misplaced, that there really was something wrong with the pregnancy.
She contemplated steeling herself to ring David. He was secure in his little flat in Swiss Cottage; maybe he ought to be informed of the family crisis. Oh dear, that would mean talking to him, something she had pretty thoroughly avoided since they’d both put on such a good show of being civilized to each other at the wedding. It would also mean looking up his telephone number. Her photographic memory for figures blanked out that particular piece of information. Still, she supposed she should ring him.
But then she thought: why? As Stephen had said, hearing the news about Gaby’s scare would just make him flap. David had always been prone to flapping. When her son needed a rock in his life, it was his mother he turned to, not his father. The knowledge gave Carole a surge of guilty pleasure.
? Death under the Dryer ?
Fourteen
Jude was a shrewd judge of character and, even though they hadn’t met, Carole’s description had made her certain Sheena was the kind of woman who would seize any opportunity to talk about herself. So it proved. In response to a phone call from a complete stranger who wanted to talk about what she’d seen at Connie’s Clip Joint, Sheena was more than ready to fix a meeting. “Soon as you like. Friend was going to come down and see me today, but he’s cried off. Apparently has to spend the weekend with his
So a rendezvous at the Crown and Anchor when it opened at noon was easily arranged.
Sheena must have been there waiting before Ted Crisp unlocked the doors, because she was well into a large gin and tonic when Jude arrived only a couple of minutes after twelve. “Oh, I should have got you a drink, Sheena. I set this up.”
“Don’t worry, darling. You can get the next one. What’re you having?”
Sheena managed to get Ted’s attention away from the customer whom he was asking which fingers hairdressers use to hold their scissors, and bought a large Chilean Chardonnay for her interrogator. Jude had instantly recognized the woman from Carole’s description. As when she’d made her entrance that morning at Connie’s Clip Joint, Sheena was wearing dark glasses and had her hair swathed in a scarf. She was maintaining that illusion of unobtrusiveness so often affected by people who like to be the centre of attraction. Her silk top and linen suit were expensive, showing just enough fussy decoration to be designer garments.
“There you are, darling. Cheers!”
It was still warm enough to sit outside – and that might have been a justification for the dark glasses – but Sheena had selected one of the pub’s shady individual booths. Again the attempt at self-effacement had the reverse effect, exacerbated by the loud husky whisper in which she insisted on talking. Any casting director looking for someone to play a spy would have rejected her as too obvious.
“Jude, I’m so glad you got in touch. Because I must confess I’m still traumatized by what I saw that morning at Connie’s. I keep wanting to talk about it, but holding back. You know, a shock on that scale is not something you can talk about to just anyone.”
But evidently – and fortunately for Jude – something she could talk about to an unknown woman who’d rung her up out of the blue that morning.
“I mean, let me tell you, mine has been a life not without incident. I’ve had a few shocks in my time – particularly where men have been concerned – but nothing like this. Actually to have been present at a murder scene – it’s the last thing in the world I would have wanted to happen to me.” Even though the opposite was clearly the case, this was spoken with great vehemence. “And the thought that the perpetrator of this awful crime is still at large…well, it’s too, too ghastly even to think about. I mean, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I am positively terrified. I am currently living on my own and I get these appalling fantasies. Suppose the murderer wants to silence all the people who were witnesses to his crime…?”
She left a pause for this awful thought to sink in, thus giving Jude the opportunity to interject, “But you weren’t strictly a witness to the crime, were you?”
“I was a witness to the effects of the crime. I saw the poor girl with that flex around her neck. I tell you, the image of her face is one that I will keep with me to my dying day.”
She attempted to punctuate this line with a dramatic swallow from her gin and tonic glass, but found it to be empty. Jude went up to the bar for refills. Ted Crisp was betting another customer a fiver that he couldn’t say which fingers hairdressers held their scissors in.
When she returned with the drinks, further discussion of Kyra Bartos’s murder was delayed by Sheena saying, “I see you don’t wear a wedding ring, Jude. Have you had trouble with men?”
“Yes, sometimes,” came the even reply. “I have also had more pleasure with men than with anything else in my life.”
“Oh yes, me too,” Sheena hastened to assure her.
“I have known the heights of sexual ecstasy…many, many times. But I have also known the hideous free-fall from that ecstasy…the moments of betrayal…the moment when one realizes one has just been too trusting…that one has once again listened to too many lies. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s the fate which we women are born to.”
This did not coincide exactly with Jude’s view of relationships with men, but she didn’t want to break the growing mood of complicity, so let it pass with a casual “Mmm.”
Which Sheena, of course, took as agreement. “Have you ever been married?”
“Yes,” Jude replied, rightly confident that she would not be asked for any more details. Very few people knew about her marriages – or indeed her divorces. Jude’s soothing company drew confidences from people about their own lives rather than questions about hers. Which suited her well. And so it proved in the current situation. It was her own experiences Sheena wanted to discuss, not anyone else’s.
“Oh, I was married. For twelve years. I thought we loved each other. I thought he loved me. But suddenly, after twelve years, he said he wanted it to end. Now why would he do that?”
‘Emotional exhaustion’ was the answer that offered itself to Jude, but she kept it to herself. Anyway, the question turned out to have been only a rhetorical flourish. “I’ll tell you why he did that. Because he had another woman. For seven of the twelve years we had been together, he had been seeing another woman.
“A stupid girl at his office, hardly out of her teens. She couldn’t offer any of the things I could offer him.”
Like bent ears, thought Jude.
“And he’s now gone and married her – and serve him bloody well right.”
“You don’t know whether they’re happy together?”
Sheena let out a derisive laugh. “I can hardly think they would be. The girl’s total number of brain cells is in single figures.”
“There’s no logic to who gets on with who.”
“There certainly isn’t. Otherwise he’d still be with me. God, the adjustments I’ve had to make in my lifestyle since the divorce!”
“Were you left very hard up?”
“Well, I got a house down here, but it’s not nearly as big as the house we used to live in. Where Miss Pinhead is currently doing her impression of the Lady of the Manor.”
“But have you had to work hard to make ends meet?”
“No, not work as such. But my house has only got four bedrooms, hers has got six. I’m not nearly as well off as she is.”
Jude’s sympathy for the divorcee’s plight was waning. From what she said – and from the clothes she was wearing – she hadn’t done at all badly out of the settlement. Her feelings might not yet have healed, but in material terms she was OK.
Time to move the conversation on. “Going back to that morning in Connie’s Clip Joint – ”, Fat chance of getting Sheena off her favourite subject, though. “Since the divorce,” she went on, “I’ve had many attempts to find love again, but they’ve all ended in disappointment. Men are such bastards, why do we love them so much?”
Jude didn’t offer an opinion. She reckoned she’d have to ride out the tide of anti-men hatred before she got back to investigation.
