The Fethering Mysteries 10; The Poisoning in the Pub

left. In the stifling heat of the July afternoon, there was a feeling of a storm about to break.

– Just as she was approaching the door, Carole said, “Oh, I haven’t settled up, have I, Ted?”

“You’re forgetting. Nothing to pay. I said today was on the house.”

As she went out of the pub Carole heard Sylvia’s hard nasal voice behind her saying, “That’s no way to run a business. No wonder you say you haven’t got any money. Do you pick up the tab for all your lady friends, Ted?”

¦

Through the open windows of her sitting room Carole saw Jude arriving back from her conference in Brighton. Many people would have called out a greeting there and then but, being Carole, she waited till her neighbour had had ten minutes to settle in before telephoning her. She was relieved to hear that Jude was very definitely up for a glass of wine.

They sat in the High Tor garden, which maintained the same impersonal neatness as the house’s interior. Neither Carole Seddon nor her husband David – they had still been married when they made the purchase of it as a weekend cottage – had wanted a garden that would need much maintenance. So the small rectangular plot was mostly paved over, with a two-foot frame of flowerbeds running up to the well-maintained fences. No weeds were ever allowed to attain maturity in the beds; they were removed with the same alacrity that Carole would wipe a stain off her kitchen work surface. A path led from the paved rectangle to the back gate, which opened on to an area of rough ground, where Carole would take Gulliver out to do his business when the weather was too bad for a proper walk.

She and Jude sat on green metal chairs at a green metal table with a bottle of Chilean Chardonnay in a cooler between them. A statutory enquiry was made about the day in Brighton, to which Jude, knowing the level of Carole’s interest in alternative therapies, replied with commendable brevity.

Social niceties observed, Carole was quickly into an account of her lunchtime visit to the Crown and Anchor. In particular, she wanted to know whether Jude knew any more than she did about Ted Crisp’s ex-wife.

“I don’t think I do really. He’s made enough jokes about her over the years, but most of them sounded as if they were just out of his old stand-up routine. But you’ve heard those as much as I have. He tells them all the time in the Crown and Anchor for the benefit of anyone who happens to be listening.”

“I thought you might have heard more about Sylvia when Ted poured his heart out to you on Monday evening.”

“All he said was that his ‘ex-wife had come back into his life’ – or to be more accurate, that his ‘bloody ex- wife had come back into his life’. Which I told you.”

“Yes, you did. Nothing more, though?”

Jude shook her head. “But Ted didn’t say anything to you, did he…?” For a rare moment she almost felt the approach of coyness as she asked, “I mean, when you and he…when you were together?”

“What do you mean?” Carole reddened, thrown by the question. “Why should he have done?”

“Well, it’s just…men and women, in an intimate situation…” Jude, tired of her own pussy-footing. “In bed. People often talk about their former lovers when they’re in bed with someone new.”

Carole Seddon looked deeply shocked. “Ted and I didn’t talk about anything like that,” she said primly.

“Right. Just a thought.”

Deliberately changing the tack of the conversation, Carole said firmly, “I wish I could remember what he actually had said about Sylvia in the pub. There might have been some truth hidden away in all the jokes.”

“Well, I remember one that he told. He said that, fairly soon into their marriage – only three months or so – his wife had run off with a double-glazing salesman.”

“Had she really?”

“That I don’t know. It could just have been a setup for his next line.”

“Which was?”

“As I recall: “I can’t see what she sees in him. He’s so transparent.””

Carole winced. “Oh dear.”

“But it might have been true. Who knows?”

“Hmm. Jude, has led ever said to you that he’s actually divorced?”

“I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure he has. I mean, I’ve always assumed he was. Why?”

“Oh, I was just thinking that a divorced ex-spouse can cause problems…” Carole coloured again “…as I know with David, but those problems are nothing to those that can be caused by someone to whom you’re still married.”

Jude nodded. “You’re right. And led does seem to be overreacting to Sylvia’s reappearance. Yes, be worth finding out whether their separation ever was legalized.”

“But how do we do that?” asked Carole.

“Next time we’re in the Crown and Anchor,” said Jude with a grin, “we ask him.”

“Oh.” Carole’s expression showed that she regarded this as far too frontal an approach. Once again she was glad to move the conversation along. Particularly glad to be moving it on to the one important gobbet of news she had been hoarding till it would have its fullest dramatic impact. “I did actually find out something else at the pub at lunchtime…”

“Oh?”

And Carole told Jude about Ray having been unmonitored in the kitchen while led, Ed and Zosia had shifted the beer barrels in the Crown and Anchor’s cellar.

“You say Ted didn’t mention that to the Health and Safety people?”

“No. He suddenly got all protective about Ray. Almost crusading about how society treats people like that. I must say, it was a side of Ted I had never seen before.”

“Not even when you and he – ?”

“Never,” said Carole, firmly stopping that train of thought in its tracks.

“Well, it sounds like we ought to speak to this Ray.”

“If we can find him. Ted wouldn’t give me his address.”

“No, but we know he lives in a flat in a block for other people with special needs. And there can’t be many of those in Fethering.”

“So you think you could track him down, Jude?”

“I’m sure I could. Fortunately I have very good contacts in the local social services. If I could just use your phone, I’ll try – ”

But that line of enquiry was at least temporarily postponed by the sound of High Tor’s front doorbell.

¦

Both women recognized the man whom Carole ushered through into the back garden, though neither of them had ever met him socially. It was impossible to live in Fethering for any length of time without knowing who he was. He was present at every public event, and more weeks than not there was a photograph of him in the Fethering Observer. The place was not big enough to have a mayor, but it did have a village committee, and the chair of that was Greville Tilbrook.

Like Carole Seddon, he was a retired civil servant, though she knew from contacts within the organization that he’d never reached even as high up the system as she had. But he was one of those men whose entire life seemed to have been waiting for the blossoming that would attend retirement. For some years while still employed he had been a Methodist lay preacher, but when he gave up the day job he was soon climbing other local hierarchies. He was a leading light of the Conservative Association, on the committees of Fethering Yacht Club, the Fethering Historical Society and the local Probus Club (for retired professional and business people).

He was a living warning, an embodiment of the truth that a colleague had told Carole before she moved permanently to Fethering: “If you live in the country, never volunteer for anything, or you’ll end up doing everything.” It was advice she had stuck by, and it had served her well.

But of course Greville Tilbrook’s personality was very different from hers. He positively loved civic responsibility. In retirement he was having the time of his life.

He was dressed that evening in his uniform of pale-grey…well, they could only really be called ‘slacks’…and soft brown loafers. As a gesture to informality and the July weather, he had removed his blue-striped seersucker jacket and swung it roguishly over his shoulder in distant recollection of some photograph he’d seen of Frank Sinatra. This revealed a short-sleeved pale-blue shirt, round whose neck was a neatly knotted tie bearing the