Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand (26 page)

That night George and Molly had a quiet meal in the hotel restaurant. Each was preoccupied. George was considering the details of his plan, not allowing himself to consider the final outcome. Molly was thinking of Bernard Cranshaw, and wondering how the thing would end. When they did speak the conversation seemed hushed, intimate, because outside, even with the thick curtains drawn, they could hear the sound of rain and thunder. Later the electricity supply failed and the dining room was lit only by candles and the flashes of lightning.

Terry was terrified by the storm. He watched the huge clouds roll in from the sea like giant waves. He did not understand what was happening. He had no memory of any other storm. The house he had built was no protection against the noise of thunder and lightning and the rain. He crouched under the dripping gorse bushes and the rain ran in a stream across his feet. The wind blew straight into his face and lifted the corrugated iron roof at one corner so that it banged. He felt cold and miserable. Then there came a gust of wind so strong that it lifted the roof away from the bushes and Terry watched with horror as it was carried down the hill, bouncing and twisting as if it were no heavier than a piece of cardboard. Now there was nothing between him and the sky and the lightning. He forgot his discomfort and felt only terror. His fear of the storm was stronger than any vague, previous fear.

He remembered suddenly and vividly Mrs. Black and the solid house in the village. He thought of warm food and he wanted to go home. He ran down the hill, exposed, the only person in the world, it seemed, who was out in the storm. On the road between Skeffingham and Rushy a van driver stopped and gave him a lift home.

When the electricity went off Mrs. Black lit candles and thanked heaven for the coal stove. There was a knock on the door and she carried a candle with her to answer it. It would be the police, she thought. Who else would be out on such a night? But even as she went to answer it, daring not to hope, she thought that it was a sheepish knock, not a policeman’s knock. Terry stood there, grinning, pushing his dripping hair away from his eyes with his fist.

“I’m sorry,” he said automatically, the grin becoming guilty. Then with excitement: “I ran away.”

He was surprised because she did not scold him. She held him to her just for a moment, then took him in and ran him a bath, and fed him. He talked about running away, and the house he had built. He had already forgotten the storm. She listened and then talked to him about his reasons for running away. They were sitting in the dark by the fire. She talked to him about Tom French, taking him back to the morning of the murder, slowly gaining from him information which he never knew he had. She tried to telephone George Palmer-Jones, but there was no reply. Only then did she contact the police station. When a police car came to take Terry away, she went with him.

Ella sat by the telephone all evening. It rang incessantly. The birdwatchers had discovered her home phone number years ago and she had never been able to discourage them from using it. It was always busy on Friday nights, when they were deciding where to go for the weekend, but tonight, it was exceptional. She played her part well. She had always been a good actress. George would be proud of her.

No one ever knew for certain who started the rumour of the blue-cheeked bee-eater. Later, George Palmer-Jones denied all knowledge of it. He just shrugged his shoulders and smiled, reminding his friends of other rumours: the gyrfalcon in South Wales, the black-throated thrush in Lancashire. Ella’s version of the story was uncharacteristically vague. She claimed that someone had phoned her from the village on the Friday evening and that she had written the details on the board. She had passed on the information from the board as she always did.

Whatever the origin of the rumour, by late that Friday evening the news that a blue-cheeked bee-eater had been seen near Rushy had become widespread. The species had not been seen in Britain since 1951, but that had been in the middle of June and it was perfectly possible that it should occur again. And the rumour was so detailed, with its exact position, the names of the observers and the time when it had been seen, that it was accepted without question. The names of the observers were unfamiliar, but the story was that the bird had not been seen at Rushy, but on a local authority reserve a couple of miles inland, so it was assumed that the observers were the reserve wardens, or knowledgeable locals, not twitchers. Afterwards, when the hoax had been discovered, it was decided that the story had been too cleverly constructed, too plausible, for the rumour to have been created by accident.

