High Island Blues (16 page)

‘Esme’s disappeared!’ Joan said, and she too could have been a middle-aged housewife, stage-struck and acting her heart out. Hamming it up for all she was worth.

If he were the producer he would tell them they needed to move more naturally. ‘Darlings, I’m afraid that you’re
terribly
wooden.’ Instead he took a seat next to Joan and then the tableau was broken and they moved away in groups to chat or go for drinks, content to leave the matter to George. It was impossible, after all, to take either of the Lovegroves seriously.

‘She wasn’t here when you got back then?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘When exactly did you last see her?’

‘Just after lunch. In the morning there was an organized trip and of course we went along for that. Esme said that the heat was affecting her. She has rather a weak constitution. Or so she claims. I suppose it was about two o’clock when I left her. She was in our room then. When I first got back from Smith Oaks with you I wasn’t concerned. Esme likes to play these little tricks. But after a while I began to worry. I spoke to Miss Cleary who was as pleasant as always but not terribly helpful. We talked to the girl at reception. She couldn’t remember having seen Esme leave but she did seem rather vague …’

‘I suppose,’ George said, ‘your sister could have left Oaklands without passing reception. Through one of the french doors on to the porch, for instance.’

‘Well yes. So I thought I should ask all the guests if they’d seen her. And that’s when you came in.’

The room had become quieter. People had moved from the bar into the restaurant.

‘I know she’s a grown woman, but I feel responsible for her. I always have.’

‘I think perhaps we should alert the authorities,’ George said gently.

‘Do you? You don’t think that would be an over-reaction? Esme has cried wolf before, Mr Palmer-Jones. She does enjoy a drama.’

‘I think perhaps it’s better to be safe than sorry.’ George winced at the platitude but Joan seemed not to notice it.

‘You do think she’s all right, don’t you?’ For the first time it seemed to occur to her that her sister might be in danger. George tried to think of a reply that was honest and reassuring, but Joan did not wait for an answer. ‘Of course she is. Of course. No harm ever comes to Esme.’

George phoned Joe Benson at home.

‘Mr Palmer-Jones. I’m glad you called. You went to see Mrs Brownscombe?’

‘I did. But that’s not why I’m phoning.’

He explained that one of Rob Earl’s party was missing.

‘I thought you should know,’ he said. ‘Our concern might be unfounded. Miss Lovegrove doesn’t seem to be a very sensible or thoughtful woman. It’s quite possible that she wandered off without telling anyone. But all the same…’

‘Well I do appreciate the communication Mr Palmer-Jones.’ There was a pause and a sound which George took to be Benson gulping beer from a bottle. ‘Now I’m reluctant to cause any panic here in High Island by drafting in people to start a full scale search right now.’ He paused again, thinking perhaps of his friend who ran the gas station and the value to the local economy of wildlife tourism. ‘I understand there’s some sort of festival planned for the weekend. The Birdathon. We wouldn’t want to spoil that. But you say none of the Brits has seen her all afternoon.’

‘Apparently not.’

‘And no one else is missing?’

‘No.’

‘Well maybe I’ll come over to the Oaklands Hotel myself. And I’ll ask my deputy to make enquiries in the neighbourhood. Let’s see if we can get her back to you before her disappearance hits the news.’

But in the end no discreet enquiries of Joe Benson’s could prevent Esme Lovegrove’s disappearance from hitting the news. George found her at midnight after an evening of waiting and increased tension. Joe Benson had sent him to bed. Throughout the evening any remaining hostility towards George had disappeared and he spoke like a kindly uncle, promising to wake him if Esme turned up. George walked across the lawn to the staff house where he was staying. The moon was covered by cloud. Esme’s small body was lying across the doorway into the house. It was as if a faithful retriever had brought a gift for its master. But Esme’s skull had been battered and she was dead.

Molly had followed George’s advice and taken a trip to Devon. It went against the grain, but she knew he was right She accepted that the motive for Mick Brownscombe’s murder lay somewhere in the past. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Mick had been killed a couple of days after meeting up with his friends. She thought it had all started twenty years ago when they had travelled to the States together, before that even, when they were at university.

