‘ Don’t worry. It’s not inside knowledge. Just what everyone’s been saying. And I’m only joking, George, about Oliver. He wouldn’t have the nerve. Not even for Sally, would you, my love? Besides, he couldn’t stand by and let Rob Earl be accused of the murder. He’s far too much of a gentleman.’

They both looked at Oliver. He seemed on the verge of tears and struggled to speak.

‘I didn’t tell Michael about Sally. Please believe me. I wouldn’t.’

There was a moment of silence, then George continued as if Oliver hadn’t spoken:

‘Talking about confessions, do you remember your last night at Oaklands? You played a truth game.’

‘So we did. How do you know about that?’

George did not answer the question.

‘Laurie asked you what was the wickedest thing you’d ever done. What did you tell her?’

There was a pause. ‘I don’t know.’ It was the old Oliver, charming and in control, as if in talking about that night he was reliving his youth. ‘I really can’t remember. It was nothing too heinous I’m sure. Rob was the exciting one.’

‘What
did
the others say?’

‘Come on George! It was twenty years ago. And other people’s sins have never held much interest for me. I doubt if Michael said very much at all. He went through a silent phase when we travelled through America. Sometimes we forgot he was there.’

‘He spoke about crashing his father’s car. Does that jog your memory?’

‘Did he? Of course he
was
speaking by then. We’d met Laurie. She brought him back to life. But it doesn’t help me remember what crime I admitted to. It must have been something extremely boring and unremarkable.’

I wonder, George thought, if Mick would have remembered.

‘What will you do now?’ George addressed the question to both of them. He found it hard to believe that they could continue their life together, after such antagonism, but perhaps they had devised ways of surviving these skirmishes.

‘I want to go home,’ Julia said. She stretched her arms above her head.

‘Honestly, Ollie, I don’t think I can stand it here any longer. You’re the lawyer. Surely you can persuade the sheriff to let us go. There might be seats on the flight this evening.’

‘Oh, no,’ Oliver said. ‘That’s quite out of the question. Tomorrow’s the bird race.’

Then George thought that madness had overtaken them all.

They found it just as they were planning to give up the search for the evening – a small patch of freshly dug earth, the size of a pet’s grave. It was covered with twigs, impossible to see unless you bent down close. It was under the live oaks at the edge of the garden, in the woodland which Mary Ann intended for a wildlife refuge.

Then they had to bring lights because the lieutenant wanted to come from Galveston and by the time he arrived it was nearly dark. Benson heard about the find at home. He stood like a big grizzly, silhouetted against the floodlights, glaring down at them. They crouched, moving the soil and the leaf mould with small trowels, archaeologists on a dig, looking for buried treasure.

First out of the hole came a short-handled shovel which had been used to dig the pit and also, it turned out later, to hit the back of Esme Lovegrove’s skull hard enough to kill her. Then there was a plastic carrier bag. It had come from Gatwick airport’s duty free shop and would have held a bottle of spirits – it was too big for perfume or even for packets of cigarettes. Now it contained a chisel with a sharp point and a fat wooden handle, a wood carver’s chisel said Benson, who knew about tools. Lovely and old and just right for the job.

‘For sticking through a victim’s ribs?’ said one of the officers but nobody laughed and Benson did not consider that worth answering.

All this George saw from the edge of the gathering. He stood apart from the officers like an uncertain guest at a funeral. He had spent the afternoon sitting on the veranda, listening to the conversations going on around him, asking questions. Esme Lovegrove had been much on his mind.

He had even sought an audience with Joan, the sister. He had offered to go up to her room but she had come to him. They had taken tea together, sitting side by side on an uncomfortable wrought iron bench, and had chatted for half an hour before tiredness or the medication she’d been prescribed had overtaken her.

