Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever (12 page)

“No,” James said. “I’m sorry. I was reading.”

“But you did go to look for Greg when they found the rare bird?”

“Oh, yes,” James said. “ That’s when I remembered him. And the others seemed so excited by the bird. They were afraid of missing anything. So I volunteered.”

“Was everyone on the deck when you left?”

“I don’t know.” He allowed himself to play the part of vague, absentminded academic for all it was worth. “ There was so much noise and confusion, you see.”

“Yes,” she said, “ so I’ve been told. You didn’t see anything unusual when you went to look for Greg?”

“No,” he said, hesitating, “ not at first. When he wasn’t on deck, I supposed he was in his bunk. He had looked terribly ill. Then, when I went below, there was no sign of him. Nothing. Even his sleeping bag had disappeared.”

“How long was it before you went back to the others to tell them he was missing?”

There was a hesitation, and though the inspector seemed not to notice, Duncan was aware of the sergeant’s perceptive and compassionate gaze.

“I suppose it must have seemed rather a long time,” Duncan said, “before I went back on deck. I looked in the places where he might have been. I thought he might have been sick in the lavatory or lying down in the saloon. It seemed inconceivable, of course, that he could have just have disappeared. When I did go back to the others, they didn’t believe me.”

“No,” the inspector said.

He was still waiting for the awkward questions that he had been dreading and did not realise that the interview was over until the inspector asked if he would send Mr. Matthews in as he went out. His relief gave him courage, and at the door he hesitated.

“I’d like to get home as soon as possible,” he said. “ Would it be all right to go back tomorrow?”

The inspector looked up at him and smiled.

“I can’t stop you, of course,” she said. “But I’d rather you stayed here for a couple of days. You had planned to be here on holiday anyway, hadn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “ Very well. I understand.”

Only when he was outside the door, away from the steady stare of the sergeant, did he begin to shake uncontrollably.

Gerald Matthews repeatedly took off his spectacles and rubbed them with the hem of his jersey in what they thought was a gesture of nervousness and was in fact the result of a contained excitement. All day he had been even more aware than usual of Rose. He watched her from a distance, knowing that if he made a wrong move, the fragile understanding which he felt had spontaneously developed between them in Matilda’s bedroom would be lost. He saw her for the first time as vulnerable, unhappy, obtainable. It never occurred to him that by offering her marriage now he would be exploiting her shock and sadness. He wanted her. The gentleness and tact he showed now in his discretion, in keeping his distance, was a tactic in obtaining her. Concern and consideration for her feelings had nothing to do with it.

He thought of Greg Franks’ death with a celebratory joy. His problem was in trying to keep the emotion under control. He managed it by involving himself in Roger Pym’s research into the possible identification of the petrel and channelled his excitement into that. Yet all the time he was watching Rose through the living room window, so in touch with her that he believed he could smell her hair and hear the peaceful breathing of the baby on her knee.

When Gerald Matthews was called into the dining room, he was aggressive and hostile. It was not exactly a performance—more a welcome opportunity to release the tension which had been building up all day. The inspector did not read too much into his reaction. He was the sort of man who would pride himself on complaining, on standing up for his rights. He was pale, slight, ageless. He would look much the same when he was fifty.

“Look!” he said. His voice was flat, hard, northern. “What have you been doing to upset Rose Pengelly? She was nearly in tears when she came out of here.”

“What does that have to do with you?” Claire asked. She smiled a cruel, tight-lipped smile. You’re a failure, she thought. Rose Pengelly’s chosen Rosco. Don’t you know that yet?

“I’m her friend,” Gerald Matthews said, blustering, hoping that he would be taken for Matilda’s father. “A very special friend.”

“You help her, do you? Support her in times of crisis?”

“That’s right.”

“Does she confide in you?”

“I hope so.”

“Did she tell you, for example, who was the father of her child?”

“I didn’t ask,” he lied. “ It was none of my business.”

Claire smiled again, laid her palms deliberately on the table, and leaned forward. She wanted to show him who was in charge.

“Tell me about Greg Franks,” she said.

