Palmer-Jones 03 - Murder in Paradise by Ann Cleeves

that she would go. He saw her off sadly. He did not know what to do. He felt powerless to take charge of events. If only there was something conclusive, he thought. If only there was something to prove that Mary had been pushed. If only I had the scarf …
    In the windswept playground Ben Dance crouched in a corner and drew on the asphalt with a stone. Grandma had given him breakfast today. He wondered where his mother was. Perhaps she had disappeared like Dad and Mary. He had wanted Dad and Mary to disappear, but he would not want to lose his mother. He felt that he might cry, and frowned to stop himself. He had been a very good boy lately, so there was no reason for her to go. He had felt, secretly, that he must have some magic. He had wanted Dad to disappear for as long as he could remember, and then suddenly he had. When they moved to Kinness, Mary had been so bossy and had spoiled all his games, and he had hoped that she would go, too, in the same way. And she had. That must be some sort of magic. But it would be terrible if it happened to his mother. The bell went and he ran inside, and was distracted from his anxieties by Peter and Jane and First Step Maths.
    On her way home Sarah called into the post office. She needed groceries, flour, cheese, stamps. Kenneth Dance was alone in there. He sat on a high stool behind the counter.
    “Yes?” he said. He was staring at her.
    The room was heated by a Calor Gas heater and the smell of the gas and the sudden warmth made her feel slightly faint. She ordered some stamps, but he did not move. He sat behind the counter like a Dickensian clerk at his desk and stared at her over his glasses. She was embarrassed and increasingly uncomfortable in the stuffy room. At last he took his eyes from her face and pushed the stamps over the counter towards her.
    She was about to ask for the other goods she needed when the door opened and Elspeth came in. Her long hair was tangled and there was a hole in her tights. She was wearing a moth-eaten fur coat and a shapeless knitted hat. Her father ignored Sarah.
    “Where have you been?” he said to Elspeth. “ We were worried sick.”
    “I went out for a walk.”
    “We thought that perhaps you’d gone out on the Ruth. “
    “I did think about it. But I would have told you first. I wouldn’t leave Ben—you know that.”
    “He wanted to know where you were.”
    “Did he go off to school all right?”
    Kenneth Dance nodded grudgingly. “He ran off early. You should have been here to see him off.”
    “Yes,” she said. “I should have been.”
    “Don’t do it again. Your mother’s been ill with worry.”
    Sarah watched with interest. It seemed to her that Kenneth Dance was over-reacting. Elspeth Dance turned away towards the kitchen door, then returned to face Sarah.
    “How’s Jim?” she asked.
    “He’s well,” Sarah said.
    “I never meant to hurt him. I hope he understands.”
    They stood for a moment looking at each other.
    “Did you pin a note to my wedding dress?” Sarah said suddenly.
    “No.” Elspeth’s surprise seemed genuine, but Sarah was not convinced. “ He should have been mine,” the note had read, and “He should have been hers” was the inscription on the gravestone of the original Elspeth Dance. The similarity came to her suddenly and seemed too much of a coincidence.
    Elspeth disappeared into the kitchen, then Kenneth Dance served Sarah as if the conversation had never taken place.
    In the school Jonathan Drysdale was irritated, as he always was, by the younger children’s inability to concentrate. He would never have chosen to specialize in primary teaching elsewhere. Sylvia had been glad to help him with the little ones, and when they had first moved to Kinness they had worked together in the classroom. They had been happy then, he thought. The walls of the school room had been covered by the collages and pictures she had inspired in the infants, and he had taken the older ones for more formal,