The character of Mick Brownscombe intrigued her. As a social worker she had often prepared social enquiry reports for the court on young offenders, explaining the influences in their family and surroundings which had made them turn to crime. She saw this as a similar exercise. What was there in Mick’s background to make him a victim? Parents who had rejected him? A criminal father? Some other factor which had not yet come to light?

Molly was beginning her enquiries in a pub. Outside it was raining and the windows streamed with condensation. She was drinking cider, cloudy and rough and potent as hell. It was women’s darts night and at the other end of the bar, gathered round the dart board there was a riotous assembly of women of all shapes and ages, cheering on their team. Here, near the fire, there was Molly and an old woman. It seemed that the men of the village had steered clear of the place for the night.

Molly had taken a room in the pub. There was plenty of space. The season hadn’t properly started and the pub was on the edge of the village, a couple of miles inland, not quite on the tourist route. She had told the landlord that she was a writer. Not published yet but hopeful. He had accepted that without question. It was always possible to believe in failure.

The woman beside her was called Edie Gill. She drank whisky with ginger ale. To keep Molly company she said, though it was always Molly who went to the bar to buy the drinks. Edie knew she was doing her companion a favour.

Molly had tracked her down to a stone terraced house where she lived with her daughter. There she was unappreciated, an unpaid skivvy. When Molly had called she was in the scullery scrubbing her granddaughter’s school shirts by hand because that was the only way you could really get them clean.

Molly asked how long she had lived there.

‘Five years. Since my husband died.’

‘Didn’t you want to stay on in your own home?’ Molly liked her daughter but could never live with her.

‘No. I never could stand being on my own. Better to be useful and have a bit of company.’ She was no fool. She understood the trade off.

Molly had told her the same story as the landlord. She was a writer, doing some research on the area for a book. Edie had lived and worked there all her life. Would she mind talking to Molly about the old times, answering a few questions?

Edie had rinsed out the last shirt and put it in the spinner with the others before answering. ‘ Not now. Come back later when I’ve cleared up the tea things. About seven.’

When Molly had arrived there had been a row of suspicious faces peering at her through the living-room window. She had realized it would be impossible to have a private conversation there. They stood together in the narrow hall.

‘Would you mind if we talk in the Golden Fleece?’ Molly asked. ‘That’s where I’m staying.’

She thought Edie might not like to be seen in a public house, but the old woman was already putting on her hat and coat.

‘I’d like that,’ she said. They stepped out into the street. ‘I haven’t had a night in the Fleece since Jack died.’ She pulled a face. ‘My daughter married a Methodist.’ They laughed together.

And Edie Gill had sailed into the pub, waving to them all like royalty. The first drink for both of them had been on the house.

‘Of course there have always been visitors,’ Edie Gill said.

Molly had explained that she was writing a history of tourism.

‘There were wealthy people who took houses for the summer and families staying in boarding houses, though that was mostly in Ilfracombe and there wasn’t so much of that trade when they closed down the railway.’ She paused, drained the glass of whisky. ‘It was Wilf Brownscombe who brought the crowds to the village.’

‘Wilf Brownscombe?’ Molly asked, as if she’d never heard the name before.

‘I went to school with his mother. She was a poor little thing. Pretty enough, but not much about her. And
my
daughter went to school with Wilf. They knocked about together for a while. There was nothing I could do about it. She was always a stubborn madam and if I’d put my foot down she’d have seen him all the more. She saw sense by herself. Better the Methodist than that’

‘Why? What was wrong with Mr Brownscombe?’

She didn’t answer and Molly thought she had not heard. The darts match members were becoming rowdy.

‘Why do you want to know?’ Edie demanded at last.

‘Out of interest. It’s general background for my book.’

Edie shook her head.

‘You’ve been asking questions,’ she said. ‘You wanted to speak to someone who worked for the Brownscombes about twenty years ago. Do you think my friends would have given you my name without telling me? Do you think a stranger can come in nosing about without causing a stir? You’re not writing a book. So who are you? Too old for the police, that’s for certain.’

She paused briefly to take a breath but did not give Molly time to answer.