“There’s nothing to tell. I’d only met him a couple of times. He was not the sort of birdwatcher I approve of. He probably wouldn’t even have called himself a birdwatcher. He would say he was a birder or a lister—dreadful Americanisms. He didn’t know very much about common birds. These youngsters move onto rarities too quickly, in my opinion. They don’t put in the groundwork. I’d been watching my local reed bed for years before I started going to the Scillies.”

She considered his words as the ravings of a lunatic. She had no idea what he was talking about. But they all came back to these birds, she thought. Perhaps I’m missing something. Can they really matter in a case like this? She turned Gerald Matthews’ attention back to Greg Franks.

“So you disapproved of him?”

“I did.”

You were probably jealous of Franks, she thought, because he was young and irresponsible. He knew how to enjoy himself. It was hard to imagine Gerald Matthews as ever having been young, and she had by now gained an impression of Greg as a man who, above all things, knew how to enjoy himself.

“Apart from the birds,” she said, “ was there any reason for the disapproval?”

“I’d heard rumours,” he said.

“About drugs?”

“Yes,” he said. “And about other things. Everyone knew he was mixed up in something shady. It was as if they thought he was clever. ‘Look at Greg Franks,’ they’d say. ‘ Just back from Thailand,’ or ‘Just bought a new ’scope,’ or ‘Driving a new car.’ ‘Bet he didn’t get that on the dole,’ they’d say. It made me sick. I didn’t think Rose should have him here. She agreed not to let him stay again, but here he was. She’s too kindhearted.”

“So you weren’t expecting him to be here this weekend?”

“No,” Gerald said sulkily. “It was a shock. I don’t know what made her change her mind.”

“Have you asked Miss Pengelly why she allowed him to come?” she asked. He muttered that it was none of his business, and she could do what she liked.

Molly Palmer-Jones spent all day listening. It was not exactly that she was eavesdropping. She was always in full view of the people who were talking. It was that they did not consider her worth bothering with. They thought she posed no threat. And the shock made them want to talk; they were glad to have someone sympathetic to share their worries with. When they came away from Molly, they felt better.

Even when she was in the shady dining room, she was listening—to the whispered conversation between the inspector and her sergeant that was taking place when she entered the room, and to the subtext beneath the questions, trying to follow the line of reasoning which prompted Claire Bingham to ask them. Molly was left with the disturbing impression that there was little logic, that the questions were a random, almost desperate attempt to find a previous relationship between Greg and the other passengers. It was clear already that there were no witnesses to the murder, or if anyone had seen anything suspicious, they were not admitting it.

All day Molly watched them, too. They might have thought she was asleep in the deck chair under the front porch, a book turned facedown on her knee. It would have been understandable. She was elderly and had been up for half the night. In fact, she had more stamina than any of them, and through half-closed eyes she watched them. From her raised position she could see Rose on her bench with the view of the valley, and she could tell that Rose was watching, too, and waiting for something. Each time a car approached, the younger woman became tense until it appeared through the vegetation, and then there was disappointment. She must have been able to identify Rosco’s van just by the bangs and rattles as it came through the trees, because before she could see it, she had already relaxed. When she had seen it safely down the lane to the cottage on the shore, she felt able to leave her white bench and go inside to do other things.

Molly watched Duncan James waiting in the garden until it was his turn to be interviewed. She saw him stoop to examine the aquatic plants at the edge of the stream, as if the routine intellectual activity of identifying them would keep his mind from other, less pleasant things. And because the windows were open, she could hear what was going on inside the house, the constant telephone calls of Roger Pym, the surprising encouragement of Gerald Matthews, and the facetious mocking of Rob Earl.

When Rose took Gerald into the kitchen late in the afternoon to put things straight between them, she took no notice of Molly, dozing outside the open door. Even if the old lady did hear, she thought, what would it matter? It was time the thing was out in the open. It had been ridiculous to make a secret of it. Gerald went with her light-headedly. He had never felt so alive.

“I want to talk to you,” Rose said. “It’s about Tilly.”

He was immediately wary, prepared for disappointment.

“What about her?”

