“Andy also said,” Jude went on inexorably, “that he recognized the perfume his attacker was wearing.”
“Perfume?” Sophia mouthed, uncomprehending.
“Yes. Andy Constant said his attacker smelt of the perfume that you use.”
The girl looked bewildered, but whether her bewilderment was genuine Carole and Jude could not guess.
Then suddenly a memory came to her, and her hand went up to her mouth. “Oh, my God. My Barbour!”
“What?”
“My Barbour jacket. I couldn’t find it last night. That would smell of my perfume.”
Carole thought this sudden recollection was too neat. She felt sure the girl was just play-acting. “And what time did you go out last night?”
“About eight. I went to meet Daddy in a restaurant for dinner.” Sophia Urquhart caught sight of the other members of Magic Dragon, who were gesturing that they should start playing again. She half-rose from her seat.
“No, you can’t go yet.” Carole said this so fiercely that the girl sat back down again. “Tell me, were you at home before you went out to meet your father?”
“Yes, I’d left uni early. I wasn’t feeling too good. So I got back to Fethering at about four.”
“And didn’t go out again till eight?”
“No, I didn’t.” If that were true, then Sophia Urquhart couldn’t have been in the Drama Studio at the University of Clincham at six, stabbing her lecturer and former lover. “It was when I went out to meet Daddy that I couldn’t find my Barbour.”
“I don’t suppose,” asked Carole cynically, “that anyone could vouch for the fact that you were at home yesterday at the times you say you were?”
“As a matter of fact,” the girl replied almost smugly, “there’s someone who can. It was fairly slack in the office yesterday, so my brother Hamish was home by five. And he was still there when I left.”
With that and a curt nod, Sophia Urquhart went across to join the rest of Magic Dragon. The moment she arrived, the guitars and fiddle started the intro to ‘All My Trials’, and, whatever emotions were going through her mind, they were suppressed as her pure voice took up the song.
Just like Joan.
Carole and Jude looked at each other. And the identical logical progress was going through both their minds.
? Blood at the Bookies ?
Thirty-Seven
There was no difficulty the next morning in making an appointment with Ewan Urquhart. Though it was a Saturday, business in the offices of Urquhart & Pease remained slack. “Won’t really pick up again till the spring, when the sun comes out,” he had told Jude when she rang through. He sounded, as ever, urbane, the Old Carthusian to the last polished vowel.
If he thought it strange that Jude arrived with a friend to discuss the valuation of Woodside Cottage, he was too well bred to articulate his feelings. He and Hamish were both in the outer office when the women arrived. The younger man sat at a desk, looking blank. Despite the potential seriousness of the situation, Jude couldn’t help being reminded of the old joke:
There appeared to be no other staff on duty that morning. Maybe ‘in the spring, when the sun comes out’, there would be more. Ewan Urquhart offered them coffee, but Carole and Jude said they’d just had some. He then invited them to join him in his back office. “You hold the fort out here, Hamish. Fight off the hordes of eager purchasers, eh?”
His office gave the impression of the library of a gentlemen’s club. There were shelves showing the leather spines of unopened books, and the intervening areas of wall were dark green, with a couple of framed sporting prints. In pride of place was an etching of the neo-Gothic splendour of Charterhouse school. The desk was reproduction mahogany, the chairs were reproduction leather. And Ewan Urquhart’s vowels were reproduction upper-class.
He gestured them to chairs and said, “Now do tell me what I can do for you, ladies? I didn’t gather, Mrs Seddon, do you actually live at Woodside Cottage with, er…Jude?”
“Good heavens, no.” She didn’t know whether he actually was making a suggestion of lesbianism, but it was a notion she wanted to dispel as quickly as possible. “I live next door. High Tor.”
“I know it well. Part of my business to know the names of all the houses in the immediate vicinity. Never know when one might come up for sale, and one likes to keep a step ahead of the opposition. A highly competitive business, ours, you know.”
“I’m sure it is.” There was a silence. Having built themselves up to the confrontation, neither of the women was sure how next to proceed. They should have planned what to say.
“So, Mrs Seddon, am I to gather that you are also thinking of putting High Tor on the market? I would be more than happy to arrange a valuation for you too if – ”
“No, no. I’m quite settled there at the moment, thank you.”
“Good.” As another silence extended itself, Ewan Urquhart pushed his fingers through the greying hair of his temples. “So, please tell me. What can I do for you?”
Jude had had enough of prevarication.
“We’ve come to talk to you about Tadeusz Jankowski.” He looked surprised. “Don’t pretend you don’t know the name.”
“I am making no such pretence. I read the newspapers and watch television. I know that Tadeusz Jankowski was the name of the young man stabbed here in Fethering a couple of weeks ago. But I don’t know what he has to do with me.”
“He has to do with you the fact that he was in love with your daughter Sophia.”
Ewan Urquhart chuckled lightly. “My dear Jude, I’m sure there are a lot of young men who have been in love with my daughter. She is an exceptionally beautiful and talented young woman. It is inevitable that she attracts the interest of the opposite sex. Whether she would give any encouragement to a Polish immigrant, though, is another matter.”
“Your daughter met Tadeusz Jankowski at a music festival in Leipzig last summer,” Carole announced. “While she was InterRailing in Europe.”
He did look shaken by this revelation, but they couldn’t tell why. It could have been new information to him, or he could have been surprised by how much detail they knew of his daughter’s life.
“They had an affair out in Germany,” Carole went on, “and then Tadeusz Jankowski came over to England to look for her.”
For the first time Ewan Urquhart began to lose his cool. “My daughter would not have a relationship with a foreigner!”
“What you mean, Ewan,” said Jude, “is that you wouldn’t like your daughter to have a relationship with a foreigner. I don’t have children, but I’ve seen often enough that they do not always turn out as their parents Want them to.”
“Sophia is an intelligent girl. She wouldn’t mix with people who’re unworthy of her.”
“And what makes you think Tadeusz Jankowski was unworthy of her?”
“His nationality, apart from anything else. All right, I know we have reason to thank some Polish airmen for the help they gave us against Hitler, but as a race they’re not to be trusted. Sophia has been brought up to keep foreigners at a healthy distance.”
“Didn’t it occur to you,” asked Carole, “that if she went InterRailing round Europe, she might meet some