‘Has he robbed you? Swindled you out of your savings? You wouldn’t be the first one but he won’t have done anything you can prove is illegal. He’s too cunning for that. Or Viv is at least. And if it happened twenty years ago you’ve left it a bit late.’

‘His son was murdered,’ Molly said. ‘In America.’

‘I’d not heard.’

‘Isn’t that unusual? I’d have thought news like that would be common knowledge. Even if it didn’t get into the papers.’

Edie shook her head. ‘They’re very close those two.’

‘A friend of ours is suspected of the murder. We don’t believe he’s guilty. Nobody in America seems to have known Michael very well. I thought there might be some clue here to why someone should want to kill him. We even wondered if Michael might be mixed up with some fraud of his father’s.’

‘We?’ Edie demanded. ‘ Who’s we?’

‘My husband and I. My husband’s in America.’

‘Michael won’t be mixed up with any fraud of his father’s, even if he was the type, which he wasn’t. They haven’t spoken for twenty years so far as I know. Michael hasn’t been home at any rate and they haven’t been out there to visit.’

‘You were working for the Brownscombes when Michael went off?’

She nodded. ‘Housekeeper at the White Gables Hotel. Wilf still owns it. He managed to keep it somehow when he went bust. It’s full of old folks now like everywhere else they run.’

‘And Michael was working there too, that summer before he went off to America?’

Edie moved her empty glass across the table and waited for Molly to go to the bar for another drink.

‘Michael worked everywhere,’ she said, then. ‘You have to understand what it was like for the boy. Wilf Brownscombe’s a bully. He always has been. He couldn’t bully his wife so he bullied his son. And he bullied his workers so the business was always short-staffed. At one time the only employees left were the people he had a hold on: foreigners without the right papers and lads from the north on the run from the police. He never bullied me, mind. Jack sorted him out once when he was a boy and he never forgot it. Things changed a bit when jobs weren’t so easy to find and some of the locals went back to work for him because they were desperate, but there were never enough staff to do the job properly.’

‘So Michael filled in?’

Edie nodded but refused to be hurried. ‘Michael was never much to look at. Short and round shouldered with a bit of a squint, which the doctors put right in the end but which the other kids never forgot, the cruel little monsters. He had to wear those round glasses with a sticking plaster over one lens. So his dad picked on him at home and the children picked on him at school. It’s no wonder he grew up so nervy.’

She paused to take a drink but Molly knew better than to interrupt.

‘He was bright though. He passed the 11-plus and got offered a place in Barnstaple. It was still the Grammar School in those days. Wilf threatened not to let him go. He said there was no point when he’d end up going into the business anyway but he was only tormenting. It was his idea of fun.

‘I think things were easier for the boy then. He made new friends. I believe there was a teacher who took to him. Mick had always liked birdwatching and this teacher took him out, stuck up for him when he decided he wanted to go to college. Mind you, his dad still made him work. After school and at weekends trying to fit in his school work somehow. Even when he passed his exams and went away he was still back every holiday, filling in wherever he was needed, waiting on table, cleaning caravans, serving behind the bar. Some days he looked fit to drop but I never heard him complain.’

‘Something must have happened then,’ Molly said, ‘ to have made him break off relations completely.’

Edie Gill looked at her. ‘Perhaps he just grew up. Perhaps he just decided he’d had enough. No one could blame him.’

‘What was the name of the teacher who befriended him?’

‘Oh, my dear, if I ever knew that I forgot it years ago.’

‘What about a girlfriend?’ Molly asked. ‘ I heard there was a girlfriend. Someone local, younger than him.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘From his friends at college. There was a schoolgirl he wrote to.’

‘There was no one in the village,’ Edie said. ‘Not so far as I knew. Though I daresay he’d keep it quiet. Viv wouldn’t like that at all. No one would be good enough for her Michael.’

‘Do you remember the details of his leaving? Molly asked. ‘ It was the spring. This time of year. Exactly twenty years ago. Mick Brownscombe had been in America for a couple of months. He flew home to the UK with his friends. Almost immediately afterwards he went back to Texas to get married. With only his clothes and a few bits and pieces. Why the hurry? Did he come home in those couple of weeks?’