“Carole, hi. I wondered whether you fancied going down to the Crown and Anchor for a drink?”
Under normal circumstances, the knee-jerk response would have been, “No, thank you. I’m afraid I’m not a ‘pub person’.” But the presence of a gun-toting, possibly drug-crazed woman in her sitting room disqualified the circumstances from being normal. “Well…”
But that was all she had time to say. There was the clatter of a door behind her. Carole rushed back to find her sitting room empty. The sound of the back door slamming shut drew her through into the kitchen. That too was empty. From his position at the foot of the Aga, Gulliver looked up blearily. A real help, he was.
She moved with caution towards the window over the sink and peered into the encroaching darkness. There was no sign of the woman, but the gate at the end of the garden flapped open.
Carole turned back to see Jude framed in the kitchen doorway. That wasn’t the Fethering way, her instincts told her. To come into someone’s house without being invited, that wouldn’t do at all.
“So what about a drink?” asked Jude casually.
To her surprise, Carole Seddon found her lips forming the words, “Yes. Yes, what a good idea.”
? The Body on the Beach ?
Six
Carole wasn’t a ‘pub person’ and it was a long time since she had been to the Crown and Anchor. When they first bought the cottage, while she still had a husband, they had gone once or twice for a drink before Sunday lunch. But that period of cohabitation with David in Fethering hadn’t lasted, and pub-going didn’t seem appropriate to her single status. Except for a couple of visits on those rare occasions when her son came to see her, Carole hadn’t stepped inside the Crown and Anchor for at least five years.
To someone who didn’t know Fethering, it might seem strange that there was only one pub. Though the Crown and Anchor had been adequate for a fishermen’s village, the residential sprawl that had developed seemed to demand more watering holes. But they had never appeared. The Victorians were puritanical about drinking and later residents had been drawn to Fethering by the attractions of its privacy rather than its communal amenities. When the Downside Estate developed, plans were submitted for a new pub up in that area, but traditionalist influences prevailed and the applications were repeatedly rejected. By then the residents of Fethering were determined to ring-fence their village and prevent further expansion of any kind.
Besides, a short country drive to the east, to the west, or north into the Downs gave access to a wide range of characterful hostelries. There was no need for more pubs in Fethering.
Carole certainly hadn’t been in the Crown and Anchor since the new management took over. Though established for nearly three years, in Fethering they were still known as the ‘new’ management. And even though there was only one of them, that one was always referred to as ‘they’.
In fact, it was a ‘he’, and he was one of the reasons why Carole hadn’t been in the pub recently. Ted Crisp had arrived with a reputation, and since his arrival in the village it had been amplified by local gossip.
Carole knew him by sight. His hair was too long, he had a scruffy beard and shuffled around in jeans and sweat shirts. She had from time to time vouchsafed the most minimal of ‘Fethering Nods’ when meeting him in the village shop, but had never exchanged words. The reputation Ted Crisp carried did not endear him to her.
There was the drinking, for a start. An occupational hazard for publicans, everyone knew, but in Ted Crisp’s case it was rumoured sometimes to get out of hand. Not all the time, to be fair, but every now and then he was said to go on major benders.
Reports of his behaviour towards women were also exchanged in hushed voices among the lady residents of Fethering. Though the village was hardly at the sharp end of the political-correctness debate, Ted Crisp’s attitude was not approved of. It was one thing for a quaint elderly gentleman to call a lady love’ or chivalrously to tell her not to worry her pretty little head about things that didn’t concern her. It was something else entirely for a man hardly even into middle age to make coarse comments of an overtly sexual nature.
And, according to Ted Crisp’s burgeoning reputation, that was what he did. No doubt that kind of thing went down well enough with the younger women, who would snap back at him in kind. But then what did you expect from girls who thought nothing of going into pubs on their own? There was probably no objection from the older brassy divorcees in the village either. But sexual innuendo wasn’t the sort of attention that someone of Carole Seddon’s background and character would appreciate. Her state of shock might have driven her into the Crown and Anchor that evening, but that did not mean that she was about to engage in vulgar badinage with its landlord.
Jude appeared to be untrammelled by such inhibitions. With an, ‘I’ll get these’, she gestured Carole to a table, bustled up to the bar and greeted Ted Crisp as if she’d been a regular for years. Carole looked around the bar with some surprise. She’d expected something more garish, with flashing slot machines. Instead, she could have been in a comfortable family sitting room. And there was no piped music – a surprise, and a blessing.
“How’re you then, young Jude?” Ted Crisp asked, with what Carole categorized as a lecherous leer.
“Not so bad, Ted,” came the easy reply, reinforcing the impression that they’d known each other for years. Maybe they had, thought Carole. Maybe theirs was a relationship which went back a long way. Maybe there was even a ‘history’ between them.
“But the landlord’s next words ruled out that supposition. And how are you liking the upright citizens of Fethering? Or am I the only one you’ve met yet?”
“I’ve talked to a few people.” Jude gestured across to the table. “You know Carole, of course?”
There’s no ‘of course’ about it. He doesn’t know me, thought Carole. He knows who I am, but he doesn’t know me. All he knows is that I’ve never been in his pub before. Could this be a moment of awkwardness?
It wasn’t. Ted Crisp extended a beefy arm in a wave and called, ‘Evening, darlin’’ across the bar. Carole felt a little frisson of embarrassment. She wasn’t anyone’s ‘darlin’’. Still, the bar was fairly empty. She could recognize nobody there likely to spread to other Fethering residents the news that Carole Seddon had allowed herself to be called ‘darlin’’ by Ted Crisp.
“So what’re you going to get pissed on tonight?” the landlord asked.
“Two white wines, please,” said Jude.
“Large ones?”
“Oh yes.”
Carole had a momentary urge to remonstrate. Whenever given the choice between large and small – whatever the commodity on offer – she instinctively opted for small. But she did feel rather shaken and trembly this evening. Maybe it was one of those moments when she needed a large glass of wine.
For the first time she let her mind address itself to what had recently happened in her sitting room. Locking up the house and maintaining small talk with Jude as they walked to the Crown and Anchor had effectively blocked off the encounter. Now she allowed the shock to assert itself.
The main shock was not the behaviour of the woman with the gun but her own reaction to it. Carole Seddon had just been the victim of a serious threat, almost an assault, in the privacy of her own home. It was not the kind of incident that should go unre-ported. If nothing else did, her long experience in the Home Office told her that the police should be informed as soon as possible about unhinged people wandering the countryside with guns.
And yet Carole felt no urgency to contact the police. This morning’s interview had put her off them in a big way. She didn’t relish further scepticism, further aspersions being cast on the state of her hormones.
Besides, when she thought about it, she realized she had as little corroborative evidence for the second incident as she had had for the first. The body on the beach had disappeared. There was only her word for the fact it had ever existed. And exactly the same applied to the woman with the gun. Carole was the only witness of the woman’s arrival, of what she’d said in the sitting room and of her departure. Carole didn’t even know whether her new neighbour had heard the closing of the doors when she arrived at the house. Jude certainly hadn’t said anything about it.
And that was the way things should stay, for the moment at least. There was no point in asking Jude whether she’d heard anything. It would lead only to further questions and explanations. Carole needed time to work out her next move. Whatever had happened was her business, possibly even her problem. It wasn’t something in which she needed to involve anyone else.
There was a roar of raucous laughter from the bar. Ted Crisp had just made a joke which seemed to have amused both Jude and the man slumped on a bar stool beside her. His grey hair was thinning and the way he