On the Friday night the news was received and passed along the grapevine with intense excitement. Anxious parents consulted timetables, packed up sandwiches and let schoolboy sons, rude and uncommunicative in their fear that the bird might have gone, spend their first night away from home. Students waited until pub closing time, walked through evening streets to motorway exits, and began to hitch-hike to Norfolk. Responsible family men cancelled family plans, filled their cars with students and schoolboys and drove across the country, revelling in the irresponsibility of the night-time drive, the madness and the expense of it all. That was the attraction of twitching: the escape from anxious parents, lectures and essays, work and families, the knowledge that, despite all the effort and the movement, in the morning the bird might have gone.

By dawn on the Saturday morning the big car park at the Windmill was full of cars. There were even two mini-buses and a coach. A few people slept, curled up in sleeping bags on the back seats of their cars, but generally it was a social occasion, a time to drink coffee from a flask and catch up on news. At dawn they drove in convoy to the place where the bird had been found, an area of disused gravel pits, small ponds with a patch of deciduous woodland, which had been designated a nature reserve by the council. A systematic search was organized throughout the area, but nothing was seen. By the time the warden arrived at nine, his visitor centre was besieged by hostile twitchers who wanted to know why they had been deceived into visiting a reserve which supported only common breeding birds. His bewilderment and obvious lack of ornithological knowledge were so genuine—he repeated endlessly: “I’m sorry, I’m a mammal man myself”—that finally most of them left him alone. It was only when this crowd of birders drifted back to Rushy, to the Windmill and the pub, that the village realized it had been invaded.

The warden, an elderly man near to retirement, shut himself in his office and tried to ignore the succession of battered cars which arrived all day, and the aggrieved drivers who wanted to know where ‘ it’ was. At last he stuck a notice on the gate—“There is no rare bird on this reserve”—and went home early.

Rob Earl, Peter, Adam and Tina heard the news of the blue-cheeked bee-eater on the Friday evening, when they made their regular phone call to their contact in Norwich. The news came as a welcome relief. It had been an aimless day, yet no one had felt able to take the decision to go south. They had watched a pair of slavonian grebes on a small puddle of a loch, and Adam especially had found the experience dissatisfying. He longed for the expensive telescope and binoculars left behind at home. He had borrowed an old pair of binoculars from Pete Littleton for the trip to Scotland, but they were heavy and unfamiliar. He had used Rob’s telescope to look at the grebes, and although Rob had insisted that there was nothing wrong with it, Adam found it impossible to get a clear image of the birds.

It seemed that the whole world was out of focus. The previous days had been pleasant but they had been dreamlike, unreal. Now he had to come to terms with the fact that he was at risk. More than that, he had to do something about it. Tina and Rob had begun to bicker about the practical details of the trip. There was a quarrel about who had paid for the last tankful of petrol. Only Peter seemed content, unwilling to consider returning south before the Sunday night.

Rob made the phone call from a public box outside a small bar in the village where they were staying, while the others waited inside. The landlord and the locals had not responded to the young people’s overtures of friendship, making it quite clear that they disapproved of Tina’s presence in the place. When Rob came in chanting and singing like a football supporter, waving his arms above his head, indifference turned to active hostility and they were forced to make their plans sitting in the car.

Of course there were few plans to make. Despite Peter’s initial lack of enthusiasm it was inevitable that they would go for the bird. Peter drove and Rob and Adam sat in the back of the car, consulting the field guide by the light of a flickering match. Tina could not sleep. She was feeling increasingly irritated by these men with their futile hobby, their insane enthusiasm. She had enjoyed the stork, but Rob had been wrong; she did not share their obsession. When they arrived at the reserve early on the Saturday morning she was too tired even to leave the car. They waited until nine o’clock when the warden arrived, and it was obvious that nothing had been seen. Then they went to Peter’s cottage to sleep.

They were still asleep at mid-day when George Palmer-Jones called to see them, but the door was unlocked so he went inside. Tina had taken the bed and the bedroom and the men were asleep on the sitting-room floor. They did not stir when he looked in on them. George returned to the kitchen. He made a pot of tea, emptied the packet of biscuits he had brought with him on to a plate, and carried everything on a tray into the sitting room. With this peace offering he woke them. They were not angry, or even surprised to be woken, and sat half-dressed, half-covered by their sleeping bags, to drink tea and to talk. They thought that he had come to find out about the bee-eater. There was a lot of good-natured speculation about the root of the rumour.

