charmer sitting in a freezing hide waiting for a Brent goose to fly in.
Austen Sentinel, too, was a looker, quite a hunk for an academic: broad-shouldered, tall, and tanned. The hair was dark, a mass of tight curls. The confident brown eyes left little doubt that his plans for later matched his wife’s. His hand curled over her bare shoulder.
On another website Jo was startled to see her own name. Little else was accurate. Described as a resident of Selsey (wrong), she was supposed to have stumbled over the body (she didn’t stumble over anything) whilst exercising her dogs (what dogs?) on Medmerry Beach (East Beach). A salutary reminder not to believe everything on the internet.
Austen Sentinel’s name cropped up on numerous websites unrelated to the murder. He’d written books and articles and was much quoted in scientific literature. Apparently he was a serial attender of conferences in foreign countries. Was this significant? How did the beautiful wife amuse herself while he was away? Selsey, for all its charms, wasn’t the obvious place a lively lady might choose to visit.
The phone went. She let the answerphone play to find out who was on the line. The voice was Gemma’s.
‘Have you heard, poppet? They’ve discovered who your mystery woman was.’
Trust Gem to want to chew it over. But she wasn’t the only one. Jo badly needed shaking out of her embattled state of mind, and no one was a better shaker than Gemma. She switched off Glenn Gould and picked up the phone. ‘Hi. Just heard your voice. Yes, I caught the news on local radio.’
‘A university wife in nothing but her kecks,’ Gemma said. ‘Am I completely out of touch, or is this the end of civilisation as we know it?’
‘I know. I’d already convinced myself she must be some poor homeless woman with a stack of problems.’
‘My thought exactly,’ Gemma said. ‘Mind, she was probably an alky. They’re well known for irrigating the tonsils, aren’t they, university types?’
‘Some of them,’ Jo said. ‘There’s a picture on the internet of these two holding wineglasses.’
‘Completely stonkered.’
‘I don’t know about that. No, I think that’s unfair. Everyone’s been snapped with a glass in their hand at some stage.’
‘If it’s the same picture I just saw on South Today, “stonkered” is being charitable.’
‘She’d had something to drink before she died,’ Jo said. ‘There were traces in her blood, but not a huge amount, the paper said.’
‘She was probably gaga. The stress gets to these lecturers’ wives, trying to keep up with intellectuals. In the end they don’t know if it’s pancake Tuesday or half-past breakfast time. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know, university life.’
‘I didn’t know you went to uni.’
‘Chichester Tech-as was. They’re all universities now, aren’t they? Doesn’t matter if it’s Oxbridge or Chi. The same things go on. You know the saying, don’t you? If you want to get laid, go to college, but if you want an education use the library.’
‘Oh, Gem!’
‘True. They arrive as freshers thinking it’s all about lectures and essays and quickly find out their pointy-head tutors are expecting a shag. Some of them are dim enough to come across. And a few get spliced. It never lasts. A couple of words out of turn at high table, the confidence goes, and they’re ready to jump off a cliff.’
‘It wasn’t suicide, Gem. Someone drowned her.’
‘Okay, she was such a misery-guts she drove him to it.’
‘Oh? What are you suggesting now? The husband killed her? I thought he was in St Petersburg.’
‘His story. Who’s going to check?’
‘I’m sure the police will if they have any suspicions. He must have given a lecture there.’
‘It might have been scheduled but there’s no telling he actually gave it. Or-how about this? — he gave his spiel on the first day and caught a plane home the same night and did the deed.’ Gemma on cracking form, weaving an entire whodunnit out of nothing.
‘Why would he bring her all the way down to Selsey?’
‘You don’t piss on your own doorstep.’
‘We’re talking about an intelligent guy, Gem. There are cleverer ways of killing your wife than drowning her and leaving the body on the beach.’
‘Ah, but he meant it to be taken for suicide or an accident. He didn’t bargain for the marks on the neck.’
‘You really think he did it?’
‘The spouse is always the main suspect.’
‘They don’t seem to have charged him.’
‘Like you say, they’ll check the alibi first. See if he really was in St Petersburg.’
‘A moment ago you said they wouldn’t check.’
She chuckled. ‘I could have been wrong there. Actually I don’t have a lot of confidence in the rozzers. Plenty of crimes go undetected and it’s only thanks to informers that any get cleared up at all.’
‘There’s some truth in that.’
‘They take the easy option every time. The next thing is they’ll put Dr Sentinel on TV appealing to the public for help. That’s the giveaway. You see it so often. Men think they can bluff it out. Can they, hell?’
‘You don’t think they suspect anyone else?’
‘Like you, for instance, just because you found the body? No, babe, don’t waste any sleep over that.’
Jo wasn’t thinking about herself. ‘Someone local, maybe?’
‘I doubt it. Selsey’s got its share of weirdos, I’m sure, same as every other place, but this looks like a domestic. If it was a sex crime, you could be right, but this wasn’t, was it? I know she was practically starkers, but there was no sign of ground rations that I heard of.’
‘Ground what?’
‘Naughties. Brace up, ducky.’
‘It would be all over the papers if there was.’
‘The lines are open again. Have you asked yourself why she wasn’t wearing clothes?’
‘They went for a midnight swim?’ Jo said. ‘People do. It’s supposed to be liberating.’
‘You’re firing on all cylinders now. Think about it. She’d have to know her killer pretty well to skinny dip with him. Which is precisely why I don’t think it was some yobbo she’d met over a couple of drinks the same night. It’s got to be the husband or a lover.’
‘I think you’re right.’ Jo hoped the police were working along the same lines. She was feeling better for talking to Gemma. ‘But in the picture I saw he appeared to be quite fond of her.’
‘That’s the one he gave the fuzz, I expect. He’s not daft.’
‘He doesn’t look like a killer.’
‘They don’t all have slitty eyes and bad teeth. The Boston Strangler was a dish. Tony Curtis played him in the film.’
‘Gemma, you’re the bloody limit, did you know that? Speaking of murder suspects, have they found your boss yet?’
‘No chance. If you ask me, he’s living it up on the Costa del Crime.’
‘And are you still running the business?’
‘Trying to. I did what you said and pulped all those council pamphlets. Even Hillie on reception has gone quiet now. The next thing will be Fiona’s funeral, I suppose. Some of us will have to show our faces there.’
‘Has it been arranged?’
‘I don’t think they’ve released the body yet. I say… ’ Gemma took a gasp that could be heard down the phone. ‘I just had a thought. What if Dr Sentinel murdered Fiona as well as his wife?’
‘I don’t see how,’ Jo said. Gemma’s capacity for invention knew no bounds.
‘He was in the area.’
‘He was in St Petersburg.’
‘We dealt with that. He came back. First he drowned his wife and then Fiona.’
‘Why?’
