mind, because you’re still a little god within the family. And everyone in the family does as you say. I’ve even done it myself. Pretended to have a bad back, so that you can find out if some woman’s snooping on you. But that’s always been your approach. Never mind your inadequacies in the real world – in the Wheal Quest you are still a hero. Rowley, if you only knew how bloody pathetic you are!”
He rose from his chair with an attempt at dignity. “I’m not going to stay here to be insulted.”
“Fine. Go to the police. Let them start insulting you instead.”
“That kind of remark is not worth responding to. Come on, we’re going.”
Arnold rose obediently to his feet and crossed to his wife, who had yet to sit down. Rowley joined them, then looked back at Bridget. “Are you coming?”
“No. Certainly not now. And I’ll have to think about whether I ever come back.”
He did not respond to that, but led his acolytes back across the sand towards the front. The animated language of his back-view showed that he was telling Eithne off for her betrayal of Locke confidentiality. And Arnold was joining in the castigation.
Exhausted, Bridget dropped into a seat next to Carole. “Sorry about all that. I was just bloody furious. Letting off the steam of a good few years, I’m afraid.”
Realizing the climax of the play had passed, Fethering’s elderly matinee-goers returned once more to their tea and cakes.
“Yes.” Now the others had gone, Carole felt awkward. The dissection of the Lockes’ family life – and indeed marriage – had been rather public. She didn’t quite know where the conversation should move next. Jude, she knew, would instinctively have found the right direction.
Still, there was always one safe English fallback. “Would you like me to get you a cup of tea?”
The drained woman looked pathetically grateful for the offer and accepted.
By the time she returned with a fresh pot for both of them, Carole had decided which tack to take. “How did Nathan seem when you saw him?”
“Oh, fine. No physical harm, anyway. Though what effect it’s going to have on him emotionally, I hate to think.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Asleep. He didn’t get much sleep last night. The detectives are being quite gentle with him.”
“Rowley would never believe that.”
“No.” She sighed. “I just feel so sorry for Nathan. I mean he’s still in deep shock about that poor girl’s death. He did love her, you know, with that intense adolescent passion of a first love. He must be so cut up. And I can’t think that being shut away for three weeks and ministered to by his loony cousin has made the grieving process any easier.”
“I’m surprised to hear you use the word ‘loony’.”
“Yes, very remiss of me, isn’t it? If I wasn’t in such an emotional state, I wouldn’t have been so politically incorrect. Mopsa is, after all, my stepdaughter. But it’s true. I’ve never managed to get through to her. I mean, she loathed me, because I replaced her beloved mother, but…there was always a problem there with Mopsa. Poor concentration, no grasp of reality. I’m sure there’s a name for it…Somebody-or-Other’s Syndrome, no doubt. But, of course, the Lockes never had her properly diagnosed. No, as ever, they reckoned they could sort everything out themselves.”
“Do you know why Rowley’s first wife left?”
Bridget Locke smiled grimly. “After the scene you’ve just witnessed, do you need to ask?”
“Maybe not.” There was a silence, broken only by the gulls and the soft swooshing of the sea, before Carole asked what was, for her, a daringly personal question. “Do you think you will go back to him?”
“I don’t know.” There was a weary shake of the head. “At the moment I’m so seething with fury that…I won’t make a quick decision. There is still something there, you know. There’s a side of Rowley that very few people ever see. He can be quite enchanting.”
I’ll have to take your word for that, thought Carole. And again she asked herself the perennial question: why do bright, intelligent women stay with such unsatisfactory men? But then she thought of the alternative, the divorce she and David had shared. And wondered whether that was actually a much better solution.
“I was wondering…” Bridget went on, “you spent most of yesterday driving Nathan back from Treboddick…”
“Yes.”
“Did he say anything to you…you know, anything that made you think differently about who might have killed Kyra Bartos?”
“Not really. I mean, he told me and Jude what he’d done that night…which sounded pretty convincing to us… though whether it’ll convince the police…”
“As I say, the police are being much more sensitive than I’d ever have expected. They very definitely want to question Nathan, but I didn’t get the impression that they regard him as a major suspect.”
“Good. Well, the one thing he did mention was that that night, while he was in the salon with Kyra…he thought he heard someone trying to get in through the back gate.”
“The murderer?”
“Possibly. Whoever it was couldn’t have got in then…but maybe came back later.”
“Hmm…” Bridget Locke swept her hands slowly through her long blonde hair and looked thoughtful. “There was one thing that Nathan said to me, just now, at the police station…which I thought was interesting…”
“What was that?”
“He said that there were a dozen red roses in the back room at the salon the night Kyra Bartos died.”
“Yes, I saw them. Part of Nathan’s romantic set dressing, imagine. Which, given the circumstances, is pretty sad.”
“No.”
“What?” Carole looked curiously at the woman.
“Nathan said the red roses had nothing to do with him. They were there when he arrived.”
“Didn’t he ask Kyra if they were hers?”
“Apparently not. He assumed they were something to do with the salon’s owner…Connie, is it?”
“Yes. Did he say whether he had told the police about seeing the red roses?”
“I asked him and he said he hadn’t. I got the impression they’d been asking more about where he’d been for the past three weeks, and in the next session they’re going to get on to the night Kyra Bartos died. But I thought the red roses were interesting.”
“Certainly. And one assumes that the police took them away from the salon as evidence?”
“I would think so, Carole. What were they then – a love token for somebody?”
“Perhaps.”
“So,” said Bridget Locke, “the two obvious questions are: who brought them to the salon? And who for?”
¦
So far as Carole was concerned, the answers to those questions were very straightforward. As soon as she got back to High Tor, she fed Gulliver, hardly noticing what she was doing. Her mind was racing.
She could only think of one candidate as the bearer of red roses for Kyra. Apart from Nathan, there was another man who had fancied her. Or at least come on to her. Maybe the girl hadn’t been so immune to his attractions as she pretended.
Carole found the card and dialled his mobile number. Martin Rutherford answered immediately. She identified herself, and reminded him that he’d asked her to get in touch if she found out anything more about the murder.
“Well, I have found out something.” She told him about the red roses, and the fact that they hadn’t been brought to the salon by Nathan Locke.
“Ah. Maybe we should talk…?”
“Just what I was going to suggest.”
She looked at her watch. Just before five. Jude would surely be back soon. Maybe they’d have to delay their debriefing meeting at the Crown and Anchor. If she made an appointment to meet Martin somewhere at seven, they could both confront him. But that wasn’t going to be possible. Martin wanted to meet earlier. “The salon closes
