She was looking at the photographs on the mantelpiece, presumably of Durrington children, though of an age by now to have moved away from home, when she heard an interior door open into the hall.
“Can I go?” asked the teenager’s voice immediately. “You said three hours. It’s over that.”
“Have you had many people?” Joan Durrington’s voice was deeper and more assertive than it had been at the Listers’ dinner party.
“Hardly any. There’s some woman through there now, but she’s only about the third.”
“If you stay till six, I’ll give you another couple of pounds.”
“Hardly worth it,” the girl’s voice said. “‘Fixed to meet my boyfriend down the Stag half-five.”
“Oh. All right. Well, there’s the money we agreed.”
No thanks were expressed as the cash was presumably pocketed.
“Can you do tomorrow afternoon?”
“Don’t know that it’s really worth my while,” said the girl. “Ten quid for three hours. Do better than that picking down the mushroom farm. Anyway, it’s the weekend.”
“But I thought we agreed. Are you saying you won’t be back tomorrow?”
“That’s right. See you. Cheers!”
“You little bastard!” Joan Durrington’s voice called after the retreating girl. The front door slammed shut.
The doctor’s wife was still standing looking at the door, when Carole appeared a little sheepishly from the dining room.
She cleared her throat. “I was just, er, looking at the paintings.”
Joan Durrington turned. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which emphasized her thinness. The blonded hair was scraped back by a couple of grips, exposing the white at her temples. Without make-up, her face looked a lot older, its grey puffiness explained by the cigarette that drooped from her lips.
“So what did you think of them?” she asked, her voice a little uncertain, as though she had only recently learned the language.
“Not really my sort of stuff,” said Carole discreetly.
“Nor mine. Looks like decor for changing rooms in a swimming pool.” The crow’s-feet round Joan Durrington’s faded blue eyes tightened. “We’ve met, haven’t we?”
“Carole Seddon. At the Listers’ last week.”
“Oh, right. Yes, of course.” The doctor’s wife swayed a little and put a hand on the catalogue table to steady herself. Surely she can’t be drunk, thought Carole, not at half-past five in the afternoon.
Joan looked at Tranquillity IX and shook her head. “Why do we get landed with garbage like this? We’ve done this Art Crawl since it started, six years ago, and we’ve had some pretty hideous stuff in here. Nothing as dreary as this, though.”
“Why do you keep doing it then, opening up your house?”
An unamused smile. “Because my husband Donald is such an important figure in Fedborough society. He’s senior partner in the local medical practice, so he can’t be seen to be standoffish, can he? Doctors have to have the common touch. So when some local committee member says, “Oh, Dr Durrington, can we use your house again for the Art Crawl?” the big-hearted medico says, “Yes, of course. I’d love to have members of the public traipsing through my house, nothing I’d like more!” But, remarkably, when it comes to the Fedborough Festival, and the exhibits have to be put up and somebody has to keep an eye on all the members of the public traipsing through the house, Donald is not here. Busy life, being a doctor, so many calls on your time. Need a loyal wife to see that everything’s kept going at home.”
Carole was now in no doubt. Joan Durrington was drunk. As if to confirm it, the doctor’s wife swayed again, tottered and would have fallen if Carole had not moved forward to take her arm. The smell of gin was very strong.
“Sorry.” The fuddled blue eyes found hers.
“Do you want to go and lie down?”
“No, I bloody don’t!” Joan Durrington broke free. “That’s all Donald ever says to me. “Don’t you want to go and lie down?” Why? So that I can see an example of his famous bedtime manner? I tell you, it’s a long time since he practised his bedtime manner on me.”
She moved savagely to the front door, and snapped the latch shut. “Bad luck anyone else who wants to come and see these lousy paintings. It’s nearly six, anyway, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Carole’s social instincts told her she should leave, that she shouldn’t be witnessing the woman’s distress. But her burgeoning detective instincts told her to stay as long as possible.
“You don’t live in Fedborough, do you?”
“No. Fethering.”
The reply seemed to reassure Joan Durrington. With someone who didn’t live in Fedborough, someone who wouldn’t instantly report her actions round the town, she dared to take a risk. “Come and have a drink with me,” she pleaded.
“Well…”
“Come on. I haven’t seen anyone all day, except for that blasted girl.” She led the way through a door at the back of the hall. Without further protest, Carole followed.
The Durringtons’ kitchen, like their dining room, was furnished efficiently, but impersonally. Everything was stowed away and tidy. Only the half-full bottle of Gordon’s gin, the glass and the ashtray on the scrubbed table looked out of place.
Joan opened the fridge. “You drink gin, don’t you?”
Carole didn’t as a rule, but she wasn’t going to do anything to threaten the intimacy that had suddenly been offered.
“I’ve even got some tonic and lemon,” said the doctor’s wife, as if this somehow made getting drunk in the afternoon socially acceptable. “Do you know,” she continued with a sudden gleeful chuckle as she fixed Carole’s drink, “Donald’s been highly praised for his work with alcoholics. Referring them, putting them on drying-out programmes, rehabilitating them…” She managed the long word with an effort. “He’s asked to write papers on the subject, speak at seminars…He’s a saint, not a man.” She thrust the full glass on to the table in front of Carole. “Funny no one ever seems to ask him where he does his research.”
“Has he tried to help you?”
Joan Durrington, who was lighting up another cigarette, squinted in bewilderment at her guest, trying to come to terms with the oddness of the question. “He doesn’t notice me. We share a house, but he has about as much interest in me as in the wallpaper. All Donald thinks about is keeping up his image in Fedborough as a caring professional and model citizen.”
“Surely that’s not easy for him…” Carole suggested gently, “if you often get like this?”
“I don’t often get like this. I am very well behaved. In public I’ve never been seen to drink anything stronger than mineral water. What a perfect doctor’s wife I am.” Joan Durrington topped up her own glass, dispensing with tonic, ice and lemon, and took a long swallow. “It was just something Donald said this morning which made me realize…that he didn’t even think of me as a human being…” Tears threatened. She took another fierce swig from her glass to stop them.
“But you’re letting me see you like this. Aren’t you afraid I’ll gossip about you, spread the story of your secret?”
Joan shook her head. “You’re not from Fedborough. You’re not part of Fiona Lister’s Thought Police.”
Carole was divided between glee at her good fortune in finding her potential witness in such a communicative mood, and pity for the woman’s state. She quickly decided that the pity didn’t really help, though the communicativeness could be very useful to her.
“What will Donald say when he comes back and finds you’ve been drinking? Will he be angry?”
“God, no! He won’t give me that satisfaction. He will be infinitely understanding, just as if I was one of his patients. He finds it easier to deal with me as a malfunctioning organism than he does as a human being. And I dare say he’ll decide I need a break, and I’ll be sent away somewhere – ”
“Won’t people in Fedborough be suspicious of the real reasons why you’ve gone away?”
“No. Because Donald will be the one who tells them. And he’s a doctor, so he must be right. And I’m known to ‘have trouble with my nerves’ and be ‘highly strung’. Donald is thought locally to be rather magnificent for the
