Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise Read Free

and used to cycle up the island for his watches. It was great fun to go with him.”
    He pointed out the cliffs where he had collected gulls’ eggs, and where the puffins bred, and the hill where he and his family always dug their peat. She listened to the enthusiasm in his voice and thought: it was right for us to come back here to live although he pretended that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. He loves it.
    He described the Hill Sheep Gather when they collected all the sheep for shearing, and showed her the seals hauled up on to the rocks at the base of the cliff. It was all she had dreamed of.
    The land began to flatten and she saw the church and the school and low stone houses. At the very south of the island, above a rocky beach, he showed her the white house which would be their home. Then the Ruth Isabella moved north again and around one of the long curved headlands which protected the harbour from westerly gales, and Jim disappeared to help to bring the boat alongside the quay.
    She had hoped that the islanders would do something special to mark her arrival, but it was all much more spectacular than she had imagined. She did not know that most of the islanders came to the harbour every boat day, and she thought that the whole of Kinness had turned out just to welcome her. There was a crowd and they all seemed to be waving and smiling. A banner reading JIM AND SARAH WELCOME HOME had been strung along the wall by the jetty. She felt like visiting royalty.
    The other passenger tactfully left the boat first, quietly with no fuss, and disappeared into the crowd. Sarah stood, savouring the attention, the magic of being there, and waited for Jim to join her. He jumped on to the quay first. Instead of giving her his hand to help her ashore as she had expected, he took her into his arms and swung her on to the quay. The crowd cheered.
    Other men went on to the boat then, and started to unload it. Sarah expected Jim to go with them to help, but he took her hand and led her off to introduce her to family and friends. She had met his immediate family at the wedding, but everyone wanted to take her hand, kiss her cheek. Jim stood close beside her, as if she might need protection from those people who only wanted to be friendly.
    George Palmer-Jones, the elderly passenger, stood at the back of the crowd and watched with interest. He could not decide whether Sarah would settle on the island or not. He rather thought that she would not. He watched as Agnes, Jim’s mother, tried to introduce her youngest child to Sarah. The child, Mary, would not have it. She pulled away from her mother’s hand and would not look at Sarah. George thought that Mary was playing up on purpose because she knew that Agnes would be specially upset if there was a scene today. The girl’s face was red with the exertion of the tantrum, but she had a gleam in her eye as if she were enjoying herself immensely. Mary was twelve, but she behaved at times like a six-year-old. George thought that she was disturbed, but not as disturbed as she pretended to be. Perhaps if her deafness had been recognized earlier, or if Agnes had agreed to send her to a special school on the mainland, she might have been different.
    “Come to meet your new sister-in-law,” Agnes said. She spoke very slowly and looked directly at Mary so that the girl could lipread. “ This is Sarah, Jim’s wife.”
    “Don’t want to!” Mary said. It seemed to George that she emphasised the nasal, toneless quality of the voice. She was exaggerating her deafness.
    She hid behind her mother and began to kick and scream. Sarah did not know how to react to the girl’s rudeness. She did not want her first day on the island spoilt by unpleasantness. She wished that Agnes would take Mary away. She was confident that she would win Mary round if she had the girl to herself. She was good with children. She had enjoyed her spell on the paediatric ward. She wanted children of her own. Lots of them. Of