The blackness of night had lightened to grey as they spread the green plaid picnic rug the hotel had included with their breakfast on the cliff at Black Point. They lowered themselves onto the blanket and sat close to each other, Penny nestled into Colin’s side, with his arm around her. The air was fresh and cool, with a strong hint of the autumn to come, but they were wrapped up well in their jackets and their love for each other. Every five seconds a flash from the lighthouse lit up the rocky coastline, and every thirty seconds the fog bell tolled a mournful warning.
The first hints of red and orange streaked across the sky, signalling the coming dawn. Penny reached for the flask of coffee, poured them each a cup, and then dipped into the basket the hotel had provided and handed Colin a still-warm breakfast sandwich.
“So what do you think?” he asked as he unwrapped it.
“I’ve been wondering why Bill Ward and Sarah Spencer moved to Anglesey from Manchester.”
“Because it’s beautiful here for Bill’s painting?” He took a bite of his sandwich. “Sarah was offered a job at the Beaumaris Arms?”
“Possibly. But I think there’s more to it than that. Here’s the thing. Cilla McKee, Ward’s ex-wife, told me that they—that is, Bill and Sarah—moved to Anglesey, specifically Beaumaris. But although people do move for work, as you mentioned, they usually move to a place they’re familiar with, that they know and like.”
“That’s true. That’s exactly what they do. People often discover a small town or a resort area on holiday, and they like it so much they end up moving or retiring there,” Colin said. “Places where they were happy.”
“So let’s talk this through. As a police detective, Bethan doesn’t allow herself to have theories or to speculate, but we can, so let’s just suppose for a minute that Sarah and Bill Ward start an affair and decide they want to be together. But Sarah’s husband, Mark Currie, proves troublesome, and he lets her know he isn’t going to go quietly. He’s from a wealthy family, and she’s named as the principal beneficiary in his will, and perhaps he reminds her that she won’t see a penny of that if they divorce, hoping that will convince her not to leave him, but instead it has a much more sinister effect.”
“They decide to kill him,” said Colin. “Or she decides to kill him, and Bill Ward gets roped in to help.”
“Yes,” said Penny. “Either way, let’s assume they are in it together. They decide to kill him, but they don’t want the body found because if it looks to the authorities as if Currie’s gone off somewhere, they just have to wait seven years until he can be declared legally dead, and she stands to inherit a lot of his family’s money.”
“Some people might think seven years is an awfully long time to wait.”
“Yes, indeed, they might think that, and they’d be right. It is a long time. And it seems to me that anyone capable of playing such a long and complicated murder game has to be some kind of sociopath. But for Sarah Spencer, her life would go on as usual, knowing that at the end of the seven years, just when she might want to think about early retirement, Mark Currie could be declared legally dead, and she’d inherit millions while she was still young enough to enjoy them. Her choice was divorce now and get nothing, or wait seven years and inherit a fortune. So, she was prepared to wait.”
“Makes sense. From my perspective as an investment banker, I’ve seen people wait longer than that for their investments to pay off. But it does take a special kind of patience, though.”
“That’s a great way to look at this. As Sarah Spencer’s investment in her future. An almost-guaranteed retirement fund, if you like. She could have her cake and eat it, too. If Mark went missing before he had time to change his will, all she had to do was sit tight and she’d inherit his estate. Everything. Of course, that would mean she was still legally married to Currie for the whole seven years, and she couldn’t marry Bill Ward, but what did that matter? They could still live together, and from what his ex-wife told me, Bill Ward wouldn’t have married her, anyway.
“Of course Currie’s disappearance was investigated at the time,” Penny continued, “but even though the police suspected something wasn’t right, they couldn’t turn up any evidence of foul play. And although the Currie family hired private detectives to investigate his disappearance, they came up empty.
“And then,” she continued, “young Jessica turned up, ready to dig into the story of her missing countryman, Mark Currie. She would have done as much background research as possible into the story before she got here, so she would have known that Mark’s wife was called Sarah. But Jessica couldn’t have known that Sarah Spencer was Mark Currie’s wife. If she’d seen photos of her, taken around the time Sarah was with Mark, her hair was a different colour, and of course she was younger and looked different.”
“And Sarah had gone back to using her maiden name, so Jessica wouldn’t have made the connection that Sarah Spencer is the former Sarah Currie,” said Colin.
“Right. She wouldn’t have known any of that—yet.” Penny sipped at her coffee. It was now lukewarm, but she barely noticed. “I’m sure that she would have worked it all out, though, just as we did, and probably quicker, too.
