After Jude had gone, Carole realized with annoyance that she had no idea where the luggage that required unpacking had travelled from. She hadn’t found out anything about where her friend had been for the past two weeks.
¦
And by the next morning the moment for such questions seemed to have passed. Jude lived in the present and the future, always much more concerned with what she was about to do than with what she had done. Carole could only piece together her friend’s history from the occasional irritatingly incomplete allusion.
The weather wasn’t quite as perfect as it had been on the Saturday, but Weldisham was still doing a pretty good impression of an archetypal English village. The houses, mostly built before such concepts as planning existed, clustered round the spire of the church, as if theirs was the only configuration possible. Weldisham was meant to look as it did. There was no alternative. That air of permanence was comforting, reassuring, but to Carole in some strange way threatening.
She dropped Jude outside the Lutteridges’ house. It was called Conyers, and Carole noticed that the name of the house next door was Warren Lodge. That must be where the Forbeses lived. The Lutteridges’ was one of the village’s middle-sized houses, late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Four bedrooms perhaps. Not grand, but still requiring a pretty high income in a property hot-spot like Weldisham. The privet hedge either side of the farm- style front gate was neatly squared off, the gravel inside raked and unmarked by leaves. On the drive sat a large BMW with the latest registration letter. The space either side of the house gave the impression of a large garden behind, dipping down over the curves of the Downs. Through the gap could be seen the top of an old barn’s collapsing roof, a discordant note of untidiness that couldn’t be part of the Lutteridges’ property. Everything about their house breathed well-ordered middle–class affluence.
“OK,” said Jude. “I’ll be about an hour, then join you up at the Hare and Hounds. You be all right?”
“Of course. I’ll have a walk. I’ve got the
Carole took the Renault the hundred yards up to the pub and, just out of interest, drew it to a halt outside Heron Cottage in exactly the place where she had parked it on the Friday. And she sat there. Occasionally she glanced at the downstairs window. Through the leaded windows she could see a plaster shepherdess figurine on the sill and a faded silk pin-cushion in the form of a fat Chinaman.
Carole didn’t have to wait long. Within two minutes, a face had appeared behind the shepherdess. The long sharp nose left Carole in no doubt that the author of the aggrieved note on her windscreen had been the old woman she’d seen walking the black and white spaniel.
Carole restarted the engine of the Renault and drove it round behind the pub to the Hare and Hounds car park. She tucked her folded
The circuit didn’t take long. Weldisham was really just one street, along which were placed all its houses, except for the peripheral farms with their clusters of outbuildings. The village seemed to be exclusively residential. One house with a disproportionately large bay window must once have been the village shop, but that had long since had the life choked out of it by the building of local superstores. Though no doubt they had complained bitterly about the erosion of country lifestyle when it closed, the well-heeled of Weldisham were soon happy to fill up their four-wheel-drive pantechnicons from the sumptuous choice available in the local Sainsbury’s or Tesco’s (mostly Salisbury’s, actually – in spite of its remarketing make-overs, Tesco’s still carried a resonance of being ‘common’).
And that was it. Houses, the village green, the pub, the church. St Michael and All Angels. Carole decided she’d have a look inside.
She walked under the lych-gate, rustic but of recent construction. It was topped by a pointed lid of new thatch, still too light in colour, looking like a particularly indigestible wholefood breakfast bar. With a
She wondered whether the bones she had found at South Welling Barn had received the benefit of any kind of religious committal. Somehow she doubted it.
The graveyard was full of green-stained stones, uneven like an old man’s teeth. For one or two more recent arrivals the marble still gleamed, and fresh flowers – expensive in February – paid homage in glass vases. The grass between the graves was meticulously short.
In a corner of the portico of St Michael and All Angels, Carole noted with surprise there was a discreet CCTV camera. Security, presumably. A deterrent to the vandals for whom the holiness of the church had no meaning. The old wooden church door had a modern keyplate on it. Carole would have put money on the fact that it was locked at night.
She pushed the door and moved into the interior, which smelt of damp fabric. The air inside the church felt colder than outside. It took Carole’s eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. No lights were on and the February sun was too feeble to spread much through the stained-glass windows.
St Michael and All Angels was pretty and neat, well looked after. The wooden pews glowed from regular polishing. The brasswork of the hanging chandeliers had also been recently cleaned. Whoever was on the flower rota that week had invested a lot of pride in the displays down near the altar. On the wall a carved Christ twisted in frozen agony.
And there was someone kneeling in a pew near the front. Carole could see the outline of a fur hat on a head bent in prayer. And she could hear the sound of sobbing.
Her arrival had disturbed the supplicant. The sobbing instantly stopped. The figure, now recognizable as a woman, rose to her feet, brushed a hand across her face, gave a quick nod of respect to the altar and came up the aisle towards Carole.
As the woman passed, she flashed a quick shy smile at the intruder and left the church.
Carole had a fleeting impression of a tear glinting on a face of extraordinary beauty.
But, perhaps remarkably in Weldisham, the face was Chinese.
Carole had a desultory look around the church and paid a dutiful fifty pence into the honesty box for A
? Death on the Downs ?
Eight
It was only just after twelve, but already there were people having lunch in the Hare and Hounds. Their average age was probably round seventy, but they looked well groomed in their leisurewear and prosperous, enjoying their well-endowed pension plans.
For a moment Carole luxuriated in the boldness of walking into a pub on her own. She wasn’t by nature a ‘pub person’ and a year ago she wouldn’t have done it. The new boldness was a symptom of the changes that had come over her. Until she met Jude, Carole had expected – indeed courted – a predictability in her life in Fethering. Jude had shown her that change was possible, and even desirable.
Carole ordered a Coca-Cola. She was sure she’d have a glass of wine when Jude arrived, but she needed to pace herself. Mustn’t forget she was driving. She was served by a girl she hadn’t seen before. There was no sign of Will Maples.
All the seats in the Snug were taken, so she found a table for two by a front window that looked out at Heron Cottage. But after a brief glance across the road, she turned her attention to the crossword. Usually easy on Mondays. She had a suspicion the compilers did that deliberately, to make their addicts feel intellectually on top of things, put them in a good mood at the beginning of the week.
But, to her annoyance, that day’s clues read like a foreign language. Carole’s approach to the crossword was very linear. She always started with the first Across clue; if she couldn’t get that, she moved to the second Across clue. Only when she’d got one correct solution did she investigate the possibilities opened up by its letters. And if she got stuck again, she’d move on to the next Across clue.
That Monday, the clues seemed particularly intransigent. She knew it was her attitude that was wrong.