“I’ve just come back from the Scillies,” George said conversationally.

“Why?” Rob asked quickly, aggressively. “What’s been seen there? Why weren’t we told about it? Was it suppressed?”

“I didn’t have time for birdwatching.”

There was a silence.

“Why did you go to Scilly?” Peter asked quietly.

“I had some information and I needed to check it. I had to find out if there was any real connection between you and Tom French. I saw Barbara. She doesn’t send her love.”

“The only connection was the one that you know about. Tom and I were both twitchers. We were friends.”

“No,” George Palmer-Jones said. “The real connection between you and Tom French was a girl. A girl called Sally.”

“But I don’t understand,” Peter said “ I haven’t seen Sally since the autumn before last. She left very suddenly. She didn’t write. I don’t even know where she is.”

“Is that true?” The question was put to them all. Adam would not meet his eyes. He looked blank, as if he were embarrassed to be listening to the conversation. Rob shrugged his shoulders. Peter looked quickly at his friend.

“Of course it’s true. I tried to find out where she was from the hotel, but they didn’t seem to know either. She hadn’t given them any notice that she was leaving.”

“You
are
talking about Tom’s Sally, Sally Johnson?” Rob asked.

George nodded and Rob continued: “I don’t think that I’ve told Peter about Sally. I certainly didn’t realize that Peter knew her before Tom did. I wasn’t on St. Mary’s when: Peter must have been going out with her, and I was never very good at writing to him. So far as I know it’s true that Peter didn’t know that she was here.”

Was he George thought, being a little too accurate? If George had asked a different question would he have received more information?

Peter interrupted George’s thoughts.

“I don’t understand,” he repeated. “ How do you all know Sally? Does she live round here? Did Tom know her?”

“I would have thought,” George said, “ that by now you would have gathered that Sally was Tom French’s girlfriend. She lives at Fenquay.”

Peter ignored the implication of deceit.

“Tom always fancied her,” he said slowly. “He had a cottage on St. Mary’s, the summer she worked on Tresco. But I never thought that she liked him. Vanity I suppose. Is that why she ran away? Because she couldn’t face telling me that she liked him best?”

“No,” George said. “She ran away because she couldn’t face telling you that she was pregnant.”

Adam blushed, polished his glasses, wished that he was somewhere else. Rob tried to restrain a grin.

“Barnaby!” he said. “ Peter is Barnaby’s father! I can’t imagine Peter as a daddy.”

George continued seriously:

“For some time the police thought that Sally had murdered Tom. They may still suspect her. It’s a logical supposition. It was common knowledge that they had been arguing. Tom had found out from Ella that you had left Barbara and were thinking of living for a while in Rushy. He was terrified of losing her to you. He tried to persuade her to marry him. He threatened that he would have Barnaby put into care, then said that he would apply for custody of the child himself. I would have expected him to contact you, if he was that desperate. I’m surprised that he didn’t attempt to persuade you to stay away.”

Once again Peter ignored the question implied in the last sentence.

“Why did she stay with him?” he asked. “ If he treated her so badly, why didn’t she leave him?”

“Are you sure that you don’t know? It was because she felt obliged to him. He did her a favour. Perhaps you remember that the last time you saw her was at a party, Tom’s party.”

Peter nodded.

“You left early to get back to St. Agnes, and you left your jacket behind. In the pocket you had left some cannabis. Presumably you had obtained some for your own use. When there was a police raid, Sally persuaded Tom to say that the jacket belonged to him. She knew that you had a previous conviction for possession of cannabis, and she was afraid that you would go to prison. He pleaded guilty to the charge and received a probation order. Sally felt that it was her fault. Tom was able to use considerable emotional blackmail to tie her to him. Of course you should be grateful to him. Local authorities prefer not to employ teachers who’ve been to prison.”