Combe Island

Combe Island is the fictional offshore setting of the novel and more than a remote backdrop: its promise of protected solitude draws visitors there, while its cliffs, restricted landing points, and scattered buildings shape the investigation into two murders. The island’s apparent security makes an unseen arrival seem nearly impossible; its enclosed geography also leaves the residents together when illness brings a quarantine.

Location and Landscape

Combe Island lies off the coast of Cornwall, about twenty miles south-west of Lundy Island and roughly twelve miles from the mainland near Pentworthy. Newquay is the nearest large town. It is four and a half miles long, aligned north-east to south-west, and about two miles wide at its middle, tapering towards either end. Seen from a helicopter, it appears sharply bounded by sea: silver granite cliffs rise above surf, and the island’s quiet interior seems set apart from the mainland.

A low circuit reveals eight stone cottages, four on the north-west cliffs and four on the south-east. Scrubland, bushes, small copses, and faint tracks occupy the middle. The north-west cliffs are higher and more dramatic, with jagged rocks projecting into the sea; a lower strip of cliff follows much of the southern shore and is broken at the narrow harbour mouth. There are no beaches. A square chapel stands inland, while a lighthouse occupies a rocky spur west of the house. Its white shaft and red lantern make it a prominent landmark from the air.

The island’s layout distributes its residents rather than gathering them in one settlement. Combe House contains flats for Rupert Maycroft, the housekeeper, and the cook, as well as visitor accommodation. Millie Tranter and Dennis Tremlett live in converted stables; Jago Tamlyn occupies Harbour Cottage by the quay. Miranda Oliver stays at Peregrine Cottage, while Seal Cottage is vacant when the investigation begins. Chapel Cottage houses Adrian Boyde, and Mark Yelland occupies Murrelet Cottage. On the western side, Raimund Speidel is at Shearwater Cottage; Emily Holcombe and her butler, Arthur Roughtwood, occupy adjoining parts of Atlantic Cottage. Martha Padgett had lived at Puffin Cottage, where her son Dan moves after her death to clear her possessions. Guy Staveley and Joanna Staveley live at Dolphin Cottage, north-west of the lighthouse. This dispersed pattern makes the map essential to understanding who is where, and how residents might move between the house, cottages, harbour, and crime scenes.

History and the Trust

The Holcombe family owned the island for more than four centuries, having acquired it in the sixteenth century. Its title was later ratified by Henry VIII after Mediterranean pirates had used the island as a base for slave-trading raids along the Devon and Cornish coasts. The family took little interest in Combe for a long period, visiting occasionally from the eighteenth century to observe bird-life or picnic. In the early twentieth century, Gerald Holcombe restored the cottages and built Combe House and staff accommodation in 1912, establishing the island as a family holiday retreat.

The First World War altered that inheritance. Gerald’s two elder sons were killed, one in France and the other at Gallipoli; the surviving son, Henry, was consumptive and unfit for military service. With family wealth from investments dwindling, Henry founded a charitable trust in 1930 and transferred the island and its property to it. He intended Combe to provide rest and seclusion for people undertaking arduous, high-responsibility work in public service and in fields including the armed forces, politics, science, industry, and the arts. Although the founding language referred to men, the accepted convention extends the provision to women.

The Trust accommodates a maximum of five visitors, either in Combe House or in a stone cottage. Its offer combines peace with security: visitors can think without protection officers and expect not to be disturbed. Access is tightly controlled. Visitors generally come on the recommendation of a trustee or a previous or regular visitor; casual visitors are not admitted, and mobile phones are forbidden, although the island would not provide a signal in any case. A helicopter pad allows visitors to arrive by air. By sea, the small harbour is the only safe landing place. The island’s visitor privacy and restricted access make it a refuge, but also make any breach of its boundaries consequential.

The Investigation on the Island

When the investigation begins, Nathan Oliver’s death is already a shock to residents. Rupert Maycroft says that Combe has a violent history in the distant past but that there had been no unnatural death—and no death at all since the end of the last war—apart from Martha Padgett, who died two weeks earlier. Oliver was a regular visitor, arriving each quarter, but not a welcome one: he was demanding, critical, and prone to grievance. The Trust could not refuse him admission because he was born on the island, though the deed did not specify how often or how long he could stay. His death therefore disrupts a community accustomed to managing his presence and relying on the island’s quiet routines.

