The Fethering Mysteries 06; The Witness at the Wedding

what it was like for all of us after the murder of Janine Buckley. A terrible shock. We all felt it. Poor Robert had to be so strong. He was the one who held the family together at that time. My husband died very soon after the murder. I was distraught and had to be hospitalized, but Marie also was totally shattered. It changed her personality entirely. At that age, you think only about having fun, you don’t have a care in the world, you think perhaps that you can have relationships with boys with freedom, with no strings. Even though this is wrong, that is what a lot of young people think.

“And then this thing happens in your life. Suddenly you’re in the real world. It is brought home to you that sex can lead to pregnancy. Even worse, you discover that, in extreme circumstances, pregnancy can lead to murder.”

Had Carole been there, she would have recognized Grand’mere almost echoing Robert Coleman’s words.

“So for Marie,” the old lady went on, “it was a terrible time. She had no security. Her father was dead, her mother in hospital. Everything she had believed in had been proved to be false. And there was Howard, a good man who had been holding a candle for her for a couple of years. He loved her and wanted to marry her. For Marie, he represented security, and a chance to get away from Worthing.”

“Did you approve – and would your husband have approved – of Howard as a husband for your daughter?”

Another little Gallic shrug, with an equally characteristic ‘Phwoof’ noise. “We had always known he was an honest man, and a good Catholic. He had been in the shop working with us for a long time. It was maybe a surprise when Marie said she wanted to marry him, but she was happy about the idea and it seemed a good solution.”

“And do you think it continued to be a good solution?” It was Gaby who asked this question, and, from her lowered voice, Jude got the feeling it was the first time she had talked to her grandmother about the state of her parents’ marriage.

“Howard was a good man and a good Catholic. I think he made your mother as happy as anyone could have done. After Janine died, Marie – well, she shut off so much of her personality. She was never really complete after that.”

Jude heard a discreet cough behind her. A uniformed nurse stood in the doorway. “I am sorry, but I am afraid I must take Madame Coleman now for her bath.”

Gaby’s offer to help her grandmother into the wheelchair was politely rejected. The indignities of age were to be witnessed by professional carers, not by family members.

As they were leaving – with promises that they’d be back the following morning – Gaby noticed a photograph in the array on Grand’mere’s dressing table. She and Stephen smiled out, caught in a relaxed moment at some friend’s wedding. “Ah, I’m glad to see we’ve made it into your gallery.”

“But of course you have. Your fiance is a fine-looking man. A little serious perhaps, but I think you can be relied on, my dear Pascale, to lighten him up.”

Jude would have been impressed by the accuracy of this assessment, had her attention not been distracted by another framed photograph in the display. This showed a considerably younger Howard and Marie Martin, standing outside an open front door. Howard was less bulky than in later years and almost handsome in his old- fashioned way. Marie looked washed out, but triumphant. In her arms she bore the source of their pride, a tiny, shawl-swaddled baby.

Across the white strip at the bottom of the photograph was handwritten: “Pascale comes home – 27 May 1974.”

Jude, intrigued by the lack of symmetry in the spaces between the ‘27’ and the ‘May’ and the ‘May’ and the ‘1974’, looked more closely.

? The Witness at the Wedding ?

Thirty-Three

Carole had done a big Sainsbury’s shop that afternoon. On her return to High Tor, Gulliver treated her as though she had been absent for a decade. She told him not to be silly, which rather offended him, because he knew that, as a Labrador, it was his God-given mission in life to be silly.

The answering machine registered a couple of messages, but when Carole played them back, there was just the click of contact and nothing else. She checked 1471 for the last caller. The call had been made from a mobile she did not recognize. Probably a wrong number.

It was unsettling, though.

Jude enjoyed her food. She was not pretentious about it. She could wolf down fish and chips out of the paper or the Crown and Anchor’s dish of the day cottage pie with as much relish as a gastronomic menu, but she was a great believer in trying whatever was on offer. So when Gaby said she knew a rather good restaurant in Villeneuve- sur-Lot, Jude was very definitely up for it.

The interior was of stone and felt as though it had once been part of some monastic foundation, an impression which was reinforced by the thick bare wood of the tables and the heavy wrought-iron chandeliers. But any image of gloomy austerity was quickly dispelled when they opened the menu.

Over a convivial kir royale, they ran through the gastronomic possibilities. They felt the panic of people with only two days to do justice to the entirety of French cuisine. Lunch that day had been a wasted opportunity, a snatched sandwich in transit from the airport. Lunch the next day was doubtful. Gaby had entertained the possibility of taking Grand’mere out somewhere with them, but the old lady’s frailty precluded that. So really they only had the two evening meals for certain, and then they’d be back in England.

With this in mind, neither stinted herself on the ordering. As a starter, Gaby went for the Feuillete d’Escargots au Beurre Vert Bordelaise, while Jude chose the Terrine de Foie Gras de Canard Roti tout Natural Cuit en Terrine with a Confiture d’Oignon au Vin Vieux. Their main courses were, respectively, Poitrine de Pigeonneau Roti, les Aiguillettes au Foie Gras, Poelee de Girolles and Filet d’Agneau Roti a l’Ail Confit, Mongettes de Vendee Facon Cassoulet. The wine list was familiar territory to Gaby, and she homed in on a white and red Bordeaux from a chateau Jude had never heard of and would never have found unaided. The choice proved excellent.

Jude had things she wanted to say to Gaby, but not on this gourmet’s hallowed ground. In deference to the fury of the patron when another guest’s mobile phone had trilled, she switched hers off, determining to ring Carole when she got back to her hotel room.

She and Gaby settled down to enjoy the meal, and to talk about any subject in the world that didn’t involve murder.

The telephone rang as Carole was washing-up after her austere boiled-egg supper.

“Hello?”

The male voice at the other end sounded surprised. “Who is this?”

“My name’s Carole Seddon. Who did you want?” The man rang off.

Carole stood for a moment by the phone in the hall. This was very stupid. She was getting paranoid. Just a wrong number. And no, the voice hadn’t sounded like the one she’d heard on Gaby’s mobile outside the Crown and Anchor the previous week.

Still she lingered. Inspector Pollard had given her all his contact numbers. But no, this was no reason to bother him. It was nothing.

Be good to tell Jude about it, though. Jude would advise her whether she should do anything. And Jude might have something to tell about her encounter with Gaby’s Grand’mere. Yes, call Jude, that was the answer.

But the mobile was switched off. Carole was given the option of leaving a message, but she couldn’t think what to say that wouldn’t sound melodramatic or hysterical. And Carole Seddon had always had a great aversion to sounding melodramatic or hysterical.

She replaced the phone and went to wash down the kitchen surfaces. Then she’d have to take Gulliver out to do his business on the bit of rough ground beyond her back garden.