‘No!’ Soper bellowed the word, a raw, despairing act of denial, and he looked so angry that Penrose thought for a moment that he was going to lash out.
A young woman hurried over to join them and took Soper’s hand. ‘Johnny, what is it? What on earth’s wrong?’
He shook her off, but still she took the brunt of his grief. ‘I knew something was wrong. I should never have listened to you. We might have been able to save her if I’d gone over last night like I wanted to.’
‘But you couldn’t get across.’
‘How do you know? You’re not from round here. We could have tried harder.’
‘The young lady’s right, Mr Soper,’ Penrose added gently. ‘You arrived late last night?’ He nodded. ‘Then there was nothing you could have done. We’ve had to wait until now to come across and get some help.’
‘We were going to surprise her, weren’t we, Vi?’ He took her hand, all hostility now forgotten. ‘She wasn’t expecting us, but we wanted her to be the first to know.’
‘We’ve just got engaged, you see,’ Violet explained. ‘Johnny wanted to tell his mum.’
‘I wish I’d written now,’ Jonathan said. ‘At least then she’d have known we were on our way. She could have looked forward to it. It was her first Christmas on her own. She probably thought we didn’t care.’
‘Don’t be daft, Johnny. Of course she knew you cared about her. Why else would you have half drowned yourself last night?’
‘What do you mean?’ Penrose asked.
‘Johnny couldn’t sleep last night, so he went out to try and find a way across. I’ve spent most of today drying his clothes.’ She squeezed his hand lovingly. ‘So don’t beat yourself up about not trying hard enough, love. Your mum couldn’t have had a better son – she always said so herself.’
Mathews put his hand on Johnny Soper’s shoulder and Penrose was relieved to have someone there who knew the family. ‘Come inside, lad, and let’s get a drink down you.’ He looked at Penrose. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is.’
They headed towards the hotel, but Soper turned back. ‘How did she die?’ he asked.
Penrose’s dilemma returned and he chose a middle path. ‘We found your mother at the bottom of the stairs. She died from a head injury.’ It was the truth, but not the whole truth, and he felt a pang of conscience as Emily Soper’s son accepted it and turned away.
‘What a tragic fucking coincidence that is,’ Fielding said. ‘Poor bloke. Christmas will never be anything but misery for him now.’
There was no trace of anything but sincerity in the words, but Penrose decided to test him. ‘If it’s a coincidence,’ he said, waiting for the reaction.
His meaning took a second or two to sink in, but when it came, the surprise seemed genuine. ‘You mean she was murdered as well?’ Fielding asked. ‘It isn’t just Hartley you’re after someone for?’
The barely suppressed enthusiasm for the idea was exactly what Penrose would have expected from a journalist; if Fielding was an impostor, he was a good one. ‘Keep that to yourself for now. Let’s go and find the landlord and get those calls made.’
The warmth of the hotel was almost as welcome as the prospect of contact with the outside world. A convivial Christmas lunch was obviously drawing to a close in the dining room, and as they waited in reception, a room full of revellers wearing coloured paper hats stared in bemusement at the new arrivals and their wet, dishevelled clothes. Penrose introduced himself and asked to use the telephone, and the hotelier pushed it across the desk, mercifully too busy to engage in much conversation. ‘Isn’t there somewhere more private?’
‘There is, but not with a telephone,’ the man said in a beggars-can’t-be-choosers sort of way, and Penrose considered himself told.
‘Go and wait in the bar,’ he said to Fielding. ‘I might be some time, so get yourself a drink on me. It’s the least I can do after this morning. Make it a large one.’
Fielding took his whisky to an empty table – near the islanders but not with them – and Penrose positioned himself carefully to keep an eye on the bar while making his calls. As luck would have it, there was far too much rowdiness for him to be overheard as he asked to be put through to Scotland Yard, and then to his detective sergeant, Bill Fallowfield, who had drawn the short straw of Christmas Day duties. ‘Happy Christmas, sir,’ Bill said, when he finally came to the telephone. ‘We didn’t expect to hear from you today. Fed up of hobnobbing with film stars, are you?’
‘No, Bill, I’m fed up of trying to guess how two people have died.’ Fallowfield was one of Penrose’s closest friends, as well as his most reliable colleague, and usually he found the sergeant’s relentless good nature a welcome contrast to his own, more cynical, personality; today, he had no patience for anything but the task at hand. There was a silence at the other end of the telephone, and he took advantage of it to bring Fallowfield succinctly up to date.
‘Are Miss Tey and her friend all right?’ Bill asked as soon as Penrose had finished.
‘Yes, they’re fine, but I can’t be sure that the violence will stop here because I’ve absolutely no idea if there’s a connection between the two victims, or why anybody would want to kill either of them. There’s so much I need, Bill, and I haven’t been able to access any of it from the Mount. We’ve even had to wade across the sea to use the bloody telephone.’
‘Fire away, sir. I’ll get straight onto it.’
‘First of all, get hold of someone from The Times, preferably the editor, and ask him to confirm that he sent a photographer called Alex Fielding on this assignment. Get a full description of Fielding – there’s a chance that the man here isn’t who he says he is.’ He watched Fielding down his drink and get up to order another, wondering if he had unwittingly asked a suspect to photograph his own crime scene. ‘Find out anything you can on Gerald Lancaster and his wife Rachel. If he’s telling the truth, Lancaster works for London, Midland and Scottish Railways, so check him out there and see if he’s got any previous convictions for theft or violence. Hartley was the vicar at St Clement’s in Notting Dale …’
‘Nice part of town,’ Bill muttered sarcastically.
‘He was there for a few years after the war. Get the file out on the Naylor murders. It’s probably a needle in a haystack, but if there’s anything that might help us track down the surviving children, I want to know about it.’
He gave his sergeant the details and waited while he noted them down.
‘What about the dead woman?’ Fallowfield asked.
‘Emily Soper, an islander all her life. I think the answer to her death must lie closer to home, but obviously let me know if her name comes up in connection with anything else.’
‘Right-o, sir. Anything else?’
‘Yes. Telephone Claridge’s and ask someone to go and look at Marlene Dietrich’s Christmas tree.’
‘Her Christmas tree?’
‘That’s right. I haven’t got time to explain, but I need to know if it’s still got a snowman on top.’