Hare and Hounds on the Friday evening – the knowledge that she had sensational news to impart. The same news as he had had, in fact. And, like Graham Forbes, Carole was going to deliver it at her own pace.
“So where?” asked Jude, on cue.
“Weldisham.”
“Ah.”
“Ted Crisp said you’d got friends up there.”
“I know some people, yes.” But before Carole had time for the automatic supplementary question, Jude had pressed on, “What, though? What’s been happening up there?”
“A lot of police round Weldisham on Friday,” said Carole, deliberately enigmatic.
“What brought them there?”
“I did,” she replied proudly.
“How?”
Carole realized she’d strung out her revelation long enough. To continue the teasing would be merely tiresome. “I found some human bones,” she said, “in a barn on the Downs.”
The rest was quickly told – how she’d called the police, her conversation with Detective Sergeant Baylis in the Hare and Hounds.
“Have you heard from the police since?” asked Jude.
“No. Sergeant Baylis has got my number, so presumably he’ll be in touch when he needs to be.”
“And you’re sure they were human bones?”
“I’m not a pathologist, but they looked like it to me. And, as I said, a SOCO team was called for. They’re not going to do that if the victim is an animal, are they?”
Jude looked thoughtful. “Nor if they’re dealing with a natural death…”
“However natural the death might have been, you’d be hard pushed to explain away what was done to the bones
“True.” There was a sparkle in her eye as Jude took a large swallow of wine. “This is potentially rather exciting, isn’t it?”
“Who knows? It depends rather on what the police come up with.”
“I’d have thought it depends on what we come up with.”
“Jude, we don’t know for sure there’s been a crime. We haven’t even got a definite identification of the victim.”
“Your tone of voice suggests you do have some kind of identification, even if not a definite one.”
“Well, only pub gossip. I stayed in the Hare and Hounds after Sergeant Baylis had gone, and the manager and an old bloke in there said they reckoned they knew who it was.”
“Who?”
“Apparently there was a girl in the village who’d gone missing.”
The sparkle in Jude’s eye was quickly extinguished.
Her voice was tense as she asked, “Did the man say the girl’s name?”
“Yes,” Carole replied. “It was Tamsin Lutteridge.” All the colour drained out of Jude’s face.
? Death on the Downs ?
Seven
It turned out that she had known the girl. “Her mother, Gillie, brought her to me.”
“Why?”
“To see if I could help.”
“Help with what?”
Deliberately using the present tense, Jude said, “Tamsin is suffering from ME.”
“Should I know what that is?”
“Myalgic encephalomyelitis. Though it’s not called that now. I just thought you were more likely to have heard of ME than anything else.”
“Though, as you see, I hadn’t.”
“No. Was known for a while as ‘malingerer’s disease’ or ‘yuppie flu’.”
Graham Forbes’s comments about Tamsin Lutteridge giving up her job and ‘coming back to sponge off her parents’ suddenly made sense. “Oh yes, I’ve heard of that,” said Carole.
She had been brought up in the ‘snap out of it’ school of mental health treatment, and too much of that attitude must have come across in her voice, because Jude said firmly, “It’s a real illness, no question. Also called ‘post-viral syndrome’. Most recent name I heard for it was ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’, but there’s probably something new by now. Doctors – those who believe it exists, and there are still some, I’m afraid, who don’t are divided on the proper treatment, anyway. All kinds of therapies are recommended, though the results are very variable.”
“But why did Tamsin and her mother come to see you about it?”
“Because I do some healing.”
Carole could not have been more surprised if Jude had said she did bungee-jumping. “
“Call it nonsense if you like. It sometimes works.”
“Yes, I’m sure it does, but…but…”
Carole tried not to think about illness. She knew what could be treated by aspirin, and she knew what needed a visit to the doctor for a prescription of antibiotics. Certain conditions required surgical procedures, and she devoutly hoped she would never experience any of them. Her attitude to alternative or complementary medicine was that it was all ‘mumbo-jumbo’.
“Anyway, Gillie brought Tamsin to me, because she thought I might be able to help.”
“By ‘help’ you mean cure her?”
“Maybe get her closer to a cure, yes.”
“And did it work?”
Jude grinned. Carole had failed dismally to eradicate the scepticism from her tone. “Work? What does work mean? A complex illness like that, you’re not going to get an instant result after one session. Healers aren’t miracle workers.”
“That’s the image of them that’s projected in the press.”
“The image projected in the press of civil servants is that they’re all boring and unimaginative…” It was rare for Jude to make such a pointed remark, and the fact that she did so showed that Carole had strayed into an area of strong belief. Jude eased the situation by smiling. “But I’m sure that’s just another mistaken popular stereotype.” Carole opened her mouth to say something, but Jude went on, “So…my attempts to heal Tamsin didn’t have time to have much effect. Whether they would have done, given that time, I don’t know. But I do know they did no more harm to her than the various treatments traditional doctors had prescribed. As I said, we’re dealing with a very complex illness. The mind and the body are deeply interinvolved in what happens to sufferers like poor lamsin. Anything that might help is worth trying.”
Jude looked up suddenly, and Carole was surprised to see tears glinting in her friend’s eyes. “Poor Tamsin… What basis did this man you heard have for saying the bones belonged to her?”
“Very little, I imagine. Except that the girl was known to be missing from Weldisham. Simply putting two and two together, I suppose.”
“I must ring Gillie!” Jude reached into a pocket for her mobile phone. “She’ll be desperate.”
“Use my phone.”
But Jude had already got through. The tension she heard in Gillie Lutteridge’s voice communicated itself as she made arrangements to go up to Weldisham the following morning.
After she switched off the mobile, Jude was still clearly upset, more upset in fact than Carole had ever seen her. The atmosphere of the evening was broken. Jude accepted Carole’s offer of a lift up to the Lutteridges’ the following morning, but seemed distracted. She finished her glass of wine and said, “Better get back and sort out my unpacking.”