He had begun to feel a little cold – there was still a cool breeze in the evenings, a remnant of the storm – and was about to go to the bar before preparing for dinner when he recognized the excitement of the officers searching the wood. He sauntered over and stood unobtrusively, watching, tolerated because they knew he was a friend of Benson’s. He saw the exhumation of the shovel and the carrier bag. Although the lieutenant was there it was Benson who carried the bag right under the floodlight and opened it, a fist through each handle. He did not see inside but he knew what it contained because Benson described it, lovingly: ‘A wood carver’s chisel.’ And immediately that triggered a memory of his visit to Laurie’s house.

It meant nothing to Mary Ann. She was sure it had not been taken from Oaklands. It was the sort of thing a craftsman would own. For as long as she could remember Oaklands Hotel had been run by women and they had no time for wood carving. It was old enough to have belonged to her grandfather but she did not remember seeing it around as a child. Wouldn’t it have come as part of a set?

This was what she had told the detective. She repeated the conversation to George when she invited him to her flat after dinner for coffee and brandy.

‘Wouldn’t it have come as part of a set?’ she said again, asking George’s advice.

‘I think it would.’

He was more interested in the shovel. That must have come from the hotel. He asked her about it.

‘Sure. I recognized that. It’s been here for ever. I mixed mud pies with it when I was a kid. But I haven’t seen it for years. It’ll have been in the storeroom with all the other junk.’

Then George said he would have to go.

‘That’s fine George,’ Mary Ann said. ‘We’re real busy. It’s the Birdathon reception tomorrow night. I’ll be in the kitchen until dawn.’

‘That’s still taking place?’ he thought the discovery of the murder weapon might have made a difference.

‘Mr Benson said it should. It’s too late to cancel, he said.’

‘I bet he did.’

‘I asked Miss Lovegrove if she’d mind. She had no objections. Really, George, she wanted the race to go ahead.’ Mary Ann paused. ‘And I spoke to Laurie. She’s agreed to come over tomorrow night to present the trophy to the winning team. I thought it was time we patched things up.’

‘A nice gesture,’ George said bitterly. He still considered the bird race an appalling idea.

‘Yeah!’ Mary Ann said, pleased. ‘I thought it was.’

The rest of the bird race team was in the bar, planning its strategy for the following day assisted by the birdwatchers in Rob’s group. George saw them from the door but he did not go in. He spent the evening prowling round Oaklands Hotel.

He began outside in the paved yard beyond the kitchen where the residents parked their cars. He crossed the yard and looked up at the house trying to place the window which had been lit on the night of Esme’s murder. Through the uncurtained windows of the kitchen he saw that a chef was still working, presumably preparing the next night’s feast. He was chopping, hitting the palm of his hand on the wooden handle of a wedge shaped knife, a knife which would have been a more effective weapon than a wood carver’s chisel. Mary Ann was there too, and a couple of women stacking a dishwasher but outside it was dark and no one saw him.

The old stables which formed two sides of the yard had been turned into storerooms. The doors were unlocked, there was nothing of value inside. The shovel would have been here with the car spares, a rusting lawn mower, and the piles of cans and bottles waiting for recycling. The storeroom had an electric light, a neon tube which flickered and left the corners in shadow. When George switched it on he had left the door open and a rectangle of light would have been visible from the kitchen, but the people there were so engrossed in their work that they did not notice. Would they have seen a visitor, crossing the yard in daylight, poking around the storeroom? Probably not.

Inside, everyone was in the bar. Even the sleepy old man had deserted his seat in the lounge to watch the preparation for the bird race. It was something special to focus on. They needed that. And a few beers. From the bar came shouts and bursts of laughter. George ignored the noise and continued his tour of the hotel. He walked through the restaurant where the tables were already set for breakfast. He stood for a moment at reception. A pale young man was answering the phone. George hoped briefly that it might be Molly with news which could finish the matter tonight, but in Britain it was four in the morning. If she had news she would have called before. He climbed the stairs and wandered round the corridors, finding his bearings, occasionally bumping into a couple of chambermaids who were turning down the beds. Eventually he talked to them though they would not stop work. He stood in bedroom doorways while they changed damp towels, rinsed out cups, replaced sachets of coffee and sugar with the speed and mechanical efficiency of robots.