“Louis is her father.” He said nothing but stared down the valley.

“You don’t seem surprised,” she said.

“I’ve seen you around together,” he said. “You always seem very friendly.” He did not tell her that he was so used to disappointment that even in the excitement of the morning he was preparing for it. He did not tell her that pride was all he had left, so he was not going to let her see how hurt he was. What about Greg Franks? he wanted to scream. Where did he come into all this? What was he doing here?

“There are things you don’t know about Louis,” she said. “ Things you don’t understand. When he first came to Porthkennan, he confided in me. I felt sorry for him.”

“And isn’t that what you felt for me?” he lashed out. “ Poor old Gerald. No friends. So social graces. Isn’t that what you thought? But you wouldn’t let me go to bed with you.”

“Gerald,” she said, “I’m sorry.” But as she was talking to him, she was looking outside, towards the shore.

“You should grow up,” he shouted angrily. “We’re not all lame dogs to be petted.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, but the repeated apology only irritated him, and then he did ask the question that had been singing in his brain as a way of getting back at her.

“Where did Greg Franks come into all this?” he demanded. “What did you mean last night when you said he was upsetting things?”

She went suddenly white, as if he had slapped her face.

“Nothing!” she said, in a whisper, looking for the first time at Molly beyond the open door. “ I didn’t mean anything.”

Roger Pym waited until the inspector returned to Heanor before he sought Molly out. Until he sat beside her, she had not realized how much pressure he was under. She had thought he was wrapped up in the new bird, but perhaps, after all, that was only a distraction. She had met him with George and had always dismissed him as insensitive, mindlessly competitive. She knew he taught physical education at a large comprehensive school on a council estate outside Bristol and thought him obsessed with his own fitness and his own list. He would be the worst kind of gym teacher, she thought, concerned only to prove that he could run faster, and longer distances than the boys in his charge. Now she saw he was getting older and thought that as it became less easy to compete, he would grow vicious. When he sat beside her, he was sweating. Beads of perspiration clung to the hairs on his arms, and he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

“This is terrible,” Roger said. “I don’t know what the school will say about my being mixed up with the police like this. Or the parents.”

Roger’s previous descriptions of the parents at his school had been a little prejudiced. They were feckless mothers who either drank or were on the game, and unemployed, illiterate fathers. Neither, Molly thought, would be particularly concerned about Roger Pym. She said it must be very worrying.

“There was that ridiculous argument about the list,” Roger said. “Someone must have mentioned it to the police. I hope too much isn’t made of it.”

“Did you ever find out what Greg’s list was?” Molly asked. It was a mischievous question. She did not expect a response.

“No,” he cried, his hands shaking. “ No. Of course not.”

Jane Pym walked up, as cool and composed as if she were appearing in court. The police had given them permission to leave Porthkennan for an hour, she said. She quite fancied a drink, so why didn’t they drive into Heanor and go to that place where they had spent so much of their honeymoon? Roger agreed immediately and was almost gallant.

They walked away, but Molly remained where she was. She hoped that Rose would want to talk to her, too. Her curiosity had been aroused by the overheard conversation. She had tantalising glimpses of the woman in the kitchen, peeling vegetables in preparation for supper. Molly wondered if she should call in and offer to help, but it seemed that Rose preferred to be alone while she mixed a crumble in a large brown bowl.

Duncan James had walked back to his position in the lower garden by the stream. As dusk approached, his claustrophobia returned, and he paced backwards and forwards trying to fight it off.

George left Porthkennan early on Sunday morning and arrived in Bristol to quiet streets and the sound of church bells. The new development around the docks was empty. The wealthy young people who lived there would still be sleeping off the parties of the night before. There was an occasional jogger stumbling over the fancy cobbles on the path along the river. George considered parking there, finding somewhere for coffee. And still in the back of his mind was the wonder of the red-footed petrel, which seemed to grow larger and more vivid in his imagination, so he thought, too, of looking up the curator of vertebrate biology at the museum, who was an old friend of his. But he knew these were delaying tactics. Before he did anything, he would have to see the Franks.