Free Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise by Ann Cleeves Page A

surrounded by high walls. It stood well away from the road beyond a small lochan. On the other side of the water she could see James. He was leaning against a gate, smoking a pipe. He had changed out of his suit. He waved and shouted hello, but he did not ask her in.
    She walked on as far as the harbour and sat there for a moment on the sandy beach. North of the harbour the road petered into a track which led to the airstrip and eventually to the lighthouse. It rose steeply through bare, windswept grassland and seemed uninviting, rather daunting. She told herself she must have something to explore later, and retraced her steps. Just north of the school house the road forked. She knew that it joined again near Buness. The track which she knew went to the west past Sandwick. She took the easterly road. It, too, followed the fertile area of the island. There were small fields of oats, grass, and vegetables. There was a steep incline and then in a small valley, right next to the road, end on to it, a low grey house. It had a red post box in the wall and a small sign which said: Kinness Post Office and General Stores.
    There was no display window. A small boy, Ben, was kicking a football against the wall with intense concentration.
    “Hello!” she said. She liked children.
    He stared at her but said nothing, then scuttled indoors like a frightened animal.
    As she drew level with the kirk the sun was beginning to set below the west cliffs. From every point on the island there was a sight of the sea. She walked off the road and up the hill to the church to get a better view. The pink light of the sun caught the gravestones in the small cemetery, and threw long shadows, so that they could have been prehistoric standing stones. She went over to them and began to read the inscriptions on them. Nearly all of them remembered Stennets, Dances, or Andersons. With pleasure she read the old names—Jacobina, Jerome, Alexander, which recurred generation after generation. Then she saw a name which she recognized and she stopped the idle movement from one stone to another, without reading them carefully. The stone was in a corner, near the protecting wall, and seemed not to have weathered like the others. “ Elspeth Dance 1900—1925,” it said. Then underneath: “We remember her as she was once and forgive her. The shame is with us all. He should have been hers.”
    The last phrase was familiar to Sarah. Elspeth must be about twenty-five now, she thought. What can have happened to the poor woman sixty years ago?
    Before she could think clearly why she felt that she had seen the last phrase recently, she heard someone coming up behind her and she fumed round, startled.
    For George Palmer-Jones it had been an unsatisfactory day. He had not slept well. In his mind he had repeated the details of Mary’s death, looking for some other fact which might explain it differently. He had found none. And the problem—the need to come to a decision about his future—had not been replaced by the new one. As he tried to sleep the two subjects became linked in his mind, as if the discovery of a logical explanation of the child’s death was a test of competence, and if he failed at that, the new venture of his own business would be a failure. If I knew her secret, he thought. If only I knew her secret.
    Then there had been the dilemma of whether or not to go to church. It was not that he had no faith. He was church warden in his parish church and he had a strong, though idiosyncratic, commitment. It was a matter of delicacy. He was not sure that he would be welcome. Jonathan and Sylvia never attended services. He knew that when they first came to Kinness they were under considerable pressure to go. Jonathan had even been expected to preach. They had seen it as a matter of principle, and never went, even when the children from school were performing.
    Sylvia did not appear for breakfast. The two men sat at the pine table in the small, immaculate kitchen,