The Fethering Mysteries 08; Death under the Dryer

“And did you develop the, er…homosexual mask from the start?”

“Yes. As a joke at first. But then I saw the advantages. As I said, the customers like it, and it keeps them from prying into my private life. And there’s a third big benefit – they confide in me. Things they’d certainly never tell their husbands or lovers, and a lot that they wouldn’t even tell their girlfriends. You wouldn’t believe the things a gay hairdresser hears about female behaviour.”

“Hmm.” Carole found she was beginning to relax, recognizing that Theo’s sending her up was teasing rather than malicious. She gestured round the room. “That still doesn’t explain all this. I’m sure there are hairdressers who make a huge amount of money, but I’d have thought they’re the ones with chains of salons and their own ranges of hair-care products. I can’t think you make that much renting a chair at Connie’s Clip Joint in Fethering.”

Theo grinned. “Zara might have a lot of money.”

“Yes, I suppose she might.”

“But in fact she hasn’t. Or she hadn’t when I married her.” He stood up. “Do you want to know the last part of my secret, Carole?”

“Please.”

“I’ll tell you, but I really do want you to keep this to yourself. You’re not to pass it on to anyone else.”

Not even Jude, was her first thought. Then she decided she’d wait to see what the last part of the secret was. If it involved illegality, then she might have to break the promise of confidentiality she gave to Theo.

He led her to a door on the left-hand side of the sitting room. With his family in the house, Carole now had no anxiety in following Theo anywhere. He ushered her into a beautifully designed office. On a desk in a window overlooking the sea stood a lone state-of-the-art laptop. Other purpose-built surfaces held the armoury of more electronic equipment without which no business can now flourish. On specially designed shelves on the back wall stood rows of new-looking books – hardbacks, paperbacks, many in foreign editions.

“Come on, has your brilliant sleuthing mind worked it out yet?”

The reluctant Miss Marple was forced to admit that it hadn’t.

Theo took a hardback book from the shelf and held it across to her. On the jacket a determined-looking girl in a red dress stood on an outcrop of rock looking out at a departing steamship. The title was The Sorrowful Sea.

“Are you familiar with the oeuvre of Tamsin Elderfield?”

“No, I’m afraid I’m not.”

“Well, fortunately…” Theo gestured to the rows of shelves, “…lots of other people are.”

“You mean…you…?”

“Yes.” He grinned. “A third identity to confuse you, Carole. Theo the hairdresser in Fethering, Theo the family man in Brighton, and now – Tamsin Elderfield in virtually every bookshop in the world.”

“But…But…it’s romantic fiction, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is.”

“And you’re a man.”

“Spot on. Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, Miss Marple.”

“But, if you’re such a successful writer, why on earth do you still bother with a day job as a hairdresser?”

“Because, Carole, that is why I am a successful writer. A lot of authors have difficulty answering the inevitable question: where do you get your ideas from? I don’t,” he said smugly.

“You get them from Connie’s Clip Joint.”

“Of course I do. I actually quite enjoy hairdressing, but that’s not why I keep on doing it. No, Connie’s Clip Joint is the rich seam of experience which furnishes me with my plots. I don’t want to boast, but I think there are few men who have the depth of understanding of women’s romantic aspirations and frustrations that I do…or indeed that any other gay hairdresser does.

“So, Carole, now you know everything – as do the police, incidentally. I’ve been quite open with them about my different identities and apparently I’m not breaking any laws. So I’m sorry – none of what I’ve done is even vaguely immoral. Well, except possibly for my lying to you about owning a little Westie called Priscilla.”

There was a long silence, as Carole tried to balance her feelings of surprise and embarrassment. Finally, rather feebly, she asked, “So there’s nothing you can tell me that’ll help me find out who killed Kyra Bartos?”

“Sorry.” He too was silent for a moment, before saying, “Well, there is just one thing…I don’t know whether Nathan Locke killed the girl or not, but I would think finding the boy alive and talking to him might be the best way of getting to the truth.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No. But I did overhear him once saying something to Kyra when he came to pick her up…something that might be relevant…”

“What was it?”

“I also told the police this, so it’s no great secret. Whether they acted on what I said, I’ve no idea. It’s just…I was in the back room at the salon one evening tidying up, and Nathan came in to fetch Kyra, and she was getting her stuff together and he was talking, rather romantically, of how he’d like to take her away some time, spend a few days with just the two of them. And he said he knew a lovely place, a secret place he’d been longing to show her ever since they met.”

“Where was it?” breathed Carole.

“In Cornwall.”

¦

She still felt sheepish when she got back to the Renault. Theo had compounded the impression that he was patronizing her by giving her a copy of one of Tamsin Elderfield’s paperbacks: The Roundabout of Love. With some force Carole threw it onto the back seat, before starting on the rush-hour crawl back to Fethering.

? Death under the Dryer ?

Twenty-Three

Jude was round at the front door as soon as she saw the Renault slide neatly into the High Tor garage. Unaware of how Carole had spent the afternoon, she had her own news to impart.

So while her neighbour dropped her Times on the table and tried to regain favour with an aggrieved Gulliver by feeding him, Jude opened a bottle of wine and supplied edited highlights of her visit to the house in Summersdale. “But,” she concluded, “I still don’t know why I was summoned there. Bridget Locke had nothing wrong with her, but she was very determined that I should go over. I wonder what she wanted…?”

“I should think it was more a matter of what her husband wanted. Even though Bridget seems to be a strong woman, I get the impression Rowley dictates what happens in that household – and in the whole family, come to that. He’s used to getting his own way and he’ll use any means – even throwing tantrums – to ensure that that state of affairs continues.”

“All right, say she was only following orders…what was Bridget trying to find out? I imagine she must have got what she wanted before she fell asleep, because she didn’t ask me any supplementary questions afterwards.”

Carole was practical as ever. “Just go through everything she said to you again. There must’ve been something that had a special meaning for her.”

Screwing up her face with the effort of recollection, Jude reassembled the conversation that had taken place in Bridget Locke’s spare bedroom. At one point Carole interrupted her. “Well, that’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“She effectively asked you whether you and I were investigating the case.”

“I suppose she did.”

“I think that’s all she wanted – or all Rowley wanted. Confirmation that you and I were working together trying to find out who killed Kyra. And it would also tie in with the way Rowley’s kept insisting that I should tell him any new developments I’ve found out about.”

“You reckon he’s monitoring the progress of our investigation into the murder?”