The Mermaid's Call by Katherine Stansfield

Author:Katherine Stansfield [Katherine Stansfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749023874
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2019-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SEVEN

The funeral had at last ended and all in church had followed Parson Hawker and the coffin to the churchyard. We were the last to leave and found the captain not far from the church door. He leant on an old slate gravestone that was itself leaning. He still hadn’t slept – I saw that in his eyes, on his skin. Somehow smelt it on him too. Could he not bear to be at the graveside as his brother was lowered into the earth? Looking at the state of him, it might have been he just wasn’t able to walk that far.

‘It must be some comfort to know your brother has been laid to rest in the soil of his home.’ I looked over to where the parson stood beside fresh-turned earth, Mrs Hawker with him. ‘He’s not being buried under the trees on the south side, where the sailors go, those whose names aren’t known. There’s many denied such mercy in this world.’

‘Mercy, Mrs Williams? I suppose so,’ the captain said. ‘To think that if you hadn’t discovered the gobbet and proved my belief about Joseph being the dead man, my brother would have been buried in sight of the family plots but not with them – that would have grieved me. You have done both he and I a good service, but you must forgive my low spirits. It is difficult to find relief in my brother’s final resting place when it was coming home that killed him.’ And the captain, too, looked across at his sister and his brother-in-law by the graveside. ‘Joseph came back to Morwenstow and he was murdered.’

‘Tell me, Captain,’ Anna said, in a voice made to sound reasonable but which was anything but. ‘When you engaged our services, why did you not tell us that Parson Hawker was brother-in-law to you and Joseph?’

He was confused by this. ‘I didn’t think it important. It made no odds. Joseph was dead. That I knew.’

‘But it is a significant detail to omit, Captain, that the deceased may be related to a suspect in the case.’

‘A suspect? To whom do you refer?’

Anna didn’t answer straight away. A useful breath to take. Then she said, ‘Why, the parson, of course.’

He straightened and made some effort to brush down his quite filthy coat. ‘Perhaps it was wishful thinking on my part not to mention the connection between myself and Robert.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘In a perfect world I wouldn’t find myself brother-in-law to Robert. He is not a relation one would wish.’

‘He is an eccentric, I’ll grant you,’ Anna said. ‘His behaviour in church today …’

The captain shook his head. ‘Such things I could bear, if he behaved with decency towards my sister.’

‘He hasn’t?’ I said.

‘Not since the day they met.’ The captain turned his face from the churchyard, and from the couple now making their slow way home. ‘He has used her poorly, squandering her inheritance on lavishness he can ill afford.’

‘You mean the things he has built here – the school, the vicarage,’ I said.

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