Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise Read Free Page B

The children were excited and dragged the balloons on strings behind them, but it was the same as every boat day. The women were talking about the preparation for the wedding party, but there were dances and parties throughout the autumn. The unloading of the boat had taken longer than usual—the sun was already low behind Ellie’s Head—but with the disappearance of the lorry and the new arrivals everything had returned to normal.
    James stopped outside Unsta—their new home—but did not leave the lorry, and drove away at once. The house stood above a pebble beach which Jim called the Haven. There was a small garden in the front surrounded by a drystone wall. A bench made from driftwood stood against the whitewashed wall of the house. There was a storm porch in the middle of the house, with doors on either side.
    “That’s in case of a gale,” Jim said. “You’d never be able to open a door straight into the wind.”
    She waited outside for a moment, hoping that he might carry her in, but he seemed not to think of it. Perhaps lifting her on to the island from the boat had served the same purpose for him. She followed him into the house. It was small.
    “There’s no bathroom,” he said immediately. “I explained to you that there’s no bathroom.”
    “That’s all right,” she said. “ Really it’s no problem.”
    “If we decide to stay I can build one.”
    “Of course we’ll decide to stay.”
    The front door led into a narrow passage. There were only two rooms. On one side was the bedroom and on the other the kitchen, with a small scullery at the back. In the kitchen there was a range. The fire was ready to light. Sarah suddenly felt chilled, and tried not to shiver. There was a little essential furniture in the room—a kitchen table, a couple of chairs—but it looked cold and bare.
    “Alec and Maggie gave us this,” Jim said. “For the time being. The old man who was here moved to the mainland to live with his sister and he took everything with him. Alec will bring our things on the tractor and trailer later.”
    “It’ll be fun to start from scratch.”
    Everything was spotlessly clean, but the net curtains which hung at the windows were frayed and tatty, and the lino had lost all its colour.
    “It’s lovely,” she said. “Really. It’s lovely.”
    He took her hand and led her towards the bedroom. He stopped her at the door, picked her up, and carried her inside.
    George and Jonathan walked back slowly to the school house. Jonathan had lingered at the quay, looking out at the gannets fishing over the sea until the islanders had gone. George felt awkward. He had made friends on Kinness and would have liked to walk down the island with them.
    “How’s Sylvia?” he asked
    “Fine.”
    He had never found Jonathan easy to talk to. Every time he visited Kinness he felt that he was in the school house on sufferance. Drysdale was polite but George felt that the politeness was an effort. Yet each year the invitation came, and after he left there was a warm and friendly letter saying how much Jonathan and Sylvia enjoyed Palmer-Jones’ visit.
    “Did you have a good spring?” George asked.
    Jonathan considered. “Not bad,” he said in the end. “ I broke my record for ringing auks. We didn’t have any very special migrants.”
    He had a clipped, rather affected accent, which George found irritating. He must have been thirty-five but he still looked and sounded like a public-school boy. Molly, George’s wife, thought that Jonathan was shy, but that had never seemed to George a reasonable excuse for rudeness.
    “I’ve been invited to the party tonight,” George said. “Sandy wrote to me specially. Will you and Sylvia be going?”
    “We’ve been invited,” he said. “ Everyone on the island’s been invited. I suppose that we’ll have to go. Sylvia’s very keen. And as I said, I’ve been told to participate in community affairs.”
    The school house was in the middle of the island.