Of course, Andy Constant, being the kind of man he was, interpreted her getting in touch with him as the action of a woman who had seen the error of her ways. Yes, she must have known she had behaved badly when they last met, but she obviously couldn’t stop thinking about him. He reckoned the old Andy Constant animal magnetism was once again exerting its irresistible pull.
Jude didn’t mind what he thought her motives were, so long as he agreed to see her again. Which he readily did. “Don’t let’s bother with meeting in the pub,” he said, his voice low in a way that he knew to be sexy. “Come straight to the Drama Studio.”
“Will I be able to get in?”
“I’ll leave the building unlocked.”
“I meant – will I be able to get past security on the main gate?”
“There’s another way in. There’s a small door into the campus in Maiden Avenue. It’s meant to be locked, but some of the staff have keys and it very rarely is. A lot of the students come and go through it.” There was something unappealing about the practised ease with which he went through these details. Jude wondered how many other women had been given these instructions before an assignation with Andy Constant.
“All right. I’ll come in that way.”
“Good, Jude.” He sounded patronizing, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child. “Let’s say six o’clock. I’ll really enjoy seeing you.”
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, thought Jude as she finished the call.
She rang to see if Carole was back, but there was no reply. In the afternoon she had a couple of clients for her healing services, a man with a stomach complaint for which the doctors could find no explanation, and a woman who suffered from panic attacks. In both eases Jude felt she made some progress.
Just before she left for Clincham, she tried ringing her neighbour again. Still no reply. Must be out.
Inside High Tor, Carole looked at the Caller Display and did not pick up the phone.
¦
The door in Maiden Avenue was, as Andy Constant had promised, unlocked. The road fringed Clincham’s main park and there was no street lighting. The February night was dark. Jude slipped into the campus, reflecting on the laxness of the security. No doubt an alternative means of access was convenient for the staff, but it would only take one incident of violence by an outsider against a student for them to realize their foolishness in leaving the door unlocked.
Jude hadn’t yet worked out the best approach to use with Andy Constant. Her suspicion was growing that the lecturer had killed Tadeusz Jankowski. Replaying the scene she had overheard between him and Sophia Urquhart in the Bull made her more certain than ever that they were lovers. He was having an affair with ‘Joan’ and ‘Joan’ was Sophia’s nickname, at least for Tadek. Maybe she had told her Drama tutor that and he had relished the idea of using it as well.
Andy Constant was a spoilt and petulant man, used to getting his own way. He wouldn’t have taken kindly to having a rival for his beautiful student’s affections. Quite how he’d come to be in Fethering to meet and kill the young Pole, Jude didn’t know, but she felt sure she could find out.
As she pushed open the door into the unlit Drama Studio block, she felt a little stab of fear. If Andy was the murderer and she threatened to reveal that fact to the world, he might not think twice about killing again. Pauline’s late husband’s view that the prime motive for murder was to keep people quiet came into her mind. She needed to be very circumspect in her approach.
There were no lights on in the lobby, but memory guided her towards the door of the studio itself. She pushed open its heavy mass. The only light inside came from an illuminated ‘Exit’ sign.
It wasn’t a lot, but sufficient for her to see the body of a man lying on the double mattress. And sufficient to be reflected in the glistening of wet redness on his chest.
Jude heard a sound behind her in the lobby. She reached for her mobile and pressed the buttons to dial Carole’s number.
In High Tor, as soon as the caller was identified, the phone remained untouched.
? Blood at the Bookies ?
Thirty-Four
There was a call that Carole did take later that evening, and selfishly she almost wished she hadn’t. It was from Gaby, at her wit’s end because Lily had developed a high temperature and would not be comforted. The doctor had been called and was going to come again in the morning. If the little mite wasn’t better then, she’d be taken into hospital for observation.
For Carole, already desolated by Jude’s betrayal, that was all she needed. She knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink that night, expecting every minute a phone call with terrible news from Stephen or Gaby.
She had forgotten that awful panic that can be instantly summoned up by the sickness of a child. Lily was so perfect, but so tiny. The lightest puff of illness could blow her away, it seemed to Carole as she faced the long agony of the night. Everything in her life felt suddenly threatened and fragile.
¦
Jude heard only the clattering of the external door of the Drama block. She shivered as she realized she must have passed within inches of whoever it was in the lobby. She must have been within touching distance of someone who was probably the murderer of Tadeusz Jankowski.
But her first priority was the man lying on the bed. She felt along the walls for light switches, but in vain. She remembered that Andy Constant had achieved his lighting effects from the box, but she didn’t know how to get in there.
Still, if she- concentrated…Her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. The light from the ‘Exit’ sign seemed to grow stronger.
Soon she could see clearly enough to recognize that the man on the bed was Andy Constant himself. Blood was pouring from his chest, but he was still breathing.
Jude rang the police.
¦
They were much tougher with her this time than they had been after Tadek’s death. To discover one stabbing victim might be considered bad luck; discover two and the authorities are bound to get suspicious. It took Jude most of the evening to convince the detectives that she had no responsibility for either crime. Their questioning remained polite, but they were very persistent.
Andy Constant, she was told, had been taken to hospital and was in intensive care. They promised to let her know when they heard anything about his condition. And meanwhile they kept going over the same ground, asking about her relationship with the lecturer, on and wearily on. She was suitably cagey on the subject, admitting that they had met for a drink a couple of times, but denying things had gone any further than that. Which was pretty much the truth.
In fact, Jude answered all the detectives’ questions as honestly as she could, but she didn’t volunteer any information they didn’t ask her about. Above all, she didn’t mention that she and Carole had been trying to solve the murder mystery themselves. She knew the derision with which professional policemen would greet that news.
To her surprise, in what the detectives said to her they did not seem to be linking the two attacks. Or maybe they were, but did not want her speculations going down that route. As an amateur, she had the usual difficulty in knowing how far the official investigation had proceeded. And she wasn’t about to be enlightened on the subject. Jude was a witness and a possible suspect. The police weren’t about to tell her their secrets.
Finally, around ten-thirty, the detectives seemed to decide that there really was nothing more she could tell them. They said that they were trying to keep what had happened secret for as long as possible and firmly forbade Jude to have any contact with the media about the stabbing. It was their hope to make some headway with their investigation before they had to deal with the intrusions of press and television. Then they thanked her politely for her cooperation and asked if she wanted a lift home, an offer of which she took grateful advantage.
It was an unmarked police car that dropped her outside Woodside Cottage. She looked up at High Tor, but the curtains of Carole’s bedroom were closed. Oh well, she could bring her neighbour up to date in the morning.
