“And what about Martin? Does he still do any hair-dressing?”
“For a few favoured clients. He’ll do a bride’s hair for her wedding, something like that. Not very often, though. He’s too busy schmoozing.”
Jude took another look at Martina Rutherford. She was very beautiful, but her strength of will was written in every feature. Connie’s good-natured fluffiness would not have stood a chance against the force of that personality. And, though she hadn’t met Martin Rutherford yet, what Kelly-Jane had hinted at reinforced the feeling that he too would crumble to his wife’s every wish.
Nothing was said for a few moments while the haircut began. Then suddenly Kelly-Jane asked, “Do you want to know a way of making money?”
“What?” Jude was wary; she had expectations of being lured into some pyramid selling operation.
“It’s to do with hairdressing.”
“I haven’t got any skills as a hairdresser.”
“You don’t need any.” Kelly-Jane stopped cutting and put her hands behind her back. “All you have to do is bet people that they can’t tell you which fingers hairdressers use to hold their scissors.”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Jude looked down at her right hand and found that she was instinctively miming cutting with the two fingers next to the thumb. But that couldn’t be right. Fine for a visual shorthand, but you couldn’t get enough grip and you couldn’t move the scissors like that. “No, not those.”
“Right, not those,” said Kelly-Jane, biding her time with the confidence of someone who had played the game many times before.
“So let me think…Oh, this is daft. Goodness knows how many times in my life I’ve had my hair cut…Do all hairdressers use the same fingers?”
“All,” the girl assured her. “All over the world.”
“Right, let’s be logical here. I think the thumb must be involved…Yes, because that would give you a bit of leverage…” Jude was fishing for some kind of clue, but the stylist’s face in the mirror remained impassive. “OK, there aren’t many options. It can’t be the little finger, because that’s not strong enough…” She looked down at her hands in frustration. “It must be…It must be…” She made her decision. Pressing the top of her middle finger against her thumb, she announced, “It must be those two.”
With gleeful triumph, Kelly-Jane brought her hands round from behind her back. “Wrong!” She raised her right hand, and showed Jude the unexpected combination of digits that hairdressers have always used for the purpose of holding their scissors.
“Gosh, you’re right,” said Jude. “Yes, I think you could win a few bets that way.” Something to tell Ted Crisp. Another way for him to amuse his customers at the Crown and Anchor. And certainly better than his jokes.
Kelly-Jane grinned as she resumed cutting. She’d done the little party trick she tried out on all her new clients. And once again it had worked. Back to more conventional chat. “Do you live in Worthing?”
Jude had hardly got out a ‘Fethering’ before they were interrupted by a whirlwind of bonhomie. “Good morning, and how are you, Kelly-Jane? Looking lovely, as ever. And a new client – how exciting! What a pleasure to see you in Martin & Martina. I am one half of the salon’s name – Martin. And you…?”
“I’m called Jude.”
The first impression was of an attractive man in his early forties, though closer inspection revealed him to be a well-preserved man in his early fifties. Perhaps as much as ten years older than Connie. Jude wondered how they had met. In some salon where she’d been another junior he’d come on to…? He was of average height, and kept himself in shape. He wore a charcoal linen suit over a slate grey shirt, and the blackness of his short hair looked as if it might have been assisted. His teeth too were unnaturally white and even; some expensive veneer work had been done there. But his brown eyes were shrewd.
“And where are you from, Jude?”
“Fethering.”
“Oh, so close. So why haven’t you been into a Martin & Martina salon before, you naughty girl?”
She’d actually got him there. She wouldn’t get a better chance of raising the subject of Kyra Bartos’s murder. So Jude finessed the truth and said, “I normally have my hair done at Connie’s Clip Joint.”
“Ah.” He had been taken by surprise, but was far too cool an operator to let it show. “And how is dear Connie?”
“Pretty good.” Jude couldn’t see any other way of proceeding than the crassly direct. “I gather she’s your ex-wife.”
“Yes. Pity it didn’t work out. Lovely girl. But, you know, we were young and…”
She may have been young, you weren’t that young, Jude thought. “Have you managed to stay friends?”
“I’m sure we’d be perfectly pleasant to each other if we ever met, but we haven’t seen each other for ages.” He was keen to move on. “So, anyway, Kelly-Jane, what are you going to do to Jude’s hair to make sure she never strays from the path of Martin & Martina again?”
“Well, I – ”
Jude interrupted. It wasn’t her usual style, but they were meeting her for the first time and weren’t to know that she wasn’t by nature a woman of galumphing tactlessness. “Of course, you heard about the dreadful thing that happened at Connie’s Clip Joint? You know, that girl who was strangled?”
“Yes, of course. It was all over the television news. You couldn’t miss it. Apart from the fact that none of the clients in the salon talked about anything else. Horrible for poor Connie. I was going to ring her to offer my sympathy, but, you know, there never seems to be any time for – ”
Having taken on the persona of a diplomatic rhinoceros, Jude stuck with it. “Connie said that Kyra Bartos used to work for you…”
“Yes, yes. She was in this salon briefly.” But he didn’t want to be drawn on the subject. “I really must be checking other clients and – ”
Finding new extremes of crassness, Jude announced, “Connie mentioned that there was something funny about Kyra’s dismissal from here…that the girl had been consulting a solicitor about the rights and wrongs of it.”
This time there was no mistaking the shock in Martin Rutherford’s face, even though he managed quickly to cover it up. “Well, it’s been such a pleasure talking to you, Jude. Welcome once again to Martin & Martina. Now excuse me…” And he swanned over to another client. “Darling, you’re looking just too fabulous. Is it for a special occasion or just your natural beauty shining through…?”
Jude was afraid that Kelly-Jane might have thought her conversation with Martin odd, but she needn’t have worried. The stylist had gleaned one piece of information though, and that was all she wanted.
“So it was Connie who did your previous haircut, was it?”
Jude felt terribly disloyal.
¦
“I don’t know why I behaved like that. It’s not my usual style.”
“But did it work?”
“Not really. I didn’t get any information out of him. I’ve probably just forfeited his goodwill and made him very suspicious of me. If any further investigative approaches need to be made to Martin Rutherford, I think you’d better take them on, Carole.”
“Right.” She fingered the steel-grey helmet of her hair. “I can’t really pretend this needs doing again.”
“No, and I think we must find a different sleuthing modus operandi. Having constant haircuts is very expensive, apart from anything else. Martin & Martina was nearly double the price of Connie’s Clip Joint.”
“Hmm.” There was a silence. Both sipped their Chilean Chardonnays. They’d agreed to meet in the Crown and Anchor when they returned from their respective Saturday morning expeditions. Just for a drink, they’d said, but Ted Crisp’s recommendation of the Cheesy-lopped Fisherman’s Pie had proved too tempting.
Carole idly flicked through the Martin & Martina promotional brochure that Jude had brought back from the salon. Expensively produced, it featured news from the branches, ideas for hairstyles, a photograph of the Stylist of the Month, and so on. The publication gloried in the company’s achievements. Again Carole was aware of the contrast with the small-scale operation that was Connie’s Clip Joint. At the back of the brochure, portraits of the owners framed a message of welcome to their customers. A good-looking couple, glowing in their shared success.
“I think I behaved as I did,” Jude said thoughtfully, “because I feel we’re getting nowhere on this case. We’re
