Puffin Cottage

Puffin Cottage is Dan Padgett’s one-bedroom home on the north-west coast of Combe Island, between Dolphin Cottage and Atlantic Cottage. After his mother’s death, he moves there from the stable block; the cottage becomes both the private space where he keeps evidence of his family history and the place where investigators uncover physical evidence tying him to Nathan Oliver’s murder. Its plain domestic rooms, concealed documents and samples, and ultimately its failed escape route give the cottage a central role in the investigation’s turn from suspicion to confrontation.

Setting and Residence

Rupert Maycroft explains that Dan moves into Puffin Cottage after his mother dies. She has left him some money, and he plans to leave Combe Island for London, where he hopes to undertake training and has apparently applied for a degree course at a new university. His departure would create another vacancy on the island, already dependent on whether the community continues after the deaths and their unsettling effect on visitors. The cottage is therefore a temporary home: Dan lives there after his mother’s death, but expects to use her savings to begin a life elsewhere.

The location establishes a contrast between Dan’s island employment and his sense of not belonging. He has learned carpentry and decorating from his uncle and is described as capable with his hands, but he is regarded as someone who was never truly an islander. His employment has included general handyman work and helping Mrs. Burbridge, positions available partly because Maycroft was new and had vacancies. Puffin Cottage gives him a separate residence, but not a settled identity within the island community.

The Cottage and Dan’s Appearance

When Kate Miskin and Francis Benton-Smith visit at midday on a Monday, Dan opens the door immediately and silently stands aside. The sitting room gives little indication of his activities or interests. A few paperback books occupy the top shelf of an oak bookcase; china figurines line the mantelpiece. Otherwise, the room is strikingly bare, furnished chiefly with heavy oak pieces: a central dining table with bulbous legs and two leaves, six matching chairs, and a sideboard with intricately carved doors and top panel. Beneath the window stands a divan covered by a patchwork quilt.

The arrangement suggests a practical domestic history without confirming it. Benton wonders whether Dan’s mother was nursed in the sitting room when she was bedridden, leaving the single bedroom for whoever cared for her at night. There is no remaining medicinal smell, but the room feels stale, perhaps because all three windows are shut. The setting’s quiet order does not make Dan appear comfortable: he draws out three chairs for the visitors, sits with his hands beneath the table, and blinks like an obedient child. His heavy cable-stitched jersey emphasizes the pallor of his face and the delicate bones of his domed skull.

Clues Kept Within the House

During questioning, Dan identifies smoke as the only thing he noticed that may matter. From the bedroom window, soon after returning and before eight o’clock, he sees smoke from a fire in Peregrine Cottage. He fixes the time by his usual habit of listening to the eight o’clock news when he is at home. The observation makes the cottage a point in the reconstruction of movement around the island, even though the smoke itself comes from elsewhere.

Later, Kate and Benton arrange to search Puffin Cottage before daylight, because a light in one of the otherwise dark cottages might alert Dan. If the evidence is inside, warning him could give him time to remove or destroy the blood and hair. They cross the headland quietly and use the clearly labelled keys Rupert Maycroft has given them; Kate locks the door again behind them. Her discomfort at searching a private home is overtaken by anger and hope as she remembers Adrian Boyde’s mutilated face.

The sitting room has changed since the earlier visit. The ornaments have been cleared from the mantelpiece, the bookcase is empty, and two cardboard boxes stand beside it. Benton explains that he borrowed a hardback novel by Nathan Oliver from the island library and read it overnight. Its depiction of a sixteen-year-old girl’s rape, he says, combines the man’s and the girl’s viewpoints in a technically extraordinary way. Kate declines to pursue the literary discussion and directs the search to the bread oven inside the fireplace. Its iron door is closed and the interior appears empty, but Benton works at the brick grouting with his penknife and finds one brick that comes away, revealing a cavity.

Inside is an envelope containing two birth certificates: Bella Martha Padgett’s, dated 6 June 1962, and Wayne Daniel Padgett’s, dated 9 March 1978. The father’s name is blank on Dan Padgett’s certificate. The documents make the cottage a repository for a hidden parentage, not merely a place where the suspect lives. Kate recognizes why Dan might consider the papers damning after killing Oliver: the relationship they establish has become a danger rather than a source of support.

A second hiding place yields more immediate forensic evidence. Kate tests the butter in a tub with a meat skewer; it penetrates less than half an inch, prompting her to suspect something concealed beneath the surface. After Benton photographs the tub, she removes the top layer and finds foil, then two small wrapped packages. One contains a phial labelled with Nathan Oliver’s name and date; the other contains a hair sample wrapped in tissue. The investigators photograph the evidence, place it in an exhibit bag, seal it, and sign the label. What had seemed an emptied, dispiritingly ordinary sitting room has concealed both the family documents and the materials that connect Dan to the murder investigation.

From Search to Pursuit

The discovery does not end the danger. Kate and Benton notice a fleeting face at the kitchen window: a shorn head and two terrified eyes. By the time they reach the door, Dan has blocked it with his own key. One window will not open; Benton breaks the other with the back of a chair. Kate tells him to pursue Dan while she safeguards the exhibits and camera, then follows through the broken window with the murder case.

Dan runs toward the sea, with Benton gaining on him, but the delay at the cottage gives him a brief advantage. Jago Tamlyn suddenly rounds the house and collides with Dan; both fall, but Dan gets up first. They race toward the lighthouse, Benton about thirty yards behind. Kate sees Millie Tranter emerge around its edge. Dan reaches her, scoops her up, and throws her through the lighthouse door. Kate and Benton arrive in time to hear Millie scream and the bolt slide into place.

Narrative Significance

Puffin Cottage’s role shifts as the investigation advances. First it is the isolated home of a temporary island worker preparing to leave; then its spare furniture and closed windows invite questions about his private life and his mother’s illness. Its bread oven and butter tub turn ordinary domestic objects into hiding places for the evidence of concealed kinship and murder. Finally, the locked entrance and stuck windows cost the investigators seconds as Dan escapes. The cottage’s domestic privacy, initially a source of concealment, becomes the setting from which the case breaks into open pursuit—and from which Millie is carried into a new emergency.