Then he let them move on down the corridor while he considered what he had learned and what he should do with the information. He could not face talking to the stone-faced sergeant or the deputies who had been left in charge of the taped off area where the murder weapon had been found. Joe Benson had gone home. George had learned from Mary Ann that Benson had married just a year ago. They had all thought he was a confirmed bachelor, then he had married a Mexican girl a third of his age. There was a baby. Before the murders Joe Benson’s romance had been the talk of High Island. It would be easy enough to find out where they lived and George did not even think Joe would mind the intrusion. The constable had invited him home sometime for a beer. He probably wanted to show off his lovely wife and baby. But what would George say to him? I know who killed these people but I’ve no idea why. Better to let Benson spend the evening with his family in peace.

The bar was quieter. People had started to drift away to bed. Rob, Oliver and Russell May sat at one table. They had enjoyed being the centre of attention. Russell looked every now and again at his wife who was sitting with other women from the party, clasping her orange juice, apparently as proud as punch of him.

‘George!’ Rob said. ‘ We could have done with you here. Where have you been?’

Trying to save your skin, George thought. He said nothing.

‘The essence of a bird race is in the planning,’ Oliver said primly. ‘Especially when we’re working in such a small area.’

‘I’m sure I can safely leave that to you.’

‘We need to be at the Bolivar Ferry at dawn, George. That’s where we intend to start. Meet for breakfast in the restaurant an hour before that. Mary Ann will leave out cereal and thermos flasks of coffee.’

‘I’ll be there.’ Because although the thought of the race depressed him he felt, like Connie, that they needed looking after. Playing nurse-maid to a bunch of birders, he thought: Has it come to this?

It took Molly longer than she had expected to trace Paul Butterworth. His name was not in the telephone directory. She thought he had probably been a young teacher when he had befriended Mick Brownscombe more than twenty years before. It was possible he was still working in the area. Even if he had changed schools someone might remember him, have an address for him.

She parked in the town centre and enquired at the public library.

‘The Grammar School? Well it’s comprehensive now, but it’s still there.’ The librarian was elderly. She had views on the demise of the grammar schools. Molly interrupted and asked for directions. The librarian was offended and gave them, sniffily.

There was a walk through a Victorian park along the River Taw. The tide was out leaving expanses of glutinous mud. In the park the daffodils had been battered by the heavy rain. The school was at the end of a lane of substantial houses with large gardens.

Molly had timed her visit carefully. Ten forty-five. She had thought that would be break-time. All the teachers would be in the staffroom and she might be offered coffee. But when she arrived the playground was empty and she wondered if these days they worked straight through until lunch.

The first building she came to was red brick mock medieval. It had cloisters and quadrangles. She walked round, trying to find a way in. All the classrooms were empty. In some, chairs had been set upon desks. She swore under her breath. She should have realized the school would be closed for Easter. Paul Butterworth, even if he still worked there, might have rented a
gite
in France or be birdwatching in Nepal. She presumed he was still interested in birds. She hoped so. It would make things easier. There would be less to explain.

‘Can I help you?’ It was a small woman dressed in a tweed skirt and suede boots. She approached Molly carefully across the playground. As if, Molly thought, I’m about to attack her. She probably thinks I’m one of the mentally ill let out unsupervised into the community. It’s my clothes. I should have tidied up.

‘Can I help you?’ the woman said again.

‘I’m trying to trace a member of staff,’ Molly said. ‘For an old boy.’

Her voice, educated and southern, must have reassured the woman. She came closer.

‘I’m afraid there’s no one here,’ she said. ‘It’s the holidays. I’ve only come in to open the head’s mail.’

‘You’re a secretary?’ This was better than Molly could have hoped for. In her experience secretaries knew far more about what was going on in a school than the teaching staff.

‘The head teacher’s secretary.’ This was obviously a position of status.

‘Then perhaps you could help me. Does Mr Butterworth still teach at the school? I believe he’s a biologist.’

The woman looked at her. ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t pass on information about any of our staff,’ she said piously.