That geography initially seems to promise near-total control over access. The harbour entrance is narrow and has light sensors; people near Combe House keep watch, and Jago’s cottage is on the quay. Maycroft cannot remember an unauthorised landing. He identifies only a couple of places where someone might swim ashore at low tide from an offshore boat, and considers climbing the cliff without an accomplice unlikely. Yet the murder investigation turns this confidence into a question: the small number of residents and guests narrows the field, while the cottages and paths offer opportunities to move out of sight. Adam Dalgliesh notes that the weekend has left only thirteen possible suspects, or fifteen if the cook and housekeeper are included. The island’s enclosure concentrates suspicion as effectively as it restricts entry.

The principal scenes give particular buildings and terrain lasting significance. Oliver is found hanging at the lighthouse. Later, Kate Miskin announces that Adrian Boyde’s body has been found in the chapel, confirming a second death; Raimund Speidel is in hospital with SARS, and Dalgliesh is ill. Kate takes charge of the investigation with Francis Benton-Smith while the residents are placed in quarantine. To search the cliffs below the chapel, Kate, Benton-Smith, and Jago load climbing equipment into a buggy and stop about twenty yards from the building to preserve the scene. The cliff falls about eighty feet to a cove piled with stones and boulders, where the incoming tide makes the search difficult. In this way the island’s striking landscape becomes practical terrain for police work, not merely a view.

Quarantine and the Island’s Changing Use

As the illness and murders alter daily life, people move from the cottages into Combe House and the stable block. The relocation resembles a retreat into shelter: luggage and books are carried indoors, and residents gather in the house while the investigation and medical response proceed. When a helicopter arrives with medical equipment and collects evidence, the formal handover takes place at a distance, with everyone masked. The house, harbour, and landing arrangements that ordinarily serve privacy and controlled access now support emergency containment and police procedure.

The investigation also depends on darkness and concealment. Before searching Puffin Cottage, Kate and Benton-Smith wait until the cottages are dark; an early light at the house might warn Dan Padgett and give him time to remove or destroy the blood and hair evidence they suspect is there. They cross the headland quietly, unlock the cottage with keys labelled by Maycroft, and enter without alerting him. The search makes the privacy of a dead resident’s home a moral discomfort for Kate, even as anger over Boyde’s death steels her resolve. The cottage’s ordinary function as Martha Padgett’s home has become part of the case’s evidentiary landscape.

Narrative Significance and Departure

Combe’s solitude carries a double meaning throughout the story. From the air, the island appears calm and alluring, but the surrounding sea is at once its protection and a latent threat. The same isolation that promises visitors safety also limits escape, concentrates the residents, and gives physical weight to uncertainty about who could have arrived or moved unseen. Cottages that embody the Trust’s hospitality become interview locations and search sites; the lighthouse and chapel, landmarks in the island’s compact geography, hold the deaths that shatter its history of seclusion.

After the arrests and during the remaining quarantine, the police team is treated as though it were a group of visitors seeking peace. The murders are not discussed collectively because some residents will be witnesses at trial. Benton cooks breakfast and climbs with Jago; Kate walks alone along the cliffs, disconnects her phone, and allows the quiet to work on her. Dalgliesh, once able to walk, withdraws to Seal Cottage, where files from New Scotland Yard arrive by helicopter. The island’s retreat does not affect everyone in the same way: Dalgliesh continues working, while Kate finds temporary distance from the unsettled questions of her life in London.

On the team’s departure, the island’s buildings recede into toy-like shapes beneath the helicopter: Combe House, the stable block, Seal Cottage, the bloodstained chapel, and the lighthouse with its red cupola. Kate understands that Combe has changed her, though not yet how, and knows she will never see it again. The ending completes the island’s movement from imagined refuge, to sealed crime scene, to temporary place of recovery. The author’s note identifies Combe Island and its inhabitants as entirely fictional, underscoring that its carefully mapped geography is a constructed setting whose physical isolation gives the novel’s conflicts their particular form.