“And then,” Penny continued the narrative, “do you remember what happened in the bar yesterday? You and I were having a drink while Llifon was wiping the table across the way from us, and he couldn’t help but overhear what we were saying.”
Colin’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I do remember that.”
“Well, when that happened, I remembered that Sarah was wiping down tables across from us in the bar on that Friday night when we were talking to Jessica. It’s something you don’t take any notice of because it happens all the time in a restaurant or café or bar. Someone on the waitstaff comes along and clears tables and wipes them down for the next customers. But Sarah must have overheard Jessica telling us that she was here to investigate a murder, and from Jessica’s accent, Sarah assumed she was talking about Mark Currie. Sarah would have recognized a New Zealand accent because she’d been married to a New Zealander, and we always relate things personally to ourselves, don’t we? So she told Ward and they just couldn’t take the risk that Jessica, eager and keen as she was, might discover what happened to Mark Currie. Which, as we now believe, she would have done.
“So Sarah got her room number, went up there personally, and told Jessica that she’d been asked to pass on a message that Jessica would have to be ready to meet up with Bill for the interview really early in the morning because he’d be tied up all weekend with the painting retreat.
“Or I imagine it happened something like that, although I must admit that even to me that sounds like a pretty lame reason.”
“She went to Jessica’s room in person so there’d be no record of a phone call from her,” Colin said.
“Exactly.” In the silence that followed, the lighthouse bell tolled. Penny stiffened, and then sat up. “Of course!” She let out a little cry. “The answer’s been right in front of us the whole time. They offered to show her the lighthouse by moonlight, and how could she refuse? Louise said Jessica would have wanted to see the lighthouse, and that’s what brought her here. That’s what brings everybody here.” She sank back into the warm reassurance of Colin’s body. “So they arrange to meet, and he picks her up in the Land Rover.”
“Did he pick her up, though? The milkman said it was his vehicle, but we don’t know for sure that he was driving.”
Penny acknowledged this. “It must have been both of them. Jessica would never get in a car with just Bill Ward, but if there was a woman with him, that would have seemed safer. But in fact, it was just the opposite. It was a deadly combination.”
Colin groaned. “Oh, I hate to think of that. Poor Jessica.”
“But they got something wrong,” said Penny. “Either they left the body too far up on the beach, or they got the time of the tides wrong. Because surely Bill Ward would have expected that one or more people from the painting group would choose the lighthouse that morning. I said at the time to Alwynne that I was surprised it was just the two of us. I thought more painters would have opted for the lighthouse. So Sarah and Ward must have figured that the body would be gone by the time the painters arrived, or they never would have left it there to be discovered. The tide was doing its work, but just not fast enough.”
“So you were right,” said Colin. “Sarah and Ward were afraid of what Jessica was going to find out. What she was going to know.”
“The milkman as an eye witness seeing Jessica get into Bill Ward’s car is a good start, but we need more. I’m convinced now that Sarah Spencer and Bill Ward killed Jessica, but we need to find proof that they did.
“And we also have to find a way to connect Jessica’s murder to that of Mark Currie, seven years ago. Now, if a body were to be swept out to sea from here, I wonder where it would end up.”
Colin thought for a moment. “I have no idea, but I know someone who might.”
“Oh, really? Who?”
“A scientist buddy who works for an oceanography institute. He knows just about everything there is to know about currents and tides, and if there’s something he doesn’t know, he’s got every resource at his disposal to find out.” He reached for his phone. “I’ll text him. What should I say this place is called?”
“Tell him it’s Penmon Point, on the extreme southeast end of the island of Anglesey. In fact we can use What3words to pinpoint the location.”
“Do you know What3words?” Colin exclaimed. “That was the program the police told us to use when we were lost in Canada, and because of it, the searchers were able to locate us. I was amazed I’d never heard of it.”
Penny smiled as she typed “Penmon Point, Anglesey” into the What3words app on her phone and seconds later she read out, “Scoop.overheard.starter.” Tell him to enter those three words on the What3words app, and he’ll know exactly where the beach we’re interested in is located.”
By now, the entire sky was rose-petal pink, shot through with brushstrokes of gold. Colin sent the text, then stifled a yawn.
“What do you say we go back to the hotel?” he said as he placed his empty coffee cup in the basket. “We’ve got a few hours before our appointment to view the apartment again, and we could try to get some more sleep.”
“Hmm. I’m not sure what ‘try to get some more sleep’ means, but I like the sound of it.”