‘And Eleanor was upset? I don’t quite see how that’s relevant to her murder.’
‘The affair was with a younger man.’ He turned so that he was staring out of the window again. Willow hoped he wasn’t going to go moral and God-bothering on her. With Perez she never knew exactly how he would react. He looked back into the room and directly at her, weighing his words. ‘With Marcus Wentworth. Cilla’s field of expertise is Middle Eastern and North African art. He runs occasional cultural tours. That was how they met. The fact that Polly and Eleanor were friends was just a weird coincidence.’
‘But he must be half her age!’ Sandy sounded horrified.
Suddenly Willow felt wide awake, and she thought again that they could now look at the facts of the case from an entirely new perspective. ‘Well, that gives us a very strong motive, doesn’t it?’
Perez nodded. ‘I think Marcus was the man Eleanor met in the Bloomsbury restaurant. She was trying to persuade him to end the relationship with her mother. She knew how upset Polly would be if she found out. And Eleanor took a phone call from him when she was in the Sentiman. Again she was telling him to sort out the situation.’
‘Marcus has got Polly all lined up for the role of wife and mother,’ Willow said. ‘The woman to step into his mother’s shoes and become lady of the manor. Very aristo. He’s not going to be best pleased if Eleanor threatens to spill the beans to her best friend.’
‘I’m not sure how Polly would respond to the news, either. She seems fragile already.’
Willow looked at him sharply, uncertain exactly what Perez meant by the comment. She breathed deeply. ‘For the first time we’ve got a credible motive in this case. We’ll bring Marcus in first thing in the morning.’ She felt a rush of relief. In the end this would turn out to be an ordinary case with a human motive. Peerie Lizzie had nothing to do with it. ‘I feel like celebrating. Let’s have that glass of wine.’
But as she reached out for the corkscrew and the bottle, her mobile rang. It occurred to her again that this was like the operations room of a wartime mission. Phones ringing constantly from different agents in the field. New information arriving all the time and needing to be assimilated. Her caller was breathless, female and English. Willow recognized the clear tones and the academic precision. Caroline, Lowrie Malcolmson’s new bride.
‘We need your help, Inspector. It’s Polly. She seems to have disappeared.’
Chapter Forty
In the boat club, at the end of the meal, Polly couldn’t take her eyes off the dancing girl. It was as if she and the child were frozen in time and space and all the other guests were whirling around them until they became a blur of speed and colour. Then the music slowed and stopped and everything became normal once more. The child seemed to be aware of Polly’s eyes on her, because she stared back. Her eyes were blue and unblinking. Not rude, but curious.
Polly stood up to walk around the table to speak to her. She would feel less disturbed if she discovered the child’s name, if she got to the bottom of the apparent haunting and spoke to this strange girl, who appeared only to her and to Eleanor. But everyone was standing up to leave now and in the narrow gap between the trestle tables and the walls there were people struggling to their feet, kissing farewell, catching up on last-minute gossip. Words spoken in an accent Polly could scarcely decipher, adding to her sense of panic. An elderly woman with a walking frame was blocking her route. When she finally did squeeze past, the girl and the two boys had disappeared. So once again she was left questioning her judgement. Had her imagination been playing tricks once more? Was the dancing child like a shadow in the mist?
She pushed her way back to the door and down the stairs, thinking there might be a queue for the cloakroom and the girl might still be there. No sign of her. Polly grabbed her jacket and walked out into the night. The fog was so thick that it seemed she could taste it. It was salty like seaweed and dense on her tongue. A soup made of sea water and sulphur. The wall lamp outside the boat club bounced light back from the screen of grey. Somewhere at the mouth of the harbour a red buoy flashed very dimly. In the car park people were banging doors and shouting goodbye and words of warning about the journey home. Polly could make out some silhouettes, but there was nothing that could be the girl in white.
I’m becoming obsessed. I should leave it and find the others. Walk back to Sletts and finish packing. Tomorrow I’ll be on my way home and this will be just another story. Everything I’ve done here can be forgotten.
Then she heard a child singing. The words were high-pitched and clear:
Little Lizzie Geldard died today
The tide came in and drowned her.
The water swept the girl away,
It was night before they found her.
The words seemed to be mocking Polly and pulling her towards them. They weren’t coming from the car park, which was almost empty now, but from the footpath where she’d walked with Marcus and Ian earlier. Polly knew she should find the others and persuade them to listen to the song and help her to find the singer. For her own sanity she needed witnesses. But the words were getting fainter and seemed to be taunting her, calling her forward. It was night before they found her.
There was a torch in her jacket pocket and she set off after the girl’s voice. She hoped the others would realize that she’d left and would follow, then thought that they might be anxious if she just disappeared. As she walked she pulled out her phone, but the signal was very faint. Marcus answered, but when she spoke to him she wasn’t sure he’d heard what she’d said. Then the connection was lost. She still had a signal, but it had been cut off at the other end. It occurred to her that Marcus had deliberately switched his phone off.
Marcus. Unbidden, thoughts of her last conversation with Eleanor forced themselves into Polly’s head. She was back on the deck the night of the hamefarin’. Both the men were asleep and it was just the two girls, like the old days in Durham. Polly had gone outside again to find Eleanor wrapped up in her theatrical velvet gown, looking like a character in a Victorian melodrama. Polly had fetched her quilted jacket and joined her. A new bottle of wine on the table between them. The fog coming and going and swirling in weird shapes over the shore. Just like tonight.
And then Eleanor had started spilling out her story, her weasel words and excuses. ‘I’m so glad of the chance to talk to you on your own, Pol. This has been tearing me apart.’ And for a brief moment Polly had thought she was about to admit to an affair with Marcus. She couldn’t understand how they might have met, but she could see that there would be an attraction. Two beautiful people, both dark and handsome. Both intelligent. Polly was accustomed to playing second fiddle to Eleanor and might even have got used to that. The woman was easily bored and would have moved on very quickly. Marcus might have settled for Polly in the end. But that wasn’t what Eleanor had wanted to say at all.
‘You should know that Marcus is having an affair.’
‘With you?’ Keeping her voice even, because although she loved Marcus to pieces, her friends were still more important to her than he was. They’d rescued her when she was frightened and alone and had first left home. They’d kept her going in a strange and intimidating city when she’d moved to London.
‘Of course not with me.’ Eleanor’s voice was amused, with that touch of arrogance that never really left her. ‘I don’t want anyone other than Ian, these days. You know that, Pol. I’m a married woman. A reformed character.’